by Ian Kershaw
26. A clear distinction between the Arbeiterzirkel (which Hitler attended for the first time on 16 November 1919) and the Arbeitsausschuß, the committee of the DAP, is difficult to draw. The former, controlled by Harrer and clearly bearing his imprint, remained reminiscent of the inner core of a secret society and seems to have been essentially a small debating club (Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Hitler and the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’, in Henry A. Turner (ed.), Nazism and the Third Reich, New York, 1972, 5–19, here 11). The committee was officially responsible for party business matters, but in practice there was overlap in both personnel and matters under consideration (Tyrell, Trommler, 24–5, 190 n.48).
27. BHStA, Abt.V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, ‘Lebenslauf von Anton Drexler, 12.3.1935’, 3 (partly printed in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 59); Drexler’s initial suggestion was ‘Deutsche Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei’, but Harrer objected to ‘sozialistische’ and it was dropped (IfZ, Fa 88/Fasz.78, Fol.4 (Lotter Vortrag, 19 October 1935)). Harrer was not present at the foundation meeting of the DAP, and was possibly not enamoured by the creation of a ‘party’. According to Sebottendorff, on 18 January 1919 he was named 1st Chairman and Drexler 2nd Chairman of the Deutscher Arbeiterverein, which was founded in the rooms of the Thule Society (Sebottendorff, 81; see also Tyrell, Trommler, 189 n.42).
28. BHStA, Abt.V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, ‘Lebenslauf von Anton Drexler, 12.3.1935’, 3; Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 56–9; IfZ, Fa 88/Fasz. 78, Fol.4 (Lotter Vortrag, 19 October 1935); Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 8–9; Tyrell, Trommler, 22; Drexler states that there were around thirty present (not fifty, as given in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 59). In his 1935 lecture, Lotter (Fol.4), probably from notes he made at the time, is more precise: ‘There were 24 present, mainly railway workers’ (‘Anwesend waren 24, überwiegend Eisenbahner’). In his letter to the NSDAP Hauptarchiv six years later, on 17 October 1941 (Fol. 10), Lotter refers to between twenty and thirty being present.
29. Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 10, where he gives the number of forty-two as attendance at the meeting on 12 September. Tyrell, Trommler, 195 n.77, refers to thirty-nine
30. signatures with four names of committee members added at the end. The manuscript of the attendance list (BDC, DAP/NSDAP File) actually contains thirty-eight signatures – one of those attending had taken up two spaces for his name and address – followed by three added names (including Harrer’s) written in the same hand, presumably of well-known members attending but not signing themselves in.
31. MK, 388–9, 659–64, 669.
32. MK, 390–93; JK, 91. Hitler still spoke at this time in uniform. Part of his initial impact was unquestionably owing to the way he could portray himself as the spokesman for the ordinary soldier back from the war who could express, in their own earthy language, the sense of betrayal among his former comrades. One who heard him for the first time in the ‘Deutsches Reich’, Ulrich Graf, later became his chief bodyguard and leader of the Saalschutz, the protection squad which in 1921 turned into the SA. Graf was still bitterly angry at the events of the previous year – defeat, revolution, and especially the Soviet ‘Councils Republic’ in Munich. He was drawn to Hitler, according to his later (admittedly glorified) account, because he saw in him from the way he spoke and acted ‘a soldier and comrade to be trusted’ (IfZ, ΖS F14, Ulrich Graf, ‘Wie ich den Führer kennen lernte’, 2).
33. MK, 400–406.
34. MK, 406 (trans., MK Watt, 336).
35. Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 7–8.
36. MK, 658–61.
37. As pointed out by Tyrell, Trommler, 10–11.
38. Tyrell, Trommler, 29–30, criticizing Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 68, 73, together with Maser, Frühgeschichte, 170; and Fest, Hitler, 175.
39. BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 7 (printed in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 105).
40. Tyrell, Trommler, 30–31; Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 12; Maser, Frühgeschichte, 169.
41. MK, 390–91.
42. Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920’, VfZ, 11 (1963), 274–330, here 276.
43. Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 10; see also Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13.
44. JK, 101.
45. MK, 405; BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 7 (printed in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 105); Phelps,’Hitler’, 13 (where reference is made to the fact that Dingfelder had given the speech five times before for the Heimatdienst).
46. Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 12–13.
47. Tyrell, Trommler, 76–83. There were also overlaps with the twelve-point völkisch programme that had been published in the Münchener Beobachter on 31 May 1919, which itself had possibly been intended as an initial statement of the DSP’s aims (Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 9–10 and n.34).
48. Printed in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 108–12.
49. See Tyrell, Trommler, 84–5.
50. See Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13.
51. JK, 447, 29 July 1921.
52. BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 1, 7 (trans., Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13).
53. The police report, printed in Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 292–6, speaks of over 2,000 persons present. Dingfelder later told the NSD AΡ-Hauptarchiv that 400 of them were ‘Reds’ (Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 14).
54. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 293–4.
55. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 294–6.
56. MK, 405 (trans., MK Watt, 336).
57. Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 15.
58. VB, Nr 17, 28 February 1920, 3, ‘Aus der Bewegung’ (trans., Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 14).
59. The new name appears to have come into use at the beginning of March, though, remarkably, there was no account of the change of name in the party’s own archive. It may have been in the hope of forging closer links with the national socialist parties in Austria and Czechoslovakia (Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13 and n.37). Police reports first added ‘national socialist’ to the party’s name following a meeting (not addressed by Hitler) on 6 April 1920 (Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 277).
60. MK, 544 (trans., MK Watt, 442).
61. MK, 538–51.
62. MK, 551–7. Hitler also designed the party insignia and, two years later, the SA standards. His banner design was based on that submitted by Friedrich Krohn, a Starnberg dentist and wealthy early supporter who left the party in 1921. Hitler gave Krohn only indirect credit, and not by name, in his account in Mein Kampf (556).
63. MK, 543.
64. MK, 549–51; and see Heinrich Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, Munich, 1962, 26–7. The name ‘Gymnastics Section’ (Turnabteilung) was used for the last time on 5 October 1921, and was thereafter replaced by ‘Storm Section’ (Sturmabteilung) (Tyrell, Trommler, 137, 266 n.25).
65. Though the meeting was no different in style to previous DAP meetings, announcing it for the first time in a newspaper alongside the usual invitations brought an attendance of over 100 persons. In MK, 390, Hitler gives the attendance as in; the attendance list contains 131 names (Tyrell, Trommler, 27–8, 196–7, nn.100–101).
66. MK, 390 (trans., MK Watt, 323).
67. Oskar Maria Graf, Gelächter von außen. Aus meinem Leben 1918–1933, Munich, 1966, 114–15.
68. Frank, 38–42.
69. Tyrell, Trommler, 33; Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 284, has slightly different figures.
70. MK, 561.
71. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 279–80; Tyrell, Trommler, 33.
72. Examples are given in JK, 126, 205–13, 271–6. Ulrich Graf, Hitler’s bodyguard, was entrusted with the task of ensuring that the notes were correctly placed before the beginning of a speech. He confirmed that Hitler mainly improvised from them, claiming that he often scarcely glanced at them (IfZ, ΖS F14, 4). Graf’s account, written in Augus
t 1934, was, of course, attempting to highlight the extraordinary talent of the Führer at every opportunity. Comparison of the notes and the reports on the content of his speeches suggests that Hitler used his jottings more than Graf implies. Later, as Reich Chancellor, with the world’s diplomats and press interpreting every word of what he said, the speeches had to be fully written out and carefully edited.
73. Meetings lasted generally between two and a half and three and three-quarter hours (Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 275). Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf that his first speech in the Circus Krone, on 3 February 1921, lasted about two and a half hours (MK, 561).
74. MK, 565.
75. The term ‘November criminals’ was, in fact, used by Hitler for the first time – to storms of applause that lasted for minutes – as late as September 1922 (JK, 692), and regularly (and unceasingly) only from December that year.
76. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 283–4.
77. JK, 126–7.
78. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 286.
79. E.g., JK, 179, 204, 281–2, 302, 312.
80. Carr, Hitler, 5.
81. In the JK collection of Hitler’s speeches before the Putsch the word ‘Lebensraum’ does not appear once. See also Karl Lange, ‘Der Terminus ‘Lebensraum’ in Hitlers Mein Kampf, VfΖ, 13 (1965), 4263–37, for further insight into the development of the word ‘Lebensraum’.
