Hitler

by Volker Ullrich

22 See Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 197; Joachim Fest, Hitler: Eine Biographie, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna, 1973, p. 53.

  23 See Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 239–49; Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 96–8. On piano lessons see Josef Prewratsky-Wendt, “Meine Erinnerungen an meinen Klavierschüler Adolf Hitler!” from 17 Nov. 1938; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/65. The piano teacher, who also gave Kubizek lessons, described Hitler as a “likeable, almost shy young man…serious and calm, of medium build.”

  24 Thomas Mann, An die gesittete Welt: Politische Schriften und Reden im Exil, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, p. 256.

  25 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 199f.

  26 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 83.

  27 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 290f.

  28 See Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 10. On the “German School Association” see Schmid, Kampf um das Deutschtum, pp. 30ff.

  29 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 106. See also Hitler, Monologe, p. 379 (dated 1 Sept. 1942): “I didn’t fall under Vienna’s spell because I was very strict about my patriotic German convictions.” Building on such sentiments, Bavendamm argues that Hitler believed from his earliest days that he was on a nationalist mission. The young Hitler, Bavendamm writes, “never lost sight of the ultimate goal of a greater German Reich with himself as its leader.” Der junge Hitler, p. 218.

  30 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 107.

  31 See Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 337, 349, 362.

  32 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 128.

  33 Ibid., p. 109.

  34 Hitler, Monologe, p. 153 (dated 17 Dec. 1941).

  35 See Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 429.

  36 Hitler, Monologe, p. 153 (dated 17 Dec. 1941). For Lueger’s “city revolution” see John W. Boyer, Karl Lueger 1844–1910: Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf. Eine Biographie, Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2010, p. 181ff.

  37 See Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 132f.

  38 See Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 208–16.

  39 Ibid., pp. 296f.

  40 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 43.

  41 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 296.

  42 Hitler’s letters to Kubizek, 21 July and 17 Aug. 1908 in Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 308f., 310f.; also published in Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jäckel with Axel Kuhn, Stuttgart, 1980, nos 13, 14, pp. 49–51.

  43 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 312.

  44 See also Franz Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend: Phantasien, Lügen und Wahrheit, Vienna, 1956, p. 218; Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 196.

  45 Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 276 (dated 10 May 1942).

  46 See also Bradley F. Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth, Stanford, 1967, pp. 112f.; Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 196. In June 1938, Hitler told Goebbels that “he left home at the age of seventeen and didn’t get back in touch until 1922.” Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Part 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich, 1998–2006, vol. 5, p. 331 (entry for 3 June 1938).

  47 Hitler, Monologe, p. 317 (dated 11/12 March 1942).

  48 Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 40–2.

  49 For a debunking of his claims of working on a building site see Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 206–11.

  50 See copies of the registration cards in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/17a. For Hitler’s changing job descriptions see Anton Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie: Adolf Hitler 1908–1920, Munich, 1989, p. 32.

  51 A letter from Hitler to the Linz municipal authorities, 21 Jan. 1914; Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend, pp. 262–4 (quotation on p. 263); also published in Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 19, pp. 53–5.

  52 Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, p. 52. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, Viennese newspapers ran articles on a flat in Simon-Denk-Strasse 11 in which he apparently lived in 1909; see Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 206–8. But there is no evidence that Hitler lived there other than a photograph held by the Austrian National Library that bears the inscription: “The house in Vienna’s District 9, Simon-Denk-Gasse 11, where Hitler lived as a lodger from 16 September to November 1909.” Sigmund sees this as the “missing link” in Hitler’s whereabouts during the fall of 1909 without engaging with Hamann’s assertions to the contrary; Anna Maria Sigmund, Diktator, Dämon, Demagoge: Fragen und Antworten zu Adolf Hitler, Munich, 2006, p. 157f.

  53 See also Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, pp. 186, 203.

  54 Reinhold Hanisch, “Meine Begegnung mit Hitler” (1939); BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/64 (the spelling errors have been corrected); published in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, pp. 49f. (quotation on p. 49). A longer, three-part version of “I was Hitler’s Buddy” appeared in New Republic, 5, 12, and 19 April 1939, pp. 239–42, 270–2, 297–300. On the credibility of this source see Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 264–71.

  55 Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, p. 49. When asked what he was waiting for, Hitler is said to have responded: “I don’t know myself.” Hanish remarked: “I have never seen such helpless resignation to bad luck.” Hanisch, “I was Hitler’s Buddy,” p. 240.

