by Thomas Weber
However, while writing his book, Hitler also drew three political lessons that were either new for him or previously had not been prominent for him. Mein Kampf matters first and foremost for these lessons. One was that using force to gain power was no longer viable. As Hitler was to recall during the Second World War, the new state by 1924 had become too stable and was in firm control of most weapons in the country.19 As a result, he henceforth would pursue a legalistic, parliamentary, rather than a revolutionary, path toward power.
The second and third lessons would have even more dire consequences. He now discarded the answers that he previously had given to the question of how to create a new Germany that never again would lose a major war.20 His new answers were based on the theory of Lebensraum (living space) and on the racial ideas of Hans Günther, the author of Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, which would be the most influential book on racial theory in the Third Reich.
As long as Erwin von Scheubner-Richter and Lenin had been alive, the acquisition of Lebensraum had not played any significant role in Hitler’s thought. But in the wake of Lenin’s death it had become clear that Hitler had been wrong in expecting an imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to this realization and his recognition that Russian monarchists would be unable to launch a putsch in the future, Hitler’s previous security strategy had become obsolete. There would be no German-Russian fascist-monarchist alliance. This is why, in Mein Kampf, he devised a radically different answer to Germany’s security dilemma: rather than form a sustainable alliance in the East, Germany would have to acquire, colonize, and subjugate new territory there so as to become the hegemon of the Eurasian landmass and thus be safe for all time.
According to Hitler’s understanding of international affairs, which he believed was undergoing a fundamental change, Germany needed to expand. In language reminiscent of German militarist writing from the pre–First World War era, this was an all-or-nothing question of national survival for the country: “Germany will be either a world power or will not be at all.”21 Hitler argued that “The German people can defend its future only as a world power,” adding, “In an epoch when the earth is gradually being divided among States, some of which encompass almost whole continents, one cannot speak of a structure as a world power the political mother country of which is limited to the ridiculous area of barely five hundred thousand square kilometers.”22
It was in this context that he came across the term Lebensraum. It was a term Rudolf Heß’s professor and mentor Karl Haushofer had developed, which captured what Hitler wanted to express better than Bodenerwerb (acquisition of land), the word that he still was using in his draft notes for Mein Kampf from June 1924.23 Hitler did not really engage himself with Haushofer’s work and the conceptual framework behind the professor’s term. Rather, he was attracted by Lebensraum because it gave a name to something he had been thinking about as he was attempting to find a new answer to Germany’s security dilemma: namely, that states had to have sufficient territory to be able to feed their population, to prevent emigration, and to be sufficiently strong vis-à-vis other states.24 The term does not appear often in Mein Kampf. However, it is used in answering the core question of Hitler’s book: how Germany’s security dilemma can be solved.
As he wrote in Mein Kampf: “[The National Socialist movement] must, then, without regard to ‘traditions’ and prejudices, find the courage to assemble our people and their might for a march forward on that road which leads out of the present constriction of our ‘living space,’ the domain of life, and hence also permanently liberates us from the danger of vanishing off this earth or having to enter the service of others as a slave nation.”25
Further, he wrote, “We National Socialists, however, must go further: the right to soil and territory can become a duty if decline seems to be in store for a great nation unless it extends its territory. [… ] We take up at the halting place of six hundred years ago. We terminate the endless German drive to the south and west of Europe, and direct our gaze toward the lands in the east. We finally terminate the colonial and trade policy of the pre-War period, and proceed to the territorial policy of the future. But if we talk about new soil and territory in Europe today, we can think primarily only of Russia and its vassal border states.”26
If Germany’s security could only be achieved through the acquisition of Lebensraum in the East, as the promise of the reestablished nationalist Russia had gone up in thin air, Germany had to look for alliances elsewhere. As Goebbels noted in his diary on April 13, 1926, based on his reading of Mein Kampf: “Italy and England are our allies. Russia wants to devour us.”27
