Hitler

by Brendan Simms

  20. Hitler to Gemlich, 16.9.1919, Munich, SA, pp. 88–90. See also Plöckinger, Unter Soldaten und Agitatoren, pp. 272, 340, and Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup, ‘Wann wurde Hitler zum Antisemiten? Einige Überlegungen zu einer strittigen Frage’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 43 (1995), pp. 687–97.

  21. See Werner Bergmann and Ulrich Wyrwa, Antisemitismus in Zentraleuropa (Darmstadt, 2011), pp. 32–61; Heike Hoffmann, ‘Völkische Kapitalismus-Kritik. Das Beispiel Warenhaus’, in Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.), Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (Munich, London and Paris, 1996), especially, pp. 558–60; and Michele Battini, Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism (New York, 2016), especially pp. 75–110.

  22. See Werner Jochmann (ed.), Nationalsozialismus und Revolution. Ursprung und Geschichte der NSDAP in Hamburg, 1922–1933. Dokumente (Frankfurt, 1963), pp. 5–9.

  23. I base myself on the full account in Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, pp. 191–4. See also Ulrich von Hasselbach, ‘Die Entstehung der nationalsozialistischen deutschen Arbeiterpartei, 1919–1923’ (PhD dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1931), p. 20.

  24. Quoted in Kershaw, Hubris, p. 126.

  25. Thus Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Hitler and the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’, American Historical Review, 68 (1963), pp. 974–86.

  26. Thus Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, pp. 210–11.

  27. See also Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, pp. 263–4.

  28. Speech, 10.12.1919, SA, p. 99.

  29. Speech, 10.12.1919, SA, p. 97.

  30. Thus Geoffrey Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion: Nazi Ideology and Foreign Policy in the 1920s (Leamington Spa and New York, 1986), pp. 82–3.

  31. Remarks, 7.1.1920, SA, p. 101. Hitler used the stronger verhindert (‘prevents’) rather than behindert (‘obstructs’).

  32. Speech, 10.12.1919, SA, p. 96.

  33. Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order (London, 2014).

  34. Hitler’s occasional use of the phrase is charted in Rainer Sammet, ‘Dolchstoss’. Deutschland und die Auseinandersetzung mit der Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg (1918–1933) (Berlin, 2003), pp. 250–55.

  35. Speech, 20.9.1920, SA, p. 229. See also Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘The world through Hitler’s eyes’, in idem, Germany, Hitler and World War II: Essays in Modern Germany and World History (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 30–53 (here, p. 34).

  36. Speech, 20.3.1923, SA, p. 846. See also Christian Koller, ‘Von Wilden aller Rassen niedergemetzelt’. Die Diskussion um die Verwendung von Kolonialtruppen in Europa zwischen Rassismus, Kolonial- und Militärpolitik (1914–1930) (Stuttgart, 2001), especially pp. 246–9, 313–19, 325–6, 330, 362–75.

  37. For Canadian and other Allied atrocities see Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998), pp. 376, 379 et passim.

  38. Mayr to Hitler, Munich, 10.9.1919, in Kriegsarchiv, Reichswehr Gruppenkommando 4, Nr. 314 Propagandakurse, Teilnehmer, G-Z.

  39. Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, p. 99. See also Thomas Raithel, ‘“Kommt bald nach…”. Auswanderung aus Bayern nach Amerika, 1683–2003’, in Margot Hamm, Michael Henker and Evamaria Brockhoff (eds.), Good bye Bayern, Grüß Gott Amerika (Augsburg, 2004), pp. 23–36 (the figures on p. 25 show a spike in the 1920s).

  40. See Gerd Koenen, ‘Hitlers Russland. Ambivalenzen im deutschen “Drang nach Osten”’, Kommune, 1 (2003), pp. 65–78, especially pp. 65–8.

  41. Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg: Hitlers Chefideologe (Munich, 2007).

