Hitler

everything could be different, with different truths and different gods of very remote times, with dragons engraved upon very ancient stones.”

These aspects of what had happened remained repressed for many years. Moral indignation beclouded the realization that the people who formed Hitler’s following, who had perpetrated the cheering and the barbarities, had not been monsters. The world-wide unrest of the late sixties once again brought to the fore many of the elements that have repeatedly recurred in descriptions of pre-Fascist conditions: the cultural pessimism, the craving for spontaneity, intoxication, and a dramatic quality of life, the vehemence of youth and the aestheticizing of force. Of course, these are still a far cry from true pre-Fascist phenomena; all the comparisons between the recent and the earlier movements break on one reef: the question of the weak and the oppressed, for which Fascism had no answer.¹⁶ When Hitler called himself “the greatest liberator of humanity,” he significantly alluded to the “saving doctrine of the unimportance of the individual human being.”¹⁷ But it is also well to remember that the Fascist syndrome has so far rarely ever appeared in pure form embracing all its elements and is always threatening to veer over into new variants.

To the extent that Fascism is rooted in the age’s sense of crisis, it remains latent and will end only with the age itself. Since it is so much a reaction and a desperate defensive reflex, it lacks a positive shape of its own. This means that Fascist movements are more in need of a towering leader than other political groups. He absorbs the resentments, identifies the enemies, transforms despondency into intoxication, and makes weakness aware of its strength. The broad perspectives Hitler was able to extract from sheer anxiety must be held among his remarkable achievements. As no one else did, he overdrew the ideological and dynamic potentialities of the years between the wars. But upon his death everything collapsed, as it was bound to do; the whipped-up, concentrated, and deliberately manipulated emotions at once fell back into the diffuse, disorderly state in which they had originated.

This dead end was manifested on all planes. For all that Hitler had stressed the suprapersonal aspects of his work, had flaunted his mission and presented himself as the instrument of Providence, he did not last beyond his time. Since he could not offer any persuasive picture of the future state of the world, any hope, any encouraging goal, nothing of his thought survived him. He had always used ideas merely as instruments; when at death he abandoned them, they were compromised and used up. This great demagogue left behind him not so much as a memorable phrase, an impressive formula. Similarly, he who had wanted to be the greatest builder of all time left not a single building to the present. Nothing survived even of those grandiose structures that were completed. Shortly after the seizure of power radical zealots within the Nazi party were saying that “Hitler dead… will be more useful to the Movement than Hitler alive.” It was argued that he would have to disappear into the darkness of legend, that even his corpse must vanish beyond recovery so that he would “end in a mystery for the credulous masses.”¹⁸ The postwar era proved that this had been a vast romantic misconception. What had been apparent by, at the latest, the turning point of the war was once again driven home: Hitler’s catalyzing powers were indispensable and that everything, the will, the goal, the cohesiveness, instantly disappeared without the visible presence of the great “leader.” Hitler had no secret that extended beyond his immediate presence. The people whose loyalty and admiration he had won never followed a vision, but only a force. In retrospect his life seems like a steady unfolding of tremendous energy. Its effects were vast, the terror it spread enormous; but when it was over there was little left for memory to hold.

Notes

On the whole, German language material has been newly translated for the purposes of this book, even when the reference is to an original English publication (such as Alan Bullock’s Hitler). Mein Kampf, however, is uniformly quoted in Ralph Manheim’s translation (with some emendations approved by him), currently available in paperback (Sentry Edition), published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Short references, consisting of author’s name and page number only, are fully listed in the bibliography.

The notes are not restricted solely to sources but frequently develop various subjects discussed in the text; therefore, proper names of people appearing in expository sections of the notes will be found in the index.

Where English translations of foreign works have been published, they are mentioned in the bibliography following the entry for the original work.

For this edition the author has cut the notes by about half; readers interested in the full apparatus are referred to the German edition.

PROLOGUE

1. This Ranke quotation is cited in one of Konrad Heiden’s books. The author is aware of his indebtedness to Heiden in many respects. His was the earliest historical study of the phenomena of Hitler and National Socialism, and in the boldness of its inquiry and the freedom of its judgment it remains exemplary to the present day.

2. Speech of February 24, 1937, in the Munich Hofbrauhaus; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 107.

3. Trevor-Roper, ed., Foreword to Le Testament politique de Hitler, p. 13.

4. Speech of May 20, 1937; see Kotze and Krausnick, p. 223.

5. Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom: Reflections on History, pp. 313 ff. With Hitler in mind, Gottfried Benn in a famous letter to Klaus Mann specifically referred to Burckhardt’s observation. Benn wrote: “But here and now you may constantly hear the question: did Hitler create the Movement or did the Movement create him? This question is significant; the two cannot be distinguished because they are both identical. What is really involved here is that mysterious coincidence of the individual and the communal that Burckhardt speaks of in his Reflections on History, when he describes the great men who have moved history. Great men—it is all there: the dangers of the beginning, their appearance almost always in times of terror, the enormous perseverance, the abnormal facility in all things, especially in organic functions; but then also the premonition of all thinking persons that he is the one to accomplish things that are essential and that only he can accomplish.” Gottfried Benn, Gesammelte Werke IV, pp. 246 f.

6. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 339.

7. Thomas Mann, “Bruder Hitler,” in: Gesammelte Werke XII, p. 778.

8. Kuhnl, “Der deutsche Faschismus,” in: Neue politische Literatur, 1970:1, p. 13.

9. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

10. Hitler speaking to the chiefs of the Wehrmacht in the chancellery on May 23, 1939; see Domarus, p. 1197.

11. Mein Kampf, p. 353.

12. Jacob Burckhardt, p. 325.

BOOK I

1. Cf. Dietrich, Zwolf Jahre, p. 149. See also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 75.

2. Ribbentrop, p. 45.

3. Maser, Hitler, p. 34. For Frank’s story see Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens, pp. 320 f.; also Maser, Hitler, pp. 26 f. Maser cannot, of course, prove his thesis. Nevertheless, he advances his argument as if it were conclusive. Even the fact that Hitler waited until after his wife’s death to legitimize Alois is, to Maser, in favor of his argument, although that fact suggests just