Find really bad writing and share it.

[genghismike]

Easy, I'll just head on over to fanfiction.net and pick anything under the "Twilight" category.

@Taaj

Just pick anything from Twilight in general.

[Mortimer]

Found on the back of a bootleg Family guy DVD (counts as really bad writing):

[SleepingSilence]

dorkly.com/post/80719/fanfiction-excer..

Enjoy...?

[Vilageidiotx]

dorkly.com/post/80719/fanfiction-excer..

Enjoy...?

@SleepingSilence

"Her speech impediment made everyone cry, it touched their sharts."

that is some powerful emotion

Found on the back of a bootleg Family guy DVD (counts as really bad writing):

@Mortimer

If that counts, then I think Backstroke of the West does too.

[Garattee]

Okay wow, I'm impressed, a whole day and NOBODY'S insulted my cultural heritage by posting the Communist Manifesto. Well done, spam.

@DepressedSoviet

[Gutshot]

Does Bruno Mars Gay?

[ZB1996]

On the subject on Orson Scott Card, I read his Empire Series on a whim. The first book consisted of Card shitting on liberals, while the second consisted of apologies for biological warfare and a transition from democracy to dictatorship. The novels were often intentionally funny. And Card's done far worse things.

But returning to bad writing in a very different vein, I'm surprised no one has posted anything about this yet:

AN: Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik) 2 my gf (ew not in that way) raven, bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling. U rok! Justin ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2! MCR ROX!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

“Hey Ebony!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was…. Draco Malfoy!

“What’s up Draco?” I asked.

“Nothing.” he said shyly.

But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

My Immortal, the greatest fanfic of all time

[Mateotis]

Low-hanging fruit, but dramatic readings will always hold a special place in my heart. The guy's other videos are also well-worth watching!

[SleepingSilence]

[Dinh AaronMk]

Okay wow, I'm impressed, a whole day and NOBODY'S insulted my cultural heritage by posting the Communist Manifesto. Well done, spam.

@DepressedSoviet

How about some bashable literature then?

CHAPTER I
AT HOME

FODAY I consider it my good fortune that Fate de-

1 signated Braunau on the Inn as the place of my birth.

For this small town is situated on the border between

those two German States, the reunion of which seems, at

least to us of the younger generation, a task to be furthered

with every means our lives long.

German-Austria must return to the great German mo-
therland, and not because of economic considerations of
any sort. No, no: even if from the economic point of view
this union were unimportant, indeed, if it were harmful, it
ought nevertheless to be brought about. Common blood be-
longs in a common Reich. As long as the German nation is
unable even to band together its own children in one com-
mon State, it has no moral right to think of colonization as
one of its political aims. Only when the boundaries of the
Reich include even the last German, only when it is no
longer possible to assure him of daily bread inside them,
does there arise, out of the distress of the nation, the moral
right to acquire foreign soil and territory. The sword is
then the plow, and from the tears of war there grows the
daily bread for generations to come. Therefore, this little
town on the border appears to me the symbol of a great
task. But in another respect also it looms up as a warning

4 MEIN KAMPF

to our present time. More than a hundred years ago, this
insignificant little place had the privilege of gaining an
immortal place in German history at least by being the
scene of a tragic misfortune that moved the entire nation.
There, during the time of the deepest humiliation of our
fatherland, Johannes Palm, citizen of Nurnberg, a middle-
class bookdealer, die-hard 'nationalist, 1 an enemy of the

The idealism of the Wars of Liberation, waged by Prussia
against Napoleon, is reflected in the career of Johann Phillip
Palm, Nurnberg book-seller, who in 1806 issued a work en-
titled, Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung (Germany in
the Hour of Its Deepest Humiliation). This was a diatribe
against the Corsican. Palm was tried by a military tribunal,
sentenced to death, and shot at Braunau on August 26, 1806.
During the centenary year (1906) a play in honor of Palm was
written by A. Ebenhoch, an Austrian author. It is possible
that Hitler may have seen or read this drama.

Leo Schlageter, a German artillery officer who served after
the World War in the Free Corps with which General von der
Goltz attempted to conserve part of what Germany had gained
by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was found guilty of sabotage
by a French military tribunal during the Ruhr invasion of
1923. He had blown up a portion of the railway line between
Dusseldorf and Duisburg, and had been caught in the act.
The assertion that he was 'betrayed* to the French is without
historical foundation. It was the policy of the German govern-
ment to discountenance open military measures and to place
its reliance upon so-called 'passive resistance.' Karl Severing,
then Social Democratic Minister of the Interior in Prussia, was
a zealous though cautious patriot whose firm defense of the
democratic institutions of Weimar angered extremists of all
kinds. He was thus a favorite Nazi target. The governments oi
the Reich and of Prussia made every effort to save Schlageter.
The Vatican intervened in his behalf, and it is generally sup-
posed that the French authorities would have commuted the
sentence had it not been for a sudden wave of opposition to

AT HOME 5

French, was killed for the sake of the Germany he ardently
loved even in the hour of its distress. He had obstinately
refused to denounce his fellow offenders, or rather the chief
offenders. Thus he acted like Leo Schlageter. But like
him, he too was betrayed to France by a representative of
his government. It was a director of the Augsburg police
who earned that shoddy glory, thus setting an example for
the new German authorities of Heir Severing's Reich,
t In this little town on the river Inn, gilded by the light of
German martyrdom, there lived, at the end of the eighties
of the last century, my parents, Bavarian by blood, Aus-
trian by nationality : the father a faithful civil servant, the

Poincar6's policy in the Chamber. That induced the govern-
ment to make a show of firmness. Schlageter, whose last words
are said to have been, 'Germany must live,' was executed on
May 26, 1923. Immediately he became a German national hero.
His example more than anything else hallowed the tradition of
the Free Corps in the popular mind and thus strengthened pro-
militaristic sentiment. One of the first cultural activities of the
Nazi regime was a tribute to Schlageter.

