Interviews and Memoirs
In 1941 and 1943 Bloch was interviewed by the Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) to get information about Hitler's childhood.
He also published his memories about the encounter with the later "Führer" in the Collier's Weekly in which he painted a remarkably positive picture of young Hitler, saying that he was neither a ruffian nor untidy nor fresh: "This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well mannered and neatly dressed. He had patiently waited in the waiting room until it was his turn, then like every fourteen or fifteen year old boy, made a bow, and always thanked the doctor politely. Like the other boys in Linz, he had worn short lederhosen and a green woolen hat with a feather. He had been tall and pale and looked older than he was. His eyes which were inherited from his mother were large, melancholy and thoughtful. To a very large extent, this boy lived within himself. What dreams he dreamed I do not know."
He also said that Hitler's most striking feature was his love for his mother: "While Hitler was not a mother's boy in the usual sense, I have never witnessed a closer attachment. This love had been mutual. Klara Hitler adored her son. She allowed him his own way whenever possible. For example, she admired his watercolor paintings and drawings and supported his artistic ambitions in opposition to his father at what cost to herself one may guess". However, Bloch expressly denies the claim that Hitler's love for his mother was pathological.
In his memory Hitler was the "saddest man I had ever seen" when he was informed about his mother's imminent death. He remembered Klara Hitler, Hitler's mother as a very "pious and kind" woman. "Sie würde sich im Grabe herumdrehen, wenn sie wüsste, was aus ihm geworden ist." ("She would turn in her grave if she knew what became of him.") According to Bloch, after Hitler's father's death the family's financial resources were scarce. He mentions that Klara Hitler had not even indulged in the smallest extravagance and lived frugally.
Read more about this topic: Eduard Bloch
Famous quotes containing the words interviews and/or memoirs:
“What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.”
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