Hitler (150 page)

51.
Der Hitlerprozess,
p. 28. The previous quotation, in which Hitler contrasts his conduct with that of the Kapp putschists, is taken from his speech of November 8, 1934. Hans von Hülsen characterized the trial as a “political carnival”; quoted in Deuerlein,
A ufstieg,
p. 205.

52. This reprimand to the court was pronounced by Minister of State von Meinel; cf. Deuerlein,
Hitler-Putsch,
p. 216;
ibid.,
pp. 221 f. for the remarks of Pöhner.

 

BOOK III

 

1. Bracher,
Diktatur,
p. 139, Hitler's assertion that he first developed the idea of the autobahnen and of a cheap “people's car” is reported by Frank, p. 47. Hanfstaengl, p. 114, declares that Hitler's cell looked like a delicatessen store. He says that Hitler found the surplus useful for inducing the guards to be even more favorably inclined to him than they already were. On the horde of visitors, their requests, concerns, and intentions, cf. the report of the prison director dated September 18, 1924, BHStA I, p. 1501.

2. Hitler on February 3, 1942, to a group of Old Fighters; cf. Shirer,
Rise and Fall,
p. 90
n.

3.
Mein Kampf,
p. 36.

4.
Ibid.,
pp. 212 f.

5.
Ibid.,
pp. 154 f.

6. Olden,
Hitler,
p. 140, and
Mein Kampf,
pp. 24, 31, 493. According to various sources, among those who worked on correcting and editing the manuscript were Stolzing-Cerny, the music critic of the
Völkische Beobachter;
Bernhard Stempfle, the former monk and priest as well as editor of the anti-Semitic
Miesbacher Anzeiger;
and, though with limited success, Ernst Hanfstaengl. However, Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess's wife, has disputed all allegations of editorial assistance by others and also denied that Hitler dictated the book to her husband. Instead, she maintained, Hitler “himself typed the manuscript with two fingers on an ancient typewriter during his imprisonment in Landsberg.” Cf. Maser,
Hitlers
“Mein Kampf,”
p. 20; also Frank, p. 39.

7.
Mein Kampf,
pp. 325, 412, 562; also
Hitlers Zweites Buch,
p. 221.

8. Rauschning,
Gespräche,
p. 5; also his
Revolution des Nihilismus,
p. 53.

9. Trevor-Roper, “The Mind of Adolf Hitler.” Preface to
Hitler's Table Talk,
p. xxxv. Heiden,
Geschichte,
p. 11, spoke of Hitler's having a “distinct talent for combination.” Cf. also R. H. Phelps, “Hitlers grundlegende Rede über den Antisemitismus,” in: VJHfZ, 1968:4, pp. 395 ff.

10. Preiss, pp. 39 f. It may be pointed out here that this attempt to present Hitler's
Weltanschauung
coherently cannot be based exclusively upon
Mein Kampf;
earlier and later utterances must be taken into account. There is all the more justification for this approach because Hitler's ideology in essentials did not change after 1924.

11.
Mein Kampf,
p. 662.

12.
Tischgespräche,
p. 346; also p. 321 and Domarus, p. 647.

13.
Mein Kampf,
p. 296.

14.
Ibid.,
pp. 383, 290.

15. Cf. Ernst Nolte,
Eine frühe Quelle,
p. 590. Nolte deserves much credit for having unearthed this half-forgotten and at any rate largely ignored publication,
Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin. Zwiegespräche zwischen Adolf Hitler und mir,
and subjecting it to analysis. Cf. also Nolte,
Epoche,
pp. 404 ff. The identity of Christianity and Bolshevism, he comments, was also “the central thesis of the table talk,” although Hitler even at the height of his power would never have dared to say so bluntly. On the 30 million victims, cf. Hitler's speech of July 28, 1922, quoted in Boepple, p. 30.

16. Printed in:
Der Nationalsozialist,
1:29 (August 17, 1924), quoted from Eberhard Jäckel,
Hitlers Weltanschauung,
p. 73.

17. Trevor-Roper,
op. cit.,
p. xxv,
n.
9.

18.
Ibid.;
for the preceding quotation cf.
Libres propos,
p. 321.

19.
Mein Kampf,
pp. 138 ff.

20. Our approach here owes a good deal to the summing-up presented by H. R. Trevor-Roper in his fundamental lecture on “Hitler's War Aims,” given at the 1959 congress of historians in Munich; cf. VJHfZ 1960:2, pp. 121 ff.

