In addition, he had a further, very practical motive for quitting Austria. In 1909, at the age of twenty, Hitler should have registered with the army recruitment authorities and then a year later been called up. This he had failed to do, nor had he done so subsequently. To move abroad without having registered for military service was a serious offence. Moreover, it was exacerbated by the fact that, on leaving Vienna, he had not given Munich as his future place of residence, thereby indicating that he wanted to cover his tracks from the Austrian authorities. From August 1913 onwards, Hitler was being sought by the Linz police for ‘avoiding call-up’, and in January 1914 he was located, thanks to the cooperation of the Munich police and brought before the Austrian Consulate-General in Munich. His excuse that he had registered as a potential conscript in 1910 in Vienna and had had no intention of avoiding military service was accepted, as it was impossible to disprove it in Munich. He was permitted to undergo his medical in Salzburg on 5 February 1914, where he was declared ‘unfit for military service’.140 Six months later, the First World War broke out.
World war
The response to Germany’s declaration of war in the summer of 1914 within Germany itself was mixed: on the one hand, enthusiastic approval, on the other open discontent and protest, and in between, much nervousness, apprehension, and anxiety. The ‘August experience’, that spontaneous wave of nationalist enthusiasm that had allegedly united the nation (an idea that played such a large role in the press reports of the time and in the memories of nationalistic Germans) is a very one-sided portrayal of the national mood of the time and one subsequently spread by the authorities.
In fact, it was only certain sections of the Munich population who greeted the threat of war at the end of July 1914 with patriotic enthusiasm.141 When Germany mobilized and declared war on Russia on the evening of 1 August, there was a spontaneous demonstration in the city centre; a few thousand people surged to the Wittelsbach palace and paid homage to the king. The following day a crowd assembled at 12 o’clock, when there was a changing of the guard in front of the palace, in order to express their patriotism, among other things by singing patriotic songs. There is a photograph of the scene, taken by Hitler’s subsequent personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, in which Hitler can be identified, albeit not wholly reliably, being swept up in the enthusiasm. However, Hoffmann’s photograph is not so much a document of the actual popular mood as part of a patriotic propaganda campaign: the photographer pressed the button just at the point when the crowd, which filled only part of the Odeonsplatz, was being filmed by a film camera at the edge of the square and when it was expressing its enthusiasm in a particularly visible way.142
The outbreak of war jolted Hitler out of his apathy. For him, he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘those hours seemed like a release from the most painful feelings of my youth’.143 In the confusion of the first phase of mobilization he succeeded in being taken on as a volunteer by the 2nd Infantry Regiment. The fact that he was an Austrian citizen and therefore not really eligible to serve in the Bavarian army was ignored; his only recently having been declared unfit for service was also evidently deemed irrelevant. On 16 August, he joined the regiment and on 1 September was assigned to the recently formed 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment.144
In the army, Hitler for the first time in his life found himself subject to a regime of rules, accepted as a member of a group (albeit in the role of an outsider), and acquiring a purpose in life. In one of his Table Talks in October 1941 he described the almost five years he spent in the army as the ‘only time’ in his life when he had ‘no worries’.145 From his point of view, as a soldier he had for the first time the chance of carrying out a concrete and purposeful task that matched his high-flown fantasies: he was absolutely convinced that the war would produce a victorious ‘Greater Germany’.
