Becoming Hitler

by Thomas Weber

  65. It would be mistaken to describe Hitler’s ideas as merely a “potpourri” meant to vent anger, fear, frustration, and resentment rather than “a coherent set of intellectual propositions” and to state that “there was nothing new, different, original, or distinctive” about Hitler; see Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 132–134.

  66. It has been remarked, for example, that this letter to Gemlich reveals that “already in 1919 Hitler has a clear notion of removal of the Jews altogether”; see Ian Kershaw quoted in New York Times, International edition, June 7, 2011, A6, “Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Writing Finds a Buyer.”

  67. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 254ff.; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 12–13.

  68. Hitler, MK, 291ff. The initial meeting that Hitler attended took place on September 12. He stated that less than a week later, he received a postcard inviting him to attend a meeting of the party’s executive the following Wednesday (September 24). Hitler claimed to have decided to join the party two days later (September 26).

  69. Mook, “Nazis,” 19; Michael Lotter to NSDAP Hauptarchiv, October 17, 1941, quoted in Joachimsthaler, Weg, 257; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 254–258; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 12–13.

  70. Hitler, MK, 860 (quote); Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 98; IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 254–259; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 12–13.

  71. BHStA/IV, RWGrKdo4/313, Hans Wolfgang Bayerl to Karl Mayr, October 8, 1919. See also Piper, Rosenberg, 79–80.

  72. Mook, “Nazis,” 70–71. The figures used here are based on a membership list that includes information for 208 men and women who joined the party in 1919. Mook, well in line with much of the historiography (see, e.g.; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 25), claims that the DAP/NSDAP never was a workers’ party. He puts the percentage of working class membership at 24 percent, compared to 41 percent of Munich’s population belonging to the working class. However, these figures are not comparable, as the list Mook used does not provide information about the social status of almost one in three members. The figure for members belonging to the working class rises to 35 percent when set against members whose class background is known.

  73. Mook, “Nazis,” 69–71. At present, no comprehensive listing of the places of birth of members of the Munich chapter of the DAP/NSDAP exists. However, the many cases of leading National Socialists presented in this book who had grown up elsewhere, often outside Bavaria or even outside Germany, would suggest that migrants were heavily overrepresented in the membership of the party.

  74. Kraus, Geschichte, 649–656. The image of sovereignty as being master in one’s own house is taken from Michael Ignatieff’s IGA 360 course “Sovereignty and Intervention” at Harvard Kennedy School.

  75. Wachsmann, Prisons, 37–38; Rittenauer, “Landessymbole.”

  76. Hitler, Monologe, 242, 248 (quote).

  77. Ibid., 161 (quote); Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 841.

  Chapter 6: Two Visions

  1. Hitler in the Illustrierter Beobachter, 1929, Folge 31, 374, quoted in Joachims-thaler, Weg, 262.

  2. Gilbhard, Thule; Phelps, “Before”; Höller, Anfang, 82–83; Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 56–59; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 248ff.; Richardi, Hitler, 32–39; Maser, Legende, 170.

  3. Quoted in Höller, Anfang, 83.

  4. Gilbhard, Thule.

  5. Engelman, “Eckart,” 3–4; Franz-Willing, “Munich,” 329; SAM, PDM/10014, report, “Geiselmord im”; Gilbhard, Thule, 105. The seven executed members of the Thule Society were Walter Nauhaus, Walter Deichke, Hella von Westarp, Anton Daumenlang, Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, Gustav von Thurn und Taxis, and Franz von Teuchert. None of them had been born in Munich; four had been born outside Bavaria; of the remaining three, only one had been born in Upper Bavaria. And the only one of the executed Thule members born in Upper Bavaria, Hella von Westarp, was not Bavarian but came from an old Prussian aristocratic family. Two of the seven executed Thule members came from well-known Protestant aristocratic families; another two had been born in territories that were almost exclusively Protestant at the time, and another one was the son of a Protestant missionary.

  6. Hofmiller, Revolutionstagebuch, 225.

  7. Plöckinger, Soldaten, 144n30.

  8. Gilbhard, Thule, 122.

  9. Ibid., passim. The claim that the Thule Society continued to influence the DAP and NSDAP from the shadows is based on the idea that members of the society, such as Dietrich Eckart, exerted an enormous influence on Hitler; see, for example, Richardi, Hitler, 124. However, Eckart and others who continued to influence both Hitler and the party had been regular guests of the Thule Society, rather than, as claimed by Richardi, members. They had aligned themselves with the society when it had been convenient. Yet this does not mean that they saw themselves as agents of the Thule Society. They had their own agenda, which often overlapped with that of the society but had never been the same.

