Hitler (25 page)

 

Another account, of a speech given on August 28, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaus, reads:

The lecturer Hitler explained how things stood for us before the war and how they are now. On usurers and profiteers, that they all belong on the gallows. Further on the mercenary army. He said it probably wouldn't harm the young fellows any if they had to enlist again, for that hadn't harmed anybody, for nobody knows any more that the young ought to keep their mouths shut in the presence of elders, for everywhere the young lack discipline.... Then he went through all the points in the program, at which he received a lot of applause. The hall was very full. A man who called Herr Hitler an idiot was calmly kicked out.
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With growing self-assurance the party began touting itself as a supporter of “order” by breaking up meetings of the Left, shouting down speakers, administering “reminders” in the form of beatings, and once forcing a piece of sculpture to be removed from a public exhibition on the grounds that it offended public taste. At the beginning of January, 1921, Hitler assured his audience in the Kindl-Keller “that henceforth the National Socialist movement in Munich will ruthlessly prevent all meetings and lectures—if necessary, by force—which are designed to seditiously affect our already sick folk-comrades.”

The party found such gestures all the easier because now, in addition to the protection it enjoyed from the Munich District Army Command, it had become the “spoiled darling” of the Bavarian state government. In the middle of March, rightist circles in Berlin, headed by the hitherto nameless Dr. Kapp and supported by the Ehrhardt Brigade, had attempted a coup. The attempt had collapsed, partly because of its amateur nature, partly because it was instantly countered by a general strike. A simultaneous attempt of the same sort by the Reichswehr and the Free Corps bands in Bavaria met with more success. On the night of March 13 the bourgeois Social Democratic regime was overthrown by the military and paramilitary forces and replaced by a rightist government under the “strong man” Gustav von Kahr.

The Left retaliated with its classic weapon: a general strike. The radical leftists saw a chance to exploit the situation for their own revolutionary ends and asserted leadership over the strike, principally in central Germany and the Ruhr. Their call for arming the proletariat was greeted enthusiastically. Soon, in a well-co-ordinated way that spoke of careful planning, masses of workers were organized in regular military formations. Between the Rhein and the Ruhr alone a “Red Army” of more than 50,000 men was set up. Within a few days it took over almost the entire industrial area. The weak Reichswehr and police units that opposed its advance were crushed; in places veritable battles were fought. A wave of killing, looting, and arson passed over the country, briefly bringing to light how much class hatred was present, repressed by the half-measures of a semirevolution. Soon, however, the military launched a bloody counterattack. The summary arrests, the shootings, and other acts of vengeance again revealed deep-seated feuds and unresolved conflicts. The country, so often divided and torn by contradictions in the course of its history, more and more desperately craved order and reconciliation. Instead, it found itself sinking ever more helplessly into a morass of hatred, distrust, and anarchy.

Because of the shift in power relationships, Bavaria became the natural center for radical rightist plots—even more than it had previously been. The Allies had repeatedly demanded that the paramilitary bands be dissolved. The Kahr government in Bavaria resisted, for these bands were its strongest support. Gradually, all those irreconcilable enemies of the republic who could ill stand the climate in other parts of Germany poured into the Bavarian militias and private armies, which already numbered more than 300,000 men. Among them were followers of Kapp who had fled Berlin, determined remnants from the dissolved Free Corps of the eastern regions of the Reich, the “National Warlord” Ludendorff, vigilante killers, adventurers, nationalist revolutionaries of various ideological shades. But all were united in their desire to overthrow the hated “Jews' Republic.” They were able to exploit the traditional Old Bavarian separatism; the Bavarians had a long history of intense dislike for Prussian, Protestant Berlin. They flattered their Bavarian hosts with the slogan
Ordnungszelle Bayern
(“Bavaria as the mainstay of public order”). With more and more open support from the state government, these paramilitary groups began setting up arms depots, converting castles and monasteries into secret military bases, and plotting assassinations and coups. The conspiratorial whisperings went on constantly; all the groups were engaged in treasonous projects and often worked at cross-purposes.

These developments proved highly important to the rising National Socialist Party. The military, the paramilitary, and the civilian holders of power all looked upon it with favor, the more so as the party proved itself increasingly successful. After Hitler had been received by Prime Minister von Kahr, one of Hitler's student followers, Rudolf Hess, addressed a letter to the head of state: “The central point is that H. is convinced that a recovery is possible only if it proves possible to lead the masses, particularly the workers, back to the nationalist cause.... I know Herr Hitler very well personally and am quite close to him. He has a rarely honorable, pure character, full of profound kindness, is religious, a good Catholic. His one goal is the welfare of his country. For this he is sacrificing himself in the most selfless fashion.”

