For the end of the war deprived the sergeant Hitler of a role he had found at the front, and he lost his homeland at the moment he was dismissed for home. In shocked surprise he noted that at the home front the much-vaunted discipline of the German army collapsed as if on cue. Increasing numbers of soldiers had only one remaining desire: to throw off the suddenly unbearable burden of four years, to make an end of it and go home. They could no longer conceal the fears and humiliations of existence at the front behind patriotic formulas or warrior poses. An overwhelming sense of the vanity of it all became the general sentiment: “And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; in vain the hunger and thirst of months which were often endless; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; and in vain the death of two millions who died.”65
It was the defeat rather than the revolutionary events that so deeply affected him, for his attachment to the ruling house was as slight as his respect for the leadership of the Reich.
The force of this unrevolutionary revolution was spent chiefly in gestures that suggest a curiously helpless perplexity. From the early days of November on, deserters marched through the streets all over Germany, hunting down officers. Groups of enlisted men lay in wait for the officers, seized them, and with scornful and insulting comments ripped off their decorations, epaulets, and cockades. This was an act of revolt after the fact against the overthrown regime and was as pointless as it was understandable. In the case of the officers, it bred a permanent ire that was to have far-reaching consequences, a deep-seated antipathy for the revolution and hence for the regime which had begun under such circumstances. That antipathy was shared by all the advocates of law and order.
The whim of history had robbed the revolution of that emotional verve which might otherwise have made it memorable in the mind of the nation. As early as October, 1918, the Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, had met the demands both of President Wilson and his own public by instituting a number of domestic political reforms. Germany was given a parliamentary government. Finally, on the morning of November 9, the Chancellor, acting to a considerable extent on his own initiative, had announced the Kaiser’s abdication. The revolution had reached its goal before it had even broken out; it had at any rate missed the chance to define itself by any concrete act. Abruptly, it had been cheated of its storming of the Bastille and its Boston Tea Party.
Given these discouraging circumstances, there was only one way the quasi revolution might have become a real one—by exploiting the attraction of novelty. But the new holders of power, Friedrich Ébert and the Social Democrats, were hard-working, sobersided men. They thought they had done pretty well to eliminate right at the start a whole slew of honorary titles, decorations, and medals. The peculiar pedantry and lack of psychological flair that marked all their behavior explain why they could not fire the masses or draft any major social changes. Theirs was “a revolution entirely lacking in ideas,” as one man who lived through it recognized.66 Certainly they had no answer to the emotional needs of a defeated and disillusioned nation. The Constitution, which was discussed during the first half of 1919 and went into force in Weimar on August 11, fell far short of what was needed. It was intended, strictly speaking, merely as a technical instrument for installing a democratic power system, but it revealed scarcely any understanding of the ends of power.
Indecision and lack of courage early sapped the strength of the new regime. The new men could of course point to the exhaustion of the nation and to the fear of what had happened in Russia. Faced with the multitudinous needs of a defeated country, they might well cite many reasons for restraining the desire for political innovation that was spontaneously springing up on the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. But the events had prepared the nation for the abandonment of traditional attitudes. That readiness was not exploited. The revolution was hailed even on the right, and “socialism” as well as “socialization” constituted one of the magic formulas for solving the situation even among conservative intellectuals. But in fact its sole program was the restoration of law and order, and the new leaders thought they could accomplish this only in alliance with the traditional powers. Not even a timid approach toward socialization was attempted. Thé great feudal landholders remained untouched; the civil servants were prematurely guaranteed their positions. With the exception of the ducal and royal houses, the social groups that had hitherto wielded decisive influence emerged from the transition to a new form of government virtually without loss of power. With some cogency Hitler could later ask scornfully who had prevented the men of November from setting up a socialist state, since they had the power to do it.67
In the confusion and perplexity of those weeks, only the radical Left was capable of drafting a revolutionary program for the future. But it had neither a following nor, in Max Weber’s phrase, the spark of “Catilinarian energy.” On January 6, 1919, a crowd numbering tens of thousands of persons in a revolutionary mood gathered in the Siegesallee in Berlin and waited in vain until evening for some sign from the endlessly debating revolutionary committee. Finally, freezing, weary, and disappointed, the crowd dispersed. The gap between thought and deed was as insurmountable as ever. Nevertheless, the revolutionary Left, especially up to the assassination of its two outstanding leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, engaged in sufficiently violent struggles with counterrevolutionary soldiery to produce turmoil and internecine conflicts. What remained historically unsuccessful was not without its consequences.
For the bedeviled and directionless public soon blamed the battles and controversies of that period on the republic, which was only defending itself. Everything was equated with “the revolution,” and the political form that finally emerged from these troubled times was in the common mind obscurely connected with mutiny, defeat, national humiliation, street battles, chaos, and public disorder. Nothing so damaged the prospects of the republic as the fact that the public associated its very beginnings with a “dirty” revolution. Much of the population, including even the political moderates, remembered the inception of the republic with shame, sorrow, and disgust.
