Hitler

by Volker Ullrich

  128 Marie-Luise Recker, Die Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, Munich, 1990, p. 12.

  129 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 313 (entry for 19 Oct. 1935).

  130 Quoted in Falanga, Mussolinis Vorposten, p. 62.

  131 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 232 (entry for 15 May 1935).

  132 See Falanga, Mussolinis Vorposten, pp. 62–4.

  133 Esmonde M. Robertson, “Hitler und die Sanktionen des Völkerbunds,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 26 (1978), pp. 237–64 (quotation on p. 254). See Schmidt, Die Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, p. 189; Rauscher, Hitler und Mussolini, p. 234.

  134 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 341 (entry for 6 Dec. 1935).

  135 Hassell to Foreign Ministry, 6 Jan. 1936; Esmonde M. Robertson, “Zur Wiederbesetzung des Rheinlands 1936,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 10 (1962), pp. 178–205 (at pp. 188–90). See Petersen, Hitler–Mussolini, pp. 466–71.

  136 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 366 (entry for 21 Jan. 1936). As early as mid-December 1935, after talking to Hitler, Britain’s ambassador Phipps had noted that the chancellor probably intended to remilitarise the Rhineland as soon as an opportunity presented itself. See Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p. 134. See Neurath’s minutes of the talks on 13 Dec. 1935; ADAP, Series C, vol. 4, part 2, no. 462; see also the cabinet meeting on 13 Dec. 1935: Die Regierung Hitler, vol. 2, part 2, no. 281, p. 987; Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 347 (entry for 15 Dec. 1935).

  137 Hassell’s notes of 14 Feb. 1936; reprinted in Robertson, “Zur Wiederbesetzung des Rheinlands,” pp. 192f.

  138 Hassell, Römische Tagebücher und Briefe, p. 126 (dated 23 March 1936). According to Hassell’s notes, Hitler declared at the beginning of the meeting: “I’ve summoned you to discuss a decision I’m about to take that will perhaps be significant for Germany’s entire future!” ibid.

  139 Hossbach, Zwischen Wehrmacht und Hitler, p. 84.

  140 Hassell’s minutes of the Berlin talks of 19 Feb. 1936; reprinted in Robertson, “Zur Wiederbesetzung des Rheinlands,” pp. 194–6. See Hassell, Römische Tagebücher und Briefe, pp. 127f. (dated 23 Feb. 1936).

  141 Hassell, Römische Tagebücher und Briefe, p. 127 (dated 23 Feb. 1936). See Robertson, “Zur Wiederbesetzung des Rheinlands,” p. 203.

  142 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 383 (entry for 21 Feb. 1936).

  143 Ibid., pp. 388f. (entry for 29 Feb. 1935).

  144 Ibid., vol. 3/2, p. 30 (entry for 2 March 1936).

  145 Ibid., p. 31 (entry for 4 March 1936). According to Goebbels’s notes, Blomberg, Fritsch, Raeder and Ribbentrop took part in the meeting alongside him.

  146 Ibid., p. 33 (entry for 6 March 1936).

  147 Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Regierung Hitler. Vol. 3: 1936, ed. Friedrich Hartmannsgruber, Munich, 2002, no. 39, p. 165.

  148 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/2, p. 35 (entry for 8 March 1935).

  149 François-Poncet, Als Botschafter in Berlin, p. 257. The memorandum is reprinted in ADAP, Series C, vol. 5/1, enclosure to no. 3, pp. 14–17. See also Claus W. Schäfer, André François-Poncet als Botschafter in Berlin 1931–1938, Munich, 2004, pp. 255–8.

  150 Shirer, Berliner Tagebuch, p. 56 (entry for 7 March 1936).

  151 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 583–97 (quotation on p. 594). On the reaction of the deputies, see Shirer’s vivid description: “Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots, little men of clay in his fine hands, leap to their feet like automatons…Their hands are raised in slavish salute, their faces now contorted with hysteria, their mouths wide open, shouting, shouting, their eyes, burning with fanaticism, glued on the new god, the Messiah.” Berliner Tagebuch, p. 57 (entry for 7 March 1936).

  152 Schmidt, Als Statist, p. 320. Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens: Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eigener Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse, Munich and Gräfelfing, 1953, p. 211, remembered a similar statement when travelling with Hitler from Cologne to Berlin at the end of the month: “I’ve never had to withstand the sort of fear I have in these past days of the Rhineland action. If the French had been serious about their threats, it would have been a massive political defeat for me…Am I glad [they weren’t], thank God! How happy I am that everything went smoothly!” In January 1942, Hitler recalled: “If another man had been in my place on 13 [sic] March, he would have lost his nerve! It was only my stubbornness and audacity that got us through.” Hitler, Monologe, p. 140, dated 27 Jan. 1942. On Hitler’s nervousness in the days following 7 March, see Albert Speer, Erinnerungen: Mit einem Essay von Jochen Thies, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1993, pp. 85f.; Hossbach, Zwischen Wehrmacht und Hitler, p. 20.