Hitler’s major realignment of how he viewed the great powers of the world also resulted in a sudden shift in his attitude toward France. Whereas in the first volume of Mein Kampf he barely had mentioned Germany’s neighbor to the west, he referred to France very frequently in the second volume. In fact, references to France rose by almost 1,400 percent. France now was presented in terms of a fundamental threat to Germany’s security.28 As Hitler’s goal was to achieve parity with the Anglo-American world and as he no longer believed in a German-Russian alliance, it was imperative for him that Germany become Europe’s hegemon. Little surprise, then, that Hitler’s animus against France and Russia—the two countries that geopolitically stood in Germany’s way to becoming Europe’s hegemon—became more prominent than previously had been the case. Curiously, Poland—the country that would be second to none in the harshness with which it would be treated by Hitler in the Second World War—hardly features at all in Mein Kampf. At that time, Poland barely seems to have existed on his mental map. Hitler’s anti-Slavic feelings did not run very deep—at least, not then—as Poland was not a major player in international affairs and so did not pose, in Hitler’s mind, a threat to Germany’s national security. Poland would only matter to him in the years to come as a provider of territory and resources that would help make Germany sufficiently large to survive in a rapidly changing world. It is thus no surprise that on the eve of the Second World War, when Hitler shared his plans vis-à-vis Poland with his generals, his primary concern was how he could clear the Polish territory of its inhabitants in the same way the Ottoman Empire had the Armenians during the First World War.
In Mein Kampf, unlike in the past, Hitler also displayed a deep interest in racial theory. Questions of racial typology had not been high on his agenda prior to the putsch. Although the copy of Hans Günther’s Rassenkunde that Julius Friedrich Lehmann had sent to him in 1923 does not bear apparent traces of having been read, Hitler now engaged closely with Günther’s ideas of racial typologies. He, however, conveniently ignored that Günther did not really believe Jews to be a race.29 It can no longer be established beyond reasonable doubt where Hitler’s new interest in racial theory originated. However, it is surely of significance in a temporal sense that he turned toward ideas that would allow him to see Slavs as subhumans and to define the east as a territory for colonization at the very moment when it was politically expedient to do so. That moment had come when Hitler started to believe that a German-Russian alliance was no longer viable and thus sought a new solution to Germany’s security dilemma. This indicates that geopolitics trumped race for him; that is, in trying to find a solution to Germany’s geopolitical predicament, he was willing fundamentally to change the character of his racism. At this point in time, racism was merely a tool for Hitler to address Germany’s geopolitical challenge so as to make Germany safe for all time.
The sequence in which Hitler wrote the different chapters of the two volumes of Mein Kampf indeed supports the idea that he only changed his approach to racism, after Lenin’s death, when he no longer believed that his dream of a German-Russian permanent alliance would ever come true. Whereas those sections of his chapter on “Volk und Raum” (People and Space)—the chapter from his first volume dealing most explicitly with race—that took a historical approach to explaining Jewish characteristics had already been drafted in 1922 or 1923, th
e section that laid out Hitler’s ideas about racial theory had only been prepared in the spring or early summer of 1924. It is here that Hitler presented ideas of racial typologies and hierarchies; and it is here that he painted the danger of racial mixing on the wall and sang the song of racial purity.30 There was also a change in the frequency with which Hitler discussed matters of race in the two installments. In volume 2, Hitler mentioned race approximate 40 percent more often than in volume 1.
A comparison of the frequency of terms used in the two volumes does indeed reveal his changing preoccupations. The frequency of the term “Pan-German” (Alldeutsch*), for instance, which once had been of such central importance to Hitler, fell by 96 percent. Similarly, as Hitler started to be gradually less preoccupied with his original anticapitalism, references to capitalism (Finanz*, Spekulat*, Wirtschaft*, Börse*, Kapital*, Mammon*, Zins*) went down by 49 percent. Somewhat surprisingly, references to Jews fell sharply by 50 percent (Jud*, “Jüd*”, “Antisemit*”, “Zion*”). (The asterisk signifies that any word beginning with whatever came before the asterisk would be included. For example, “Zion*” would include “Zionismus,” “Zionisten,” and so on.)
Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, references to the nation, the National Socialist movement, the state, might, war, and race went up as Hitler tried to figure out the details of how a new National Socialist state was to be configured. “National socialism” (Nationalsozialis*) and “movement” (Bewegung), rose by 102 percent, while the frequency of the term “state” (Staat*) shot up by 90 percent. “Might” (Macht*) rose by 44 percent. The figure for “race” (Rass*) went up by 39 percent and for “war” (Krieg*) by 31 percent. The figure for “nation” (Nation*) increased by 27 percent. “People” (Volk) rose by 26 percent. The aggregate for the two terms “1918” and “Versailles” also increased sharply, by 179 percent. References to “struggle” (Kampf*), meanwhile, remained both frequent and constant.
The frequency with which Hitler referred to different countries also changed significantly. It was not just that he suddenly displayed an interest in France. References to the country of his birth (Österr*, Wien*, Habsburg*) almost disappeared. They fell by 90 percent, whereas mentions of Italy (Itali*) went up by 57 percent. As a testament of his central preoccupation with Anglo-American power, reference to Britain and the United States (Engl*, Britisch*, Angels*, Anglo*, Amerik*) grew by 169 percent, whereas mentions of the “West” (Westen*) doubled in frequency. References to communism (Marx*, Bolschew*, Sozialist*, Kommunist*) doubled as well, while mentions of the Soviet Union even rose by a staggering 200 percent (Sowjet*, Rußland*, Russ*), which reflected Hitler’s new central preoccupation now that an alliance with a monarchist Russia was no longer an option.31
A final difference between the two volumes of Mein Kampf is worth noting: In the second volume of his book, Hitler referred to German Weltherrschaft (world domination), whereas in the first volume he had only charged Jews with aiming for Weltherrschaft. However, he used the term only once in the context of Germany. He stated that if Germany had been less of a country of individualists in the past, it could have achieved Weltherrschaft. What kind of world domination he was referring to only becomes apparent by looking at how Hitler used the term elsewhere in Mein Kampf. Toward the end of the second volume of his book he talks about Britain’s Weltherrschaft of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In other words, Hitler argues that if Germans had behaved more like Britons in the past, their country could have equaled the British Empire. Thus, Mein Kampf should not be read as a blueprint to rule singlehandedly every corner of the world. Rather it should be understood as a call to arms to achieve parity with the greatest empires of the world.32
Hitler’s ideological and political evolution between the end of the First World War and the mid-1920s, as well as his occasional ideological flexibility and willingness to change some tenets of his ideas, should not be mistaken for opportunism. Nor was Hitler a demagogue who merely vented his frustrations, prejudices, and hatreds. Opportunism had certainly played a huge role in his life in the months following the end of the war. Even after that, opportunism competed, and would always do so, with his political convictions. He would do whatever it took to escape loneliness. And his narcissistic personality continually drove him to actions that would feed his grandiose sense of his own importance and uniqueness and his need for admiration.
Nevertheless, Hitler rose to the helm of the NSDAP both for himself and for a cause in which he believed deeply. From the moment of his politicization and radicalization in the summer of 1919, Hitler genuinely strived to understand the world and to come up with a comprehensive plan for how Germany and the world could be cured of their ills. His repeated use of the term Weltanschauung—denoting a comprehensive philosophical conception of what holds the world together—is a clear sign that he aimed at devising a comprehensive, cohesive, and systematic political system.33 The fact that his political views continued to evolve between 1919 and 1926 does not contradict that he was aiming to devise his own Weltanschauung. It merely indicates that the Hitler of the early 1920s was still searching for the best answer to the question of how Germany had to be recast so as to survive in a rapidly changing world.
