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Your Story: Adolf Hitler - did he visit Liverpool during 1912-13? |
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The myth surrounding Hitler's visit was not helped by the novel Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge. This was a work of fiction where Bainbridge took the idea of Adolf visiting Liverpool, as recounted in the memoir, and developing the idea further. Later it was made into a two part television drama, thus reaching an even wider audience. Although she made it clear at the time that it was a product largely of her own imagination, many observers, especially Liverpudlians, accept the visit as historical fact. Talking to the Washington Post in 1979 about non-fiction, Bainbridge said, "I haven't really got the education for that sort of thing. The bit of what I laughingly call research that I did on young Adolf I quite enjoyed. I felt rather educated rushing around looking in libraries... the part of them [the memoirs] that seems the most real is the part about Adolf coming to Liverpool. It's the most understated, whether it’s true or not. There's no proof that he came, but there's no proof that he didn't.”
Years later in the Foreword to Gardner's Last of the Hitlers, her view of the memoir was undimmed, "...what rings true, by reason of its mundane content, its very naivety of expression, is her account of Adolf's arrival in Liverpool". This encapsulates the view of many of those who feel this section of the memoir has credibility, its very matter of factness, not dressed up for effect, in fact, quite the opposite. The ordinariness of it is quite stark. Young Adolf playing her child in the kitchen, while chatting about the future of Germany - "...he would never hesitate to interrupt my housework to explain how Germany was going to take its rightful position in the world. First would come France, then England. I didn't find this talk very interesting, but whenever I tried to get away he would begin to shout, although I rarely troubled to contradict him. He would whip himself up into a rage and go on until hoarseness or some interruption stopped him. I put it down partly to the pleasure he took in hearing his own voice - another trick he had in common with my husband - and partly to a desire to domineer me".
A few paragraph later, she says "... During his Liverpool stay Adolf hadn't even picked up enough English to ask directions to the station". This topic of conversation seems quite bizarre, given the fact he was an Austrian and there in Liverpool, according to Bridget, to dodge the draft into the Austrian army. Until one remembers that the memoir was written c.1941 with a complete awareness of Hitler's true intention by then. Maybe it was quite simple and appealing to look back to her little flat in Toxteth and recount where Adolf Hitler first had the idea for world domination. That should sell a few books on the lecture circuit.
Words: M W Royden
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