People often ask me: “How could you stand to have been the begonia of the most hated man in the world?”  But what did I know?  I was young: all I thought about was growing the waxiest leaves, the plumpest petals.

I won’t even claim I was following orders.  To be sure, I was following auxins, the plant equivalent of hormones: you know, those chemicals that make the boys not want to stay with the boys and the girls not want to remain with the girls.  I know sometimes they work the other way around, but houseplants are broad-minded.  Where would we be if we started second-guessing your domestic arrangements?  Auxins tell us “Grow away from gravity,” or, “Grow towards light.”  They don’t say “Hold an opinion about your owner’s sexual preferences.”

Houseplants have noticed though, that right after you bring home a new baby, you sometimes forget about us.  Usually, you realize your delinquency before it’s too late, but I’ve seen plenty of coleus wither and dry before its time.  Then, there comes another time, say, two years on, when the little darling starts to pull off our leaves and eat us!!!!  One decent bout of vomiting though and if she doesn’t get the message, you do.  I wish I could say that always leads to a good outcome, but often, all you do is move us to a higher shelf—where sunlight never reaches and where you forget about us completely.

Speaking about eating us, some of the critics like to point out that Hitler was supposedly a vegetarian.  So?  As if meat eaters don’t bolt down their two veggies and a starch as well.   I can tell you, based on my own experience, that Hitler the man—I can’t speak for toddler Hitler back in Linz—never ate a houseplant.

You’re probably thinking though, “But he ate carpets.”  No, no, no and no!   The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich author William Shirer reported Hitler was called der Teppichfresser by gossipy Nazi bureaucrats in 1938, but despite his four years’ residence in Berlin and his marriage to an Austrian photo-journalist, Shirer was never good at picking up slang and he had no sense of humor.   What’s true is that French journalists nick-named Hitler l’grandgosier de tapis, the ‘carpet gorger,’ which glosses into German as der Teppichfresser, but this was for his carpet-devouring pacing when agitated.  When in a funk, Hitler could only calm himself by pacing back and forth, back and forth relentlessly.  Believe me: I was there.

Before I became Adolf Hitler’s houseplant, I used to work at the Reichskanzlei, the State Chancellery.  I was a decorative ornament to the Head of State.  I don’t know if Herr Hitler had his eye on me from the beginning—I’ve never been very good at judging human intentions—but shortly after the Reichstag fire in February 1933, he took me out of the public area of the Chancellery to his personal residence.  That’s right, technically, der Führer was a plant thief.  But that didn’t make him a bad person.  And, by the way, he assured me, repeatedly, that the Nationalsozialisten had nothing to do with burning the Parliament: the fire was set by a Dutch Communist, as everyone but William Shirer seemed to know.

Speaking of Communists, they said that Hitler saved Germany from the Communists and that this was a great thing.  If I’m being completely candid, I have to confess, I didn’t really know what a Communist was.  This may come as a great disappointment to many of you, but to houseplants, all humans appear much the same.  If we prick you, do you not all bleed?

After the war, I ended up on the Russian side of the line of contact.  We had plenty of Communists then.  We heard that life was freer on the other side; you could buy blue jeans.  But I was just a houseplant, what did I need with blue jeans—whatever those were—or, with freedom, for that matter?  Water is spelled H₂O wherever you go and light is light: a photon is a photon is a photon.  That’s the main reason we houseplants don’t engage in politics.

People seem to have gotten the idea that Hitler was a particularly aggressive fellow, maybe because of all the countries he invaded.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  If those countries had only been a little more flexible, a little more accommodating, he would never have had to invade them in the first place.

Take Czechoslovakia, for example.  There were already millions of Germans living in Czechoslovakian Sudetenland in Bohemia.  How were a few more going to hurt?  Herr Hitler was willing to take on all the responsibilities of government, of finance, but no.  The Czechs just turned up their noses at us: Slavs are funny like that.  What else could we do but invade them?

On top of it all, Hitler was never in it for himself, but only for the German people, who needed a little Lebensraum.  Everyone can use a little more living room from time to time.  I know I have appreciated it whenever I’ve been repotted, especially if it was done before I became root-bound.  I can’t tell you what a joy it is to be able to spread out and feel the soil between your root hairs.  Would you have denied that joy to all of Germany?  Of course Herr Hitler would have been very cross with you.