The day of public acceptance had come: The Prime Minister finally mentioned Hitler, in terms of praise, in the Landtag. Pöhner, the police commissioner of Munich, let Hitler do pretty much as he pleased. Roles in the forthcoming drama had been assigned. It became possible to discern the shape of that political constellation which has been called typical of Fascist conquests of power. Henceforth, Hitler was leagued with the conservative power of the Establishment, pledged to it as the advance guard in the fight against the common Marxist enemy. The conservatives thought they would make use of the energies and hypnotic arts of this unruly agitator and, at the proper moment, outmaneuver him by their own intellectual, economic, and political superiority. He, meanwhile, intended to march the battalions he had built up under the benevolent gaze of the ruling powers over the body of the enemy and against his partners in order to seize all the power. Hitler was playing that peculiar game, whose moves were marked by illusions, treacheries, and perjuries, with which he subsequently won almost all his victories and outwitted successively Kahr and Hugenberg, Papen and Chamberlain. On the other hand, his blunders, down to the ultimate failure in the war, were partly due to actions of impatience, petulance, or overconfidence.

The progress of the party was greatly furthered by the purchase of the
Völkische Beobachter
in December, 1920. Apparently Dietrich Eckart and Ernst Röhm raised the 60,000 reichsmarks that represented the down payment for the financially troubled racist-nationalist semiweekly.
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Among the donors were many members of respectable Munich society, to which Hitler now found an entry. For this, too, he was indebted to Dietrich Eckart, a man of many connections. A roughhewn and comical figure, with his thick round head, his partiality for good wine and crude talk, Eckart had missed the great success he hoped for as a poet and dramatist. (His best known work was the German version of Ibsen's
Peer Gynt).
In compensation he had thrown himself into that bohemian group which indulged in politics. He had founded a political club called the German Citizens Society, but that, too, had come to nought. Another failure was the periodical
Auf gut Deutsch
(“Plain Speaking”), which, in corrosive language, and with displays of pseudoerudition propounded the familiar anti-Semitic theses. Along with Gottfried Feder, Eckart preached a revolution against “interest slavery” and for “true socialism.” Influenced by Lanz von Liebenfels, he called for a ban on racially mixed marriages and demanded protection for pure German blood. He referred to Soviet Russia as “the Christian-kosher-butchering dictatorship of the Jewish world savior Lenin” and said that what he wanted most was “to load all Jews into a railroad train and drive into the Red Sea with it.”
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Eckart had met Hitler early. In March, 1920, during the Kapp putsch, both were sent by their nationalist backers to survey the scene in Berlin. Well read and a shrewd psychologist who possessed extensive knowledge consonant with his prejudices, Eckart exerted great influence upon the awkward and provincial Hitler. With his bluff and uncomplicated manner, he was the first cultivated person whom Hitler was able to endure without an upsurge of his deep-seated complexes. Eckart recommended books to Hitler and lent him some, schooled his manners, corrected his language, and opened many doors to him. For a time they were an inseparable pair on the Munich social scene. As early as 1919 Eckart had prophesied the rise of a national savior, “a fellow who can stand the rattle of a machine gun. The rabble has to be scared shitless. I can't use an officer; the people no longer have any respect for them. Best of all would be a worker who's got his mouth in the right place.... He doesn't need much intelligence; politics is the stupidest business in the world.” As far as he was concerned, someone who always had “a tough reply” to the Reds was far to be preferred to “a dozen learned professors who sit trembling on the wet pants seat of facts.” Last but not least: “He must be a bachelor! Then we'll get the women.” Hitler seemed to him the embodiment of this model, and as early as August, 1921, in an article in the
Völkische Beobachter
he for the first time hailed him as the Leader. One of the early battle songs of the NSDAP, “Storm, Storm, Storm!” was written by Eckart, and the refrain of every stanza became a party slogan: “Germany, awake!” Hitler repaid Eckart by declaring that he had written “poems as beautiful as Goethe's.” He publicly called the poet his “fatherly friend” and described himself as a disciple of Eckart. Along with Rosenberg, Eckart seems to have wielded the most lasting ideological influence upon Hitler during that early period. Evidently he also made Hitler aware of his own stature. The second volume of
Mein Kampf
ends with the poet's name printed in italics.

