by Ian Kershaw
61. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 103–10.
62. In a report of 26 September, the day after this judgement, however, Prison Governor Leybold accepted the seriousness of the breach of trust in smuggling out a number of letters, though his criticism was aimed at Kriebel and Weber, not at Hitler (Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 109–10).
63. Jablonsky, 132–3.
64. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 114–16.
65. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 116–18.
66. Hitler, Kriebel and Weber had attempted, in a declaration of 26 September, to distance themselves from Röhm’s plans for the Frontbann and show their disapproval of his actions. Hitler emphasized that he had laid down his political leadership, and that his refusal to be involved in the defence organizations set up by Röhm followed as a matter of course (Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 110– 12; see also Jablonsky, 133, and Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 160–61).
67. Jablonsky, 150.
68. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 239–40.
69. Jetzinger, 276–7; Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Die bayerischen Bemühungen um Ausweisung Hitlers 1924’, VfZ, 6 (1958), 270–80, here, 272; Jablonsky, 91 and 202 n.190; Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 239. The initial inquiry of the Bavarian police about deporting Hitler, in March 1924, had been prompted by concern that he would be acquitted at his trial, along with Ludendorff. The concern was also voiced by the Bavarian Minister President, Knilling.
70. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 101. As we have seen, the Munich Police Direction reinforced this opinion in its report of 23 September.
71. Watt, ‘Die bayerischen Bemühungen’, 273.
72. Jetzinger, 277.
73. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 240. Hitler’s war service, it was claimed, meant that he was no longer an Austrian citizen (Watt, ‘Die bayerischen Bemühungen’, 274).
74. Watt, ‘Die bayerischen Bemühungen’, 276–7; Jetzinger, 278.
75. Whether, as has often been accepted (see Bullock, 127; Toland, 203) Gürtner, influenced by the Austrian refusal to take him back, played a decisive role in having deportation proceedings against Hitler quashed remains, in the light of Watt’s examination of the evidence, uncertain. See Watt, ‘Die bayerischen Bemühungen’, 270–71, 279.
76. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 250–52; Jetzinger, 272, 279.
77. Jetzinger, 280.
78. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 119–30 (quotation, 130). Leybold had already further testified to Hitler’s good conduct in a report of 13 November.
79. See Jablonsky, 150.
80. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 130.
81. Monologe, 259–60. For Müller, see Monologe, 146, and Heiden, Hitler, 199–200.
82. Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist, 130.
83. Monologe, 259–60; Hoffmann, 60–61; Franz-Willing, Putsch, 278–9, cit. Der Nationalsozialist of 25 December 1924 and Völkischer Kurier of 23 December 1924.
84. Monologe, 261.
85. Frank, 46–7.
86. See Jochmann, 91–2, for Fobke’s description of his normal day in Landsberg.
87. See MK, 36.
88. Frank, 47.
89. Frank, 45.
90. Eitner, 75. Eitner (75–82) was prepared to see the time in Landsberg as the major turning-point in Hitler’s life, the ‘Jordan experience’ that convinced him of his messianic mission, that he was no longer Germany’s ‘John the Baptist’, but its actual messiah.
91. Even allowing for Hitler’s usual underlining of his own ‘intuitive genius’, his later comment, that it was during this time that a good deal of reflection made him for the first time grasp fully many things that he had earlier understood only by intuition, accords with this interpretation (Monologe, 262).
92. Monologe, 262.
93. Otto Strasser, Hitler und ich, Buenos Aires, n.d. (1941?), 56.
94. Franz-Willing, Putsch, 251; Jochmann, 92. Fobke speaks of one hour’s ‘lecture with the chief, or better, from the chief (‘Vortrag beim Chef, besser vom Chef). According to one of his warders (who subsequently became an SS-Sturmführer), in an account published in 1933, Hitler read out chapters of his book on Saturday evenings (Otto Lurker, Hitler hinter Festungsmauern, Berlin, 1933, 56). See also Werner Maser, Hitlers Mein Kampf, Munich/Esslingen, 1966, 20–21 and Hammer, ‘Die deutschen Ausgaben’, 161–78, here 162.
95. Hinted at in Heiden, Der Führer, 226.Though plausible, there is no corroborative evidence for Heiden’s inference (which did not appear in his 1936 biography of Hitler). Heiden, Der Führer, 226, also appears to be the source of the suggestion that Hitler had begun work in 1922 on a book entitled ‘A Reckoning’ (the title of the first volume of Mein Kampf), aimed at dealing with his enemies and rivals.
96. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 172.
