136 Handwritten letter from Hermine Hoffmann to Hitler; BA Koblenz, N 1128/5. On 11 July 1938, Hermine Hoffmann’s 81st birthday, Hitler visited her in Solln, bringing flowers and liqueur. See the daily notes of SS Untersturmführer Max Wünsche, 11 July 1938; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 10/125. See also Hitler, Monologe, p. 315, dated 10/11 March 1942): “Of all my maternal friends, only old Mrs. Hoffmann was unfailingly solicitous.” On Hitler’s relationship with Hermine Hoffmann, see also Martha Schad: “Above all, his eyes are extraordinarily compelling.” “Freundinnen und Verehrerinnen,” in, Ulrike Leutheusser (ed.), Hitler und die Frauen, Munich, 2003, pp. 30–2; Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Liste: Ein Dokument persönlicher Beziehungen, Munich, 2003, pp. 130–5.
137 Hitler’s postcards to Dora and Theodor Lauböck in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1242 and IfZ München, ED 100/86. Also reprinted in Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 152, p. 248, no. 156, p. 246, no. 304, p. 503, no. 373, p. 598. The Lauböcks also maintained a relationship with Hitler’s sister, Paula. See the undated postcard from Dora Lauböck to Hitler with a handwritten postscript from Paula Hitler; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1242. On Christmas 1922 see the entry in the guest book; IfZ München ED 100/86; also in Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Liste, p. 219. On Fritz Lauböck’s employment as Hitler’s private secretary see his records on incoming and outgoing letters between May and the end of Oct. 1923; BA Koblenz, N 1128/29. On 17 April 1937 Fritz and Dora Lauböck gave their collected documents and papers to the Hauptarchiv der NSDAP; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1242.
138 See for example the payment reminder from the Munich printers M. Müller & Sohn to the Völkischer Beobachter, Franz Eher Nachf., 22 May 1923. According to it, the newspaper’s account was 73 million marks in the red and had therefore exceeded its credit of 30 million by 43 million marks. That very day, the business director of the Beobachter, Josef Pickl, asked Hitler for help in raising a large sum of money to pay off its debts. BA Koblenz, N 1128/6 and N 1128/8.
139 See Gottfried Grandel to Hitler, 27 Oct. 1920 (on the financial situation of the Völkischer Beobachter); BA Koblenz, N 1128/2; Franz Maria Müller, “Wie Hitler Augsburg eroberte” (undated, post-1945); IfZ München, MS 570.
140 Emil Gansser to Karl Burhenne, 8 March 1922, with enclosed note on the Hitler movement; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1223.
141 See the invitation to Hitler’s talk dated 26 May 1922 from E. Gansser; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1223. For the content of the talk see Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen no. 387, pp. 642f. See also Wilhelm Weicher’s recollections, “Wie ich Adolf Hitler kennenlernte,” in Der Türmer 36 (April 1934): “A lot of prophets stood up to speak in those heady days. I heard most of them, but none captivated me as much as Adolf Hitler.” BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1223; Hanfstaengl’s note on a telephone call with Emil Gansser in the spring of 1923; BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 25. On Hitler’s entrance see Henry A. Turner, Die Grossunternehmer und der Aufstieg Hitlers, Berlin, 1986, p. 68f.
142 See ibid., pp. 70f; on Richard Franck see Hitler, Monologe, p. 208 (dated 16/17 Jan. 1942), p. 257 (dated 3 Feb. 1942).
143 Quoted in Brigitte Hamann, Winifred Wagner oder Hitlers Bayreuth, Munich and Zurich, 2002, p. 75. On Hitler’s trip to Switzerland in the summer of 1923 see Raffael Scheck, “Swiss Funding for the Early Nazi Movement,” in Journal of Modern History, 91 (1999), pp. 793–813; Alexis Schwarzenbach, “Zur Lage in Deutschland: Hitlers Zürcher Rede vom 30 Aug. 1923,” in Traverse 2006/1, pp. 178–89. On Rudolf Hess’s stay in Switzerland in the spring of 1922 see his letters to Ilse Pröhl, dated 17 March and 4 April 1922; BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 29. In Oct. 1922 Hess and Dietrich Eckart accepted an invitation to the Willeses’ country house near Zurich; Hess to Ilse Pröhl, 31 Oct. 1922; ibid. Hitler only told Hess of his own journey to Switzerland when they were imprisoned together at Landsberg: “It was a pleasure to hear him talk so excitedly of his impressions of his first journey outside Germany and Austria.” Hess to Ilse Pröhl, 18 May 1924; BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 33. Hitler’s passport, issued on 13 Aug. 1923, stamped with the date of entry into Switzerland of 26 Aug. 1923; BayHStA München, Nl Adolf Hitler. In his communications with Ralph Engelmann of 5 March 1970, Hermann Esser confirmed that Emil Gansser had established connection to Switzerland; BayHStA München, Nl Esser.
