The earliest effort to organize Hitler’s remnant books was undertaken by Hans Beilhack, a German librarian who tended to Hitler’s books in a Munich storage depot following their confiscation by the Americans in the spring of 1945. In the 1950s, Arnold Jacobius sorted the volumes for the Library of Congress while training as a library intern in the rare books and manuscript division. The eminent scholar Gerhard Weinberg included Hitler’s books in his landmark catalogue of captured German war documents, which he compiled as a newly minted graduate student.
Robert Waite drew on the collection for his controversial Freudian analysis, Hitler: The Psychopathic God, published by Basic Books in 1977. In 2003, the Hungarian scholar Ambrus Miskolczy published Hitler’s Library with the Central European University Press, a personal memoir of a summer he spent studying the Hitler volumes. Reginald Phelps and Jehuda Wallach have also written insightfully on the collection.1
The most ambitious and successful effort to date is The Hitler Library by Philipp Gassert and Daniel Mattern. This dense, 550-page volume, published by Greenwood Press in 2001, provides the first annotated catalogue of the 1,244 known Hitler books in the United States, which comprise at most 10 percent of Hitler’s original collection. I am particularly grateful to these two scholars for their comprehensive work. Their book provides a veritable road map through Hitler’s surviving books.
Before thanking those individuals who generously provided guidance and assistance with this book, I would like to acknowledge a number of former Hitler associates who shared with me details of Hitler’s reading and book-collecting habits.
Herbert Döhring, the Berghof manager from 1936 to 1941, detailed the disposition of books at Hitler’s alpine retreat, and his sorting and shelving habits. Margarete Mitlstrasser, also at the Berghof, from 1936 until 1945, detailed Hitler’s nocturnal reading habits: one book per night, either at his desk or in his armchair, always with a cup of tea. Traudl Junge, the private secretary whose memories of Hitler’s final days inspired the film Downfall, spent half a day with me studying copies of pages with Hitler marginalia. Hitler’s telephone operator Rochus Misch provided details of Hitler’s book-littered quarters in the Berlin bunker.
As with any project involving archives, there are numerous individuals and institutions to be thanked. Let me first express my appreciation to the staff of the rare book collection at the Library of Congress, stewards to the largest remnant collection of Hitler’s books. In the last six years, they have assisted me with the highest degree of courtesy, professionalism, and, most of all, patience. In this regard, I owe special thanks to Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and Clark Evans, reference specialist in the Rare Book Reading Room.
Similar thanks are also due to Samuel Streit and his staff at the John Hay Library at Brown University; Daniel Traister, curator of research services for the rare book collection at the University of Pennsylvania; Leslie Morris, curator at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; Carol Leadenham, reference archivist, Ronald Bulatoff, archival specialist, at the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University, Jenny Fichmann, an independent researcher for the Hoover Institution; Dr. Håkan Wahlquist, keeper of the Sven Hedin Foundation; Dr. Reinhard Horn, head of map collection and image archive at the Bavarian State Library; and the superb research and support staff at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich. Appreciation also to the library research staff of the University of Michigan.
A number of individuals assisted me in my attempt to locate the still-elusive collection of plundered Hitler books in Moscow, in particular Astrid Eckert, Patricia Grimstead, and Konstantin Akinsha, as well as Oliver Halmburger and his research team at LoopFilm, in Munich. Particular thanks to Franz Fleischmann, researcher extraordinaire. Most significantly, I would like to express appreciation to Florian Beierl for his generosity in providing access to the Archive for the Contemporary History of the Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden, the most extensive collection of primary source material on the Berghof and its residents. I would also like to thank him for sharing with me the original manuscript pages to Mein Kampf, and permitting me to use his extensive photographic record of Hitler’s surviving books.
As always, I owe an enduring debt of gratitude to Richard M. Hunt and his team of former Harvard University teaching fellows from Literature and Arts C-45, Weimar and Nazi Culture, to my many former colleagues at the Salzburg Global Seminar, and in particular to the Salzburg photographer Herman Seidel. Thanks also to Sebastian Cody and Jonathan Petropoulos for their careful reading of early drafts of the manuscript, to Russell Riley for his help and support, and to Steven Bach who helped frame the idea of a “book about books.” I owe particular gratitude to Jonathan Segal at Alfred A. Knopf for his vision, rigorous editing, and patience. The book also owes a great deal to the attentions of the entire team at Knopf, especially Kyle McCarthy and Joey McGarvey. As always, fond appreciation to my agent Gail Hochman, and to Marianne Merola.