  42. Kai-Uwe Merz, Das Schreckbild. Deutschland und der Bolschewismus, 1917 bis 1921 (Berlin, 1995).

  43. 27.1.1921, SA, p. 301. Later examples are Article, 6.11.1929, RSA, III/2, p. 434 (which speaks of ‘disarming the German people and delivering them up to international high finance’), and Article, 7.11.1929, RSA, III/2, p. 445. The materials used by the Reichswehr educational courses portray socialists largely as instruments of the Entente to weaken Germany: Kriegsarchiv Bayern, Reichswehrgruppenkommando 4, no. 314.

  44. Speech, 23.1.1920, SA, p. 106; Remarks, 9.8.1920, SA, p. 183; Remarks, 21.6.1920, SA, p. 150; Remarks, 9.8.1920, SA, p. 183.

  45. Hitler to Riehl, 1.3.1920, Munich, SA, p. 112.

  46. Thus Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, pp. 40, 335. See also Manfred Weissbecker, ‘“Wenn hier Deutsche wohnten…”. Beharrung und Veränderung im Russlandbild Hitlers und der NSDAP’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich (Cologne, 1994), pp. 9–54, especially pp. 13–15. See also Koenen, ‘Hitlers Russland’, pp. 71–2.

  47. Article, March 1921, SA, p. 340; Article, 15.3.1921, SA, p. 393.

  48. Article, 26.5.1921, SA, p. 415.

  49. Speech, 21.10.1921, SA, p. 506.

  50. Thus Albert Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSDAP. Erinnerungen an die Frühzeit der Partei von Albert Krebs (Stuttgart, 1959), p. 121.

  51. Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, p. 364. See also Timothy W. Ryback, Hitlers Bücher. Seine Bibliothek–sein Denken (Cologne, 2010).

  52. See Paul Hoser, ‘Thierschstrasse 41. Der Untermieter Hitler, sein jüdischer Hausherr und ein Restitutionsproblem’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 65 (2017), pp. 131–61, especially pp. 134, 140, 147, 160, 161.

  53. See Paul Madden, ‘Some social characteristics of early Nazi Party members, 1919–23’, in Central European History, 15 (1982), pp. 34–56.

  54. Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 142.

  55. Thus Hellmuth Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre und die Münchener Gesellschaft 1919–1923’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 25 (1977), pp. 14, 23–24.

  56. J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism, 1919–1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, vol. 1: The Nazi Party, State and Society, 1919–1939 (New York, 1990), p. 14, ascribes principal authorship to Hitler and Drexler.

  57. Thus Jörg Fisch, ‘Adolf Hitler und das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker’, Historische Zeitschrift, 290 (2010), pp. 93–118 (quotation on p. 105).

  58. Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 274.

  59. Speech, 13.8.1920, SA, p. 186; Speech, 5.10.1921, SA, p. 499.

  60. Thus Uwe Degreif, ‘Woher hatte Hitler das Hakenkreuz? Zur Übernahme eines Symbols’, Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, 41 (1991), pp. 310–16, especially p. 314.

  61. Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, pp. 280–81. For the fluctuating print run see Charles F. Sidman, ‘Die Auflagen-Kurve des Völkischen Beobachters und die Entwicklung des Nationalsozialismus, Dezember 1920–November 1923’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 13 (1965), pp. 112–18.

  62. Thus Roland V. Layton, ‘The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933: the Nazi Party newspaper in the Weimar Era’, Central European History, 3 (1970), pp. 353–82, especially p. 372; and Detlef Mühlberger, Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933 (Berne, 2004), vol. 1, p. 22.

  63. Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma. Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias (Frankfurt, 2010), p. 14 et passim.

  64. See Stefan Aust, Hitlers erster Feind. Der Kampf des Konrad Heiden (Reinbek, 2016), pp. 78–82, especially p. 81.

  65. Speech, 6.2.1921, SA, p. 312; Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, pp. 271–2, 282.

  66. See Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten, p. 119.

  67. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, pp. 177–8.

  68. Order, Munich, December 1919, SA, p. 95.

  69. Longerich, Hitler, p. 97.

  70. See Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, p. 16.

  71. Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 15–17 et passim.

  72. Speech, 29.1.1923, SA, p. 824.

  73. Mike Joseph, ‘Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter: the personal link from genocide to Hitler’, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Elmar Plozza (eds.), Der Völkermord an den Armeniern, die Türkei und Europa (Zurich, 2006), pp. 147–65. See also Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, p. 16; Weber
, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, pp. 324–5.