  153 Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1935–1936, p. 272 (entry for 11 March 1936). See also Lahme, Golo Mann, p. 107

  154 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/2, p. 36 (entry for 8 March 1936).

  155 Shirer, Berliner Tagebuch, p. 59 (entry for 8 March 1936).

  156 Quoted in Schmidt, Die Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, p. 201.

  157 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/2, p. 46 (entry for 21 March 1936).

  158 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 3 (1936), p. 460. See Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, pp. 126–9.

  159 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/2, p. 52 (entry for 31 March 1936). A detailed survey of Hitler’s campaign trail in March 1936 and of the programme of the rallies in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 10/125.

  160 Otto Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler, Munich, 1955, p. 45.

  161 Martha Dodd, Nice to meet you, Mr. Hitler! Meine Jahre in Deutschland 1933 bis 1937, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, p. 232.

  162 In a top-level meeting in the Chancellery on 26 Nov. 1935, Hitler said that he could not tell how long German rearmament would last, but that it would probably take “3 to 4 years.” Die Regierung Hitler, vol. 2, part 2, no. 267, p. 948.

  163 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 1, part 2, p. 606. On the change in the way Hitler saw himself during the year of 1936, see Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, pp. 590f; Thamer, Verführung und Gewalt, p 540; Wendt, Grossdeutschland, pp. 105, 110; Evans, The Third Reich in Power, p. 637.

  16 Cult and Community

  1 Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Vol. 1: Triumph. Part 2: 1935–1938, Munich, 1965, pp. 643, 641.

  2 Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: Tagebücher 1933–1941, ed. Walter Nowojski with Hadwig Klemperer, Berlin, 1995, p. 340 (entry for 27 March 1937); see ibid., p. 373 (entry for 17 Aug. 1937): “I’m increasingly coming to believe that Hitler truly embodies the soul of the German people, that he truly is Germany and that for that reason he will rightfully persist in the future.”

  3 Deutschland-Berichte der Sozia​ldemo​krati​schen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940, ed. Klaus Behnken, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, 2 (1935), p. 653 (dated 15 June 1935).

  4 Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesel​lscha​ftsge​schichte 1914–1949, Munich, 2003, p. 676. In his notes “Thoughts concerning the Führer,” written in his Nuremberg jail cell in 1945, Robert Ley concluded: “If a people and its leader ever truly became one, it was Adolf Hitler and the German people.” BA Koblenz, N 1468/4.

  5 According to Leipzig anatomist Hermann Voss, quoted in Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, p. 49.

  6 Werner Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution: Ursprung und Geschichte der NSDAP in Hamburg 1922–1933. Dokumente, Frankfurt am Main, 1963, pp. 426 (dated 28 Feb. 1933), 427 (dated 1 March 1933). See also the letter from Hess’s parents to Rudolf and Ilse Hess, early May 1933: “[Hitler’s] name is now on everybody’s lips as the saviour of Germany and thus of the whole world.” BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 51.

  7 Hedda Kalshoven, Ich denk so viel an Euch: Ein deutsch–holländischer Briefwechsel 1920–1949, Muni
ch, 1995, pp. 169 (dated 10 March 1933), 197 (dated 4 May 1933), 199 (dated 17 May 1933). The Hamburg banker Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler confided to his diary that the notoriously reserved inhabitants of the city were “blindly in love with Hitler.” Cited in Frank Bajohr, “Die Zustimmungsdiktatur: Grundzüge natio​nalso​ziali​stischer Herrschaft in Hamburg,” in Angelika Ebbinghaus and Karsten Linne (eds), Kein abgeschlossenes Kapitel: Hamburg im “Dritten Reich,” Hamburg, 1997, p. 108.

  8 Paul Dinichert to Federal Counsellor Giuseppe Motta, 17 Nov. 1933; Frank Bajohr and Christoph Strupp (eds), Fremde Blicke auf das “Dritte Reich”: Berichte ausländischer Diplomaten über Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Göttingen, 2011, p. 392. “The press worships Hitler like a combination of God and His prophets,” noted Victor Klemperer, Tagebücher 1933–1941, p. 54 (entry for 6 Sept. 1933).

