Hitler

by Joachim C. Fest

  To the extent that Fascism is rooted in the age’s sense of crisis, it remains latent and will end only with the age itself. Since it is so much a reaction and a desperate defensive reflex, it lacks a positive shape of its own. This means that Fascist movements are more in need of a towering leader than other political groups. He absorbs the resentments, identifies the enemies, transforms despondency into intoxication, and makes weakness aware of its strength. The broad perspectives Hitler was able to extract from sheer anxiety must be held among his remarkable achievements. As no one else did, he overdrew the ideological and dynamic potentialities of the years between the wars. But upon his death everything collapsed, as it was bound to do; the whipped-up, concentrated, and deliberately manipulated emotions at once fell back into the diffuse, disorderly state in which they had originated.

  This dead end was manifested on all planes. For all that Hitler had stressed the suprapersonal aspects of his work, had flaunted his mission and presented himself as the instrument of Providence, he did not last beyond his time. Since he could not offer any persuasive picture of the future state of the world, any hope, any encouraging goal, nothing of his thought survived him. He had always used ideas merely as instruments; when at death he abandoned them, they were compromised and used up. This great demagogue left behind him not so much as a memorable phrase, an impressive formula. Similarly, he who had wanted to be the greatest builder of all time left not a single building to the present. Nothing survived even of those grandiose structures that were completed. Shortly after the seizure of power radical zealots within the Nazi party were saying that “Hitler dead… will be more useful to the Movement than Hitler alive.” It was argued that he would have to disappear into the darkness of legend, that even his corpse must vanish beyond recovery so that he would “end in a mystery for the credulous masses.”18 The postwar era proved that this had been a vast romantic misconception. What had been apparent by, at the latest, the turning point of the war was once again driven home: Hitler’s catalyzing powers were indispensable and that everything, the will, the goal, the cohesiveness, instantly disappeared without the visible presence of the great “leader.” Hitler had no secret that extended beyond his immediate presence. The people whose loyalty and admiration he had won never followed a vision, but only a force. In retrospect his life seems like a steady unfolding of tremendous energy. Its effects were vast, the terror it spread enormous; but when it was over there was little left for memory to hold.

  Notes

  On the whole, German language material has been newly translated for the purposes of this book, even when the reference is to an original English publication (such as Alan Bullock’s Hitler). Mein Kampf, however, is uniformly quoted in Ralph Manheim’s translation (with some emendations approved by him), currently available in paperback (Sentry Edition), published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Short references, consisting of author’s name and page number only, are fully listed in the bibliography.

  The notes are not restricted solely to sources but frequently develop various subjects discussed in the text; therefore, proper names of people appearing in expository sections of the notes will be found in the index.

  Where English translations of foreign works have been published, they are mentioned in the bibliography following the entry for the original work.

  For this edition the author has cut the notes by about half; readers interested in the full apparatus are referred to the German edition.

  PROLOGUE

  1. This Ranke quotation is cited in one of Konrad Heiden’s books. The author is aware of his indebtedness to Heiden in many respects. His was the earliest historical study of the phenomena of Hitler and National Socialism, and in the boldness of its inquiry and the freedom of its judgment it remains exemplary to the present day.

  2. Speech of February 24, 1937, in the Munich Hofbräuhaus; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 107.

  3. Trevor-Roper, ed., Foreword to Le Testament politique de Hitler, p. 13.

  4. Speech of May 20, 1937; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 223.

  5. Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom: Reflections on History, pp. 313 ff. With Hitler in mind, Gottfried Benn in a famous letter to Klaus Mann specifically referred to Burckhardt’s observation. Benn wrote: “But here and now you may constantly hear the question: did Hitler create the Movement or did the Movement create him? This question is significant; the two cannot be distinguished because they are both identical. What is really involved here is that mysterious coincidence of the individual and the communal that Burckhardt speaks of in his Reflections on History, when he describes the great men who have moved history. Great men—it is all there: the dangers of the beginning, their appearance almost always in times of terror, the enormous perseverance, the abnormal facility in all things, especially in organic functions; but then also the premonition of all thinking persons that he is the one to accomplish things that are essential and that only he can accomplish.” Gottfried Benn, Gesammelte Werke IV, pp. 246 f.

