Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  Having done so, they attributed the sudden collapse of the structure solely to the war, which had brought so much misery to them. But this is absurd. In fact, all the collapse did was to expose weaknesses that had long existed. Chief among them were general suffrage which Germany got before England, misleadingly known as the “mother of democracies,” did. On its heels came elections and democracy. All three were non-German elements of government. Initially, they were foisted on us by the professors of 1848, who wanted nothing better than to ape the “ideals” of the French Revolution. Once established, they quickly turned into a morass of useless chatter and corruption.

  Next came the failure to properly deal with the liberated provinces, Alsace and Lorraine. As a result, they never truly became an integral part of the Reich. To repeat, Wilhelm II’s foreign policy was essentially misdirected. To add insult to injury it was often weak and vacillating as well.

  Finally, there was the tolerance long shown for those vile Marxist traitors, the Social Democrats. Starting long before the war and redoubling their efforts while it lasted, they did whatever they could to foment discontent and to incite the people against the army and the government. Their ability to do so was due to the government’s inability or unwillingness to rein in the press. Not that the non-socialist press was necessarily better. Only parts of it supported the government in its conduct of the war, and much of it did what it could to undermine them.

  Though the war was over, the British blockade still continued. Only in the middle of 1919 was it finally lifted, enabling us to resume our imports and exports. But this happened only to a very limited extent. Partly because of carelessness in August 1914, partly because of enemy action, and partly because no new merchantmen were built during the war, we had lost almost our entire merchant navy. Much of what we still possessed had to be given away gratis as reparations. In any case the enemy had used the war to steal our overseas markets from us. This caused production to come to a halt and unemployment to soar. The demobilization of the armies, which at the end of the war still numbered several million men, added to the problem. That’s to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands maimed and crippled men who had to be taken care of in one way or another.

  Determined to avenge themselves on us, our enemies took large parts of Prussia and Silesia, which had been German for centuries, if not longer, away from the Reich. This caused hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, who understandably were unwilling to live under Polish (mis)rule, to leave their homes to migrate to the west, where nothing had been done to receive them. Nor did the process of drawing the borders unfold peacefully. Throughout 1919, in many places, volunteer units known variously as Freikorps, or the Black Reichswehr, fought heroically, if ultimately unsuccessfully, to retain the lands in question.

  All over Germany, wherever one looked, people shivered and hungered. It goes without saying that I detest that self-appointed artist and filthy pornographer, Georg Grosz. Luckily for him, he left the country in a hurry in 1933, or else I would have had him thrown into a concentration camp! Still I must concede that many of his sketches, which show starving workers, fat, evil-looking capitalists with heaps of money, and made-up prostitutes presented a true, if one-sided and perverted, picture of reality at the time. Much later, I learned that the origins of this misery had been explored in depth by the English economist John Maynard Keynes in his booklet The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). He could hardly have done a better job.

  Political conditions naturally reflected the economic situation. The new Social-Democratic government was unable to resist the Allied demands. So weak were the “statesmen” whom the so-called “Revolution” had brought to power that they signed the famous Kriegsschuld, war-guilt, article under which Germany assumed responsibility for the war. To be sure, history bristles with occasions when the defeated were not only despoiled but humiliated. However, the Kriegsschuld business was something new and unprecedented. Besides preparing the “legal” basis for extracting reparations, it hit straight at the nation’s soul, which, of course, was just what it had been meant to do.

  Internally, the political situation was even worse. The Social Democrats, having successfully undermined public order, were unable to reimpose it. Everywhere workers, incited by their often Jewish leaders, spat on officers, tore the epaulets from their shoulders, and beat them up. So bad were conditions that many places were reduced to anarchy. That specifically included Bavaria and Munich, where I was stationed at the time and where the Jews set up a “Soviet Republic.” The stupidity of these people was truly amazing. During the few days the “Republic” lasted its foreign affairs commissar, Franz Lipp, whose record included several stays in mental hospitals, actually declared war on Switzerland. That was done, he explained, because the Swiss had refused to lend him sixty locomotives! At one point I myself, rifle in hand, had to chase away three scoundrels who had come to arrest me in my quarters.

  In the end the Reichswehr, assisted by Freikorps units, re-took Munich and exacted a well-deserved vengeance. Eugene Leviné, the Jewish Communist who had led the uprising, was killed. Not so his uncouth right-hand man and fellow Jew, Erich Mühsam. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. But he did not have to stay there for long; in 1924 an amnesty was granted, and he was released. After the Reichstagbrand on 28 February 1933, I had him arrested and sent to a concentration camp where the boys, seeking their revenge, saw to it that he would expire. Good! As these two gentlemen illustrate so nicely, behind each and every one of these problems stood the Jews.

