The Secret Journals of Adolf Hitler: Volume 1 - The Anointed

by A G Mogan

  The next day, I also receive my uniform. As I dress up, tears run down my face again. In fact, by the time I start training, I weep every day. They are tears of happiness, tears of immense joy. Looking into the mirror, I know at last who I am. The guiding voice, once thought lost, whispers again, as if knowing my thoughts: That’s right, your destiny begins. I know no other time or other place in which I would rather be. My destiny begins.

  After several weeks of intensive training, the day I must leave Munich for the front finally arrives. My eyes glaze with a frantic enthusiasm and my chest can barely contain my heart. As we march west to meet the enemy, I see the Rhine for the first time in my life. This German river, this silent witness of history, holding the sweat and blood of my ancestors, boosts my euphoria and I find myself smiling ear to ear.

  A damp foggy night in Flanders follows. We march silently through the muddy forest on the outskirts of Ypres until the light of dawn breaks through the heavy drops of the intensified drizzle. A shrapnel, our first iron greeting, bursts above our heads and splatters all over the cold damp earth. But before the smoke of the explosion disappears, a wild “Hurrah!” is shouted from two hundred throats, in response to this first greeting of Death.

  The whistling of bullets and the booming of cannons begins, and I hear the shouting and singing of the combatants. With eyes straining feverishly, we press forward, quicker and quicker, until we finally come to close-quarter fighting. The strains of a song reach us from afar. Nearer and nearer, from company to company, it comes. And while Death begins to make havoc in our ranks we pass the song on to those beside us: Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles, Über Alles In Der Welt.

  This is the beginning. And so, we carry on, from year to year, with the sense of horror gradually replacing the romantic fighting spirit. Enthusiasm cools down and the exuberant spirits are now quelled by the fear of ever-present Death. The time comes, that inevitable time, when the conflict between the urge for self-preservation and the call of duty arises within each of us. It is fear; fear that had taken on a cloak, so as to impose itself upon us. But the more the voice advising prudence increases its efforts, and the more clear and persuasive its appeal becomes, the stronger resistance becomes.

  I repeat that tenth commandment in my head, over and over again: Thou shall be loyal to your people and your country to the death, until finally the internal strife is over and the call of duty triumphant.

  The young volunteer has become a hardened veteran.

  The Road To Light Is Made Out Of Tears

  I could write for days on my experiences of war, but must refrain from doing so here. Writing about war and politics, the arts, or the Babylon of races sucking the blood of the Motherland comes easily, but when I attempt to write about myself, the private man, a thick fog suddenly covers the eyes of my consciousness, drying out my thoughts. Alas, what doesn’t a man in grief do to relieve his heart and psyche of that burden!

  And yet, I must not move forward without recording the most memorable events I had taken part in during the four years of war.

  Comfortable as I was in the certainty that nothing could touch me, I became one of the bravest soldiers in my regiment. I am entrusted with the most dangerous task on a battlefield, that of dispatch runner, delivering messages between the different subunits, sometimes many kilometers apart. I am not afraid and am the only soldier volunteering for this most hazardous task. My fanaticism, bravery, and very zealous attitude toward the war attracts the antipathy and criticism of the other regiment comrades. But, I do not mind. In fact, just as happened in school, where I’d always been envied and hated by my classmates, the whole thing gives me a sense of importance and self-confidence. Plus, I cannot stand their stupid chatter about women, copious foods, and leisure time, and deeply despise their eagerness to return home to their useless lives. I also despise how, at Christmas, they lay down their weapons and join the enemy, exchanging knick-knacks, and smoking English cigarettes together.

  For their part, they insult me and ridicule the impassioned way in which I treat the war. I don’t mind that either, as I always preferred the company of my own thoughts over anything or anybody else.

  At night, in my loneliness, when the idle soldiers have quit the trenches for peaceful Dreamland, I pull my little notebook from my uniform’s chest pocket and write. At times, I jot down random thoughts, or strategies I believe would help win the war. Yet at other times, when my imagination soars to magic places, I throw off a poem.

