Political views of Adolf Hitler
The political views of Adolf Hitler, dictator of
Hitler's political views were formed during three periods, namely (1) his years as a poverty-stricken young man in Vienna and Munich prior to World War I, during which he turned to nationalist-oriented political pamphlets and antisemitic newspapers out of distrust for mainstream newspapers and political parties; (2) the closing months of World War I when Germany lost the war, since Hitler claimed to have developed his extreme nationalism and allegedly pledged to "save" Germany from both external and internal enemies, who in his view betrayed it; (3) and the 1920s, during which his early political career began and he wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but did not acquire German citizenship until almost seven years later in 1932; thereby allowing him to run for public office.[2] Hitler was influenced by Benito Mussolini, who was appointed Prime Minister of Italy in October 1922 after his "March on Rome".[b] In many ways, Hitler epitomized "the force of personality in political life" as described by Friedrich Meinecke.[4] Hitler was essential to Nazism's political appeal and its manifestation in Germany. So important were Hitler's views that they immediately affected the political policies of Nazi Germany. He asserted the Führerprinzip ('leader principle'), which advocated the absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors. Correspondingly, Hitler viewed himself at the top of both the party and government in this structure.[5]
Hitler firmly believed that the force of "will" was decisive in determining the political course for a nation and rationalized his actions accordingly. Given that Hitler was appointed "leader of the German Reich for life", he "embodied the supreme power of the state and, as the delegate of the German people", it was his role to determine the "outward form and structure of the Reich".[6] To that end, Hitler's political motivation consisted of an ideology that combined traditional German and Austrian antisemitism with an intellectualized racial doctrine resting on an admixture of bits and pieces of social Darwinism and the ideas – mostly obtained second-hand and only partially understood – of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Arthur de Gobineau and Alfred Rosenberg as well as Paul de Lagarde, Georges Sorel, Alfred Ploetz and others.[7]
Pre-World War I
During his life in
Hitler developed fervent
During his time in Vienna, Hitler also became vehemently opposed to ideas of
"What most repelled me was its hostile attitude toward the struggle for the preservation of Germanism, its disgraceful courting of the Slavic 'comrade' who accepted this declaration of love in so far as it was bound up with practical concessions, but otherwise maintained a lofty and arrogant reserve, thus giving the obtrusive beggars their deserved reward."
— Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Volume One, Chapter II: Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna, p. 38
Army intelligence agent
During World War I, Hitler was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack on 15 October 1918 for which he was hospitalised in Pasewalk.[21] While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, with the armistice to take effect on 11 November. By his own account—upon receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness.[22] Days after digesting this traumatic news, Hitler later stated his decision: "... my own fate became known to me ... I ... decided to go into politics."[23] On 19 November 1918, Hitler was discharged from the Pasewalk hospital and returned to Munich, which at the time was in a state of socialist upheaval.[24] Arriving on 21 November, he was assigned to 7th Company of the 1st Replacement Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. In December he was reassigned to a Prisoner of War camp in Traunstein as a guard.[25] There he would stay until the camp dissolved January 1919.[f]
Returning to Munich, Hitler spent a few months in barracks waiting for reassignment. During this time Munich was a part of the People's State of Bavaria, which was still in a state of chaos with a number of assassinations occurring including that of socialist Kurt Eisner[g] who was shot dead in Munich by a German nationalist on 21 February 1919.[28] Other acts of violence were the killings of both Major Paul Ritter von Jahreiß and the conservative MP Heinrich Osel .[29] In this political turmoil, Berlin sent in the military, whom the communists called the "White Guards of Capitalism". On 3 April 1919, Hitler was elected as the liaison of his military battalion and again on 15 April. During this time he urged his unit to stay out of the fighting and not join either side.[30] The Bavarian Soviet Republic was officially crushed on 6 May 1919, when Lt. General Burghard von Oven and his military forces declared the city secure. In the aftermath of arrests and executions, Hitler denounced a fellow liaison, Georg Dufter, as a Soviet "radical rabble-rouser."[31] Other testimony he gave to the military board of inquiry allowed them to root out other members of the military that "had been infected with revolutionary fervor."[32] For his anti-communist views he was allowed to avoid discharge when his unit was disbanded in May 1919.[26]
In June 1919 he was moved to the demobilization office of the 2nd Infantry Regiment.[h] Around this time the German military command released an edict that the army's main priority was to "carry out, in conjunction with the police, stricter surveillance of the population ... so that the ignition of any new unrest can be discovered and extinguished."[31] In May 1919 Karl Mayr became commander of the 6th Battalion of the guards regiment in Munich and from 30 May the head of the "Education and Propaganda Department" (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr, Headquarters 4.[33] In this capacity as head of the intelligence department, Mayr recruited Hitler as an undercover agent in early June 1919. Under Captain Mayr "national thinking" courses were arranged at the Reichswehrlager Lechfeld near Augsburg,[33] with Hitler attending from 10 to 19 July 1919. During this time Hitler so impressed Mayr that he assigned him to an anti-bolshevik "educational commando" as one of 26 instructors in the summer of 1919.[34][35][36][i]
These courses he taught helped popularize the notion that there was a
The origin and development of Hitler's anti-Semitism remains a matter of debate.