  74. Speech, 17.12.1922, SA, p. 775.

  75. Hitler to Anton Drexler, Munich, 9.12.1920, SA, p. 277.

  76. Quoted in Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Anton Drexler, der Gründer der NSDAP’, Deutsche Rundschau, 87 (1961), pp. 1,134–43, here p. 1,140.

  77. Thus Wolfgang Horn, Führerideologie und Parteiorganisation in der NSDAP (1919–1933) (Düsseldorf, 1972), p. 424 et passim.

  78. See Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 285.

  79. Thomas Weber, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (New York, 2017), pp. 111 and 132.

  80. Werner Bräuninger, ‘“Die Partei ist kein abendländischer Bund!” Die Sommerkrise der NSDAP im Jahre 1921’, in Werner Bräuninger, Hitlers Kontrahenten in der NSDAP, 1921–1945 (Munich, 2004), pp. 28–37.

  81. Hilter to Ausschuss der NSDAP, 14.7.1921, Munich, SA, p. 436.

  82. See Phelps, ‘Drexler’, pp. 1,139–41.

  83. Albrecht Tyrell, Vom ‘Trommler’ zum ‘Führer’. Der Wandel von Hitlers Selbstverständnis zwischen 1919 und 1924 und die Entwicklung der NSDAP (Munich, 1975), pp. 132–3 et passim.

  84. Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 295.

  85. Thus Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 301.

  86. Tyrell, Vom ‘Trommler’ zum ‘Führer’, pp. 132, 139–40, 146–7.

  87. See Egon Fein, Hitlers Weg nach Nürnberg. Verführer, Täuscher, Massenmörder. Eine Spurensuche in Franken mit hundert Bilddokumenten (Nuremberg, 2002), pp. 84–5.

  88. Thus Hellmuth Auerbach, ‘Regionale Wurzeln und Differenzen der NSDAP, 1919–1923’, in Horst Möller, Andreas Wirsching and Walter Ziegler (eds.), Nationalsozialismus in der Region. Beiträge zur regionalen und lokalen Forschung und zum internationalen Vergleich (Munich, 1996), pp. 65–85.

  89. Herbert Speckner, ‘Die Ordnungszelle Bayern. Studien zur Politik des bayerischen Bürgertums, insbesondere der bayerischen Volkspartei von der Revolution bis zum ende des Kabinetts Dr von Kahr’ (PhD dissertation, University of Erlangen, 1955).

  90. Se Kai Uwe Tapken, Die Reichswehr in Bayern von 1919 bis 1924 (Hamburg, 2002), pp. 415, 419 et passim.

  91. See Bruno Thoss, Der Ludendorff Kreis, 1919–1923. München als Zentrum der mitteleuropäischen Gegenrevolution zwischen Revolution und Hitler-Putsch (Munich, 1978), especially pp. 453–55.

  92. Weber, Wie Adolf Hitler zum Nazi wurde, passim.

  93. Speckner, ‘Ordnungszelle Bayern’, p. 27.

  94. Speech, 12.4.1922, SA, p. 624.

  95. Speech, 17.12.1922, SA, p. 769. See more generally Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge, 2003); Samuel Koehne, ‘Reassessing The Holy Reich: leading Nazis’ views on confession, community and “Jewish” materialism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 48 (2013), pp. 423–45; Thomas Schirrmacher, Hitler’s Kriegsreligion, 2 vols. (Bonn, 2007); Rainer Bucher, Hitlers Theologie (Würzburg, 2008); Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus. Die religiösen Dimensionen der NS-Ideologie in den Schriften von Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler (Munich, 1998).

  96. Speech, end of December 1922, SA, p. 775.

  97. See Derek Hastings, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford and New York, 2010), pp. 12, 14, 78, 107–42 et passim.

  98. See Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 283.

  99. E.g. ‘Betr. Verbot des Völkischen Beobachters’, Munich, 29.4.1920, Staatsarchiv München, Pol. Dir. 6697; Ramer (Polizeidirektion) to Völkischer Beobachter, 5.10.1921, Munich, Staatsarchiv München, Pol. Dir. 6697, fols. 119–20.