  10. Gilbhard, Thule.

  11. IFZ, ED561/1, Hermann Esser interview, February 24, 1964.

  12. Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 91.

  13. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964.

  14. Police report of the DAP meeting of November 13, 1919, reproduced in Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 92 (quote); SAM, PDM/6697, police report, dated November 22, 1919.

  15. SAM, PDM/6697, police report of DAP meeting of November 22, 1919.

  16. Ibid., police report of DAP meeting of November 26, 1919; Phelps, “Parteiredner,” 275.

  17. For Hitler’s outfit at the time, see IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964.

  18. SAM, PDM/6697, police report of DAP meeting of December 10, 1919. As Hitler considered the United States and Britain Germany’s eternal enemies, the idea that he had given little thought to America in the years after 1918 and that the United States would only later become important to Hitler’s worldview (see Weinberg, “Image,” 1007) is unfounded.

  19. SAM, PDM/6697, police report of DAP meeting of December 18, 1919.

  20. Plöckinger, Soldaten, 157–162; ibid, 178.

  21. Ibid., 171–177; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 245.

  22. Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 101ff. (quote); Plöckinger, Soldaten, 188.

  23. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 23, 1964.

  24. There is disagreement as to whether Hitler formally sought permission to join the party from Karl Mayr, see Joachimsthaler, Weg, 254ff.; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 12–13; Plöckinger, Soldaten, 152–153, 177–178. Members of the Reichswehr were required to seek permission to join political groups. However, Othmar Plöckinger argues that as Hitler was legally a member of the old army rather than of the new Reichswehr, he did not have to seek permission; therefore, he did not ask for it. This argument ignores the fact that even if Hitler was aware that technically he did not need to seek permission, anyone who desired to be transferred into the Reichswehr would have almost certainly done so anyway. Furthermore, the Schützenregiment 41 in which Hitler served was, in fact, a unit of the provisional Reichswehr (Vorläufige Reichswehr).

  25. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Plöckinger, Soldaten, 168.

  26. It would be mistaken to see two formal meeting requests that Hitler received from Mayr in late October and late November as well as Hitler’s transfer to the Schützenregiment 41 in late October as indicating that it was only in the second half of October that Hitler entered politics, and that he did so only under instruction from Karl Mayr. For claims to this effect, see Plöckinger, Soldaten, 154–162; Longerich, Hitler, 70–71. For the two meeting requests, see Joachimsthaler, Weg, 246; BHStA/IV, RWGrKdo4/314, Mayr’s adjutant to Hitler, November 21, 1919.

  In fact, Hitler had chosen to speak up in the DAP meeting of September 12; he had opted to join the party in the second half of September, and most important, he had given an official speech for the DAP prior to his transfer to the Schützenregiment 41 and prior to the receipt of the two formal meeting requests from Mayr.

  27. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 25, 1964 (first, second, a
nd fourth quotes); Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 112 (third quote); Engelman, “Eckart,” 6–7, 50; Richardi, Hitler, 128; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 278; Dresler, Eckart.

  28. Engelman, “Eckart,” passim, 8–9 (quote); Hamann, Vienna; Richardi, Hitler, 124ff.; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 13–14; Heiden, Fuehrer, 85–86. For Eckart’s religious background, see Hitler’s monologue of January 16/17, 1942, Hitler, Monologe, 209.

  29. Quoted in Engelman, “Eckart,” 64–65.

  30. Quoted in Richardi, Hitler, 128.

  31. Hitler, 197; Pyta, Hitler, 155 (quote).

  32. Hitler, Monologe, 208.

  33. Heiden, Fuehrer, 85–86; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 13–14.

  34. Reuth, Goebbels, chap. 2; Goebbels, Tagebücher, i (2004 ed.), 136, entry for May 16, 1924; Longerich, Goebbels, 31–35. It is not clear why Longerich asserts, without positively proving his case, that Goebbels’s socialism was insincere; see Longerich, Goebbels, 64, 686–87.