  At the center of the storm stood Erich Ludendorff. Born in 1865, Ludendorff, as his lack of a “von” indicates, was the scion of a bourgeois family. He was educated at a cadet school, one of several similar institutions. So good were they at producing officers that the enemy, in the Treaty of Versailles, paid them a compliment by insisting that they be shut down. Obtaining a commission, he became famous for his skill at mathematics and, even more so, his incredible aptitude for hard work. It was these qualities which in 1911 put him, now a colonel, at the head of the mobilization department. In 1914 he was a major general in command of a brigade.

  It was Ludendorff who forced the surrender of Liege, the great Belgian fortress that stood in the way of our invasion of France. For that he got the Pour le Mérite. Just a few days later, he was transferred to East Prussia to deal with the Russian invasion of that province. His post was that of chief of staff to Paul von Hindenburg, then an elderly general of no great distinction who had just been recalled from retirement. Together they won the famous victories of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, sending the Tsar’s armies reeling back into Poland.

  More victories followed in 1915, enabling us to occupy vast territories in that country as well as Russia’s Baltic provinces. Though Hindenburg got most of the credit, in every case the real brain was Ludendorff’s. Hindenburg’s greatest quality was his iron nerves. A story told after the war illustrates this very well. Ludendorff’s own deputy, Colonel Hoffmann, used to show visitors over the battlefield. Stopping at one cottage, he said, “Here Hindenburg slept before the battle.” Stopping at another he said, “Here Hindenburg slept after the battle.” “And this,” he would end the tour, “is where Hindenburg slept during the battle.”

  In the summer of 1916 Ludendorff, still with Hindenburg in tow, was appointed first quartermaster-general of the army. In this capacity he went on performing almost superhuman feats, including a vast expansion of armament production and the victory over Russia. But even he, for all his titanic efforts, could not save Germany. Abroad, he was facing a crushing numerical and material superiority. At home he was constantly fighting any number of people who preferred their own interests to those of the state. This included not just the parties and large segments of the press but, all too often, the great industrialists and the trade unions as well. More trouble was occasioned by farmers and peasants who did whatever they could to obtain high prices for their products even if doing
so meant starving the cities. The Kaiser, who by failing to exercise his authority had reduced himself to a figurehead, did nothing to help. For over two years Ludendorff, who had lost two sons to the war, stood like a rock. That was just what turned him into a symbol not only of everything the traitors were trying to destroy but also of everything Germany, eternal Germany, had ever stood for.

  Somehow or the other, the worst was averted. To a large extent, we had our enemies to thank for that. One, Russia, was involved in bloody civil war. It delivered the country into the tender hands of the Jews and the Bolsheviks, leaving it in an even worse state than it had been in 1917-18. One, the U.S., turned its back on Europe and quickly withdrew its forces to where they had come—but not far enough, as events in 1941 showed. And one, Italy, had not counted for much in the past and did not count for much now. The two most important ones, England and France, were almost as tired of war as we were. As was not yet clear at the time, but became so later on, both had entered the twilight of their power. They also started quarreling among themselves. At times the English on their island, seeking to maintain “the balance of power” as they had done for centuries past, almost reached the point where they saw France as posing a greater danger to them than we did. This only left the Polish attempts to steal even more of our land. In the end, they were somehow thrown back, and the fighting in the east ceased.

  The result was that Germany, though truncated, desolated, impoverished and humiliated, survived. The country was not overrun by foreign armies, as was to happen in 1945. Separatism, though not without support in Bavaria in particular, was overcome and the state prevented from disintegrating. Order was restored, albeit with great difficulty and never completely. Even during the so-called “good years” of the Weimar Republic about forty people each year were killed in political demonstrations and other violent disputations. Conditions remained extremely difficult. Unemployment, poverty, disease, and death stalked the population in a way they had not done since at least the Napoleonic Wars and possibly since the Thirty Years War. As the phrase went, Germany was wehrloss, ehrloss, heerloss (disarmed, dishonored, and defenseless).

  These were the circumstances against which I rallied and which formed the background of my first attempts to enter politics. At the time, I had no idea where they would ultimately lead my country and me.

  6. Entering Politics

  To repeat: what caused me to enter politics was the defeat of my country. Contrary to what some of my less intelligent biographers have written, the single sentence in which I summed up my decision does not mean that it was made on the spot or all at once. Much less that, when I wrote it, I was lying. In reality, such decisions are always made step by step, bit by bit. One thing leads to another. And how, I ask you, could it be otherwise? So many factors, quite a few of them unexpected and contradictory, are involved. One has some kind of vague idea. One tries the water. One hesitates, one gets wet, one retreats, one advances. And suddenly one discovers that one has become an artist, or a politician, or whatever.

