The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  “Down with the Terrorism of Jewry”: Ibid., p. 490.

  “the entire Marxist worldview”: Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew (New York: 2011); Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 37–51.

  planned a trip to Munich together: Hanisch, “I Was Hitler’s Buddy,” p. 271.

  “but which never left me”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 125.

  “for primarily political reasons”: Ernst Günther Schenck, Patient Hitler. Eine medizinische biographie (Düsseldorf, 1989), p. 163.

  “by far the most contented of my life”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 126.

  physically unfit for military service: Schenck, Patient Hitler, p. 297.

  “the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 161.

  singlehandedly capturing seven French soldiers: Hitler related the story to American correspondent H. R. Knickerbocker. See Knickerbocker’s Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? (New York, 1941), pp. 31–32. For the many embellishments and outright fabrications of Hitler’s war record in Nazi propaganda, see Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War, pp. 272–77.

  “weakness and narrow-mindedness”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 192–93.

  the vicious accusations from the right continued unabated: For details, see Werner T. Angress, “The German Army’s ‘Jüdenzählung’ of 1916-Genesis-Consequences-Significance,” Leo Baeck Yearbook 23 (1978), pp. 117–38.

  revolution would engulf the country: Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1996), pp. 15–19.

  “and shirkers were losing the war”: Ernst Schmidt, Hitler’s closest comrade among the messengers, quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York, 1976), p. 70.

  “goes on strike against it”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 195.

  “than the biggest cannon of the enemy”: Hans Mend, quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler (New York, 1953), p. 53.

  “internationalism will be broken up”: Letter to Josh Popp, his Munich landlord, cited in Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 62.

  “damned the war to hell”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 84.

  a morbid fear of syphilis: He would return time and again in speeches, private conversations, and in the pages of Mein Kampf to the scourge of prostitution and syphilis, which he attributed to the Jews. Mein Kampf, pp. 246–56.

  “not the time for it”: Ibid., p. 160. His sergeant, Max Amann, who would later become Hitler’s business manager and editor, confirmed that Hitler rarely discussed politics during the war.

  a pathological obsession by war’s end: See the recollections of Hans Mend from Hitler’s regiment, in Rudolf Olden, Hitler the Pawn (London, 1936), pp. 70–71.

  “without spitefulness”: Ignaz Westenkirchner, quoted in Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 66.

  “hatred of Jews dated back to that time”: Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte (Velbert/Kettig, 1964), pp. 33–34.

  “his mental instability”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 84.

  lacked “the capacity for leadership”: Wiedemann, quoted in Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 67.

  “psychopath suffering from hysteria”: Thomas Weber, pp. 220–21.

  “the shame of indignation”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 250.

  “in the world of war he felt at home”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 78.

  “for the time being regular pay”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 206.

  Chapter 2: Hitler and the Chaos of Postwar Germany

  four times the size of the regular army: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 38–42.

  Bolshevik terror and counterrevolutionary suppression: Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York, 2004), p. 160.

  a task he performed with his usual zeal: Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 207–8.

  The courses . . . included such offerings: Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, vol. I (New York, 1998), pp. 121–23.

  “immense importance for the future of the German people”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 213.

  “a natural orator in your group?”: The instructor was Karl Alexander von Müller, the archconservative historian who later joined the NSDAP. See Müller, Mars und Venus. Erinnerungen, 1914–1919 (Stuttgart, 1954), p. 339, quoted in David Clay Large, Where Ghosts Walked (New York, 1997), p. 128.

  “I could ‘speak’ ”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 215.

  “and makes them think his way”: Joachim Remak, The Nazi Years (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969), p. 25.

  tone down his anti-Semitic rhetoric: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, p. 12.

  “removal of the Jews in general”: Hitler’s letter is reproduced in Eberhard Jäckel, ed., Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905–1924 (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 88–90.

  Hitler left underwhelmed: Georg Franz-Willig, Die Hitlerbewegung. Der Ursprung 1919–1922, second edition (Hamburg, 1962), pp. 66–67. Drexler’s account of that meeting and his impressions of Hitler are also found in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffry Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919–1945, vol. I: The Rise to Power (Exeter, UK, 1983), p. 11.

  at which Hitler spoke again: Franz-Willig, Die Hitlerbewegung, p. 71.

  a new government had to be formed: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 72–74.

