HITLER.
by IAN KERSHAW.
Preface to the New Edition
It has been a source of immense satisfaction to me that the original two-volume biography, Hitler, 18891936: Hubris. .h.i.tler, 18891936: Hubris, and Hitler Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis Nemesis, published in 1998 and 2000 respectively, was so well received, as also in the numerous countries where foreign-language editions were published. The warm reception in Germany was particularly gratifying.
My biography was above all intended to be a study of Hitler"s power. I set out to answer two questions. The first was how Hitler had been possible. How could such a bizarre misfit ever have been in a position to take power in Germany, a modern, complex, economically developed, culturally advanced country? The second was how, then, Hitler could exercise power. He had great demagogic skills, certainly, and combined this with a sure eye for exploiting ruthlessly the weakness of his opponents. But he was an unsophisticated autodidact lacking all experience of government. From 1933 he had to deal not just with n.a.z.i roughnecks but with a government machine and circles used to ruling. How could he then so swiftly dominate the established political elites, go on to draw Germany into a catastrophic high-risk gamble for European domination with a terrible, unprecedented genocidal programme at its heart, block all possibilities of a negotiated end to the conflict, and finally kill himself only when the arch-enemy was at his very door and his country physically and morally in total ruins?
I found the answer to these questions only partially in the personality of the strange individual who presided over Germany"s fate during those twelve long years. Of course, personality counts in historical explanation. It would be foolish to suggest otherwise. And Hitler, as those who admired him or reviled him agreed, was an extraordinary personality (though, however varied and numerous the attempts at explanation are, only speculation is possible on the formative causes of his peculiar psychology). Hitler was not interchangeable. The type of individual that Hitler was unquestionably influenced crucial developments in decisive fashion. A Reich Chancellor Goring, for instance, would not have acted in the same way at numerous key junctures. It can be said with certainty: without Hitler, history would have been different.
But Hitler"s disastrous impact cannot be explained through personality alone. Before 1918, there had been no sign of the later extraordinary personal magnetism. He was seen by those around him as an oddity, at times a figure of mild scorn or ridicule, definitively not as a future national leader in waiting. From 1919 onwards, all this changed. He now became the object of increasing, ultimately almost boundless, ma.s.s adulation (as well as intense hatred from his political enemies). This in itself suggests that the answer to the riddle of his impact has to be found less in Hitler"s personality than in the changed circ.u.mstances of a German society traumatized by a lost war, revolutionary upheaval, political instability, economic misery and cultural crisis. At any other time, Hitler would surely have remained a n.o.body. But in those peculiar circ.u.mstances, a symbiotic relationship of dynamic, and ultimately destructive, nature emerged between the individual with a mission to expunge the perceived national humiliation of 1918 and a society ready more and more to see his leadership as vital to its future salvation, to rescue it from the dire straits into which, in the eyes of millions of Germans, defeat, democracy and depression had cast it.
To encapsulate this relationship, as the key to understanding how Hitler could obtain, then exercise, his peculiar form of power, I turned to the concept of "charismatic authority", as devised by the brilliant German sociologist Max Weber, who died before Hitler had been heard of at least outside Munich beerhalls. I did not elaborate on this concept, which had figured prominently in my writing on Hitler and the Third Reich over many years. It lay unmistakably, however, at the heart of the inquiry. "Charismatic authority", as deployed by Weber, did not rest primarily on demonstrable outstanding qualities of an individual. Rather, it derived from the perception of such qualities among a "following" which, amid crisis conditions, projected on to a chosen leader unique "heroic" attributes and saw in him personal greatness, the embodiment of a "mission" of salvation. "Charismatic authority" is, in Weber"s conceptualization, inherently unstable. Continued failure or misfortune will bring its downfall; and it is under threat of becoming "routinized" into a systematic form of government.
Applying this concept of "charismatic authority" seemed to me to offer a useful way of tackling both of the central questions I had posed. To my mind, the concept helps in evaluating the relationship between Hitler and the ma.s.s following that shaped his rise though in conditions never, of course, imagined by Max Weber, and where the image of "heroic" leadership attached to Hitler, exploiting pre-existing pseudo-religious expectations of national salvation, was in good measure a manufactured propaganda product. And I also found it invaluable in examining the way Hitler"s highly personalized rule eroded systematic government and administration and was incompatible with it. Of course, by the middle of the war, Hitler"s popularity was in steep decline and any "charismatic" hold over government and society was now waning sharply. By this time, however, Germany had been wedded for a decade or so to Hitler"s "charismatic" domination. Those who owed their own positions of power to Hitler"s supreme "Fuhrer authority" still upheld it, whether from conviction or necessity. They had risen with Hitler. Now they were condemned to fall with him. He had left them no way out. Hitler"s authority within the regime started to crumble only as Germany faced imminent and total defeat. And as long as he lived, he posed an insuperable barrier to the only way the war he had brought about could be ended: his country"s capitulation.
I linked "charismatic authority" to another concept as a way of showing how Hitler"s highly personalized form of rule functioned. This, as referred to in the text and operating as a kind of leitmotiv throughout the biography, was the notion of "working towards the Fuhrer", which I tried to use to show how Hitler"s presumed aims served to prompt, activate or legitimate initiatives at different levels of the regime, driving on, consciously or unwittingly, the destructive dynamic of n.a.z.i rule. I did not mean, with this notion, to suggest that people at all times asked themselves what Hitler wanted then tried to put it into practice. Some, of course, especially among the party faithful, did more or less just that. But many others say in boycotting a Jewish shop to protect a rival business, or denouncing a neighbour to the police on account of some personal grievance were not asking themselves what the Fuhrer"s intentions might be, or operating from ideological motivation. They were, nevertheless, in minor ways, helping to sustain and promote ideological goals represented by Hitler and thereby indirectly promoting the process of radicalization by which those goals in this case, "racial cleansing" of German society gradually came more sharply into view as realizable short-term aims rather than distant objectives.
The approach I chose meant the two volumes were necessarily long. But even beyond the text itself there was much to be added. I was keen to provide full reference to the extensive doc.u.mentary sources both archival and printed primary sources, and the wealth of secondary literature I had used first, so that other researchers could follow these up and re-examine them if need be, and second to remove distortions in some accounts or dispose of myths which had attached themselves to Hitler. At times, the notes became in themselves minor excursions on points of detail which could not be expanded in the text, or offered additional commentary upon it. I provided lengthy notes in Hubris Hubris, for example, elaborating on points of interpretation in historiography, and on differing views of Hitler"s psychology; and in Nemesis Nemesis on the authenticity of the text of the final "table talk" monologues of early 1945 and on the complex (and sometimes conflicting) evidence about the circ.u.mstances of Hitler"s death and Soviet discovery of his remains. All of this meant that the two finished volumes became ma.s.sive in size, totalling over 1,450 pages of text and almost 450 pages of notes and bibliography. Of course, not all readers are able to devote sufficient time and energy to a work of such length. And, naturally, not all readers are interested in the scholarly apparatus. on the authenticity of the text of the final "table talk" monologues of early 1945 and on the complex (and sometimes conflicting) evidence about the circ.u.mstances of Hitler"s death and Soviet discovery of his remains. All of this meant that the two finished volumes became ma.s.sive in size, totalling over 1,450 pages of text and almost 450 pages of notes and bibliography. Of course, not all readers are able to devote sufficient time and energy to a work of such length. And, naturally, not all readers are interested in the scholarly apparatus.
After much consideration, I decided, therefore, to produce this condensed edition. On undertaking it, I was reminded of the pa.s.sage in the film Amadeus Amadeus, where the Kaiser tells Mozart that he likes his opera apart from the fact that it contains too many notes. "Too many notes, Majesty?" an indignant Mozart interjects. "There are neither too many, nor too few. Just exactly the right number." That is more or less how I felt about my original two volumes. These took the form and shape that they did because I wanted to write them in exactly that way. So the drastic pruning that has gone into the present edition losing over 650 pages (more than 300,000 words) of text and the entire scholarly apparatus was nothing if not painful. And of course, it goes against the grain for a historian to produce a text lacking references and scholarly apparatus. But I console myself that the notes and bibliographical references are all there for consultation by those who want to check them in the full text of the two-volume original version, which will remain in print. And the abridged text, though greatly shortened to create this single, more approachable volume, stays completely true to the original. I have cut out much which provided context, eliminated numerous ill.u.s.trative examples, shortened or removed many quotations, and deleted some entire sections which described the general social and political climate or the setting in which Hitler operated. In two cases, I have blended chapters together. Otherwise the structure is identical with the originals. The essence of the book remains completely intact. I did not want to, and saw no need to, change the overall interpretation. And, in an exercise devoted to reducing the size of the text, I naturally did not want to add to its length. Apart from insignificant wording adjustments, I have incorporated only one or two minor amendments to what I had written earlier. Since the original notes have been excluded, there seemed no point in including the lengthy bibliographies in the original two volumes of works I had used. I have, however, provided a selection of the most important printed printed primary sources for a biography of Hitler, on all of which (apart from a couple of recent publications) I drew. Most are, of course, in German, though I add where relevant a reference to English translations. primary sources for a biography of Hitler, on all of which (apart from a couple of recent publications) I drew. Most are, of course, in German, though I add where relevant a reference to English translations.
My many debts of grat.i.tude remain unchanged from the lists of acknowledgements in Hubris Hubris and and Nemesis Nemesis. In addition, however, I would like to add my thanks in connection with this edition to Andrew Wylie, and to Simon Winder and the excellent team at Penguin. It is a great pleasure, finally, to add Olivia to the family roster alongside Sophie, Joe and Ella, and to thank, as always, David and Katie, Stephen and Becky, and, of course, Betty, for their love and continuing support.
Ian Kershaw Manchester/Sheffield, August 2007
Reflecting on Hitler
Hitler"s dictatorship has the quality of a paradigm for the twentieth century. In extreme and intense fashion it reflected, among other things, the total claim of the modern state, unforeseen levels of state repression and violence, previously unparalleled manipulation of the media to control and mobilize the ma.s.ses, unprecedented cynicism in international relations, the acute dangers of ultra-nationalism, and the immensely destructive power of ideologies of racial superiority and ultimate consequences of racism, alongside the perverted usage of modern technology and "social engineering". Above all, it lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity, culminating in ideological war, conquest of scarcely imaginable brutality and rapaciousness, and genocide such as the world had never previously witnessed. Hitler"s dictatorship amounted to the collapse of modern civilization a form of nuclear blow-out within modern society. It showed what we are capable of.
The century which, in a sense, his name dominated gained much of its character by war and genocide Hitler"s hallmarks. What happened under Hitler took place in fact, could only have taken place in the society of a modern, cultured, technologically advanced, and highly bureaucratic country. Within only a few years of Hitler becoming head of government, this sophisticated country in the heart of Europe was working towards what turned out to be an apocalyptic genocidal war that left Germany and Europe not just riven by an Iron Curtain and physically in ruins, but morally shattered. That still needs explaining. The combination of a leadership committed to an ideological mission of national regeneration and racial purification; a society with sufficient belief in its Leader to work towards the goals he appeared to strive for; and a skilled bureaucratic administration capable of planning and implementing policy, however inhumane, and keen to do so, offers a starting-point. How and why this society could be galvanized by Hitler requires, even so, detailed examination.
It would be convenient to look no further, for the cause of Germany"s and Europe"s calamity, than the person of Adolf Hitler himself, ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, whose philosophies of breathtaking inhumanity had been publicly advertised almost eight years before he became Reich Chancellor. But, for all Hitler"s prime moral responsibility for what took place under his authoritarian regime, a personalized explanation would be a gross short-circuiting of the truth. Hitler could be said to provide a cla.s.sic ill.u.s.tration of Karl Marx"s dictum that "men do make their own history ... but ... under given and imposed conditions". How far "given and imposed conditions", impersonal developments beyond the control of any individual, however powerful, shaped Germany"s destiny; how much can be put down to contingency, even historical accident; what can be attributed to the actions and motivations of the extraordinary man ruling Germany at the time: all need investigation. All form part of the following inquiry. Simple answers are not possible.
Since he first entered the limelight in the 1920s, Hitler has been viewed in many different and varied fashions, often directly contrasting with each other. He has been seen, for example, as no more than "an opportunist entirely without principle", "barren of all ideas save one the further extension of his own power and that of the nation with which he had identified himself", preoccupied solely with "domination, dressed up as the doctrine of race", and consisting of nothing but "vindictive destructiveness". In complete contrast, he has been portrayed as fanatically driving on a pre-planned and pre-ordained ideological programme. There have been attempts to see him as a type of political con-man, hypnotizing and bewitching the German people, leading them astray and into disaster, or to "demonize" him turning him into a mystical, inexplicable figure of Germany"s destiny. No less a figure than Albert Speer, Hitler"s architect, then Armaments Minister, for much of the Third Reich as close to the Dictator as anyone, described him soon after the end of the war as a "demonic figure", "one of those inexplicable historical phenomena which emerge at rare intervals among mankind", whose "person determined the fate of the nation". Such a view runs the risk of mystifying what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945, reducing the cause of Germany"s and Europe"s catastrophe to the arbitrary whim of a demonic personality. The genesis of the calamity finds no explanation outside the actions of an extraordinary individual. Complex developments become no more than an expression of Hitler"s will.
An absolutely contrary view tenable only so long as it was part of a state ideology and consequently evaporating as soon as the Soviet bloc which had sustained it collapsed rejected out of hand any significant role of personality, relegating Hitler to no more than the status of an agent of capitalism, a cypher for the interests of big business and its leaders who controlled him and pulled the strings of their marionette.
Some accounts of Hitler have scarcely recognized any problem at all of understanding, or have promptly ruled one out. Ridiculing Hitler has been one approach. Describing him simply as a "lunatic" or "raving maniac" obviates the need for an explanation though it of course leaves open the key question: why a complex society would be prepared to follow someone who was mentally deranged, a "pathological" case, into the abyss.
Far more sophisticated approaches have clashed on the extent to which Hitler was actually "master in the Third Reich", or could even be described as "in some respects a weak dictator". Did he in fact exercise total, unrestricted, and sole power? Or did his regime rest on a hydra-like "polycracy" of power-structures, with Hitler, on account of his undeniable popularity and the cult that surrounded him, as its indispensable fulcrum but little else remaining no more than the propagandist he had in essence always been, exploiting opportunities as they came along, though without programme, plan, or design?
Differing views about Hitler have never been purely a matter of arcane academic debate. They have wider currency than that and more far-reaching implications. When Hitler was put forward as a sort of reverse copy of Lenin and Stalin, a leader whose paranoid fear of Bolshevik terror, of cla.s.s genocide, motivated him to perpetrate race genocide, the implications were plain. Hitler was wicked, no doubt, but less wicked than Stalin. His was the copy, Stalin"s the original. The underlying cause of n.a.z.i race genocide was Soviet cla.s.s genocide. It also mattered when the spotlight was turned away from the crimes against humanity for which Hitler bears ultimate responsibility and on to his ruminations on the transformation of German society. This. .h.i.tler was interested in social mobility, better housing for workers, modernizing industry, erecting a welfare system, sweeping away the reactionary privileges of the past; in sum, building a better, more up-to-date, less cla.s.s-ridden, German society, however brutal the methods. This. .h.i.tler was, despite his demonization of Jews and gamble for world power against mighty odds, "a politician whose thinking and actions were far more rational than up to now thought". From such a perspective, Hitler could be seen as wicked, but with good intentions for German society or at least intentions which could be viewed in a positive light.
Such revised interpretations were not meant to be apologetic. The comparison of n.a.z.i and Stalinist crimes against humanity was intended, however distorted the approach, to shed light on the terrible ferocity of ideological conflict in inter-war Europe and the motive forces of the German genocide. The depiction of Hitler as a social-revolutionary was attempting to explain, perhaps in somewhat misconceived fashion, why he found such wide appeal in Germany in a time of social crisis. But it is not hard to see that both approaches contain, however unwittingly, the potential for a possible rehabilitation of Hitler which could begin to see him, despite the crimes against humanity a.s.sociated with his name, as nevertheless a great leader of the twentieth century, one who, had he died before the war, would have had a high place in the pantheon of German heroes.
The question of "historical greatness" was usually implicit in the writing of conventional biography particularly so in the German tradition. The figure of Hitler, whose personal attributes distinguished from his political aura and impact were scarcely n.o.ble, elevating or enriching, posed self-evident problems for such a tradition. A way round it was to imply that Hitler possessed a form of "negative greatness"; that, while he lacked the n.o.bility of character and other attributes taken to pertain to "greatness" in historical figures, his impact on history was undeniably immense, even if catastrophic. Yet "negative greatness" can also be taken to have tragic connotations mighty endeavour and astounding achievements vitiated; national grandeur turned into national catastrophe.
It seems better to avoid altogether the issue of "greatness" (other than seeking to understand why so many contemporaries saw "greatness" in Hitler). It is a red-herring: misconstrued, pointless, irrelevant, and potentially apologetic. Misconstrued because, as "great men" theories cannot escape doing, it personalizes the historical process in extreme fashion. Pointless because the whole notion of historical greatness is in the last resort futile. Based on a subjective set of moral and even aesthetic judgements, it is a philosophical-ethical concept which leads nowhere. Irrelevant because, whether we were to answer the question of Hitler"s alleged "greatness" in the affirmative or the negative, it would in itself explain nothing whatsoever about the terrible history of the Third Reich. And potentially apologetic, because even to pose the question cannot conceal a certain admiration for Hitler, however grudging and whatever his faults; and because, to look for greatness in Hitler bears the almost automatic corollary of reducing in effect those who directly promoted his rule, those agencies which sustained it, and the German people themselves who gave it so much backing, to the role of mere supernumeraries to the "great man".
Rather than the issue of "historical greatness", we need to turn our attention to another question, one of far greater importance. How do we explain how someone with so few intellectual gifts and social attributes, someone no more than an empty vessel outside his political life, unapproachable and impenetrable even for those in his close company, incapable it seems of genuine friendship, without the background that bred high office, without even any experience of government before becoming Reich Chancellor, could nevertheless have such an immense historical impact, could make the entire world hold its breath?
Perhaps the question is, in part at least, falsely posed. For one thing, Hitler was certainly not unintelligent, and possessed a sharp mind which could draw on his formidably retentive memory. He was able to impress not only, as might be expected, his sycophantic entourage but also cool, critical, seasoned statesmen and diplomats with his rapid grasp of issues. His rhetorical talent was, of course, recognized even by his political enemies. And he is certainly not alone among twentieth-century state leaders in combining what we might see as deficiencies of character and shallowness of intellectual development with notable political skill and effectiveness. It is as well to avoid the trap, which most of his contemporaries fell into, of grossly underestimating his abilities.
Moreover, others beside Hitler have climbed from humble backgrounds to high office. But if his rise from utter anonymity is not entirely unique, the problem posed by Hitler remains. One reason is the emptiness of the private person. He was, as has frequently been said, tantamount to an "unperson". There is, perhaps, an element of conde scension in this judgement, a readiness to look down on the vulgar, uneducated upstart lacking a rounded personality, the outsider with half-baked opinions on everything under the sun, the uncultured self-appointed adjudicator on culture. Partly, too, the black hole which represents the private individual derives from the fact that Hitler was highly secretive not least about his personal life, his background, and his family. The secrecy and detachment were features of his character, applying also to his political behaviour; they were also politically important, components of the aura of "heroic" leadership he had consciously allowed to be built up, intensifying the mystery about himself. Even so, when all qualifications are made, it remains the case that outside politics (and a blinkered pa.s.sion for cultural grandeur and power in music, art and architecture) Hitler"s life was largely a void.
A biography of an "unperson", one who has as good as no personal life or history outside that of the political events in which he is involved, imposes, naturally, its own limitations. But the drawbacks exist only as long as it is presumed that the private life is decisive for the public life. Such a presumption would be a mistake. There was no "private life" for Hitler. Of course, he could enjoy his escapist films, his daily walk to the Tea House at the Berghof, his time in his alpine idyll far from government ministries in Berlin. But these were empty routines. There was no retreat to a sphere outside the political, to a deeper existence which conditioned his public reflexes. It was not that his "private life" became part of his public persona. On the contrary: so secretive did it remain that the German people only learned of the existence of Eva Braun once the Third Reich had crumbled into ashes. Rather, Hitler "privatized" the public sphere. "Private" and "public" merged completely and became inseparable. Hitler"s entire being came to be subsumed within the role he played to perfection: the role of "Fuhrer".
The task of the biographer at this point becomes clearer. It is a task which has to focus not upon the personality of Hitler, but squarely and directly upon the character of his power the power of the Fuhrer. the character of his power the power of the Fuhrer.
That power derived only in part from Hitler himself. In greater measure, it was a social product a creation of social expectations and motivations invested in Hitler by his followers. This does not mean that Hitler"s own actions, in the context of his expanding power, were not of the utmost importance at key moments. But the impact of his power has largely to be seen not in any specific attributes of "personality", but in his role as Fuhrer a role made possible only through the underestimation, mistakes, weakness, and collaboration of others. To explain his power, therefore, we must look in the first instance to others, not to Hitler himself.
Hitler"s power was of an extraordinary kind. He did not base his claim to power (except in a most formal sense) on his position as a party leader, or on any functional position. He derived it from what he saw as his historic mission to save Germany. His power, in other words, was "charismatic", not inst.i.tutional. It depended upon the readiness of others to see "heroic" qualities in him. And they did see those qualities perhaps even before he himself came to believe in them.
As one of the most brilliant contemporary a.n.a.lysts of the n.a.z.i phenomenon, Franz Neumann, noted: "Charismatic rule has long been neglected and ridiculed, but apparently it has deep roots and becomes a powerful stimulus once the proper psychological and social conditions are set. The Leader"s charismatic power is not a mere phantasm none can doubt that millions believe in it." Hitler"s own contribution to the expansion of this power and to its consequences should not be underrated. A brief counter-factual reflection underlines the point. Is it likely, we might ask, that a terroristic police state such as that which developed under Himmler and the SS would have been erected without Hitler as head of government? Would Germany under a different leader, even an authoritarian one, have been engaged by the end of the 1930s in general general European war? And would under a different head of state discrimination against Jews (which would almost certainly have taken place) have culminated in out-and-out genocide? The answer to each of these questions would surely be "no"; or, at the very least, "highly unlikely". Whatever the external circ.u.mstances and impersonal determinants, Hitler was not interchangeable. European war? And would under a different head of state discrimination against Jews (which would almost certainly have taken place) have culminated in out-and-out genocide? The answer to each of these questions would surely be "no"; or, at the very least, "highly unlikely". Whatever the external circ.u.mstances and impersonal determinants, Hitler was not interchangeable.
The highly personalized power which Hitler exercised conditioned even shrewd and intelligent individuals churchmen, intellectuals, foreign diplomats, distinguished visitors to be impressed by him. They would not for the most part have been captivated by the same sentiments expressed to a raucous crowd in a Munich beerhall. But with the authority of the Reich Chancellorship behind him, backed by adoring crowds, surrounded by the trappings of power, enveloped by the aura of great leadership trumpeted by propaganda, it was scarcely surprising that others beyond the completely naive and gullible could find him impressive. Power was also the reason why his underlings subordinate n.a.z.i leaders, his personal retinue, provincial party bosses hung on his every word, before, when that power was at an end in April 1945, fleeing like the proverbial rats from the sinking ship. The mystique of power surely explains, too, why so many women (especially those much younger than he was) saw him, the Hitler whose person seems to us the ant.i.thesis of s.e.xuality, as a s.e.x-symbol, several attempting suicide on his behalf.
A history of Hitler has to be, therefore, a history of his power how he came to get it, what its character was, how he exercised it, why he was allowed to expand it to break all inst.i.tutional barriers, why resistance to that power was so feeble. But these are questions to be directed at German society, not just at Hitler.
There is no necessity to play down the contribution to Hitler"s gaining and exercise of power that derived from the ingrained features of his character. Single-mindedness, inflexibility, ruthlessness in discarding all hindrances, cynical adroitness, the all-or-nothing gambler"s instinct for the highest stakes: each of these helped shape the nature of his power. These features of character came together in one overriding element in Hitler"s inner drive: his boundless egomania. Power was. .h.i.tler"s aphrodisiac. For one as narcissistic as he was, it offered purpose out of purposeless early years, compensation for all the deeply felt setbacks of the first half of his life rejection as an artist, social bankruptcy taking him to a Viennese doss-house, the falling apart of his world in the defeat and revolution of 1918. Power was all-consuming for him. As one perceptive observer commented in 1940, even before the triumph over France: "Hitler is the potential suicide par excellence par excellence. He owns no ties outside his own "ego" ... He is in the privileged position of one who loves nothing and no one but himself ... So he can dare all to preserve or magnify his power ... which alone stands between him and speedy death." The thirst for personalized power of such magnitude embraced an insatiable appet.i.te for territorial conquest amounting to an almighty gamble against extremely heavy odds for a monopoly of power on the European continent and, later, world power. The relentless quest for ever greater expansion of power could contemplate no diminution, no confinement, no restriction. It was, moreover, dependent upon the continuance of what were taken to be "great achievements". Lacking any capacity for limitation, the progressive megalomania inevitably contained the seeds of self-destruction for the regime Hitler led. The match with his own inbuilt suicidal tendencies was perfect.
All-consuming though power was for Hitler, it was not a matter of power for its own sake, devoid of content or meaning. Hitler was not just a propagandist, a manipulator, a mobilizer. He was all those. But he was also an ideologue of unshakeable convictions the most radical of the radicals as exponent of an internally coherent (however repellent to us) "world-view", acquiring its thrust and potency from its combination of a very few basic ideas integrated by the notion of human history as the history of racial struggle. His "world-view" gave him a rounded explanation of the ills of Germany and of the world, and how to remedy them. He held to his "world-view" unwaveringly from the early 1920s down to his death in the bunker. It amounted to a utopian vision of national redemption, not a set of middle-range policies. But it was not only capable of incorporating within it all the different strands of n.a.z.i philosophy; combined with Hitler"s rhetorical skills, it also meant that he soon became practically unchallengeable on any point of party doctrine.
Hitler"s ideological goals, his actions, and his personal input into the shaping of events need, then, to be accorded the most serious attention. But they explain far from everything. What Hitler did not do, did not instigate, but which was nevertheless set in train by the initiatives of others is as vital as the actions of the Dictator himself in understanding the fateful "c.u.mulative radicalization" of the regime.
An approach which looks to the expectations and motivations of German society (in all its complexity) more than to Hitler"s personality in explaining the Dictator"s immense impact offers the potential to explore the expansion of his power through the internal dynamics of the regime he headed and the forces he unleashed. The approach is encapsulated in the maxim enunciated by a n.a.z.i functionary in 1934 providing in a sense a leitmotiv for the work as a whole that it was the duty of each person in the Third Reich "to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish" without awaiting instruction from above. This maxim, put into practice, was one of the driving-forces of the Third Reich, translating Hitler"s loosely framed ideological goals into reality through initiatives focused on working towards the fulfilment of the Dictator"s visionary aims. Hitler"s authority was, of course, decisive. But the initiatives which he sanctioned derived more often than not from others.
Hitler was no tyrant imposed on Germany. Though he never attained majority support in free elections, he was legally appointed to power as Reich Chancellor just like his predecessors had been, and became between 1933 and 1940 arguably the most popular head of state in the world. Understanding this demands reconciling the apparently irreconcilable: the personalized method of biography and the contrasting approaches to the history of society (including the structures of political domination). Hitler"s impact can only be grasped through the era which created him (and was destroyed by him). An interpretation must not only take full account of Hitler"s ideological goals, his actions, and his personal input into the shaping of events; it must at the same time locate these within the social forces and political structures which permitted, shaped, and promoted the growth of a system that came increasingly to hinge on personalized, absolute power with the disastrous effects that flowed from it.
The n.a.z.i a.s.sault on the roots of civilization was a defining feature of the twentieth century. Hitler was the epicentre of that a.s.sault. But he was its chief exponent, not its prime cause.
1.
Fantasy and Failure
I.
The first of many strokes of good fortune for Adolf Hitler took place thirteen years before he was born. In 1876, the man who was to become his father changed his name from Alois Schicklgruber to Alois. .h.i.tler. Adolf can be believed when he said that nothing his father had done had pleased him so much as to drop the coa.r.s.ely rustic name of Schicklgruber. Certainly, "Heil Schicklgruber" would have sounded an unlikely salutation to a national hero.
The Schicklgrubers had for generations been a peasant family, smallholders in the Waldviertel, a picturesque but poor, hilly and (as the name suggests) woody area in the most north-westerly part of Lower Austria, bordering on Bohemia, whose inhabitants had something of a reputation for being dour, hard-nosed, and unwelcoming. Hitler"s father, Alois, had been born there on 7 June 1837, in the village of Strones, as the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, then forty-one years old and daughter of a poor smallholder, Johann Schicklgruber, and baptized (as Aloys Schicklgruber) in nearby Dollersheim the same day.
Hitler"s father was the first social climber in his family. In 1855, by the time he was eighteen, Alois had gained employment at a modest grade with the Austrian ministry of finance. For a young man of his background and limited education, his advancement in the years to come was impressive. After training, and pa.s.sing the necessary examination, he attained low-ranking supervisory status in 1861 and a position in the customs service in 1864, becoming a customs officer in 1870 before moving the following year to Braunau am Inn, and attaining the post of customs inspector there in 1875.
A year later came the change of name. Alois, the social climber, may have preferred the less rustic form of "Hitler" (a variant spelling of "Hiedler", otherwise given as "Hietler", Huttler", "Hutler", meaning "smallholder", the surname of Johann Georg Hiedler, who had later married Alois"s mother, apparently acknowledging paternity). At any rate, Alois seemed well satisfied with his new name, and from the final authorization in January 1877 always signed himself "Alois. .h.i.tler". His son was equally pleased with the more distinctive form "Hitler".
Klara Polzl, who was to become Adolf Hitler"s mother, was the eldest of only three surviving children out of eleven the other two were Johanna and Theresia from the marriage of Johanna Huttler, eldest daughter of Johann Nepomuk Huttler, with Johann Baptist Polzl, also a smallholder in Spital. Klara herself grew up on the adjacent farm to that of her grandfather Nepomuk. At the death of his brother, Johann Georg Hiedler, Nepomuk had effectively adopted Alois Schicklgruber. Klara"s mother, Johanna, and her aunt Walburga had in fact been brought up with Alois in Nepomuk"s house. Officially, after the change of name and legitimation in 1876, Alois. .h.i.tler and Klara Polzl were second cousins. In that year, 1876, aged sixteen, Klara Polzl left the family farm in Spital and moved to Braunau am Inn to join the household of Alois. .h.i.tler as a maid.
By this time, Alois was a well-respected customs official in Braunau. His personal affairs were, however, less well regulated than his career. He would eventually marry three times, at first to a woman much older than himself, Anna Gla.s.serl, from whom he separated in 1880, then to women young enough to be his daughters. A premarital liaison and his last two marriages would give him nine children, four of whom were to die in infancy. It was a private life of above average turbulence at least for a provincial customs officer. When his second wife, Franziska (Fanni) Matzelberger, died of tuberculosis in August 1884 aged only twenty-three, their two children, Alois and Angela, were still tiny. During her illness, Fanni had been moved to the fresh air of the countryside outside Braunau. For someone to look after his two young children, Alois turned straight away to Klara Polzl, and brought her back to Braunau. With Fanni scarcely in her grave, Klara became pregnant. Since they were officially second cousins, a marriage between Alois and Klara needed the dispensation of the Church. After a wait of four months, in which Klara"s condition became all the more evident, the dispensation finally arrived from Rome in late 1884, and the couple were married on 7 January 1885. The wedding ceremony took place at six o"clock in the morning. Soon after a perfunctory celebration, Alois was back at his work at the customs post.
The first of the children of Alois"s third marriage, Gustav, was born in May 1885, to be followed in September the following year by a second child, Ida, and, with scarcely a respite, by another son, Otto, who died only days after his birth. Further tragedy for Klara came soon afterwards, as both Gustav and Ida contracted diphtheria and died within weeks of each other in December 1887 and January 1888. By the summer of 1888 Klara was pregnant again. At half-past six in the evening on 20 April 1889, an overcast and chilly Easter Sat.u.r.day, she gave birth in her home in the "Gasthof zum Pommer", Vorstadt Nr.219, to her fourth child, the first to survive infancy: this was Adolf.
The historical record of Adolf "s early years is very spa.r.s.e. His own account in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf is inaccurate in detail and coloured in interpretation. Post-war recollections of family and acquaintances have to be treated with care, and are at times as dubious as the attempts during the Third Reich itself to glorify the childhood of the future Fuhrer. For the formative period so important to psychologists and "psycho-historians", the fact has to be faced that there is little to go on which is not retrospective guesswork. is inaccurate in detail and coloured in interpretation. Post-war recollections of family and acquaintances have to be treated with care, and are at times as dubious as the attempts during the Third Reich itself to glorify the childhood of the future Fuhrer. For the formative period so important to psychologists and "psycho-historians", the fact has to be faced that there is little to go on which is not retrospective guesswork.
By the time of Adolf "s birth, Alois was a man of moderate means. His income was a solid one rather more than that of an elementary school headmaster. In addition to Alois, Klara, the two children of Alois"s second marriage, Alois Jr (before he left home in 1896) and Angela, Adolf, and his younger brother Edmund (born in 1894, but died in 1900) and sister Paula (born in 1896), the household also ran to a cook and maid, Rosalia Schichtl. In addition, there was Adolf "s aunt Johanna, one of his mother"s younger sisters, a bad-tempered, hunchbacked woman who was, however, fond of Adolf and a good help for Klara around the house. In material terms, then, the Hitler family led a comfortable middle-cla.s.s existence.
Family life was, however, less than harmonious and happy. Alois was an archetypal provincial civil servant pompous, status-proud, strict, humourless, frugal, pedantically punctual, and devoted to duty. He was regarded with respect by the local community. But he had a bad temper which could flare up quite unpredictably. At home, Alois was an authoritarian, overbearing, domineering husband and a stern, distant, masterful, and often irritable father. For long after their marriage, Klara could not get out of the habit of calling him "Uncle". And even after his death, she kept a rack of his pipes in the kitchen and would point to them on occasion when he was referred to, as if to invoke his authority.
What affection the young children missed in their father was more than recompensed by their mother. According to the description given much later by her Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch, after his own forced emigration from n.a.z.i Germany, Klara Hitler was "a simple, modest, kindly woman. She was tall, had brownish hair which she kept neatly plaited, and a long, oval face with beautifully expressive grey-blue eyes." In personality, she was submissive, retiring, quiet, a pious churchgoer, taken up in the running of the household, and above all absorbed in the care of her children and stepchildren. The deaths within weeks of each other of her first three children in infancy in 18878, and the subsequent death of her fifth child, Edmund, under the age of six in 1900, must have been hammer blows for her. Her sorrows can only have been compounded by living with an irascible, unfeeling, overbearing husband. It is scarcely surprising that she made an impression of a saddened, careworn woman. Nor is it any wonder that she bestowed a smothering, protective love and devotion on her two surviving children, Adolf and Paula. Klara was in turn held in love and affection by her children and stepchildren, by Adolf quite especially. "Outwardly, his love for his mother was his most striking feature," Dr Bloch later wrote. "While he was not a "mother"s boy" in the usual sense," he added, "I have never witnessed a closer attachment." In one of the few signs of human affection recorded in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf, Adolf wrote, "I had honoured my father, but loved my mother." He carried her picture with him down to the last days in the bunker. Her portrait stood in his rooms in Munich, Berlin, and at the Obersalzberg (his alpine residence near Berchtesgaden). His mother may well, in fact, have been the only person he genuinely loved in his entire life.
Adolf "s early years were spent, then, under the suffocating shield of an over-anxious mother in a household dominated by the threatening presence of a disciplinarian father, against whose wrath the submissive Klara was helpless to protect her offspring. Adolf "s younger sister, Paula, spoke after the war of her mother as "a very soft and tender person, the compensatory element between the almost too harsh father and the very lively children who were perhaps somewhat difficult to train. If there were ever quarrel[s] or differences of opinion between my parents," she continued, "it was always on account of the children. It was especially my brother Adolf who challenged my father to extreme harshness and who got his sound thrashing every day ... How often on the other hand did my mother caress him and try to obtain with her kindness what the father could not succeed [in obtaining] with harshness!" Hitler himself, during his late-night fireside monologues in the 1940s, often recounted that his father had sudden bursts of temper and would then immediately hit out. He did not love his father, he said, but instead feared him all the more. His poor beloved mother, he used to remark, to whom he was so attached, lived in constant concern about the beatings he had to take, sometimes waiting outside the door as he was thrashed.
Quite possibly, Alois"s violence was also turned against his wife. A pa.s.sage in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf, in which Hitler ostensibly describes the conditions in a workers" family where the children have to witness drunken beatings of their mother by their father, may well have drawn in part on his own childhood experiences. What the legacy of all this was for the way Adolf"s character developed must remain a matter for speculation. That its impact was profound is hard to doubt.
Beneath the surface, the later Hitler was unquestionably being formed. Speculation though it must remain, it takes little to imagine that his later patronizing contempt for the submissiveness of women, the thirst for dominance (and imagery of the Leader as stern, authoritarian father-figure), the inability to form deep personal relationships, the corresponding cold brutality towards humankind, and not least the capacity for hatred so profound that it must have reflected an immeasurable undercurrent of self-hatred concealed in the extreme narcissism that was its counterpoint must surely have had roots in the subliminal influences of the young Adolf "s family circ.u.mstances. But a.s.sumptions have to remain guesswork. The outer traces of Adolf "s early life, so far as they can be reconstructed, bear no hint of what would emerge. Attempts to find in the youngster "the warped person within the murderous dictator" have proved unpersuasive. If we exclude our knowledge of what was to come, his family circ.u.mstances invoke for the most part sympathy for the child exposed to them.
II.
Alois. .h.i.tler had always been a restless soul. The Hitlers had moved house several times within Braunau, and had subsequently been uprooted on a number of occasions. In November 1898, a final move for Alois took place when he bought a house with a small plot of attached land in Leonding, a village on the outskirts of Linz. From now on, the family settled in the Linz area, and Adolf down to his days in the bunker in 1945 looked upon Linz as his home town. Linz reminded him of the happy, carefree days of his youth. It held a.s.sociations with his mother. And it was the most "German" town of the Austrian Empire. It evidently symbolized for him the provincial small-town Germanic idyll the image he would throughout his life set against the city he would soon come to know, and detest: Vienna.
Adolf was now in his third elementary school. He seems to have established himself rapidly with a new set of schoolmates, and became "a little ringleader" in the games of cops and robbers which the village boys played in the woods and fields around their homes. War games were a particular favourite. Adolf himself was thrilled by an ill.u.s.trated history of the Franco-Prussian War, which he had come across at home. And once the Boer War broke out, the games revolved around the heroic exploits of the Boers, whom the village boys fervently supported. About this same time, Adolf became gripped by the adventure stories of Karl May, whose popular tales of the Wild West and Indian wars (though May had never been to America) enthralled thousands of youngsters. Most of these youngsters graduated from the Karl May adventures and the childhood fantasies they fostered as they grew up. For Adolf, however, the fascination with Karl May never faded. As Reich Chancellor, he still read the May stories, recommending them, too, to his generals, whom he accused of lacking imagination.
Adolf later referred to "this happy time", when "school work was ridiculously easy, leaving me so much free time that the sun saw more of me than my room", when "meadows and woods were then the battleground on which the ever-present "antagonisms"" the growing conflict with his father "came to a head".
In 1900, however, the carefree days were drawing to a close. And just around the time when important decisions had to be made about Adolf "s future, and the secondary education path he should follow, the Hitler family was once more plunged into distress with the death, through measles, of Adolf "s little brother Edmund on 2 February 1900. With Alois"s elder son, Alois Jr, already spiting his father and living away from home, any careerist ambitions for his offspring now rested upon Adolf. They were to lead to tension between father and son in the remaining years of Alois"s life.
Adolf began his secondary schooling on 17 September 1900. His father had opted for the Realschule Realschule rather than the Gymnasium, that is, for a school which attached less weight to the traditional cla.s.sical and humanistic studies but was still seen as a preparation for higher education, with an emphasis upon more "modern" subjects, including science and technical studies. According to Adolf, his father was influenced by the apt.i.tude his son already showed for drawing, together with a disdain for the impracticality of humanistic studies deriving from his own hard way to career advancement. It was not the typical route for a would-be civil servant the career which Alois had in mind for his son. But, then, Alois himself had made a good career in the service of the Austrian state with hardly any formal education at all to speak of. rather than the Gymnasium, that is, for a school which attached less weight to the traditional cla.s.sical and humanistic studies but was still seen as a preparation for higher education, with an emphasis upon more "modern" subjects, including science and technical studies. According to Adolf, his father was influenced by the apt.i.tude his son already showed for drawing, together with a disdain for the impracticality of humanistic studies deriving from his own hard way to career advancement. It was not the typical route for a would-be civil servant the career which Alois had in mind for his son. But, then, Alois himself had made a good career in the service of the Austrian state with hardly any formal education at all to speak of.
The transition to secondary school was a hard one for young Adolf. He had to trek every day from his home in Leonding to school in Linz, a journey of over an hour each way, leaving him little or no time for developing out-of-school friendships. While he was still a big fish in a little pond among the village boys in Leonding, his cla.s.smates in his new school took no special notice of him. He had no close friends at school; nor did he seek any. And the attention he had received from his village teacher was now replaced by the more impersonal treatment of a number of teachers responsible for individual subjects. The minimum effort with which Adolf had mastered the demands of the primary school now no longer sufficed. His school work, which had been so good in primary school, suffered from the outset. And his behaviour betrayed clear signs of immaturity. Adolf"s school record, down to the time he left in autumn 1905, hovered between poor and mediocre.
In a letter to Hitler"s defence counsel on 12 December 1923, following the failed putsch attempt in Munich, his former cla.s.s teacher, Dr Eduard Huemer, recalled Adolf as a thin, pale youth commuting between Linz and Leonding, a boy not making full use of his talent, lacking in application, and unable to accommodate himself to school discipline. He characterized him as stubborn, high-handed, dogmatic, and hot-tempered. Strictures from his teachers were received with a scarcely concealed insolence. With his cla.s.smates he was domineering, and a leading figure in the sort of immature pranks which Huemer attributed to too great an addiction to Karl May"s Indian stories together with a tendency to waste time furthered by the daily trip from Leonding and back.
There can be little doubting that Hitler"s att.i.tude towards his school and teachers (with one exception) was scathingly negative. He left school "with an elemental hatred" towards it, and later mocked and derided his schooling and teachers. Only his history teacher, Dr Leopold Potsch, was singled out for praise in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf for firing Hitler"s interest through vivid narratives and tales of heroism from the German past, stirring in him the strongly emotional German-nationalist, anti-Habsburg feelings (which were in any case widely prevalent in his school, as in Linz generally). for firing Hitler"s interest through vivid narratives and tales of heroism from the German past, stirring in him the strongly emotional German-nationalist, anti-Habsburg feelings (which were in any case widely prevalent in his school, as in Linz generally).
The problems of adjustment that Adolf encountered in the Realschule Realschule in Linz were compounded by the deterioration in relations with his father and the running sore of the disputes over the boy"s future career. For Alois, the virtues of a civil service career could not be gainsaid. But all his attempts to enthuse his son met with adamant rejection. "I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time," wrote Adolf in in Linz were compounded by the deterioration in relations with his father and the running sore of the disputes over the boy"s future career. For Alois, the virtues of a civil service career could not be gainsaid. But all his attempts to enthuse his son met with adamant rejection. "I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time," wrote Adolf in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf.
The more Adolf resisted the idea, the more authoritarian and insistent his father became. Equally stubborn, when asked what he envisaged for his future, Adolf claimed he replied that he wanted to be an artist a vision which for the dour Austrian civil servant Alois was quite unthinkable. "Artist, no, never as long as I live!", Hitler has him saying. Whether the young Adolf, allegedly at the age of twelve, so plainly stipulated he wanted to be an artist may be doubted. But that there was a conflict with his father arising from his unwillingness to follow a career in the civil service, and that his father found fault with his son"s indolent and purposeless existence, in which drawing appeared to be his main interest, seems certain. Alois had worked his way up through industry, diligence, and effort from humble origins to a position of dignity and respect in the state service. His son, from a more privileged background, saw fit to do no more than dawdle away his time drawing and dreaming, would not apply himself in school, had no career path in view, and scorned the type of career which had meant everything to his father. The dispute amounted, therefore, to more than a rejection of a civil service career. It was a rejection of everything his father had stood for; and with that, a rejection of his father himself.
Adolf"s adolescence, as he commented in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf, was "very painful". With the move to the school in Linz, and the start of the rumbling conflict with his father, an important formative phase in his character development had begun. The happy, playful youngster of the primary school days had grown into an idle, resentful, rebellious, sullen, stubborn, and purposeless teenager.
When, on 3 January 1903, his father collapsed and died over his usual morning gla.s.s of wine in the Gasthaus Wiesinger, the conflict of will over Adolf "s future was over. Alois had left his family in comfortable circ.u.mstances. And whatever emotional adjustments were needed for his widow, Klara, it is unlikely that Adolf, now the only "man about the house", grieved over his father. With his father"s death, much of the parental pressure was removed. His mother did her best to persuade Adolf to comply with his father"s wishes. But she shied away from conflict and, however concerned she was about his future, was far too ready to give in to Adolf "s whims. In any case, his continued poor school performance in itself ruled out any realistic expectation that he would be qualified for a career in the civil service.
His school record in the following two years remained mediocre. In autumn 1905, at the age of sixteen, he used illness feigned, or most likely genuine but exaggerated to persuade his mother that he was not fit to continue school and gladly put his schooling behind him for good with no clear future career path mapped out.
The time between leaving school in autumn 1905 and his mother"s death at the end of 1907 is pa.s.sed over almost completely in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf. In these two years, Adolf lived a life of parasitic idleness funded, provided for, looked after, and cosseted by a doting mother, with his own room in the comfortable flat in the Humboldtstrae in Linz, which the family had moved into in June 1905. His mother, his aunt Johanna, and his little sister Paula were there to look after all his needs, to wash, clean, and cook for him. His mother even bought him a grand piano, on which he had lessons for four months between October 1906 and January 1907. He spent his time during the days drawing, painting, reading, or writing "poetry"; the evenings were for going to the theatre or opera; and the whole time he daydreamed and fantasized about his future as a great artist. He stayed up late into the night and slept long into the mornings. He had no clear aim in view. The indolent lifestyle, the grandiosity of fantasy, the lack of discipline for systematic work all features of the later Hitler can be seen in these two years in Linz. It was little wonder that Hitler came to refer to this period as "the happiest days which seemed to me almost like a beautiful dream".
A description of Adolf "s carefree life in Linz between 1905 and 1907 is provided by the one friend he had at that time, August Kubizek, the son of a Linz upholsterer with dreams of his own about becoming a great musician. Kubizek"s post-war memoirs need to be treated with care, both in factual detail and in interpretation. They are a lengthened and embellished version of recollections he had originally been commissioned by the n.a.z.i Party to compile. Even retrospectively, the admiration in which Kubizek continued to hold his former friend coloured his judgement. But more than that, Kubizek plainly invented a great deal, built some pa.s.sages around Hitler"s own account in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf, and deployed some near plagiarism to amplify his own limited memory. However, for all their weaknesses, his recollections have been shown to be a more credible source on Hitler"s youth than was once thought, in particular where they touch upon experiences related to Kubizek"s own interests in music and theatre. There can be no doubt that, whatever their deficiencies, they do contain important reflections of the young Hitler"s personality, showing features in embryo which were to be all too prominent in later years.
August Kubizek "Gustl" was some nine months older than Adolf. They met by chance in autumn 1905 (not 1904, as Kubizek claimed) at the opera in Linz. Adolf had for some years been a fanatical admirer of Wagner, and his love of opera, especially the works of the "master of Bayreuth", was shared by Kubizek. Gustl was highly impressionable; Adolf out for someone to impress. Gustl was compliant, weak-willed, subordinate; Adolf was superior, determining, dominant. Gustl felt strongly about little or nothing; Adolf had strong feelings about everything. "He had to speak," recalled Kubizek, "and needed someone to listen to him." For his part, Gustl, from his artisa.n.a.l background, having attended a lower school than the young Hitler, and feeling himself therefore both socially and educationally inferior, was filled with admiration at Adolf "s power of expression. Whether Adolf was haranguing him about the deficiencies of civil servants, school teachers, local taxation, social welfare lotteries, opera performances, or Linz public buildings, Gustl was gripped as never before. Not just what his friend had to say, but how he said it, was what he found attractive. Gustl, in self-depiction a quiet, dreamy youth, had found an ideal foil in the opinionated, c.o.c.ksure, "know-all" Hitler. It was a perfect partnership.
In the evenings they would go off, dressed in their fineries, to the theatre or the opera, the pale and weedy young Hitler, sporting the beginnings of a thin moustache, looking distinctly foppish in his black coat and dark hat, the image completed by a black cane with an ivory handle. After the performance, Adolf would invariably hold forth, heatedly critical of the production, or effusively rapturous. Even though Kubizek was musically more gifted and knowledgeable than Hitler, he remained the pa.s.sive and submissive partner in the "discussions".
Hitler"s pa.s.sion for Wagner knew no bounds. A performance could affect him almost like a religious experience, plunging him into deep and mystical fantasies. Wagner amounted for him to the supreme artistic genius, the model to be emulated. Adolf was carried away by Wagner"s powerful musical dramas, his evocation of a heroic, distant, and sublimely mystical Germanic past. Lohengrin Lohengrin, the saga of the mysterious knight of the grail, epitome of the Teutonic hero, sent from the castle of Monsalvat by his father Parzival to rescue the wrongly condemned pure maiden, Elsa, but ultimately betrayed by her, had been his first Wagner opera, and remained his favourite.
Even more than music, the theme, w