Hitler's family background has been a subject for much re-
search and speculation. The father, Alois Hitler (1837-1903),
was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber; and it is
generally assumed that the father was the man she married
Johann Hiedler. Until he was forty, he bore the name of his
mother, being known as Alois Schicklgruber. Then on January
8, 1877, he legally changed the name to Hitler, which had been
that of his maternal grandmother. His third wife was Klara
Poelzl (1860-1908), who on April 20, 1889, gave birth to Adolf
Hitler. There may have been a brother or half-brother if
reports current in Nazi circles are to be credited. At any rate,
Hitler has a living sister and a half-sister. The first has lived in
retirement, but the second a woman of considerable charm
and ability is known to have exercised no little influence at
times.

6 MEIN KAMPF

mother devoting herself to the cares of the household and
looking after her children with eternally the same loving
kindness. I remember only little of this time, for a few
years later my father had again to leave the little border
town he had learned to like, and go down the Inn to take a
new position at Passau, that is in Germany proper.

But the lot of an Austrian customs official of those days
frequently meant 'moving on.' Just a short time after-
wards my father was transferred to Linz, and finally retired
on a pension there. But this was not to mean * rest' for the
old man. The son of a poor cottager, even in his childhood
he had not been able to stay at home. Not yet thirteen
years old, the little boy he then was bundled up his things
and ran away from his homeland, the Waldviertel. Despite
the dissuasion of 'experienced' inhabitants of the village
he had gone to Vienna to learn a trade there. This was in
the fifties of the last century. A bitter resolve it must have
been to take to the road, into the unknown, with only three
guilders for traveling money. But by the time the thirteen-
year-old lad was seventeen, he had passed his apprentice's
examination, but he had not yet found satisfaction. It was
rather the opposite. The long time of hardship through
which he then passed, of endless poverty and misery,
strengthened his resolve to give up the trade after all in
order to become something 'better.' If once the village
pastor had seemed to the little boy the incarnation of all
obtainable human success, now, in the big city which had
so widened his perspective, the rank of civil servant became
the ideal. With all the tenacity of one who had grown ' old '
through want and sorrow while still half a child, the sev-
enteen-year-old youth clung to his decision . . . and became
a civil servant. The goal was reached, I believe, after nearly
twenty-three years. Now there had been realized the
premise of the vow that the poor boy once had sworn, not
to return to his dear native village before he had become
something.

AT HOME 7

Now the goal was reached, but nobody in the village
remembered the little boy of long ago, and the village had
become a stranger to him.

When he retired at the age of fifty-six, he was unable to
spend a single day in 'doing nothing.' He bought a farm
near Lambach in Upper Austria which he worked himself,
thus returning, after a long and active life, to the origin of
his ancestors.

It was probably at that time that my first ideals were
formed. A lot of romping around out-of-doors, the long
trip to school, and the companionship with unusually 'ro-
bust 1 boys, which at times caused my mother much grief,
made me anything but a stay-at-home. Though I did not
brood over my future career at that time, I had decidedly
no sympathy for the course my father's life had taken. I
believe that even then my ability for making speeches was
trained by the more or less stirring discussions with my
comrades. I had become a little ringleader and at that
time learned easily and did very well in school, but for the
rest I was rather difficult to handle. Inasmuch as I received
singing lessons in my spare time in the choir of the Lambach
Convent, I repeatedly had an excellent opportunity of intox-
icating myself with the solemn splendor of the magnificent
church festivals. It was perfectly natural that the position
of abbot appeared to me to be the highest ideal obtainable,
just as that of being the village pastor had appealed to my
father. At least at times this was the case. For obvious
reasons my father could not appreciate the talent for ora-
tory of his quarrelsome son in the same measure, nor could
he perceive in it any hope for the future of the lad, and so
he showed no understanding for these youthful ideas.
Sadly he observed this dissension of nature.

Actually, my occasional longing for this profession dis-
appeared very quickly and made way for aspirations more
in keeping with my temperament. Rummaging through

MEIN KAMPF

my father's library, I stumbled upon various books on mili-
tary subjects, and among them I found a popular edition
dealing with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. These
were two volumes of an illustrated journal of the period
which now became my favorite reading matter. Before
long that great heroic campaign had become my greatest
spiritual experience. From then on I raved more and more
about everything connected with war or with militarism.

Since Hitler's outlook and policies are rooted in Austrian ex-
perience (it is sometimes said that he 'made Germany an Aus-
trian's province') some remarks on the general situation in his
home land may be helpful. The Austria-Hungary of the last
three decades of the nineteenth century was only the remnant
of a Habsburg Empire that had once included most of western
Europe. It was a 'dual monarchy,' the crown belonging to the
monarch as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Since
most of Germany had been welded together (1871) by Bis-
marck in an empire ruled by the Hohenzollern kings of Prussia,
the Germans who remained in Austria-Hungary constituted a
minority, even though most of the important bureaucratic
positions were still in their hands. The position obtained by
Hungary made their lot no easier. For soon every ' nationality '
wished to secure comparable advantages for itself.