  The Versailles Treaty and its impact on the fledgling Weimar Republic: Ibid., pp. 87–91.

  It was, Hitler charged: Ibid. Such attacks on the hated peace treaty were staples of Hitler’s rhetoric throughout his career.

  He had stolen the show: Franz-Willig, Die Hitlerbewegung, pp. 73–74.

  “the voice of the people were speaking”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, pp. 105–10.

  “only to religious conversion”: Kurt Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (New York, 1937), p. 268.

  the “Twenty-five Points”: The Twenty-five Points and the DAP’s original program can be found in Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, eds., The Third Reich Source Book (Berkeley, 2013), pp. 5–6, 12–14.

  unrelenting anti-Semitism: Franz-Willig, Die Hitlerbewegung, p. 83.

  “There can only be the hard ‘either—or’ ”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 203.

  cut from the same cloth as Hitler: Franz-Willig, Die Hitlerbewegung, pp. 67–68.

  Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A highly successful forgery, published in pamphlet form in Russia in 1903, claiming the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to ensure world domination. It was widely circulated in Europe before the war and enthusiastically seized upon by German far-right, anti-Semitic circles. By 1921 it was fully exposed as a fraud, though this discovery had little effect on its lingering popularity across Europe. See Benjamin Segel and Richard S. Levy, A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Lincoln, NE, 1995); and Esther Webman, The Global Impact of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (London, 2011).

  but because it was revolutionary: Göring, Hanfstaengl recalled, was “not the intellectual type.” In those early postwar years, he was “a complete condottiere, the pure soldier of fortune.” Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Memoir of a Nazi Insider Who Turned Against the Führer (New York, 1957), pp. 71–72.

  “the orderly life of your respectable burgher”: Ernst Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters, quoted in Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 98.

  German nationalist and racist: Chamberlain was the author of The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a pseudo-intellectual work first published in Germany in 1899 that provided a racist, nationalist interpretation of Germany’s past. It was greatly admired by anti-Semites everywhere. Among its many enthusiasts was Adolf Hitler.

  seen in a dinner jacket and white tie: Hanfstaengl, Hitler, pp. 42–43.

  notably absent: Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, NY, 1985), pp. 47–60.

  from anti-Marxist groups abroad: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 188–91.

  were collected in celebration of Hitler’s birthday: Borsig soon soured on Hitler after reading the Nazi program and refused to offer further financial support. Thyssen’s contributions were made not directly to the NSDAP but to Ludendorff, who dispensed the funds to different counte
rrevolutionary groups, including the Nazis. Turner, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, p. 60.

  executing many and murdering others: James Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in the Weimar Republic (Bloomington, IN, 1977), pp. 29–30.

  were committed by leftists: Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 110.

  “when murder could be had for small change”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 113.

  the schedule of installments: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 112–13.

  “madness, nightmare, desperation and chaos”: Fritz Ringer, ed., The German Inflation of 1923 (London, 1969), p. 144. See also Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (Oxford, NY, 1997); and Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, Die Deutsche Inflation 1914–1923 (Berlin, 1980).

  “the death of money”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 126.

  flock to hear him speak: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 196–98; Large, Where Ghosts Walked, pp. 168–72.

  coup swept throughout Munich: Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in the Weimar Republic, p. 143; Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, p. 191.

  the party had to act: Harold J. Gordon, Jr., Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, (Princeton, 1962), pp. 241–42.

  no time for unilateral moves: Ibid., pp. 246–56.

  Kahr’s hand would have to be forced: Ibid., pp. 258–59.

  “a revolution by sheer bluff”: Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York, 1953), p. 85.

  “with all his medals clinking”: Hanfstaengl, Hitler, p. 97.

  training it directly on the audience: David Clay Large, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich (New York, 1997), p. 176

  “This hall is surrounded”: Adolf Hitler quoted in ibid., p. 177.

