Hitler (147 page)

In addition, the political and moral catastrophe that Hitler brought upon the country also served to change attitudes. Auschwitz might be said to represent the fiasco of the private German universe and its autistic narcissism. It is incontestably true that the majority of Germans knew nothing of the practices in the death camps, and at any rate knew far less about them than the world public whose attention had been called, in repeated cries of alarm from the end of 1941 on, to the mass crimes that were taking place.
¹³
The apathy and lack of reaction to the circulating rumors derived to some extent from the feeling that the events in the camps belonged to that political sphere that had always been alien and uninteresting to them.

This, too, helps explain why the Germans after 1945 tended to repress their recent experience. For putting Hitler behind them also meant to some extent putting a whole way of life behind them, taking leave of the private world and the cultural type they had been for so long. It remained for the younger generation to complete the break, to cut the ties to the past and achieve freedom from sentiment, prejudices, and memories. Paradoxically, in doing so, in a sense it actually completed Hitler's revolution. This younger generation thinks politically, socially, and pragmatically to an extent hitherto uncommon in Germany. It has, aside from some marginal individuals, renounced all intellectual radicalness, all asocial passion for grand theories, and it has shed the qualities that for so long had been peculiar to German thinking: the systematic approach, profundity, and contempt for reality. It argues soberly, objectively, and, to use a famous phrase of Bertolt Brecht's, it no longer conducts conversations about trees.
¹⁴
Its mentality is highly contemporary; it has abandoned the realms of a past that never existed and an imaginary future. For the first time Germany is busy making her peace with reality. But along with this, German thought has lost something of its identity; it practices empiricism, is willing to compromise, and is concerned about the general welfare. The German sphinx, of which Carlo Sforza spoke shortly before Hitler came to power,
¹⁵
has yielded up its secret. And the world can feel the better for this.

 

Nevertheless, Fascist or related tendencies have survived in Germany, as they have elsewhere. What have survived above all are certain psychological hypotheses, though these may have no obvious connection with Nazism or may turn up under unusual, often leftist auspices. Similarly, certain social and economic concomitants of Nazism have survived. The ideological premises have had the shortest span of survival, for example, the nationalism of the period between the wars, the eagerness for great-power status, or the dread of Communism. A certain bias toward Fascist solutions may be seen as a reaction to the transition from stable conditions to the uncertain future of modern societies and will continue as long as the crisis of adjustment lasts. No one yet knows the most effective way to counter this trend. For the experience of Nazism did not promote rational analysis of the causes of the crisis; rather, it prevented it for a long time. The vast shadow cast by the death camps acted as a check upon our even thinking of the way in which the Nazi phenomenon might have been related to determinative factors of the era or to the more universal needs of men, to anxieties about the future, impulses to opposition, to the emotional transfiguration of simple things, to the awakening of nostalgic atavisms, to the desire to believe “that everything could be different, with different truths and different gods of very remote times, with dragons engraved upon very ancient stones.”

These aspects of what had happened remained repressed for many years. Moral indignation beclouded the realization that the people who formed Hitler's following, who had perpetrated the cheering and the barbarities, had not been monsters. The world-wide unrest of the late sixties once again brought to the fore many of the elements that have repeatedly recurred in descriptions of pre-Fascist conditions: the cultural pessimism, the craving for spontaneity, intoxication, and a dramatic quality of life, the vehemence of youth and the aestheticizing of force. Of course, these are still a far cry from true pre-Fascist phenomena; all the comparisons between the recent and the earlier movements break on one reef: the question of the weak and the oppressed, for which Fascism had no answer.
¹⁶
When Hitler called himself “the greatest liberator of humanity,” he significantly alluded to the “saving doctrine of the unimportance of the individual human being.”
¹⁷
But it is also well to remember that the Fascist syndrome has so far rarely ever appeared in pure form embracing all its elements and is always threatening to veer over into new variants.