144 Hanfstaengl’s unpublished memoirs, p. 32; BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 47. See also Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, p. 99: “Like a will-o’-wisp, he appears first here, then there, only to disappear a moment later.”
145 Gottfried Feder to “my dear Herr Hitler,” 10 Aug. 1923 (which ended: “With a heartfelt greeting of Heil and in full confidence”); IfZ München, ED 100/86.
146 Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, p. 44.
147 Large, Where Ghosts Walked, p. 154. See Markus Schiefer, “Vom ‘Blauen Bock’ in die Residenz—Christian Weber,” in Marita Krauss (ed.), Rechte Karrieren in München: Von der Weimarer Zeit bis in die Nachkriegsjahre, Munich, 2010, pp. 152–65 (particularly pp. 155f.).
148 Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers: Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung, Munich, 1969, p. 66. See Hanfstaengl’s note “A. H.—Stammcafé Heck”; BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 26.
149 Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, p. 88.
150 Quoted in Auerbach, “Hitlers politische Lehrjahre,” p. 35. See the transcript of an interrogation of Göring on 20 July 1945, who claimed that Hitler had particularly welcomed him “since he always wanted to have a young officer respected throughout the nation in the ranks of the movement.” IfZ München, ZS 428. For Göring’s biography see Alfred Kube, Pour le mérite und Hakenkreuz: Hermann Göring im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1986, pp. 4–8.
151 See Hamann, Winifred Wagner, pp. 73f.; Large, Where Ghosts Walked, p. 151f; Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, pp. 48f.; Schad, “Freundinnen und Verehrerinnen,” pp. 38–43; Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Liste, pp. 68–71.
152 Müller, Im Wandel einer Welt, p. 129. See also the recording by Karl Alexander von Müller “Meine Beziehungen zur NSDAP” (undated, post-1945); BayHStA München, Nl K. A. v. Müller 7. Among those who attended the Munich historian’s lectures in 1922–3 were Göring, Hess and Ernst Hanfstaengl.
153 See Wolfgang Martynkewicz, Salon Deutschland: Geist und Macht 1900–1945, Berlin, 2009; Miriam Käfer, “Hitlers frühe Förderer aus dem Grossbürgertum: Das Verlegerehepaar Elsa und Hugo Bruckmann,” in Krauss (ed.), Rechte Karrieren in München, pp. 72–9. On Elsa Bruckmann’s anti-Semitic views see her letter to Karl Alexander von Müller dated 20 March 1929, in which she denigrated the German Cultural Association as a “culturally Jewified” antithesis of the ethnic-chauvinistic Fighting Association for German Culture. BayHStA München, Nl K. A. v. Müller 246.
154 See Martynkewicz, Salon Deutschland, pp. 382, 387, 408.
155 Herbst 1941 im “Führerhauptquartier”: Berichte Werner Koeppens an seinen Minister Rosenberg, ed. and annotated Martin Vogt, Koblenz, 2002, p. 1 (dated 6 Sept. 1941). See also the telegram from Hitler offering condolences to Elsa Bruckmann; BSB München, Bruckmanniana Suppl. Box 4; quoted in Käfer, “Frühe Förderer,” p. 74.
156 Fest, Hitler, p. 197.
157 Hitler told his secretary Christa Schroeder that he often felt like “an ape in a zoo”; Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, p. 69.
158 Hamann, Winifred Wagner, pp. 83f.; see also Hitler, Monologe, p. 224 (dated 24/25 Jan. 1942): “When I entered Wahnfried for the first, I was so moved!”
159 Hamann, Winifred Wagner, p. 85.
160 H. St. Chamberlain to Hitler, Bayreuth, 7 Oct. 1923; the dictated letter signed by Chamberlain in BA Koblenz, N 1128/16. See Hamann, Winifred Wagner, p. 82.
161 Hess, Briefe, p. 275 (entry for 3 July 1921).
162 Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, pp. 36, 86f.
163 Machtan, Hitlers Geheimnis, p. 146. See Albert Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSD
AP: Erinnerungen aus der Frühzeit der Partei, Stuttgart, 1959, p. 133, who emphasises Hitler’s ability to “adapt himself to various people and groups.”
164 Tischgespräche, p. 181 (dated 3 April 1942). See also Hitler, Monologe, pp. 204f. (dated 16/17 Jan. 1942): “No pictures of me existed. Those who didn’t know me had no idea what I looked like.”
165 See Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos, Munich, 1994, pp. 92f. (on p. 93 see a reproduction of the page from Simplizissimus); Claudia Schmölders, Hitlers Gesicht: Eine physiognomische Biographie, Munich, 2000, pp. 46–8, 54.
