Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

“how such a narrow-minded, unpleasant fellow could found and carry a movement of such immense dimensions and consequences.”32

“How do we explain how someone with so few intellectual gifts and social attributes…could nevertheless have such an immense historical impact, could make the entire world hold its breath?”33

The artistry with which Hitler was able to conceal his real intentions from both friends and foes was another main key to his success as a politician.

former Finance Minister Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk identified “bottomless mendacity” as Hitler’s primary personal characteristic.

Hitler’s unusually improvisational and personal style of leadership, which created constant responsibility conflicts and an anarchic tangle of offices and portfolios, was anything but an expression of political incompetence. On the contrary, it served to make Hitler’s own supremacy essentially unassailable.

as an eternal cautionary monument to what human beings are capable of.”

As someone born in 1889, Hitler should have registered for the draft in the late autumn of 1909 and submitted to an examination in the spring of 1910, but he had done neither. One likely reason why Hitler left Vienna was to avoid these duties. “Illegally absent because whereabouts unknown,” read his file in Linz. Since August 1913, police there had been trying to track Hitler down, and in mid-January 1914 they succeeded. On 19 January, he was taken to the Austro-Hungarian general consulate in Munich. Only now did Hitler realise that he was in serious trouble: refusing to appear for the draft carried a penalty of four weeks to one year of imprisonment and a fine of 2,000 crowns.

On 5 February 1914, he was given a military examination in Salzburg and was deemed “unsuitable for combat and support duty, too weak, incapable of firing weapons.”101 Hitler was then allowed to return to Munich.

Two months before, from 25 to 28 August, German troops had committed a number of war crimes in Louvain, massacring 248 Belgian civilians, destroying parts of the old city centre and setting fire to the city’s famous university library.27

800-kilometre-long line from Nieuport on the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. “A web of dugouts, trenches with embrasures, saps, wire entanglements and landmines—in short, an almost impregnable position,” was how Hitler described the trench-warfare system in a letter from January 1915.33

For Hitler, the war seemed to confirm what he had read in pan-Germanic pamphlets and newspapers in Vienna, namely that in human society, as in nature, only the strong would survive, while the weak would drop dead in their tracks. More than once in his monologues, Hitler confirmed that such social Darwinist beliefs, which he would maintain until the end of his life, originated in his experience of the war. “I went to the battlefield with the purest idealism,” Hitler said, “but when you see thousands get injured and killed, you become aware that life is a constant, terrible struggle, which serves to preserve the species—someone has to die so that others may survive.”60

Battle of the Somme, which had been raging since 1 July. One of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, almost 20,000 British troops died on the first day alone, and by the time the fighting was over, 419,000 British and 204,000 French soldiers had been killed or wounded; German casualties totalled some 465,000.74 “This is not war, but a mutual annihilation using technological strength,” wrote Vice-Sergeant Hugo Frick from another regiment to his mother in October 1916. “Beyond the word horrible, there’s no describing the hardships and mortal fear we endure here.”75

Since the winter of 1915/16 it had become increasingly difficult to supply Germany’s major cities with necessities, and there were long queues in front of grocery shops. Women and children stood for hours in all kinds of weather to obtain a pound of butter, a couple of eggs or a piece of meat. People’s disgruntlement with such intolerable conditions grew the longer they went on, and eventually led to public unrest and spontaneous strikes. Such protests also became increasingly political, directly targeting the prevailing social hierarchy, the privileged and the wealthy.