The monarchy itself had suffered many a reverse. Under
Frederick the Great and Bismarck, the Prussians had inflicted
several major defeats upon their Austrian rivals. While the
revolutionary liberalism of 1848 was successfully put down at
the cost of severe fighting, the power of the bureaucratic State
was none the less seriously undermined and the eventual
triumph of 'constitutionalism* in 1860-61 was assured. In
addition the unification of Italy was achieved at the cost of
Austrian prestige and possessions. And though the Partition of
Poland had added Galicia to the Habsburg domains, it was
always doubtful who ruled the province the Poles or the
Austrians. Galicia was also the home of large Jewish com-
munities, from which strong contingents moved to Vienna
and other important cities.

AT HOME 9

But this was to prove of importance to me in another
direction as well. For the first time the question confronted
me I was a bit confused, perhaps if and what differ-
ence there was between those Germans fighting these bat-
tles and the others. Why was it that Austria had not taken
part also in this war, why not my father, and why not all
the others? -<

Are we not the same as all the other Germans?

Do we not all belong together? This problem now began
to whirl through my little head for the first time. After
cautious questioning, I heard with envy the reply that not
every German was fortunate enough to belong to Bis-
marck's Reich.

This I could not understand.

I was to become a student.

From 1880 onward, the problem of * nationalities' dominated
Austrian life. On the one hand, the Hungarians were concerned
lest the Slavic groups Czechs, Croats, Poles, etc. extend
their demand for autonomy to the point where the Empire
would become a * federation' of States, and therefore made
common cause with the Germans on issues affecting the status
quo. But a good many Germans, for their part, felt aggrieved
at having been excluded from the Bismarckian Empire and
saw no future for themselves in a predominantly Slavic State.
On the other hand, the Czechs and kindred 'nationalities' con-
tinued to urge the idea of a federation, and to insist upon the
right to foster their own languages and cultures. The Habs-
burg rulers had no choice save recourse to continual compro-
mise. In the Austrian parliament common national interests,
for example the army, were always being subordinated to hotly
debated matters of domestic 'nationality' policy. Doubtless
there was no way out except the establishment of a federation.
To this idea Franz Ferdinand, the Crown Prince whose murder
at Saravejo was the immediate cause of the World War, seems
to have committed himself.

10 MEIN KAMPF

Because of my entire nature, even more because of my
temperament, my father thought he was right in concluding
that attendance at the humanistic Gymnasium would not
be in keeping with my ability. He thought that the Real-
schule [a German secondary school for modern subjects and
sciences] seemed more suitable. This opinion was strength-
ened by my obvious talent for drawing; this subject, he
thought, had been neglected in the Austrian schools. Per-
haps his own lifetime of hard work was a decisive factor and
made him appreciate humanistic studies to a lesser degree,
for to him they appeared impractical. As a matter of prin-
ciple, he was determined that like himself his son should,
nay must, become an official. It was natural that the bitter
experiences of his own youth made his later achievements
appear so much greater, especially since they were exclu-

Some Germans protested strongly against these tendencies.
Nevertheless, the effort to create a party openly favorable to
the separation of German Austria from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and its merger in the Bismarckian State was far less
successful than might have been anticipated. The early Na-
tionalists of the iSSo's eventually gave rise to the Grossdeutsch
Partei of Hitler's youth, which was violently critical of the
Habsburgs and of all concessions made to the Slavs during the
years 1879-1900. Perhaps it would have gained more ground
if Bismarck had been vitally interested in the problem. But in
addition to the dynastic question of the status of the Habsburgs,
he had after 1871 to avoid giving the impression that Prussia
was an expansion-hungry State. He also realized that the
Vienna monarchy was a source of unity in the chaotic south-
east of Europe, in the affairs of which he did not wish to involve
Germany. Accordingly, the Grossdeutsch people got little
sympathy from him. When he was dismissed from his post by
Emperor Wilhelm II, the sole group remaining in Germany
that could have given much support to the separationist move-
ment in German Austria was the AUdeutscher Verband (Pan-

AT HOME 11

sively the result of his own industry and energy. It was the
pride of the self-made man which moved him to endeavor
to bring his son to a similar position in life, if not a better
one, and all the more since he hoped to make things easier
for the child through his own industry.

It was unthinkable that that which had become the con-
tent of his whole life could be rejected. Thus the father's
decision was matter-of-fact, simple, exact, and clear, quite
comprehensibly in his own eyes. His domineering nature,
the result of a lifelong struggle for existence, would have
thought it unbearable to leave the ultimate decision to a
boy who, in his opinion, was inexperienced and irrespon-
sible. What is more, this would have been inconsistent with
his idea of duty, a wicked and reprehensible weakness in
exercising his paternal authority as he saw it in his respon-
sibility for the future of his son.

German League), an organization of chauvinists and expan-
sionists. They, however, looked upon Austria-Hungary as a
powerful ally and as a diving-board for the plunge eastward
which they looked upon as the German destiny.

In Austria itself the Grossdeutsch elements adopted a policy
calculated to insure failure. They sponsored a little Kultur-
kampf (religious war) of their own, attacking the clergy and
the Church; they disassociated themselves from all social re-
form and all concessions to other groups; and they were given
to rabid attacks on the monarchy. As a consequence, the Ger-
man group was more seriously divided than ever. These mis-
takes all made, as is evident from the text of Mein Kampf , a
deep and lasting impression upon Hitler. Just as he was dis-
gusted with the wrangling about 'nationality' problems that
characterized the Austrian parliament, so was he conscious of
the mistakes which the pro- Prussia leaders had made. He
never disassociated himself from the principles adopted by
those leaders, but he learned to look askance at their methods.

