Becoming Hitler

by Thomas Weber

  Furthermore, not long before Hitler’s election by the men of the Second Demobilization Company, the men of the battalion to which the company belonged had voted their representative to be Josef Seihs, who was known for his left-wing leanings. In fact, he would join the Red Army a few weeks later.37 The same men who had voted overwhelmingly for left-wing parties in January and had just elected a dyed-in-the-wool left-wing candidate as their battalion representative hardly would have chosen, as the representative of their company, a rookie candidate with known and outspoken right-wing convictions. Similarly, it is difficult to see how they would have voted for someone whom they had perceived as being a supporter of the hard Left.

  The answer lies in a matter of degree. Soldiers in Munich had been oscillating between supporting the moderate left, that is, the SPD, and the radical left in its different incarnations, not between left-wing and right-wing ideology. After all, more than 90 percent of soldiers in Hitler’s unit had voted for either the moderate or the radical left in the Bavarian elections in January. This does not necessarily mean that Hitler had been outspoken in supporting the revolution; just that had he been vocal against the revolution even in its moderate form, he would have scuppered his chances of election. In short, whatever his inner thoughts were, Hitler was perceived as being in support of at least moderately left-wing ideas.

  As most of the men from Hitler’s Ersatz unit who had defied demobilization and who had served with him in Traunstein and elsewhere were not known for their eagerness to serve and to lead, the bar for candidates they would have been willing to elect, so as not to have to run for the office themselves, is extremely unlikely to have been very high, which created a window of opportunity for Hitler. Even with the bar set low, it is difficult to imagine that they would have voted an outspoken right-wing candidate into office.

  The context of Hitler’s election as Vertrauensmann strongly suggests that his decision to run for office, when in the past he had been uninterested in leadership, had been driven by expediency and opportunism on his part. But now that he held his first leadership position, he was presented with an opportunity to learn on the job, which in turn gave him an opportunity to realize that he actually had leadership potential. In conversations with some of his close associates from the early years of the Nazi Party, Hitler revealed that he had been utterly unaware of his talent for leadership until the spring of 1919. He certainly did not admit later to his role as Vertrauensmann. Rather, he clothed his awakening as a leader in a fanciful account of how he had supposedly challenged radical revolutionaries in an inn on his way back from Traunstein to Munich. This account was fed by someone to Konrad Heiden. As the Social Democratic journalist put it in his Hitler biography, which was written in exile, Hitler “climbed on to a table, overcome with passion, scarcely knowing what he was about—and suddenly discovered he could speak.”38

  The real significance of the winter and spring of 1919, during which Adolf Hitler was a cog in the machine of socialism, does not lie in the political sphere. Rather, it lies in his having brought about, through expediency and opportunism, a sudden radical transformation of his personality. Almost overnight Hitler had changed from being an awkward but well-liked loner in whom no one had seen any leadership qualities to being a leader in the making.

  CHAPTER 3

  Arrested

  (Early April to Early May 1919)

  On April 12, 1919, Ernst Schmidt decided it was time to leave the army. His friend Hitler, by contrast, chose to stay.1 This was an active decision on the part of the future right-wing dictator of Germany to serve a regime that at that time pledged allegiance to Moscow.

  On April 7, Bavaria’s Central Council had taken inspiration from the recent establishment of a Soviet Republic in Budapest. In the hope that a Socialist axis could stretch all the way from Munich, via Vienna and Budapest, to Moscow, the council proclaimed Bavaria a Soviet Republic. It stressed there would be no cooperation whatsoever with the “contemptible” Social Democratic government in Berlin. And it concluded, “Long live the Soviet Republic! Long live the world revolution!”2 The council managed to get away with its proclamation, despite the poor standing of the radical left in elections, because the scales had recently tipped against parliamentary rule. This had happened because major sections of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Upper Bavaria had started to turn against their own leader, Johannes Hoffmann, who had taken over in the wake of the assassination attempt on Erhard Auer.