  56 See also Smith, Adolf Hitler, p. 132; Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 227.

  57 See also Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 229–34; Hertha Hurnaus et al. (eds), Haus Meldemannstrasse, Vienna, 2003 (foreword by Brigitte Hamann), pp. 5–7.

  58 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 35; see also Hitler, Monologe, p. 316 (entry for 10/11 March 1942): “In my youth, I was a bit of an oddball who preferred to be alone rather than needing company.”

  59 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 275.

  60 This is the view put forward in Lothar Machtan, Hitlers Geheimnis: Das Doppelleben eines Diktators, Berlin, 2001. Compare with Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 515.

  61 See Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 286: “As he often told me, he worried about becoming infected.”

  62 Quotation from Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 523.

  63 See also Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, p. 44f.

  64 On this see Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität: Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler, Munich and Vienna, 1998.

  65 Hanisch, “I was Hitler’s Buddy,” p. 299.

  66 See the two facsimiles of the “Meldezettel für Unterpartei” in Haus Meldemannstrasse, pp. 6f.

  67 Transcript of Hitler’s testimony from 5 Aug. 1910; first published in Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend, p. 224. Hanisch later denied the accusation that he had cheated Hitler, saying that following the latter’s instructions, he had sold the picture for 12 Kronen, of which he had given Hitler 6 Kronen. Undated record from Reinhold Hanisch in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/64.

  68 See Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 249f., 507–10.

  69 Transcript from the Linz district council from 4 May 1911; published in Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend, p. 226.

  70 Karl Honisch, “Wie ich im Jahre 1913 Adolf Hitler kennenlernte”; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/17a; published in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, pp. 51–8. On 31 May 1939, Honisch sent his reminiscences to the NSDAP main archive with the commentary: “As requested, I have written everything down as thoroughly as possible. It should come as no surprise that I have forgotten a lot since twenty-six years have passed in the meantime.” BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/17a.

  71 Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, p. 54 (Joachimsthaler’s misreadings have been corrected).

  72 Ibid., p. 55.

  73 Ibid., p. 56.

  74 Ibid., p. 56f.

  75 See Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, p. 113: “To the best of my recollection, Hitler was already a committed anti-Semite when he came to Vienna.” Disagreeing with this: Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 82.

  76 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 69. See also Hitler’s letter to an unknown “Herr Doktor” of 29 Nov. 1921: “Within the space of a year the harshest sort of reality made me, who had been raised in a rather cosmopolitan family, into an anti-Semite.” Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 325, p. 525. See also Hitler’s testimony to Munich Court I on 26 Feb. 1924: “I came to Vienna as a cosmopolitan and left it as an absolute anti-Semite and the mortal enemy of the entire Marxist world view.” Der Hitler-Prozess 1924, ed. and annotated by Lothar Gruchmann and Reinhold Weber w
ith Otto Gritschneder, part 1, Munich, 1997, p. 20. See also Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen—Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933. Vol. 3: Zwischen den Reichstagswahlen Juli 1928–September 1930. Part 2: März 1929–Dezember 1929, ed. Klaus As Lankheit, Munich, 1994, doc. 62, p. 341 (entry for 3 Aug. 1929): “I had been aware of the threat represented by Jews since I was eighteen and read whatever I could find on the subject.”

  77 Fest, Hitler, p. 64. Bullock sees the roots of Hitler’s anti-Semitism in his “tortured sexual jealousy.” Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, London, 1990, p. 39f. Haffner writes that Hitler “carried around his anti-Semitism from the very beginning like a congenital hunchback”; Sebastian Haffner, Anmerkungen zu Hitler, 21st edition, Munich, 1978, p. 15.

  78 On what follows see Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 239–42, 426–503; and subsequently, although partly a qualification of Hamann’s theories, Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, pp. 60–7. Critical of this theory is Ralf Georg Reuth, Hitlers Judenhass: Klischee und Wirklichkeit, Munich and Zurich, 2009, pp. 21–30, but his attempt to stylise Hitler into a “friend to Jews” (p. 28) is misleading. Before Brigitte Hamann, John Toland questioned Hitler’s assertion that he had become an anti-Semite in Vienna. Toland argued that Hitler’s anti-Jewish prejudice was probably fairly typical for the time and place and that he had become a hardcore anti-Semite at some later juncture. John Toland, Adolf Hitler: Volume 1, New York, 1976, p. 48f.

