Hitler painting fetches 32,000 euros in Slovak auction

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"The painting has been offered for sale by an unnamed family of a Slovak painter who probably met Hitler personally when he was struggling to become an artist in Vienna during the early 20th century," Darte owner Jaroslav Krajnak said earlier.

"I look at him as an artist - in 1913, when Hitler painted this picture, he didn't know what would become of him in the decades to come," he added.

The auctioning house already sold a painting by Hitler from the same family collection last year for 10,200 euros.

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The interesting part of this story is not the story itself. Its the comments section demanding anything to do with good old Adolf Hitler be destroyed.

I respectfully disagree with that opinion. Why ?

Hitler is an important historical figure. And you can hardly start laying down policy and rules on how to prevent another Hitler if you destroy all information on him in the first place , can you ? You need to know how he got started in life, how he was twisted , how he went from an innocent child to a mass murdering (elected ...people keep forgetting he was elected by a majority of his country men no less) Chancellor (can't call an elected official a dictator ... well you can but it isn't true. ) And you can hardly do that if you destroy all the evidence , so to speak.

I've always found Hitler a fascinating figure, though not for the reasons the average person or the neo-nazi's would expect. The reason is ... if you ever download a copy of Mein Kampf , it usually comes with an appendix with news paper clippings of that era , and explains that Hitlers opinions were actually pretty mild compared to some of the opinions that got published in those newspapers.

Contrast that with every german complaining it was all Hitlers fault after the war was lost , and he was elected by popular mandate he wasn't a dictator ... maybe Hitler wasn't as alone as they claim he was. Maybe the populous that elected him actually knew what he was up to , and approved. Not so silently approved even , if those newspaper clippings are any indication.

Just an opinion of a man who's dead and gone before I was even born. But the evidence is interesting none the less.