The general view is that the war is being fought not for the fatherland, but for capitalism.”81

In March 1918, after dictating terms of peace to Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the German Army Supreme Command made one last attempt to decide the war in Germany’s favour with a massive military offensive in the west. Initial triumphs seemed to justify the wildest of hopes. On 21 March, German forces attacked along a broad line from Cambrai in northern France to St. Quentin in the south, advancing as many as sixty kilometres. But after a few days the advance stalled, and none of the three subsequent offensives in April, May and July 1918 could turn the tide. By late May, the vanguard of the German army had reached the Marne and was once again only a few days’ march from Paris, but the strategic position of the German forces had worsened as the bulging front lines were vulnerable to counter-offensives. The Army Supreme Command had pushed things too far and exhausted Germany’s offensive capabilities. On 18 July, the French counter-attacked and achieved a major breakthrough of German lines. The Allies had regained the initiative and could count on reinforcements in the form of fresh American troops.

reliable liaisons who could spread “counter-propaganda” among the troops, educating them about the dangers of Bolshevism and reigniting the spirit of nationalism and militarism. A list likely drawn up by the intelligence department in early July featured the name “Hittler [sic], Adolf.”33 But before Private Hitler could get to work, he was sent on a training course. He was not, as had been previously assumed, part of the first such course, which took place from 5 to 12 June at Munich University. He participated in the third one held from 10 to 19 July in the Museum Society’s space at the Palais Porcia.34

In late July 1919, when an “educational commando” was formed to hold anti-Bolshevik classes at the temporary camp in Lechfeld for soldiers returning from the front, Hitler was named one of twenty-six instructors.41 During the five-day course from 20 to 25 August, Hitler not only gave lectures with titles such as “Conditions of Peace and Reconstruction” and “Very Social and Economic Political Catchphrases,” he also spoke during the discussions following the other lectures.

On 10 September 1919, the captain told Hitler to answer a letter from a former course participant, Adolf Gemlich. Gemlich had asked for advice as to whether Jews represented “a national danger,” and if so, what approach the ruling Social Democrats were taking to this threat.52 Hitler’s extensive reply, dated 16 September, can be regarded with utter justification as the key document in his early biography. It featured all of the anti-Semitic prejudices he had acquired in the preceding months, including the idea that Jews were “a racial and not a religious community,” combined into one neurotic complex. As a race, Hitler argued, Jews were incapable of assimilating. “After thousands of years of inbreeding,” he wrote to Gemlich, “the Jew has generally preserved his race and its innate traits better than most of the people in whose midst he lives.” As a disciple of Gottfried Feder, Hitler saw boundless greed, the “dance around the golden calf,” as one of those characteristics. “His power is the power of money, which in the form of interest infinitely reproduces itself in his hands without any effort on his part,” Hitler instructed Gemlich. “Everything that inspires people to strive for something higher—be it religion, socialism or democracy—is for a Jew just a means serving the end of satisfying monetary greed and the desire to rule. His effect on other peoples is that of racial tuberculosis.”53

The Thule Society provided a platform for counter-revolutionary activities. It used the swastika as its symbol and had its own newspaper, the Münchener Beobachter. It did not just restrict its appeal to middle-class circles, but also reached out to blue-collar workers.

Treaty of Versailles, which had been signed at the end of June. “As long as the earth has existed,” Hitler thundered, “no people have ever been forced to declare themselves willing to sign such a shameful treaty.” The person who wrote up a report of the event for the Munich police noted someone yelling out “The work of Jews!” at this point. Hitler combined his criticism of the treaty with scabrous personal attacks on Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger, who had signed the armistice agreement in the woods of Compiègne on 11 November 1918.

On 10 December, he spoke in the Deutsches Reich restaurant. The title of his talk was “Germany as it faces its worst humiliation.” He made no bones about who he considered responsible for military defeat and revolution: “the Jews, who alone are profiting from it and don’t shy away from inciting civil war with their rabble-rousing and base agitation.” Hitler insisted on the idea of “Germany for Germans!”78

Over the course of just a few months, the unknown private had made himself irreplaceable as the (NS)DAP’s most effective speaker. This was the first step of his meteoric rise. Hitler’s task now was to expand the party’s base and establish himself at its head. Supported by powerful patrons, the beer-cellar demagogue was about to become a public attraction—in Munich and beyond.

Without Hitler, the rise of National Socialism would have been unthinkable. In his absence, the party would have remained one of many ethnic-chauvinist groups on the right of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, the special conditions of the immediate post-war years in both Bavaria and the German Reich were also crucial: without the explosive mixture of economic misery, social instability and collective trauma, the populist agitator Hitler would never have been able to work his way out of anonymity to become a famous politician. The circumstances at the time played into Hitler’s hands, and he was more skilful and unscrupulous about using them than any of his rivals on the nationalist far right.

