Female doctors sat on the courts which examined candidates for sterilization and carried out some of the operations. Others performed compulsory abortions on female concentration camp inmates. It was mostly female nurses who killed tens of thousands of mentally and physically handicapped people of all ages. Unpleasant, but necessary. Women, whom the SS recruited by means of simple newspaper advertisements, even took on the rather unfeminine duty of guarding concentration camps. Some of them belonged to the General SS, others proudly displayed the special Totenkopf insignia, featuring the famous, fearsome skull-and-bones. When Bernhard Schlink in his 1995 novel, Der Vorleser, described them as a bunch of heartless bitches, he was not far from the mark. A few were even put in charge of concentration camp brothels, where they supervised the prostitutes’ activities! In brief: there was hardly any field of activity in which German women did not participate to the best of their ability. Often they did so with considerable enthusiasm as well.
To sum up, it is simply not true, as feminists and other Sitzpinklers (people who pee sitting down or squatting) have so often claimed, that we National Socialists were the enemies of women nor that we did what we could to discriminate against them, put them under all kinds of restrictions, and oppressed them. To the contrary, when we called on them they came, almost always out of their own free will and in ever-growing numbers. The reason why they came was that they understood what we were trying to do: namely, help them direct their lives into the channels most suitable both to their own nature and to the needs of the community. Well aware of how precious they were, we pampered them and protected them as best we could. To be sure, the war prevented us from bringing all our projects to a successful conclusion. Nevertheless, both in peace and in war, in many ways we did more for them than the leaders of any country before and since. They rewarded us, and me personally as their Führer, with what one post-1945 magazine called Nibelungengtreue. The highest form of loyalty there is.
16. My Private Life
Can a leader such as I was have a private life? In theory, the answer is yes. After all, my body and physical needs were no different from those of other people. Like everyone else, I also had my preferences in day-to-day life; what to eat, what kind of ambience to surround myself with, what to do during my leisure hours, and the like.
One might think that all this was no one’s business but mine. But that was by no means the case. It only took a surprisingly short time after I took power for a large market for consumer goods, such as busts, postcards, porcelain, and embroidered articles with my image on them, to emerge. That forced me to pass a special law (“The Law for the Protection of National Symbols”) to regulate them and to make sure they would not be used in an inappropriate manner. But there was more. If I publicly expressed my approval or disapproval of this or that, countless people followed my example and/or tried to profit from doing so. That even applied to the kind of mustache I grew! At one point someone floated the (false) rumor that my favorite flower was the Edelweiss. No sooner had the news spread than the Edelweiss, with a little help from Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, became the favorite flower of half the nation. The same happened with clothing, music, and everything else you could think of. The opposite was also true. If I fell ill, then the consequences not just for me but for the German nation could be very serious, especially if the fact became widely known.
My long experience in politics made me well aware of all this even before January 1933. Such being the case, perhaps my greatest problem was to make sure that my image as a man of the people would stay intact. Others too have found out how difficult that is. Before I became Chancellor, out of every ten men I met, nine belonged to the people and one to the elite. From that point on it was the other way around. Moreover, high society has its customs. At the risk of my being looked down upon as a boor, I had to respect them, antiquated and ridiculous as many of them were and are. Just imagine me wearing a cummerbund!
Some leaders have sought to solve these problems by having themselves filmed while they engaged in various popular activities. Think of Mussolini fencing or riding horses, Fidel Castro playing basketball, Reagan riding a horse at Quantico or on his ranch in California, or Vladimir Putin riding a motorcycle, fishing, and throwing opponents in judo. I, alas, did not have the physique to do as they did. I did, of course, attend the Berlin Olympics as my position demanded. And I was proud of our team which, on this occasion, garnered more medals than any other. However, my interest in sports has always been limited.
Most of the time I had to use other methods. One was wearing a simple uniform coat whenever possible. Decorated solely by my Iron Cross, First Class, and contrasting sharply with the glittering uniforms of my generals, it served the purpose very well, as is evident from the fact that any number of subsequent leaders have imitated me in this respect. Another was my custom of sitting or standing in the front seat of my open cars. Rather than relaxing in the rear one, as so-called VIPs, communist ones included, almost always did and do. I wanted to show my people that, eschewing luxury, I was no soft simpering ninny but a strong, hard man. I also wanted to show that I trusted them, was not afraid of them, and, in fact, was one of them. That none of this precluded the most stringent security measures hardly requires saying. An entire book has been written about that subject, to which I have nothing to add.
All my life I went to bed late and got up late. During the daytime there were a public agenda and a secret one known only to those who had to know. I also liked springing surprises on my people; it kept them on their toes. Keenly aware that I could be assassinated at any moment by some criminal or lunatic, I used to change my plans frequently and unexpectedly. On at least two occasions, doing so saved my life. One was in November 1939. A bomb was planted in the Bürgerbräukeller, where I held a speech to commemorate our Putsch. I, however, left the meeting early so that the explosion took place when I was no longer there.
