Journal 07

TJ Montgomery
Stephanie Gai
English 100
16 Februaury 2009


If I could Change One Thing In History...


I believe that it is just as important to pay attention to the smallest of details as it is to the greatest. It is no secret that Hitler has a great liking for the arts; however many would be surprised to find that he had great hopes to be a magnificent artist. If I could change any world event before the year 2000, I would have Adolf Hitler achieve his greatest failure; I would go back to 1907 and grant him admission into the prestigious Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Throughout high school, Hitler found himself quite annoyed by his instructors and felt no need to yield to their commands. He was a very lazy and uncooperative student, who essentially flunked out. Hitler began to feel like a failure and was absolutely repulsed by the thought of working as an underclass citizen. To avoid this harsh unappealing reality Hitler put all his hope into the dream of achieving greatness, not as a ruthless tyrant but as an artist. After dropping out of high school in 1905, Adolf Hitler spent the next few years in ominous redundancy. His mother urged him to learn some sort of trade and get a job, but the obstinate Hitler found the idea of daily work with its necessary submission to authority to be revolting.

In the spring of 1906, seventeen year old Hitler took his first trip to Vienna, one of the worlds most important centers of music and art. With the intent of seeing world class operas and galleries, he was quite surprised to find himself captivated by the empire’s bravura architecture. Using his natural ability to draw, he compiled drawings of detailed images of buildings he had only seen once. As a young boy he developed a natural talent for drawing, and his trip to Vienna only heightened his adoration for the art.

In January of 1907, his mother was now dying of breast cancer, despite her operation. But an aspiring Hitler chose to withdraw his inheritance and relocate to Vienna to study the arts. He decided he would attend the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He took the two day entrance exam with high hopes, but was only devastated to hear the school did not believe him to be satisfactory. Hitler was badly shaken by this rejection.

It is my firm conviction that had Hitler been admitted and given the opportunity to go after his dream, he would not have been so angry with the world, and set out on the quest to control it. There are over 6,000,000 Jews that I am sure would have liked to have been able to go after their dreams as well. Had Hitler been able to express himself through his art, his pain wouldn’t have built up inside of him like a raging volcano, but it would have poured through his art like a free flowing river. Would this event really have made a difference? Not sure, but it would be worth the try.



Works Cited
Stokes, Phil. Adolf Hitler Biography. 2009. 16 February 2009 .


PHOTO BY ADOLF HITLER
Franziskanerplatz Wien, 1912.