  I often go on bitter nights

  To Wotan’s oak in the quiet glade

  With dark powers to weave a union

  The moonlight showing me the runic spell

  And all who are full of impudence during the day

  Are made small by the magic formula!

  They draw shining steel - but instead of going into combat,

  They solidify into stalagmites

  Thus the wrong ones separate from the genuine ones

  I reach into a nest of words

  Then give to the good and fair

  With my formula blessings and prosperity

  Even though I prefer the company of my own thoughts, the Goddess of Kindness sees fit to contradict me, and through a miraculous twist of events, sends me a most loyal comrade.

  As I lay stretched on the wet soil, facing skywards, daydreaming during one of the calm periods in the trenches, I hear a strange sniffle coming from the nearby meadow. Startled, I am on my feet in a second, scanning the landscape. I soon see a small brown-and-white fox terrier staring at me from its hiding place. I try to cajole it into coming closer, then shout orders, but I soon realize it doesn’t understand a word. An enemy dog! I think to myself with a smile. Some English soldier must have lost it. I immediately take him under my wing, and over the following days, teach him some commands in German. I name him Fuchsl, the Fox. He becomes all the camaraderie I need.

  The following year, from May through October, we fight fiercely in the battles of Arras and La Bassee. They are endless, dreary months. I have nightmares nearly every other night, where I often dream we lose the war. But the nightmares aren’t the only troubles advancing my depression. The constant hunger, the old abdominal pain, and a dry cough, torture me with equal intensity. Every evening before sleep, I catch myself praying ardently, to who I don’t know, for the favorable outcome of the war. I rarely pray for my own life, and though not in the greatest shape—I feel protected. Soon enough, a most terrible event convinces me this is so.

  Toward the end of September, on an apparently uneventful day, as the setting sun reaches us in the trenches with its warm, reddish light, I eat my dinner quietly propped on one elbow. Some comrades sit next to me, eating and chatting on the same old trivialities. As I guzzle my canned soup and take a greedy bite of a loaf of bread, a sharp, clear voice suddenly sounds in my ears. I look at my comrades, who continue eating and chatting. Get up! Move over there! the voice commands again. I instinctively look at a spot about twenty meters down the trench to the left side. Without much thought, I get up and move.

  I barely sit down when a blinding light comes from the spot I just deserted. The ear-piercing noise that follows forces me to cover my ears and I throw myself on my face, covering my head with my arms and hands. An all too dreadful silence settles around me and I sit up, realizing what just happened. A stray shell had just exploded above my comrades’ heads, sending them all on their last journey.

  The image unfolding before my eyes makes me puke. Not one of them had been left in one piece. Their bellies have burst open, revealing their last supper. I realize that even if death had been all around me for the past year, I will never be able to come to terms with it, to come to terms with the losses of my army.

  But then, I realize another thing. I am alive and unscathed. And one thing is certain: this war will never be permitted to claim my life.

  In 1916, my regiment relocates south, to fight in the battle on the Somme. It is an absurd bloody battle that lasts for o
ver three months. I am assigned the same task, dispatch runner. By the end of the year, my luck fades and I am injured at the hip. Immediately transported to Germany by ambulance train, I have to lie in a hospital bed for almost a month.

  Once I can walk again, I ask for permission to visit Berlin. As I enter the city, a feeling of repulsion overwhelms me. Bitter want is in evidence everywhere. The metropolis, with its’ teeming millions, is suffering from hunger. I almost faint when I find the disgraces previously found in Vienna to be here as well: the traffic in Kurfuerstendamm, the Jews luxury, the perversity, the inequity. I think of Christ, whip in hand, scourging from the Temple of God the loan sharks and the black marketers.

  After the war, I shall give up my ivory-handled cane and replace it with a whip.

