Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

  80. Monologe, 79 (13 October 1941).

  81. Monologe, 46 (24–5 July 1941).

  82. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, London, 1955, 34.

  83. Ernst Toller, I Was a German, London, 1934, 54.

  84. Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Der autoritäre Nationalstaat, Frankfurt, 1990, 407. See Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War, Oxford, 1993, 2–4, for a balanced account of the varied mood and the differing motives for war enthusiasm.

  85. Cit. Adrian Lyttelton (ed.), Italian Fascisms from Pareto to Gentile, London, 1973, 211.

  86. Mommsen, Der autoritäre Nationalstaat, 407.

  87. Werner Abelshauser, Anselm Faust and Dietmar Petzina (eds.), Deutsche Sozial-geschichte 1914–1945. Ein historisches Lesebuch, Munich, 1985, 215, cit. Soziale Praxis, 23 (1913–14), Sp. 1241–4.

  88. One German soldier, in a letter to his father on 7 October 1915, wrote: ‘What people call “patriotism” – I haven’t got all that stuff (den Klimbin). Rather, pity, sympathy with the plight of the dear German people, the wish to understand its weaknesses and mistakes, and to help. So I don’t want to flee from my people, also not in heart and mind. No, instead to place myself in the midst of the great misery and woe, to be a proper fighter for my people’ (Philipp Witkop (ed.), Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten, Munich, 1928, 22).

  89. MK, 177 (trans., MK Watt, 148).

  90. Joachimsthaler, 101. The cited passage is not included in the English version of Hoffmann’s memoirs – Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, London, 1955 – though the picture with Hitler ringed is printed opposite 16. The picture was publicized widely on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War (see Daily Telegraph, 3 August 1934). The picture without the famous ringing of Hitler is printed in Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann und Hitler. Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos, Munich, 1994, 29. By 1943, Hoffmann enjoyed an annual income of over 3 million Marks, and his estate was worth over 6 million Marks (Herz, 37–8).

  91. MK, 179.

  92. Joachimsthaler, 102, 104.

  93. Joachimsthaler, 108, attributes Hitler’s acceptance in the Bavarian army to ‘apparently the carelessness and lack of attention of some sergeant in the 2nd Infantry Regiment’.

  94. Joachimsthaler, 103–8.

  95. Joachimsthaler, 107. See Hitler’s letter to the anonymous ‘Herr Doktor’ of 29 November 1921 (IfZ, MA-731 (= HA, Reel 1), reproduced in Joachimsthaler, 93).

  96. Joachimsthaler, 106–7, 109–14, 116. Hitler was assigned to the First Company of the First Battalion of the Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (List) in the Twelfth Infantry Brigade of the Sixth Bavarian Reserve Division (comprising in all around 17,000 men). The List Regiment was drawn mainly from Upper and Lower Bavaria. Difficulties in arming and uniforming the regiment meant that it only received spiked helmets in November 1914, and the full steel helmets in 1916 shortly before the Battle of the Somme.

  97. JK, 59·

  98. JK, 59 (postcard to Joseph Popp en route from Ulm to Antwerp); Joachimsthaler, 117.

  99. JK, 60, 68.

  100. Joachimsthaler, 120–21, 124.

  101. Monologe, 71 (25–6 September 1941).

  102. Joachimsthaler, 159–60.

  103. Wiedemann, 26.

  104. Joachimsthaler, 159–60.

  105. Joachimsthaler, 126–7, 135, 277 n.339; Heinz, 65.

  106. MK, 181–2; see Joachimsthaler, 129.

  107. Examples cited in Joachimsthaler, 125, 128, 152–3, 155–6.

  108. The regimental command post at Fromelles, from where military operations were directed, was about three kilometres behind the front. The regimental staff, forming the administrative support, were based an hour’s walk away at Fournes. Hitler and the other dispatch runners worked in shifts of three days at Fromelles followed by three rest days at Fournes. (For Hitler’s time there, see Joachimsthaler, 123, 126–7, 135–40.) Hitler claimed in 1944 that he had carried around with him throughout the entire First World War the five volumes of Schopenhauer’s work (Monologe, 411 (19 May 1944)). Hans Frank remembered him saying much the same thing (Frank, 46).

