Although Adolf Hitler always considered Linz, where he spent most of his childhood, his hometown, he was born on April 20th, 1889, in Braunau in Austria. From an early age he had vowed to dedicate his life wholly to art. He had a great talent for painting and drawing, and as a young man never tired of sketching theatre buildings, museums, even a bridge for the town of Linz. Several of these plans were later realised.

                It has been noted that Hitler's antisemitism and his suspicion of anything modern were well developed from his early youth on. Many people have tried to explain Hitler's hatred of so called intellectuals and of modern art by the fact that he failed to pass the entrance examination of the Viennese Academy in 1907. This failure is exaggerated. The myth of the artist rejected by the decadent bourgeois art establishment suited his image, so he propagated it himself. In fact 85 of his 113 fellow art students also failed the entrance examination. But the verdict of the academy -- Sample drawing unsatisfactory -- was certainly a big blow to him. He later wrote that it was like a glaring flash of lightning. He tried to study architecture and was again told that he lacked the necessary qualifications. He also failed in a painting class. As he later wrote in "My Struggle": By all reasonable judgement, the fulfilment of my dreams of being an artist was no longer possible.

Hitler. Election poster

                Hitler was self educated, and his attitude toward art and his judgments about it had the hallmark of the self taught. As a student in Wien he developed the roots of what became the aesthetic principles of the Third Reich. From the start his approach to art was conventional and full of prejudice against decadent art. He acquired attitudes he would never change.

Adolf Hitler. Postcard

                Hitler loved the nineteenth century, especially the works of the traditionalists Hans Makart, Anselm Feuerbach, and Ferdinand Waldmüller, but knew nothing of the innovators Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Even as a young man eager to become an artist Hitler had no desire to explore anything new or unconventional. It was always the well trodden path. He rightly revelled in the neoclassic facades of Wien, and endlessly sketched the Ringstraße. He continually drew architectural subjects which show no influence from the new generation of Viennese architects Josef Hoffmann, Otto Wagner, or Adolf Loos.

Dr. Goebbels. Postcard

                Hitler had always had a penchant for München, where he moved from Wien. It is rather revealing of his conventional outlook that he chose provincial München rather than modern and sophisticated Berlin. But here, too, as in Wien, he ignored any new artistic trends. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee all lived and worked in the bohemian Schwabing District at the same time as Hitler, but he joined others who branded these trendy groups as exemplars of what would later be called cultural Bolshevism, a label extensively used in National Socialist phraseology.

                Hitler was very prolific in his artwork. According to his own account he made over 700 paintings in Wien alone. The estimated number of his watercolours, oils, and drawings varies between 2,000 and 7,000. Hitler himself liked particularly his early watercolours and oils, done from 1905 to 1908. He also attached some importance to the work done in the prison in Landsberg in 1923-1924, while he was incarcerated for an abortive attempted uprising. But except for his architectural drawings, he was never very proud of them. My architectural sketches were my most proud possession, the fruit of my brain. I held onto them and never gave them away, as I did my pictures.

                Among Hitler's early drawings were sketches for the triumphal arches and cupolas that his chosen architect, Albert Speer, later would attempt to build for him. His lifelong passion for architecture explains why he was more liberal in his attitudes toward that art form than toward any of the others. In contrast to the most extreme voices in the Party, who spoke against the intellectualism of the Bauhaus School, Hitler did not share their total distaste for innovators like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, and he allowed some modern trends to continue. As late as 1936, when the visual arts had already been cleaned up, one could still find articles featuring the work of Mies van der Rohe and Peter Behrens, who was named that year to head the Architectural Department of the Prussian Academy.

                When Hitler was a student he frequently sold his work on the street, sometimes giving it to friends in return for favours. Their conventional style, their traditional theme, and their neat execution obviously appealed to many people who rejected anything modern. Later he managed to sell his work through some dealers in Wien.

                Hitler also made advertising prints and posters to keep himself going. His drawings included plans for tanks, battleships, and a stage set for Tristan und Isolde. He later designed the handsome National Socialist flag, the SA standard, and the masthead of the Völkischer Beobachter -- The Folkish Observer, the official National Socialist newspaper. He admitted that everything that made the Mercedes automobile beautiful was based on his ideals, and that the Volkswagen Beetle was his design. Cutlery and furniture for the Reich Chancellery were also designed by him. From 1920 onward he replaced the word artist after his name with writer. He read ferociously, and even tried his hand at writing a play!

                The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was the first to collect Hitler's work for its archive. Under Rudolf Heß, a Section systematically recorded, authenticated, and photographed all of Hitler's sketches, advertising designs, watercolours, and oil paintings. This archival activity was maintained until the beginning of the Churchill's war.