The extent of Austrian yearning for incorporation in the

12 MEIN KAMPF

And yet the course of events was to take a different turn.

For the first time in my life, I was barely eleven, I was
forced into opposition. No matter how firm and deter-
mined my father might be in carrying out his plans and
intentions once made, his son was just as stubborn and
obstinate in rejecting an idea which had little or no appeal
for him.

I did not want to become an official.

Neither persuasion nor ' sincere ' arguments were able to
break down this resistance. I did not want to become an
official, no, and again no! All attempts to arouse my inter-
est or my liking for such a career by stories of my father's
life had the opposite effect. The thought of being a slave
in an office made me ill ; not to be master of my own time,
but to force an entire lifetime into the filling-in of forms,
t What ideas this must have awakened in a boy who was
anything but ' good ' in the ordinary sense of the word ! The
ridiculously easy learning at school left me so much spare

German Empire or, after 1918, the German Republic, is a moot
question. Prior to the War, anti-Prussian sentiment was
probably just as vigorous among the people generally as pro-
Habsburg sentiment. After the defeat there was a general
feeling that the little independent State of Austria could not
survive. Even so it is very doubtful whether the demand for
Anschluss was as 'elemental 1 as Hitler says it was. Some
Austrians notably Professor Ludo Hartmann sponsored
it with vigor and eloquence. A few unofficial plebiscites were
held in Salzburg and elsewhere and seemed to show that senti-
ment was overwhelmingly in favor of Anschluss; but individu-
ally and collectively they have little value as evidence. Other
sources of information (e.g., records of party deliberations) give
a different impression. Undoubtedly the desire for union grew
during the following years, but it is none the less doubtful
whether an honest plebiscite in 1938 would have favored ab-
sorption of Austria into the Third Reich.

AT HOME 13

time that the sun saw more of me than the four walls of my
room. When today my political opponents examine my life
down to the time of my childhood with loving attention, so
that at last they can point with relief to the intolerable
pranks this 'Hitler 1 carried out even in his youth, I thank
Heaven for now giving me a share of the memories of those
happy days. Woods and meadows were the battlefield
where the ever-present 'conflicts' were fought out.

My attendance at the Realschule, which now followed,
did little to deter me.

But now it was a different conflict that had to be fought.

This was bearable as long as my father's intention to
make an official of me was confronted by nothing more than
my dislike of the profession on general principles. I could
restrain my private views and, after all, it was not always
necessary for me to contradict. My own firm intention not
to become an official was sufficient to set my mind at rest.
This decision, however, was irrevocable. The question be-
came more difficult as soon as my father's plan was met by
one of my own. This took place when I was twelve years
old. I do not know how it happened, but one day it was
clear to me that I would become a painter, an artist. My
talent for drawing was obvious and it was one of the reasons
why my father had sent me to the Realschule, but he never
would have thought of having me trained for such a career.
On the contrary. When, after a renewed rejection of my
father's favorite idea, I was asked for the first time what I
intended to be after all, I unexpectedly burst forth with the
resolve I had irrevocably made; in the meantime my father
at first was speechless.

'A painter? An artist?'

He doubted my sanity, he did not trust his own ears or
thought that he had misunderstood. But when it had been
explained to him and when he had sensed the sincerity of
my intentions, he opposed me with the resoluteness of his

14 MEIN KAMPF

entire nature. His decision was quite simple, and any con-
sideration of those actual talents that I might have pos-
sessed was out of the question.

'An artist, no, never as long as I live/ But as his son had
undoubtedly inherited, amongst other qualities, a stubborn-
ness similar to his own, he received a similar reply. Only
its meaning was quite different.

So the situation remained on both sides. My father did not
give up his 'never* and I strengthened my 'nevertheless/

Obviously the consequences were not very enjoyable.
The old man became embittered, and, much as I loved him,
the same was true of myself. My father forbade me to
entertain any hope of ever becoming a painter. I went one
step farther by declaring that under these circumstances
I no longer wished to study. Naturally, as the result of such
'declarations' I got the 'worst of it,' and now the old man
relentlessly began to enforce his authority. I remained
silent and turned my threats into action. I was certain
that, as soon as my father saw my lack of progress in
school, come what may he would let me seek the happiness
of which I was dreaming.

I do not know if this reasoning was sound. One thing
was certain : my apparent failure in school. I learned what
I liked, but above all I learned what in my opinion might
be necessary to me in my future career as a painter. In this
connection I sabotaged all that which seemed unimportant
or that which no longer attracted me. At that time my
marks were always extreme depending upon the subject and
my evaluation of it. ' Praiseworthy ' and ' Excellent ' ranked
with 'Sufficient' and ' Insufficient. 1 My best efforts were in
geography and perhaps even more so in history. These
were my two favorite subjects and in them I led my class.-*

Now, after so many years, when I examine the results of
that period, I find two outstanding facts of particular im-
portance:

AT HOME 15

First, / became a nationalist.

Second, / learned lo grasp and to understand the meaning
of history.

Old Austria was a 'State of nationalities. 9
t A citizen of the German Empire, at that time at least,
could hardly understand the bearing of this fact upon the
daily life of the individual in such a State. After the amaz-
ingly victorious campaign of the heroic German armies
during the Franco- Prussian War, one had become more and
more estranged from the Germans abroad, partly because
one no longer knew how to appreciate them or perhaps
because one was unable to do so. As far as the Austro
German was concerned, it was easy to confuse the decadent
dynasty with a people who were sound at heart.