The terms of the Versailles peace treaty increased the resentment. The public statements of President Wilson had fostered the illusion that overthrow of the monarchy and the adoption of Western constitutional principles would soften the wrath of the victors and cause them to adopt a milder tone toward men who, after all, were only acting as executors of the legacy of a deceased regime. Many Germans also believed that the “order of world peace,” for which the discussions at Versailles were ostensibly laying the groundwork, excluded punishment, injustices, and any kind of coercion. This period of understandable but unrealistic hopes has been called “the dreamland of the Armistice period.” The country’s reaction at the beginning of May, 1919, when the peace terms were presented to it, was all the more dumfounded. There was a great outcry. The public consternation was expressed politically by the resignations of Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann and of Foreign Minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau.
One thing is certain: the victorious powers arranged the surrounding circumstances with deliberate desire to harass and insult the Germans. They had opened the peace conference on January 18, 1919, the anniversary of the day the German Empire had been proclaimed barely fifty years before; and they chose as the place for signing the treaty the same Hall of Mirrors in which that proclamation had been issued. Perhaps that could be borne with. But their choosing for the signing date June 28, the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo, stood in what was felt to be cynical contrast to the altruism of Wilsonian pledges.
In general, the psychological affronts rather than the material exactions were what produced the extraordinarily traumatic effects of the Treaty of Versailles, so that from Right to Left, running across all factions and parties, it produced a sense of unforgettable humiliation. The territorial demands, the require
ments for compensation and reparations, which at first dominated public discussion, certainly did not have that “Carthaginian harshness” which was so much talked about. The terms in fact could stand comparison with the conditions Germany had imposed on Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and on Rumania in the Treaty of Bucharest. But certain clauses seemed intolerably insulting and soon figured in rightist agitation as the “disgrace” of Versailles. These were the clauses that struck at German honor: above all Article 228, which provided for the handing over of certain German officers for judgment by Allied military tribunals, and the celebrated Article 231, which placed sole moral guilt for the outbreak of the war upon Germany.
The contradictions and hypocrisies in the 440 articles of the treaty were all too evident. The victors assumed the pose of judges and insisted on the Germans’ confessing their sins, where in fact their interests were purely material. The pointless vengeful moralism was what awoke so much hatred and ridicule. Even in the Allied countries there was strong criticism of this hypocritical tone. The right of self-determination, for example, which in President Wilson’s proclamations had been raised to the height of a sacred principle, was quietly dropped whenever it might have worked to the advantage of the Germans. There was no question of the German remnant of the shattered Hapsburg monarchy becoming part of the Reich. Supranational states were destroyed and nationalism triumphantly confirmed; but, paradoxically, the League of Nations was created, whose essence was the denial of nationalism.
The treaty solved scarcely any of the problems that had led to the recent hostilities. Instead, it all but destroyed the sense of European solidarity and common tradition that had survived so long, despite the wars and angry passions of centuries. The new order imposed by the peace treaty diii little to restore this sense. For all intents and purposes, Germany remained excluded, seemingly forever, from the European community. This discrimination turned the Germans decisively against European co-operation. In challenging the victors, Hitler was able to build on this feeling. Actually, a large part of Hitler’s early successes in foreign affairs were gained by his posing as a firm adherent of Woodrow Wilson’s principles and the maxims posited by the Versailles Peace Treaty with regard to the self-determination of national and ethnic groups. “A terrible time is dawning for Europe,” wrote one clear-sighted observer on the day the peace treaty was ratified in Paris, “a sultriness before the storm which will probably end in an even more terrible explosion than the World War.”68
Within Germany, the bitterness over the terms of the peace treaty increased the resentment against the republic, for it had proved incapable of sparing the country the distresses and privations of this “shameful dictated peace.” How unwanted the republic really had been now became evident. It had been merely the product of embarrassment, chance, craving for peace, and weariness. Its impotence in domestic affairs had already lost it much credit. To this bad record was now added its weakness in foreign affairs. To a growing number of Germans the very term “republic” seemed synonymous with disgrace, dishonor, and powerlessness. The feeling persisted that the republic had been imposed on the Germans by deception and coercion, that it was something altogether alien to their nature. It is true that in spite of all its drawbacks it held a certain promise; but even in its few fortunate years it was “unable to arouse either the loyalty or the political imagination of the people.”69
These developments led to a surge of political consciousness. Large segments of the population, who previously had lived in a political limbo, abruptly and violently found themselves caught up in events that aroused in them political passions, hopes, and despairs.