In July 1919, Hitler was appointed Verbindungsmann ('intelligence agent') of an Aufklärungskommando ('reconnaissance commando') of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP).[49] Much like the political activists in the DAP, Hitler blamed the loss of the war on Jewish intrigue at home and abroad, espousing völkisch-nationalist political beliefs with the intention of resurrecting Germany's greatness by smashing the Versailles Treaty. Along those lines, Hitler proclaimed that the "German yoke must be broken by German iron" (Das deutsche Elend muß durch deutsches Eisen zerbrochen werden).[50]
German Workers' Party
In September 1919 Hitler wrote what is often deemed his first antisemitic text, requested by Mayr as a reply to an inquiry by Adolf Gemlich, who had participated in the same "educational courses" as Hitler. In this report, Hitler argued for a "rational anti-Semitism" which would not resort to pogroms, but instead "legally fight and remove the privileges enjoyed by the Jews as opposed to other foreigners living among us. Its final goal, however, must be the irrevocable removal of the Jews themselves".[51] Most people at the time understood this as a call for forced expulsion. Europe has a long history of expelling Jews and the auto-da-fé of the Inquisition.[k]
While he studied the activities of the German Workers' Party (DAP), Hitler became impressed with founder
Hitler was discharged from the army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the party.
While Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin in June 1921, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP).[63] Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party.[64] Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich.[65] They capitulated to Hitler's demand and on 29 July 1921 a special congress was convened to formalize Hitler as the new chairman (the vote was 543 for Hitler and one against).[66]
Hitler asserted the Führerprinzip ('leader principle'). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors as he viewed the party structure and later the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader.[5]
Early followers of the party included
Beer Hall Putsch
Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Ludendorff to try to seize power in
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide, although this state of mind has been disputed.[73] Hitler was depressed but calm when he was arrested on 11 November 1923.[74] Fearing "left-wing" members of the Nazi Party might try to seize leadership from him during his incarceration, Hitler quickly appointed Alfred Rosenberg as the party's temporary leader.[75]
Mein Kampf
Beginning in February 1924, Hitler was tried for
Hitler's speeches during the trial made him famous, but they did not exonerate him. In April 1924, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Landsberg Prison, where he received preferential treatment from sympathetic guards and received substantial quantities of fan mail, including funds and other forms of assistance. During 1923 and 1924 at Landsberg, he dictated the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess.[78] Originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice, his publisher shortened the title to Mein Kampf.[79]
The book, dedicated to
In Mein Kampf, Hitler states that he had little interest in politics as a child, aspiring instead to become a painter. Like other boys in his part of Austria, he was attracted to pan-Germanism, but his intellectual pursuits were generally those of a dilettante. Hitler portrays himself as a born leader interested in knightly adventures and exploration. By the time he was 11, Hitler was a nationalist and interested in history.[84][m]
Hitler never finished his primary schooling, dropping out by the time he was 16. He devoted his attention instead to his artistic pursuits, which led him to move to Vienna in 1905.[86] Hitler was later to proclaim that he learned some hard lessons in Vienna, namely that life was a critical struggle between the weak and the strong; in Hitler's worldview, morality did not matter, and everything simply boiled down to "victory and defeat".[87]
While Hitler was incarcerated at the Landsberg prison writing Mein Kampf, he had routine visits from the respected First World War veteran, Major General Dr.