“Who cares whether they laugh at us or insult us, treating us as fools or criminals?” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. “The point is that they talk about us and constantly think about us.”16

The swastika flag became the party emblem very early on, in 1921, combining the colours of the German Reich—black, white and red—with a symbol which had long been in use among ethnic-chauvinist circles; Ehrhardt’s navy brigade, for instance, had worn it on their steel helmets during the Kapp–Lüttwitz putsch.32 There were also the pennant that became the sign of the SA, and the “Heil” greeting, which was made mandatory within the movement in 1926.33 The National Socialists also had no qualms about adopting leftist propaganda techniques. They announced their meetings on garish red posters, and they distributed flyers from trucks to the general populace. One goal was to seduce workers away from leftist parties, although in the beginning it was worried members of the lower middle classes, uprooted former soldiers and impoverished university graduates who flocked to Hitler’s events.34

“Why do we stand today amidst the ruins of the Reich Bismarck created so brilliantly?” Hitler asked in a speech in January 1921, on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the German Reich.37 His answer was always the same: the revolution of 1918–19 had been Germany’s downfall, casting it into slavery.38 Those primarily responsible were Jews and leftists whom he described as “revolutionary” or “November criminals.”39 They had undermined Germany’s armed forces, cheating the country of the victory it had earned and delivering it up helplessly to its enemies. “The ‘utterly fearless’ army was ‘stabbed from behind’ by ‘Jew-socialists’ bribed with Jewish money,” was how a USPD pamphlet cited a statement by Hitler at a meeting in the Hofbräuhaus in April 1920.40 Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the former heads of the Third Supreme Command, had launched the stab-in-the-back legend during an effectively staged appearance before the investigations committee of the German National Assembly in November 1919. This myth then became a constant component within the propaganda arsenal of right-wing nationalists.41 Polemical attacks on the Treaty of Versailles occupied a central position in Hitler’s campaigns, playing upon widespread bitterness about what was perceived as a shameful and humiliating peace. The conditions of the treaty, Hitler repeatedly hammered into his listeners’ heads, were “unfulfillable,” since they stripped Germany down to its “last shirt” and condemned i...

the Treaty of Versailles had been relatively mild compared with those that the Soviet government had been forced to accept. Hitler combined

Even in his earliest speeches, Hitler vowed to annul the Treaty of Versailles: “As soon as we have the power, we’ll rip up this scrap of paper.”50 He made no bones of his view that economic recovery depended upon “smashing interest slavery.”51 The goal of “national rebirth” meant, externally, the creation of a “greater Germany” and, internally, the foundation of an “ethnic community” (Volksgemeinschaft) that abolished the chasm between the bourgeoisie and the working class.52 “We must become a people of honest hard workers,” Hitler proclaimed.

Democracy was to be replaced with “a government of power and authority” that would “ruthlessly clean out the pigsty.”56 When he demanded a “dictator who is also a genius…a man of iron who is the embodiment today of the Germanic spirit,” Hitler was speaking to the hearts of his audience.57 Germany, he declared in May 1921, “will only be able to live if the pigsty of Jewish corruption, democratic hypocrisy and socialist betrayal is swept clean by an iron broom—and that broom will be made in Bavaria.”58 Hitler made no secret about what he would do with the post-war revolutionaries. “We demand a German national court, before which all the men of 1918 and 1919 can be held responsible,” he thundered. The police report of a Hitler speech in September 1922 noted “minutes of frenetic applause” after he demanded “a final reckoning

The receptivity of large masses is very limited. Their capacity to understand things is slight whereas their forgetfulness is great. Given this, effective propaganda must restrict itself to a handful of points, which it repeats as slogans as long as it takes for the dumbest member of the audience to get an idea of what they mean.61 Hitler’s analysis was hardly original. In fact, it recalled a pre-war book by the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon entitled The Psychology of the Masses, which by 1919 was in its third edition. Like Hitler, Le Bon described the masses as stupid, egotistical, feminine, fickle, incapable of accepting criticism and ruled by uncontrollable urges.62 Hitler

Indeed, the fact that the conservative elites often failed to appreciate Hitler’s ability to influence people and get his way was a major factor in his success.