82. JK, 213.
83. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 278, 288; JK, 126–7.
84. On other occasions he spoke more generally about ‘nationally minded leadership personalities’ or a ‘government of power and authority’, seeming to imply a collective rather than individual leadership. See Tyrell, Trommler, 60; Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 299, 319, 321.
85. JK, 126–7(27 April 1920), 140 (beginning of June 1920), 163 (21 July 1920).
86. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 288. For Hitler’s sources, see Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede über den Antisemitismus’, VfZ, 16 (1968), 390–420, here 395–9.
87. See Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 284.
88. JK, 200.
89. JK, 119–20.
90. JK, 119, 128, 184.
91. JK, 348.
92. JK, 115, 148, 215, 296.
93. JK, 201.
94. JK, 119.
95. One hostile commentator on a Hitler speech in late June 1920 even reported that he made ‘demand upon demand for the murder of the Jews’ (‘Aufforderung um Aufforderung zur Ermordung der Juden’), Der Kampf, 28 June 1920 (JK, 152). An explicit call to murder can be found, however, in no other speech. It is fair to presume that it reflects the interpretation of the reporter rather than the precise word used by Hitler.
96. Cited in Alexander Bein, ‘Der moderne Antisemitismus and seine Bedeutung für die Judenfrage’, VfZ, 6 (1958), 340–60, here 359. See also Alexander Bein, ‘“Der jüdische Parasit”. Bemerkungen zur Semantik der Judenfrage’, VfZ, 13 (1965), 121–49.
97. JK, 176–7.
98. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 286; and see, e.g., JK, 201.
99. See Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 393–5, for the structure of his speech on ntisemitism on 13 August 1920, and for audience reactions.
100. Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 395. As Phelps notes (391), the full text (400–420; JΚ, 184–204) – unusually among early Hitler speeches – survives perhaps precisely because of its significance as a programmatic statement.
101. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 215; JK, 231 n.7. Hitler recognized, in a letter of 3 July 1920, the difficulty of winning support from the industrial working class (JK, 155–6).
102. MK, 722 (trans., ΜK Watt, 620).
103. JK, 337 (speech of 6 March 1921); Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 394, 398.
104. The view that Hitler’s genocidal hatred of the Jews derived from his fear of Bolshevik terror, shored up by horror stories of barbarity during and after the Russian civil war, was famously advanced by Ernst Nolte in interpretations.which were one of the triggers to the ‘Historikerstreit’ (‘Historians’ Dispute’) of the late 1980s. See Ernst Nolte, ‘Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus’, and ‘Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will’, in ‘Historikerstreit’. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, 13–47, together with Nolte’s book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945.
105. JK, 88–90.
106. JK, 126–7 (27 April 1920), 140 (beginning of June 1920), 163 (21 July 1920).
107. JK, 231.
108. Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 398.
109. Nolte, Bürgerkrieg, 115, 564 n.24, pointed, for instance, to the publication in the VB of stories that during the Russian civil war the Cheka forced confessions out of prisoners by exposing their faces to hunger-crazed rats.
110. The swelling of KPD membership in Germany in autumn 1920 through the influx of former adherents of the USPD’s radical wing provided a further spur (Tyrell, Trommler, 49–50), but the focus on ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ was by then already well established. The onslaught on Jewish finance capital did not thereby abate. It became incorporated somewhat uneasily in the notion of international finance capital and the international element in Soviet Russia working together against Germany’s national interests. (See JK, 337.)
111. Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 398 and n.33. See MK, 337, for Hitler’s acceptance of their authenticity, 111. Mayr, 195–6.
112. Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 11; JK, 106–11.
113. Dirk Stegmann, ‘Zwischen Repression und Manipulation: Konservative Machteliten und Arbeiter- und Angestelltenbewegung 1910–1918. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der DAP/NSDAP’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 12 (1972), 351–432, here 413. Mayr had already met Kapp personally on two occasions, once with Eckart and once alone, as the contact man of Generals Lüttwitz and von Oldershausen. Mayr was, according to Ernst Röhm, ‘the most decisive promoter of the Kapp enterprise in Bavaria’ (Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters, 100–101).
