61. Mein Kampf, pp. 202 f.
62. Ibid., p. 204.
63. Communication from Speer to the author. The remark was made on the occasion of Hitler’s visit to Speer’s sickbed in Klessheim Palace. See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 335. The above-mentioned speech is that of February 15, 1942. In context the passage reads: “How important is a world that I myself can see if it is repressive, if my own people are enslaved? In that case, what can I see worth seeing?” The text is cited from Kotze and Krausnick, p. 322. See also Maser, Frühgeschichte, p. 127. Maser quotes a personal communication from General Vincenz Müller, who allegedly informed General von Bredow, on orders from Schleicher, that Hitler’s blindness had been solely “hysterical in nature.” But on the wartime personnel roster Hitler was recorded as wounded, “gassed.”
64. Mein Kampf, p. 293.
65. Ibid., pp. 204 f.
66. Kessler, Tagebücher 1918–1937, p. 173.
67. Preiss, p. 38 (speech of March 23, 1927).
68. Kessler, p. 206.
69. Winston Churchill, as quoted in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, p. 23 (without source).
70. Mein Kampf, p. 207. On the question of the red armband see Maser, Frühgeschichte, p. 132. Ernst Deuerlein has even argued that in the winter of 1918–19 Hitler entertained the notion of joining the Social Democratic Party. See Deuerlein, A ufstieg, p. 80.
71. Mein Kampf, p. 208.
72. Mein Kampf, p. 206.
INTERPOLATION I
1. Ernest Niekisch in: Widerstand III, 11, issue of November, 1928. See also Hitler in the special issue of the VB (Völkischer Beobachter) of January 3, 1921, and in the speech of September 22, 1920, also of April 12, 1922, which show broad variations on the same theme. The VB of July 19, 1922, for example, called Germany the “ideological training ground for international finance,” a “colony” of the victorious powers. Hitler sometimes denounced the Reich government as a “bailiff for the Allies” and the Weimar Constitution as the “law for enforcing the Treaty of Versailles”; cf. also Hitler’s speech of November 30, 1922 (this speech, as well as those mentioned in the following notes for which no other source is given, will be found in the corresponding issue of the VB).
2. Münchener Beobachter, October 4, 1919. This is the sheet from which the Völkische Beobachter later emerged; the quoted article purports to be a missive from an unnamed Catholic clergyman of Basel.
3. “Krasnij Terror,” October 1, 1918, quoted by Nolte, Faschismus, p. 24.
4. Hitler’s memorandum on the expansion of the NSDAP of October 22, 1922, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. I, 1509. The proclamation of the National Socialist Party headquarters cited earlier is printed in VB, July 19, 1922.
5. See the speech of April 12, 1922. For Hitler’s other assertions see the speeches of July 28, 1922; April 27, 1920; September 22, 1920; April 21, 1922; and the article in VB for January 1, 1921. Rosenberg, who obviously helped to shape the notions about atrocities in Russia, wrote in the VB of April 15, 1922, that Russia had “during Lenin’s ‘government’ become a battlefield strewn with corpses, an inferno in which millions upon millions of persons wander about famished, where millions are diseased, starved, and have died a miserable death on deserted roads.” The following quotation is taken from Hitler’s Reichstag speech of March 7, 1936. See Domarus, p. 587.
6. Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, p. 10.
7. Ibid., p. 63.
8. Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, pp. 561 ff.
9. Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, p. 86.
10. Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, p. 135.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Dawn,” in: Walter Kaufmann, ed. and trans., The Portable Nietzsche, p. 84.
12. Hermann Bahr, Der Antisemitismus. Ein internationales Interview. Bahr’s publication was based on conversations with many German and European writers and people in public life.
13. Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 140 f. See also the thoughtful comments on it in Eva G. Reichmann, Flucht in den Hass, pp. 82 ff. But cf. also Franz Neumann, Behemoth, p. 121. Neumann argued that anti-Semitism in Germany was extremely feeble and that the German people were “the least anti-Semitic”; this very fact, he held, was what made anti-Semitism a suitable weapon for Hitler.
14. VB, April 6, 1920. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck spoke of the “German mania for taking over all the ideas of the Westerners,” as though it were an honor to be received into the circle of the liberal nations.
15. Libres propos, p. 225. After eating, Hitler regularly rinsed his mouth; out of doors he almost always wore gloves, at least in his later years. Cf. also Kubizek, p. 286. The fear of venereal infection was, it is true, the prevailing anxiety of that whole generation. Zweig, Die Welt von gestern, pp. 105 ff., speaks of the extent to which it dominated people’s minds in Vienna.