  100. See Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 298.

  101. Article, 23.1.1922, SA, p. 553.

  102. Speech, 28.7.1922, SA, p. 669; Speech, 16.8.1922, SA, p. 680; Speech, 7.8.1922, SA, p. 674.

  103. This paragraph is based on Henry Ashby Turner, Jr, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985), pp. 49–55 (quotation on p. 52).

  104. Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Weg, p. 304; Peter Manstein, Die Mitglieder und Wähler der NSDAP, 1919–1933. Untersuchungen zu ihrer schichtmässigen Zusammensetzung, 3rd edn (Frankfurt, 1990), p. 115, gives a lower figure.

  105. Joachim Albrecht, Die Avantgarde des ‘Dritten Reiches’. Die Coburger NSDAP während der Weimarer Republik, 1922–1933 (Frankfurt, 2005), pp. 79–81.

  106. Peter Bor, Gespräche mit Halder (Wiesbaden, 1949), p. 109.

  107. NSDAP pamphlet, 11.2.1922, SA, p. 571; Speech, 5.10.1921, SA, p. 499; Speech, ‘Before 9.11.1922’, SA, p. 726.

  108. Speech, 17.6.1920, SA, p. 147; Speech, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 336; Notes for a speech, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 335.

  109. Article, 27.1.1923, SA, p. 798; Speech, 17.4.1920, SA, p. 123; Speech, 28.2.1921, SA, p. 328; Speech, 17.6.1920, SA, p. 148; Speech, 24.11.1920, SA, p. 268.

  110. Article, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 330; Speech, 25.1.1923, SA, p. 798; Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 145; Notes for a speech, ‘July 1920’, SA, p. 154.

  111. Speech, 22.9.1920, SA, p. 235; Speech, 13.4.1923, SA, p. 890; Speech, 17.4.1920, SA, p. 122; Speech, 13.4.1923, SA, p. 891; Speech, 7.8.1922, SA, p. 677; ‘Nach April 1923’, SA, pp. 857, 859.

  112. Speech, 31.5.1920, SA, p. 137; Speech, 3.1.1923, SA, p. 777; Speech, 21.4.1922, SA, pp. 629–31; Article, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 330; Speech, 28.9.1922, SA, p. 697; Notes for a speech, 1.9.1921, SA, p. 486.

  113. Remarks, 20.8.1920, SA, p. 205; Speech, 26.10.1921, SA, p. 509; Speech, 31.8.1920, SA, p. 219; Circular, 19.11.1921, SA, p. 522. See also Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs (Stuttgart, 1987), p. 28 et passim; Claus-Christian Szejnmann, ‘Nazi economic thought and rhetoric during the Weimar Republic: capitalism and its discontents’, Politics, Religion & Ideology, 14 (2013), pp. 355–76; and Henry A. Turner Jr, ‘Hitlers Einstellung zu Wirtschaft and Gesellschaft vor 1933’, Geschichte and Gesellschaft, 2 (1976) p. 97.

  114. Speech, 5.9.1920, SA, p. 222; Speech, November 1920, SA, p. 268; Speech, 19.8.1921, SA, p. 458.

  115. Speech, 26.10.1921, p. 509.

  116. Speech, 4.3.1920, SA, p. 114.

  117. E.g. Speech, 6.7.1920, SA, p. 158. See also: Speech, 24.6.1920, SA, p. 151; Speech, 21.7.1920, SA, p. 163; Notes for a speech, 31.5.1921, SA, pp. 421–2.

  118. See Michael Geyer, ‘Insurrectionary warfare: the German debate about a levée en masse in October 1918’, Journal of Modern History, 73 (2001), pp. 459–527, especially pp. 512–13 et passim.

  119. Notes for a speech, [after 29.1.1921], SA, p. 306; Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 144; Speech, 7.8.1920, SA, p. 176; Speech, 12.4.1922, SA, p. 612; Speech, 11.8.1922, SA p. 677.