97. Heiden, Hitler, 206; Heiden, Der Führer, 226.
98. Franz-Willing, Putsch, 251.
99. Strongly hinted in Heiden, Der Führer, 226 (though without corroborative evidence).
100. Otto Strasser, Hitler und ich, 59; Frank, 45; Heiden, Hitler, 188–90; Hans Kallenbach, Mit Adolf Hitler auf Festung Landsberg, Munich, 1933, 56. See also Hammer, ‘Die deutschen Ausgaben’, 161–2; Lurker, 56; Maser, Frühgeschichte, 304 and n.325; Maser, Adolf Hitler, 192. Ilse Heß claimed after the war that her husband had not taken down the text in dictation, but that Hitler had typed it himself with two fingers on an old typewriter, and subsequently, after his release, dictated the second volume to a secretary (Maser, Mein Kampf, 20–21). Given Hitler’s aversion to writing, and the availability of willing hands (including Heß’s) in Landsberg, this seems highly unlikely.
101. Otto Strasser, Hitler und ich, Constance, 1948, 78.
102. Heiden, Hitler, 206; Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 172–3.
103. Hammer, ‘Die deutschen Ausgaben’, 163; Görlitz-Quint, 236–43. Ilse Heß claimed somewhat unpersuasively, after the war, that only she and her husband had been involved in what amounted to purely stylistic amendments to Hitler’s text (Maser, Mein Kampf, 22–4).
104. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 173–4.
105. Frank, 45–6. According to Frank, he said that had he guessed in 1924 that he would become Reich Chancellor, he would not have written the book.
106. Heiden, Hitler, 206; Maser, Mein Kampf, 24; Oron James Hale, ‘Adolf Hitler: Taxpayer’, American Historical Review, 60 (1955), 830–42, here 837.
107. Hammer, ‘Die deutschen Ausgaben’, 163; Maser, Mein Kampf, 26–7, 29; [No author given], ‘The Story of Mein Kampf,’ Wiener Library Bulletin, 6 (1952), no.5–6, 31–2, here 31.
108. According to Otto Strasser, Hitler und ich, 60–61, the leading members of the party had privately to admit, during the Nuremberg Rally of 1927, that they had not read the book. See also Karl Lange, Hitlers unbeachtete Maximen: ‘Mein Kampf und die Öffentlichkeit, Stuttgart, 1968. Those well acquainted with Hitler from the earliest days of the party, such as Christian Weber, occasionally made fun of the contents of Mein Kampf (see Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 188).
109. Hitler’s declared gross taxable income largely derived from the sales of Mein Kampf, was 19,843 RM in 1925, dipped to 11,494 RM by 1927, was 15,448 RM in 1929, rising sharply the following year to 48,472 RM, then soaring to 1,232,335 RM in 1933. Hitler was delinquent in paying his tax for 1933, but action by the revenue authorities was first delayed, then stopped when he was declared tax exempt. He paid no taxation, therefore, on the vast royalties earned on Mein Kampf during the Third Reich (Hale, ‘Adolf Hitler: Taxpayer’, 839–41).
110. The outstanding analysis is that of Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft, Tübingen, 1969; extended and revised 4th edn, Stuttgart, 1991.
111. See MK, 317–58.
112. MK, 372 (trans., MK Watt, 308).
113. MK, 358.
114. See MK, 742–3, 750–52. For the development of the ‘Lebensraum’ idea from its early usage in a programmatic declaration by the Pan-Germans in 1894, see Lange, ‘Der Terminus “Lebensraum”’, 426–37, esp. 428ff.
115. See Martin Broszat, ‘So
ziale Motivation’, 392–409, here esp. 403.
116. A point established, against the current interpretation at that time, as early as 1953 by Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Mind of Adolf Hitler’, his introduction to Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–44, London, 1953, vii–xxxv. Trevor-Roper reinforced the argument in his article ‘Hitlers Kriegsziele’, VfZ, 8 (1960), 121–33. But it was only in the light of Jäckel’s masterly analysis of Mein Kampf, in his book Hitlers Weltanschauung, in 1969 that Hitler’s ideas became generally accepted as inherently cohesive as well as consistent.
117. Frank, 45. Subsequent editions of Mein Kampf down to 1939 nevertheless contained, in all, around 2,500 largely minor stylistic corrections (Hammer, 164; Maser, Hitler, 188).
118. See Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, esp. 152–8.
119. The linking role of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund in the continuity of extreme antisemitic ideas between the Pan-Germans and the Nazis is excellently brought out in Lohalm, Völkischer Radikalismus.