  “Charlie Chaplin and a headwaiter”: Quoted in ibid., p. 177.

  no laughing matter: Otto Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist für den Terroristen Adolf H. Der Hitler Putsch und die bayerische Justiz (Munich, 1990), p. 14, quoted in Large, Where Ghosts Walked, p. 177.

  “cannot now be undone”: Hitler quoted in Gordon, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, p. 286.

  “every province in Germany”: Hitler, quoted in Large, Where Ghosts Walked, p. 178.

  boisterous cries of “Yes, yes!”: Müller, Im Wandel der Zeit, pp. 162–63, quoted in Gordon, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, pp. 287–88.

  “ditch of some obscure country lane”: Hanfstaengl, Hitler, p. 104.

  almost all were armed: Large, Where Ghosts Walked, pp. 185–86.

  “for she acquits us”: Hitler’s closing statement in Der Hitler Prozess 1924 Wortlaut der Hauptverhandlung vor dem Volksgericht München I, Teil 4: 19–25. Verhandlungstag, Lothard Grunchmann and Reinhard Weber, eds., p. 159; English translation in Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 206.

  “impossible to keep Hitler from talking”: Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 189.

  “an excellent joke for All Fools Day”: New York Times, April 1, 1924.

  “the Law for the Protection of the Republic”: Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 188–93.

  Chapter 3: On the Fringe, 1925–28

  “all the stuff started in there”: Hanfstaengl, Hitler, p. 114.

  “made even the smallest disturbance”: H. Kallenbach, Mit Adolf Hitler auf Festung Landsberg (Munich, 1933), quoted in Werner Maser, Hitler’s Mein Kampf (London, 1970), 22–23.

  “sat around him like schoolboys”: O. Lurker, Hitler hinter Festungsmauern (Berlin, 1933), quoted in Maser, p. 23.

  a shorter, pithier title: Mein Kampf (My Struggle): Maser, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, p. 26.

  Rosenberg was in no danger: Wolfgang Horn, Der Marsch zur Machtergreifung; Ian Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I,

  to the stabilization crisis of 1924: For details, see Thomas Childers, “Inflation, Stabilization, and Political Realignment in Germany, 1924–1928,” in Gerald D. Feldman et al., eds., Die Deutsche inflation (Berlin, 1982); and Feldman, The Great Disorder, pp. 754–802.

  loomed over the negotiations: Feldman, The Great Disorder, p. 821ff.

  cooperated and accepted the report: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 172–73.

  by the vindictive Allied governments: See J. W. Reichert, ed., Helferrichs Reichstagsreden 1922–1924, pp. 323–24; for the Communist reaction, Die Rote Fahne, March 22, 1924.

  all the enemies of the Republic: Childers, “Inflation, Stabilization, and Political Realignment in Germany, 1920–1928,” pp. 409–43.

  in the original classical Greek: Peter D. Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 30–31.

  burgeoning regional stature: Ibid.

  “for or against the Jews”: “Aus dem Schulbuch der Marxisten,” Völkisch coalition leaflet, 1924, Bundesarchiv (BA) ZSg. I, 45/13, and “Zu den Stadtverordnetenwahl,” Völkisch leaflet, 1924, BA, ZSg. I, 45/14.

  onset of the Great Depression in 1929: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 30–31.

  manage events from the confines of prison: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 228–29.

  the rudderless party to disintegrate: Heiden, Der Fuerher, p. 251.

  “the country of his birth”: New York Times, December 20, 1924.

  stormed out of the meeting: Horn, p. 165ff.

  “allied with or supportive of them”: Völkischer Beobachter, February 26, 1925.

  “world pestilence and scourge, the Jew”: Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, vol. I, pp. 14ff, 28.

  collapse of German democracy: Wolfgang Horn, Der Marsch zur Machtergreifung (Düsseldorf, 1980), pp. 216–18; see also Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism (New York and Oxford, 1990).

  owing allegiance to him personally: Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in the Weimar Republic, pp. 158–60; Peter Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone (Munich, 1989), pp. 39–40.

  an instrument for political agitation: Hitler. RSA, vol. 2, p. 9.

  never offered a response of any kind to his old comrade: Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, pp. 48–52.