“Adolf Hitler—Traitor?” It argued that Hitler’s lust for power and personal ambition had seduced him into sowing “dissent and fragmentation” within the party, playing into the hands of “Jewry and its helpers.” It accused Hitler of trying to use the party as a springboard for corrupt purposes and “of trying to grab sole power for himself so that he could push the party in a completely different direction when the moment was right.” Hitler was a “demagogue,” whose only talent was his speaking ability. He also fought in “true Jewish fashion” by twisting the facts. The pamphlet urged party members to resist “this interloping megalomaniac and bigmouth.”103 A

The beginnings of the National Socialist storm troopers lie in 1920, when the DAP/NSDAP began to organise security for their meetings to prevent them from being disrupted by “Marxist hecklers.”

Göring met Hitler in October or November 1922 at a Nazi event and soon joined the party. Less than half a year later, Hitler put him in charge of the SA. “A famous combat pilot and a bearer of the Pour le Mérite—what a propaganda coup!” Hitler is said to have gushed. “What’s more, he has money and doesn’t cost me a penny. That’s very important.”150

then took off a belt with a revolver and hung that up as well on a coat hook. That was strange, like something out of [the Westerns of] Karl May…The man who entered was no longer the clumsy, sheepish instructor in a badly fitting uniform whom I had met in 1919. You could see the confidence he’d gained from his public appearances in his eyes. Nonetheless, there was still something gauche about him, and you had the unpleasant feeling that he could sense you had noticed it and held that against you.152

Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In a letter to Hitler on 7 October, Chamberlain also praised him as “an awakener of souls from sleep and idleness.” In Chamberlain’s opinion, Hitler was not at all the fanatic he had been depicted as: “The fanatic heats up people’s heads, but you warm their hearts. The fanatic wants to drown people out, while you seek only to convince them, which is why you succeed.” Hitler’s visit, Chamberlain added, had renewed his faith: “The fact that Germany has given birth to a Hitler in the hour of its greatest need shows that it is still alive and well.”160 Just as Hitler absorbed chauvinist and anti-Semitic ideas like a sponge during the early years of his phenomenal rise from obscurity to political prominence, he now learned how to move in various social circles and play changing roles. The tone Hitler used in his public speeches might not be to everyone’s taste, Hess wrote in June 1921, but he could also speak in different modes.161

“What does Hitler look like?” asked illustrator Thomas Theodor Heine in the May 1923 edition of Simplicissimus magazine, only to conclude after twelve satiric attempts: “These questions must remain unanswered. Hitler is not an individual at all. He’s a condition.”165 Yet

“Mussolini has shown what a minority can accomplish, if the holy national will lives inside it,” Hitler declared at a public event in November 1922, demanding “the formation of a national government along Fascist lines in Germany.”170 Impressed by the events in Italy, a small group of Hitler followers began to propagate an image of the Führer that drew heavily from Il Duce. In early November in the Hofbräuhaus, Hermann Esser explicitly proposed that “Germany’s Mussolini is named Adolf Hitler.”171

Dietrich Eckart and Alfred Rosenberg, too, continually projected messianic expectations onto Hitler, praising him as the strong hand that would liberate Germany from its humiliation and shame and lead it into a new golden age.

