Hitler

it. Adolf took his friend not once, but twice, along the row of lit windows behind which scantily clad women advertised their wares and touted for custom. His voyeurism was then cloaked in middle-class self-righteousness by the lecture he proceeded to give Kubizek on the evils of prostitution. Later, in
Mein Kampf
, he was to link the Jews – echoing a commonplace current among antisemites of his Vienna years – with prostitution. But if this association was present in his mind in 1908, Kubizek did not record it.
    Though seemingly repelled by sex, Hitler was at the same time plainly fascinated by it. He discussed sexual matters quite often in lengthy talks late at night with Gustl, regaling him, wrote Kubizek, on the need for sexual purity to protect what he grandly called the ‘flame of life’; explaining to his naïve friend, following a brief encounter with a businessman who invited them to a meal, about homosexuality; and ranting about prostitution and moral decadence. Hitler’s disturbed sexuality, his recoiling from physical contact, his fear of women, his inability to forge genuine friendship and emptiness in human relations, presumably had their roots in childhood experiences of a troubled family life. Attempts to explain them will inevitably remain speculative. Later rumours of Hitler’s sexual perversions are similarly based on dubious evidence. Conjecture – and there has been much of it – that sexual repression later gave way to sordid sado-masochistic practices rests, whatever the suspicions, on little more than a combination of rumour, hearsay, surmise, and innuendo, often spiced up by Hitler’s political enemies. And even if the alleged repulsive perversions really were his private proclivities, how exactly they would help explain the rapid descent of the complex and sophisticated German state into gross inhumanity after 1933 is not readily self-evident.
    Hitler was to describe his life in Vienna as one of hardship and misery, hunger and poverty. This was notably economical with the truth as regards the months he spent in Stumpergasse in 1908 (though it was accurate enough as a portrayal of his condition in the autumn and winter of 1909–10). Even more misleading was his comment in
Mein Kampf
that ‘the orphan’s pension to which I was entitled was not enough for me even to live on, and so I was faced with the problem of somehow making my own living’. As we have noted, the loan from his aunt, hisshare of his mother’s legacy, and his monthly orphan’s pension certainly gave him sufficient to live comfortably – perhaps even equivalent to that of a young teacher over a year or so at least. And his appearance, when he put on his fineries for an evening at the opera, was anything but that of a down-and-out. When Kubizek first saw him on their reunion at the Westbahnhof in February 1908, young Adolf was wearing a good-quality overcoat, and dark hat. He was carrying the walking-stick with the ivory handle that he had had in Linz, and ‘appeared almost elegant’. As for working, in those first months of 1908, as we have noted, Hitler certainly did nothing whatsoever about making his own living, or taking any steps to ensure that he was on the right track to do so.
    If he had a reasonable income during his time with Kubizek, Hitler nevertheless scarcely led a life of wild extravagance. His living conditions were unenviable. The sixth district of Vienna, close to the Westbahnhof, where Stumpergasse was situated, was an unattractive part of the city, with its dismal, unlit streets and scruffy tenement blocks overhung with smoke and soot surrounding dark inner courtyards. Kubizek himself was appalled at some of the accommodation on view when he was looking for a room the day after he had arrived in Vienna. And the lodging he and Adolf came to share was a miserable room that stank constantly of paraffin, with crumbling plaster peeling off dank walls, and bug-ridden beds and furniture. The lifestyle was frugal. Little was spent on eating and drinking. Adolf was not a vegetarian at that time, but his main daily fare usually consisted only of bread and butter, sweet flour puddings, and often in the afternoons a piece of poppy- or nut-cake. Sometimes he went without food altogether. When Gustl’s mother sent a food parcel every fortnight, it was like a feast. Adolf drank milk as a rule, or sometimes fruit-juice, but no alcohol. Nor did he smoke. The one luxury was the opera. How much he spent on