It was hard to understand that, were the German in
Austria not actually of the best stock, he never would have
been able to impress his mark upon a State of fifty-two mil-
lion people in such a manner as to create even in Germany
the erroneous impression that Austria was a German State.
This was nonsensical, with the gravest of consequences, but
brilliant testimony for the ten million Germans in the Ost-
mark. Only a very few Germans in the empire had any
idea of the continuous and inexorable struggle waged for
the German language, the German schools, and the German
mode of existence. Only today, when this misery has been
forced upon millions of our people outside of the Reich
proper, who, under foreign domination, dream of a common
fatherland and in their longing for it strive to preserve their
most sacred claim their mother tongue only today
wider circles understand what it means to fight for one's
nationality. It is now perhaps that the one or the other will
be able to realize the greatness of the Germans abroad in
the old East of the Reich who at first, dependent upon them-
selves, for centuries protected the Reich in the East, and
at last guarded the German language frontier in a war of

16 MEIN KAMPF

attrition at a time when the Reich was greatly interested in
colonies but not in its own flesh and blood outside its very
doors.

As everywhere and always, as in every struggle, there
were also in the language struggle of the old Austria three
groups:

The fighters, the lukewarm, and the traitors.

Even in school this segregation was apparent. It is sig-
nificant for the language struggle on the whole that its ways
engulf the school, the seed bed of the coming generation.
The child is the objective of the struggle and the very first
appeal is addressed to it:

'German boy, do not forget that you are a German.'

'German maid, remember that you are to be a German
mother/ +

Those who know the soul of youth will understand that
it is youth which lends its ears to such a battle-cry with the
greatest joy. In hundreds of forms, in its own way and
with its own weapons, it carried on the battle. It refuses to
sing non-German songs; the more one tries to estrange it
from German heroic grandeur, the more enthusiastic it
waxes; it stints itself to collect pennies for the fund of the
grown-ups; it has an unusually fine ear for all that the non-
German teacher says to it; it is rebellious; it wears the for-
bidden emblem of its own nationality and rejoices in being
punished or even in being beaten for wearing that emblem.
On a smaller scale youth is a true reflection of its elders, but
more often with a deeper and a more honest conviction.

At a comparatively early age I, too, was given the oppor-
tunity to participate in the national struggle of old Austria.
Money was collected for the Sildmark and the school club;
our conviction was demonstrated by the wearing of corn-
flowers and the colors black, red, and gold; the greeting was
1 Heil ' ; ' Deutschland iiber alles f was preferred to the imperial
anthem, despite warnings and punishments. In this man-

AT HOME 17

ner the boy was trained politically at an age when a member
of a so-called national State knows little more of his nation-
ality than its language. It is obvious that already then I
did not belong to the lukewarm. In a short time I had be-
come a fanatical 'German nationalist/ a term which is not
identical with our same party name of today.

My development was quite rapid, so that at the age of
fifteen I already understood the difference between dynastic
'patriotism* and popular 'nationalism'; at that time the
latter alone existed for me.

Those who have never taken the trouble to study closely
the internal situation of the Habsburg monarchy may not
be able to understand the full meaning of these events. In
this State the origin for this development was to be found
in the lessons in world history taught in the schools, since
there is practically no specific Austrian history as such.

The conservative cabinet headed (1879-1893) by Taafe at-
tempted to solve the problems of the Empire by winning the
support of the Slavic groups. In 1895-1897 Count Casimir
Badeni sponsored legislation favoring the Czechs in linguistic
and cultural matters; and violent opposition to these measures
was aroused among the nationalistic Germans. The Deuischer
Schulverein (German School Society), an organization founded
in 1880 to promote German schools in foreign countries, was a
center of resistance particularly in Carinthia, where the Slavs
were looked upon as especially menacing. The corn-flower was
a patriotic symbol in Wilhelmian days. Deutschland, DeiUsth-
land uber alles, a lyric written by Fallersleben in 1841, was
sung by the nationalistic groups in Austria to the tune written
by Hayden for the Imperial hymn. Singing it was, therefore,
an insult to the Habsburgs. The 'HeiF an old German form
of greeting was used by Austrian nationalists instead of tfie
native forms (e.g., Griiss Gotf), and had an anti-Semitic under-
tone. It required little manipulation to transform all these
things into the Nazi practices now current.

18 MEIN KAMPF

The fate of this State is so closely bound up with the life
and growth of the entire German nationality that it is
unthinkable to separate its history into German and
Austrian. As a matter of fact when Germany began to
split into two supreme powers, this very separation became
German history.

The imperial crown jewels kept in Vienna, reminders of
the old realm splendor, still seem to exercise a magic spell,
a pledge of eternal communion.

The German-Austrian's elementary outcry for a reunion
with the German motherland during the days of the break-
down of the Habsburg State was merely the result of a
feeling of nostalgia slumbering deep in the hearts of the
entire nation for a return to the paternal home which had
never been forgotten. This would be inexplicable had not
the political education of each individual German-Austrian
been the origin of that common longing. In it there lies a
longing which contains a well that never dries, especially
in time of forgetfulness and of temporary well-being it
will again and again forecast the future in recalling the
past.