  In January, I return to the front; in midsummer, after the long bloody battle of Ypres, the regiment moves for repose in Elsas. Waiting to board the train, I play with Fuchsl and have him perform all the tricks he’s learned. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a railroad worker watching us. I feel proud. But, misfortune hits me again and in the hustle of boarding, Fuchsl disappears. I go crazy searching for him and almost miss the boarding. I am sure the bloody railroad worker with envious eyes, stole him from me. The damned pig has no idea what harm he’s done to me.

  And because this one loss could not have been all my bad luck, another pig steals my paintings and watercolors out of my rucksack. I hate these thieves. I hate these soldiers. I hate humanity! I am so deeply hurt, so utterly distressed, I decide to give up painting forever. I will now dedicate my entire life to the removal of these damaged growths of humanity.

  The courage and dedication I put forth in the war doesn’t go unnoticed and I receive numerous decorations. My uniform looks quite fancy now with the Iron Cross, both classes, and the Bavarian Cross of Military Merit, Third Class with Swords, hanging from its’ pockets. Still and all, I do not get promoted, even if courage was something I never lacked throughout the entire war. I feel hurt, offended even, yet a promotion would mean leaving behind my job as dispatch runner, and this I couldn’t possibly accept. I crave action, shedding my blood on the battlefield, rather than sitting in a tent dispensing orders to my subordinates.

  Later on, I discover that one of the medals I had been given was proposed by a Jew. A high-ranked Jew, of course. How else? I rip it off my chest and throw it to the floor. Soon though, I realize that the merit is all mine and I deserve it more than any other soldier around me.

  At the end of September 1918 my division occupies, for the third time, those positions which we had once taken by storm as young volunteers. What a memory! Here we had received our baptism of fire, in October and November 1914. With a burning love of the homeland in their hearts and a song on their lips, our young regiment went into action as if going to a dance. The dearest blood was given freely here in the belief that it was shed to protect the freedom and independence of the Motherland.

  And here would also be my last battle of the Great War.

  During the night of October 13th-14th, the British open a gas attack on the front, south of Ypres. They use the yellow gas, whose effect is unknown to us, at least from personal experience, but destiny wants me to experience this very night.

  On a hill south of Werwick, on the evening of October 13th, we are subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment of gas bombs that continues throughout the night with varying intensity. About midnight, some of us are put out of action, some forever.

  Toward morning, I begin to feel pain in my eyes. It increases with every quarter of an hour. About seven o’clock, my eyes are scorching, as I stagger to deliver the last dispatch I am destined to carry in this war. A few hours later, my eyes are like glowing coals and all is darkness around me.

  I am sent to the hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania. Now I am more than five hundred miles from the front. I occupy a bed among other hundreds of casualties of war.

  If I could ignore the overwhelming pain in my eyes, I might have enjoyed the fresh linens and soft mattress. With a single exception, it is four years since I last slept in a real bed.

  The nights are terrible. Wails and whimpers reach me from each corner of the ward, and the smell of death lingers. I am blind, but somehow, among the mortally wounded in the room, my blindness becomes bearable.

  I am entrusted to the care of Dr. Forster. I can tell he is quite kind, or his soft voice makes me believe so. Yet this is not what I hear whispering among the patients. If I am to believe their talk, the man is a brute, a sadist with no heart, who uses the most draconian methods on his patients. Painful electric shocks, attempted suffocation, and total isolation are said to be the favorite methods he employs. When the time comes for him to disinfect my wounds, I almost bite his head off.

  Pain, pain, pain … pain must be the stuff from which life is made, as it is all I’ve experienced in this bloody cursed life.

  However, after less than two weeks under Dr. Forster’s care, my pain subsides and I begin to distinguish nearby shapes. I am so happy that I cannot stand still. I thought I would be blind forever. With my newly recovered vision, I offer my help to the nurses in the salon and, as much as my convalescence allows me, I look after the other patients in the ward.