  120. Speech, 20.9.1920, SA, p. 229; Speech, 17.2.1922, SA, p. 577.

  121. This is how Keith L. Nelson, ‘The “Black Horror on the Rhine”: race as a factor in post-World War I diplomacy’, Journal of Modern History, 42 (1970), pp. 606–27, translates Hitler’s use of the term, p. 626.

  122. Speech, 30.11.1922, SA, p. 752; Speech, 24.4.1923, SA, p. 913; Notes for a speech, 20.7.1921, SA, pp. 441–2; Speech, 28.6.1922, SA, p. 665; Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 144; Speech, 11.1.1923, SA, p. 783.

  123. Quoted in Gerwin Strobl, The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), p. 45.

  124. See Jared Poley, Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (Berne, 2005), pp. 215–47.

  125. Iris Wigger, Die ‘schwarze Schmach am Rhein’. Rassistische Diskriminierung zwischen Geschlecht, Klasse, Nation und Rasse (Münster, 2007), p. 36 et passim.

  126. Marcia Klotz, ‘The Weimar Republic: a postcolonial state in a still-colonial world’, in Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz and Lora Wildenthal (eds.), Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, Nebr. and London, 2005), pp. 135–47, especially pp. 143–5.

  127. In Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Lebanon, Va., 2009).

  128. See Kris K. Manjapra, ‘The illusions of encounter: Muslim “minds” and
Hindu revolutionaries in First World War Germany and after’, Journal of Global History, 1 (2006), pp. 363–82, especially p. 380.

  129. Speech, 19.8.1921, SA, p. 458; Article, 1.1.1921, SA, p. 281; Article, 27.1.1921, SA, p. 301; Speech, 5.5.1922, SA, p. 638; Speech, 24.4.1923, SA, p. 912; Notes for a speech, ‘mid 1922’, SA, p. 648.

  130. Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 146; Speech, 26.10.1920, SA, p. 252; Speech, [before 6.6.1920], SA, p. 140; Speech, 12.4.1922, SA, p. 617; Speech, 28.7.1922, SA, p. 663.

  131. Speech, 22.6.1922, SA, p. 645; Speech, 28.6.1922, SA, p. 660.

  132. Speech, 8.11.1922, SA, p. 723.

  133. Thus Lorna Waddington, Hitler’s Crusade: Bolshevism, the Jews and the Myth of Conspiracy (London and New York, 2012), p. 34.

  134. Speech,18.11.1920, SA, p. 732; Conversation, late December 1922, SA, p. 773.

  135. Speech, 17.6.1923, SA, p. 937.

  136. Speech, 7.5.1920, SA, p. 130; Notes for a speech, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 334; Speech, 5.11.1920, SA, p. 257; Speech, 21.11.1922, SA, p. 739; Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, p. 144.

  137. Hitler and Anton Drexler to Walter Riehl, Munich, 1.3.1920, SA, p. 112.

  138. Court statement, 27.1.1921, SA, p. 303.

  139. NSDAP pamphlet, 24.9.1921, SA, pp. 492–3.

  140. Werner Bräuninger, ‘“Als Redner war Ballerstedt mein grösster Gegner”. Ein bayerischer Separatist gegen Hitler’, in Bräuninger, Hitlers Kontrahenten, pp. 19–27 (quotations on pp. 19–21).

  141. Speech, 10.4.1923, SA, p. 877; Speech, 28.12.1921, SA, p. 536; Speech, 17.4.1920, SA, p. 124; Notes for a speech, 25.8.1920, SA, p. 208; Speech, 6.3.1921, SA, p. 335; Notes for a speech, 10.4.1923, SA, p. 869.

  142. Speech, 11.6.1920, SA, pp. 142, 145; Proclamation, 23.9.1922, SA, pp. 694–5; Notes for a speech, 10.4.1923, SA, p. 870.

  143. Speech, 17.4.1923, SA, p. 901. In same vein: Speech, 20.9.1920, SA, p. 230.

  144. Notes for a speech, 8.12.1920, SA, p. 272.

  145. See Brendan Simms, ‘The return of the primacy of foreign policy’, in William Mulligan and Brendan Simms (eds.), German History, 21, 3 (2003), special issue on ‘The Primacy of Foreign Policy in German History’, pp. 275–92.