Contrary to the long-standing legend, the 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment was not a regiment of volunteers; only 30 per cent of the soldiers who joined in 1914 did so voluntarily. The majority of the members of the regiment consisted of ‘Ersatz-Reservists’, in other words men who had hitherto been excused national service.146 The social composition of the regiment was similar to that of the Bavarian population as a whole.147 On 10 October, after being inspected by King Ludwig III of Bavaria, the regiment moved into Lechfeld camp where it underwent a ten-day course of fairly intensive training that almost exhausted a large number of its members. The first five days at Lechfeld, Hitler wrote to his former landlady, Frau Popp, ‘were the most taxing of my life’.148 On 21 October, the regiment was transferred to the western front; according to Hitler, during their journey through the Reich, the troop trains were enthusiastically greeted by the population.149 On 24 October, the infantrymen arrived in Lille, from where, after a few days, they were marched to the front.150
On 29 October, the regiment had its first experience of combat. As part of the so-called First Battle of Flanders, which had begun on 20 October, an attack group was created from the German 6th Army, with the aim of supporting the offensive of the 4th Army further north, along the Channel coast. The 6th Bavarian Reserve Division including Hitler’s regiment, which was commonly called the List regiment after the name of its first commander, formed part of this attack group. On the morning of 29 October, the regiment had the task of taking the village of Gheluvelt, held by troops of the British IV Corps. The inexperienced, inadequately trained, and poorly equipped soldiers from Bavaria – for example, they had not received any helmets, but wore territorial army caps – found themselves confronted by well-trained units made up of professional soldiers, although during the three-day engagement the latter made numerous tactical errors.151 Moreover, the List regiment not only had to fight the British; numerous losses were caused by friendly fire because the members of the List regiment were thought to be British on account of their unusual head gear.152
Hitler’s own account and the reports of other members of the regiment provide a striking picture of the fearful chaos of this ‘baptism of fire’. The attack took place on broken ground with numerous obstacles: hedges, fences, and ditches held up the advance, while farmsteads, copses, and spinneys provided the enemy with sufficient cover to mount ambushes. Governed no doubt by a mixture of fear and desperate courage, the inexperienced troops, who had not yet felt the effects of artillery and machine-gun fire, pressed forwards; the attack then broke up into a series of uncoordinated bands, who were continually pushed to go on by their officers and NCOs. Three months later, using his unique orthography, Hitler described this experience in a detailed letter to a Munich acquaintance, a lawyer, Ernst Hepp,153 as if it had only just happened. Even by February 1915 Hitler had evidently still not got over his experiences during the previous autumn.
‘We creep along the ground until we reach the edge of the forest. Shells scream and whistle overhead, tree trunks and branches are flying all around us. Then once again shells crash into the edge of the wood sending up clouds of stones, earth and sand, uprooting the biggest trees and suffocating everything in a yellow-grey stinking mist. . . . Then, our major arrives. He goes on ahead. I jump up and run as fast as I can over meadows and turnip fields, over ditches, climb over wire and hedges and then, in front of me, I hear shouts: “In here, everybody, in here.” I see a long trench in front of me; a moment later I jump in, as do a large number of others, in front of me, behind me, to the left and right. Beside me there are Würt[t]embergers, under me dead and wounded Britons.’ After their own artillery had begun targeting the British lines, the attack continued: ‘We advance rapidly across the fields and, after, in some cases bloody, hand-to-hand combat, we kick the chaps out of their trenches one after the other. Many put their hands up. Those who don’t surrender are killed. We clear them out trench by trench.’ But finally the attack stalled until the battalion commander intervened: ‘The major quickly reviews the situation and orders us to prepare to attack to the right and left of the road. We have no more officers left and hardly any NCOs. So those of us who a
re a bit plucky go back to get reinforcements. When I return a second time with a troop of Würt[t]embergers who had become separated from their units the major is lying on the ground with his chest split open and surrounded by a pile of bodies. Now there is one officer left, his adjutant. We are boiling with rage. Everybody shouts: “Lieutenant, take the lead and let’s attack!” So, on we go through the forest to the left; we can’t get through on the road. Four times we press forward and each time have to go back again; from my whole lot there is only one left apart from me, and in the end he too falls. A bullet has torn off the whole of the right arm of my coat, but miraculously I am unharmed and OK. Finally at two o’clock we make a fifth attempt and this time we manage to take the edge of the forest and the farmstead.’154
