Hitler

by Volker Ullrich

  Looking back in 1924 on his time before the First World War, Hitler positively gushed about Munich.92 Many aspects of the Bavarian capital could hardly fail to appeal to the young man. By the start of the twentieth century, Munich had become known as the “Athens on the Isar River,” a major cultural metropolis that attracted growing numbers of painters, sculptors and writers.93 Hitler was not interested at all in the avant-garde of the Blaue Reiter school around Vassily Kandinsky, but he was drawn to the Alte Pinothek with its collection of old masters, the Neue Pinothek, which contained the private collection of Ludwig I of Bavaria, and the Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack collection, which included works by Hitler’s favourite Böcklin, Anselm Feuerbach, Carl Spitzweg and the late Romantic Moritz von Schwind.94 He was also impressed by Munich’s imposing architecture and its grand boulevards. In Mein Kampf he rhapsodised about the “magic” of the royal Munich Residenz, “that wonderful marriage of primeval strength and fine artistic sentiment.”95

  Hitler apparently also felt quite at home in the bohemian milieu of Schwabing with its vivid mixture of determined artists and eccentric do-gooders. The anarchist writer Erich Mühsam once described Schwabing’s population as “painters, sculptors, poets, models, slackers, philosophers, founders of new religions, revolutionaries, reformers, sexual ethicists, psychoanalysts, musicians, architects, people who do arts and crafts, runaway daughters from respectable families, eternal students, the diligent and the lazy, those hungry for and tired of life, people with bushy locks and dapperly parted hair.”96 Among this cast of eccentrics the introverted, peculiar young Hitler did not stand out, and he could give in to his disinclination towards regular working hours and his fondness for daydreaming. Like many of the regulars at Café Stefanie, nicknamed Café Megalomania, Hitler believed he had a higher calling without knowing precisely what it was or how it could be achieved.

  In one of his later monologues, Hitler talked about what he called his “decision to keep working as an autodidact”: “I went to Munich with joy in my heart. I intended to keep learning for three more years and then, when I turned 28, to become a draughtsman at Heilmann and Littmann [a major construction company]. I would have taken part in the first competition, and I told myself that, then, people would see that this fellow had talent.”97 In reality, Hitler did nothing concrete in Munich to prepare himself for a career as an architectural draughtsman. Instead, he continued to pursue his chosen lifestyle. Every two or three days he would paint a picture. As had been the case in Vienna, these were mostly copies of postcards featuring famous city landmarks—the Hofbräuhaus, the Feldherrnhalle, the Frauenkirche, the Alte Hof or the Theathinerkirche. He would then try to sell his works in shops and beer gardens.

  The Munich doctor Hans Schirmer recalled that one evening in the Hofbräuhaus garden, a “modest-looking young man who seemed to have been through a lot” approached his table and tried to sell him an oil painting. Schirmer did not have enough money on him, so he asked Hitler to come to his apartment the next day, where he ordered two further works, which Hitler promptly delivered. “I concluded that this man had to work very hard in order to earn money for the basic necessities,” Schirmer remembered.98 Gradually, Hitler built up a set of loyal customers, from whom he could earn a reasonable living.

  But on 18 January 1914, Hitler was abruptly ripped from his cosy, bohemian existence. An officer from the Munich criminal police appeared at the Schle​isshe​imers​trasse apartment and handed Hitler a letter from the magistrate’s office in Linz ordering him to appear in two days’ time for military examination.99 As someone born in 1889, Hitler should have registered for the draft in the late autumn of 1909 and submitted to an examination in the spring of 1910, but he had done neither. One likely reason why Hitler left Vienna was to avoid these duties. “Illegally absent because whereabouts unknown,” read his file in Linz. Since August 1913, police there had been trying to track Hitler down, and in mid-January 1914 they succeeded. On 19 January, he was taken to the Austro-Hungarian general consulate in Munich. Only now did Hitler realise that he was in serious trouble: refusing to appear for the draft carried a penalty of four weeks to one year of imprisonment and a fine of 2,000 crowns.

  Hitler must have got a nasty shock. On 21 January, he wrote a letter justifying his behaviour. It was three and a half pages, quite long by Hitler’s standards, and represents the most extensive surviving sample of his early handwriting.100 In it, he admitted to not registering in Linz in 1909, but claimed that he had done so in Vienna in February 1910 but had never heard anything further from the authorities. That laid the blame on bureaucratic negligence: it had “never occurred to him” to attempt to evade military service. He also tried to win over the magistrate in Linz with an extensive and sometimes exaggerated description of his years of privation in Vienna:

  Despite great desperation, amidst often more than dubious company, I kept my name respectable and remained entirely guiltless in the eyes of the law and untroubled by my own conscience except for my failure to register for military service, which I was not even aware of. That is all I feel responsible for. I would ask to be allowed to pay a small sum of money to atone for this and declare myself willing to do so.

  Hitler also asked to be examined in Salzburg, which was closer to Munich, rather than Linz. The general consulate passed on Hitler’s letter to the Linz magistrate, noting that it was “well worth taking into consideration,” and Hitler got what he wanted. On 5 February 1914, he was given a military examination in Salzburg and was deemed “unsuitable for combat and support duty, too weak, incapable of firing weapons.”101 Hitler was then allowed to return to Munich.

