by Thomas Weber
33. LOC/RBSCD: D640.A2I4; 78-362555; BHStA/V, NL Lehmann/4.12, Hitler to Lehmann, July 31, 1931 (quote).
34. BHStA/V, NL Lehmann, 412, Hitler to Lehmann, April 13, 1931.
35. Ibid., Lehmann to Hitler, March 12, 1935.
36. Reuth, Judenhass, 198–199; Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 37.
37. LOC/RBSCD: GN549.T4G82 1923, Günther, Hans F. K., Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (Munich, third ed., 1923). Timothy Ryback’s claim that the 1923 edition was a “well-thumbed copy” (see Ryback, Library, 69) is incorrect.
38. The listing is reproduced in Ryback, Library, 57. Ryback misdates the listing as originating in 1921. In fact, many of the books and pamphlets listed were only published in 1922.
39. Gassert/Mattern, Library, 291; Hamann, Vienna, 211; Amtliches Fernsprechbuch Oberpostdirektion München, 1932, s.v. “Steininger, Babette,” accessed via Ancestry.co.uk on May 15, 2015); Fleischmann, Hitler, 372.
40. LOC/RBSCD: JC311.T2624 1918, Tagore, Rabindranath, Nationalismus (Leipzig, [1918]).
41. Gassert/Mattern, Library, passim. The book on the Kabbalah was Anton Joseph Kirchweger’s Annulus Platonis; see Gassert/Mattern, Library, 170.
42. Mees, “Hitler.” No doubt, Kurlander is correct in stating that Hitler believed in the supernatural; see Kurlander, “Monsters.” However, there is no evidence that Hitler’s belief in the supernatural went hand in hand with one in Nordic occultism and rites.
43. Toland Papers, “Giesler, Hermann,” transcript, interview, John Toland with Giesler, October 5, 1971.
44. Hitler, MK, 498.
45. See Mees, “Hitler,” 265.
46. See IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964 (quote); Pyta, “(Self-)Fashioning,” 171.The books Hitler received from people close to him confirm his preference for books about history, art, architecture, military affairs, and technology. For instance, Helene Bechstein and Heinrich Hoffmann made sure through their gifts to him that he would own all three volumes of a popular introduction to technology, Max Geitel’s Der Siegeslauf der Technik (The Triumph of Technology), see Gassert/Mattern, Library, 94, 111; Ryback, Library, 50–51; Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 43.
47. Gassert/Mattern, Library, 39, 46, 58, 155, 279, 325, 335.
48. LOC/RBSCD, Hitler collection. I inspected all books owned by Hitler that had been published in 1925 or earlier.
49. Gassert/Mattern, Library, 94, 111; Ryback, Library, 50–51; Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 43.
50. Ryback, Library; Sherratt, Philosophers, chap. 1.
51. See, for example, ibid., chap. 1.
52. LOC/RBSCD: PN5276.S55 A4715, Snessareff, Nikolai, Die Zwangsjacke: Autorisierte Übersetzung nach dem Manuskript aus dem Russischen von Hellmut von Busch, Berlin, 1923 (quotes); Williams, Exile, 213–222.
53. Kellogg, Roots, 126, 137, 158, 225 (quote), 230; Williams, Exile, 213–215, 348; Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 191.
54. RPR-TP, “Buch, Walter,” undated interview with Walter Buch.
55. Ibid., 141 (first quote), 142 (second quote).
56. Quoted in ibid., 217.
57. Ryback, Library, 69 (quote); Reuth, Judenhass, 230–231; Hitler, Monologe, 255, monologue of February 2, 1942.
58. Heiden, Fuehrer, 116.
59. IFZ, ZS-0539, Eberstein’s testimony, 1975; Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 157; Deuerlein, Hitler, 59.
60. Schwarzenbach, Geborene, 168.
61. Hitler, Monologe, 209, Hitler’s monologue of January 16/17, 1942.
62. Schwarzenbach, Geborene, 170–171.
63. Quoted in ibid., 170.
Chapter 11: The German Girl from New York
1. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-2, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, October 14, 1970; 45-Hanfstaengl-1, “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940” (quote); Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 36–37; Smith, Hitler, 7–8.
2. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, Toland–Helen Niemeyer interview, October 19, 1971, and “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940.” See. also RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-3, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, September 11, 1971.
3. Hoffmann would also be one of Hitler’s most frequent visitors while Hitler was incarcerated in Landsberg in 1924; see Fleischmann, Hitler, 44, 240.
4. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, Toland-Helen Niemeyer interview, October 19, 1971 (second quote) and “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940.” See also RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-3, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, September 11, 1971; Hitler, Monologe, 231, Hitler’s monologue January 25/26, 1942 (first quote).
5. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, Toland-Helen Niemeyer interview, October 19, 1971, and “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940.” See also RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-3, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, September 11, 1971.
6. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, Toland-Helen Niemeyer interview, October 19, 1971 (first quote); 46-Ilse Heß, Heß-Toland interview, April 21, 1971.
7. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940” (quote); RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-3, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, November 4, 1970.
8. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, Toland–Helen Niemeyer interview, October 19, 1971.
9. Plöckinger, “Texte,” 96, 104. Nazi propaganda also used the same date. According to Bouhler, Werden, 9, Hitler moved to Munich on April 24, 1912.
10. Hitler to Gansser, November 29, 1921, reproduced in Maser, Briefe, 117 (first quote); Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 252 (second quote).
11. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940”; NARA, RG263/3, OSS Report, December 1942, 22–23.
12. Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 27.
13. For a claim to the contrary, see Evans, “Introduction,” 16.
14. For a claim to the contrary, see ibid., 17, 28–34.
15. Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 50; For claims that Hanfstaengl had introduced Hitler to Munich upper-class society, see, for example, Heusler, Haus, 80ff.; Longerich, Hitler, 116; Nerdinger, München, 58.
16. Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 45–46.
17. Ibid., 46; Lehmann/Riemer, Kaulbachs, 12, 216–217, 243; Salmen, Ich kann, 26. Hanfstaengl’s claim that Hitler already had met the Bruckmanns prior to the putsch (see his Unknown Hitler, 46) is incorrect. Similar claims have often been made; see, for example, Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 187; Ludecke, Hitler, 95–96; Toland, Adolf Hitler, 134; Conradi, Piano Player, 49.
18. For a claim to the contrary, see Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 160.
19. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940.”
20. Zdral, Hitlers, 207; Joachimsthaler, Liste, 213–214.
21. Zdral, Hitlers, 209; Chaussy/Püschner, Nachbar, 26–27; Hitler, Monologe, 203, monologue of January 16/17, 1942 (quotes).
22. Ibid., Monologe, 167, 205–206, Hitler’s monologues of January 2/3 and 16/17, 1942.
23. The idea that Hitler and Eckart were no longer close by 1923 (see, for example, Heusler, Haus, 82) is thus wrong. It is based on a police interrogation with Eckart conducted in the aftermath of Hitler’s failed putsch, in which Eckart for self-serving reasons falsely claimed not to have met Hitler in the summer and autumn of 1923; see RPR-TP, “Eckart, Dietrich,” “Erklärung” by Dietrich Eckart, undated.
24. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-1, “Helen Niemeyer’s ‘Notes,’ 1939/1940.” The change at the helm of the party’s newspaper does not imply that Hitler cut himself loose from Eckart and that the two men became estranged, nor does it imply that Hitler would have pushed Eckart as far away as he had done with Drexler and Feder, had Eckart still been alive in the late 1920s and after; for claims to the contrary, see Joachimsthaler, Weg, 279; Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 155.
25. Hitler, Monologe, 160–161, monologue of December 28/29, 1941.
26. NARA, RG263/3, OSS Report, December 1942, 34–40. The intelligence report is based here on conversations Ernst Hanfstaengl had with both Hitler and Eckart during and after the visit to the mountains.
27. Hitler, Monolog, monologue of February 3, 1942, p. 257.
28. Schwarzenbach, Geborene, 173ff.
29. Quoted in ibid., 176.
30. Hitler, Monologe, 208.
31. LOC/RBSCD: HX276.088, Otto, Berthold, Der Zukunftsstaat als sozialistische Monarchie (Berlin, 1910); IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; SAM, PDM/Nr. 6697, police report of DAP meeting of April 27, 1920 (quote).
32. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964.
33. Thus, for instance, the November 1922 verdict of Major Lykeman, a British officer serving on the Allied Control Commission in Munich; see Truman Smith’s “Notebook,” November 1922, reproduced in Smith, Hitler, 16.
34. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 150.
35. Kraus, Geschichte, 677.
36. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-2, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, October 14, 1970 (first quote); Truman Smith’s “Notebook,” November 1922, reproduced in Smith, Hitler, 21–27 (second quote).
37. Smith, “Notebook,” 21–30.
38. Quoted in Düren, Minister, 34–35. For his Swabian accent, see Heiden, Hitler, 157.
Chapter 12: The Ludendorff Putsch
1. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 298; Düren, Minister, 35.