  9 For example see the municipality of Wackerberg bei Tölz, 10 May 1933: Beatrice und Helmut Heiber (eds), Die Rückseite des Hakenkreuzes: Absonderliches aus den Akten des Dritten Reiches, Munich, 1993, p. 126; Quedlingburg, 20 Apil 1933: Henrik Eberle (ed.), Briefe an Hitler: Ein Volk schreibt seinem Führer. Unbekannte Dokumente aus Moskauer Archiven—zum ersten Mal veröffentlicht, Bergisch-Gladbach, 2007, p. 264; the Assocation of Thuringian Towns, 18 April 1933; the town Werl, 26 April 1933; Bremen, 8 May 1933: BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 43 II/959; Berlin and Munich: Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Part 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich, 1998, vol. 2/4, part 3, p. 315 (entry for 15 Nov. 1933). For Hitler’s further honorary citizenships between 1935 and 1938 see BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 51/79. In a public announcement of 22 May 1933, the Führer’s office asked for understanding that it could not immediately answer “the great number of requests that arrived every day for Hitler to accept honorary citizenships and certificates thereof.” BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 51/80.

  10 See Axel Schildt: “Jenseits der Politik? Aspekte des Alltags,” in Hamburg im “Dritten Reich,” p. 250; Hans-Ulrich Thamer and Simone Erpel, Hitler und die Deutschen: Volksgemeinschaft und Verbrechen. Katalog zur Ausstellung im Deutschen Historischen Museum in Berlin, Dresden, 2010, p. 210.

  11 Eberle (ed.), Briefe an Hitler, pp. 129f. See ibid. pp. 130f., 132, 135, 163–5 for further examples.

  12 Ibid., pp. 141f.

  13 Heiber (ed.), Die Rückseite des Hakenkreuzes, pp. 12, 119–26. Headteacher of the Eberswalde Academy of Foresty to Hitler, 8 April 1933, and answer from Lammers, 27 April 1933; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde R 43 II/959.

  14 See Thamer and Erpel, Hitler und die Deutschen, pp. 208, 225.

  15 Quotation from the MNN in Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1987, p. 58. See Rudolf Hess to Fritz Hess, 19 April 1933: “All day long the people are queueing in the Reich Chancellory to add their birthday congratulations to the books on display there. The love of the people and their reverence is unbelievable.” BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 51. Messages for Hitler’s birthday in 1933 in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 51/72. Similar in tone were the greetings for New Year 1934/35; ibid., NS 51/73 und NS 51/74. Goebbels’s article “Unser Hitler!” for Wolff’s Telegraphisches Büro, 19 April 1933; BA Berlin-Lichterfelde R 43 II/959.

  16 Klemperer, Tagebücher 1933–1941, p. 37 (entry for 17 June 1933). On the shift in public attitudes towards Hitler see Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, p. 59; Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos, Munich, 1994, pp. 202ff.

  17 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, pp. 92f.; see Christa Schroeder, Er war mein Chef: Aus dem Nachlass der Sekretärin von Adolf Hitler, ed. Anton Joachimsthaler, 3rd edition, Munich and Vienna, 1985, pp. 92f.; Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler wie ich ihn sah: Aufzeichnungen seines Leibfotographen, Munich and Berlin, 1974, p. 198.

  18 Antoni Graf Sobanski, Nachrichten aus Berlin 1933–1936, Berlin, 2007, p. 89. See Martha Dodd, Nice to meet you, Mr. Hitler! Meine Jahre in Deutschland 1933 bis 1937, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, p. 233.

  19 Klemperer, Tagebücher 1933–1941, p. 21 (entry for 10 April 1933).

  20 Eberle (ed.), Briefe an Hitler, pp. 159f.

  21 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1 (1934), p. 275. In a decree on 25 Sept. 1933, Interior Minister Frick ordered that public offices only hang up pictures of the Führer “that do not give cause for concern about how he is presented or artistically depicted.” BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 43 II/959.

  22 Gebhard Himmler to Heinrich Himmler, 30 Aug. 1934, with the addition from his mother Anna Himmler: “You can’t imagine how happy we are about the picture of our beloved Führer.” BA Koblenz, N 1126/13. See the similar reaction of Rudolf Hess’s mother after she was sent a picture “of our beloved Führer” with the handwritten dediction, “To Herr and Frau Hess, dear parents of my oldest and most loyal comrade in arms, with heartfelt devotion, Ad. Hitler.” Klara Hess to Rudolf Hess, 4 Jan. 1934; BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 53.

  23 Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, p. 60.

  24 Wiedemann, Der Mann, p. 80; see Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 2/3, p. 252: “People stood around and waited for hours”; vol. 3/1, p. 100 (entry for 2 Sept. 1934): “First the people down below marched past him. It was moving. What trust [they have!”; see ibid., vol. 4, pp. 215, 217 (entries for 11 and 13 July 1937).