  35. Goebbels to Anka Stalherm, February 17, 1919, quoted in Reuth, Goebbels, 79.

  36. Goebbels, “Erinnerungsblätter,” reproduced in Goebbels, Tagebücher, i (1987 ed.), 17; Piper, Rosenberg, 32 (quote).

  37. BSB, NL Bruckmann/Suppl., box 8, Elsa to her mother, January 16, 1920 (quotes); Piper, Rosenberg, 32.

  38. For claims to the contrary, see, for example, Heusler, Haus, 76.

  39. Weiss, Rupprecht, 282.

  40. On “standing” in politics, see Ignatieff, Fire, 75ff.

  41. Schlie, “Nachwort”; Schöllgen, Hassell.

  42. Unlike the German National People’s Party, the BVP did not suffer from organization weakness; see Ziblatt, Conservative Political Parties.

  43. Hastings, Catholicism; Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, chaps. 1–3.

  44. Faulhaber, Stimmen, 258.

  45. Ibid., 250–265. On the return of the flu, see BSB, NL Bruckmann, Suppl., box 8, letters, Elsa to her mother, December 27, 1919, and January 16, 1920.

  46. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 262–265. Peter Longerich argues that the power struggle between Hitler and Harrer was, in fact, not at all over Harrer’s secret society strategy, as Harrer had been in Berlin in late 1919 to sound out a possible cooperation of the party with the DNVP, aimed at creating a unified right-wing camp in Germany; see Longerich, Hitler, 79–80. It is difficult to see why Harrer’s contacts with the DNVP would contradict the idea that Harrer’s vision for the DAP was to be a kind of Thule Society for the working class. Surely, for men like Harrer, secret society–like groups and existing right-wing parties, while fulfilling different functions, were supposed to collaborate.

  47. SAM, PDM/6697, police report of DAP meeting of November 26, 1919.

  48. Heiden, Fuehrer, 83 (quote); IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 71. For the DAP’s weekly meetings, see SAM, PDM/6697, police report of DAP meeting of November 26, 1919. According to other sources, the DAP had to pay fifty marks a month for the use of its office; see Richardi, Hitler, 99.

  49. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Bauer, Hauptstadt, 350.

  50. Sigmund, Freund, 13–18, 328n19.

  51. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 187–188; Hitler, Monologe, 146 (quote).

  52. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 256; Reichardt, “SA,” 246; BHStA/IV, KSR/16776, Nr. 793.

  53. Both Drexler and Hitler wanted to go out into the public, but according to Drexler’s subsequent claims, Hitler had been worried whether holding a meeting in the Hofbräuhaus was too high a risk to take; see Richardi, Hitler, 111–112.

  54. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964; Hitler, MK, 511ff. (quote); Phelps, “Parteiredner,” 277.

  55. IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964 (quote). To the present day, there is no consensus as to who the primary authors of the program were. Names that are regularly mentioned include Hitler, Drexler, Feder, and Eckart; see, for example, Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 144; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 267; Pätzold/Weißbecker, Hitler, 59ff.; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 18; Longerich, Hitler, 81; Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 79; Payne, Hitler, 142–145. Gottfried Feder, while hardly the main author of the program, had attended a meeting at which a draft of it was discussed; IFZ, ED874, Bd. 1/29, Feder’s diary, December 15, 1919.

  The idea that Hitler had been the or one of the prime architects of the program is based on his own words and on two documents produced by Drexler in 1940; see Joachimsthaler, Weg, 267. In both documents, a draft of an unsent letter to Hitler and testimony given to the NSDAP party archive, Drexler sought to get some credit for having authored the party program, against a background in which Hitler was presented as its sole or prime author. The year 1940 was clearly not the time to tell Hitler and his party’s archive that Hitler’s role as the architect of the program had been small. However, Drexler had often told Hermann Esser, in private, that Hitler’s role had indeed been minute; see IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964. See also Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 75–79.

  56. Program of the DAP, February 24, 1920, German History in Documents and Images, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3910. Accessed May 15, 2015.

  57. For claims to the contrary, see, for example, Pätzold/Weißbecker, Hitler, 62–63; Piper, Nationalsozialismus, 18; Piper, Rosenberg, 48–50; Herbert, “Nationalsozialisten,” 21.

  58. For the underlying anti-Semitism of the DAP program, see Meyer zu Uptrup, Kampf, 137–150.

  59. Program of the DAP, February 24, 1920; IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 24, 1964 (Esser quote).

  60. Hitler, MK, 512–513.

  61. Bouhler, Werden, 10, 19 (quotes); Weber, HFW.

  62. Hitler, MK, 513–514.

  63. Phelps, “Parteiredner,” 277; Phelps, “Arbeiterpartei,” 983.

  64. SAM, PDM/6697, newspaper cutting, Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten, February 25, 1920 (quotes); see also cuttings from the Bayerische Staatszeitung, February 26, 1920, and from the Münchener Augsburger Abendzeitung, February 26, 1920.

