Adolph Hitler. Renown Austrian Artist

For all my descendants, whom I never had the pleasure of knowing and loving, and who happen to be reading this long after I have gone on to my reward, be it known that I am writing this blog at 6:21am on February 9, 2016, having been awake all night; sleep having somehow escaped me.

Since I happened to run across a small article yesterday, relating to Adolph Hitler’s mediocre artwork while a young man in Vienna, I have not ceased to think about how world history might have been altogether changed had he, rather, attained great success in the field.

To be sure, Hitler’s paintings of flowers and cathedrals look quite good to me, as I  have seen plenty of them recreated in books and on the internet. But apparently the folks at The Vienna Academy of Art were possessed of a very different opinion, indeed. 

And I have mused how that perhaps one individual, if indeed one individual made the decision, or for that matter a group of individuals, may have very well found himself, or themselves in the momentary, but perfectly innocent position to prevent the most calamitous war in the history of the world; in which 50-80 million military men and civilians lost their lives. 

And can anyone deny the foregoing supposition has to be one of the most amazing, but rarely considered propositions known to mankind?

For you see, in the event The Vienna Academy had seen fit to give “the little corporal” the opportunity to attend classes, to become proficient in his craft, to go out from there, and produce fine art, the entire course of human events might have fallen together in an entirely different manner.

A countless multitude of soldiers, sailors and airmen spared from the slaughter, and deformity of the dusty battlefield, azure sky, and restless wave. Multiplied millions of Jews salvaged from ghettos and concentration camps. Poles and Russians, Hollanders and French civilians who, though unmindful of that ugly alternate fate, avoiding that which we, the descendants of that conflict, are all too aware. Not to mention the untold generations which might have sprung from the loins of those brave men, innocent women, boys and girls from whom was stolen the potential to live and move and thrive on God’s good earth.

Robert Kennedy once reflected,

“Some men see things which are, and say, ‘why?’ I see things which never were, and say, ‘why not?’”

The saddest words ever spoken.

“What might have been.”



By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 26. Copyright pending

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