by Ian Kershaw
In general, as we have noted, the demobilization of the German army was carried out remarkably swiftly and efficiently.28 All Hitler’s close wartime comrades, including Ernst Schmidt, were discharged well before he was.29 That Hitler himself was able to avoid discharge until March 1920 owed everything to his increasing involvement, from the late spring of 1919, in political work for the Reichswehr, out of which his entry into politics was to emerge. Meanwhile, he was keen to take whatever opportunity presented itself to stay in the army as long as possible.
For just over two weeks, beginning on 20 February, he was assigned to guard duty at the Hauptbahnhof, where a unit of his company was responsible for maintaining order, particularly among the many soldiers travelling to and from Munich. During this period the guard command at the station was the subject of an investigatory commission examining numerous instances of maltreatment of persons arrested. Whether Hitler was involved is not known, though he cannot fail to have been a witness to the violence and brutality.30 Beyond guard duties, Hitler, Schmidt, and the others in their demobilization company had as good as nothing to do. They were able to earn 3 Marks a day testing old gas-masks, which gave them enough money for the occasional visit to the opera.31 Normal earnings appear to have been about 40 Marks a month – with food and accommodation provided, certainly enough to keep body and soul together.32 The future outside the army looked distinctively less rosy.
As we have noted, Hitler spoke of his involvement in the investigatory commission following the suppression of the Räterepublik as his first political activity. Evidence recently come to light of Hitler’s actions during the revolutionary era does not accord with this assertion. It also helps to suggest why Hitler was so reticent about his behaviour during the months that the ‘November criminals’, as he later repeatedly called them, ruled Munich.
A routine order of the demobilization battalion on 3 April 1919 referred to Hitler by name as the representative (Vertrauensmann) of his company. The strong likelihood is, in fact, that he had held this position since 15 February. The duties of the representatives (Vertrauensleute) included cooperation with the propaganda department of the socialist government in order to convey ‘educational’ material to the troops.33 Hitler’s first political duties took place, therefore, in the service of the revolutionary regime run by the SPD and USPD. It is little wonder that he later wished to say little of his actions at this time.
In fact, he would have had to explain away the even more embarrassing fact of his continued involvement at the very height of Munich’s ‘red dictatorship’. On 14 April, the day after the Communist Räterepublik had been proclaimed, the Munich Soldiers’ Councils approved fresh elections of all barrack representatives to ensure that the Munich garrison stood loyally behind the new regime. In the elections the following day Hitler was chosen as Deputy Battalion Representative.34 Not only, then, did Hitler do nothing to assist in the crushing of Munich’s ‘Red Republic’; he was an elected representative of his battalion during the whole period of its existence.
How to interpret this evidence is, nevertheless, not altogether clear. Since the Munich garrison had firmly backed the revolution since November, and again in April supported the radical move to the Räterepublik, the obvious implication must be that Hitler, in order to have been elected as a soldiers’ representative, voiced in these months the views of the socialist governments he later denounced with every fibre of his body as ‘criminal’. At the very least it would appear that he could not have put forward strongly opposed views. Already in the 1920s, and continuing into the 1930s, there were rumours, never fully countered, that Hitler had initially sympathized with the Majority SPD following the revolution. Since the rumours tended to come from left-wing journalists, seeking to discredit Hitler, they were presumably not taken too seriously. But comments, for example, in the socialist Münchener Post in March 1923 that Hitler had assisted in the indoctrination of troops in favour of the democratic-republican state match the evidence, which we have noted, that he served, probably from February 1919 onwards, in such a capacity as Vertrauensmann of his company.35 Similar rumours circulated in the socialist press in the early 1930s.36 Ernst Toller reported that a fellow-prisoner also interned for involvement in the Räterepublik had met Hitler in a Munich barracks during the first months after the revolution, and that the latter had then been calling himself a Social Democrat.37 Konrad Heiden remarked that, during the time of the Councils Republic, Hitler had, in heated discussions among his comrades, voiced support for the Social Democratic government against that of the Communists. There were even reported rumours – though without any supportive evidence – that Hitler had spoken of joining the SPD.38 In a pointed remark when defending Esser in 1921 against attacks from within the party, Hitler commented: ‘Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat.’39