  “from your personal friendship”: See Ernst Röhm, Die Memoiren des Stabschef Röhm (Saarbrücken, 1934), p. 160.

  “those worms around him”: Kurt Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (New York, 1937), p. 287.

  the vast majority in the north: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, p. 41.

  “move an audience by his very personality”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 285.

  most visible Nazi leader in the country: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, p. 270.

  rather than a follower: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, p. 38.

  “to bring about the national revolution”: Strasser’s Reichstag speech, November 25, 1925, quoted in ibid., p. 42.

  “thus national suicide”: February 14, 1926, Hitler. RSA, vol. I, pp. 294–95.

  “to see you in this company”: Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1924–25, I/II, February 14, 1926, p. 55.

  been so wrong about Hitler: Horn, Der Marsch zur Machtergreifung, p. 241.

  firmly under Hitler’s control: Noakes and Pridham, eds., Nazism, vol. I, pp. 55–56.

  “the greater man, the political genius”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, I/II, April 13, 1926, p. 73.

  executing the party’s campaign directives: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 68–73.

  “and after that Germany”: Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, pp. 234–35.

  “repeat them over and over”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 179–84.

  so too should the National Socialists: Ibid., p. 230.

  the Propaganda Leadership in Munich: NS Rundschreiben, March 20, 1926, HA/70/1529.

  assault on the surrounding countryside: Joseph Goebbels, “Neue Methoden der Propaganda,” Nationalsozialistische Briefe, August 15, 1926.

  propaganda and campaign strategy: Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party (Pittsburgh, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 112–26.

  forms of agitational activity: “Propaganda,” Munich 1927, BA/NS12/40.

  a rough form of local entertainment: E. Stark, Moder
ne Politische Propaganda, Propagandaschriften der NSDAP, Heft 1, BA, NSD 12/1. For the impact of such Nazi activities at the local level, see William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power (Chicago, 1965).

  not so out of bounds after all: See Rudy Koshar, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1986).

  grandiosity in Nuremberg: See Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds., Enzyklopädie des National Sozialismus, expanded edition (Munich, 2007), p. 445.

  nothing to discourage it: Hanfstaengl, Hitler, pp. 131–32.

  “the symbol of a great mission”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 3.

  “the heart of a people”: Ibid., pp. 106–7.

  required to subscribe: Memorandum of May 7, 1928, to “alle Gau und selbstständige Ortsgruppen der NSDAP,” HA/24A/1758; Oran Hale, The Captive Press in the Third Reich, pp. 40–42.

  The first national election since 1924: See Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder. Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933, Bonn, 1990, pp. 61–69.

  “the revolution is fine by us”: J. Goebbels, “Why Do We Want to Join the Reichstag?,” Der Angriff, April 30, 1928.

  but right-of-center DVP: See Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 217–67.

  ideological framework of National Socialism: Childers, “Interest and Ideology. Anti-System Politics in the Era of Stabilization, 1924–1928,” in Gerald D. Feldman, ed., Die Nachwirkungen der Inflation auf die deutsche Geschichte, 1921–1933 (Munich, 1985), pp. 1–20.

  searching for political alternatives: Childers, “Inflation, Stabilization, and Political Realignment in Germany, 1920–1928,” pp. 409–43.

  “the course of political events”: BA, R 43, Vol. 528.

  Chapter 4: Into the Mainstream

  “disappear and are forgotten”: Völkischer Beobachter, May 31, 1928.

  need for a shift in emphasis: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 64–68.

  rural landowning population: Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (Chapel Hill, 1983), pp. 127–28.

  promising foundation on which to build: Ibid.

  fallow periods between elections: Ibid.

  against the proposed settlement: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 278–82.

  occupied center stage throughout: “Wahlaufruf der NSDAP,” Reichstags-Handbuch, V. Wahlperiode, Berlin, 1930; Gottfried Feder, “Betrachtungen zum Youngplan,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, (NSHF), Heft 6, September 1930, pp. 249–56; “Das Dritte Versailles, leaflet of the Reichausschuss für das Deutsche Volksbegehren,” BA, ZSg. 1, 83/2; “Sklaverei Bedeutet der Pariser Tributplan,” BA, ZSg. I, 83/4.