  On the same day that the Soviet Republic was declared, Bavaria’s minority government, headed by Hoffmann—which had been formed on March 17 following a vote in parliament and had competed with the Central Council for power since then—had to flee the city to the safe haven of Bamberg in northern Bavaria. Munich-based military units refused to come to the aid of Hoffmann’s government. As Prince Adalbert of Bavaria, the son of a cousin of the ousted king, wrote in his diary on April 7, “The Munich Garrison declared it would do nothing to protect the Bavarian parliament.” Parliament had already suspended its own powers indefinitely on March 18 anyway. It had done so by passing an Enabling Act that, in letter though not in spirit, resembled Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933 that would kill parliamentary democracy in Germany for the following twelve years.3

  With the minority government out of town, revolutionary Socialism reigned in Munich. On April 10, the rulers of the Bavarian Soviet Republic announced that all units of the Munich garrison would be the bedrock of a newly formed Red Army. This was the context in which Ernst Schmidt decided it was time to be demobilized and thus to stop serving the revolutionary regime.4 Rather than continue spending as much time as possible with the one remaining member of his “surrogate” family from the war, Hitler remained in a unit that refused to come out in support of the government in Bamberg and that, as far as the Soviet government was concerned, was part of the newly established Red Army.

  Why did Hitler not follow suit when Schmidt left the army? Why did he choose to spend less time with the person who had been closest to him for several months, and arguably even for years? One possible answer is that Hitler’s election as Vertrauensmann had transformed him. It provided a raison d’être for his existence, supplied him with a new home, and gave him a new place to fit into. And, for the first time in his life, it gave him influence and power over other people. Were he to follow Schmidt’s actions and turn his back on the revolutionary regime, he would have to give all this up.

  Hitler stayed on even when, on April 13, Palm Sunday, the revolution devoured its children, as the most radical regime yet, a new and more hard-core Soviet Republic headed by Communists, was established in Munich. Its government, the Vollzugsrat, had a direct line of communication to the Soviet leadership in Moscow and in Budapest. Encoded telegrams went back and forth between Russia’s capital and Munich. In fact, in the person of Towia Axelrod, Lenin and his fellow Bolshevik leaders in Moscow even had one of their own men on the Vollzugsrat, through whom they could directly influence the decisions made by the Munich Soviet Republic.5

  The creation of the second Soviet Republic was bloody. On April 13, when twenty-one people died in street fighting, and on the following day, chaos and mayhem reigned in Munich. “We are utterly isolated and at the mercy of the red rabble,” wrote opera singer Emmy Krüger in her diary on April 14. “As I write, guns are firing and bells are ringing—a dreadful music. The theaters are all closed, Munich is in the hands of the Spartacists—murder, theft, all vices have free rein.”6

  Yet soon afterward, a sense of normalcy returned to Munich. For instance, Rudolf Heß, Hitler’s future deputy, who recently had moved to Munich and now lived on Elisabethstraße, close to the barracks in which Hitler resided at the time, did not think that the Soviet Republic was something worth getting upset about: “Going by what the foreign papers are writing, there seem to be the most Neanderthal rumors about Munich.—However, I can report that it is and was wholly quiet here,” Heß wrote to his parents on April 23. “I have not experi
enced any unrest at all. Yesterday we had an orderly march with red flags, nothing else out of the ordinary.”7

  Despite the superficial calm, the political, social, and economic situation in Munich grew ever more volatile as the shortage of food and supplies worsened by the day in the city. Even though the residents of Munich had become used to going to bed hungry over the last four and a half years, there was a limit to what people could endure. On April 15, teacher Josef Hofmiller concluded that “either they will bring in troops from outside or we will starve.”8