  25 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 2 /3, p. 170 (entry for 18 April 1933); see ibid., p. 192 (entry for 23 May 1933): Kiel; p. 232 (entry for 22 July 1933): Bayreuth Festival; p. 238 (entry for 31 July 1933): Stuttgart Gymnastics Festival; p. 259 (entry for 2 Sept. 1933): Nuremberg Party Conference; vol. 3/1, p. 54 (entry for 28 May 1934): Dresden; p. 94 (entry for 18 Aug. 1934): Hamburg.

  26 Albert Speer, Erinnerungen: Mit einem Essay von Jochen Thies, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1993, p. 61. See Otto Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler, Munich, 1955, p. 183, on the “indescribable scenes” surrounding Hitler’s journeys in peace time.

  27 Wiedemann, Der Mann, p. 81. The Jewish lawyer Kurt F. Rosenberg from Hamburg concluded that “one cannot overstate the religious needs of the people as one of the forces driving the new movement in Germany.” Kurt F. Rosenberg: “Einer, der nicht mehr dazugehört”: Tagebücher 1933–1937, ed. Beate Meyer and Björn Siegel, Göttingen, 2012, p. 257 (entry for 16 March 1935).

  28 William S. Shirer, Berliner Tagebuch: Aufzeichnungen 1934–41, transcribed and ed. Jürgen Schebera, Leipzig and Weimar, 1991, p. 24 (entry for 4 Sept. 1934). On the occasion of his 44th birthday, three sisters from the city of Halle wrote to Hitler that the moment they first caught sight of him was “the greatest of our lives thus far.” They had sensed, they wrote, how “everyone alive and breathing was drawn to you as though attracted by a magnetic force.” BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, NS 51/72.

  29 Speer, Erinnerungen, p. 79. Hess testified that for Hitler, alongside Friedrich the Great and Richard Wagner, Luther was “the greatest German”: “All those revolutionary, tough and fearless spirits that overcome the world are of his kind.” Rudolf Hess to Klara Hess, 21 Jan. 1927; BA Bern, Nl Hess, J1.211-1989/148, 39.

  30 For a summary see Wehler, Deutsche Gesel​lscha​ftsge​schichte 1914–1949, pp. 709–11 (“Was there a National Socialist economic miracle?”)

  31 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 2 (1935), p. 283.

  32 Ibid., 3 (1936), p. 157.

  33 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 260, 262. See countless other examples in Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, 2nd revised and expanded edition, Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 190–6.

  34 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1 (1934), p. 197; 2 (1935), pp. 24, 422.

  35 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/1, p. 341 (entry for 6 Dec. 1935). See ibid., vol. 3/2, pp. 40 (entry for 13 March 1936), 94 (entry for 30 May 1936). Further, Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens: Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eigener Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse, Munich and Gräfelf
ing, 1953, p. 198.

  36 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1 (1934), pp. 198, 200.

  37 Ibid., 1 (1934), pp. 10f. In early June 1934, the Gestapo in Kassel reported: “As unshakable as people’s trust in the Führer may be, there is also some strong criticism of the lower party organs and particular local conditions.” Thomas Klein (ed.), Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei über die Provinz Hessen-Nassau, Cologne and Vienna, 1986, vol. 1, p. 102.

  38 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 1, part 2, p. 613. See Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, London, 2000, p. 246.

  39 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 2 (1935), p. 152.

  40 Ibid., 2 (1935), p. 758: “Sayings like ‘If the Führer only knew…he wouldn’t put up with this’ were common.” Further examples in Frank Bajohr, “Ämter, Pfründe, Korruption,” in Andreas Wirsching (ed.), Das Jahr 1933: Die natio​nalso​ziali​stische Machtergreifung und die deutsche Gesellschaft, Göttingen, 2009, pp. 196, 199n52. On the compensatory function of the mythology of the Führer see Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, pp. 83, 96–104.

  41 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 1, part 2, p. 529.

  42 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 2 (1935), p. 277; see ibid., p. 410: “There is no doubt that the constant drum-beating about equality, honour and German liberty has had an effect and caused confusion even deep within the ranks of the formerly Marxist working classes.”

  43 Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, p. 73; see Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 2/3, p. 37 (entry for 22 April 1934): “The people is indivisibly at Hitler’s side. No human being has ever enjoyed this sort of trust.”

  44 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 2 (1935), pp. 904, 1018.

  45 Wiedemann, Der Mann, p. 90.

  46 Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 3 (1936), p. 281.

  47 Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3/2, p. 203 (entry for 5 Oct. 1936).

  48 See Karlheinz Schmeer, Die Regie des öffentlichen Lebens im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1956, pp. 68–116.

  49 Hans-Ulrich Thamer, “Faszination und Manipulation: Die Nürnberger Reichsparteitage der NSDAP,” in Uwe Schultz (ed.), Das Fest: Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, 1988, pp. 352–68 (quotation on p. 353).