I welcomed the scrupulous reading given my book by David A. Randall and, in particular, his thoughts in helping me develop the chapter on Madison Grant.
And finally, thanks to my wife, Marie-Louise, who, as always, is my single greatest source of support and inspiration, and, of course, to my children Katrina, Brendan, and Audrey, who each helped in their own way. Brendan provided important and sustained assistance with the final reading of the manuscript and the selection of illustrations.
In closing, I would like to remember Jerry Wager, the former head of the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress, who passed away recently, unexpectedly, and at much too young an age. When I first began my research, in the spring of 2001, Jerry served as my guide to this collection, revealing hundreds of pages of marginalia that had been overlooked by generations of researchers and scholars. For several years, he continued to update me on his own investigations into the collection. There is hardly a chapter in this book that does not owe some insight or discovery to Jerry, whose spirit of intellectual inquiry and curatorial acuity is preserved in these pages.
* * *
1 Reginald H. Phelps, “Die Hitler Bibliothek,” Deutsche Rundschau 80 (September 1954): 923–31; Jehuda Wallach, “Adolf Hitlers Privatbibliothek,” Zeitgeschichte (1992): 29–50.
INDEX
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations.
All Quiet on theWestern Front (Remarque), 80
Amann, Max, 13– 14, 55, 65, 66, 75, 92, 93, 260
title for Mein Kampf decided by, 76
America in the Battle of the Continents (Hedin), 208, 215–18, 219–20
American Eugenics Society, 111, 114
American Revolution, 192, 215, 257
Amorality in the Talmud (Rosenberg), 56
Annulus Platonis, 165
anti-Semitism
of Carlyle, 229
of Catholics, 151
of Dickel, 47, 54
of Drexler, 32
of Eckart, 30, 38, 39
of Fichte, 130
of Ford, 69, 70– 1
of Hitler, 30, 38– 40, 50, 55, 67, 77, 78– 9, 92, 164, 220, 221
of Nazis, 151
of Nietzsche’s sister, 128
see also Jews
Arco-V alley, Anton von, 63
Arendt, Hannah, 243– 4
Arendt, Richard, 25
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 194
Aronson, Albert, 246, 247
“Art of Becoming a Speaker in a Few Hours, The,” 265
As You Like It (Shakespeare), xi
Atlantic Monthly, The, 247
Auf gut deutsch, 30, 51
Augsburg University, 47, 48
Austria, 174, 220, 231
Awakening (Drexler), 184
Bach, Steven, 125n
Baligrand, Maximilian,
14
Barnes, Harry Elmer, 246, 262
Baur, Erwin, 111
Bavaria, 30, 52, 55, 132, 178
Hitler’s failed coup in, 40, 62– 3, 65, 66, 78, 88, 119, 124, 220, 280
Bavarian War Archive, 7
Bayreuth, Germany, 170, 172
Bayerische Vaterland (Bavarian Fatherland), 77
Beauty in the Olympic Games, 120
Bechstein, Helene, 66, 174
Beer Hall Putsch, 40, 62– 3, 65, 66, 78, 88, 119, 124, 220
Beilhack, Hans, 255–6, 263–6
Belgium, 197, 203
Below, Nicolaus von, 177
Benjamin, Walter, xiv–xv, xx, 27, 61– 2, 67, 114–15, 119, 134, 241, 242–4
Berchtesgaden, xiii, xv, 46n, 167, 256, 260
Berghof, 61, 120, 138, 156, 167, 171, 174–6, 175, 177, 183, 190, 216, 244–5, 246, 247, 255
Berlin, 20, 23, 92, 255
Hitler’s library at, xv
Hitler’s plan to march on, 62
Berlin (Osborn), 3, 8– 11, 9, 17, 18– 22, 25, 26, 27, 126
Berlin Olympic Games, 120–1, 214
Bible, xiii–xiv
biological racism, 134
Bismarck, Otto von, 67, 145, 206, 214, 215, 264
Black, Edwin, 111
Blomberg, Werner von, 192, 257
Blood and Steel (Jünger), 80