  British intelligence shared Hofmiller’s sentiment. Winston Churchill, the secretary of war, had already concluded on February 16, based on intelligence reports, that Germany was “living on its capital as regards food supplies, and either famine or Bolshevism, probably both, will ensue before the next harvest.” Nevertheless, he was willing to play with fire, as letting Germany feel the pain would provide Britain with leverage. He believed that “while Germany is still an enemy country which has not yet signed peace terms, it would be inadvisable to remove the menace of starvation by a too sudden and abundant supply of foodstocks.”9

  British intelligence officers on the ground in Bavaria were less willing than Churchill to take a risky gamble. Captain Broad and Lieutenant Beyfus, who were investigating the situation in Bavaria prior to and following the declaration of the Munich Soviet Republic, thought that there had been initial popular optimism about the future after the war. However, that hopefulness had evaporated over time, as the expectation of a peace that would be agreeable to all sides had still not materialized and material conditions had worsened instead of improved. By April they opined that the situation had become unsustainable, deeming the shortage of food to be “a serious menace to the country,” as it was having “a most demoralising effect on the people.” They urged that “supplies should be sent with utmost promptitude.”10

  As Beyfus put it in early April, “Hope deferred has made the German heart sick. From the heights of hope of last November—and in spite of the disaster that had overtaken them the Armistice was hailed with genuine joy in Germany—they have plunged into the depths of despair.” The lieutenant wrote that as a result of the absence of a “speedy peace,” “the nerves of the German people appear to have broken down.” He argued the continued depravations had given Bolshevism a chance in Bavaria. In short, British intelligence believed they were witnessing in Bavaria a political phenomenon born of socio-economic factors.11

  By April 15, the rulers of the Soviet Republic had decided that they would call new elections in each of the military units based in Munich. This was prompted by the escalating political situation and the fact that, from his headquarters in Bamberg, Johannes Hoffmann had been plotting to set up a military force that would attack Munich. The elections were called in the hope of ensuring that henceforth all elected representatives would stand “unreservedly behind the Soviet Republic” and defend it against “all attacks by the united bourgeois-capitalist reaction.”12

  The elections that took place on April 15 provided Hitler with a golden opportunity to stand back if he was deeply troubled by the establishment of a Communist Soviet Republic. Indeed, many soldiers in Munich who previously had been willing to go along with the revolution had changed their minds and now expressed support for the government in Bamberg. Sensing the volatility of the mood of the soldiers as well as the ongoing division among them into moderate and hard-core revolutionary factions, the Communist rulers of the city tried to buy their loyalty, announcing on April 15 that “all soldiers will receive 5 marks a day extra.”13

  Rather than withdraw, as many others did, Hitler decided to continue his involvement with the Communist regime and run for election again. Having proven himself since his election as Vertrauensmann, he now ran to become Bataillons-Rat—the representative of his company, the Second Demobilization Company, on the council of his battalion. When the election results were published the following day, he learned that he had secured the second-highest number of votes, 19, compared to the 39 of the winner, meaning he had been elected to being the Ersatz-Bataillons-Rat (deputy battalion councilor) of his unit.14

  Hitler’s election should not necessarily be read as a sign of explicit and wholehearted support for the Soviet Republic on either his part or that of his voters. While the possibility cannot be excluded altogether that he and the men of his unit had been carried away by the events of recent weeks and thus now supported the Soviet Republic,15 the previous and subsequent behavior patterns of both Hitler and his voters strongly suggest something else: that he was perceived by the voters as a supporter of moderate revolutionaries.

  Whatever his inner thoughts and intentions, Hitler now had to serve as a representative of his unit within the new Soviet regime. By his willingness to run for office as Bataillons-Rat, he had become an even more significant cog in the machine of Socialism than previously had been the case. Furthermore, Hitler’s actions helped sustain the Soviet Republic.