Influenced by Haushofer's theories, Hitler believed it was Germany's right to seize the cultivatable land in Russia, since the earth belonged to those people willing to till it "industriously". Describing the
Many historians contend that Hitler's essential character and political philosophy can be discovered in Mein Kampf. Historian James Joll once claimed that Mein Kampf constituted "all of Hitler's beliefs, most of his programme and much of his character".[94] According to Andreas Hillgruber, evident within the text of Mein Kampf is nothing less than the very crux of Hitler's program.[95] One of Hitler's foremost goals was that Germany should become "a World Power" on the geopolitical stage, or as he stated, "it will not continue to exist at all".[96] Biographer Joachim Fest asserted that Mein Kampf contained a "remarkably faithful portrait of its author".[97]
In Mein Kampf, Hitler categorized human beings by their physical attributes, claiming German or
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf of his hatred of what he believed were the world's twin evils, namely communism and Judaism. He said his aim was to eradicate both from Germany and moreover stressed his intention to unite all Germans in the process of destroying them.[100]
Völkisch nationalism
Hitler was a
Hitler stressed the völkisch ideology, claiming Germanic/Aryan superiority in Mein Kampf:
- Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term: MAN. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings on the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth; within a few thousand years human culture will vanish and the world will become a desert.[105]
The völkisch nationalism of Hitler and Nazis encompassed the notion that the German Volk was epitomized by German farmers and peasants, people who remained uncorrupted by modern ideals and whose greatest attribute was their "cheerful subservience" and their capacity to respond to their "monarchical calling".[106] Hitler was their new monarch in a manner of speaking. Völkisch nationalism also forged into its ideals, the importance of nature, the centrality of a knightly savior (Hitler in this case) and the belief in the superior Aryan.[107] Antisemitism remained a key component of the völkisch movement and a permanent undercurrent throughout conservative parties in German history and after many years culminated with the view that the Jews were the only thing standing in the way of the ideal society.[108] As Germany's newfound völkisch nationalist leader, Hitler initiated a policy of ethnic nationalism replete with directives to eliminate Jews and other identified enemies as Nazism ultimately became the religion of the movement and the "irrational became concrete" under the terms of its "ideological framework".[109]
Social conservatism
Hitler and the Nazis promoted a
Evidence of Hitler's disdain for Weimar's cultural and social decadence appears on multiple occasions in Mein Kampf. In his seminal tome, he expresses an ultraconservatism:
If we study the course of our cultural life during the last twenty-five years we shall be astonished to note how far we have already gone in this process of retrogression. Everywhere we find the presence of those germs which give rise to protuberant growths that must sooner or later bring about the ruin of our culture. Here we find undoubted symptoms of slow corruption; and woe to the nations that are no longer able to bring that morbid process to a halt.[116]
Hitler raved against what he considered to be tasteless and morally destructive art on display throughout Germany in Mein Kampf, calling some of it morbid and declaring that "people would have benefited by not visiting them at all".[116] Convinced that it was necessary to show the German people what comprised, "degenerate art" so as to protect them in the future, Hitler arranged for a formally commissioned exhibit in July 1937 of specially selected carvings, sculptures, and paintings. Once the exhibit was at an end, selected artists' works were banned from Nazi Germany.[117]
Well known was Hitler's vehement opposition to racial-mixing. He was also a
That such a mentality [racial purity] may be possible cannot be denied in a world where hundreds and thousands accept the principle of celibacy from their own choice, without being obliged or pledged to do so by anything except an ecclesiastical precept. Why should it not be possible to induce people to make this sacrifice if, instead of such a precept, they were simply told that they ought to put an end to this truly original sin of racial corruption which is steadily being passed on from one generation to another. And, further, they ought to be brought to realize that it is their bounden duty to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He himself made to His own image.[118]
Another area of concern for Hitler and which was mentioned by his childhood companion in Vienna, August Kubizek, was prostitution. Hitler associated it with venereal disease and cultural decline.[119] Moreover, Hitler found the practice counter to proper family development and displayed a puritanical view in Mein Kampf, writing:
Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity and cannot be removed simply by charitable or academic methods. Its restriction and final extermination presupposes the removal of a whole series of contributory circumstances. The first remedy must always be to establish such conditions as will make early marriages possible, especially for young men...[120]
He goes on asserting that prostitution was dangerous and intimated much more significant, destructive socio-political implications.[121] Once Hitler came to power, his regime moved against all forms of sexual deviations and sexual crimes, especially homosexuality, which was prosecuted as a crime as many as 30,000 times between 1934 and 1939.[122] Hitler's social conservatism was so extreme towards homosexuals that he deemed them "enemies of the State" and grouped them in the same category as Jews and communists; a special department of the Gestapo was formed to deal with the matter.[123]
Hitler's general perception about women was ultra-conservative and patriarchal, with their foremost task being a domestic one as a mother of children who worked contentedly at home, ensuring it remained clean and orderly. Meanwhile, it was the woman's role to educate her children to be conscious of their importance as Aryans and instill within them a commitment to their ethnic community. Consequently, Hitler believed women had no place in public or political life due to their differing nature from men.[124][125] Like many Romantic artists, musicians, and writers, the Nazis valued strength, passion, frank declarations of feelings and deep devotion to family and community (with women being seen as the center of the family in Nazi Germany).[n] So great was Hitler's influence in all political aspects of social life that even education for children was subordinate to his opinion. Profoundly anti-intellectual and against conventional education for children, Hitler determined instead that training and education should be designed to create young German "national comrades" who were utterly convinced of their "superiority to others".[127] Moreover, Hitler wanted to create young German soldiers who were willing to fight for their convictions so they were accordingly indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda, trained in military discipline and taught obedience to authority in the Hitler Youth.[128]
Contempt for democracy
Hitler blamed Germany's parliamentary government for many of the nation's ills. The Nazis and especially Hitler associated democracy with the failed Weimar government and the punitive Treaty of Versailles.[129] Hitler often denounced democracy, equating it with internationalism. Since democratic ideals espoused equality for all men, it represented to Hitler and his Nazi ideologues the notion of mob rule and the hatred of excellence.[130] Not only was democracy antithetical to their social-Darwinist abstractions, but its international-capitalist framework was considered an exclusively Jewish-derived conception.[131] Hitler also thought democracy was nothing more than a preliminary stage of Bolshevism.[132]
Hitler believed in the leader principle (hence his title, the Leader, der Führer) and considered it ludicrous that an idea of governance or morality could be held by the people above the power of the leader. Joachim Fest described a 1930 confrontation between Hitler and Otto Strasser as such: "Now Hitler took Strasser to task for placing 'the idea' above the Führer and wanting 'to give every party comrade the right to decide the nature of the idea, even to decide whether or not the Führer is true to the so-called idea.' That, he cried angrily, was the worst kind of democracy, for which there was no place in their movement. 'With us the Führer and the idea are one and the same, and every party comrade has to do what the Führer commands, for he embodies the idea and he alone knows its ultimate goal'".[133][o]
Although Hitler realized that his ascension to power required the use of the Weimar Republic's parliamentary system (founded on democratic principles), he never intended for the continuation of democratic governance once in control. Contrarily, Hitler proclaimed that he would "destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy".
Anti-communism
In Hitler's mind, communism was a major enemy of Germany, an enemy he often mentions in Mein Kampf. During the trial for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler claimed that his singular goal was to assist the German government in "fighting Marxism".[138] Marxism, Bolshevism, and communism were interchangeable terms for Hitler as evidenced by their use in Mein Kampf:
In the years 1913 and 1914 I expressed my opinion for the first time in various circles, some of which are now members of the National Socialist Movement, that the problem of how the future of the German nation can be secured is the problem of how Marxism can be exterminated.[139]
Later in his seminal tome, Hitler advocated for "the destruction of Marxism in all its shapes and forms".