To the extent that Fascism is rooted in the age's sense of crisis, it remains latent and will end only with the age itself. Since it is so much a reaction and a desperate defensive reflex, it lacks a positive shape of its own. This means that Fascist movements are more in need of a towering leader than other political groups. He absorbs the resentments, identifies the enemies, transforms despondency into intoxication, and makes weakness aware of its strength. The broad perspectives Hitler was able to extract from sheer anxiety must be held among his remarkable achievements. As no one else did, he overdrew the ideological and dynamic potentialities of the years between the wars. But upon his death everything collapsed, as it was bound to do; the whipped-up, concentrated, and deliberately manipulated emotions at once fell back into the diffuse, disorderly state in which they had originated.

This dead end was manifested on all planes. For all that Hitler had stressed the suprapersonal aspects of his work, had flaunted his mission and presented himself as the instrument of Providence, he did not last beyond his time. Since he could not offer any persuasive picture of the future state of the world, any hope, any encouraging goal, nothing of his thought survived him. He had always used ideas merely as instruments; when at death he abandoned them, they were compromised and used up. This great demagogue left behind him not so much as a memorable phrase, an impressive formula. Similarly, he who had wanted to be the greatest builder of all time left not a single building to the present. Nothing survived even of those grandiose structures that were completed. Shortly after the seizure of power radical zealots within the Nazi party were saying that “Hitler dead... will be more useful to the Movement than Hitler alive.” It was argued that he would have to disappear into the darkness of legend, that even his corpse must vanish beyond recovery so that he would “end in a mystery for the credulous masses.”
¹⁸
The postwar era proved that this had been a vast romantic misconception. What had been apparent by, at the latest, the turning point of the war was once again driven home: Hitler's catalyzing powers were indispensable and that everything, the will, the goal, the cohesiveness, instantly disappeared without the visible presence of the great “leader.” Hitler had no secret that extended beyond his immediate presence. The people whose loyalty and admiration he had won never followed a vision, but only a force. In retrospect his life seems like a steady unfolding of tremendous energy. Its effects were vast, the terror it spread enormous; but when it was over there was little left for memory to hold.

On the whole, German language material has been newly translated for the purposes of this book, even when the reference is to an original English publication (such as Alan Bullock's
Hitler). Mein Kampf,
however, is uniformly quoted in Ralph Manheim's translation (with some emendations approved by him), currently available in paperback (Sentry Edition), published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Short references, consisting of author's name and page number only, are fully listed in the bibliography.

The notes are not restricted solely to sources but frequently develop various subjects discussed in the text; therefore, proper names of people appearing in expository sections of the notes will be found in the index.

Where English translations of foreign works have been published, they are mentioned in the bibliography following the entry for the original work.

For this edition the author has cut the notes by about half; readers interested in the full apparatus are referred to the German edition.

 

PROLOGUE

 

1. This Ranke quotation is cited in one of Konrad Heiden's books. The author is aware of his indebtedness to Heiden in many respects. His was the earliest historical study of the phenomena of Hitler and National Socialism, and in the boldness of its inquiry and the freedom of its judgment it remains exemplary to the present day.

2. Speech of February 24, 1937, in the Munich Hofbräuhaus; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 107.

3. Trevor-Roper, ed., Foreword to
Le Testament politique de Hitler,
p. 13.

4. Speech of May 20, 1937; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 223.

5. Jacob Burckhardt,
Force and Freedom: Reflections on History,
pp. 313 ff. With Hitler in mind, Gottfried Benn in a famous letter to Klaus Mann specifically referred to Burckhardt's observation. Benn wrote: “But here and now you may constantly hear the question: did Hitler create the Movement or did the Movement create him? This question is significant; the two cannot be distinguished because they are both identical. What is really involved here is that mysterious coincidence of the individual and the communal that Burckhardt speaks of in his
Reflections on History,
when he describes the great men who have moved history. Great men—it is all there: the dangers of the beginning, their appearance almost always in times of terror, the enormous perseverance, the abnormal facility in all things, especially in organic functions; but then also the premonition of all thinking persons that he is the one to accomplish things that are essential and that only he can accomplish.” Gottfried Benn,
Gesammelte Werke
IV, pp. 246 f.

6. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 339.

7. Thomas Mann, “Bruder Hitler,” in:
Gesammelte Werke
XII, p. 778.

8. Kühnl, “Der deutsche Faschismus,” in:
Neue politische Literatur,
1970:1, p. 13.

9. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

10. Hitler speaking to the chiefs of the Wehrmacht in the chancellery on May 23, 1939; see Domarus, p. 1197.

11.
Mein Kampf,
p. 353.

12. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

 

BOOK I

 

1. Cf. Dietrich,
Zwölf Jahre,
p. 149. See also Heiden,
Geschichte,
p. 75.

2. Ribbentrop, p. 45.

3. Maser,
Hitler,
p. 34. For Frank's story see Frank,
Im Angesicht des Galgens,
pp. 320 f.; also Maser,
Hitler,
pp. 26 f. Maser cannot, of course, prove his thesis. Nevertheless, he advances his argument as if it were conclusive. Even the fact that Hitler waited until after his wife's death to legitimize Alois is, to Maser, in favor of his argument, although that fact suggests just the opposite of his conclusion. It is reasonable to assume that Hitler would have been prompted to such an act of consideration only if he wished to admit that he himself was the father and had legitimized Alois as his own son. All the other arguments are equally dubious. In general, Maser cannot suggest any plausible motive for Hüttler's conduct. It is a very old assumption that Hitler insisted on the change of name as a condition for appointing Alois Schicklgruber his heir; cf., for instance, Kubizek, p. 59. We must add that the question of who Hitler's grandfather was is really of secondary importance. Only Hans Frank's version could have given it a new psychological dimension; aside from that, it is merely a matter of minor interest.

4.
Mein Kampf,
p. 6.

5.
Mein Kampf,
pp. 8, 10.

6.
Mein Kampf,
p. 10.

7.
Mein Kampf,
p. 18. Hitler alleged a “serious lung ailment,” but the assertion will not hold water. Cf. Jetzinger, p. 148; also Heiden,
Hitler
I, p. 28. The episode is also reported in Zoller, p. 49, where Hitler traces his dislike for alcohol back to it. On the incident of the discarded report card cf. Maser,
Hitler,
pp. 68 ff.

8. Kubizek repeatedly stresses Hitler's striking tendency to confound dream and reality. See, for example, pp. 100 f. For the episode of the lottery ticket (which follows here), see pp. 127 ff.

9. Kubizek, p. 79.

10.
Ibid.,
pp. 140 ff. However, the scene appears to have been exaggerated and retouched. On the whole, Kubizek's credibility is suspect. His memoirs were conceived with the intention of glorifying Hitler. The value of the book consists less in demonstrable facts than in the descriptions and character judgments that quite often emerge against the author's will.

11.
Mein Kampf,
p. 5. Hitler speaks of the “lovely dream” on p. 18. Cf. the letter to Kubizek dated August 4, 1933, in which Hitler speaks of the “best years of my life”; facsimile in Kubizek, p. 32.

12. Oral communication from Albert Speer. On Hitler's fantasy of withdrawing from politics see
Tischgespräche,
pp. 167 f.

13. Cf. Andies, p. 192. Also, for this and the previously mentioned facts and statistics: Jenks, pp. 113 ff. In 1913, 29 per cent of the students in the Faculty of Medicine were Jews, 20.5 per cent in the Faculty of Law, and 16.3 per cent in the Faculty of Philosophy. By contrast, the Jewish proportion among criminals was 6.3 per cent, considerably lower than the Jewish proportion in the population at large. Cf. Jenks, pp. 121 f.

14.
Mein Kampf,
p. 19. The following “classification list” is printed in Heiden,
Hitler
I, p. 30
(Der Führer,
p. 52).

15.
Mein Kampf,
p. 20.

16.
Ibid.,
p. 20.