Stoddard, Lothrop, 112–13
Storm and Steel (Jünger), 80
Strasser, Gregor, 77, 123
Strasser, Otto, 69, 77, 123, 280
Streicher, Julius, 69, 154
Stresemann, Gustav, 70, 88, 93
Studies of Myth, 148– 9
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 263– 6
Sunday Meditations, xvi
Sunken Road near Wytschaete (painting;
Hitler), 18
swastikas, xvi, xix, 51, 152, 281
Tagore, Rabindranath, 51
Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de, 264
Talmud, 139
Tannhäuser on Vacation (Eckart), 40
“Target No. 589” (Hitler), 85– 91, 87, 92– 3, 276
Teachings on Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene (inscription; Lehmann), 131
Terminating Reproductive Capacity for Racial-Hygienic and Social Reasons (Kankeleit), 131
Theodor Adorno Archive, 244
Thiersch, Frieda, 175
Third Reich, xvii, 130, 135, 149, 230, 255
Third Reich, The (von der Bruck), 134, 135
This Is the Enemy (Oechsner), 255, 257
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 151
Thomas Jefferson Library, xv, 110
Tiefland (film), 122, 125n
Traces of Jews in the Course of Time (Rosenberg), 56
Traister, Daniel, 247
Trebitsch-Lincoln, Timothy, 36, 50
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 50, 67
Triumph of the Will (film), 120
Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare), xi
Truman, Harry S., 234
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), xi
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), xi
United States, 215, 220, 221, 227, 246
Untersberg, 174, 176– 7, 184
V ersailles, Treaty of (1919), 49, 216
Vienna, Austria, 38, 49, 137, 234
Voices of Our Ancestors (Himmler), 119
Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer), 47, 52, 55, 75, 92
Völkischer Kurier (People’s Courier), 66
Volkskrieg, 129
Vossische Zeitung, 9, 32
Wagner, Richard, xvi, 40, 50, 51, 64, 127, 176, 239
Wagner, Siegfried, 64– 5, 84
Wagner and the Jew, 50
Wagner’s Resounding Universe (Engelsmann), 146
Wallace, Edgar, 259
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (Black), 111–12
War and State (Clausewitz), 194– 5
War as Inner Experience (Jünger), 80
Wartenburg, Maximilian Yorck von, 50
Washington, George, 192
Weber, Max, 90
Wehrwolf, 210, 211, 213, 219
Weimar, Germany, 37, 127, 128, 131
Weimar Republic, 88, 146
Weinberg, Gerhard, 104–5, 276
Weiss, Alexander, 16
Wenzler, Franz, 125n
Werlin, Jakob, 74– 5
Wessel, Horst, 125
Weyer’s Handbook of War Fleets, 194
White Ecstasy (film), 125
Whitman, Walt, xvi
Whitney, Leon, 111, 114–15
Wilhelm II (kaiser), 84– 5, 172, 186
Wilkins, Anni, 175– 6
Wilson, Woodrow, 264
Winter, Anni, 170, 177, 178, 179
Wisdom of Happiness, The (Schleich), 136n, 181
With Adolf Hitler in Landsberg Prison (Kallenbach), 64, 273
With Adolf Hitler in the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 “List” (Meyer), 14
Wolf’s Lair, 210, 219
World as Will and Representation, The (Schopenhauer), 126
World War I, xvi, 3– 18, 22, 23, 25– 6, 49, 51, 79, 126, 185, 199, 203, 215, 216, 236
World War II, 164, 209–13, 220–2, 223–8, 233–6, 243–4
Hedin’s view of, 208, 215– 20
Nazi historiography of, 217n
Nostradamus’s prediction of, 239– 41
Yeats, William Butler, 229
Ypres, 10– 11
Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von, 194
Zionism as an Enemy of the State (Rosenberg), 56
Zola, Émile, 50
Zyklon B, xiv
APPENDIXES
By the end of his life, Hitler maintained private libraries at his residences in Berlin, Munich, and on the Obersalzberg, as well as a book depository at the “Führer Archive” in the basement of the Nazi Party headquarters at the Brown House in Munich. Except for a partial inventory of the Reich Chancellery library in Berlin, which is preserved at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, there is no surviving catalogue of Hitler’s book collection.
