Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  Since then, I have often wondered whether, far from being too ruthless, I had been too soft and easygoing. Some people thought so. Perhaps I would have obtained better results if I had treated my collaborators as Stalin, the self-styled “Man of Steel,” did his. Perhaps I should have played cat and mouse games with them as he was always doing. And perhaps I should have shot those who did not perform to keep the rest terrified. But my name was not Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. I was a German, not some half-breed Caucasian chieftain magnified a thousand times over. I never used Stalinist methods to run my armed forces—except in the wake of the Putsch attempt of 20 July 1944, of course. Even then, I did not go nearly as far as Stalin had in 1937-39. If I pressed for more death sentences, which I did many, many times, I did not do so because I derived any pleasure from doing so but simply because, blessed with a judiciary that often proved weak in the knees, I felt doing so was my duty to the German nation. Wasn’t it Stalin who, pronouncing his so-called “permanently operating principles” of war, wrote that the most important thing was to maintain the stability of the homeland? This, after all, was a time when countless excellent young men were dying every day. Against that background, what right did I have to let all sorts of psychopaths, criminals, and traitors live?

  Much less was I a Zhukov who, at one point, told General Eisenhower that heavy losses did not matter to him because Russian women could be depended on to bear children. (With regard to that, incidentally, he was wrong. Currently, Russia’s birthrate is among the lowest in the world, though still higher than our own.) Far from it. Whatever historians, especially feminist ones, may have written about the way we National Socialists “oppressed” women and “discriminated” against them, I always retained a soft spot for our beautiful and tender, but long-limbed, delicate, and vulnerable German women. Those with the “blue eyes, soft glance, and a heart that is noble and proud and good,” as the poet Gottfried Friedrich Klopstock put it.

  I also felt our German losses deeply. Too deeply, perhaps, as at least two of my top commanders, Manstein and Dönitz, thought. On one occasion, when someone told me of the sad songs my troops were singing at the front, I could hardly restrain my tears. How well I understood them! That, and not any lack of empathy, as Speer insinuates in his memoirs, was why, happening to find myself face to face with a trainload of our soldiers returning from the east, I ordered the curtains of my carriage drawn. That, too, was why I prohibited Volksgenossen whose houses had been destroyed by bombing from coming to Berchtesgaden and, later, refused to look at pictures of German refugees he presented me with. They might have caused me to weaken, and weakness is the last thing a man in my position can afford.

  A well-known psychologist once said, “Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent [my emphasis, AH] others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.” If so, I want to put it on record that I never knowingly committed a single evil deed. Not during my struggle for power. Not later. And not during my last days either. With the Reich collapsing around me, I had to complete my Providence-appointed task as far as was in my power to do so. I particularly needed to prevent the resurgence of Jewry by exterminating every last Jewish man, woman, and child I could. Do you say they were innocent? Bedbugs are innocent! They do what nature has destined them to, no more, no less. But is that any reason to spare them?

  That is why, at this time, over and over again, I steeled myself to do what had to be done. The later the date and the more our overall situation deteriorated, the more difficult the dilemma and the more terrible the decisions that needed to be made. To quote Goethe, “Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there.” It was this contradiction that gave many of my deeds the peculiarly horrible, twisted, character they had or appeared to have. Those which confused so many of my associates who, knowing my aversion to blood sports and even to horse racing, sometimes wondered at the things I ordered done. It is this seeming contradiction, too, which, starting in the 1930s, has baffled so many of my biographers and prevented them from getting to the bottom of me. Even though, proportionally and absolutely, my deeds were no worse than those of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or even Saddam Hussein. All of them were members of the lesser races, and all of them were twentieth-century dictators who killed without losing a moment’s sleep. To repeat, it was die Endlösung which turned me into the most hated man in history. That is a burden which, however undeserved it may be, I am happy to carry for my people’s sake.

  When the war ended, the victors took the opportunity to expel an estimated 10-12,000,000 of our Volksgenossen from Eastern Europe, where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries. It was by far the greatest forced migration in history, perhaps even exceeding the one that took place during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. It made my own efforts in this direction look positively puny. Germany itself was partitioned into four occupation zones. Later, the number was reduced to two: a western one and an eastern one. Later still, both the Western Allies and the Russians set up puppet governments in their respective zones. Staffed by Communist traitors who, unfortunately, had been able to escape my security services, the so-called German Democratic Republic remained a puppet right to the end, which came when it collapsed in 1989-90. The so-called German Federal Republic fared somewhat better, especially from an economic point of view. In fact it became filthy rich.

  The price was having to kowtow to the victors. Culminating, in 1974, in the infamous scene when Chancellor Willy Brandt—a socialist and former deserter, incidentally, whom I would have shot if I had the chance—went on his knees in front of the Poles. The Poles! Need I say more? And the Jews, of course. There was never any question of combating them with every available means as I urged in my political testament. Instead, having blackmailed us into paying them huge sums in reparations, they grew even fatter and more impudent than before. Continuing their work after Roosevelt’s death, so successful were they in corrupting Washington, D.C. that the U.S. paid Israel hundreds of billions of dollars in “aid.” Meanwhile our own people were made to feel as guilty as hell. Afraid to look others in the eyes, in a certain sense they have been more traumatized by the “Holocaust” than the Jews themselves.

