The Charisma of Adolf Hitler

Part of  Hermann Giesler's model for the reconstruction of Linz's Danube bank.

An excellent lecture from Laurence Rees on Hitler's charismatic leadership:

It includes some discussion of ordinary Germans' support for the "deeply violent, prejudiced" Nazis:

[36.26] there's terrible social unrest, and these people are going to fix it for me as long as I just stay at home; they're just going to sort it out... [37.05] and this one woman said to us: Well, d'you know, you've no idea what it was like in the Depression, I couldn't walk safely across the park. There were all these vagrants everywhere. And they solved the problem. They weren't there one day; they weren't there any more. And it's terrific they did that. It became completely safe.

Hitler's first viewing of the Linz model, February 13th 1945: that night saw the first RAF raid on Dresden.

August Kubizek's 1953 memoir "Adolf Hitler, mein Jungenfreund", on his friend in Linz and Vienna between 1904 and 1908, would be comical but for what followed, and is worth reading for a sense of the extraordinary young man's nature (he had his own grandiose plans for Linz and Vienna).

 Landstraße looking towards the Schmiedtoreck: see Chapter 7.