Hitler's Private Library

by Timothy W. Ryback

  In this densely written treatise, Riedel establishes the groundwork for his “new religion,” replacing the “trinity” of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with a new tripartite unity, the Körper, Geist, und Seele—body, mind, and soul. He argues that the traditional five senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—relate only to physical perceptions, permitting us to interact with the material world but blinding us to the more profound dynamics underlying our relationship to other human beings and to the deeper forces of the universe, a position Hitler himself advanced. “We will at best learn about the laws that determine the nature of life, or at the very least apply this knowledge to make the laws of nature serve us, but why these laws have the power they do we will never know,” Hitler once observed. “Our position in the world does not allow us to look into other levels. Therefore the human being has invented the wonderful concept of the almighty whose powers he reveres.”

  Linkages between the physical and spiritual worlds as outlined by Max Riedel “Law of the World.”

  Based on the penciled intrusions in “Law of the World,” Hitler was particularly taken with the chapter in which Riedel discusses the human being’s seven additional perceptive capacities, identified by Riedel as those that transcend the superficial perception of the world and touch on deeper universal knowledge. On page 43, Hitler highlights a passage affirming what he had previously encountered in his readings of Schleich and Schertel: “The body, mind and soul do not belong to the individual, they belong to the universe.” By cultivating our emotional perceptions, our emotional “sense” of others, our “sense” of racial belonging, our “sense” of nature, we can develop a cognitive emotional intelligence that transcends the pure objective logic driving most people’s decision-making. In affirmation of Riedel’s thesis, Hitler marks a passage on page 45: “The human intellect is thus never a prime mover, but rather a result of the interaction between body and soul”; and another on page 47, where Riedel expounds on the limited cognitive value of relying on the five recognized human senses and the misleading notion of “objectivity” that results: “The problem with being objective is that we use objective criteria as the basis for human understanding in general,” Riedel writes and Hitler affirms, “which means that the objective criteria, that is, the rational criteria, end up serving as the basis for all human understanding, perception, and decision-making.” By cultivating and engaging the additional seven senses identified by Riedel, a person is able to tap the deeper forces of the world, and is thus able to achieve that unity of body, mind, and soul.

  In these marked passages we find echoes of similar highlighted sentences and paragraphs from Hitler’s copies of the books of Schleich and Schertel. In a Schleich essay on “genius and talent” from The Wisdom of Joy, Hitler has repeatedly marked passages related to individuals of exceptional talent, underlining a sentence about genius as a “singular creation”; double-striking a passage in which Schleich describes genius as “the materialization of the divine” that is both “incomprehensible” to and “unrecognized” by the common man; highlighting a paragraph that explores the relationship between genius and politics in which Hitler underlines a sentence; and once again double-striking passages on pages 26 and 27, in which Schleich talks about the relationship between politics and genius and the fact that “genius belongs to all mankind.”

  We can follow Hitler’s pencil tracing Schleich’s edifying musings on genius into Schertel’s “handbook” on the occult, where Hitler again marks a passage by Schleich linking the biological and the spiritual with the political:

  Everything of the mind and spirit, whether right or wrong, infects like a bacillus, it transcends the rhythm of thoughts viscerally; therefore ideas have won such great power over the masses. Ideas are infectious and those which emerge from the individual as incontrovertible observations, as concentration of the spirit, can lead to explosive, dynamite-like constructions that can be released like an avalanche begun by the footsteps of a bird on packed snowflakes.

  Hitler draws a thick line beside this passage on page 69 of Schertel’s book Magie, then traces Schertel’s reflections on Schleich’s observations. Schertel notes, with Hitler’s pencil in train, that the great cultures of the past would be unthinkable without the grand ideas that were willed into existence by individuals of “imaginative power,” who were not “slaves” to empirical realities, who could imagine a world and then will it into existence through the force of their personality. Schertel describes this creative genius as the “truly ektropic,” an energizing force possessed of demonic qualities that is capable of shaping the course of the world.