  109. Wiedemann, 24–5.

  110. Balthasar Brandmayer, Meldegänger Hitler 1914–18, 2nd edn, Munich/Kolber-moor, 1933, 51–2. Brandmayer remained one of the few people allowed to address Hitler with the familiar ‘Du’. This did not prevent him receiving a warning in 1939, passed on by the Kanzlei des Führers, to avoid meddling in Party matters and ‘sowing discontent among the people’ through his complaints about the closure of a Catholic Kindergarten in his home town of Bruckmühl in Bavaria. Two years earlier, the Munich branch of the Reichsschrifttumskammer had sought permission to drop any reference to Hitler in the title of Brandmayer’s book (BDC, Personal File of Balthasar Brandmayer, letters of Kanzlei des Führers, 18 October 1939, and Reichsschrifttumskammer München-Oberbayern, 12 November 1937).

  111. JK, 68; Joachimsthaler, 130–31. The British journalist Ward Price much later recorded Hitler’s characteristic embellishment of the story, claiming that he followed an inner voice as clear as a military command, telling him to leave the trench immediately (G. Ward Price, I Know These Dictators, London, 1937, 38).

  112. JK, 60.

  113. JK, 68.

  114. JK, 61.

  115. Wiedemann, 25–6; Brandmayer, 61, 68; Joachimsthaler, 140–44, 155–6. Two of those who knew Hitler during the war – Hans Mend and Korbinian Rutz – and subsequently published less than flattering recollections of him landed after 1933 in Dachau. See Joachimsthaler, 113, 143, 152–4, 271 n.193, 284 n.430. Rutz was dismissed from his teaching post after Hitler had been consulted but had declined to intervene on behalf of his former wartime comrade, declaring him to be ‘inferior’ (minderwertig) (BDC, Personal File, Korbinian Rutz, Hans-Heinrich Lammers to the Reich Governor of Bavaria, 17 March 1934).

  116. Brandmayer, 105. For the suggestion that Hitler fathered a son, Jean-Marie Loret, during his time in the army, see Werner Maser, ‘Adolf Hitler: Vater eines Sohnes’, Zeitgeschichte, 5 (1977–8), 173–202. The extreme unlikeliness of this is emphasized by Joachimsthaler, 162–4. The alleged son, Jean-Marie Loret, went on to produce (in collaboration with René Mathot) his ‘memoirs’, Ton père s’appelait Hitler, Paris, 1981. They included (107–16) his mother’s purported revelations of her relationship with Hitler and (127–49) an account of his own dealings with the German historian Werner Maser, on the trail of ‘Hitler’s son’. M. Loret had shown himself, in correspondence with Berlin museums in 1980, keen to establish the authenticity of a number of drawings which had been in his mother’s possession as works of Hitler (IfZ, ZS 3133, Jean-Marie Loret).

  117. Joachimsthaler, 144–6, 167. Max Amann and Fritz Wiedemann, who later made major careers for themselves in the Third Reich, of course did better than that. Amann’s property in 1943 was worth more than 10 million Marks; though not in that league, Wiedemann was given a position as Hitler’s adjutant, a six-seater Mercedes, and ‘loans’ and other gifts worth tens of thousands of Marks during the Third Reich (Joachimsthaler, 150).

  118. Brandmayer, 72, 105; Joachimsthaler, 133, 156–8.

  119. See Joachimsthaler, facing 128, 129, 161.

  120. Brandmayer, 52–6.

  121. Brandmayer, 43–4.

  122. Brandmayer, 102.

  123. Monologe, 219 (22–3 January 1942).

  124. Hitler told Albert Speer in autumn 1943 that he would soon have only two friends, Fräulein Braun and his dog (Speer, 315). Around that time, Goebbels remarked in his diary: ‘The Führer has his great happiness in his dog Blondi, who has become a true companion for him… It’s good that the Führer has at least one living being who is constantly around him’ (TBJG, 11.9, 477 (10 September 1943)).