Even today, courses in world history in the so-called
secondary schools are still badly neglected. Few teachers
realize that the aim of history lessons should not consist in
the memorizing and rattling forth of historical facts and
data; that it does not matter whether a boy knows when
this or that battle was fought, when a certain military
leader was born, or when some monarch (in most cases a
very mediocre one) was crowned with the crown of his an-
cestors. Good God, these things do not matter.

To 'learn' history means to search for and to find the
forces which cause those effects which we later face as
historical events.

Here, too, the art of reading, like that of learning, is to
remember the important, to forget the unimportant.

AT HOME 19

It was perhaps decisive for my entire future life that I
was fortunate enough to have a history teacher who was
one of the few who understood how essential it was to make
this the dominating factor in his lessons and examinations.
At the Realschule in Linz my teacher was Professor Doctor
Ludwig Poetsch, who personified this requisite in an ideal
way. The old gentleman, whose manner was as kind as
it was firm, not only knew how to keep us spellbound, but
actually carried us away with the splendor of his eloquence.
I am still slightly moved when I remember the gray-haired
man whose fiery descriptions made us forget the present
and who evoked plain historical facts out of the fog of the
centuries and turned them into living reality. Often we
would sit there enraptured in enthusiasm and there were
even times when we were on the verge of tears.

Our happiness was the greater inasmuch as this teacher
not only knew how to throw light on the past by utilizing
the present, but also how to draw conclusions from the past
and applying them to the present. More than anyone else
he showed understanding for all the daily problems which
held us breathless at the time. He used our youthful na-

The educational ideas here expressed are in part the common
property of all who have gone to school and in part the legacy
of Turnvater Jahn, the founder of the Turnvereine, or gymnas-
tic societies, whose Deutsches Volkstum (German Folkishness)
appeared in 1810, and whose part in rallying Prussian youth
against Napoleon was a most estimable one. When Hitler
speaks of the girl who ought to remember that her duty is to
become a German mother, or of history as the science which
demonstrates that one's own people is always right, he is
echoing Jahn in the first instance. The best discussion in Eng-
lish of this interesting pedagogue is still an essay which appeared
in the London Magazine during 1820, when these new Prussian
ideas of education seemed important but strange to English-
men.

20 MEIN KAMPF

tional fanaticism as a means of education by repeatedly
appealing to our sense of national honor, and through this
alone he was able to manage us rascals more easily than
would have been possible by any other means.

He was the teacher who made history my favorite sub-
ject.

Nevertheless, although it was entirely unintentional on
his part, I already then became a young revolutionary.

Who could possibly study German history with such a
teacher and not become an enemy of the State which,
through its ruling dynasty, so disastrously influenced the
state of the nation?

And who could keep faith with an imperial dynasty which
betrayed the cause of the German people for its own ig-
nominious ends, a betrayal that occurred again and again
in the past and in the present?

Boys though we were, did we not already realize that this
Austrian State did not and could not harbor love for us
Germans?

Our historical knowledge of the influence of the House
of Habsburg was supported by daily experiences. In the
North and the South the poison of foreign nationalities

This is probably one of the most revealing passages in the
book. Hitler has consistently considered himself a 'Revolu-
tionary,' but has added little to the interpretation of the term
given here. The longing to change the structure of society de-
veloped, in his case, not out of the consciousness of real or fan-
cied social and economic injustices, but out of the feeling that
the Ruling House did not adequately support the demands of
the German groups. After the War he took an identical point
of view in Germany itself, laying siege to the Weimar Republic
because its policy of international conciliation seemed to him a
duplicate of the policy of making concessions to Slavic groups
which Habsburg governments had sponsored. Cf . Adolf Hitter,
by Theodor Heuss (1932).

AT HOME 21

eroded the body of our own nationality, and it was apparent
how even Vienna became less and less a German city. The
Royal House became Czech wherever possible, and it must
have been the hand of the goddess of eternal justice and
inexorable retribution which caused Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, the most deadly enemy of Austrian-Germanism,
to fall by the very bullets he himself had helped to mold.
For was he not the patron of Austria's Slavization from
above !

The burdens which the German people had to bear were
enormous, its sacrifices in taxes and blood unheard of, and
yet, everyone who had eyes to see realized that all this
would IDC in vain. What grieved us most was the fact that
the whole system was morally protected by the alliance with
Germany, and thus Germany herself, in a fashion, sanc-
tioned the slow extermination of the German nationality
in the old monarchy. The hypocrisy of the Habsburgs, who
knew well how to create the impression abroad that Austria
was still a German State, fanned the hatred against this
house into flaming indignation and contempt.

It was only in the Reich itself that the 'chosen ones' saw
nothing of all this. As if stricken with blindness, they
walked by the side of the corpse, and in the indications of
decomposition they thought they detected signs of 'new'
life.

The tragic alliance between the young Reich and the old
Austrian sham State was the source of the ensuing World
War and of the general collapse as well.

In the course of this book I shall find it necessary to deal
further with this problem. It suffices to state here that from
my earliest youth I came to a conviction which never de-
serted me, but on the contrary, grew stronger and stronger:

That the protection of the German race presumed the destruc-
tion of Austria, and further, that national feeling is in no way
identical with dynastic patriotism; that above all else, the

22 MEIN KAMPF

Royal House of Habsburg was destined to bring misfortune
upon the German nation.