The other was in March 1943. I was scheduled to greet an officer by the name of von Gersdorff during a weapons review held at Army Group Center Headquarters. He was carrying a bomb and was ready to blow himself up along with me. However, something told me to walk right past him. Next, by cutting my visit short, I did not give him a second chance. I suppose that, on both occasions, what saved me was my intuition. Or perhaps it was Providence. Having lost my faith during my schooldays, I am not religious in the ordinary sense of the word. Starting at quite an early age, though, I have always believed that there was a mysterious force guiding and protecting me.
Anyhow, I received reports, and I issued orders. I read memoranda—during the war I had them presented to me on a special typewriter with large characters. I signed all kinds of decrees and directives. And I made plans, and I held meetings. Not, however, of the whole cabinet, where we National Socialists were initially a minority. Even after that problem had been rectified, I preferred to govern by dealing with each minister separately rather than with all of them together. After the beginning of 1938, I held no cabinet meetings at all. More than one of my ministers, visiting the new chancellery Speer built for me in 1939 and looking over the cabinet room with the chair with his name on it, felt sorry he would never take his place at the table! I appointed people and, when the occasion arose, dismissed them from their posts. I received all sorts of dignitaries, both of the home-grown variety and foreigners. Briefly, I did everything rulers have always done and will always do.
But there were also some differences. To repeat, these were the times before television. Yet my rule was as personal as personal can be. Seldom, if ever, in history did the charisma of a single man matter so much as mine. The more so because Goebbels never ceased extolling me, almost turning me into a god on earth. At Hitler Youth ceremonies they went so far as to compare me with Christ! National Socialism was me, and I was National Socialism. But for me, no party, no Third Reich, no concentration camps, no World War II, no Holocaust. And no Götterdämmerung either; no one else could have inspired the German people to follow
him practically to the end.
Yet such ties, far from being self-evident, must be constantly refreshed and renewed. I wanted—I had to—show myself to as many people as I could as often as I could. And I had to address them, of course. That is why, during the six years before the war, I traveled much more than most contemporary rulers did. By air, by train, by car, whatever. Unlike Stalin, who owed nothing to oratory but governed Russia from his Kremlin office, I addressed countless meetings, large and small. I also devoted more time than most to the problems of art, as by opening exhibitions and talking to artists. I also regularly attended the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. So, I am told, does Frau Angela Merkel.
To repeat, one reason for putting so much emphasis on this field was that I considered art to have a vital role in the education of a people. Another was that I always remained an artist at heart. There were few things I enjoyed more than meeting Paul Troost, my first architect, and his admirable wife, Gerdy. After his premature death in January 1934, the same applied to his equally able and gifted successor, Albert Speer. Together, we would lay down plans for the grandiose building projects I had in mind. We exchanged views about the things we had done and would do, examined models, made changes, etc. Some of our sessions took place in the studio and others on the spot. All this took me through moments when I regretted the fact that, carried by circumstances, I had not realized my youthful dream of becoming an artist. Mais c’est la vie. One cannot always consult one’s own preferences. Least of all if one is in a position like mine.
Regardless of whether one’s field is politics, the easel or the drawing board, to be an artist means that leisure is absolutely essential. Right from the beginning I was determined not to be taken over by, or to drown in, affairs of state as has happened to so many others before and after me. I wanted—I very much needed—time to relax and to think. In fact I always considered my ability to do so to be one of my greatest strengths. That is why I often exasperated my collaborators by postponing meetings and delaying decisions. It was not that I could not make them; Heaven knows that, when circumstances called, I could and did. But it was because I soon learned there existed lots and lots of issues which, given enough time, tended to disappear of their own accord. So I simply turned my back on them.
I also continued my long-time habit of rising late and going to bed late. Evenings were often spent talking to close associates or else watching some movie selected by Goebbels. Both German and foreign ones were included in the program. I was particularly interested in American ones. I hoped they would enable me to form at least some idea of what that country, known to me principally from the writings of Karl May, which I had read in my youth, was like. Seen from the point of view of their ability to attract viewers and to feed their lessons to the people, many were better than ours; good as the people at Babelsberg were, we never found a German equivalent to Walt Disney. But that was not the end of the matter. Each night, before going to sleep, I would spend some time reading a little about things completely unrelated to those that had been preoccupying me throughout the day.
On Fridays I would take the train to Munich, and from there travel by motor car convoy to Berchtesgaden. There I would remain until Sunday evening, when the night train would bring me back to Berlin. In the meantime I had redesigned and enlarged the Berghof to suit my tastes. The centerpiece was a very large living room. Originally, it was furnished simply in the Bavarian style. Later, when I sometimes used it for representative purposes, I had it redecorated with costly furniture. There was a bust of Wagner as well as some exquisite paintings done by German, mostly nineteenth-century, artists. It also had a huge picture window that provided an unexcelled view of the Obersalzburg. On fine days it could be lowered into the ground, allowing in fresh air. There was a dining room, a study with a library, a large marble-top table for maps, and a big terrace. Upstairs, there were several more rooms, including two interconnecting bedrooms for Fräulein Braun and me.