  125. Monologe, 219.

  126. Heinrich Lugauer testimony in HA, Reel 2, Folder 47; extract printed in Joachimsthaler, 134.

  127. Brandmayer, 66–8.

  128. JK, 69; Maser, Hitlers Briefe, 100–101.

  129. But see t
he comment of Ignaz Westenkirchner, one of Hitler’s comrades, in the admittedly rosy-coloured Heinz, 66: ‘For the most part he was always on about politics.’

  130. MK, 182 (trans., MK Watt, 152), 192.

  131. Joachimsthaler, 159. Ernst Schmidt, probably Hitler’s closest comrade, also later remarked: ‘He didn’t try to bring any political influence to bear on me at that time’ (Heinz, 98).

  132. Toland, 66.

  133. Brandmayer, 115. See also Westenkirchner’s recollection in the 1930s: ‘Two things seemed to get his goat – what the papers were saying at home about the war and all, and the way the government, and particularly the Kaiser, were hampered by the Marxists and the Jews’ (Heinz, 66). In a post-war interview, Westenkirchner reversed his position, denying that Hitler had spoken with any ‘spitefulness’ about the Jews (Toland, 66).

  134. Brandmayer, 91–2.

  135. MK, 209–12.

  136. Joachimsthaler, 135.

  137. MK, 209; Joachimsthaler, 164.

  138. Hitler dated his wounding to 7 October (MK, 209). It seems more likely that it occurred two days earlier (see Joachimsthaler, 164–6, 286 n.487; also Brandmayer, 81, 89; Wiedemann, 28–9).

  139. MK, 209–12. (Cited passages, 211, trans., MK Watt, 175); and see Joachimsthaler, 166. For the hatred of the Prussians in Bavaria, one of the foremost resentments of the civilian population, see Karl-Ludwig Ay, Die Entstehung einer Revolution. Die Volksstimmung in Bayern während des Ersten Weltkrieges, Berlin, 1968, 134–448.

  140. Nipperdey, i.412; Werner Jochmann, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus’, in Werner Mosse (ed.), Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution 1916–1923, Tübingen, 1971, 425–7; Toland, 933; Wiedemann, 33.

  141. Joachimsthaler, 174; Binion, Hitler among the Germans, 2; Toland, 66.

  142. See above n. 133.

  143. See Ay, 32–3 for the growth of complaints in Bavaria about the Jews as alleged shirkers. How much, even at the beginning of the war, antisemitism had been part of Munich’s popular culture is brought out by Robert Eben Sackett, ‘Images of the Jew: Popular Joketelling in Munich on the Eve of World War I’, Theory and Society, 16 (1987), 527–63, and his Popular Entertainment, Class, and Politics in Munich, 1900–1923, Cambridge, Mass., 1982. See also Large, Where Ghosts Walked, ch.I. For the spread and increasing ferocity of anti-Jewish feeling during the second half of the war, see, especially, Saul Friedländer, ‘Die politischen Veränderungen der Kriegszeit und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Judenfrage’, and Werner Jochmann, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus’, in Mosse, Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, 27–65, 409–510.

  144. JK, 78, 80; MK, 212.

  145. Joachimsthaler, 169.

  146. MK, 219–20; Joachimsthaler, 170.

  147. Joachimsthaler, 170–71; Monologe, 100 (21–2 October 1941).

  148. JK, 82. Joachimsthaler, 170–71, dispatches suggestions, which have found their way into the literature, that Hitler visited his relatives in Spital, or went to Dresden before going to Berlin.