Even then I had drawn the necessary deductions from
this realization: an intense love for my native German-

The picture Hitler draws of his early youth is, therefore, one
of idle years spent fighting off formal education under the pre-
text that he wanted to become an artist. That he has ever
since considered himself brilliantly gifted as a painter and archi-
tect is indubitable. The flags, uniforms and insignia of the
Party were designed by him. The 'senate chamber* and study
in the Brown House, Munich, are proudly displayed as exam-
ples of the Fuhrcr's (Leader's) work. In the first, which is
primarily a study in red leather, the swastika serves as an al-
lusion to the SPQR of ancient Rome. Later on his views were
influenced by his Bavarian environment, more particularly it
would seem by the art theories of Schulze-Naumburg, who in
the Thuringia of 1930 led the attack on modernistic art and
architecture.

During 1937 Munich was stirred by an exposition of 'De-
generate Art,' which gathered from the museums pictures ad-
judged not to be in the strict Aryan tradition. Meanwhile
there had been erected in the same city a Kunsthalle adorned
with a row of simple classical pillars; and this structure is
generally accepted as embodying Hitler's ideal of what a build-
ing ought to be. The example of Mussolini also had its effect.
In order to provide a suitable approach to the Kunsthalle, one
of King Ludwig's ancient streets was torn down and widened.
Down this avenue, festooned with countless flags and abundant
drapery, II Duce proceeded upon the occasion of his historic
trip to Munich in 1937.

More recently the new Chancellery in Berlin has been com-
pleted. A skyscraper, taller than any in New York, was pro-
jected for Hamburg. Hitler is also known to have devised
models of a Vienna and Berlin reconstructed according to his
ideas of what a city ought to be. Enormous sums have already
been diverted into building operations.

AT HOME S3

Austrian country and a bitter hatred against the 'Austrian*
State.

The art of historical thinking, which had been taught me
in school, has never left me since. More and more, world
history became a never-failing source of my understanding
of the historical events of the present, that is, politics. What
is more, I do not want to ' learn ' it, but I want it to teach
me.

Since I had become a political 'revolutionary' at so early
a stage, it was not much later that I became an 'artistic'
one.

At that time the capital of Upper Austria had a theater of
fairly high standing. Almost everything was performed
there. At the age of twelve I saw 'Wilhelm Tell' for the
first time, and a few months later, I saw the first opera of
my life, 4 Lohengrin.' I was captivated at once. My youth-
ful enthusiasm for the master of Bayreuth knew no bounds.
Again and again I was drawn to his works and today I con-
sider it particularly fortunate that the modesty of that
provincial performance reserved for me the opportunity of
seeing increasingly better productions.

All this served to confirm my deep-rooted aversion for
the career my father had chosen for me, especially after I
had left childhood behind and approached manhood a
painful experience. I was more definitely convinced that I
could never be happy as an official. And now that my talent
for drawing had also been recognized in school, my resolve
was even more firmly established.

Neither pleas nor threats could influence me.

I wanted to become a painter, and no power on earth
could ever make an official of me.

But it was strange that as the years passed, I demon-
strated more and more interest in architecture. At that

24 MEIN KAMPF

time I took it for granted that this was merely an augmen-
tation of my talent for painting and secretly I was delighted
at this widening of my artistic horizon.

I had no idea that things were to turn out so differently.

The question of my career was to be settled more quickly
than I had anticipated.

When I was thirteen my father died quite suddenly. The
old gentleman, who had always been so robust and healthy,
had a stroke which painlessly ended his wanderings in this
world, plunging us all in the depths of despair. His dearest
wish, to help his son to build up his existence, thus safe-
guarding him against the pitfalls of his own bitter experi-
ence, had apparently not been fulfilled. But unconsciously
he had sown the seed for a future which neither he nor I
would have grasped at that time.

At first nothing changed in my daily life.

My mother probably felt the obligation to continue my
education in accordance with my father's wishes, in other
words, to have me continue my studies for the career of an
official. But I was determined more than ever not to be-
come an official. My attitude became more and more in-
different in the same measure that the subjects and the
education which school afforded me deviated from my own
ideal. Suddenly an illness came to my aid, and in the course
of a few weeks, settled the perpetual arguments at home
and, with them, my future. Because of a severe pulmonary
illness, the doctor strongly advised my mother not to place
me in an office later on under any circumstances. I was
also to give up school for at least one year. With this event,
all that I had fought for, all that I had longed for in secret,
suddenly became reality.

Impressed by my illness, my mother agreed at long last
to take me out of school and to send me to the Akademie.

AT HOME 25

These were my happiest days; they seemed like a dream
to me, and so they were. Two years later my mother's
death put a sudden end to all these delightful plans.

It was the end of a long and painful illness that had
seemed fatal from the very beginning. Nevertheless it was
a terrible shock to me. I had respected my father, but I
loved my mother.

Necessity and stern reality now forced me to make a
quick decision. My mother's severe illness had almost ex-
hausted the meager funds left by my father; the orphan's
pension which I received was not nearly enough for me to
live on, and so I was faced with the problem of earning my
own daily bread.

I went to Vienna with a suitcase, containing some clothes
and my linen, in my hand and an unshakable determination
in my heart. I, too, hoped to wrest from Fate the success my
father had met fifty years earlier; I, too, wanted to become
'something' but in no event an official.

CHAPTER II

YEARS OF STUDY AND
SUFFERING IN VIENNA

t% ^W^ JTHEN my mother died, Fate had cast the die in
\J\X one direction at least.

T T During the last months of her suffering, I had
gone to Vienna to take my entrance examination to the
Akademic. I had set out with a lot of drawings, convinced
that I would pass the examination with ease. At the Real-
schulc I had been by far the best artist in my class; and
since then my ability had improved greatly, so that my self-
satisfaction made me hope both proudly and happily for
the best.