  6. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 339.

  7. Thomas Mann, “Bruder Hitler,” in: Gesammelte Werke XII, p. 778.

  8. Kühnl, “Der deutsche Faschismus,” in: Neue politische Literatur, 1970:1, p. 13.

  9. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

  10. Hitler speaking to the chiefs of the Wehrmacht in the chancellery on May 23, 1939; see Domarus, p. 1197.

  11. Mein Kampf, p. 353.

  12. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

  BOOK I

  1. Cf. Dietrich, Zwölf Jahre, p. 149. See also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 75.

  2. Ribbentrop, p. 45.

  3. Maser, Hitler, p. 34. For Frank’s story see Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens, pp. 320 f.; also Maser, Hitler, pp. 26 f. Maser cannot, of course, prove his thesis. Nevertheless, he advances his argument as if it were conclusive. Even the fact that Hitler waited until after his wife’s death to legitimize Alois is, to Maser, in favor of his argument, although that fact suggests just the opposite of his conclusion. It is reasonable to assume that Hitler would have been prompted to such an act of consideration only if he wished to admit that he himself was the father and had legitimized Alois as his own son. All the other arguments are equally dubious. In general, Maser cannot suggest any plausible motive for Hüttler’s conduct. It is a very old assumption that Hitler insisted on the change of name as a condition for appointing Alois Schicklgruber his heir; cf., for instance, Kubizek, p. 59. We must add that the question of who Hitler’s grandfather was is really of secondary importance. Only Hans Frank’s version could have given it a new psychological dimension; aside from that, it is merely a matter of minor interest.

  4. Mein Kampf, p. 6.

  5. Mein Kampf, pp. 8, 10.

  6. Mein Kampf, p. 10.

  7. Mein Kampf, p. 18. Hitler alleged a “serious lung ailment,” but the assertion will not hold water. Cf. Jetzinger, p. 148; also Heiden, Hitler I, p. 28. The episode is also reported in Zoller, p. 49, where Hitler traces his dislike for alcohol back to it. On the incident of the discarded report card cf. Maser, Hitler, pp. 68 ff.

  8. Kubizek repeatedly stresses Hitler’s striking tendency to confound dream and reality. See, for example, pp. 100 f. For the episode of the lottery ticket (which follows here), see pp. 127 ff.

  9. Kubizek, p. 79.

  10. Ibid., pp. 140 ff. However, the scene appears to have been exaggerated and retouched. On the whole, Kubizek’s credibility is suspect. His memoirs were conceived with the intention of glorifying Hitler. The value of the book consists less in demonstrable facts than in the descriptions and character judgments that quite often emerge against the author’s will.

  11. Mein Kampf, p. 5. Hitler speaks of the “lovely dream” on p. 18. Cf. the letter to Kubizek dated August 4, 1933, in which Hitler speaks of the “best years of my life”; facsimile in Kubizek, p. 32.

  12. Oral communication from Albert Speer. On Hitler’s fantasy of withdrawing from politics see Tischgespräche, pp. 167 f.

  13. Cf. Andies, p. 192. Al
so, for this and the previously mentioned facts and statistics: Jenks, pp. 113 ff. In 1913, 29 per cent of the students in the Faculty of Medicine were Jews, 20.5 per cent in the Faculty of Law, and 16.3 per cent in the Faculty of Philosophy. By contrast, the Jewish proportion among criminals was 6.3 per cent, considerably lower than the Jewish proportion in the population at large. Cf. Jenks, pp. 121 f.

  14. Mein Kampf, p. 19. The following “classification list” is printed in Heiden, Hitler I, p. 30 (Der Führer, p. 52).

  15. Mein Kampf, p. 20.

  16. Ibid., p. 20.

  17. Quoted in Maser, Hitler, pp. 82 ff. Cf. also the report of the Vienna Gestapo dated December 30, 1941, quoted in Smith, p. 113.

  18. Mein Kampf, pp. 21 f.

  19. We owe the precise calculation of Hitler’s monthly income to Franz Jetzinger, who with pedantic ingenuity has tracked down all the sources of such income. The comparison to the earnings of a junior magistrate is also his. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that at this time Mussolini was employed in Austrian Trent as editor-in-chief of L’Avvenire del Lavoratore and secretary of the socialist Labor Bureau. For these two jobs he received a total income of 120 crowns—not much more than Hitler’s income as one of the unemployed. See Kirkpatrick, Mussolini.