In itself, Hitler’s possible support for the Majority Social Democrats in the revolutionary upheaval is less unlikely than it might at first sight appear. The political situation was extremely confused and uncertain. A number of strange bedfellows, including several who later came to belong to Hitler’s entourage, initially found themselves on the Left during the revolution. Sepp Dietrich, later a general in the Waffen-SS and head of Hitler’s SS-Leibstandarte, was elected chairman of a Soldiers’ Council in November 1918. Hitler’s long-time chauffeur Julius Schreck had served in the ‘Red Army’ at the end of April 1919.40 Hermann Esser, one of Hitler’s earliest supporters, who became the first propaganda chief of the NSDAP, had been for a while a journalist on a Social Democratic newspaper.41 Gottfried Feder, whose views on ‘interest slavery’ so gripped Hitler’s imagination in summer 1919, had sent a statement of his position to the socialist government headed by Kurt Eisner the previous November.42 And Balthasar Brandmayer, one of Hitler’s closest wartime comrades and a later fervent supporter, recounted how he at first welcomed the end of the monarchies, the establishment of a republic, and the onset of a new era. His subsequent disillusionment was all the greater. ‘Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘we only changed the marionettes,’ while the people continued to slave and starve. ‘We hadn’t bled for a councils government (Räteregierung)’; ‘ the thanks of the Fatherland were missing,’ he concluded bitterly.43 Similar sentiments, in which, as was the case with Brandmayer, aggressive nationalism and antisemitism intermingled with a form of radicalism born of a sense of social grievance that was rapidly switched from the old monarchical regime to the new republic itself, were widespread following the war. Ideological muddle-headedness, political confusion and opportunism combined frequently to produce fickle and shifting allegiances.
That, as has been implied, Hitler was inwardly sympathetic to Social Democracy and formed his own characteristic racist-nationalist Weltanschauung only following an ideological volte-face under the influence of his ‘schooling’ in the Reichswehr after the collapse of the Räterepublik is, however, harder to believe.44 Certainly, he welcomed the removal of the monarchies through the revolution.45 But even accepting that it is difficult to determine when, precisely, he became a pathological antisemite, the evidence of his early pan-German sympathies, antagonism towards Social Democracy, belligerent militarism, and aggressive xenophobia rules out any genuine attuning to the aims, policies, and ideas of the SPD after 1918. If, as seems almost certain, Hitler felt compelled to lean outwardly towards the Majority Social Democrats during the revolutionary months, it was not prompted by conviction but by sheer opportunism aimed at avoiding for as long as possible demobilization from the army.
A number of pointers towards Hitler’s opportunism exist from this period. In Pasewalk, he did not denounce to his superiors (as patriotic duty would have demanded) the sailors who arrived in the hospital preaching sedition and revolution.46 On leaving the hospital, he avoided committing himself politically, and made no attempt to join any of the numerous Freikorps units which sprang up to engage in the continued fighting on the eastern borders of the Reich and the suppression of left-wing radicalism with
in Germany, not least in Munich itself. After his return to Munich from Traunstein in February 1919, he most likely took part, since his regiment had issued orders to participate, in a demonstration march of about 10,000 left-wing workers and soldiers in Munich. Probably in April 1919, with Munich ruled by the Communist Councils, he wore, along with almost all the soldiers of the Munich garrison, the revolutionary red armband.47 That Hitler stood back and took no part whatsoever in the ‘liberation’ of Munich from the Räterepublik is said to have brought him later scornful reproaches from Ernst Rohm (who was to head the Nazi stormtroopers), Ritter von Epp (after 1933 Reich Governor in Bavaria), and even Rudolf Heß (who would serve as Hitler’s private secretary and subsequently become Deputy Leader of the Party).48