Blue Light, The (film), 123, 125–6
Body, Spirit and Living Reason (Carneades), 167, 179, 247–9
Boepple, Ernst, 65
Bolsheviks, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 39, 67, 91, 151, 153, 155, 156, 157, 161, 164, 210, 214, 218, 233
Bormann, Albert, 177, 189
Bormann, Martin, 160, 177, 212, 237
Botticelli, Sandro, 15– 16, 17
Brandenburg Gate, 20, 24
Braun, Eva, 45, 138, 178, 235, 237, 238, 246
Braunau-on-the-Inn, 74, 119
Breitenbach, Edgar, 61
Broszat, Martin, 254
Brown University, xvi, 16n, 61, 136, 167, 240, 247
Bruckmann, Elsa, 61n, 66, 75, 80– 1, 147
Bruckmann, Otto, 75, 79, 80
Brussels (Osborn), 22
Bülow, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 194
Burckhardt, Carl J., 171–3, 183
Burkhardt, Jacob, 61n
Busch, Wilhelm, xiv
Carlyle, Thomas, 223, 225, 228–33, 239
Carneades, Dicaiarchos, 167, 179, 247–9
Carnegie Foundation, 264
Case for Sterilization, The (Whitney), 114
Catalogue of Adolf Hitler’s Private Gallery, 233
Catechism for the Teutonic warrior and defender . . . (Arndt), 194
Catholic Church, 39
anti-Nazi plot of, 142–3, 147, 150–4, 159–64
Hitler and, 142, 144–5, 155, 156–9, 163–5, 258–9
indecency trials and, 155
see also Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Caucasus, 210, 212, 213
Central Office for War Injuries, 14
Cervantes, Miguel de, xi
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 50, 68, 69, 80, 97, 134
Chamberlain, Neville, 174
Churchill, Winston, xviii, 221, 222, 227, 228, 264
Church’s Shadowed Men, The (Rosenberg), 149
Civil War, U.S., 215
Class, Heinrich (Einhardt), 50, 51
Clausewitz, Karl von, xvi, 50, 90, 91– 2, 194–5, 201, 211
“Coming Religion, The,” 170
Conquest of the Air, The: A Handbook of Air Transport and Flying Techniques, 194
“Conversation” (Eckart), 39– 40, 128, 164
Cooper, James Fenimore, 42
Copse 125 (Jünger), 80
Cornelius, Peter, 25
Counterintelligence Corps, 255
Courts-Mahler, Hedwig, 259
Critiques (Kant), 246, 262
Cushing, Harvey, 215
Czechoslovakia, 156, 174, 198
Daimler-Benz corporation, 123, 265
Dante, 15
Danzig, Poland, 171, 172
Davenport, Charles, 111
Darwin, Charles, 89, 90, 147
Dawes Plan, 88
de Balzac, Honoré, xx
Dead Are Alive!, The, xvi, 165– 6
Dearborn Independent, 70
Death and Immortality in the World View of Indo-Germanic Thinkers, (inscription; Himmler), 119
Decline of the West, The (Spengler), 47, 50
Defoe, Daniel, 42
Deuss, Edward, 163
Diana and Her Nymphs Assaulted by Satyrs (Rubens), 15
Dickel, Otto, 47– 8, 49, 52, 53– 5, 57– 8, 59
Dickens, Charles, 167
Dieckhoff, Hans Heinrich, 239
“Die Fahne hoch!,” 125
Dietrich, Otto, 201
Divine Comedy (Dante), 15, 242
Don Quixote (Cervantes), xi
Doré, Gustave, xi
Döhring, Herbert, 138, 176, 190
Dressing Station (painting; Hitler), 18
Drexler, Anton, 31, 32, 33, 35, 46– 7, 48, 51, 58, 66, 184
Dunkirk, France, 200, 203–4
Dwinger, Edwin Erich, 265
Eckart, Dietrich, 28– 30, 31, 34, 35, 36– 7, 46, 51, 52, 56n, 57, 61, 69, 78, 97, 98, 128, 130, 131, 147, 192, 214, 271
anti-Semitism of, 30, 38, 39
“Conversation” of, 39– 40, 128, 164
Peer Gynt adaption of, 28, 40– 5, 43, 56
second volume of Mein Kampf dedicated to, 79
Egypt, 212–13
“Eidhalt, Rolf,” 66
Eisner, Kurt, 30
El Alamein, 212–13, 222
elections of 1928, 88
Elizabeth (tsarina), 231–2
Engelsmann, Walter, 146
Essence, Principles, and Goals of the National Socialist Workers Party, 56
Essence of Creation, The, 167
Esser, Hermann, 36, 48, 49– 50, 51, 192, 193
