“Hitler's native district in the Waldviertel, is a hilly, wooded country of peasant villages and small farms, and though only some fifty miles from Vienna it has a somewhat remote and impoverished air, as if the main currents of Austrian life had passed it by. The inhabitants tend to be dour, like the Czech peasants to the north of them. Intermarriage is common, as in the case of Hitler's parents, and illegitimacy is frequent.”

— William L. Shirer, book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Source: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), pp. 6,7

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William L. Shirer35

American journalist 1904–1993

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