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'The Young Hitler I Knew' is an extraordinary memoir by a man who actually met Hitler in 1904 while they were both competing for a space at the opera. Their mutual passion for music created a friendship, and a roommate situation --Midwest Book Review, October 2006
An invaluable tool for every Hitler scholar; a fascinating portrait for every reader who is interested in Hitler. --Simon Sebag Montefiore
Kubizek's memoir of Hitler was largely written from memory after World War II, and published in German in 1953, which was shortly followed by an abridged English edition. This is the first full translation. Kubizek's book has to be used with some care. Certainly his memory could hardly have allowed him to recount incidents or repeat verbatim talks with Hitler that had occurred forty years earlier. But, as Ian Kershaw points out in his thoughtful introduction, Kubizek almost certainly got the things right in broad outline . . . an interesting look at Hitler's early years --NYMAS Review
An invaluable tool for every Hitler scholar; a fascinating portrait for every reader who is interested in Hitler. --Simon Sebag Montefiore
Kubizek's memoir of Hitler was largely written from memory after World War II, and published in German in 1953, which was shortly followed by an abridged English edition. This is the first full translation. Kubizek's book has to be used with some care. Certainly his memory could hardly have allowed him to recount incidents or repeat verbatim talks with Hitler that had occurred forty years earlier. But, as Ian Kershaw points out in his thoughtful introduction, Kubizek almost certainly got the things right in broad outline . . . an interesting look at Hitler's early years --NYMAS Review
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August Kubizek met Adolf Hitler in 1904 while they were both competing for standing room at the opera. Their mutual passion for music created a strong bond, and over the next four years they became close friends. Kubizek describes a reticent young man, painfully shy, yet capable of bursting into hysterical fits of anger if anyone disagreed with him. The two boys would often talk for hours on end; Hitler found Kubizek to be a very good listener, a worthy confidant to his hopes and dreams. In 1908 Kubizek moved to Vienna and shared a room with Hitler at 29 Stumpergasse. During this time, Hitler tried to get into art school, but he was unsuccessful. With his money fast running out, he found himself sinking to the lower depths of the city: an unkind world of isolation and constant unappeasable hunger. Hitler moved out of the flat in November, without leaving a forwarding address; Kubizek did not meet his friend again until 1938. The Young Hitler I Knew tells the story of an extraordinary friendship, and gives fascinating insight into Hitler's character during these formative years. This is the first edition to be published in English since 1955 and it corrects many changes made for reasons of political correctness. It also includes important sections which were excised from the original English translation.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
So much of what is taken and accepted as "FACT" about Adolf Hitler is full of inconsistencies and assumption. It has been my experience that the public will readily swallow whatever they are fed about Hitler without giving so much as a second thought as to whether or not it is accurate. I wish I could be indifferent to this and take a neutral stance, but I cannot. I have dedicated six years of my life to studying that of Hitler, and it pains me to witness the widespread ignorance displayed by the majority whenever his name is mentioned.
This is why this book is so important to me. It is by far the best ever written about his young adulthood and, in short, who he really was as a person, an individual; for in order to begin to grasp who Hitler was, one must look into his past.
During the years the two spent together in Linz and later in Vienna, young Adolf was already developing into who he would later become. For getting a deeper perspective of the true nature of Adolf Hitler, August Kubizek is, in my humble opinion, the most reliable source for insight into this complicated human being. No one knew Hitler more intimately than he did. He was also reunited with his old friend three decades after their ways parted in Vienna, and thus gives valuable insight regarding "Adolf Hitler, the Führer". And, as Kubizek remarked, "Hitler didn't change."
The words Kubizek uses to describe his young friend convey the image of a deep, passionate, gifted and serious young man who, due to his great obsession with changing the world around him, did not enjoy his youth in any traditional sense. Kubizek did his friend a great service by writing this book. It is required reading for all serious students of Hitler's incredible life, for it is an honest, first-hand account of the young starving artist, open and unbiased--unlike any other book ever to tackle the subject.
Kubizek was, I am convinced, a good man who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by publishing the truth about Adolf Hitler's character and showing the world his "human" side, because the world after the war (and even today) was not interested in the truth. So many were then and still are content to write Hitler off as the embodiment of all evil, to reject his humanity. .