  Soon though, terrible news of a possibly disastrous outcome of war reaches my ears more and more often. I cannot read the newspapers; hence, I pace the room all day long like a caged, maddened lion.

  In mid-November, a pastor comes to the hospital to talk to us. The patients that can stand and walk are asked to take a seat in the great hospital’s waiting room, where chairs have been set in rows to accommodate us while we listen to the pastor’s speech.

  “My dear fellows, the day when a country loses its freedom is a sad day,” the pastor begins. “And today is that day for our nation. The House of Hohenzollern no longer wears the Imperial Crown; our Fatherland has become a Republic. You, my soldiers, gave your best on the battlefield. What remains now is that we should pray to the Almighty not to withhold His blessing from the new order of things and not to abandon our people in the days to come.”

  I spring from my chair and begin shouting at the top of my voice. “No! No! Impossible! No! No!”

  The room turns dead silent and all eyes are turned to me.

  “My son,” I hear the pastor, “the war is over. It’s time you quit fighting as well. For the sake of your soul.”

  “No! No! No!” I continue howling, with my hands stretched forward to avoid bumping into things. I shuffle to the window. The war out there might be over, I think to myself staring at the faded light coming from outside, but the one within me just got more brutal.

  “My son?”

  “Silence!” I yell, staring half-mad at a barely discernible sky. I curse it and I curse Providence. Why? Why did it do this to me? I was the chosen one! I should have won the war! Why did it turn its back on me? Had I been left on the front a little longer the outcome would have been so different! I know it! I know it!

  Thousands of questions hit my conscience with the force of a tornado. The pastor is still addressing the crowd, but all I hear are faint words, disastrous words … insurmountable debts for Germany … ten million dead ... demilitarization…

  “The Jews!” I shout out, and the room turns silent again. “The Jewish bacillus sold my country!”

  I look at the sun again. It seems to be pushing further and further away from me, until it completely disappears. There is nothing but darkness around me, darkness returned with renewed strength. I am blind again. My legs no longer follow my orders and I grab the curtain framing the window in a last effort to regain my equilibrium.

  Dizziness possesses me and I collapse on the floor, shrouded in the perfect darkness.

  The smell coming from a candle awakes me and I find myself lying face up in my hospital bed. The same smell reminds me of the day I awakened from a coma after falling into River Inn. This time, however, the smell comes from someone else’s candle, a sol
dier who passed last night from his war injuries. I know it from the nurse, for I still grabble in darkness.

  The nightmare I had last night returns to haunt me. I am tied in a chair in the middle of a brightly lit room. I believe I was placed in this position to watch a show. Wagner crosses my mind, then the pastor who spoke to us the other day. Then, I see a monk far off, who seems to be heading in my direction. He wears a white robe with hems that sweep the ground. A bright light, brighter than the one filling the room, surrounds him, emanates from him. He looks so mystical, so surreal. Could it be God? That’s how I imagined him from all those tales Mother used to read to me, the Jewish tales.

  As he approaches, I narrow my eyes in an effort to distinguish his features and realize there is no pastor, no true God, but … my degenerate Father. He has no longer taken the face of Death, but that of Jesus Christ. The image strikes me as grotesque and profanatory, and I struggle to wriggle myself free of the chair.

  “Still afraid, boy?” he thunders. I try to ignore his question and continue to jerk in the chair. “You see … I am always right! Isn’t that so, boy? Say it!”

  “Like Hell!”

  “I told you, you would lose your eyesight. I am always right, you damn spawn!” he barks, his voice making the room quake. “Say it!”

  “You’re wrong! I can see you!”

  The room shakes again from his terrifying laughter.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha! How stupid you are, you worthless failure! You don’t get it, do you?”

  “You are dead! Stay dead! Stay dead!” I shout out, squeezing my eyes shut, but he smacks me across my head so forcefully that he throws me out of my dream.

  The wisp of smoke coming from the dead man’s candle chokes me and I beg the nurse to remove it.