  Like Riedel, Schertel underscores the limits of rational thinking and calls for a deeper perception of the world that permits one to sense its “predetermined fate” and thereby help shape the course of events. “Every man of genius possesses this power and all nations whose histories have not simply ‘run their course’ have possessed this,” Schertel writes, Hitler’s pencil following along as Schertel outlines his notion of the “demonic” forces inherent to the “ektropism.”

  In contrast to Riedel, Schertel posits the notion of the modern “European human type” who has become “calcified” by rational thinking, who has given over to the “thoughtless form of thinking,” to an empty form of European rationalism. “One has always said that the European has the capacity for a particularly well-developed ‘sense of reality,’ ‘sense for facts,’ etc.,” Schertel writes. “But a closer look shows that he looks right past ‘reality’ and ‘facts,’ and that what he holds in his hands are empty images. The entire materialism and rationalism of our era is in complete contradiction to the deeper sense of reality and facts.” Beside this passage, and in the paragraphs that follow, Hitler has drawn a series of extended dense lines.

  Schertel writes of a “mollified” and “castrated” European who had lost the will to determine the course of events, of the need for the “ektropic,” powers “beyond good and evil,” that can break the constraints imposed by modern society and give birth to a new world, against which society is powerless to resist. Schertel admits that such forces are often perceived as “antagonistic,” even “evil,” but that they in fact create their own systems of norms. With the “ektropic” dynamic there is no such thing as “real” or “unreal,” as “true” or “false,” as “right” or “wrong.” Only when this completely irrational, amoral, apersonal force has consumed us can we perceive these values.

  Here we glimpse at least a portion of Hitler’s essential core. It was less a distillation of the philosophies of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche than a dime-store theory cobbled together from cheap, tendentious paperbacks and esoteric hardcovers, which provided the justification for a thin, calculating, bullying mendacity.

  It was Schertel’s “ektropic” man, not Schopenhauer’s genius of will, or even Nietzsche’s “new man” born beyond good and evil, who greeted Carl Burckhardt on that airy crag above the Obersalzberg in early August 1939, who seemed to possess the ability to “usher in the end of civilization,” and it was this same “ektropic” man who stood two weeks later in the great hall of the Berghof, framed against the imposing face of the Untersberg, and told his generals of his decision to go to war.

  On Tuesday morning, August 22, 1939, Hitler assembled his general staff, fifty men in two rows of chairs, in the great hall and informed them that the time had come for the invasion of Poland. Before detailing the plans for his military operation, he made it clear that the outcome of the upcoming war was ultimately to be determined not by military equipment or carefully weighed strategies but by the force of personality. With a calculating perceptiveness of the current political scene, Hitler enumerated the qualities of the personalities to be considered in the coming conflict. Mussolini was a force with which to be reckoned, and could be considered an ally. In Spain, Franco had his own war and would remain neutral. “On the other side, a negative picture, as far as decisive personalities are concerned,” Hitler said. “There i
s no outstanding personality in England or France.” He had negotiated with them. He knew they were no match for him. “Our enemies have men who are below average,” Hitler declared. “No personalities, no masters, no men of action.” Hitler himself was the protean force, the man who by his very will and personality would determine the course of events. “Essentially, it depends on me, my existence, because of my political activity,” Hitler said. “Furthermore, the fact that probably no one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people as I do. There will probably never again be a man with more authority. My existence is, therefore, a factor of great value.”

  Hitler then provided explicit and detailed instructions on the strategy, tactics, and timing of the invasion. As Hitler spoke, he invoked words he had read in Anton Drexler’s Awakening back in the autumn of 1919, and had repeated frequently in the intervening decades. The generals and other officers listened dutifully. Hitler had given instructions that no notes were to be taken, but Franz Halder, the German army chief of staff, ignored Hitler’s request and recorded the proceedings, as was his habit at all military briefings. Halder was a stocky, humorless, taciturn man with steely blue eyes. He disliked Hitler intensely and had assumed his position the previous year, in his words, to prevent Hitler from doing “any more damage.” He now found himself writing notes like none he had ever before taken:

  Goal: Extermination of Poland—Elimination of its living existence. It is not about achieving a specific line or a new border, rather it is the extermination of the enemy that must be sought through ever new and repeated means.