However, we do have several firsthand accounts that help us understand the texture of this vanished library. Most significant among these is Frederick Oechsner’s description based on interviews with various Hitler associates, which was ultimately published in a 1942 book-length profile of Hitler titled This Is the Enemy. Though journalistic by nature and propagandistic in intent, Oechsner’s account nevertheless provides, aside from its more sensational and salacious claims, the best portrait we have of Hitler’s book collection. In comparison, the other three firsthand accounts are mere snapshot glimpses. The first of these comes from a classified report by the U.S. Army’s Twenty-first Counterintelligence Corps, dating from May 1945, detailing the bunker complex beneath the Berghof. It includes a brief description of the vaulted room that served as an air raid shelter for Hitler’s Berghof books but mentions only three of them by name. This is especially unfortunate, because in the weeks to follow the room was picked clean by pilfering neighbors, soldiers, and others.
A second postwar account, published by Hans Beilhack in a Munich daily newspaper in November 1946, describes the cache of Hitler’s books discovered in a salt mine near Berchtesgaden. Though he mistakenly assumed the three thousand books under his care represented Hitler’s entire library, he proved to be remarkably perceptive in gauging the “dilettantish” nature of Hitler’s bibliophilic interests.
Finally, we have a Library of Congress memorandum dated January 9, 1952, which details the “Hitler Library” after it arrived in the United States but before it was accessioned into the rare book collection. The in-house report was written by Arnold Jacobius, a trained librarian hired on a temporary basis to provide an expert opinion on the final disposition of the books. Ultimately, Jacobius reduced the number of books to twelve hundred by recommending that the Library of Congress retain only those books with inscriptions, marginalia, or the Hitler ex libris. In the process, Jacobius “duped out” hundreds of Hitler’s books that were anonymously absorbed into the main collection or sent to a distribution department, where they were disseminated to public libraries across the United States. It was an understandable and maybe necessary decision, given space constraints, but a good number of Hitler’s personal acquisitions almost certainly vanished in the process, including a book that Beilhack notes in his account, a “how-to” book titled The Art of Becoming a Speaker in a Few Hours.
These four firsthand descriptions of the Hitler Library are intended to supplement my own account and provide the reader with additional perspectives on the man and his books.
APPENDIX A
From This Is the Enemy, by Frederick Oechsner, 1942
I found that [Hitler’s] personal library, which is divided between his residence in the Chancellery in Berlin and his country home on the Obersalzberg at Berchtesgaden, contains roughly 16,300 books. They may be divided generally into three groups:
First, the military section containing some 7,000 volumes, including the campaigns of Napoleon, the Prussian kings; the lives of all German and Prussian potentates who ever played a military role; and books on virtually all of the well-known military campaigns in recorded history.
There is Theodore Roosevelt’s work on the Spanish American War, also a book by General von Steuben, who drilled our troops during the Ameri
can Revolution. [Werner von] Blomberg, when he was war minister, presented Hitler with 400 books, pamphlets and monographs on the United States armed forces and he has read many of these.
The military books are divided according to countries. Those which were not available in German Hitler has had translated. Many of them, especially on Napoleon’s campaigns, are extensively marginated in his own handwriting. There is a book on the Gran Chaco dispute [the 1932–35 war between Paraguay and Bolivia] by the German General [Hans] Kundt, who at one time (like Captain Ernst Röhm) was an instructor of troops in Bolivia. There are exhaustive works on uniforms, weapons, supply, mobilization, the building-up of armies in peacetime, morale and ballistics. In fact, there is probably not a single phase of military knowledge, ancient or modern, which is not dealt with in these 7,000 volumes, and quite obviously Hitler has read many of them from cover to cover.
The second section of some 1,500 books covers artistic subjects [such] as architecture, the theater, painting and sculpture, which, after military subjects, are Hitler’s chief interest. The books include works on surrealism and Dada-ism, although Hitler has no use for this type of art.