166 On the incident see Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, pp. 74f.; Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, pp. 93f.; Pahl’s account in Thomas Friedrich, Die missbrauchte Hauptstadt: Hitler und Berlin, Berlin, 2007, p. 61.
167 Quoted in Friedrich, Die missbrauchte Hauptstadt, p. 62. See also Das Hitler-Bild: Die Erinnerungen des Fotografen Heinrich Hoffmann, ed. Joe J. Heydecker, St. Pölten and Salzburg, 2008, pp. 27–36 (“Mein Kampf um das erste Hitler-Bild”).
168 On Heinrich Hoffmann’s biography see Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, pp. 26–34; Heike B. Görtemaker, Eva Braun: Leben mit Hitler, Munich, 2010, pp. 15f.; Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler wie ich ihn sah: Aufzeichnungen seines Leibfotographen, Munich and Berlin, 1974, pp. 7–17 (foreword by Henriette Hoffmann).
169 Harry Graf Kessler, Das Tagebuch. Vol. 7: 1919–1923, ed. Angela Reinthal with Janna Brechmacher and Christoph Hilse, Stuttgart, 2007, p. 567 (entry for 29 Oct. 1922) On the legendary “March on Rome” see Hans Woller, Geschichte Italiens im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich, 2010, pp. 92f.
170 Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 419, p. 726, no. 422, p. 728. See also Monologe, p. 43 (dated 21/22 July 1941): “The March on Rome in 1922 was a turning point of history. The mere fact that they were able to do that gave us a powerful boost.”
171 Quoted in Maser, Frühgeschichte, p. 356. See Herbst, Hitlers Charisma, p. 144. On 18 Sept. 1923 the Berliner Dienst concluded that in a comparison between Hitler and Mussolini “the German Mussolini was no copy of the Italian, unable to stand on his own two feet.” BA Koblenz, N 1128/12.
172 See Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, p. 139; Auerbach, “Hitlers politische Lehrjahre,” p. 24; Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, p. 182f.
173 R. Hess to K. A. v. Müller, 23 Feb. 1923; BayHStA München, Nl. K. A. v. Müller 19/1. The letter also contained an invitation to attend Hitler’s speech to university students in the Löwenbräukeller on 26 Feb. The manuscript of the prize-winning essay, which Hess claimed had been written “a couple of hours before the deadline,” is reprinted in Bruno Hipler, Hitlers Lehrmeister: Karl Haushofer als Vater der NS-Ideologie, St. Ottilien, 1996, pp. 221–6 (quotations on pp. 222, 225). See also Hess’s description of Hitler’s appearance in Zirkus Krone, which emphasised his “unbending, iron-hard dictator’s skull.” “Der Nationalsozialismus in München” (undated, 1922); BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 6/71.
174 Quoted in Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler, p. 90.
175 These and other congratulatory letters and telegrams to Hitler in BA Koblenz, N 1128/7. Even among respectable middle-class audiences in Munich’s Hofgarten, Hanfstaengl observed “a certain aggressive admiration for the events south of the Alps, the élan of Mussolini’s fascist movement and the new Italy.” Hanfstaengl recorded statements like: “Indeed, we need someone like that at the top—a Renaissance man and a power politician, someone without scruples.” “Der Ruf nach dem Borgia Typ”; BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 25.
176 On Max Weber’s concept of charismatic leadership, see the penetrating analysis in Herbst, Hitlers Charisma, pp. 11–57.
177 See ibid., especially pp. 137ff.
178 See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1914–1949, Munich, 2003, pp. 559–61. On the origins of the Führer cult also see Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1987, pp. 21–31.
179 Max Maurenbrecher, “Adolf Hitler,” in Deutsche Zeitung, 10 Nov. 1923; reprinted in Joachim Petzold, “Class und Hitler: Über die Förderung der frühen Nazibewegung durch den Alldeutschen Verband und dessen Einfluß auf die nazistische Ideologie,” in Jahrbuch für Geschichte 21 (1980), pp. 284f. Further, see André Schlüter, Moeller van den Bruck: Leben und Werk, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2010, p. 299n80. In his speech to the Nationale Klub 1919 in Berlin on 29 May 1922, Hitler stressed that he “considered himself to be only the drummer for the movement of national liberation.” Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 387, p. 643.
180 Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 436, p. 754 (dated 4 Dec. 1922).
181 Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, pp. 99f. (on pp. 98f. see the first three photographs). See also Hanns Hubert Hofmann, Der Hitler-Putsch: Krisenjahre deutscher Geschichte 1920–1924, Munich, 1961, p. 74, who emphasises that even before 1923 Hitler had already begun to “feel his way around in the role of messiah.”