Whatever his opportunism and passivity, Hitler’s antagonism to the revolutionary Left was probably evident to those around him in the barracks during the months of mounting turmoil in Munich. If indeed, as was later alleged, he voiced support for the Social Democrats in preference to the Communists,49 it was presumably viewed as a choice of the lesser of two evils, or even, by those in Hitler’s unit who knew him of old, as an opportune adjustment betraying none of his real nationalist, pan-German sympathies. Ernst Schmidt, for example, who by then had been discharged but was still in regular touch with him, spoke later of Hitler’s ‘utter repugnance’ at the events in Munich.50 The nineteen votes cast for ‘Hittler’ on 16 April, electing him as the second company representative – the winner, Johann Blüml, received thirty-nine votes – on the Battalion Council, may well have been from those who saw him in this light.51 That there were tensions within the barracks, and between the soldiers’ elected representatives, might be read out of the subsequent denunciation by Hitler of two colleagues on the Battalion Council at the Munich tribunal investigating the actions of the soldiers of his regiment during the Räterepublik.52 Hitler was probably known to those around him, at the latest towards the end of April, for the counter-revolutionary he really was, whose actual sympathies were indistinguishable from those of the ‘white’ troops preparing to storm the city. One plausible, if unsubstantiated, story has him jumping on a chair to exhort his battalion to remain neutral in the imminent fighting, exclaiming that ‘we are not a revolutionary guard for Jews who have come over here’.53 Significant, above all, is that within a week of the end of the rule of the Councils, Hitler had been nominated – by whom is not known – to serve on a three-man committee to explore whether members of the Reserve Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment had been actively involved in the Räterepublik.54 This speaks in favour of the recognition within his battalion of his deep antagonism to ‘red’ rule. At any rate, his new role now prevented Hitler being discharged, along with the rest of the Munich garrison, by the end of May 1919.55 More importantly, it brought him for the first time into the orbit of counter-revolutionary politics within the Reichswehr. This, rather than any psychological trauma in Pasewalk at the news of the defeat, any dramatic decision to rescue Germany from the ‘November criminals’, was, within the following months, to open up his path into the maelstrom of extreme right-wing politics in Munich.
III
On 11 May 1919, under the command of Generalmajor von Möhl, the Bayerische Reichswehr Gruppenkommando Nr. 4 (‘Gruko’ for short) was created from the Bavarian units that had been involved in the crushing of the Räterepublik.56 With the Bavarian government ‘exiled’ in Bamberg until the end of August, Munich – its centre crammed with barricades, barbed wire, and army control-points – was throughout the spring and summer a city effectively under military rule.57 Recognizing twin tasks of extensive surveillance of the political scene and combating by means of propaganda and indoctrination ‘dangerous’ attitudes prevalent in the transitional army, Gruko took over in May 1919 the ‘Information Department’ (Nachrichtenabteilung, Abt. Ib/P) which had been immediately established in Munich at the suppression of the Räterepublik. The ‘education’ of the troops in a ‘correct’ anti-Bolshevik, nationalist fashion was rapidly regarded as a priority, and ‘speaker courses’ were devised in order to train ‘suitable personalities from the troops’ who would remain for some considerable time in the army and function as propaganda agents (Propagandaleute) with qualities of persuasion capable of negating subversive ideas.58 The organization of a series of ‘anti-Bolshevik courses’, beginning in early June, was placed in the hands of Captain Karl Mayr, who, a short while earlier, on 30 May, had taken over the command of the Information Department.59 Mayr, one of the ‘midwives’ of Hitler’s political ‘career’,60 could certainly have claimed prime responsibility for its initial launch.