16. The quotations and references are taken from, in order, VB of March 3, 1920, September 12, 1920, January 10, 1923, Mein Kampf, pp. 233 ff. and 257 ff. For this whole context cf. Nolte, Epoche, pp. 480 ff., where the central importance of anxiety as a factor in Hitler’s conduct as a whole is discussed. Similarly, Franz Neumann in his “Notizen zur Theorie der Diktatur” has pointed out the function of anxiety in the totalitarian state. See his Demokratischer und autoritärer Staat, pp. 242 ff. and 261 ff., where the verdict is rendered that Germany in that phase of its history was “the land of alienation and anxiety.”
17. Tischgespräche, p. 471.
18. Preiss, p. 152; also VB of January 1, 1921, and March 10, 1920—which, incidentally, appeared under the banner headline of: “Clean Out the Jews!” The article demanded immediate expulsion of all Jews who had immigrated after August 1, 1914, and the removal of all others from “all government posts, newspapers, theaters, and motion picture houses.” Special “collection camps” were to be set up to receive them.
19. Mein Kampf, pp. 65, 247, 249.
20. Stefan George, “Das Neue Reich,” in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9.
21. George L. Mosse, “Die Entstehung des Faschismus,” in: Internationaler Faschismus 1920–1945, p. 29.
BOOK II
1. In the proclamations of the Bavarian People’s Party (April 9, 1919), of the Bavarian Landtag (April 19), and in a report of the Bavarian Gruppenkommando on “The Bolshevist Danger and Ways of Fighting It” (July 15, 1919), the new men were indiscriminately equated with “elements alien to country and race,” “foreign, politicizing Jews,” “unscrupulous alien scoundrels” from the prisons and penitentiaries, “Jewish rascals,” and “misleaders of labor.” See Franz-Willing, Die Hitlerbewegung, pp. 32 ff. This crude propaganda always put Eisner on a par with the Communist leaders Lewien, Levine, and Axelrod, all of whom were in fact Russian emigres. The influence of that association has persisted to this day.
2. Josef Hofmiller, “Revolutionstagebuch 1918/1919,” in Schriften 2, Leipzig, 1938, p. 211. As for the number of victims, the extremely bitter fighting between April 30 and May 8, 1919, took a total of 557 lives, according to the police inquiry. In a report of the army’s Military History Research Institute on “The Repression of Soviet Rule in Bavaria in 1919,” published in 1939, the total is subjected to analysis. Of these 557 persons “38 White and 93 Red soldiers, 7 citizens and 7 Russians, fell in battle. In summary executions under martial law 42 members of the Red Army and 144 civilians were shot. No fewer than 184 innocent persons were killed either because of their own foolishness or unfortunate mischance. In forty-two cases the cause of death could not be ascertained. Three hundred and three wounded persons were reported.” Different figures are given by Maser, Frühgeschichte, pp. 40 f. Cf. also Emil Gumbel, Verräter verfallen der Feme, p. 36 passim.
3. Mein Kampf, p. 208. The reference is to Feder’s crackpot idea of “smashing interest slavery”; as one of the lecturers he was trying to popularize this notion in his talks.
4. See Ernst Deuerlein, “Hitlers Ein
tritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr,” in VJHfZ 1959: 2, p. 179. Incidentally, Hitler was not, as he puts it in Mein Kampf, p. 215, appointed as an “educational officer,” but was carried on the roster as a “liaison man.” It is a moot question whether his motive in covering up his real activity was a desire to share in the prestige of bourgeois education or in that of officer’s rank, or whether he merely wanted to avoid the dubious repute of liaison man, which implied “informer.”
5. The full text of Hitler’s letter, which is dated September 16, 1919, is printed by Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr,” pp. 201 ff.
6. In order to lessen Drexler’s importance, Hitler does not give his name (“I had not quite understood his name”). Instead, he repeatedly speaks of him as “that worker,” or uses similar phrases. When at last he has to mention Drexler as the chairman, he does so without indicating that it was Drexler who pressed the pamphlet on him. See Mein Kampf, pp. 219 ff.