2. Gebhardt, Mir fehlt eben, 20; Ihrig, Atatürk, chap. 4; Ihrig, Genocide, 323ff.
3. Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 38.
4. Fritz Lauböck to Hans Tröbst, September 7, 1923, reproduced in Tröbst, Soldatenleben, vol. 9, loc. 14 (quote); Gebhardt, Mir fehlt eben, 20.
5. Quoted in Ihrig, Atatürk, 85–86.
6. Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 775.
7. Hitler did not allow for the speech to be recorded and prohibited his audience from taking notes, yet an account of the speech was written up by one of the attendees, almost certainly based on the stenographic notes that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of military intelligence, had taken in defiance of Hitler’s order. The report made its way to Canaris’s confidante General Ludwig Beck, the former chief of the general staff, who had resigned the previous year from his post in protest over Hitler’s drive toward war. Beck passed on the report to Hermann Maaß, a member of the Social Democratic underground and go-between between Hitler’s opponents there and in military intelligence, asking him to hand the report over to Louis P. Lochner, bureau chief of the Associated Press in Berlin, in order to warn the west about Hitler’s plans. From Lochner, the report made it to the Foreign Office in London via Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the chargé d’affaires at the British embassy in Berlin. See Klemperer, German Resistance, 32–33; Baumgart, “Ansprache”; Anderson, “Who Still Talked,” 199.
There has been some disagreement as to the exact wording of Hitler’s speech. In fact, four other extant sets of notes about it, which attendees drew up in the aftermath of Hitler’s delivery of it, do not mention the Armenians (see Baumgart, “Ansprache”); this has led some scholars to question the authenticity of the account that was smuggled to Britain. For instance, pointing to the report’s not having been used as evidence by the Nuremberg War Tribunal (see Hillgruber, “Quellen,” 384–385), they assert that the account smuggled to Britain had to have been a forgery. They also stress that the other four reports use less vulgar and less strongly worded language, and claim that the authors of the report embellished it so as to change Western policy toward Germany.
Yet their arguments do not add up. As the tribunal had access to a number of different accounts of Hitler’s speech, all of which supported the case that he had waged a war of aggression, it made sense to admit only those versions of the report that could be challenged the least by the lawyers on the defense team. As Canaris, Beck, and Maaß had all been executed during the war, it made perfect sense not to make use of the report that had been smuggled to London. Yet this does not make that report unreliable. Furthermore, as the other three reports had been written for the personal use of their authors, to remind them of the main points of Hitler’s speech, and were thus a different genre than the one passed on to London, they were logically shorter and less illustrative. Finally, it is not really clear how the report would have made less of a difference (ignoring that it did not make much of a difference in London anyway) had it not included the reference to the Armenian atrocities. It is simply not clear why the reference to the Armenians was likely to be a game changer if the goal was to change British and American government policy, especially since the other accounts of Hitler’s speech concur anyway that Hitler had stated that people had to be eliminated to clear Poland for German colonization. For instance, one of those other reports explicitly referred to an “elimination of the living” (Beseitigung der lebendigen Kräfte) in Poland (see Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 2, 208–209), which from a 1939 understanding of the Armenian atrocities was what the Ottomans had done in the areas of Armenian settlement during the First World War. Only if the author of the report had an anachronistically late twentieth- or early twenty-first-century understanding of the Armenian atrocities as genocide would it make sense to argue that a doctored reference to the Armenians would have made a difference in ifluencing the British and the Americans. At any rate, if the goal was to change British and American policy, it would have been counterproductive for the report’s author to invent a reference to the Armenians, as the whole point of Hitler’s reference to the Armenians was that despite the outcry about Ottoman conduct among Germany’s adversaries during the First World War, no one talked about the crimes committed against the Armenians.
8. Domarus, Complete Hitler, iii, 2231–2232.
9. Hitler, MK, 984.
10. Quoted in Schwarzenbach, Geborene, 169.
11. RPR-TP, 45-Hanfstaengl-3, Toland-Hanfstaengl interview, November 4, 1970; Hanfstaengl, Unknown Hitler, 48–51; Heiden, Fuehrer, 126.
12. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 180 (first quote); Tröbst, Soldatenleben, vol. 10, loc. 170 (second quote); BHStA/V, NL Lehmann/8.2, Melanie Lehmann’s diary, October 2, 1923 (third quote).
13. Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 525–527, 530, 535, 547, 600–607, 581, 787, 824, 851–853, 1038.
14. Hitler, Monologe, 205, January 16/17, 1942 (quote); Schmölders, Hitlers Gesicht, 46–55; Heiden, Fuehrer, 126. See also Aust, Feind, 96.