Adolf Hitler, now some thirty years old, was seized by this general mood in the hospital at Pasewalk. A vague but furious sense of misfortune and betrayal swept over him. It brought him a step closer to politics, but his decision to go actively into politics, which in Mein Kampf is linked to the events of November, 1918, actually was made a year later, when he discovered his oratorical gifts. The overwhelming moment came to him in the haze of a small meeting; in a burst of rapture he suddenly saw a way out of a hopelessly blocked life and found that he had prospects for a future.
Certainly his behavior during the following months suggests this interpretation. For when he was discharged from Pasewalk hospital at the end of November, he went to Munich and reported to the reserve battalion of his regiment. Munich had played an important part in the November events and had led the way in the overthrow of the German ruling houses. But although the city was vibrating with political excitement, Hitler remained indifferent. In spite of his alleged decision to go into politics, he neither joined nor opposed the political currents. Rather tersely, he comments that Red rule was repugnant to him. But since by his own contention the “Reds” were in power basically throughout the period of the republic, such an observation scarcely justifies the meager interest he took in politics at this period.
At the beginning of February, craving something to do, he volunteered for guard duty in a prisoner-of-war camp at Traunstein, near the Austrian border. But about a month later the few hundred French and Russian soldiers were released, and both camp and guard detail were dissolved. Once more, Hitler was left at loose ends. He returned to Munich.
Since he did not know where else to go, he took up quarters in the barracks in Oberwiesenfeld. Presumably, the decision did not come easily to him, for it meant he had to subordinate himself to the dominant Red Army and don its red armband. Nevertheless, he put up with taking orders from the revolutionary Left at a time when he might have joined units of the Right, a fact revelatory of his underdeveloped political instincts and lack of discrimination at the time. Later, the mere mention of the word “Bolshevism” would drive him wild. But all subsequent revision of the facts to the contrary, at this stage his political indolence was obviously stronger than any horror he might have had at being counted a soldier of the world revolution.
It is true that he also had no choice. The army was the only social framework in which he could feel sheltered. To leave it meant returning to the realm of the shipwrecked. Hitler was distinctly aware of the hopelessness of his personal predicament: “At that time endless plans chased one another through my head. For days I wondered what could be done, but the end of every meditation was the sober realization that I, nameless as I was, did not possess the least basis for any useful action.”70 Plainly, he was as far as ever from thinking of a job, of earning a living, and achieving bourgeois status. Instead, he was agonizingly aware of his insignificance. According to his story, his political activity at that time had incurred “the disapproval of the Central Council” of the new soviet government in Munich, so that at the end of April they came to arrest him. “Faced with my leveled carbine, the scoundrels lacked the necessary courage and marched off as they had come.” But in reality the Central Council was no longer in existence at the time he gives.
It is much more likely that his behavior at this time was a mixture of embarrassment, passivity, and opportunistic adjustment. He took no noticeable part even in the. turbulent events of early May, when the troops of Colonel von Epp’s Free Corps, a paramilitary organization, together with other formations, overthrew the soviet government in Munich. Otto Strasser, who for a time was one of his followers, later asked publicly: “Where was Hitler on that day? In what corner of Munich was the soldier hiding who ought to have fought in our ranks?” In fact Red Army man Adolf Hitler was arrested and questioned by the invading troops; some officers who knew him intervened, and he was released again. Possibly the story of the attempted arrest by the Central Council is the retouched version of this incident.
Afterward, a commission was set up to look into events during the soviet rule, and there has been much speculation on the role Hitler may have played in conjunction with these investigations. All that is certain, however, is that he offered his services to the board of inquiry established by the Second Infantry Regiment. He supplied information for the tribunals, which often h
anded down very harsh sentences reflecting the bitterness of the recent struggle. He located fellow soldiers who had taken part in the soviet regime, and seems to have carried out his assignment so well that he was soon sent to a training course in “civic thinking.”
Now for the first time he was beginning to attract attention, to emerge from the anonymity that had so long concealed and depressed him. He himself called his work for the investigating commission his “first more or less purely political activity.”71 He was still letting himself drift; but the direction in which he now floated rapidly brought him to the end of his formative years, which were compounded of asocial apathy and a messianic sense of vocation.
Looking back over this period, it is astonishing to see that Adolf Hitler, who was to become the century’s political phenomenon, did not feel tempted by politics until his thirtieth year. At a comparable age, Napoleon was already First Consul, Lenin in exile after years of persecution, Mussolini editor in chief of the socialist paper Avanti. Hitler, however, had not been impelled to take a single step in behalf of any of those ideas that would soon send him forth on a mission of world conquest. He had not entered a single party, had not joined any of the numerous associations of the period, with the exception of the Viennese League of Anti-Semites. There is nothing betokening any impulse toward political action, no sign of anything more than a stammering participation in the platitudes of the era.
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