182 Deuerlein, Aufstieg, p. 139.
183 Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, p. 63; Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, ed. Egon Voss, Stuttgart, 2001, p. 21. See Hanfstaengl’s note: “You couldn’t find out anything about his previous life: the official hour of his birth was the outbreak of the world war in 1914, about which he never tired of talking.” BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 25.
184 Hitler to an unknown “Herr Doktor,” 29 Nov. 1921; original with Hitler’s handwritten corrections in BA Koblenz, N 1128/24; reprinted in Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no. 325, pp. 525–7. See Othmar Plöckinger, “Frühe biographische Texte zu Hitler: Zur Bewertung der autobiographischen Texte in Mein Kampf,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 58 (2010), pp. 95f.
185 Kölnische Zeitung, 8 Nov. 1922: “Ein Abend bei Adolf Hitler”; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/1223.
186 Müller, Im Wandel einer Welt, p. 145.
187 Margarete Vollerthun to Hitler, 27 Feb. 1923; BA Koblenz, N 1128/5.
188 Detlev Clemens, Herr Hitler in Germany: Wahrnehmungen und Deutungen des Nationalsozialismus in Grossbritannien 1920 bis 1939, Göttingen and Zurich, 1996, pp. 46f., 54, 60. For the American perspective see Sander A. Diamond, Herr Hitler: Amerikas Diplomaten, Washington und der Untergang Weimars, Düsseldorf, 1985, pp. 53f.; report by Truman Smith, military attaché to the U.S. embassy, of 25 Nov. 1922; copy in BSB München, Nl Hanfstaengl Ana 405, Box 25.
189 Wartime comrade Wackerl, Munich, to Hitler, 19 April 1923; BA Koblenz, N 1128/7.
6 Putsch and Prosecution
1 Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, 1980, p. 171 (dated 3/4 Jan. 1942).
2 Cited in David Clay Large, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich, New York and London, 1997, p. 189. See also the “obituary” for the NSDAP in the Frankfurter Zeitung from 10 Nov. 1923 in Philipp W. Fabry, Mutmassungen über Hitler: Urteile von Zeitgenossen, Königstein im Taunus, 1979, p. 25. “If ridiculousness were fatal, Hitler would be long dead,” wrote the Vossische Zeitung on 9 Nov. 1931; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/87.
3 See Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, pp. 212f. See also Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole 1923 bis 1945, Vierow bei Greifswald, 1996, p. 299ff.
4 G. Escherich to Herrn Elvers, 28 March 1923; BayHStA München, Nl Escherich 47. For context see Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie, Munich, 1993, pp. 188ff.
5 Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jäckel with Axel Kuhn, Stuttgart, 1980, no. 456, pp. 781, 783, 784. See ibid., no. 460, p. 792; no. 463, pp. 800f.
6 Sebastian Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933, Stuttgart and Munich, 2000, p. 61. See also Martin H. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne. München 1914–1924,
Göttingen, 1998, pp. 382ff.
7 See Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten: Erlöser der zwanziger Jahre, Berlin, 1983.
8 Ernst Deuerlein (ed.), Der Hitler-Putsch: Bayerische Dokumente zum 8./9. November 1923, Stuttgart, 1962, doc. 3, p. 164 (dated 8 Sept. 1923).
9 Notes by Rudolf Hess, entitled “The party above all parties,” early 1923; BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 31. Transcript of a conversation with Maria Endres on 11 Dec. 1951; IfZ München, ZS 33. For figures see Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weissbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1998, p. 72. The circulation of the Völkischer Beobachter mirrored the number of party members. It increased from c.13,000 in January 1923 to 24,000 in July 1923. See the statistics compiled by Lauböck Sr, in BA Koblenz, N 1128/19.
10 Harry Graf Kessler, Das Tagebuch. Vol. 7: 1919–1923, ed. Angela Reinthal with Janna Brechmacher and Christoph Hilse, Stuttgart, 2007, p. 570 (entry for 9 Nov. 1922).
11 Quoted in Large, Where Ghosts Walked, pp. 161.
12 Quotation in in Ernst Deuerlein (ed.), Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Augenzeugenberichten, Munich, 2nd edition, 1976, pp. 160f.
13 Lawyer and NSDAP member Dr. Richard Dingeldey’s records of the conversation between Nortz and Hitler on 29 Jan. 1923; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/385. See also Interior Minister Dr. Schweyer to the Munich Police Directorship, 24 Jan. 1923; ibid.
14 Report by Police President Nortz to the public prosecutor at the Munich District Court I with reference to Adolf Hitler, 9 Feb. 1923; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 26/385. On the discussion between Hitler and Kahr see unpublished memoirs of Gustav Ritter von Kahr, p. 1174; BayHStA München, Nl Kahr 51. According to Kahr, Hitler declared: “I’m not that stupid to destroy the work I’ve done this far with an attempted putsch. I give you my word of honour that I’m not contemplating a putsch.”
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