I always found the mountain air invigorating. It was at the Berghof that I had my best ideas and made my most important decisions. In 1937 a tea house was built about a kilometer away. Accompanied by a guest or two, during my stays I used to walk there and back almost every day I was there. Himmler in particular used these walks, and the privacy they afforded, to discuss some of the most sensitive subjects of all, to receive his orders, and to report on his progress in carrying them out. For my birthday in the spring of 1939 Bormann had another tea house built for me higher up the mountain at Kehlstein. Access was by means of an elevator whose shaft was hewn right into the rock. Constructed at breakneck speed, technically it was a magnificent achievement. However, the thin air—it was located 1,800 meters above sea level—did not agree with me. Consequently, I only went there a handful of times.
As I said, the person in charge of the Berghof was my stepsister Angela, Geli’s mother. She had some experience in the field and did as good a job as I could have wished for; unsurprisingly, though, she did not get along with Fräulein Braun. So I eventually had to let her go. The place was run like the small resort it had originally been, complete with housekeepers, gardeners, cooks, waiters, and so on. The overall responsibility for it was in the hands of Bormann and, coming under him, a Frau Mittelstrasser, who acted as hostess. I used to entertain guests there every weekend. Himmler apart, among the most frequent visitors were Goebbels, Speer, Hoffmann, Hess, Ribbentrop, Otto Dietrich (my press secretary), and my physicians Theodor Morrell and Karl Brandt. Also, before he was assassinated in 1942, Heydrich. At times their wives were also invited; so, less often, were figures from the world of art.
Having gone over my mail, I used to come down from my upstairs apartment around noon or even later. I would talk to the guests a little before inviting them inside for lunch. Since I was busy, on such occasions it fell to Bormann to look after Eva. The food was normally quite light. Though I did have something of a sweet tooth, I never pretended to be a gourmet. No fancy dishes with incomprehensible French names, no twelve-course dinners for me! Soup, baked potatoes, and rice or pasta served with asparagus or some other vegetables were quite enough. Though I myself was a vegetarian and a teetotaler, I did not object to others consuming meat or drinking a glass of wine. However, the terrace apart, I did not allow them to smoke in my presence.
I also used my stays at the Berghof to play an occasional game of bowling—there was an alley in the basement—and to train my dog, among other activities. On occasion I held a little party to which one of my associates’ children were invited. I did that because I liked children and they liked me. Hoffmann and Eva, who was an enthusiastic photographer and a good one too, made sure some of our idyllic existence was captured on film. The resulting images were in greater demand than any of the rest. People, it seems, were eager to see me as one of them. It lay in the nature of things that my paladins wanted to be as close to me as possible, mainly to compete for my favor and to have my ear, of course. But I flatter myself that some of them also did so because they valued the relaxed, informal, ambience I provided them with.
As the years went by, each of them felt obliged to build his own place nearby. The paths, originally covered with pine needles, were paved over. The entire complex was fenced in and guarded by an SS company, whose troops, in turn, had to be provided with living quarters, a dining hall, exercise facilities, and so on. As each addition led to others, year by year the number of people who lived or worked on the mountain increased. Ultimately, it almost became a small city, complete with shelters and underground corridors that would allow the occupants, and me of course, to escape in case of an emergency. The moving spirit in much of this was Bormann. In this and other fields, to get what he wanted he was not above using rather brutal methods, such as, for example, evicting the original residents and acquiring their property. A few spent time in concentration camps before they understood what he expected of them. Personally, I would rather have left things as they had been early on. Again, though, one cannot always consult one’s
own preferences.
From time to time I used to invite foreign guests I wanted to honor. Among them were former British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, the man who probably did more than any other to bring down Germany during the Great War. Hoffmann, who was present as usual, later told me that he had said that Germany should thank God for having sent it such a leader. Others were the Agha Khan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Austrian Prime Minster Kurt von Schuschnigg, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Pierre Laval, and Benito Mussolini. Not to mention various smaller fry. I also sometimes invited the top officers of the armed forces to Berchtesgaden to discuss my plans in the privacy the place afforded.
Those of my German visitors who frequented the Berghof were aware of the existence of Eva, on whom more in a moment, and kept the secret. But I just could not afford to have the nation know about her. Any public shows of affection were strictly out of bounds. Simple, affectionate soul that she was, that was hard on her. But it could not be helped. She would mix with my paladins, especially Speer, with whom she sometimes used to go hiking. But when foreign visitors arrived, I had to ask her to stay in her room. “Up there,” she once commented, “there is something people are not allowed to see—me!”
Hitler in Hell Page 24