  This is a point I want to stress. Starting in 1945, hardly any of the thousands of historians, both German and foreign, who have written or lectured or made documentaries about my life and times have been sympathetic to me. That is as it should be. The reason why this is as it should be is because only nobodies do not have enemies. Another reason is that they, the historians, did not have a choice. Whoever had the courage to write anything else would surely have been crucified. As the handful who did try to take a more balanced approach, such as David Hoggan in Der Erzwungene Krieg were. Let me add that as much as I admire Hoggan’s courage, his thesis is wrong. World War II was forced on me, if at all, only in the sense that, in the long run, I saw no alternative. Either the German people had to win fresh Lebensraum, or they were doomed. But in the short run it was always I who took the initiative. And non, je ne regret rien.

  Briefly, the first attribute of any good biographer is his ability to get under his subject’s skin. This was something mine, for obvious reasons, either wouldn’t or couldn’t do. The outcome, a lot of bad history, speaks for itself. Some authors have saddled me with such a long list of mental diseases as to make one wonder how such a person could have existed, let alone succeeded as I did. They cite hysteria, schizophrenia, paranoia, and “dangerous leader disorder,” to name but a few. Every time psychiatrists “discover” some new mental disease, it is immediately attributed to me! Others took it for granted that I was wicked, wicked, wicked. Between them they treated almost everything I ever said or wrote as if it were either a product of my alleged perversions or simply a pack of lies. It would be good both for them and for the world if they changed their approach and admitted the truth: namely, that Mein Kampf and my other works did no more than reflect the truth as I saw it then and as, to a very large extent, I see it now.

  I do not mean that the book does not contain some minor inaccuracies. After all, I did not have access to Wikipedia. Having my attention directed to them, I sought to correct them in subsequent editions or had others do so for me. Furthermore, Mein Kampf is a fairly long book. Any book of that length is bound to contain some errors. See, for example, the Iliad, much shorter though it is. And the Bible has enough errors, misunderstandings, and discrepancies to have occupied thousands of priests over thousands of years. How anyone who does not understand all this can have the gall to call himself a scholar is beyond me.

  Once I was discharged from the hospital, I was sent back to Munich by way of Berlin. Returning to my barracks on 21 November, I was reunited with some of my comrades and commanders. I very much hoped to stay in the army. After all, where else could I, now 29 years old, an anonymous figure in the crowd with no family, no home, no recognized profession, no income, and no prospects, go? All around unemployment and misery were widespread. The army offered a steady job, an income of sorts, housing, clothes, and medical care. In some ways, as was indeed recognized at the time, it was the ultimate socialist dream! In the hope of obtaining all this I was no different from millions of others both at the time and throughout history.

  In any event it worked out. For a short time I was detailed to help guard a Russian prisoner of war camp at Trauenstein in southeastern Bavaria, very close to Braunau on the other side of the border. By the middle of February—not, as I mistakenly wrote in Mein Kampf, in March—my unit was back in Munich, where it was supposed to be demobilized. For days on end we were made to examine old gas masks, the kind of make-work job only the military, in its wisdom, can devise. With plenty of time on my hands, I found the city, and indeed the whole of Bavaria, a seething mess rife with every kind of conspiracy, real and imaginary. Not just in the civilian world but in the military as well, “revolutionary” meetings were held, red flags waved, and “Soviets”—that hateful Russian word—established.

  My superiors needed to know what was going on so as to anticipate the next moves and to prepare their own. Why they chose me for the job I do not know. This is not the kind of thing the army tells you, is it? Presumably, they were aware of my interest in, and opinions on, politics. In any case they made me a Vertrauensmann, partly an informant, partly a propagandist. My job was to attend all sorts of meetings and to report on them. But also, when the occasion presented itself, to try and influence the participants in the direction the authorities considered desirable.

  To prepare me and my fellow propagandists they made us attend some lectures on the three great political movements of the time, i.e. authoritarianism, democracy, and Bolshevism. I need hardly say that, personally, I had long opposed the last two in particular. But neither, especially during the last years of the war, had I been terribly happy with the first, which, in any case, no longer existed. Scant wonder I was a little confused. So, after all, were millions of others. Along with my fellow-propagandists, I tried this and I tried that. Some of my biographers, using accounts written by all kinds of people I had never heard about, did their best to discredit me by claiming that I had briefly flirted with Soci
al Democracy. Hoping to find some way out the terrible situation my country found itself in, perhaps I did.

  I liked my work. For the first time, I was able to make some use of my extensive political studies. It enabled me to push people in the direction I considered desirable—the national one, of course. It also let me develop my rhetorical skills. My performance was appreciated, as is evident from the fact that people contacted me and asked me for my opinion on the Jewish question. In response I told one of them, a certain Herr Gemlich, that “in his effects and consequences he [the Jew] is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.” The way to get rid of him is not by mounting pogroms; that method, as thousands of years have shown, leads nowhere. What is necessary are systematic legal measures to end his privileges. Later, this one-page letter was described as my “first anti-Semitic writing.” More important, I learned that my direct superior, Captain Karl Mayr, whom I met on a daily basis for several months, was very happy with me. He thought I was “a force to be reckoned with, a first-class popular speaker.”