  79 Still of fundamental importance is Peter G. J. Pulzer, Die Entstehung des politischen Antisemitismus in Deutschland und Österreich 1867–1914, Gütersloh, 1964; new edition with a research report, Göttingen, 2004.

  80 Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 404f.; for Lueger’s anti-Semitism see Boyer, Karl Lueger, pp. 89ff.

  81 On Guido List and Lanz von Liebenfels see Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 293–319.

  82 Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab: Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, new and revised edition, Vienna, 1994.

  83 Quoted in Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 499.

  84 Hanisch, “I was Hitler’s Buddy,” p. 271. See also Franz Jetzinger, “Meine Erlebnisse mit Hitler Dokumenten,” notes dated 12 July 1953: “There is hardly a trace of anti-Jewish hatred in his periods in Linz and Vienna.” IfZ München, ZS 325.

  85 Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 498.

  86 For a summary see ibid., pp. 239–41.

  87 Konrad Heiden, Adolf Hitler: Das Zeitalter der Veran​twort​ungsl​osigkeit: Eine Biographie, Zurich, 1936, p. 28.

  88 Recording of the owner of Kafee Kubata, Marie Wohlrabe, from 11 June 1940, and statements of the woman serving at the till, Maria Fellinger, on 17 June 1940; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/17a. Analysed in Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, p. 620f.n87.

  89 See Hamann, Hitlers Wien, p. 568.

  90 For Rudolf Häusler’s biography see ibid., pp. 566–8; Machtan, Hitlers Geheimnis, pp. 67ff.

  91 Facsimile of the registration form in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, p. 17.

  92 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 138.

  93 See David Clay Large, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich, New York and London, 1997, pp. 3–42.

  94 See Schwarz, Geniewahn, pp. 70f.

  95 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 139.

  96 Erich Mühsam, Unpolitische Erinnerungen: Mit einem Nachwort von Hubert van den Berg, Hamburg, 1999, p. 89.

  97 Hitler, Monologe, p. 115 (dated 29 Oct. 1941). For Heilmann & Littmann see Schwarz, Geniewahn, pp. 76f.

  98 Hans Schirmer’s report reprinted in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, pp. 84f.; see further reports from the NSDAP main archive by people who bought paintings in Munich on pp. 85–9.

  99 On Hitler’s escape from registering for the draft, see the description and documents in Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend, pp. 253–65.

  100 First published in ibid., pp. 262–4 (see p. 273 for the facsimile of the letter); also in Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 20, pp. 53–5. On the attempt by the SS to gain possession of Hitler’s military record after the Anschluss, see Franz Jetzinger, “Meine Erlebnisse mit Hitler-Dokumenten.”

  101 Jetzinger, Hitlers Jugend, p. 265.

  102 Quoted in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, pp. 78f.

  3 The Experience of War

  1 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Vol. 1: Eine Abrechnung, 7th edition, Munich, 1933, p. 179. See Hitler’s explanation from 14 April 1926: “I wore a soldier’s grey uniform for almost six years. Of my time on Earth, these six years will remain not only my most eventful but also my most cherished years.” Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen—Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933. Vol. 1: Die Wiedergründung der NSDAP Februar 1925–Juni 1926, ed. and annotated Clemens Vollnhals, Munich, London, New York and Paris 1992, no. 123, p. 383.

  2 This is also quite rightly emphasised in Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris, London, 1998, p. 73. Thomas Weber’s contrary thesis—that the First World War did not form Hitler but rather that he remained fully open and malleable—is unconvincing; Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Oxford and New York, pp. 254, 345. After he was shunted off as a consul general to San Francisco in January 1939, Hitler’s former adjutant Fritz Wiedemann used the trans-Atlantic crossing aboard the MS Hamburg to jot down his key memories. Wiedemann summarised what Hitler had said upon appointing him before Christmas in 1933: “Emphasised importance of war and revolution for own development. Said, ‘Otherwise I would have likely made an excellent architect.’ ” BA Koblenz, N 1720/4.

  3 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 174.

  4 Kurt Riezler, Tagebücher, Aufsätze und Dokumente, ed. and introduced Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Göttingen 1972, p. 183 (entry for 7 July 1914). On the German Reich leadership’s risky politics during the July 1914 crisis see Volker Ullrich, Die nervöse Grossmacht: Aufstieg und Untergang des deutschen Kaiserreichs 1871–1918, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, pp. 250–63.