21.
Mein Kampf,
p. 649, 652.

22.
Ibid.,
p. 654.

23.
Ibid.,
pp. 654 f.

24. Nolte,
Faschismus,
pp. 135 f.

25. Albert Speer,
Inside the Third Reich,
p. 440: Speer's letter to Hitler of March 29, 1945. Also IMT XLI, pp. 425 ff. Hitler's speech at Erlangen is printed in Preiss, p. 171.

26.
VB of
March 7, 1925; also Heiden,
Geschichte,
p. 190.

27. Luedecke, p. 234.

28. Otto Strasser,
Hitler und Ich,
p. 113. According to this account, Goebbels made the demand in a speech that he delivered standing on a chair. With good reason doubts have been expressed about this scene; all the same, Gregor Strasser, who is more credible than his brother, confirmed it. Helmut Heiber may therefore be right in his conjecture that Goebbels actually uttered the words in dispute, but not under the dramatic circumstances described by Otto Strasser; rather, that he spoke in these terms to a small group, in conversation. Cf.
Goebbels-Tagebuch 1925–26,
p. 56.

29. These drawings cannot be definitely dated. According to Albert Speer, who bases his opinion on remarks by Hitler, the sketches date from this period. On the other hand, Speer's office manager, Apel, who drew up a list of the Hitler sketches in the architect's possession, assigns the date “about 1924” to the drawing of the “Grand Triumphal Arch,” the “Great Hall,” the “Berlin South Station,” and the “Berlin State Library.” Some of the sketches are reproduced in Speer's
Inside the Third Reich.

30. Cf.
Goebbels-Tagebuch 1925–26,
p. 60; also Hinrich Lohse,
Der Fall Strasser,
p. 5.

31. Sir Nevile Henderson,
The Failure of a Mission, Berlin 1937—1939,
p. 282.

32.
Goebbels-Tagebuch,
pp. 92 ff.

33. The report also states: “Violently firing their revolvers and employing iron flagpoles like lances, the National Socialists penetrated the ranks of the Communists. Nine lightly injured and five gravely injured persons were removed from the scene of the battle.” A month before, a battle in the Pharus Halls in Berlin's North End had ended with ninety-eight serious casualties. After it Goebbels wrote triumphantly: “Since this day they know us in Berlin. We are not so naive as to believe that now everything has been done. Pharus is only a beginning.” See
GoebbelsTagebuch,
p. 119n.

34. Quoted in Heiden,
Hitler,
I, p. 242; see also Goebbels, “Der Führer als Staatsmann,” p. 51.

35. Sales began to rise significantly only after the NSDAP made its breakthrough and became a mass party. Wider distribution was helped by the issuance of a cheap edition costing eight marks for both volumes. In 1930, 54,086 copies were sold, in 1931, 50,808, and in 1932, 90,351; the following year the annual sale passed the 200,000 mark, and thereafter repeatedly exceeded it. In 1943, total sales of the book were alleged to be 9,840,000; cf. Hermann Hammer, “Die deutschen Ausgaben von Hitlers ‘Mein Kampf,' ” in: VJHfZ 1956:2, pp. 161 ff.

36. Shirer,
Rise and Fall,
p. 134; Shirer refers to a study by Professor Oron James Hale in
The American Historical Review,
July, 1955.

37. Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Munich, quoted in Tyreil,
Führer befiehl
..., pp. 269 ff. In this speech, also, Hitler referred, by way of comparison, to primitive Christianity.

38. Quoted in Tyrell, pp. 211 ff., also p. 196; see also Heinrich Hoffmann,
Hitler Was My Friend,
pp. 151 ff.

39. Preiss, p. 81.

 

BOOK IV

 

1. Bracher,
Auflösung,
p. 291.

2. Heiden,
Hitler
I, p. 268.

3. Quoted from Shirer,
Rise and Fall,
p. 136.

4. A study by S. M. Lipset defines the typical Nazi voter as follows: “An independent Protestant member of the middle class who lived either on a farm or in a very small town and who formerly had voted for a centrist party or a regional party that opposed the power and influence of big industry and the unions”; cf. Nolte,
Theorien,
p. 463.

5. Frank, p. 58.

6. Quoted in Heiden,
Hitler
I, p. 275, and in Kühnl,
Die nationalsozialistische Linke,
p. 374.

7. Cf. Albert Krebs,
Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSDAP,
pp. 138 f.

8. The
Daily Mail
of September 24, 1930, quoted according to the
VB
of September 25. Lord Rothermere's article began significantly by calling on Englishmen to change their conception of Germany which, he said, they remembered chiefly as prisoners of war. He pointed out that Germany was not free as other nations were; that the Allies had made the regaining of her full national freedom dependent upon payments and conditions imposed upon her against her will. And he asked whether it was wise to insist upon the ultimate letter of the law. It would be best for the welfare of Western civilization, he concluded, if there came to the helm in Germany a government permeated by the same healthy principles with which Mussolini had renewed Italy in the last eight years.