Ethics (Spinoza), 242
Eusebius, 149
Ewers, Hans Heinz, 265
FA Brockhaus V erlag Leipzig, 218
Famous Cultural Sites, 3
Fanck, Arnold, 125–6, 130
Faulhaber, Michael, 155–6, 157–9, 161, 174, 177
Feder, Gottfried, 31, 51, 56, 57, 58, 66, 69
Fegelein, Hermann, 235
Felsennest, 195– 6, 196
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 91, 122–3, 125–6, 129–30, 131, 139
Fichte’s German Belief (Grunewald), 91
Field Marshal and the Techniques of War (Justrow), 195
Fire and Blood (Jünger), 81, 82– 4, 83
Fischer, Eugen, 111, 112
Flanner, Janet, 117
Flaubert, Gustave, 125
Ford, Henry, xiv, 50, 56, 57, 69– 71, 97, 244
Foreign Policy Position After the Reichstag Election, 276
Forster, Alfred, 171– 2
Foundation of Human Hereditary Science and Racial Hygiene (Baur, et al.), 111
Foundations of National Socialism (Hudal), 142, 143, 154, 159– 62
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Chamberlain), 50, 80, 97, 134
Fournes, France, 7, 11, 18, 23
Four Years on the Western Front: History of the List Regiment, RIR 16; Memoirs from a German Regiment, 6– 7
France, 88, 173, 186, 197, 203, 204, 206, 215, 231
France, Anatole, 116
Franco-Prussian War, 186, 192
Frank, Hans, 92– 3, 126
Frankfurter Zeitung, 76– 7
Franz Eher V erlag, 65, 75, 79, 80, 85, 264
Frederick the Great, xvi, 20– 1, 25, 50, 51, 194, 203, 204, 215, 216, 217, 247, 264
Carlyle’s biography of, 223, 224, 225, 228–33
Fredersdorf, Michael Gabriel, 235
Freemasons, 171
Führerhauptquartier, 209, 210
Führerbunker, 128, 146, 167, 232–9, 238, 244–6
Führerprinzip, 151
Galileo, 147
>
Gandhi, Mohandas, 68
Gärtner, Fritz, 16n
Gassert, Philipp, 117
Gelzer, Matthias, 172
Genesis of the World War, The (Barnes), 246, 262
Gerling, Heinrich, 192
German Essays (Lagarde), 116, 134, 135, 139–40
German History (Einhardt), 50, 51, 131–2
German language, 129–30
German Letters (Lagarde), xvii
German Reichstag, 19– 20
German Workers Party, 31
Germany, 221
economy of, 93
inflation in, 93
Gestapo, 56, 244
Giesler, Hermann, 212
Gladbacher Fire Insurance Company, 117, 118
Gladisch, Walter, 194
Gobi Desert, 213– 14
Goebbels, Joseph, 77, 78, 88, 92, 121, 125, 137, 150, 153, 154, 159, 160, 189, 190, 191, 200, 214, 222, 223, 225–6, 227, 228, 233, 234, 237
indecency trials of, 155
Goebbels, Magda, 237
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xi, xii, 126, 146
Goethe and the Jews, 50
Good Health, 111
Göring, Hermann, 77, 119, 150, 154, 189, 190, 204n, 235, 259
Göring, What Were You Thinking! A Sketch from a Life (Göring), 119
Gottberg, Otto von, 202
Gracián, Balthasar, 127
Graff, Anton, 233
Gran Chaco dispute, 257
Grandel, Gottfried, 36, 46, 47, 54– 5
Grant, Madison, 94–115, 132
Great Britain, 203, 204, 213, 215, 220, 227
Great Brockhaus Encyclopedia, 138, 139, 239
Grieg, Edvard, 43, 45, 45
Grüner, Bernard, 152, 281
Grunewald, Maria, 91
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift), xi
Günther, Hans F. K., 69, 97, 104, 111, 113, 132, 133, 179
Hahnke, Wilhelm von, 186, 207
Halder, Franz, 184–5, 197, 198, 199, 200, 204n, 206, 210–11, 212, 217
Hamlet (Shakespeare), xi, xiii
Hand Oracle and the Art of Worldly Wisdom (Gracián), 127
Hanfstaengl, Ernst “Putzi,” 50, 51, 59, 62, 65, 67, 93, 125n–6n, 108, 112–13, 149, 244
Mein Kampf edited by, 75– 6
Hans Westmar (film), 125n
Harrer, Karl, 31, 35, 46, 58
Harvard University Rare Book Library, 78
Hauer, William, 280
Hitler's Private Library Page 28