One of his ironical marginal notes could be roughly translated: “Modern art will revolutionize the world? Rot!” In writing these notes Hitler never uses a fountain pen but an old-fashioned pen or an indelible pencil.
In drawers beneath the bookshelves he has a collection of photographs, drawings [of ] famous actors, dancers, singers, both male and female. One book on the Spanish theater has pornographic drawings and photographs, but there is no section on pornography, as such, in Hitler’s library.
The third section includes works on astrology and spiritualism procured from all parts of the world and translated where necessary. There are also spiritualistic photographs, and, securely locked away, the 200 photographs of the stellar constellations on important days in his life. These he has annotated in his own handwriting and each has its own separate envelope.
In this third section there is a considerable part devoted to nutrition and diet. In fact, there are probably a thousand books on this subject, many of them heavily marginated, those marginal comments including the vegetarian observation: “Cows were meant to give milk; oxen to draw loads.” There are dozens of books on animal breeding with the photographs of stallions and mares of famous name. One interesting psychological angle here is that where stallions and mares are shown on opposite pages, many of the mares have been crossed out in red pencil as merely inferior females and unimportant compared with the stallion males.
There are some 400 books on the Church—almost entirely on the Catholic Church. There is also a good deal of pornography here, portraying alleged license in the priesthood: offenses such as made up the charges in the immorality trials which the Nazis conducted against priests at the height of the attack upon the Catholic Church. Many of Hitler’s marginal notes on this pornographic section are gross and uncouth. Some pictures show Popes and Cardinals reviewing troops at moments in history. The marginations here are: “Never again” and “This is impossible now,” showing that Hitler proposes that the princes of the Church shall never again be allowed to gain political positions in which they can command armies and otherwise exercise temporal powers. Hitler is himself a Catholic, though not a practicing one.
Some 800 to 1,000 books are simple, popular fiction, many of them pure trash in anybody’s language. There are a large number of detective stories. He has all of Edgar Wallace; adventure books of the G. A. Henty class; love romances by the score, including those by the leading romantic sob sister of Germany, Hedwig Courts-Mahler, in which wealth and poverty, and strength and weakness are sharply contrasted and in which honor and chastity triumph and the sweet secretary marries her millionaire boss. All of these flaming volumes are in neutral covers so as not to reveal their titles. Hitler may read them, but he doesn’t want people to know that he does.
Among Hitler’s favorites is a complete set of American Indian stories written by the German, Karl May, who had never been to America. These books are known to every German youngster, and Hitler’s fondness for them as bedside reading suggests that he, like many a German thirteen-year-old, has gone to sleep with the exploits of “Old Shatterhand” reeling through his brain. Hitler’s set, which was presented to him by Marshal Goering, is expensively bound in vellum and kept in a special case. They are much thumbed and read and usually one or two may be found in the small bedside bookcase with its green curtain in Hitler’s bedroom.
Sociological works are strongly represented in the library, including a unique book by Robert Ley, written in 1935, on world sociological problems and solutions. This book never was circulated. Six thousand copies were printed, 5,999 were destroyed; the single remaining copy is Hitler’s. The reason: all books and pamphlets on National Socialism have to be submitted to a special Party commission before being released for publication, and books by prominent Nazi individuals have to be shown to Hitler himself. The book, by Ley, a notorious idolater, so idealized Hitler that even he couldn’t stomach its being published.
Another suppressed book in Hitler’s library is Alfred Rosenberg’s work on the proposed Nazi Reich-Church, of which today there are only twelve copies in proof, although typewritten carbon copies of some sections are known to exist and in mysterious ways to have circulated as far as the United States.
In earlier days, when he had time, Hitler used to bind his own damaged books. Hitler’s own best-seller, Mein Kampf, has yielded him a fancy fortune, estimated by German Banking circles to be about 50,000,000 Reich mark ($20,000,000 at official rates). With part of this sum, Hitler has amassed a collection of precious stones valued at some 20,000,000 Reich marks, which he keeps in a special safe built into the wall of his house at Berchtesgaden.