  By the time Hitler turned thirty on April 20, Easter Sunday, the fortune of the Communist rulers had improved markedly from the time they had called elections to be held in military units in Munich. As the Soviet Republic had continued to spread across Bavaria, they now controlled large swaths of the state. And on April 16, the Red Army under the leadership of Ernst Toller, a dramatist and writer born in West Prussia, had celebrated a huge success. It had repelled an attack by a makeshift army of approximately eight thousand men loyal to the government in Bamberg, on the little town of Dachau to the north of Munich, preliminary to an attack on Bavaria’s capital.

  Posters all over Munich announced: “Victory by the Red Army. Dachau taken.” Also, demonstrating that many soldiers in Munich supported the Communist regime, the number of regular soldiers and sailors and of irregulars who wore red armbands and other insignia had been growing by the day in the city. The government living in exile in Bamberg had totally misjudged the strength and resolve of the red forces. It was no match for the Communist regime in Munich.16

  The rulers of the Soviet Republic received another boost when, on April 17, they requested that Russian POWs who had not returned home yet join the Munich Red Army. The exact number of POWs who signed up has not survived. Yet their contribution to the fighting power of the Munich Red Army was significant, not least for their battle experience and their expertise in devising operational regulations and plans for the army.17

  Very little is known about how Hitler celebrated his thirtieth birthday on Easter Sunday in the Karl Liebknecht Barracks, as the Soviet rulers of Munich had recently renamed the military complex that housed his regiment, to honor the slain cofounder of the Communist Party of Germany. We do, however, know that Hitler spent his birthday wearing a red armband, which all soldiers in Munich were required to wear. We also know that on April 20, during the daily roll call of his unit, he had to announce, as he did every day, the latest decrees and announcements of the Soviet rulers of Munich, which had been conveyed to the regiment through its propaganda department. (Hitler also had to report to the propaganda department of the Second Infantry Regiment once a week to pick up new propaganda material.)18

  Meanwhile, Johannes Hoffmann had reluctantly turned to Berlin for help, realizing that he would be unable to unseat the Soviet regime without outside assistance. Asking Berlin for aid was a thorny issue, as Bavarian and national authorities had clashed with each other ever since the end of the war about the degree to which Bavaria would remain a sovereign political entity under the roof of a federal Germany, as it had been before the war. Hoffmann now had to accept that his fellow Social Democrat, Gustav Noske, the minister of national defense, would call the shots.

  Furthermore, Hoffmann had to accept that a non-Bavarian general would command the all-German force which Noske and Hoffmann were trying to put together, aimed at breaking the neck of the Munich Soviet Republic. The Bavarian government requested military assistance from the government of Württemberg, its south German neighbor, and from irregular
troops outside Bavaria, urging Bavarians quickly to set up militias and to join them. Likewise, the leadership of the Bavarian SPD called upon Bavarians to enlist in militias, to put an end to the “tyranny of a small minority of foreign, Bolshevik troops.”19

  As news spread in Munich that the government in Bamberg was gathering a force aimed at bringing down the Soviet Republic, people started to leave the city in droves to join the “white” forces, as Friedrich Lüers, Hitler’s former peer from the List Regiment, wrote in his diary on April 23. Others in Munich started to think about leaving not just Munich but Germany altogether, and starting a new life in the New World. The interest in emigration was so great that a periodical specializing in the subject, Der Auswanderer (The Emigrant), was sold in the streets of Munich. For instance, on the day before Hitler’s birthday, well-dressed people had been seen buying the periodical from a newspaper girl at Stachus in central Munich.20

  However, Hitler did not display any apparent interest in abandoning his post. He neither turned his back on the Soviet Republic nor actively supported it at this point, as he neither left Munich to join a militia nor joined an active Red Army unit.

  In theory, all Munich-based military units and thus Hitler’s regiment, too, were part of the Red Army.21 In that sense, Hitler served in the Red Army. In reality, however, most regiments neither actively supported the Soviet regime nor opposed it. That is not to say that they overtly took a neutral position, as any reluctance to make themselves available to the legitimate governments in Bavaria and in Berlin constituted, strictly speaking, high treason.