The first of Hitler’s many patrons, Mayr had a maverick career which saw him swing from active engagement on the extreme counter-revolutionary Right – he was an important Bavarian link with the putschist Wolfgang Kapp in 1920 – to become a strong critic of Hitler and an active figure in the Social Democrat paramilitary organization, the Reichsbanner. He fled to France in 1933, but was later captured by the Nazis, and died in Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1945. In 1919, his influence in the Munich Reichswehr extended beyond his rank as captain, and he was endowed with considerable funds to build up a team of agents or informants, organize the series of ‘educational’ courses to train selected officers and men in ‘correct’ political and ideological thinking, and finance ‘patriotic’ parties, publications, and organizations.61 Mayr first met Hitler in May 1919, after the crushing of the ‘Red Army’. Hitler’s involvement in his battalion’s investigations into subversive actions during the Räterepublik may have drawn him to Mayr’s attention. And as we have noted, Hitler had already been engaged in propaganda work in his barracks earlier in the spring – though on behalf of the Socialist government. He had the right credentials and ideal potential for Mayr’s purposes. When he first met Hitler, Mayr wrote much later, ‘he was like a tired stray dog looking for a master’, and ‘ready to throw in his lot with anyone who would show him kindness… He was totally unconcerned about the German people and their destinies.’62
The name ‘Hittler Adolf’ appears on one of the early lists of names of informants (V-Leute, or V-Männer) drawn up by the Information Department Ib/P at the end of May or beginning of June 1919. Within days he had been assigned to the first of the anti-Bolshevik ‘instruction courses’, to take place in Munich University between 5 and 12 June 1919. For the first time, Hitler was to receive here some form of directed political ‘education’. This, as he acknowledged, was important to him; as was the fact that he realized for the first time that he could make an impact on those around him. Here he heard lectures from prominent figures in Munich, hand-picked by Mayr, partly through personal acquaintance, on ‘German History since the Reformation’, ‘The Political History of the War’, ‘Socialism in Theory and Practice’, ‘Our Economic Situation and the Peace Conditions’, and ‘The Connection between Domestic and Foreign Policy’. Among the speakers, too, at the specific insistence of Mayr (since he was not originally scheduled to deliver a lecture), was Gottfried Feder, who had made a name for himself among the Pan-Germans as an economics expert. His lecture on the ‘breaking of interest slavery’ (a slogan Hitler recognized as having propaganda potential), on which he had already published a ‘manifesto’ – highly regarded in nationalist circles – distinguishing between ‘productive’ capital and ‘rapacious’ capital (which he associated with the Jews), made a deep impression on Hitler, and eventually led to Feder’s role as the economics ‘guru’ of the early Nazi Party.63 The history lectures were delivered by the Munich historian Professor Karl Alexander von Müller, who had known Mayr at school. Following his first lecture, he came across a small group in the emptying lecture hall surrounding a man addressing them in a passionate, strikingly guttural, tone. He mentioned to Mayr after his next lecture that one of his trainees had natural rhetorical talent. Müller pointed out where he was sitting. Mayr recognized him immediately: it was ‘Hitler from the List Regiment’.64
Hitler hi
mself thought this incident – he said he had been roused to intervene by one of the participants defending the Jews – had led directly to his deployment as an ‘educational officer’ (Bildungsoffizier). However, he was never a Bildungsoffizier, but a V-Mann, which he had been since the late May or early June.65 Plainly, the incident helped to focus Mayr’s attention on Hitler. But it was certainly Mayr’s regular close observation of Hitler’s activity for his department rather than a single incident that led to the latter’s selection as one of a squad of twenty-six instructors – all drawn from the participants in the Munich ‘instruction courses’ – to be sent to conduct a five-day course at the Reichswehr camp at Lechfeld, near Augsburg. The course, beginning on 20 August 1919, the day after Hitler’s arrival in the camp, was arranged in response to complaints about the political unreliability of men stationed there, many having returned from being held as prisoners-of-war and now awaiting discharge. The task of the squad was to inculcate nationalist and anti-Bolshevik sentiments in the troops, described as ‘infected’ by Bolshevism and Spartacism.66 It was in effect the continuation of what the instructors themselves had been exposed to in Munich.
Alongside the commander of the unit, Rudolf Beyschlag, Hitler undertook the lion’s share of the work, including helping to stir discussion of Beyschlag’s lectures on, for example, ‘Who Bears the Guilt for the World War?’ and ‘From the Days of the Munich Räterepublik’. He himself gave lectures on ‘Peace Conditions and Reconstruction’, ‘Emigration’, and ‘Social and Political-Economic Catchwords’.67 He threw himself with passion into the work. His engagement was total. And he immediately found he could strike a chord with his audience, that the way he spoke roused the soldiers listening to him from their passivity and cynicism. Hitler was in his element. For the first time in his life, he had found something at which he was an unqualified success. Almost by chance, he had stumbled across his greatest talent. As he himself put it, he could ‘speak’: