printed in VB, July 19, 1922.
5. See the speech of April 12, 1922. For Hitler’s other assertions see the speeches of July 28, 1922; April 27, 1920; September 22, 1920; April 21, 1922; and the article in VB for January 1, 1921. Rosenberg, who obviously helped to shape the notions about atrocities in Russia, wrote in the VB of April 15, 1922, that Russia had “during Lenin’s ‘government’ become a battlefield strewn with corpses, an inferno in which millions upon millions of persons wander about famished, where millions are diseased, starved, and have died a miserable death on deserted roads.” The following quotation is taken from Hitler’s Reichstag speech of March 7, 1936. See Domarus, p. 587.
6. Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, p. 10.
7. Ibid., p. 63.
8. Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, pp. 561 ff.
9. Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, p. 86.
10. Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, p. 135.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Dawn,” in: Walter Kaufmann, ed. and trans., The Portable Nietzsche, p. 84.
12. Hermann Bahr, Der Antisemitismus. Ein internationales Interview. Bahr’s publication was based on conversations with many German and European writers and people in public life.
13. Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 140 f. See also the thoughtful comments on it in Eva G. Reichmann, Flucht in den Hass, pp. 82 ff. But cf. also Franz Neumann, Behemoth, p. 121. Neumann argued that anti-Semitism in Germany was extremely feeble and that the German people were “the least anti-Semitic”; this very fact, he held, was what made anti-Semitism a suitable weapon for Hitler.
14. VB, April 6, 1920. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck spoke of the “German mania for taking over all the ideas of the Westerners,” as though it were an honor to be received into the circle of the liberal nations.
15. Libres propos, p. 225. After eating, Hitler regularly rinsed his mouth; out of doors he almost always wore gloves, at least in his later years. Cf. also Kubizek, p. 286. The fear of venereal infection was, it is true, the prevailing anxiety of that whole generation. Zweig, Die Welt von gestern, pp. 105 ff., speaks of the extent to which it dominated people’s minds in Vienna.
16. The quotations and references are taken from, in order, VB of March 3, 1920, September 12, 1920, January 10, 1923, Mein Kampf, pp. 233 ff. and 257 ff. For this whole context cf. Nolte, Epoche, pp. 480 ff., where the central importance of anxiety as a factor in Hitler’s conduct as a whole is discussed. Similarly, Franz Neumann in his “Notizen zur Theorie der Diktatur” has pointed out the function of anxiety in the totalitarian state. See his Demokratischer und autoritarer Staat, pp. 242 ff. and 261 ff., where the verdict is rendered that Germany in that phase of its history was “the land of alienation and anxiety.”
17. Tischgesprache, p. 471.
18. Preiss, p. 152; also VB of January 1, 1921, and March 10, 1920—which, incidentally, appeared under the banner headline of: “Clean Out the Jews!” The article demanded immediate expulsion of all Jews who had immigrated after August 1, 1914, and the removal of all others from “all government posts, newspapers, theaters, and motion picture houses.” Special “collection camps” were to be set up to receive them.
19. Mein Kampf, pp. 65, 247, 249.
20. Stefan George, “Das Neue Reich,” in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9.
21. George L. Mosse, “Die Entstehung des Faschismus,” in: Internationaler Faschismus 1920– 1945, p. 29.
1. In the proclamations of the Bavarian People’s Party (April 9, 1919), of the Bavarian Landtag (April 19), and in a report of the Bavarian Gruppenkommando on “The Bolshevist Danger and Ways of Fighting It” (July 15, 1919), the new men were indiscriminately equated with “elements alien to country and race,” “foreign, politicizing Jews,” “unscrupulous alien scoundrels” from the prisons and penitentiaries, “Jewish rascals,” and “misleaders of labor.” See Franz-Willing, Die Hitlerbewegung, pp. 32 ff. This crude propaganda always put Eisner on a par with the Communist leaders Lewien, Levine, and Axelrod, all of whom were in fact Russian emigres. The influence of that association has persisted to this day.
2. Josef Hofmiller, “Revolutionstagebuch 1918/1919,” in Schriften 2, Leipzig, 1938, p. 211. As for the number of victims, the extremely bitter fighting between April 30 and May 8, 1919, took a total of 557 lives, according to the police inquiry. In a report of the army’s Military History Research Institute on “The Repression of Soviet Rule in Bavaria in 1919,” published in 1939, the total is subjected to analysis. Of these 557 persons “38 White and 93 Red soldiers, 7 citizens and 7 Russians, fell in battle. In summary executions under martial law 42 members of the Red Army and 144 civilians were shot. No fewer than 184 innocent persons were killed either because of their own foolishness or unfortunate mischance. In forty-two cases the cause of death could not be ascertained. Three hundred and three wounded persons were reported.” Different figures are given by Maser, Fruhgeschichte, pp. 40 f. Cf. also Emil Gumbel, Verrater verfallen der Feme, p. 36 passim.
3. Mein Kampf, p. 208. The reference is to Feder’s crackpot idea of “smashing interest slavery”; as one of the lecturers he was trying to popularize this notion in his talks.
4. See Ernst Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr,” in VJHfZ 1959: 2, p. 179. Incidentally, Hitler was not, as he puts it in Mein Kampf, p. 215, appointed as an “educational officer,” but was carried on the roster as a “liaison man.” It is a moot question whether his motive in covering up his real activity was a desire to share in the prestige of bourgeois education or in that of officer’s rank, or whether he merely wanted to avoid the dubious repute of liaison man, which implied “informer.”
5. The full text of Hitler’s letter, which is dated September 16, 1919, is printed by Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr,” pp. 201 ff.
6. In order to lessen Drexler’s importance, Hitler does not give his name (“I had not quite understood his name”). Instead, he repeatedly speaks of him as “that worker,” or uses similar phrases. When at last he has to mention Drexler as the chairman, he does so without indicating that it was Drexler who pressed the pamphlet on him. See Mein Kampf, pp. 219 ff.
7. Mein Kampf, p. 224. Also Adolf Hitler, “10 Jahre Kampf,” in: Illustrierter Beobachter, IV:31 (August 3, 1929).
8. Mein Kampf, p. 355.
9. Mein Kampf, pp. 293, 353.
10. Cf. the record of the Munich Political Intelligence Service in Reginald H. Phelps, “Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920,” in: VJHfZ 1963:3, pp. 292 ff. Phelps also relates the story of the finding of the documents he reproduces. Hitler’s romanticizing, exaggerated account of the meeting may be found in Mein Kampf, pp. 365 ff.
11. The importance of the program was long underestimated, and it was often dismissed as a mere opportunistic propaganda trick. That opinion overlooks the seriousness and the anxious sincerity of those who drafted the program. Hitler himself, moreover, was at that time not playing the kind of part that this interpretation assumes. Recently, more balanced evaluations of the party program have begun to appear; cf., for example, Jacobsen and Jochmann, Ausgewahlte Dokumente, p. 24, or Nolte, Epoche, p. 392. A different view is taken by Bracher, Diktatur, p. 98.
12. On the “Protocols” see Gunter Schubert, Anfange nationalsozialistischer