The stones were bought for him in various parts of the world by his friend Max Amann, head of the Nazi publishing firm the Eher Verlag, in which Hitler has an interest. It was Hitler who put Max Amann in charge of the Eher Verlag, and it has turned out to be a lucrative job; Amann’s own fortune today is estimated by bankers at around 40,000,000 Reich marks. With absolute autocratic control over all publishing enterprises in Germany, it is no wonder that the Nazi Eher Verlag snowballed into a phenomenally profitable enterprise for everybody connected with it, including Adolf Hitler. The Reich Chancellor has never found it necessary to use his official salary, a large part of which he turns over to charity.
Among the books in Hitler’s library is one volume covering a field in which he has always shown particular interest: namely, the study of hands, including those of as many famous people throughout the ages as could be procured. Hitler, in fact, bases a good deal of his judgment of people on their hands. In his first conversation with some personality, whether political or military, German or foreign, he usually most carefully observes his hands—their form, whether they are well cared for, whether they are long and narrow or stumpy and broad, the shape of the nails, the knuckle and joint formation and so on. Various generals and diplomats have wondered why Hitler sometimes, after starting a conversation in a cordial and friendly way, became cool as he went along, and often closed the discourse curtly or abruptly without much progress having been made. They learned only later that Hitler had not been pleased by the shape of their hands.
APPENDIX B
From a classified report by the U.S. Army Twenty-first
Counterintelligence Corps, May 1945
In addition Hitler had a private library of a large but undetermined number of books. At the far end were arranged lounge chairs and reading lamps. Most of the books were concerned with art, architecture, photography and histories of campaigns and wars. A hasty inspection of the scattered books showed that it was noticeably lacking in literature and almost totally devoid of drama and poetry.
There were many books illustrating types of architecture throughout the world, one tracing the early domestic architecture of Pennsylvania and another of American public buildings.
<
br /> Immanuel Kant’s Critiques were there as well as Machiavelli’s The Prince. One of the few American authors represented was Harry Elmer Barnes’s The Genesis of the World War.
A big folio size book printed in heavy Gothic type outlined Hitler’s genealogy and a note penned on the fly-leaf showed that it was worked out and presented by an admirer.
Many of the books bore Hitler’s bookplate, “Ex Libris Adolf Hitler.” This consisted of a black engraved eagle with outstretched wings carrying the swastika in his claws.
None of the books examined gave the appearance of extensive use. They had no marginal notes or underlinings.
APPENDIX C
“The Library of a Dilettante: A Glimpse into the Private Library of Herr
Hitler,” by Hans Beilhack, Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 9, 1946
Four freight cars filled with National Socialist literature of every kind will be heading on a journey from Munich to the U.S.A. in the coming days. The extensive collection, which includes Hitler’s private library, is being sent to the American Library of Congress and will be used as a reference work for students and other interested individuals who want to trace the development of Nazism. For the first time the Süddeutsche Zeitung is reporting on Hitler’s library.
Among the many “Nazi Holy Relics” that have fallen into the hands of the Americans is the private library of Herr Hitler. They had been kept in the elaborate bookcases in the Berlin Reich Chancellery until recently. A few weeks before Berlin was taken into the grip of the Allied pincers, they came to Munich. Just how quickly that happened was shown by the way they were packed. They were stowed in old schnapps crates addressed to the Reich Chancellery. Evidently, they were dispatched in great haste.
The library itself, seen as a whole, is only interesting because it is the library of a “great” statesman and yet so uninteresting. It is the typical library of a dilettante. You can see Hitler’s hatred of the “educated,” who “in truth alienate themselves more and more from the world until they end up either in a sanatorium or as a politician” (Mein Kampf, Chapter 2). For anyone familiar with his “Kampf,” the quality of his library will not come as a surprise. A man who could say, “In a few years I created [through impassioned reading in my youth] the foundation of knowledge on which [!] I still draw today” didn’t really need a methodically selected library in the more mature years of his life. Even if he did eventually decide to become a politician.
Hitler's Private Library Page 30