7. Mein Kampf, p. 224. Also Adolf Hitler, “10 Jahre Kampf,” in: Illustrierter Beobachter, IV:31 (August 3, 1929).
8. Mein Kampf, p. 355.
9. Mein Kampf, pp. 293, 353.
10. Cf. the record of the Munich Political Intelligence Service in Reginald H. Phelps, “Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920,” in: VJHfZ 1963:3, pp. 292 ff. Phelps also relates the story of the finding of the documents he reproduces. Hitler’s romanticizing, exaggerated account of the meeting may be found in Mein Kampf, pp. 365 ff.
11. The importance of the program was long underestimated, and it was often dismissed as a mere opportunistic propaganda trick. That opinion overlooks the seriousness and the anxious sincerity of those who drafted the program. Hitler himself, moreover, was at that time not playing the kind of part that this interpretation assumes. Recently, more balanced evaluations of the party program have begun to appear; cf., for example, Jacobsen and Jochmann, Ausgewählte Dokumente, p. 24, or Nolte, Epoche, p. 392. A different view is taken by Bracher, Diktatur, p. 98.
12. On the “Protocols” see Günter Schubert, Anfänge nationalsozialistischer Aussenpolitik, pp. 33 ff. In the first Hitler speech for which the full text is available, the speech of August 13, 1920, Hitler used many themes from the “Protocols.” Cf. Phelps, “Hitlers grundlegende Rede über den Antisemitismus,” VJHfZ, 1968:4, p. 398.
13. Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 170, where Hitler states that “movements with a definite spiritual foundation… can… only be broken with technical instruments of power if these physical weapons are at the same time the support of a new thought, idea or philosophy.” Two pages further on he writes: “Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of violence will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for a new spiritual attitude.” Similar statements may be found in Hitler’s speech of August 13, 1920, VJHfZ, 1968:4, pp. 415, 417.
14. Rauschning, Gespräche, pp. 174 f.
15. Mein Kampf, p. 485.
16. Deuerlein, “Eintritt,” p. 211 (Doc. 19) and p. 215 (Doc. 24).
17. Dietrich Eckart admitted in VB, July 15, 1922, that he had personally received 60,000 marks from General von Epp. The newspaper cost 120.000 marks, and in addition had debts amounting to 250,000 marks. This liability was also assumed by the NSDAP. Hitler himself declared that he “paid a heavy price” for his foolishness at the time; and it appears that the party had to bear the burden of these debts until 1933. As one method of supporting the newspaper, every party member undertook to subscribe to the VB; from January, 1921, on the membership dues of.50 mark were supplemented by an equal sum for the support of the party newspaper. The circulation remained static at first, then dropped to almost 8.000 before rising, in the spring of 1922, to 17,500 subscribers. Cf. Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party 1919–1933, p. 22.
18. Report by Heinrich Derbacher of a meeting with Dietrich Eckart in January, 1920. From the posthumous papers of Anton Drexler, quoted in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, p. 104; also, with further quotations, Nolte, Epoche, p. 403.
19. Konrad Heiden, Hitler, a Biography, cited by Bullock, p. 81.
20. Karl Alexander von Müller, Im Wandel einer Welt, p. 129.
21. Libres propos, p. 151.
22. Cf. especially the speeches in VJHfZ 1963:3, pp. 289 ff. and VJHfZ 1968:4, pp. 412 ff.
23. Ibid., pp. 107 ff. The party committee’s reply is also printed here.
24. Quoted in: Rudolf Hess, der Stellvertreter des Führers, no author indicated; published in the series Zeitgeschichte, Berlin, 1933, pp. 9 ff.
25. Rauschning, Gespräche, p. 81.
26. Mein Kampf, pp. 504—06.
27. Speech of August 1, 1923, quoted in Boepple, p. 72.
28. Hitler in VB, August 30, 1922; also Mein Kampf, p. 100. In the party of the early period small craftsmen and small businessmen were distinctly overrepresented—187 per cent in proportion to their numbers in the general population. On this subject cf. Iring Fetcher, “Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus,” p. 53.
29. Mein Kampf, p. 470.
30. Tischgespräche, pp. 261 f.; here Hitler mentions a whole list of his tactics and tricks; cf. also Mein Kampf, pp. 504 f., and Heiden, Geschichte, p. 28.
31. K. A. v. Müller, pp. 144 f.
32. Norman H. Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. I, p. 107; also R. H. Phelps in: VJFfZ 1963:3, p. 299.
33. Tischgespräche, p. 451; also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 109. For the following remark of Hitler, see Mein Kampf, p. 467.
34. Kurt G. W. Luedecke, I Knew Hitler, pp. 22 f.; also Ernst Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, p. 43.
