Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939
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Read between October 1 - October 3, 2025
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“Whoever has read Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf,” Gerlach wrote, “will ask himself in horror how a sadistic master of confusion could become the preferred leader of a good third of the German people.”108
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Hitler was only able to launch his second political career because his adversaries criminally underestimated him.
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There had been no objections to Hitler’s claim of absolute leadership,
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Hitler liked to use comparisons with Italy under Mussolini to portray conditions in Germany in the worst possible light.
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Hitler deliberately called upon the fears of his audience,
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For Hitler the categories “Jewish” and “Marxist” were interchangeable.
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He was also constantly coming up with new phrases to describe the marriage of nationalism and socialism, the unification of “workers of the mind and workers of the fist.” National Socialism knew neither bourgeois nor proletarian, only “the German working for his people.”
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Hitler rarely made it explicitly clear that the territory in question would come at the expense of the Soviet Union,
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“It’s staying as it is. The New Testament, too, is full of contradictions, but that did nothing to hinder the spread of Christianity.”
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Hitler drew a revealing parallel between early Christianity and the “movement.”
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a personal oath of loyalty to the Führer.
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Hitler’s sense of mission and the expectations of those who saw him as the coming messiah, the saviour of Germans, reinforced each other. As Hess wrote in November 1927: “For me, being constantly in his presence, it is astonishing to see how he grows day by day, continually acquiring new fundamental wisdom, developing new ways of dealing with problems, gushing with ideas and constantly excelling himself in his speeches.”104
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The impression arose that the Nazi leader was less concerned about the welfare of Germany than with securing unfettered power for himself and his followers.
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the fact that Hitler had unmistakably revealed that a government led by him would do away with the rule of law and legalise political murder did not scare people off as much as Kessler hoped it would.
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Hitler gave free rein to his anti-Semitic hatred in his election campaign.
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Hitler could not have expressed any more clearly that his emphasis on “legality” had been mere lip service and that his government was going to do away with all norms of separation of powers and the rule of law.
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“It is the miracle of our age that you found me…among so many millions,” Hitler proclaimed at the Nuremberg Party Conference on 3 September 1936. “And that I found you is Germany’s great fortune.” With these words Hitler sought to suggest a mystical unity between himself as Führer and his followers.
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Such messianic rhetoric appealed to the desire of Hitler’s followers who looked up to him as their supposed saviour with an unprecedented willingness to believe.
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The rallies were the perfect opportunity to indulge his monomaniacal need to speak.
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he was unwilling to change the sequence of ceremonies once it had been set.
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While he was alive, he told Speer in 1938, the “form” had to become “an immutable rite.”
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Some future Führer of the Reich may not have my talents, but this framework will support him and give him authority.”
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The consecration of rituals was his way of lending potential successors something of his own charisma and establishing the Third Reich for the long term.
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Those who wanted to get ahead in this system could not wait for orders from above, but rather had to anticipate the Führer’s will and take action to prepare and promote what they thought to be Hitler’s intentions. This not only explains why the regime was so dynamic but also why it became more and more radical. In competing for the dictator’s favour, his paladins tried to trump one another with ever more extreme demands and measures.58
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They were not just the willing executioners of Hitler’s ideological postulates: they drove racist policies forward.
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“Responsible to no one and unable to be replaced, his position is comparable only with that of the crowned heads of state of the absolute monarchies of the past,”
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Nazi Germany had no institutions that could have developed into a counterweight to Hitler’s stranglehold on power.
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The “Führer state” was now solidly established, and in it Hitler’s charismatic authority was the most important resource for ruling.
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from the beginning to its extreme end, it stood and fell with this one man.”62 Decisions could only be made under the regime if they were derived from and thus sanctioned by the will of the Führer.
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Hitler’s marked aversion to bureaucratic procedures and his scattershot, impulsive style of rule made such a system impossible. He demanded of all his underlings that they spare him from unwelcome, banal, everyday details. “The best man is for me the one who burdens me the least by taking responsibility for himself ninety-five out of every one hundred decisions,”
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Hitler claimed the solitary right to decide only on fundamental issues, not on routine matters he considered ancillary;
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Finally, he was also inspired by a Machiavellian strategy of divide and conquer, playing rivals off against one another, and so shielding himself against potential usurpers of his power.73
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the Gestapo’s efficiency depended on the participation of ordinary Germans who were willing to inform on people they did not like.85
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the Führer even dictated several key passages himself,
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“Very cutting and drastic,” Goebbels confided to his diary. “I would not have gone that far.”83
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“Animalistic sexual degeneracy was widespread among the Catholic clergy,” Goebbels raged, and the entire brotherhood was covering up this “filth.” Everywhere “sex offenders in priestly robes” were pursuing their “repulsive urges.” This “sexual pestilence,” Goebbels concluded, “must be removed by the roots.”85 After
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the Gestapo took care to suppress any contrary opinions in the Catholic press and strictly monitored the sermons of Catholic clergymen.
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“In Germany, the pious Catholic is subject to emergency law,” complained the bishop of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing. “He is forced to endure mockery and scorn, constraint and pressure without being able to defend himself, while the enemies of the Church enjoy freedom of speech, the freedom to attack and the freedom to scoff.”88
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Hitler had likely realised that he would not be able to subjugate the Churches to his rule in the short term.
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The vow of celibacy must be eradicated. Church assets must be confiscated, and no one should be allowed to study theology before the age of twenty-four. With that, we will rob them of their next generation.
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“Kerrl wants to preserve the Church while we want to liquidate it.”
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Hitler’s decree was announced in the evening papers, where it created a stir. It read: “After the Reich Church committee failed to produce an agreement between the groups within the German Protestant Church, the Church shall now autonomously and completely freely give itself a new constitution and, with it, a new order.”
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It was one of the rare occasions when a decree by Hitler simply came and went with no results.100
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Fundamental decisions on the Church issue were postponed amid intensifying preparations to go to war, and Kerrl was explicitly “prohibited from instituting any reforms.”
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Hitler confirmed: “[Niemöller] will not be released until he has been broken. Opposition to the state will not be tolerated.”106
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even when he seemed to be losing rhetorical self-control, Hitler knew exactly what he was saying.
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Just as he had always gone to the limit of what he could get away with in foreign policy, he gradually, step by step, worked his way towards radical measures of persecution in his anti-Jewish policies.
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despite showing tactical flexibility, he never lost sight of his “final goal”—the eradication of European Jews.
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A good many Germans enriched themselves at Jews’ expense, unscrupulously exploiting the desperate situation into which a harassed and persecuted minority had been forced.
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truth and lies had been “combined so cleverly” that the “lies will necessarily appear to be true.”13