The welcome Hitler received in the Munich society to which Dietrich Eckart introduced him was scarcely of a political nature. One of the first ladies to open her salon to him was an American by birth, Catherine Hanfstaengl, mother of a young man named Ernst (“Putzi”) Hanfstaengl, who had fallen under Hitler's oratorical spell. She herself was by no means nationalistic. Liberals were intrigued by this phenomenon of a young popular orator with Neanderthal views and unpolished manners. His sometimes shocking public behavior made him the more interesting. He had the aura of a prestidigitator, the acrid odor of both the circus and of tragic embitterment, the sharp glitter of a “famous monster.” The common topic of conversation was frequently Richard Wagner; Hitler would rhapsodize at length about Wagner in staccato phrases. The descriptions we have all convey a mixture of eccentricity and clumsiness. With people of importance Hitler was inhibited, brooding, and to some extent servile. During a conversation with Ludendorff at this time he kept raising his backside slightly after each of the general's sentences, “with a half bow uttering a most respectful, ‘Very well, your Excellency!' or ‘Quite so, your Excellency!' ”

His insecurity, the painful sense of being an outsider in bourgeois society, remained with him for a long time. If we are to believe the available accounts, he was eternally bent upon making an impression. He came late; his bouquets of flowers were bigger than others, his bows lower. Intervals of saying nothing alternated abruptly with choleric outbursts. His voice was rough; he made even casual remarks with passion. Once, according to an eyewitness, he had sat silent and weary for about an hour when his hostess happened to drop a friendly remark about the Jews. Only then “did he begin to speak and he spoke without ceasing. After a while he thrust back his chair and stood up, still speaking, or rather yelling, in such a powerful penetrating voice as I have never heard from anyone else. In the next room a child woke up and began to cry. After he had for more than half an hour delivered a quite witty but very one-sided oration on the Jews, he suddenly broke off, went up to his hostess, begged to be excused and kissed her hand as he took his leave.”
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His social awkwardness reflected his irreparably distorted relationship to bourgeois society. The reek of the home for men clung to his clothing for a long time. When Pfeffer von Salomon—later to become his chief storm troop leader—met him for the first time, Hitler was wearing an old tailcoat, tan shoes, and carrying a knapsack on his back. The Free Corps leader was so unpleasantly impressed that he did not wish to be introduced to this person. Ernst Hanfstaengl recalled that Hitler wore with his blue suit a purple shirt, brown vest and crimson tie; the holster of his revolver made a conspicuous bulge at his hip. Hitler was quite slow in learning to stylize his appearance and to do justice to his conception of himself as grand tribune of the people down to his weird uniform. Even then, the picture he presented betrayed deep insecurity. It combined elements from his long-ago dreams of being a Rienzi with touches of Al Capone and General Ludendorff; the result was something preposterous. But even this effect could be interpreted in a number of ways. Some observers thought Hitler was trying to exploit his insecurity and was using his very awkwardness as a means of self-dramatization. At any rate, he seemed concerned less with making his appearance attractive than with making it memorable.

How he struck others at this time can be seen in the following thumbnail sketch by the historian Karl Alexander von Müller, who met Hitler at a coffee hour at Erna Hanfstaengl's, Ernst's sister. Also present was Abbot Alban Schachleiter, who was curious to meet the rising politician. “My wife and I provided part of the decor. The four of us were already sitting at the polished mahogany table by the window when the bell rang. Through the open door I could see him in the narrow hallway politely and almost servilely greeting our hostess, laying aside riding whip, velour hat and trench coat, finally unbuckling his cartridge belt with revolver attached and likewise hanging it on the clothes hook. It all looked very odd, reminiscent of Karl May's American Indian novels.
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As yet we did not know how precisely each of these trivialities in clothing and behavior was even then calculated for effect, as were the strikingly close-cropped mustache, which was narrower than the unpleasantly wide-nostriled nose.... The look in his eyes already expressed a consciousness of public success; but something curiously awkward still clung to him, and one had the uneasy feeling that he sensed it and resented anyone's noticing it. His face, too, was still thin and pale, with something like an expression of suffering. But the protruding watery-blue eyes sometimes stared with inflexible hardness, and above the base of his nose, between the curve of the thick eyebrows, a clotted bulge bespoke a fanatical will. This time, too, he spoke very little; most of the time he listened with marked attentiveness.”
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