Synopsis

This play belongs to the ‘alternate history’ genre, where historical stories are rewritten based on the question “What if?" The genre imagines the alternative path an historical period might have taken if matters took a different course.  

As a boy, Adolf Hitler suffered from a psychological crisis due to the violent behaviour his customs officer father displayed towards him, and for other family reasons. When the child entered the stage of psychological disturbance, the district doctor suggested that his mother, Klara, should take him to a psychiatric clinic for children opened recently by the well-renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in Vienna. The father refused and the boy Adolf Hitler didn't go to Dr Freud for treatment.

The story of Hitler’s psychological illness as a boy and the suggestion of going to Dr Freud's clinic is a historical fact. This play starts from this factual point and then diverges to an alternate history where the boy went with his mother to the clinic. The plot revolves around whether Dr Freud would be capable of saving this young patient, and humanity with him.

One of history’s ironies is that Adolf Hitler met Freud in Vienna’s cafés before World War I. Hitler was twenty-four at the time, miserable and looking for work. Josef Stalin Leon Trotsky were fugitive revolutionaries hiding away from Tsarist Russia in Vienna while the Yugoslav leader Josip Tito was also there. All of them frequented the same cafés in central Vienna, and there are documented coincidences that led Hitler and Stalin to be in the same café, as well as Hitler and Freud, without the latter having a chance to treat the young Hitler and save the world. Thus, Hitler escaped Dr Freud twice, and humanity lost an opportunity for security and peace.

Extracted from ‘Ahram Online’ (https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/351302.aspx)

Characters