35. Cf. Tischgespräche, p. 224.
36. Communicated to the author by Albert Speer. Speer was present at this scene; “Wolfsburg” was the name of an estate in the vicinity.
37. According to Hitler’s statement; cf. Görlitz and Quint, Adolf Hitler, p. 185.
38. Boepple, p. 118.
39. Cf. Maser, Hitler, p. 405, for many details. Further references in Heiden, Geschichte, pp. 143 ff.; Franz-Willing, p. 177, and Bullock, pp. 84 f. Bullock underestimates the importance of foreign financial backers, probably because the sources of support have been only recently uncovered.
40. Franz-Willing, p. 182. Cf. also Luedecke, p. 99. Luedecke speaks of a woman of some fifty-odd years who called at the business office after a Hitler speech and spontaneously gave the party an inheritance she had just received. On this and related matters see also Orlow, pp. 108 ff., which contains further references.
41. According to a speech in the Reichstag by Helmut von Mücke, a former naval officer who originally counted among the leaders of the NSDAP. In July, 1929, he had discussed the party’s methods of financing itself in an open letter. See Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 444, pp. 138 f.
42. Cf. Maser, Frühgeschichte, pp. 410 f.; also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 46, and Walter Laqueur, Deutschland und Russland, pp. 76 f.
43. Heiden, Hitler I, p. 162.
44. Boepple, p. 87.
45. Hitler spoke these words as early as September 12, 1923; see Boepple, p. 91.
46. Quoted in Heiden, Geschichte, p. 143.
47. The letter is printed in Illustrierter Beobachter, 1926:2, p. 6.
48. As the meeting was breaking up, Interior Minister Schweyer stepped up to Hitler, who was feeling himself the victor of the evening, tapped him on the chest “like an angry schoolmaster,” and said that this victory had been “nothing but a breach of faith.” This is the incident referred to in the quoted remark by Heiden in Hitler I, p. 181.
49. Statement by Julius Streicher at the Nuremberg trial, IMT VII, p. 340.
50. Cf., for example, Maser, Frühgeschichte, pp. 453 f.; Maser even charges Hitler with having sued for the favor of the monarchist generals. See also Heiden, Geschichte, pp. 162 f. Bullock, pp. 113 f., straddles the fence; on the one hand he charges Hitler with incompetence as a revolutionary and on the other hand denies that Hitler intended a revolutionary uprising.
51. Der Hitlerprozess, p. 28. The previous quot
ation, in which Hitler contrasts his conduct with that of the Kapp putschists, is taken from his speech of November 8, 1934. Hans von Hülsen characterized the trial as a “political carnival”; quoted in Deuerlein, A ufstieg, p. 205.
52. This reprimand to the court was pronounced by Minister of State von Meinel; cf. Deuerlein, Hitler-Putsch, p. 216; ibid., pp. 221 f. for the remarks of Pöhner.
BOOK III
1. Bracher, Diktatur, p. 139, Hitler’s assertion that he first developed the idea of the autobahnen and of a cheap “people’s car” is reported by Frank, p. 47. Hanfstaengl, p. 114, declares that Hitler’s cell looked like a delicatessen store. He says that Hitler found the surplus useful for inducing the guards to be even more favorably inclined to him than they already were. On the horde of visitors, their requests, concerns, and intentions, cf. the report of the prison director dated September 18, 1924, BHStA I, p. 1501.
2. Hitler on February 3, 1942, to a group of Old Fighters; cf. Shirer, Rise and Fall, p. 90n.
3. Mein Kampf, p. 36.
4. Ibid., pp. 212 f.
5. Ibid., pp. 154 f.
6. Olden, Hitler, p. 140, and Mein Kampf, pp. 24, 31, 493. According to various sources, among those who worked on correcting and editing the manuscript were Stolzing-Cerny, the music critic of the Völkische Beobachter; Bernhard Stempfle, the former monk and priest as well as editor of the anti-Semitic Miesbacher Anzeiger; and, though with limited success, Ernst Hanfstaengl. However, Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess’s wife, has disputed all allegations of editorial assistance by others and also denied that Hitler dictated the book to her husband. Instead, she maintained, Hitler “himself typed the manuscript with two fingers on an ancient typewriter during his imprisonment in Landsberg.” Cf. Maser, Hitlers “Mein Kampf,” p. 20; also Frank, p. 39.
7. Mein Kampf, pp. 325, 412, 562; also Hitlers Zweites Buch, p. 221.
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