In Mein Kampf Hitler describes how the attacking soldiers had sung ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’, and how this had spread from company to company.155 His own report of the battle, composed much closer to the events, does not contain this incident and nor do the other contemporary reports of this attack. Evidently Hitler took the liberty of borrowing from the numerous post-war descriptions of the patriotic courage of those ‘volunteer regiments’ who, based near Langemarck (a good ten kilometres north of Gheluvelt), had been cut down by British machine guns while singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’.156
After three days of bitter fighting the regiment finally succeeded in taking the village, but they did not secure the real goal of the offensive, namely the capture of the city of Ypres. Around 75 per cent of the reserve regiment had been killed or wounded. Among the dead was its commander, Julius List.157 The offensive became bogged down in trench warfare and little changed in this respect during the following four years.158 To begin with, however, after a short break for rest and recuperation, in November the regiment was integrated into the front running through Flanders, initially near Messines,159 then a few days later, near Wytschaete,160 where it took part in more heavy fighting, and then again near Messines.161
After the war had come to a halt, the soldiers directly on the front line inevitably had to dig themselves in using a system of trenches and dugouts. With the onset of winter, fighting on this part of the front gradually died down, even though casualties still occurred through artillery salvos, enemy snipers, and occasional British reconnaissance sorties.162
During the winter it was above all the unpleasant conditions in the trenches that made the soldiers’ lives a misery. ‘As a result of the endless rain (we don’t have any winter), the proximity to the sea and the low-lying land, the meadows and fields are like bottomless marshes, while the roads are covered with mud a foot deep. And our trenches run through this bog’, Hitler wrote to Munich.163 The soldiers often stood up to their knees in water, trenches had to be abandoned because they had been transformed into streams. Maintaining even a minimum of hygiene under these conditions was impossible.164
On 3 November, Hitler was promoted to the rank of corporal and, on 9 November, assigned to the staff of the regiment as a runner.165 In this capacity his job was primarily to take messages from regimental headquarters several kilometres behind the front line to the forward battalion headquarters or to neighbouring regiments, but generally not to the front line itself.166 In the event that their own positions were under heavy attack this was a dangerous job; most of the time, however, there was relative peace on the front line and the advantages of being a runner predominated. Unlike his regimental comrades, Hitler did not have to spend days and nights in the bog and dirt of the trenches; most of his time was passed on standby in the (forward) headquarters of the regiment or in the relatively secure regimental headquarters further in the rear, where he had fairly comfortable sleeping quarters, and one can assume that his constant proximity to staff officers would have provided certain privileges. In quiet periods he could read, draw, and paint; he even kept a little dog called Foxl. While around a quarter of the soldiers of the List regiment, which was continually being replenished, were killed, none of the eight members of Hitler’s group of runners, who were with him from 1915 onwards, were killed during their military service.167 Hitler did everything he could to hang on to his posting.168
According to Fritz Wiedemann, who was the regimental adjutant at the time, Hitler was considered particularly reliable. Thus, along with two or three other comrades, he was used as little as possible for conveying routine messages, and kept back for especially difficult assignments. From a military standpoint, however, Hitler had not cut ‘a particularly impressive figure’: his bearing was sloppy, his head ‘usually tilted towards his left shoulder’. His responses were ‘anything but soldierly and brief’; he did not have ‘what it takes to be in command of others’, but nor had he sought promotion. After the Second World War, Max Amann, Hitler’s sergeant-major and later head of the German press, stated that Hitler had been ‘quite appalled’ when offered promotion. Amann described Hitler as ‘obedient, zealous in the performance of his duties, and modest’.169
On 15 November 1914, Hitler was accompanying the new regimental commander, Philipp Engelhardt, to the front, when the latter unexpectedly came under fire. Together with another soldier – according to another account, there were four of them – Hitler placed himself in front of the officer to protect him and urged him to take cover.170 When, at the beginning of December, sixty Iron Crosses Second Class were given out to members of the regiment, among those honoured were the runners who had saved the regimental commander a fortnight earlier.171 Hitler wrote to Joseph Popp, a Munich acquaintance: ‘It was the happiest day of my life’.172