  As I also wrote in my testament, from beginning to end what inspired me was my love for our people. In a Darwinian world where the strong prevail and the weak go under, I wanted to preserve our German identity and to strengthen it as much as possible. It was to that end, and that end alone, that I took every step and adopted every measure I ever did. For them I fought, for them I suffered, and for them I died. But without success. The old Germany, the convivial Germany of small towns, thinkers, poets, high-quality craftsmen, and heroes—briefly, the Germany I used to love—is no more. Instead, we have bankers and “public relations” persons. The former fleece whomever they can. The latter lie on behalf of anyone who pays.

  Two processes are involved. First, starting as soon as it was established in 1949, the Federal Republic did whatever it could to “integrate” itself into Europe in the hope that the latter might forgive us our “sins.” Doing so, our dear, fellow EU members took us to the cleaner’s so often that we lost count; the reunification of 1989, far from reestablishing our independence, only reinforced the process. Second, starting in 1998 when the Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder entered office, we admitted an ever-growing flow of non-Germanic people from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Currently, about a fifth of the population has an immigration background. As a result, the identity in question is on the point of becoming irretrievably lost. Much to my sorrow Germany, as it has been understood throughout the centuries, is abolishing itself. As a look at the center of Berlin and many other cities shows, in many ways it no longer exists. That makes me feel like vomiting.

  In the whole of German history the twelve years of my rule, specifically including the glorious and heroic strugg
le for existence that was the war, are almost the only ones in which foreigners, and even many Germans, still take any interest at all. Everything else tends to be seen either as a prelude to the Third Reich or as a sequel to it. Just look at the bookshops, movies, and TV series. And not just in Germany either! Each time the leading news magazines are in need of money, which, in the day of the Internetz, they almost always are, they put a picture of me on the cover. Historians, journalists, and filmmakers have made fortunes by researching my life and times and are certain to do so in the future, too.

  For all but a handful of grumblers, the years of the Third Reich—until, let us say, early 1942, when fortune started turning her face away from us—were the most joyous in German history. Neither before nor after have so many people, great and small, been ripped out of their humdrum, often poor and quite miserable, lives, transformed, elevated, welded together, and united in a single purpose. By 1939, some two-thirds of the entire population had become members of at least one Party organization. According to one story, so busy were various family members doing Party work that they only met once a year at the Nuremberg Rally! All this made sure that the Western Allies’ subsequent efforts at “denazification” would remain a sick joke. This was true even in our show window, the Foreign Ministry, which was in charge of “restoring” our relations with the rest of the world. Until 1970 or so, half the personnel there consisted of former card-carrying Party members.

  Back in the late 1980s my countrymen engaged in the so-called Historikerstreit over the question as to whether the “Holocaust” could or could not, ought or ought not, be compared with other historical events. Be that as it may, the more time passes, the more I feel I and my ideas have become part and parcel of Western civilization. This is not merely in the sense that practically all its members unite in holding me up as the ultimate evil but also in that, in many ways, they continued upon the path where I had led. Look at Europe. Look at North America. Look at Australia. All of them are talking about the need to combat growing socio-economic inequalities, though none have yet begun to tackle the problem as firmly as we National Socialists did. All have adopted programs meant to protect consumers’ rights. All have developed vegetarian parties, some of them much more extreme and inclined toward violence than mine used to be. All have allowed, indeed required, doctors to take a much larger part in public life. All have mounted strong public health campaigns centering on the elimination of smoking, a filthy habit I have always opposed. And all have firmly embraced environmentalism and the protection of nature as part of their central ideologies.

  All of these countries preen themselves on being democratic and liberal Yet all followed my example in putting in place impressive arrays of thought control, broadly known as political correctness, with the aim of muzzling people and making them toe the line. Going much further than we did, they expanded their supervision over about a vast variety of topics my people never dreamt of touching. This has now been carried to the point where one private company alone, Facebook, has appointed 7,500 censors to prevent people from saying what they think! Partly to force their citizens to pay their taxes, and partly to combat terrorism, all have also resorted to using the most modern technology to spy on people. Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner and Müller—Gestapo Müller, as he was known—would have loved to use hacking, data mining, and other modern inventions if only they could have imagined them.

  Still not content, quite a few of the countries in question are employing their scientists in an attempt to find ways to look directly into people’s brains. Neither the law—where it exists—nor respect for privacy, nor the potential for blackmail can stop them. Finally, all are busily working to improve the race by eliminating the unfit. If not after they have been born, which for lack of an alternative was the way we tried to do it, then during the time when they are still in the womb. In these and many other fields I was the pioneer, and they are my followers. Even though most of them do not know it and would vehemently deny it if told.