  65. Phelps, “Rede,” 391.

  66. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 108–112; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 274–275; Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung, 79.

  67. Gilbhard, Thule-Gesellschaft.

  68. For a claim to the contrary, see Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 132–133; Heusler, Haus, 64–65; Herbst, Charisma, locs. 1972, 2181.

  69. Phelps, “Parteiredner,” 276.

  70. AEMF, NMF/7556, Georg von Bayern to Faulhaber (first quote); AEMF, NMF/7558, Faulhaber to Prince Wilhelm, February 1920; BHStA/V, Nachlaß Stempfle, spy report, “Gesamt-Bericht,” February 12, 1920 (second and third quotes). The assertion that anti-Bolshevism played little role for Hitler and did not really feature in the party program (see Plöckinger, Soldaten, 272) is unfounded, for its incorrect assertion that anti-Bolshevism played no prominent role in popular right-wing anti-Semitism at the time.

  71. See, for example, Hitler, Aufzeichnungen, 98.

  Chapter 7: A 2,500-Year-Old Tool

  1. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 272; Pätzold/Weißbecker, Hitler, 63.

  2. Erger, Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch.

  3. Joachimsthaler, Weg, 272. Eckart would subsequently write Mayr out of the story and present the trip to Berlin as resulting solely from his initiative; see Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 177ff.

  4. IFZ, ED561/3, Hermann Esser interview, February 25, 1964.

  5. IFZ, ED561/3, Esser interview, February 25, 1964; Longerich, Hitler, 1044n75.

  6. Quoted in Kellogg, Roots, 88, 105.

  7. IFZ, ED561/3, Esser interview, February 25, 1964. For Hitler’s fear of flying, see Richardi, Hitler, 179.

  8. Hitler, Monologe, 192, monologue of January 9/10, 1942; Richardi, Hitler, 179.

  9. Hassell, Kreis, 231–232.

  10. Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 112; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 273; Richardi, Hitler, 234–235.

  11. Kraus, Geschichte, 659–672; Thoß, “‘Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch”; Menges, “Möhl”; Richardi, Hitler, 169ff.; Longerich, Hitler, 83.
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  12. For claims to the contrary, see, for example, Pätzold/Weißbecker, Hitler, 64; Kraus, Geschichte, 672; Karl, Räterepublik, 255ff.; Longerich, Hitler, 83; Bauer/Piper, München, 278.

  13. Timm, “Bayern,” 624.

  14. BHStA, NL Groenesteyn/No. 63, Pacelli to Otto von Groenesteyn, April 15, 1920; NHStA/IV, KSR 2945/11; Joachimsthaler, Weg, 247; Nickmann, “Auswüchse”; Longerich, Hitler, 83–84; Richardi, Hitler, 195–243; Thoß, “Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch”; Franz-Willing, “Munich.”

  15. Götschmann, “Landtagswahlen.”

  16. BHStA/IV, KSR 4421/204l and 4470/7111. Previously, scholars have put three different possible reasons forward for Hitler’s departure from the army. First, against the demand of the Versailles Treaty to reduce the Reichswehr to 100,000 men, his mentors in the Reichswehr, who were charged with cutting the number of soldiers in Munich, may have decided it did not really matter whether Hitler would formally serve in the army, as they could and would continue to support him inside or outside the army; see Pätzold/Weißbecker, Hitler, 64. Second, the dissolution of the Military District Command 4 in March 1920 (see Joachimsthaler, Weg, 236) may have necessitated his decommissioning. Third, Hitler, as an Austrian-German (i.e., a noncitizen) simply could not be admitted into the new army of the Weimar Republic, the Reichswehr; see Plöckinger, Soldaten, 157, 177.

  Yet there is a flaw in all three explanations. They all accept as a fact that Hitler continued to be a tool in the hands of the Reichswehr. They do not allow for the possibility that those who had tried to use him no longer were powerful. If his mentors in the army found him so useful to them, why did they not reserve for him one of the 100,000 spots available for those who served—and demobilize somebody else? Surely they could have found Hitler a position in a new unit. Furthermore, they could have found a way to grant him citizenship so that he could have continued to work for them. Hermann Esser claimed that Hitler was not forced out but that he chose to leave because he wanted to be independent; see IFZ, ED561/1, Esser interview, February 25, 1964. However, Esser’s statement has the ring of a post facto rationalization on Hitler’s part.