On 12 March 1915 the regiment took part in a costly German counter-offensive near Neuve Chapelle,173 subsequently taking up new positions in front of the village of Fromelles.174 The regiment was holding a section of the front just over 2,300 metres in length; six companies took it in turns to man the front line, with six remaining in reserve, of which three were quartered in the rear.175 Most of the time in the forward section was spent in the routine of trench warfare with relatively little combat; the soldiers were occupied, above all, with expanding trenches and fortifications, as well as the struggle to keep water from leaking into the trenches and dealing with vermin. However, there were a number of major engagements. In May 1915 the British breached the line of the 16th Reserve Regiment, which suffered heavy casualties in retaking the position on the following day.176 In July they managed to thwart a British-Australian attack.177
In September 1916 the regiment was relieved and, at the beginning of October, deployed to the Battle of the Somme, which had been raging since July as the British ambitiously tried to wear down the German forces in a ‘battle of attrition’. On 5 October, the regimental runners’ dugout, which was approximately two kilometres behind the front line, was hit by artillery fire. Hitler suffered a wound to the leg and was sent to hospital in Beelitz.178 He remained there for eight weeks and, while recuperating, used the opportunity to visit nearby Berlin, where, among things, he visited the National Gallery.
At the beginning of November Hitler travelled to Munich in order to join a replacement unit, the 2nd Infantry Regiment. Reflecting on his visits to Beelitz, Berlin, and Munich, Hitler noted in Mein Kampf that he had become aware of a powerful mood of defeatism: ‘irritation, discontent, and grumbling’, cowardice, and ‘skiving’. And, he went on, the offices of the home army were packed with Jews; the war economy was in the hands of the Jews.179 Anti-Semitism was in fact increasing during the second half of the war; there was widespread talk of alleged Jewish ‘skivers’ and ‘war profiteers’. It would, however, be simplistic to assume that this atmosphere reinforced Hitler’s anti-Semitism. It is, indeed, remarkable that we do not have any documentary evidence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism for the period of the First World War.180
To prevent his being transferred to another regiment Hitler wrote to Wiedemann, who responded by requesting his transfer to the staff of the 16th Reserve Regiment and, at the beginning of March 1917, Hitler rejoined the regiment
, which was now based near La Bassée.181 In April the regiment was driven out of its positions by a Canadian attack,182 but a few weeks later, after a short pause for rest and recuperation, it was in action once again in the Battle of Arras.183 The following months were largely spent resting behind the lines,184 interrupted by short and bloody engagements in the second half of July, when for two weeks the regiment lay under constant enemy fire, losing 800 men. No longer capable of fighting, it was withdrawn from the front line, but parts of it became involved in the major British offensive that began on 31 July.185
At the beginning of August the exhausted regiment was transferred to the front in Alsace. Here, in the middle of September 1917, Hitler received the Military Service Cross Third Class186 and, at the end of the month, was permitted to go on leave, which he spent in Berlin with the parents of a comrade.187 In the meantime, his regiment had been transferred to the Champagne region. In March and April 1918 it was once more involved in costly engagements, this time in support of Germany’s spring offensive, the last major attempt by the German Army to defeat the Western Allies. In April alone the regiment lost almost half of its soldiers through death, wounds, and disease. After the German offensive came to a halt at the beginning of June, the regiment was pulled out of the front line, but was transferred after only a fortnight to the Marne front and, during the second half of July, became involved in the Battle of the Marne, the last attempt of the German Army to reach Paris. At the end of July, the regiment was withdrawn from this section of the front as well.188 At the beginning of August, Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, an extremely rare distinction for someone who was not an officer. It was justified on the grounds that Hitler had carried an important message to the front under heavy enemy fire, although it was probably in recognition of his overall performance.189 He was put forward by Wiedemann’s successor, the regimental adjutant, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann. As Gutmann was a Jew, in later years Hitler slandered him as a ‘coward’.190
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