  20. Kubizek, pp. 126, 210–20, 256 f., 307. Also Jetzinger, pp. 194 ff. For Hitler’s remark that he heard Tristan in Vienna thirty or forty times, see Cameron and Stevens, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, pp. 270 f. Jenks, p. 202, has shown that during Hitler’s years in Vienna Richard Wagner was incontestably the most popular operatic composer; at the Hofoper alone Wagner operas were given on at least 426 evenings during that period.

  21. Tischgespräche, pp. 275, 323, 422. Also Kubizek, p. 199, describes Hitler venting his anger upon the Academy. This must refer to his first rejection, since Kubizek was not in Vienna at the time of the second rejection and saw nothing of Hitler again after he returned.

  22. Mein Kampf, p. 23. In much the same sense Stefan Zweig notes in Die Welt von gestern, p. 50, “the worst threat that existed in the bourgeois world was falling back into the proletariat.” See also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 16.

  23. Greiner, p. 25. Greiner’s memories of Hitler raise many questions. In contrast to Kubizek he has no proof of the close acquaintanceship that he claims to have had with Hitler. Nevertheless, his work does contain a number of hints that increase our knowledge. His evidence can be used, however, only to the extent that it is supported by other accounts, or by other examples of similar behavior on Hitler’s part.

  24. Mein Kampf, p. 40.

  25. Cf. Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab. Lanz considered Hitler his disciple; he named, among other disciples who had early seen the importance of his doctrines, Lord Kitchener and Lenin! This fact sheds considerable light on Lanz himself and the pathological structure of his thought. His principal work, published in 1905, bore the illuminating title: Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-ûfflingen und dem GötterElektron. Eine Einführung in die älteste und neueste Weltanschauung und eine Rechtfertigung des Fürstentumes und des Adels (“Theo-zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods. An Introduction into the Oldest and Newest Philosophy and a Justification of Royalty and Nobility”). The blue-blond “Arioheroicans” were in his view “masterpieces of the gods,” equipped with electric organs and even transmitters. By eugenic concentration and breeding for purity the Arioheroic race was to be redeveloped and once again provided with the divine electromagnetic-radiological organs and powers it had lost. The age’s anxiety feelings, elitist leanings toward secret societies, fashionable idolization of Science by dabblers in the sciences, all tied together by a considerable dose of intellectual and personal fraud, combined to shape this doctrine.

  Daim surely overestimates Lanz’s influence on Hitler; it seems certain that this influence did not extend beyond the limits described in the text. The situation is obviously different in regard to several other Nazi leaders, such as Darre and above all Heinrich Himmler. Directly or indirectly, in both the breeding catalogues of the SS Race and Settlement Bureau and in the practice of exterminating “unfit” lives, or Jews, Slavs, and gypsies, the weird and murderous notions of Lanz von Liebenfels in a way persisted.

  26. Mein Kampf, pp. 56 if.

  27. Greiner, p. 110. Cf. Bullock, Hitler, p. 39; but see also Shirer, Rise and Fall, p. 26.

  28. Mein Kampf, p. 325. The assurance, urged as “a certainty,” that Hitler had no relations with women in Linz or Vienna, comes from Kubizek and of course applies only to the time Kubizek spent with Hitler (Kubizek, p. 276).

  29. Mein Kampf, pp. 55, 69.

  30. Ibid., p. 122.

  31. Maser, Frühgeschichte, p. 92, has a different opinion; he maintains that Kubizek was in the right as against Hitler, but adduces no evidence to justify his view. For the cited phrases from Hitler see Mein Kampf, pp. 39 f., where Hitler also admits that his knowledge of union organization at the time he began work at the building site was still “practically nonexistent.” There is no reason to doubt this assertion. Hitler’s anti-Semitism at this time was not yet thoroughgoing or consistent. As late as 1936 Hanisch, his companion from the home for men, insisted that Hitler in Vienna had not been an anti-Semite. Hanisch presented an extensive list of Jews with whom Hitler had allegedly maintained cordial relations. Cf. Smith, p. 149.