                In 1937 Hitler decreed that no one should write about his drawings, and forbade any exhibitions. He realised and admitted his limitations as an artistic worker. A few years later he banned the sale of his work abroad. It was eagerly sought after at home, however. Considerable amounts of money were offered for a Hitler original; examples could be bought right through the war. One of the biggest collectors of Hitler's architectural drawings was Albert Speer.

                Despite Hitler's order not to publish anything about his art work, them were some reproductions and reprints still in circulation. But on the whole, the general public knew little about them. Strangely enough, in 1936, the American magazine Esquire reproduced some of his work, and eight paintings were reproduced in Collier's magazine in 1938.

                Hitler's drawings have been criticised by hateful subhumans as being amateurish, which is patently not true. But they are perhaps excessively neat, like his writing. Nevertheless, his knowledge of architecture and his skill in drawing deserve our greatest respect. Of course, the praise they received during the National Socialist period was occasionally over the top:

                This simple Lance Corporal and Front fighter worked also as an artist even between the bitter experiences of the battles ..... His works are not a romantic rendering of the War, but a serious and moving monument ..... He catches, with the eye of a German landscape painter, the foreign land, so that it becomes familiar ..... In all the drawings one detects the born architect putting the Viennese Academy to shame. But most of all we recognise in all the details of his work honest, loving, and upright devotion to the whole.

                Hitler also had a great passion for music. He saw for himself a career which would combine the visual arts and music. He idolised Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner, and ignored Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauß, and of course the modern Viennese School of Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. As a young man, he went night after night to the opera, seeing Tristan und Isolde 34 times, for example. His relationship with Wagner's music was strongly personal. He spoke about an almost hysterical excitement that overcame him when he recognised kinship with the great man. Hitler's ideology was in agreement with Wagner's ideas about blood brotherhood and his antisemitism.

                You artists live in great and happy times. Above you is the most powerful and understanding patron. The Leader loves artists, because he is himself one. Under his blessed hand a Renaissance has begun ..... Oh, century of artists! What a joy to be part of it! proclaimed Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the other artistic leader of genius who dominated German art from 1933 to 1945.

                Born in 1897, Joseph Paul Goebbels was perhaps the most cultured and intellectual of the highly cultured and intellectual National Socialist Leaders. Goebbels had studied under the eminent Jewish professor of German literature Friedrich Gundolf. But he never belonged to the Gundolf circle, which included many followers of the poet Stefan George. Goebbels's association with Gundolf may have prompted his futile attempt to persuade George to return to Germany from Switzerland, where he had taken refuge in 1933.

                Goebbels's ideas about race, about the godlike mission of The Leader, and his conviction that one must be ready to sacrifice one's life for one's country, were formulated long before he came to power. His early sentimental novel, Michael. Ein deutsches Schicksal -- Michael: A German Destiny, published in 1928 by the National Socialist publisher Franz Eher, tells the story of the conversion of a young intellectual to National Socialism. It is full of jibes at Jews: The Jews are not like us, they have soiled the German race. In his essay Thinker Or Priest, Goebbels talks about the mission of the German Folk: We will be heroes and redeemers for a Reich that is to come. He cast the German Folk in the role of National Socialist Christians, with Hitler as the intermediary between Man and God. The Jew was seen as the Antichrist, and Hitler therefore became the Christ figure. Was he a man, half plebeian, half God? is he Christ or only St. John? Goebbels wrote in his diary.

                Once Goebbels joined the National Socialists, he rose quickly in the hierarchy of the Party. He founded the daily newspaper Der Angriff -- The Assault in 1930. In his hands it became his first powerful tool of propaganda, attacking the liberal attitudes of the Weimar Republic. Two months after Hitler came to power, in March, 1933, Goebbels was appointed Minister For The Folk's Enlightenment And Propaganda. With Hitler the architect of the Nation, Goebbels was the writer.

                Goebbels, for the greater good of Germany, together with all good Germans, gave himself heart and soul to the lofty ideals of Adolf Hitler. Goebbels had his own political and cultural ideas, but he happily modified them whenever Hitler intervened. He was independent in propaganda and cultural matters, especially once the English and French had caused the war which they wanted, with the great Commander and statesman Hitler being preoccupied.

Adolf Hitler: Church Entrance In Wien

Adolf Hitler: Odeonsplatz With The Feldherrnhalle And Theatiner Church, München

Adolf Hitler: Sketch For The Renovation Of The Reich Parliament And Brandenburg Gate, Berlin