  Excuse for attack: Any reason will do. The victor is never questioned whether his reasons were justified. It has nothing to do with having good cause. Only victory matters.

  For a general such as Halder—from a proud lineage of three hundred years of military tradition, who had trained under his own father in the Third Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment Prince Leopold and gone on to serve with distinction in the First World War, earning an Iron Cross First Class in the early months of the fighting—it was clear, as it was to the assembled military staff, that this would be a war without precedent, an armed conflict the likes of which the world had never seen, conducted by a man who seemed to have no regard for military convention, not politically, not strategically, not tactically, not ethically, and certainly not rationally.

  * * *

  1 In the early 1950s, Winter was arrested for attempting to sell a suitcase full of Hitler’s personal documents, including his passport, his gun permit, a number of watercolors, and photographs of his parents, for a hundred thousand marks on the black market. In her defense, Winter claimed Hitler had given them to her. The cache of material is now in the Bavarian main state archives in Munich.

  BOOK EIGHT

  Frontline Reading, 1940

  That Wilhelm II could bear to hear the truth and also valued it is evident from a statement he made on the deathbed of his longtime general adjutant, Field Marshal Wilhelm von Hahnke, on February 8, 1912. “The only man who always told me the truth.”

  Schlieffen: A Study of His Life and Character for the German People, by HUGO ROCHS, 1921

  THIS SLENDER, NINETY-TWO-PAGE volume, by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen’s personal physician, was evidently designed to impress, with its solemn Teutonic dignity. The name “Schlieffen” is printed in bold crimson Fraktur type across an amber field of textured linen with the author’s name and subtitle rendered, also in Fraktur, in rich forest green. Published in 1921, Schlieffen is a “character study” of the legendary Prussian count known as much for his humane wisdom as for his strategic genius. When urged to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, Schlieffen declined, refusing to subject civilians to unnecessary harm for military purposes.

  Schlieffen also cautioned Germans against a two-front war, and was an advocate of strategic retreat; sometimes it was necessary to sacrifice a province temporarily to save a country. Most notably he authored the “Schlieffen Plan,” which provided for the invasion of France by the stunningly effective flanking maneuver through the Low Countries, the blueprint for Germany’s dramatic early advances in 1914, one year after his death, and again in modified form in 1939, to even greater effect.

  Hitler’s copy of Schlieffen by Hugo Rochs

  Along with providing a brief biography of his former patient, Hugo Rochs intended his book to serve as a “character study for the German people” by presenting the stately, monocled count as the embodiment of Prussian virtues: diligence, modesty, humanity. Rochs recalls that Schlieffen, after his victory at Königgrätz, bowed to the surrendering Austrian generals in recognition of a battle well fought. His operative aphorism was “Be more than you appear to be, achieve much, boast little.” As if to underscore this point, Rochs dispenses with Count von Schlieffen’s aristocratic signifier in the book’s title and text.

  Schlieffen is a hagiography to be sure, but one whose intentions are noble: a “character profile” intended to instill pride, to inspire and to instruct, to remind German readers of the essential humanity and dignity at the core of the Prussian military traditions. It thus seems disconcertingly out of place to open this slender volume of moderated militarism and find the following inscription scrawled across the inside cover:

  Meinem Führer gewidmet

  Motto: “so-oder-so”

  Sieg Heil, Kannenberg, 19.5.1940

  Everything about the inscription by Artur “Willy” Kannenberg offends. The crude, haphazard scrawl of the letters, the glaring red of the grease pencil, the implied ruthlessness of the motto, “so-oder-so” (“one way or another”)—regardless of the means, the costs, or the consequences—and especially the ideologically charged closing salutation, “Sieg Heil,” that emblematic greeting of the Nazi movement, military in tone but political in intent.