Kubizek’s book, although published over 50 years ago, shines like a beacon among so many lesser works -- written by those who had never so much as spoken to their subject -- countering all the blindness and ignorance that those looking to criticize Hitler can dish out by, in turn, showing us the other side of who Adolf Hitler was: the poet, the dreamer, the visionary, the artist, the son, the brother, and the friend.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It is stated on the rear of this edition that it is the first complete English translation. This is a lie. Furthermore, Ian Kershaw's introduction is packed with the usual unsubstantiated anti-Hitler political rhetoric (that which has made him so rich over the years) and the language in this limited translation is much more vague (in much the saem way as the Manheim translation of Mein Kampf is more vague and `wandering' in comparison to the superior Murphy translation). Instead, I urge others to try to locate the ORIGINAL English language translation with the introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper (himself no pro-National Socialist to say the least, contributing an introductino in that edition arguable more ridiculous than Kershaw's - hard as that is to beleive). Anyway, from that edition, missing from this 2006 Leventhal translation, here is the ACTUAL ending of this book:
"It was only just in time as the very next day I was arrested and held for sixteen months in the notorious detention camp of Glasenbach. Naturally, an intensive search was made during my absence for the Hitler papers, but with no success. In the beginning I was often questioned, first in Eferding, then in Gmunden. These interrogations all ran on the same lines; something like:
"You are a friend of Adolf Hitler's?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since 1904."
"What do you mean by that? At that time he was nobody."
"Nevertheless, I was his friend."
"How could you be his friend when he was still a nobody?"
An American officer of the Central Intelligence Corps asked: "So you are a friend of Adolf Hitler's. What did you get out of it?"
"Nothing."
"But you admit that you were his friend. Did he give you money?"
"No."
"Or food?"
"Neither."
"A car, a house?"
"Not that either."
"Did he introduce you to beautiful women?"
"Nor that."
"Did he receive you again, later on?"
"Yes."
"Did you see him often?"
"Occasionally."
"How did you manage to see him?"
"I just went to him."
"So you were with him. Really? Quite close?"
"Yes, quite close."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Without any guard?"
"Without any guard."
"So you could have killed him?"
"Yes, I could have."
"And why didn't you kill him?"
"Because he was my friend."
THE (real) END
"It was only just in time as the very next day I was arrested and held for sixteen months in the notorious detention camp of Glasenbach. Naturally, an intensive search was made during my absence for the Hitler papers, but with no success. In the beginning I was often questioned, first in Eferding, then in Gmunden. These interrogations all ran on the same lines; something like:
"You are a friend of Adolf Hitler's?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since 1904."
"What do you mean by that? At that time he was nobody."
"Nevertheless, I was his friend."
"How could you be his friend when he was still a nobody?"
An American officer of the Central Intelligence Corps asked: "So you are a friend of Adolf Hitler's. What did you get out of it?"
"Nothing."
"But you admit that you were his friend. Did he give you money?"
"No."
"Or food?"
"Neither."
"A car, a house?"
"Not that either."
"Did he introduce you to beautiful women?"
"Nor that."
"Did he receive you again, later on?"
"Yes."
"Did you see him often?"
"Occasionally."
"How did you manage to see him?"
"I just went to him."
"So you were with him. Really? Quite close?"
"Yes, quite close."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Without any guard?"
"Without any guard."
"So you could have killed him?"
"Yes, I could have."
"And why didn't you kill him?"
"Because he was my friend."
THE (real) END
3 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a rather favorable biography written by a musician and Austrian from Linz, which by hazard knew a friend about 16 years old. That friend was Adolf Hitler. This is I think a tendentious biography, but even so, has some interest, and one can get the following conclusions, having in count Hitler at that time was just a boy who still had not knew WW I. For me at least, Hitler (whose original surname was Heidler, that he disliked), was an great idealist type. He only liked art and the German people as he believed that things should be. Hitler, it is clear, wasn't absolutely interested in common life as food, drink or sex, and a little in money. This book tells a love affair, but absolutely ridiculous for his lack of social or physical relationship with a girl, something own of people with the mind in another world. You can judge this as something that can happen once to every teenager, but later, the author explains how in Vienna were many women, that, owing the climate of decadence, offered easily. Hitler never used these opportunities.
On the other hand, although Hitler loved art until be absorbed, he was not an artist, by lack of talent for making artworks. His admired Wagner, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc, all had been artists, but also had lived her life with her lovers and women with more or less success. Hitler admired them, but he was unable to create something original and love. Furthermore, the book is not very revealing, but outlines the personality - if not of a madman, yes of someone deeply disturbed.
Hitler father an mother are characters badly designed, shown mostly as vulgar, religious catholic persons, but the author isn't a professional of the mind.
On the other hand, although Hitler loved art until be absorbed, he was not an artist, by lack of talent for making artworks. His admired Wagner, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc, all had been artists, but also had lived her life with her lovers and women with more or less success. Hitler admired them, but he was unable to create something original and love. Furthermore, the book is not very revealing, but outlines the personality - if not of a madman, yes of someone deeply disturbed.
Hitler father an mother are characters badly designed, shown mostly as vulgar, religious catholic persons, but the author isn't a professional of the mind.
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