120. JK, 176–7.
121. MK, 372 (trans., MK Watt, 307).
122. MK, 772 (trans., ΜK Watt, 620).
123. As implied in the title of the important analysis of Nazi anti-Jewish policy by Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Nazi Policy toward German Jews 1933–1939, Urbana/Chicago/London, 1970.
124. JK, 646.
125. JK, 703–4.
126. JK, I2I0.
127. JK, 1226.
128. JK, 1242 and n.2–3.
129. Wolfgang Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers aus dem Frühjahr 1924’, VfZ, 16 (1968), 287, 288. For the conventionality of Hitler’s Pan-German notion of foreign policy in the early 1920s, see Günter Schubert, Anfänge nationalsozialistischer Außenpolitik, Köln, 1963, esp. ch.1–2; Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 31–8; and, in particular, Kuhn, Hitlers außenpolitisches Programm, 31–59, esp. 56.
130. Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 33–4.
131. Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’, 283, 291; Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 35–6; Geoffrey Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion, Leamington Spa, 1987, 137.
132. Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’, 284–91; Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 35.
133. Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’, 285, 289–90; Stoakes, 122–35.
134. JK, 96; Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 39.
135. JK, 427. See also Binion, Hitler among the Germans, 59. The May 1921 speech was shortly after Hitler’s first visit to Ludendorff, who may have put the idea into his head (Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 30 n. 127). By the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia had withdrawn from the war at a cost of conceding vast tracts of territory to Germany.
136. JK, 505; Stoakes, 96.
137. See Stoakes, 120–21.
138. Stoakes, 118–20.
139. See Stoakes, 135, for Ludendorff’s views, and the possibility of his influence on Hitler.
140. JK, 773 (trans., Stoakes, 137).
141. See Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’; the text is printed in JK, 1216–27.
142. See Heiden, Hitler, 188.
143. Woodruff Smith, 110–11, 164.
144. See Woodruff Smith, esp. ch.6.
145. Woodruff Smith, 224–30. Despite a turgid style, the novel sold 265,000 copies between 1926 and 1933 (Lange, ‘Der Terminus “Lebensraum”’, 433).
146. Woodruff Smith, 223, 240; Lange, ‘Der Terminus “Lebensraum’”, 430–33. The part played by ‘Lebensraum’ in Hitler’s changing ideas on foreign policy at this time is brought out by Kuhn, ch.5, pt.3, 104–21, esp. 115–17.
147. Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’, 293 and n.67.
148. For Haushofer’s denial at Nuremberg that Hitler had understood his works, see Lange, ‘Der Terminus “Lebensraum”’, 432 (where serious doubt is cast on that assertion).
149. Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 37, points out that it is impossible to establish plainly the direct influence on the development of Hitler’s ideas during the period in Landsberg. Maser, Hitler, 187, takes for granted, on the basis of comments in Mein Kampf, that Hitler knew the theories of Haushofer, Ratzel, and – though he did not read English – the Englishman Sir Halford Mackinder. Haushofer visited Heß in Landsberg. He later admitted that he had seen Hitler, though he denied seeing him alone (Toland, 199). His name does not appear in the list of Hitler’s own visitors (Horn, ‘Ein unbekannter Aufsatz Hitlers’, 293, n.68).
150. See Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 37; Kuhn, 104–21.
151. Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 38–41.
152. MK, 741–3(trans., slightly amended, ΜK Watt, 597–8). The first edition of Mein Kampf had ‘Persian Empire’ (Perserreich), not ‘giant Empire’ (Riesenreich) (Hammer, 175; Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung, 45 n.32).
153. Hitlers Zweites Buch. Ein Dokument aus dem Jahr 1928, ed. Gerhard L. Weinberg, Stuttgart, 1961; republished under the title ‘Außenpolitische Standorts-bestimmung nach der Reichstagswahl Juni-Juli 1928’, in RSA, IIA.
154. Monologe, 262.
155. JK, 1210; Tyrell, Führer, 64; Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 155.
156. Tyrell, Trommler, 166–7.
157. See Eitner, 75–84.
158. See Tyrell, Trommler, 167.
159. MK, 229–32 (quotations 231–2).
160. MK, 650–51 (trans., MK Watt, 528).
161. MK, 70.
162. Bullock’s formulation (Hitler, 804) – ‘an opportunist entirely without principle’ in a system whose theme was ‘domination, dressed up as the doctrine of race’ – was guided by Hermann Rauschning, Die Revolution des Nihilismus. Kulisse und Wirklichkeit im Dritten Reich, Zürich/New York, 1938, esp. pt.1.