  Häusler had moved out of their shared room when Hitler was away. In all likelihood, he could no longer bear living in such close confines with a room-mate who read until the early hours and liked to hold forth. But Hitler seems to have had little difficulty paying the entire rent on his own. He continued to frequent the cafés of Schwabing, although he did not make any close friends. Nor did he establish contact with any of the local chapters of ultranationalist organisations like the Pan-Germanic League, which was the largest of its kind in Wilhelmine Germany and had an influential spokesman in the publisher Julius F. Lehmann. His landlady characterised Hitler as a reticent young man who had secluded himself in his room “like a hermit” and refused all invitations to eat dinner together, saying that he had to work.102

  Hitler’s lack of social contact was the external symptom of a deep inner uncertainty. Having spent a year in Munich, he had to admit that he had made no progress and that his precarious existence as “artistic painter” did not offer many prospects for the future. But out of nowhere the beginning of the First World War in early August 1914 would release him from his frustrating lack of prospects.

  3

  The Experience of War

  “As probably was the case for every German, the most unforgettable and exciting time in my life had begun,” Hitler wrote rather melodramatically in Mein Kampf. “Everything previous paled into nothingness compared to the events of this giant struggle.”1 The First World War was Hitler’s defining experience and marks a caesura in his life. Having failed to achieve his lofty artistic ambitions, after seven years of privations, disappointments and rejections, the 25-year-old loner finally thought he had found a way out of his disoriented, useless existence. Hitler would never have developed as he did had he not fought in the First World War, and it was the war that made his political career possible in the first place.2

  On 28 June 1914, when Hitler heard the news that the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife had been assassinated in Sarajevo, he was sitting, as was his wont, over his books in his room on Schle​isshe​imers​trasse. Given the tense situation in Europe, and in particular the drastically deteriorating relationship between Austria–Hungary and Serbia over the previous years, Hitler had no doubt that “a stone had begun to roll and there was no stopping it.”3 He was hardly alone in thinking th
at a major European conflict was inevitable. People all the way up to the highest echelons of political and military power in Wilhelmine Germany shared that view. In point of fact, however, war could have been averted in July 1914, had the Reich leadership in Berlin, urged on by military commanders, not decided to use the assassination as a pretext for a test of strength with the Triple Entente of France, Britain and Russia. The aim was to drive apart the powers “encircling” Germany and alter the European balance of power in the Reich’s favour. On 5 and 6 July, not only did Germany assure its ally Austria–Hungary of its complete support in the event of military action against Serbia; Berlin also encouraged Vienna to respond quickly and with determination. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was all too aware that Germany was incurring a tremendous risk in issuing Austria–Hungary such a blank cheque. “Military action against Serbia could lead to a world war,” he admitted on the evening of 6 July to an intimate, Foreign Ministry Legation Secretary Kurt Riezler.4

  The public had little idea of what was going on in the governing cabinets in Berlin and Vienna as the crisis continued to escalate. Hitler, too, followed the general assumption that “ruling circles in Vienna” were the ones pushing for war and that Germany had no other option than stay unswervingly loyal to its ally.5 Hardly anyone realised how slyly Bethmann Hollweg manoeuvred Imperial Russia into the role of the aggressor in the final stage of the crisis so that the tsar could be blamed for the war. “Ruthlessly and under all circumstances, Russia must be made into the source of injustice,” the chancellor told Kaiser Wilhelm II on 26 July.6 Bethmann Hollweg’s plan worked. The German public believed that their country was defending itself from enemy attack and put aside all domestic quarrels and class enmity to come together as a nation.

  By late July 1914 in Munich, as in most big German cities, public demonstrations of patriotism were sometimes ending in wild excesses. When the band leader at a café refused to play the patriotic song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (The Watch on the Rhine), for example, the premises were ransacked.7 In early August, as war became more and more certain, there were outpourings of enthusiasm. On 2 August, a crowd of many thousands assembled on Odeonsplatz in front of the Feldherrnhalle. “All the melodies, military tunes and enthusiastic words that resonated up to the heavens sounded like a song of songs about German might and German self-confidence,” reported one eyewitness.8 Among the jubilant masses was the “artistic painter” Adolf Hitler, and a picture taken by his later “court photographer” Heinrich Hoffmann shows him getting carried away by the euphoric atmosphere.9 In Mein Kampf, Hitler described his feelings with his characteristic bent towards exalted language: “Even today, I am not ashamed to say that I, overcome by tempestuous enthusiasm, sank to my knees and thanked heaven with an overflowing heart that I was fortunate enough to live in these times.”10

  Many people felt the way Hitler did. Suddenly everything that confined and divided Germans seemed to have disappeared, leaving an intoxicating sensation of togetherness. “To be honest, I must acknowledge that there was something grand, captivating and even seductive about this eruption of the masses, which was difficult to resist,” recalled Stefan Zweig many years later.11 Even the anarchist and pacifist Erich Mühsam found himself “somehow captivated by the general uproar unleashed by angry passion.” In his diary, Mühsam wrote: “The confidence of the Germans, their pious and intense enthusiasm, is harrowing, but also grand. There’s a spiritual unity there that I hope to see some day employed for great cultural works.”12