114. Stegmann, 413–14. As Tyrell correctly remarked (Trommler, 296), this proves efforts to manipulate Hitler, not that Hitler was the tool of such external forces.
115. Röhm, 100–101, 107.
116. Tyrell, Trommler, 27–8, 61, 197 n.104; Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 16, 18.
117. On Eckart, see Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler. Der völkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart, Bremen, 1970; and Tyrell, Trommler, 190–91 n.49, 194 n.70. Tyrell is persuasive in his refutation of the view that Eckart’s posthumous (1924) publication, Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin. Zwiegespräch zwischen Adolf Hitler und mir, Munich, 1924, was based on discussion with Hitler, as first claimed by Ernst Nolte, ‘Eine frühe Quelle zu Hitlers Antisemitismus’, Historische Zeitschrift, 192 (1961), 584–606, and Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, Mentor edn, New York, 1969, 417–21. Eckart’s financial support for Hitler is dealt with by Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 1 80ff. and Plewnia, 66–71.
118. Tyrell, Trommler, 23.
119. By 1923 Eckart was no longer in favour and in March was left greatly embittered by his dismissal as editor of the Völkischer Beobachter. He rarely saw Hitler thereafter, and took no part in the putsch. He became increasingly ill, and died towards the end of the year. The dedication of Mein Kampf to Eckart was pro forma – directed at the many who knew full well Hitler’s early indebtedness to Eckart (Tyrell, Trommler, 194 n.70).
120. Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 179–80, 190.
121. Tyrell, Trommler, 110, 177. As Tyrell (Trommler, 110) points out, Grandel also brought the supporters from the Schutz- und Trutzbund that he had built up in Augsburg into the NSDAP after he himself had joined the party in August 1920.
122. BHStA, Abt.V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, copy of Drexler’s draft letter to Hitler, end of January 1940, 3 (partly printed in Deuerlein, A
ufstieg, 128–9). (See also Tyrell, Trommler, 175–7.)
123. JK, 277–8.
124. Tyrell, Trommler, 38, 42, 206 n.189.
125. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 136.
126. Gustave Le Bon’s study, published in France in 1895 and in English translation as The Crowd a year later, had appeared in a German edition, Psychologie der Massen, in 1908. A few days before Hitler joined the DAP, in September 1919, a lengthy article in the VB had drawn attention to a published lecture by a Dr J.R. Roßbach, a Munich nerve specialist, on ‘The Soul of the Masses. Psychological Reflections on the Emergence of Popular Mass Movements’ (Die Massenseele. Psychologische Betrachtungen über die Entstehung von Volks-(Massen)-Bewegungen (Revolutionen)). Roßbach made frequent use of quotations from Le Bon, and summarized his findings in pithy language. There are striking similarities between Roßbach’s phraseology and that of Hitler in his comments on the psychology of the masses. Perhaps Hitler was drawn from Roßbach to read Le Bon’s own work. But what does seem likely is that he read Roßbach and was influenced by him. (See Tyrell, Trommler, 54–6.)
127. Tyrell, Trommler, 42–64, for the above.
128. In April, the Reparations Commission reassessed the payments at 132,000 million Gold Marks (Kolb, Weimarer Republik, 44), which Hitler must have had in mind when he spoke in Mein Kampf of ‘the insane sum of a hundred milliard [thousand million] gold marks’ (MK, 558).
129. The Circus Krone’s manager was said to have been a party member who charged a much reduced rent for the hire of the hall (Toland, 109, but without any supportive evidence).
130. MK, 558–62; JK, 311–12. In his own account, Hitler states that, following the Circus Krone triumph, he booked the hall for two more successful meetings in the coming two weeks. While the NSDAP did go on to use the hall increasingly for major rallies, the next meeting there did not take place until 6 March 1921, the one thereafter on 15 March. These were, however, the next two meetings after the one described by Hitler (JK, 335ff, 353ff.). The early meetings in the Circus Krone, and how nervous Hitler had felt about them, figured in his frequent reminiscences during the Second World War about the ‘good old days’ of the party’s history. See, for example, his comments to Goebbels on the occasion of Heydrich’s state funeral (TBJG, 11, 4, 492 (10 June 1942)).