Furthermore, his occasional ideological flexibility and the periodic sudden changes in his political ideas, as expressed, for instance, in the rapid changes to his racism in 1924, indicate that there were two parts to his worldview. The first part constituted an inner core set of ideas that were built upon irrational beliefs but that were perfectly coherent if one accepted their underlying irrational first principles. Hitler’s views about the Jews, about political economy and finance, about the nature of history and historical change, about human nature and social Darwinism, about governmental systems, about the need to bring all social classes together and establish socialism along national lines, about the need to build states that have sufficient territory and resources, and about the nature of the international system and geopolitics more generally were all part of that inner core. Anything beyond that—including ideas that were very important to many other National Socialists—was for Hitler the second part of his worldview. They functioned merely as a means to an end, which is why Hitler was extremely flexible when it came to them: he was willing to change them or even replace them with something else at any time, if expediency so demanded.
With the completion of the writing of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s metamorphosis from a nobody with still indeterminate and fluctuating political ideas to a National Socialist leader was complete. By the second half of the 1920s, the Adolf Hitler who, while in power, would almost bring the world to its knees, was becoming visible. For instance, soon after the publication of the second volume of Mein Kampf, the “Heil Hitler” greeting of National Socialists was introduced. However, the term “Nazi” had not yet become common currency in referring to Hitler and his followers. Other terms were in circulation that henceforth would fall out of use. For instance, in October 1926 people referred to National Socialists as “Nazisozis.” It was also only after 1924 that SA (Sturmabteilung) and party members would wear brown shirts. Prior to that, members of the SA had worn makeshift uniforms, which included the wearing of windbreakers and woolen ski hats.34
From the perspective of 1926, the year of publication of the second volume of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s future and the fate of his ideas depended just as much on himself as they did on the choices and decisions of millions of Germans who in the years to come would sustain his rule and become implicated in the crimes of the Third Reich.
The tragedy of Germany and the world is that Hitler found himself in Munich in the wake of the First World War and the revolution of 1918/1919. Had it not been for the political situation of postrevolutionary Bavaria as well as the semiauthoritarian political settlement of March 1920, there would have been no soil on which he and the NSDAP could have flourished. Likewise, the tragedy of Germany and the world was that between 1923 and the time he came to power in 1933, Germany as a
whole did not resemble Bavaria more closely. Munich, in particular, proved politically to be a forbidding place for the NSDAP. Although the city had produced the party, the NSDAP struggled to attract voters in Bavaria’s capital. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, three out of five voters in Munich supported either the BVP or the Social Democrats, while only one in five voted for the NSDAP.35
Due to the organizational strength of the BVP, Hitler’s party would never become the strongest party in Bavaria in a free election. Democracy held out in Bavaria in 1933 longer than anywhere else in Germany. In short, had it not been for Bavaria, Hitler hardly would have metamorphosed into a National Socialist. But had the rest of Germany been more like Bavaria, Hitler is unlikely ever to have come to power.
Epilogue
When the Harvard Museum of Germanic Art—now home to the university’s Center for European Studies—commissioned Lewis Rubenstein to paint frescoes for its entrance hall in the mid-1930s, the young American artist decided that he would use his art to attack and ridicule Hitler. The frescoes by the Jewish painter with family roots in Germany and Poland depicted scenes from the dictator’s favorite operatic work, Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. At the center of his frescoes, right above the main entry to the museum, Rubenstein painted Hitler as Alberich, the spiteful dwarf and antagonist of the heroes of the Ring cycle, chief among them Siegfried.
When walking past Rubenstein’s frescoes on the way to my office every day while researching this book, I often stopped to admire them. They cleverly turned Nazi mythology upside down. For German nationalists, Siegfried had become the symbolic personification of their country during the First World War. For instance, the most famous defense line of the western front had been called Siegfriedstellung. And the popular postwar right-wing charge against Jews, left-wingers, and liberals—that they had treacherously stabbed a victorious Germany in the back—was a reference to how Alberich’s son Hagen had slain Siegfried. In Rubenstein’s frescoes, it was no longer the Jews and democrats but Hitler and his followers who were the cowardly traitors to Germany.1