163. Tyrell, Führer, 85.
164. Jochmann, 134 (Fobke to Haase, 21 August 1924).
165. See Tyrell, Trommler, 174.
166. See Broszat, Der Nationalsozialismus, 21–2: ‘The National Socialist ideology has correctly been spoken of as a mixed-brew, a conglomeration, a mush of ideas.’ (‘Man hat mit Recht von der Weltanschauung des Nationalsozialismus als von einem Mischkessel, einem Konglomerat, einem “Ideenbrei” gesprochen’.)
167. See above, n.162.
CHAPTER 8: MASTERY OVER THE MOVEMENT
1. BAK, R43 I/2696, Fol.528. See also Thomas Childers (ed.), The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919–1933, London/Sydney, 1986, 232.
2. See Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger and Siegfried Schumann (eds.), Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten, Munich, 1986, 45.
3. See Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, Krisenjahre der Klassischen Moderne, Frankfurt am Main, 1987, 125, 132ff., 141–2, 176; Petzina, Abelshauser and Faust (eds.), Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, Band III, 61, 98, 114–15, 125, 137. The extensive improvements in the framework of a welfare state are dealt with in Ludwig Preller, Sozialpolitik in der Weimarer Republik, Düsseldorf (1949), 1978.
4. See Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, London, 1969.
5. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 175–6.
6. See Michael Kater, Different Drummers. Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany, New York/Oxford, 1992, 3–28, for the spread of jazz in the Weimar Republic.
7. BHStA, MA 102 137, RPvOB, HMB, 18 February 1928, S.I.
8. Tyrell, Führer, 382.
9. Tyrell, Führer, 352. The figures given by the party did not take account of those leaving, and are therefore too high.
10. A point made by Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 1, 1919–33, Newton Abbot, 1971, 76, of the 1926 party.
11. Tyrell, Trommler, 171.
12. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 163; Lüdecke, 252.
13. Hanfstaengl had on a visit to Landsberg encouraged Hitler to take some physical exercise and play some sport to reduce the weight he was putting on. Hitler rejected the idea on the grounds that ‘a leader cannot afford to be beaten by his followers – not even in gymnastic exercises or in games’ (Hanfstaengl, 15 J
ahre, 157).
14. Hanfstaengl, 15Jahre, 164. On Hitler’s later strict vegetarianism, and the varied explanations he and others gave for this, see Schenck, 27–42.
15. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 166–7.
16. Monologe, 260–61, 453, n. 170. Hitler had moaned to Hanfstaengl at Christmas that ‘mein Rudi, mein Hessen’ was still in prison (Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 165).
17. Monologe, 261 (where Hitler remarked that Held had been decent to him at their meeting and that he had later, therefore, ‘done nothing to him’); Karl Schwend, Bayern zwischen Monarchie und Diktatur, Munich, 1954, 298; Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 169; Lüdecke, 255; Margarethe Ludendorff, 271–4.
18. Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution, 193–4.
19. Schwend, 298. And see Jablonsky, 155 and 218–19 n.166–7.
20. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 170. The ban automatically ceased with the lifting of the Bavarian state of emergency (Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 245).
21. Tyrell, Führer, 89–93, letter of the later Gauleiter of Pomerania (1927–31), Walther von Corswant-Cuntzow. See also Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 242–3, based on an account in the Münchener Post, 4 February 1925; and Jablonsky, 156. For Reventlow’s public attack on Hitler soon after the ‘Preußentagung’, see Horn, Marsch, 213.
22. Tyrell, Führer, 92.
23. Horn, Marsch, 216 and no.23.
24. Horn, Marsch, 212 n.6.
25. Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution, 193–4. In a private letter in July 1925 dealing with Hitler’s relationship with Ludendorff, Rudolf Heß wrote: ‘Herr Hitler never authorized his Excellency Ludendorff to lead the National Socialist Movement. Herr Hitler repeatedly requested his Excellency to withdraw from the petty political dispute immediately after the trial. His Excellency L[udendorff] should retain his name for the nation and not enter it and use it up on behalf of a small party’ (Sonderarchiv Moscow, 1355-I-2, Fol.75, Heß to Kurt Günther, 29 July 1925).
26. Tyrell, Führer, 93–4.
27. Horn, Marsch, 213 and n.13, 214 and n.14; Jablonsky, 158; Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 245. The DNVP immediately reformed itself as the DNVB (Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung).
28. Tyrell, Führer, 104.
29. Tyrell, Führer, 71.