There was but one cloud which occasionally made its ap-
pearance; my talent for painting sometimes seemed to over-
shadow my ability for drawing, especially in nearly all of
the branches of architecture. Also my interest in the art
of building as a whole grew steadily. This was stimulated,
when I was not quite sixteen, by the fact that I was allowed
for the first time to spend a two weeks' vacation in Vienna.
I went there especially to study the picture gallery of the
Hofmuseum, but I had eyes for nothing but the buildings
of the museum itself. All day long, from early morn until
late at night, I ran from one sight to the next, for what at-
tracted me most of all were the buildings. For hours on end

YEARS OF STUDY AND SUFFERING 27

I would stand in front of the opera or admire the Parliament
Building; the entire Ringstrasse affected me like a fairy tale
out of the Arabian Nights.

And now I was in this beautiful city for the second time,
burning with impatience; I waited with pride and confi-
dence to learn the result of my entrance examination. I was
so convinced of my success that the announcement of my
failure came like a bolt from the blue. And yet it was true.
When I had obtained an interview with the director and
asked him to explain why I had not been admitted to the
general painting school at the Akademie, he assured me that
the drawings I had submitted clearly showed my lack of
painting ability, but that my talents obviously lay in the
field of architecture; it was the school of architecture and
not the school of painting where I belonged. They could
not understand why I had not attended a school for archi-
tecture or why I had not been given any instruction in this art.

Downcast, I left von Hansen's magnificent building on
the Schillerplatz, dissatisfied with myself for the first time
in my life. What I had been told about my ability was like
a bright flash of lightning which seemed to illuminate a dis-
sonance from which I had long suffered, but as yet I had not
been able to give myself a clear account of its wherefore and
whyfore.

A few days later I, too, knew that I would become an
architect.

However, the way was to be an extremely difficult one,
for all that which I had stubbornly neglected at the Real-
schule was to take its vengeance now. The admission to the
school of architecture of the Akademie was dependent on
attendance at the Polytechnic's building school, and admis-
sion to this was only possible after having received a certifi-
cate of maturity at a secondary school. I was without all
this. In all human probability it seemed as though the
realization of my artist dreams was no longer possible.

28 MEIN KAMPF

When, after my mother's death, I went to Vienna for
the third time and this time to remain there for many years,
I had in the meantime regained my peace and my confi-
dence. My former obstinacy had returned and my goal was
finally fixed before my eyes. I wanted to become an archi-
tect, and one should not submit to obstacles but overcome
them. And I would overcome these obstacles, always bear-
ing in mind my father's example, who, from being a poor
village boy and a cobbler's apprentice, had made his way
up to the position of civil servant. Now I was on surer
ground and the chances for the struggle were better; what I
then looked upon as the cruelty of Fate, I praise today as
the wisdom of Providence. When the Goddess of Misery
took me into her arms more than once and threatened to

Hitler's mother died on December 21, 1908, leaving him vir-
tually penniless. He left Vienna again in the spring of 1912.
During the period intervening, he lived generally in the Refuge
for Men, in Vienna-Brigittenau, Information concerning his
activities has been supplied by various people who then knew
him, primarily Rudolf Hanisch, a designer, whose memoirs have
been evaluated by Heiden. It is often difficult to determine
whether these traditions are historically accurate, since the
Hitler of Vienna days was a bit of human flotsam who in addi-
tion kept pretty much to himself. But we know that he slept
in a ward with other derelicts, that he was fed at the gate of
the monastery in the Gumpendorferstrasse; that in winter he
earned an occasional schilling with a snow shovel; and that he
drew little water-colors and sketches whicii Hanisch peddled
around at the humbler art shops. It has been proved that at
the time he had Jewish acquaintances and a number of Jewish
friends. More important, however, is the fact that he spent
much time in the cafes, reading the newspapers constantly
available there. He was never, then, a 'house painter, 1 but
remained a young man with a poor scholastic record who had
time to read political journalism.

[BrokenPromise]

@Mateotis

Who let you out of your dungeon?

well, if you like that, then you might like this:



Newgrounds reviews are always worth a chuckle.

[SleepingSilence]

@Mateotis

Who let you out of your dungeon?

well, if you like that, then you might like this:



Newgrounds reviews are always worth a chuckle.

@BrokenPromise

Literally was trying to find this one earlier, but posted another instead. :P

[aza]

is there really ever anything called bad writing?

[IntPenDespSword]

yeah

Fun times.

[Vilageidiotx]

yeah

Fun times.

@IntPenDespSword

The first sentence in the story might just be the weirdest semi-colon placement I've ever seen.

[Lucian]

yeah

Fun times.

@IntPenDespSword

Thanks for that one

[Mateotis]

@BrokenPromise

This.

And I would've kept it too for a while, were it not for you meddling kids!

Oh, as for actual bad writing, I find this article a pretty hilarious showcase:
telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-mak..

[IntPenDespSword]

<Snipped quote by IntPenDespSword>

The first sentence in the story might just be the weirdest semi-colon placement I've ever seen.

@Vilageidiotx

The entire story has the weirdest semi-colon placements you've ever seen.

And too many adverbs.

[Doivid]

Let me just go grab every paper I've ever written for my major coursework.

[ZB1996]

@IntPenDespSword From reading just the chapter you linked to, it seems plausible that it could be a parody.

That reminds me of an article I saw.

Another Harry Potter fanfic. The "counterpart" to My Immortal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4