  149. Joachimsthaler, 172.

  150. Wiedemann, 25–6. Wiedemann points out that he and Max Amann had unsuccessfully nominated Hitler on a previous occasion. Gutmann was generally unpopular with the men, and – whether simply because he was a Jew is uncertain – detested by Hitler. See Brandmayer, 55; Monologe, 132 (10–11 November 1941); Toland, 932–3; Joachimsthaler, 173–4.

  151. The figure fluctuated. Berlin newspapers wrote in 1933 of him capturing an officer and twenty soldiers (Daily Telegraph, 4 August 1933). The account by Westenkirchner in Heinz, 80–81, has twelve French soldiers captured by Hitler on 4 June 1918, but does not link this to the award of the Iron Cross. Toland, 69 (without source), speaks of Hitler delivering four prisoners to his commanding officer in June and being commended for it.

  152. According to a letter from Eugen Tanhauser, Landrat in Schwabach, to the Nürnberger Nachrichten, of 4 August 1961, he had been told this by Gutmann himself, whom he had known for years and trusted implicitly (IfZ, ZS 1751, Eugen Tanhauser). This is cited by Joachimsthaler, 175–6, as the basis of his account, along with the post-war comments of Hitler’s comrade, Johann Raab, and the remarks from 31 July 1918 on the nomination (from HA, Reel 2, File 47) of the Deputy Commander of the Regiment, Freiherr von Godin.

  153. Joachimsthaler, 176. He did not travel to Spital, where his relatives lived, as stated by Maser, Hitler, 142, and Toland, 71.

  154. MK, 220; Joachimsthaler, 176–7.

  155. The testimony given to the NSDAΡ-Hauptarchiv (HA, Reel 2, Folder 47) of Johann Raab and Heinrich Lugauer, who were also blinded by the gas attack, is printed in Joachimsthaler, 177–8. Hitler said in his 1921 letter (see Joachimsthaler, 93) that he was ‘at first totally blinded’; he used exactly the same words in his Munich trial in 1924 – Hitler-Prozeß, i.19. (The wording given by Joachimsthaler, 177, that he was for a time ‘almost blind’ is inaccurate.) His account in Mein Kampf suggests that he was partially blinded at first, stumbling back ‘with burning eyes’ before, a few hours later, the burning sensation had increased and ‘it had grown dark around me’ (MK, 220–21 (trans., MK Watt, 183).

  156. Nipperdey, ii.861–2.

  157. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Bd.I, Eine Abrechnung, Munich, 1925, 213 (trans., MK Watt, 183). In the single-volume ‘Volksausgabe’ (People’s Edition) of Mein Kampf, the wording ‘greatest villainy of the century’ was changed to ‘revolution’ (MK, 221; Hermann Hammer, ‘Die deutschen Ausgaben von Hitlers “Mein Kampf”’, VfZ, 4 (1956), 161–78, here 173).