According to the sociologist Max Weber, the power of a charismatic politician depends on his having a community of followers who are convinced that he possesses extraordinary abilities and has been called by destiny.176 For Hitler, this group had crystallised in 1922, and they went on a publicity offensive in November that year with the aim of building a cult of the charismatic Führer. Historian Ludolf Herbst is correct when he writes of the “invention of a German messiah.”177

His gaunt, pale features seemed to have been pinched together by an obsessive rage, and cold flames darted from his eyes, which seemed to glance right and left for enemies to be put down. Was it the masses that gave him this mysterious power? Or did it flow from him to them?186

The year 1923 had started with a bang. On 11 January, French and Belgian troops entered the industrial Ruhr Valley region to punish Germany for falling behind in its reparations payments for the First World War. A wave of animosity arose throughout the country, and the simmering German nationalism reminded some observers of the mood in August 1914.

The French and Belgian occupiers responded by imposing harsh sanctions, arresting striking workers and taking railways and mines into their own hands. This only increased German outrage. “1923

The economic consequences of “passive resistance” were disastrous. The only way the Reich could cover the costs for wages in the dormant factories, mines and companies was to print massive amounts of money. The devaluation of the reichsmark, which had already begun at the end of the war, reached a dizzying pace. Overnight, the middle and working classes saw their savings disappear, while financial adventurers and speculators exploited the chance to amass huge fortunes. The demise of the currency was accompanied by the decay of fundamental social values.

In Bavaria, Hitler was the one attracting the desire for religious awakening and salvation of those who had fallen down the social ladder or who feared they might be about to. The National Socialists were one of the main profiteers from Germany’s economic catastrophe. “While other political events are poorly attended due to the enormous entry fees and beer prices, the halls are always full when the National Socialists put on one of their mass meetings,” Munich police reported.8 Crowds of people felt drawn to the NSDAP and Hitler’s tirades against capitalist and Jewish criminals and usurers: the sudden impoverishment of broad segments of the German populace made Hitler’s words seem much more plausible.

“In August, [the exchange rate with] the dollar reached one million,” Sebastian Haffner recalled. We read the news with bated breath, as though the reports were of some astonishing new record. Fourteen days later we could only laugh about it. It was as if the dollar had gained a tenfold of energy from surpassing the million mark. Its value began to increase by increments of hundreds of millions and even billions. By September, the million-mark note was practically worthless. The billion became the new standard unit, and by the end of October it was the trillion.32

The first volume of Mein Kampf appeared on 18 July 1925, but it would be a while before the second volume was published. It was not until the autumn of 1926 that Hitler once again withdrew to the Obersalzberg to dictate the final parts to one of his secretaries.74 Hess, who had in the meantime become Hitler’s private secretary, did the final editing.75 On 11 December of that year, the second volume appeared in the bookshops. Hess had prophesied that it would unleash a “wave of astonishment, anger and admiration…throughout the German lands,” but sales were initially sluggish, which may have been because of the relatively expensive price tag of 12 marks per volume.76 By the end of 1925, the 10,000-strong first edition of the first volume was sold out, but demand for the second volume was nowhere near as great.77

sources that left their mark on Mein Kampf were Arthur de Gobineau’s teachings on the inequality of human races; Hans F. K. Günther’s Racial Ethnology of the German People, which was in its third edition by 1923 and which publisher J. F. Lehmann had given Hitler with a personal dedication; and the racist pamphlet by American carmaker Henry Ford, “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem,” which had appeared in German translation in 1922 and became a huge hit. “I regard Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler allegedly told an American reporter.85

“The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose and the tiger a tiger,” Hitler argued. For him, any mixing of races was a violation of the “iron logic of nature” that would automatically lead to decadence and decay. “The reason all the great cultures of the past collapsed,” Hitler proposed, “was that the original creative race died of blood poisoning.”90

There was no room for humanitarian considerations in the pitiless “fight for survival” between peoples: “Whoever wants to live must fight, and whoever does not want to fight in this world of eternal tests of strength does not deserve to live.” Within this profoundly inhumane logic, the ultimate goal was the “breeding towards perfection” of the races until the point, somewhere in the distant future, when “the best form of humanity is in charge, having taken possession of the earth.”91 Aryans, who were deemed the sole “creative race,” were the ones to carry out this task. On that score, Hitler was absolutely clear: “Everything we see today of human culture and artistic, scientific and technological achievements is almost exclusively the creative work of the Aryan.”92