9. Quoted from Bullock, p. 163, and
Frankfurter Zeitung,
September 26, 1930. Cf. also
Mein Kampf,
p. 345: “The movement is anti-parliamentarian, and even its participation in a parliamentary institution can only imply activity for its destruction, for eliminating an institution in which we must see one of the gravest symptoms of mankind's decay.”

10. Hitler's statement is
not
complete and not recorded
in the
transcript of
the
trial; the quotations given here sum up the substance of different texts. See the attempt to reconstruct the exact wording on the basis of press reports in Peter Bucher,
Der Reichswehrprozess,
pp. 237 ff.

11. Willi Veller's letter of August 16, 1930, abridged, quoted from Tyrell, pp. 297 f.

12. A. Fran?ois-Poncet,
The Fateful Years,
pp. 5 ff.

13. J. Curtius,
Sechs Jahre Minister der deutschen Republik,
p. 217.

14. Report of the British ambassador for July 16, 1931, cited from Bullock, pp. 177 f.

15. The meeting was continued in Berlin shortly afterward. According to the testimony of Ernst Poensgen, Hitler pleaded with the captains of industry to withdraw their support for Brüning, but without success. See Poensgen's
Erinnerungen,
p. 4; also Dietrich,
Mit Hitler in die Macht,
p. 45.

16. Ernst von Weizsäcker,
Erinnerungen,
p. 103, adds to the remark on the postmaster generalship the anecdotal phrase: “Then he can lick my ass on the stamps.” Hindenburg habitually called Hitler the “Bohemian corporal” because he mistakenly assumed that Hitler came from Braunau in Bohemia. But it is also possible that he intended simultaneously to stress a certain foreignness and un-Germanness in Hitler, who struck him as “bohemian” in both senses of the word.

17. Carl J. Burckhardt,
Meine Danziger Mission,
pp. 340, 346. Hitler made it clear that he could not be considered bourgeois in an interview with Hanns Johst published in
Frankfurter Volksblatt,
January 26, 1934. Cf. also
Tischgespräche,
p. 170.

18. Cf. G. W. F. Hallgarten,
Hitler, Reichswehr und Industrie,
p. 120. Hallgarten gives details on the expenses of the NSDAP and the amount of support contributed by industry. See also Heiden,
Hitler,
vol. I, pp. 313 f. Some emendations may be found in Henry A. Turner, “Fritz Thyssen und ‘I Paid Hitler' ” in:
Faschismus und Kapitalismus in Deutschland,
pp. 87 ff. The magnitude of the sums and the difficulties involved are illuminated by Thyssen's unsuccessful attempt to withdraw 100,000 marks for the benefit of the NSDAP from the strike fund of the Northwest Group of the Association of German Iron and Steel Industrialists. When Ludwig Grauert, then business manager of the association, undertook the transaction without obtaining Chairman Ernst Poensgen's consent, Poensgen rebuked him sharply. Krupp actually demanded Grauert's dismissal, and Grauert was saved only when Thyssen came forward asserting that the 100,000 marks had merely been a loan—which he promptly paid back out of his own pocket. Cf. Turner, “Thyssen,” pp. 101 ff.

    According to partially supported testimony given in court by Friedrich Flick, the Nazis received only 2.8 per cent of the money he spent for political purposes; cf.
ibid.,
p. 20. Partly because of the altogether inadequate source materials, the question of how much financial support Hitler received from industry has become a broad field for speculation colored by ideology. Franz Xaver Schwarz, treasurer of the NSDAP, by his own testimony burned in the spring of 1945 all the documents in the Brown House in order to save them from confiscation by the advancing American troops. In addition, the source most frequently cited—Fritz Thyssen's
I Paid Hitler
—has proved to be highly unreliable. Thyssen himself has contested the book's authenticity. In Monte Carlo, where he was living in exile, he had granted several interviews to the editor, Emery Reves, in the spring of 1940. These interviews were to provide material for a volume of memoirs. The rapid advance of the German armies in France put an abrupt end to the undertaking. Reves fled to England with the documents and later published the interviews, considerably expanded. Reves tells another story which, however, seems a good deal less credible since it was not even accepted by the denazification tribunal in Königstein/Taunus.