  In a growing number of Western countries, bleeding hearts and other milksops may talk of “integration,” “diversity,” and multi-kulti. They are welcome to continue spreading their vomit until that vomit turns around and hits them in the face as, judging by recent events, it has clearly begun to do. Racism, or ethnocentrism as those politically-correct morons call it, is again proving itself to be a basic human quality. One which, as self-sacrificing heroes such as Anders Breivik have shown, tsunamis of more or less official propaganda, dished out day and night by corrupt media, cannot eradicate. Least of all in Israel, which in some ways has proportionally more of my followers than Germany does! Yet another idea I often expressed is that Christianity, supposedly based on love, is a religion for weaklings and that we Germans would have been well advised if we had adopted Islam, truly a militant creed fit for men and warriors. Now that Al Qaeda, Daesh, and any number of other Muslim terrorist organizations are scaring the living daylights out of people the world over, the only ones who still do not know how right I was are those who will soon find out. Hopefully, they will learn before they have a knife stuck into their ribs or a bomb placed under their bums.

  So numerous and so extensive are the fields in which people, knowingly or not, have taken their cue from my movement and me that I sometimes wonder whether we did in fact lose the war. Not the physical war, of course, as our much-shrunken borders attest to the present day. But the much more important one between different Weltanschauungen. Nor is that all. Notwithstanding that the Berghof had been thoroughly plundered and demolished several times over, very soon after our defeat it became almost as much of an object of pilgrimage as it was before I put an end to the practice in 1938. It is just like Mount Kyffhäuser, where Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa is said to be asleep, waiting for the nation to call! On any given day one will find hordes of people, guidebooks and cellphones in hand, trying to trace the places where the most important buildings used to be. Others queue to enter the elevator that will take them, as it took me on the rare occasions I used it, to Kehlstein. Far over a million, by no means all German, came to see the local documentation center built by the Bavarian government. Had not the police intervened, my Munich home and other places where I used to stay would also have been turned into shrines for people to worship at. Surely there would have been souvenir shops selling Nazi dolls, Nazi music, and, who knows, working models of Nazi concentration camps complete with miniature Nazi gas chambers and ovens.

  Take the attempt of the Austrian government to pull down the house in which my parents, having rented a flat, lived when I was born. The owner, a courageous lady in whose family the house had been for over a century, held out for five years, refusing to sell. As a result, she was finally expropriated, all in the name of democracy, freedom, and truth! But I am not worried. In the long run, the only outcome of such attempts to tinker with history will be to further increase the already large number of visitors who come to pay homage to me. Just as the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans 2,000 years ago only made the site on which it stood, or is supposed to have stood, holier still.

  As I have already explained, our art was figurative. It was the kind which sought to elevate people’s souls, not to fill their heads with the often obscene ravings of disturbed imaginations ripe for the lunatic asylum. That is why, starting in 1933 and continuing after 1945, it has been reviled as much as it was. That is also why, watching the world as I do, I am very happy to see that, in many places, abstract art is on the retreat, and figurative art, in some ways like that of the Renaissance, is well on its way back in. It is gaining popularity not because those snobs, the critics, like it but because the broad public, thanks to its sound instincts, demands it. Failing to find what it is looking for, it simply votes with its feet. As figurative art made a comeback, our own started doing the same. Some of our old pieces, long neglected and even given up for lost, have been rediscovered. Take the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, long a stronghold of political correctness. Ju
st a few years back it mounted a show to “prove” how we wicked Germans had maltreated the poor Poles. Now it has, in the entrance hall, a copy—a poor one, alas—of Breker’s huge statue of a nude, heroic man holding a sword. The one I personally commissioned and named Die Wehrmacht.

  Worried about what “Nazi” memorabilia might stand for, some countries have tried to ban the trade in them. But to no avail. Most of the dealers and the collectors they serve are gentile. Some, however, are Jewish. Here and there, some of the latter justify their interest (and their profits) by claiming that their collections signify their “victory” over me. As if, in reality, things were not the other way around! Furniture and utensils are grist to their mill. So are every kind of bric à brac, uniforms, insignia, daggers, medals, stamps, bank notes, coins, photographs, posters, letters, diaries, magazines, books, banners, etc. Even as I was writing these words, a “treasure trove” of just such objects was discovered in Argentina; how it got there no one knows. Major items such as tanks, aircraft, and submarines are also eagerly collected and lovingly restored until they are as good as new.

  Many, if not most, of the items in question were stolen from their German owners, both alive and dead. Other profit seekers have turned to robbing graves, especially in Eastern Europe, where most of our soldiers were killed and either had their bodies left in place or buried in makeshift cemeteries. So great is the demand as to form the basis of an entire industry. Those involved fake the items in question and sell them to the credulous. As for me, judging by the fact that everything I ever owned, touched, or laid eyes upon seems to increase in value a thousandfold, one might think I am some kind of a Catholic saint! I am told that, in 2009, three of my heavy six-wheeled cross-country Mercedes cars were sold for $3,300,000 each. A good investment, no doubt.