  158. Nipperdey, ii.865–6.

  159. Bessel, 46–7.

  160. Bessel, 5–6, 10.

  161. Toller, 100–101, and see also 95: ‘There is only one way for us. We must revolt!’

  162. See Bessel, 257.

  163. Bessel, 258.

  164. Nipperdey, ii.855.

  165. Bessel, 33.

  166. Ay, 101–2.

  167. Nipperdey, i.412.

  168. Poliakov, iv. 148–9.

  169. Nipperdey, ii.413.

  170. Cit. Poliakov, iv.151.

  171. Poliakov, iv.150, 152.

  172. Poliakov, cit. iv.153.

  173. MK, 218–19.

  174. See Ay, 106–9 for the mood among Munich’s soldiers in the last two war years.

  175. MK, 213–14, 217.

  176. Brandmayer, 92.

  177. MK, 213–14, 218–19.

  178. MK, 219.

  179. MK, 219–20.

  180. Brandmayer, 67.

  181. MK, 222.

  182. MK, 222–3.

  183. MK, 223–5 (trans., MK Watt, 185–7).

  184. Summarized in Binion, Hitler among the Germans, 136–8.

  185. J K, 1064.

  186. Cit. Binion, Hitler among the Germans, 137.

  187. Binion, Hitler among the Germans, esp. 3–14; Toland (following Binion), 71, 934·

  188. Binion, Hitler among the Germans, 14–35.

  189. Ernst Günther Schenck, Patient Hitler. Eine medizinische Biographie, Düsseldorf, 1989, 298–9, 306–7. He refers to the comment of Dr Martin Dresse in 1952, after allegedly seeing the patient’s record in Pasewalk, that Hitler was not blind, but suffered from severe ‘burning eyes’, a description which fits Hitler’s own in Mein Kampf. Schenck is strongly critical, on the basis of medical knowledge, of Binion’s interpretation, especially his views on Bloch and his treatment (Schenck, 515–33, esp. 523–9)·

  190. See Albrecht Tyrell, ‘Wie er der “Führer” wurde’, in Guido Knopp (ed.), Hitler heute. Gespräche über ein deutsches Trauma, Aschaffenburg, 1979, 20–48, here 25–6.

  191. See Axel Kuhn, Hitlers außenpolitisches Programm, Stuttgart, 1971, esp. ch.5.

  192. MK, 225; JK, 1064; Hitler-Prozeß, i.20.

  193. Ernst Deuerlein, Hitler. Eine politische Biographie, Munich, 1969, 40.

  194. The rapidity and success of the demobilization programme is emphasized by Richard Bessel, ‘Unemployment and Demobilisation in Germany after the First W
orld War’, in Richard J. Evans and Dick Geary (eds.), The German Unemployed, London/Sydney, 1987, 23–43.

  195. Joachimsthaler, 187, 203.

  196. Joachimsthaler, 255.

  CHAPTER 4: DISCOVERING A TALENT

  1. Ernst Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr’, VfZ, 7 (1959), 177–227, here 200.

  2. There is no evidence to support this story. Ernst Schmidt’s account in Heinz, 92, simply echoes Hitler’s in MK, 226. The ‘Central Council’ did not even exist any longer by that date. It had been dissolved on 13 April; and the Communist Executive Council, which replaced it, was by the last days of April in total disarray. (See Werner Maser, Die Frühgeschichte der NSDAP. Hitlers Weg bis 1924, Frankfurt am Main/Bonn, 1965, 131–2 (cit. information provided by Ernst Niekisch); Joachimsthaler, 212.) According to Ernst Schmidt (see Maser, Frühgeschichte, 132; Maser, Hitler, 159; Werner Maser, Adolf Hitler. Das Ende der Führer-Legende, Düsseldorf/Vienna, 1980, 263 n.), Hitler was briefly arrested by the ‘white’ troops of the Freikorps Epp, before being recognized and released. (See also Heinz, 95–6; Joachimsthaler, 218; and Heiden, Hitler, 54.) If the story is true, it suggests that they initially took him for a supporter of the ‘Red Army’. In Mein Kampf, Hitler converted the tale into an attempt, which he fought off, at his arrest by soldiers of the ‘Red Army’.

  3. MK, 226–7 (trans., MK Watt, 188–9).

  4. Eberhard Kolb, Die Weimarer Republik, 3rd edn, Munich, 1993, 4.

  5. Ernst Toller, I Was a German, 133.

  6. See Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘Die deutsche Revolution 1918–1920’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 4 (1978), 362–91. A different emphasis on the aims of the Councils is given by Reinhard Rürup, ‘Demokratische Revolution und “dritter Weg”’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 9 (1983), 278–301. Among the most important works dealing with the Councils are Eberhard Kolb, Die Arbeiterräte in der deutschen Innenpolitik 1918–1919, Düsseldorf, 1962; and Reinhard Rürup, Probleme der Revolution in Deutschland 1918/19, Wiesbaden, 1968.

  7. Anthony Nicholls, ‘The Bavarian Background to National Socialism’, in Anthony Nicholls and Erich Matthias (eds.), German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, London, 1971, 105–6.