Der Führer’s folly, they said, was to invade Russia.  You don’t think Germans really wanted to live in Russia, do you?  Have you ever drunk a Stäry Melnik?  Sour, putrid, this is what Russians call ein Bier.  But they led us on.  They kept retreating: what could we do but advance?

Some people say that Herr Hitler thought he could defeat the Russians because at 5’8”, he was two inches taller than Napoleon.  To a houseplant, this makes some sense—if you are taller you can access more sunlight—provided you don’t get too spindly and just fall over.  Other people say it was all about oil; that he worried about Russia taking over Romania’s oilfields.  If this is true, it is just another example of der Führer’s great heart, of his selflessness.  How many people, would take their country to war just to protect another country’s oil?  Unheard of.

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One thing which I particularly appreciated Hitler for was his firm stance against smoking.  Being bathed in tobacco smoke really browns off a houseplant and I mean that literally.  I know Herr Hitler had smoked heavily as a young man, but somehow he had found the strength to quit and not, as they say, just because he was a cheapskate, or, because he thought tobacco was a poisoned gift from American Indians to get even with Europeans for giving them alcohol.

Martin Bormann was Herr Hitler’s private secretary, the second most powerful man in Germany and, as der Führer’s attention was increasingly directed towards war and other foreign affairs, perhaps the most important on the domestic front.  He also smoked like a chimney.  But when he came into the personal apartments at the Chancellery, he was forbidden to smoke there.  Admittedly, Hitler was not so strict with his Schatze, his sweetheart Eva Braun.  But even she, even in the middle of winter, was made to stand by an opened window and blow the smoke outside.  It broke Herr Hitler’s heart to see his beloved smoking and he never missed an opportunity to let her know this.

The one man whose smoking der Führer could never control was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.  But then, who could ever control Fat Hermann’s appetites?  Certainly not Göring himself.  Even in the private apartments of the Chancellery, the Reichsmarschall insisted on smoking his vile Cuban cigars: I hated it.

I have to tell you though, the one time I saw Hitler become angry, I mean truly angry, I mean, blow his top—April 22, 1945—it was when Göring stubbed out one of his cigars in the container of a houseplant.  (Gott sei Dank, nicht von mir!  Not mine!)  Der Führer stripped Hermann of all his titles, expelled him from the Nazi Party and even ordered his arrest.  This never came about because, a week later, Herr Hitler, that great man, was himself dead.

This is the one true Hitler secret I possess.  Historians claim Hitler’s rage at Göring, then der Stellvertretender Führer and chosen successor, erupted when his Deputy insisted on replacing him if he was truly intendant upon committing suicide.  This might sound plausible to anyone who didn’t know the parties in question as I did.  But Fat Hermann, for all his extrovert bluster, was far too sneaky to risk anything like that.  He would simply have waited until der Führer was dead, and then assumed the mantle.  I was there.  I know.

One evening, it was in early January 1944, when it became so clear that Operation Wacht am Rhein had completely failed to dislodge the Americans from Belgium that even Herr Hitler accepted the necessity to retreat, I heard him say to his Schatze Eva Braun:  “Wann comes die time, ve vill take Hansi mit uns into der bunker.”   He was either talking about me or the canary: he called us both Hansi.  In any case, when that time did come, they were in such a rush, they forgot to take either of us.

It was probably for the best.  While it would have been an honor to die with der Führer, a bullet is an ugly way to go.  Even for a houseplant.

Say what you like about Herr Hitler, he always made sure I was kept well-dusted and had the correct amount of water.  I’ve seen other people’s houseplants sitting in saucers full of water, full I tell you.  But Hitler knew how to treat a begonia.  He couldn’t have been bad through and through.

Editor’s note:   The author of this piece came from a cutting of a cutting of a cutting … of Hitler’s wax begonia (Begonia semperflorens).  The chain of authentication isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as could be expected under the circumstances.  Strictly speaking, the piece might have better been titled: “I Was a Clone of Adolf Hitler’s Houseplant,” but I think you can see, that would have been clumsy and impractical.

How, then, should Hansi’s revelation be taken?  I think you will have to decide that for yourself, keeping always in mind, that this is the world from a houseplant’s point of view.