  Most handwritten inscriptions in Hitler’s books are scripted in a practiced hand and designed to embody the admiration, even reverence, they convey in form and content. Leni Riefenstahl expresses “deep admiration” in a hand as feminine and alluring as her person. Heinrich Himmler avers his “loyal obedience” in careful, practiced script. Hermann Göring offers a biography of himself “to my Führer” in both “loyalty and admiration.”

  In contrast, Kannenberg’s inscription is casual, jocular, mildly presumptuous. The motto belongs not to him but to Hitler, a catchphrase he frequently invoked to express his single-mindedness of purpose. Whether in politics or personal affairs, through kindness and generosity or deceit, bribery, and brutality, whatever it took to get things done: so-oder-so. Another favored Hitler adage: “wenn schon, denn schon.” If you do something, then do it without hesitation or consideration, fully, vigorously, ruthlessly.

  Kannenberg quotes Hitler to Hitler with the same casual confidence, the same easy intimacy, with which he scrawls his own name, simply “Kannenberg.” And when Kannenberg writes “my Führer,” he means exactly that, in the most proprietary sense of the word, his friend the Führer.

  Kannenberg did not belong to the clutch of lieutenants and confidants such as Goebbels, Göring, Bormann, Speer, and Himmler, or to the half dozen other close associates whose company and informal counsel Hitler kept. He belonged instead to that intimate inner circle who knew Hitler as der Chef, or “the boss”: his valets and adjutants such as Otto Günsche, Julius Schaub, Heinz Linge, and Hans Junge; his quartet of secretaries, Johanna Wolf, Gerda Daranowski, Christa Schröder, and Traudl Junge; his private pilot, Hans Baur; and his chauffeur, Erich Kempka.

  These are the handsome figures who populate the periphery of period photographs, nameless and meaningless to history, but individuals whom Hitler considered “family,” into whose personal lives he constantly inquired and occasionally interfered. He insisted that his Berghof manager, Herbert Döhring, marry a maid who was carrying Döhring’s child. He urged Traudl Humps to wed Hans Junge, and he served as best man at the wedding of Erich Kempka. He treated them like family but could fire them on the spot. Among th
is tight, incestuous, and cloying circle, Kannenberg was unique.

  As the Hausintendant of the Reich Chancellery, the director of Hitler’s social affairs, Kannenberg was responsible for orchestrating gala events for state visits and artistic receptions, but his purview was in fact much broader. In 1936, when Hitler expelled his half-sister, Angela Raubal, as his housekeeper and resident hostess at the Berghof, he regularly brought in Kannenberg and his wife to prepare the Alpine residence for visits by dignitaries. At Christmas, Hitler dispatched Kannenberg to scour the finest shops in Berlin for gifts, which Kannenberg then displayed for review on the dining room table in Hitler’s Reich Chancellery apartment.

  Kannenberg was a heavyset, thick-necked, ruddy, middle-aged man possessed of casual arrogance, a disarmingly ingratiating manner, and a quick wit. His coquettish, dark-haired beauty of a wife ran a flower shop in Berlin’s fashionable Adlon Hotel. Hitler first met Kannenberg in the early 1930s, at Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a small restaurant Kannenberg ran near Berlin’s Anhalter train station and which was frequented by Göring and Goebbels. Hitler was so taken with the vegetarian cuisine and Kannenberg’s easy style that he hired him to help run the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich and, after the seizure of power, installed him in Berlin to orchestrate the grand receptions and state dinners. Kannenberg’s attention to detail was legendary: He once sent an airplane to Dresden for a single goose, and he matched the flower arrangements, supplied by his wife, to the artwork on the walls. He was possessed of an easy confidence, and was as comfortable in a tuxedo as he was in an apron. He also knew how to hold a room. He would interrupt Hitler with a quip or comment, bring an audience to laughter with a joke, or fill a room with gaiety with his songs.