  32. Cf. Jahrbuch der KK Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie, 1909, pp. A 108, A 118, cited in Smith, p. 127. Werner Maser (Frühgeschichte, p. 77) has challenged Konrad Heiden and the historians deriving from him. Making downright assertions on a flimsy foundation, Maser argues that financial reasons would “with certainty” not have forced Hitler to seek shelter in a doss-house. But in calculating Hitler’s financial situation Maser has assumed that Hitler’s inheritance from his father was available to him as a permanent annuity. In reality it amounted to about 700 crowns and, depending on how quickly Hitler spent it, was bound to be used up sooner or later. Maser is so bent on showing that Hitler had financial security that he even suggests the possibility (and in a later passage terms it a probability) that Hitler lived in the doss-house “because he wanted to study the conditions there.”

  33. Heiden, Hitler I, p. 43. Some interesting details on the home for men are to be found in Jenks, pp. 26 ff. According to Jenks, the home was restricted to persons with an income of under 1,500 crowns per year. It had 544 beds and was the fourth project of this type built by a foundation committed to alleviating the housing shortage. From 1860 to 1900 the population of Vienna had risen by 259 per cent; after Berlin (281 per cent) this was the steepest increase in Europe. Paris, for example, showed a population increase of only 60 per cent during the same period. The statistics obtained by Jenks show that in the eight predominantly proletarian districts of Vienna there was an average of 4.0 to 5.2 persons per room.

  34. Mein Kampf, p. 34.

  35. Thomas Mann, “Sufferings and Greatness of Richard Wagner,” in; Essays of Three Decades.

  36. Rauschning, Gespräche, pp. 215 f. Also Albert Speer in a note to the author dated September 15, 1969.

  37. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke 12, pp. 775 f.

  38. Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, p. 24.

  39. Mein Kampf, p. 41; also Kubizek, p. 220.

  40. Mein Kampf, pp. 42 ff.

  41. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts, I, p. 352.

  42. Bullock, p. 36; for this whole context cf. also Hans-Günter Zmarzlik, “Social Darwinism as a Historical Problem,” in: Hajo Holborn, ed., Republic to Reich.

  43. Tischgespräche, pp. 179, 226, 245, 361, 447; many other similar phrases may be found in the table talk and in the wartime speeches.

  44. Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner, p. 309.

  45. Mein Kampf, p. 128.

  46. Thomas Mann; Gesammelte Werke 9, p. 176.

  47. Mein Kampf, pp. 123 f.

  48. For the complex of motives governin
g his departure from Vienna cf. Mein Kampf, p. 123.

  49. The description of this affair of the call-up follows the conclusions of Jetzinger, pp. 253 if. He also deserves the credit for having uncovered the circumstances.

  50. Mein Kampf, p. 158.

  51. Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, p. 461.

  52. Around the turn of the century Georges Sorel popularized this remark of Proudhon’s. The quotation reads in full: “War is the orgasm of universal life which fructifies and moves chaos, the prelude for all creations, and which like Christ the Saviour triumphs beyond death through death itself.” Quoted in Freund, Abendglanz Europas, p. 9. “Sacred Hymns” was the title Gabriele d’Annunzio gave to the collection of his poems pleading for Italy’s entry into the war (Gli inni sacri della guerra giusta).

  53. Mein Kampf, p. 163.

  54. Mein Kampf, p. 164.

  55. Hitler’s letter to lustizassessor Hepp in February, 1915; photocopy in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. The previous remark is quoted from Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann der Feldherr werden wollte, p. 29. The cited letter indicates that it deserves credence even in this somewhat deprecatory phrasing; it is the more credible because it trenchantly characterizes Hitler’s general manner of expressing his ideas, right down to the table talk of later years. Cf. also Wiedemann, p. 24, and Mein Kampf, pp. 166 f.

  56. Mein Kampf, p. 190.

  57. Ibid., p. 169.

  58. All these quotations ibid., pp. 182 ff.

  59. Ibid., p. 172.

  60. Regrettably, Hitler’s medical file disappeared even before 1933, and has not been recovered. Hitler’s military papers merely note tersely that he was “gassed.” The chemical in question was mustard gas, the effects of which generally did not blind, but greatly reduced sight and sometimes occasioned temporary blindness.