  But not everyone joined in the chorus of glee. There was little enthusiasm for war in the German countryside. “Deep concern is making the rounds among the many, often large farming families whose fathers will be going away, whose sons, horses and wagons will be commissioned by the military, and whose harvests still have to be brought in,” reported the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten on 4 August 1914.13 In the big cities, too, enthusiasm for the war was largely confined to the middle classes. Blue-collar workers, particularly those who were members of the SPD and the trade unions, were in a serious, almost despondent mood. “What do we care if the heir to the throne of Austria was murdered?” one worker in Hamburg was overheard remarking in a bar. “I’m glad I’m too old to go [to war],” said another. “I have no desire to get shot and killed for anyone else.”14 The attitudes in Munich’s working-class districts in late July 1914 would hardly have been much different.

  Intellectuals, writers and artists were most likely to get caught up in the intoxication of the “August experience.” The reasons varied from dissatisfaction with the ossified structures of Wilhelmine society, to weariness with bourgeois complacency and the comfort of a long stretch of peace, to the longing for adventure, challenges and feelings of community. “How could the artist, the soldier in the artist, not have thanked God for the breakdown of a peaceful world of which he was so very sick?” asked Thomas Mann, who was living in Munich at the time. “War! What we experienced was cleansing, liberation and an enormous sense of hope.”15

  The “artist” Adolf Hitler felt something very similar. In Mein Kampf he recalled that the war seemed like “liberation from the annoying sensibilities of youth” and a way out of the idle cycles of his oddball existence.16 The prospect of belonging to a community and of devoting himself to a seemingly worthy national cause enlivened Hitler. If Mein Kampf is to be believed, on 3 August 1914, he wrote a letter beseeching King Ludwig III of Bavaria to allow him to join a Bavarian regiment despite being an Austrian citizen. One day later Hitler received permission by special cabinet order.17 This account is very implausible, however.18 It is much more likely that in the chaos of the first days of military mobilisation, as hordes of patriotic enthusiasts were signing up for military service, no one bothered to check Hitler’s citizenship. Otherwise he would never have been allowed to serve in the Bavarian army.

  Hitler first tried to volunteer on 5 August, but he was sent away, and it was not until 16 August that he was inducted into Recruit Depot VI of the 2nd Bavarian Infantry Regiment. This replacement battalion was quartered in a school that had been hastily converted into barracks. Here Hitler was given field uniform and equipment, and he underwent basic military training.19 On 1 September, he was transferred to the reconstituted 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment. The “List Regiment,” nicknamed after its first commander, Colonel Julius List, was a rather ragtag bunch. Young volunteers served together with older men known as “replacement reserves.” Munich students and artists marched side by side with farmers, rural labourers, small entrepreneurs, artisans, workers and professionals. The regiment thus represented a cross section of ages and social classes.20

  On 10 October 1914, it left Munich for combat training at Lechfeld, an outwash plain near the city of Augsburg. “The first five days at Lechfeld were the hardest of my life,” Hitler wrote in a letter to his landlady, Anna Popp. “Every day we have a long march, major exercises and a night-time march of up to forty-two kilometres, followed by major brigade manoeuvres.”21 Hitler’s biggest concern during these weeks, if we take him at his word, was that the war would be won by the time he got to the front. “This alone robbed me time and again of my peace of mind,” he claimed in Mein Kampf.22 Any worries proved unfounded. The German army may have advanced rapidly through Belgium and northern France, but the retreat of German troops to the Marne in early September 1914 spelled the end of the original plan of destroying the French army by squeezing it in a surprise pincer movement. Realistically, the war was already lost for Germany. The Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke—the nephew of the great, victorious Prussian commander—suffered a nervous breakdown and was replaced on 14 September by Reich Minister of War Erich von Falkenhayn. But the scale of the military disaster was kept secret from the public. As a result, broad segments of German society, and in particular volunteers eager to get to the front, maintained dangerous illusions about the true situation.

  —

  Early in the morning on 21 October, the List Regiment was
loaded onto three trains and taken to the Western Front. “I’m immensely looking forward to it,” wrote Hitler.23 In Ulm, the first stop on the journey, Hitler sent a postcard to Joseph Popp with “best regards on my way to Antwerp.”24 The next morning the train reached the River Rhine, which had long been a bone of contention between Germany and France. Hitler still recalled this moment in March 1944: “I saw the Rhine for the first time when my regiment was sent west in 1914. I will never forget the feelings that welled up in me when I first caught sight of this historic river.”25 Via Cologne and Aachen, the train continued to Belgium. There Hitler could see the traces of war. The train station in Liège, he reported, was “badly shot up,” and the city of Louvain was a “pile of rubble.”26 Two months before, from 25 to 28 August, German troops had committed a number of war crimes in Louvain, massacring 248 Belgian civilians, destroying parts of the old city centre and setting fire to the city’s famous university library.27