15. Pyta, “(Self-)Fashioning”; Pyta, Hitler, 180–181, 185ff.; Hoffmann, Hitler-Bild, 27–36.
16. Heiden, Fuehrer, 148.
17. Wits, A807/Bc, certified copy, dated February 15, 1957, of Else Boepple’s statutory declaration given under oath June 13, 1955; A807/Aa15, Koerber to Lentze, April 28, 1946; A807/Dg, “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated. Else Boepple was the widow of the publisher who had issued the book. She confirmed that Hitler himself had written his own biography. Lentze was a fellow inmate of Koerber’s from his time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In his letter to Lentze, Koerber gave further details about Hitler’s authorship of the book, as he did in biographical sketches from his private papers at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Even in his letter to the president’s office of the Reichsschriftumskammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) of February 21, 1938, in which he tried to prevent his being kicked out of the Reichsschrifttumskammer and being banned from publishing his work, Koerber alluded to Hitler’s authorship of the book. Of course, it would have been counterproductive for him in this context fully to reveal Hitler’s authorship of it. However, even so, he mentioned the book, stating that it had been written “with the active participation and under the control” of Hitler; see Bundesarchiv Berlin, R9361, V/7158/7159, Reichsschrifttumskammer, personal file on Victor von Koerber, Koerber to the Präsidium of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, February 21, 1938.
Hitherto Hitler scholarship had been unaware of Hitler’s authorship of the book and of the existence of Koerber’s private papers; see Plöckinger, “Texte,” 101ff. The extent of Josef Stolzing-Czerny’s involvement in editing Hitler’s 1923 autobiography can no longer be established.
18. Koerber, Hitler, 4–13 (quotes, 10–11).
19. A807/Dg, “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated; Aa 1952–1953, certified copy, dated February 15, 1957, of Else Boepple’s statutory declaration of June 13, 1935; Aa
15, Koerber to Lentze, April 28, 1946.
20. There might have been another reason for Hitler’s reluctance to publish the book under his own name. Even later in his life, he displayed signs of an insecure writer who lacks confidence, which would stand in contrast to his grandiose public behavior, his belief in being a genius, and his megalomania. For instance, he would prohibit Mein Kampf from being commented upon once he was in power; see Pyta/Lange, “Darstellungstechnische Seite.” He would not even publish a book on his foreign policy vision that he wrote in 1928.
21. For the contact between Ludendorff and Hitler, see Kellogg, Roots, 194.
22. Wits, A807/Ba, Konformations-Schein, Potsdam, April 1, 1906; Ba, photocopy of his 1924 passport ; A807/Dg, TSS, “Biographische Daten Victor v. Koerber,” undated; “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated; “Mein Lebenslauf,” undated; “Mein Lebenslauf,” August 7, 1946; TSS, “Mein Lebenslauf,” May 15, 1947; “Kurzer Lebensabriss,” November 11, 1954.
23. Wits, A807/Aa/1919–1922, Koerber to “9 grosse Bahnhofsbuchhandlungen,” Ma 17, 1919; A807/Aa/1968–1969, letter Koerber to Dr. Döderlein, February 7, 1969; Wits, A807/Bb, “Ausweis,” dated January 18, 1919; “Bescheinigung,” May 26, 1920; Wits, A807/Dg, TSS, “Biographische Daten Victor v. Koerber,” undated; “Kurzer Lebensabriss,” November 11, 1954; “Historical Reminiscence” article from the “Bulletin on German Questions,” January 13, 1963; “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated.
24. Wits, A807/Ab, Pabst, Koerber to Major W. Pabst, August 7, 1961; A807/Ab, Nordewin von Koerber, Koerber to Nordewin, April 1922 (quote); A807/Dg, TSS, “Hauptlebensdaten nach Aktenlage,” undated.
25. Wits, A807/Dg, TSS, “Mein Lebenslauf,” May 15, 1947; Aa/1952–1953, Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Stadt Aachen, to Koerber, May 21, 1952; “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated; “Biographische Daten Victor v. Koerber,” undated; A807/Ab, Nordewin von Koerber, Koerber to Nordewin, 1922/1923 (quote).
26. Wits, A807/Aa15, Koerber to Lentze, April 28, 1946; A807/Aa/1960, Koerber to Ernst Deuerlein, January 31, 1960; A807/A807/Dg, TSS, “Mein Lebenslauf,” May 15, 1947; “Personalnotiz Victor v. Koerber,” undated.