  5 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 176. Later, with an eye towards the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler declared: “The most devastating thing for the German government is not that it did not want war, but that in fact it was manoeuvred into war against its own volition.” Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen—Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933. Vol. 2: Vom Weimarer Parteitag bis zur Reichstagswahl Juli 1926–Mai 1928. Part 1: Juli 1926–Juli 1927, ed. and annotated Bärbel Dusik, Munich, London, New York and Paris, 1992, no. 104, p. 256 (dated 17 April 1927).

  6 First reprinted in Egmont Zechlin, “Bethmann Hollweg, Kriegsrisiko und SPD,” in Der Monat, no. 208 (1966), p. 32.

  7 See Das Hitler-Bild: Die Erinnerungen des Fotografen Heinrich Hoffmann, ed. Joe J. Heydecker, St. Pölten and Salzburg, 2008, p. 49. This is a reprint of a series based on audio recordings that appeared, starting in November 1954, in Münchner Illustrierte magazine.

  8 Quoted in Anton Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie: Adolf Hitler 1908–1920, Munich, 1989, p. 101.

  9 When Hitler happened to see the photo at Hoffmann’s studio, he reportedly remarked: “I too was in that crowd!” Hoffmann promptly enlarged the image and succeeded in locating Hitler. The photographer later recalled: “The photo quickly became world-famous. There was hardly a newspaper in Germany or abroad that did not publish it. We had to make thousands and thousands of prints to satisfy the demand.” Heydecker, Hoffmann- Erinnerungen, p. 50. See also, Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler wie ich ihn sah: Aufzeichnungen seines Leibfotographen, Munich and Berlin, 1974, pp. 32f. Recently the authenticity of the photographs has been doubted: see Sven Felix Kellerhof, “Berühmtes Hitler-Foto möglicherweise gefälscht,” in Die Welt, 14 Oct. 2010. On Hoffman’s darkroom see Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos, Munich, 1994, p. 26ff.; Heike B. Görtemaker, Eva Braun: Leben mit Hitler, Munich, 2010, pp. 14ff.

  10 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 177.

  11 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers, Stuttgart and Hamburg, p. 254.

  12 Erich Mühsam, Tagebücher 1910–1924, ed. and with an afterword by Chris Hirte, Munic
h, 1994, pp. 101, 109 (entries for 3/4 and 11 Aug. 1914).

  13 Quoted in Bernd Ulrich and Benjamin Ziemann (eds), Frontalltag im Ersten Weltkrieg: Wahn und Wirklichkeit, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 31. See also Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen in Bayern 1914–1923, Essen, 1997, pp. 41ff.

  14 Richard J. Evans (ed), Kneipengespräche im Kaiserreich: Die Stimmungsberichte der Hamburger Politischen Polizei 1892–1914, Reinbek by Hamburg, 1989, p. 415 (dated 24 and 29 July 1917).

  15 Thomas Mann, “Gedanken im Kriege,” in Essays II: 1914–1916, ed. and with critical commentary by Hermann Kurzke, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 32.

  16 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 177.

  17 See ibid., p. 179.

  18 See the detailed account in Joachimsthaler, Korrektur, pp. 102–9, which is based on research done by Bavarian officials in 1924.

  19 See ibid., p. 113.

  20 See ibid., p. 114; Weber, Hitler’s First War, pp. 21–4; Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte: Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen des Vorgesetzten Hitlers im 1. Weltkrieg und seines späteren persönlichen Adjutanten, Velbert and Kettwig, 1964, p. 18.

  21 Hitler to A. Popp, 20 Oct. 1914; Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jäckel with Axel Kuhn, Stuttgart, 1980, no. 24, p. 59.

  22 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 180.

  23 Hitler to A. Popp, 20 Oct. 1914; Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 24, p. 59.

  24 Ibid., no. 25, p. 59.

  25 Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, 1980, pp. 407f. (dated 23 March 1944). See Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Part 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich, 1998–2006, vol. 5, p. 253 (entry for 10 April 1938): “The Führer told of how the song ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ had moved him when he crossed over [the river] for the first time in October 1914.”

  26 Hitler to J. Popp, 3 Dec. 1914; Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 26, p. 60.

  27 Based on John Horne and Alan Kramer, Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914: Die umstrittene Wahrheit, Hamburg 2004, pp. 65–72.