In 1939, Hitler told the Swiss Commissioner to the League of Nations Carl Burckhardt that everything he was undertaking was "directed against Russia" and that "if those in the West are too stupid or too blind to understand this, then I shall be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians to beat the West, and then, after its defeat, turn with all my concerted force against the Soviet Union".[144] When Hitler finally ordered the attack against the Soviet Union, it was the fulfillment of his ultimate goal and the most important campaign in his estimation, as it comprised a struggle of "the chosen Aryan people against Jewish Bolsheviks".[145]
Biographer Alan Bullock avows Hitler "laid great stress" on the need to concentrate on a single enemy, an enemy he lumps together as "Marxism and the Jew".[146] Shortly in the wake of the Commissar Order, a directive pursuant to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, SS Deputy Reinhard Heydrich informed the SS of Hitler's geopolitical philosophy which conflated Bolshevism and Jews, writing that "eastern Jewry is the intellectual reservoir of Bolshevism and in the Führer's view must therefore be annihilated".[147][q] Considering the eventual Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), no additional inducements are really requisite concerning Hitler's hatred of communism, particularly since the Nazi persecution and extermination of these groups was not only systematic, but it was extensive both within Germany and only intensified in the occupied zones during the war under Hitler's leadership.[148]
Because Nazism co-opted the popular success of socialism and Communism among working people while simultaneously promising to destroy Communism and offer an alternative to it, Hitler's anti-communist program allowed industrialists with traditional conservative views (tending toward monarchism, aristocracy and laissez-faire capitalism) to cast their lot with and help underwrite the Nazi rise to power.[149][r] When asked in a 1923 interview why Hitler called himself a National Socialist when the Nazi Party was "the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism", Hitler responded: "Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists."[150]
Anti-slavism, Lebensraum and the invasion of the Soviet Union
Historian Roderick Stackelberg contended that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union was the result of "mutually reinforcing ideological, racial, and geopolitical assumptions" that Hitler had plainly laid out in Mein Kampf.[153] German historian Andreas Hillgruber shared Stackelberg's view. In fact, Hillgruber encapsulates Hitler's political views (which drove German policy throughout his rule) in summary through the invasion of the Soviet Union. He places it within the context of Hitler's intent to create a continental Reich which included the destruction of the Jews. According to Hillgruber, Hitler had the following objectives in mind when he invaded the former Soviet Union:
- 1. The total eradication of all forms of "Judeo-Bolshevik" leadership, which encompassed its perceived biological roots, namely the millions of Jews occupying central and eastern Europe.
- 2. The requisite acquisition of Lebensraum or colonial space necessary for German settlement in the finest and most arable territories within Russia, or in those parts of Russia which provided political or strategic advantages in Hitler's mind.
- 3. The subjugation and decimation of the Slavic people, which was to be divided into four German territories or "Reich Commissariats" entitled Ostland, Ukraine, Moskovia and Caucasus, with each subordinated to German "viceroys". One of the principal aims of German leadership in these Reich Commissariats would be the cancellation of any semblance or memory of Russian statehood and the conditioning of these subordinated "states" to German mastery.
- 4. Ultimately, a "great space" autarchy in Continental Europe under German suzerainty would result, one capable of defeating any possible Allied blockade and for whom the vanquished eastern territories could provide a theoretically inexhaustible source of raw materials and food necessary for any protracted war against the Allied powers. The establishment of this "German Reich of the Germanic nation" also included in its planning to feed its soldiers off the Russian land, although that meant that "many millions of people will be starved to death", a directive already contemplated by the Economic Staff East no later than 2 May 1941.[154]
- 1. The total eradication of all forms of "
Not alone in this interpretation of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union as a move of continental expansion and one with an antisemitic
Antisemitism and the Holocaust
Among scholars of the
Either way, antisemitism always constituted one of the most important aspects of Hitler's political views. Historian Peter Longerich writes: "There can be no doubt that Hitler's behaviour during his entire political career... was characterised by radical antisemitism".[163] Correspondingly, Germanic cultural and racial purity remained paramount in his understanding of the world, having once exclaimed: "The greatest danger is and remains for us, the alien racial poison in our body. All other dangers are transitory".[164][v]
Hitler wrote his first antisemitic letter to Adolf Gemlich on 16 September 1919 stating that Jews were a race and not a religious group and that the aim for the government "must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether".[165] Throughout Mein Kampf, Hitler employs biological crudity by describing the Jews as "parasites" or "vermin".[166] Reflecting back on the beginning of the First World War, Hitler makes the eerily prescient statement that if "twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain."[167]
Underlining the argument that Hitler had overt eliminationist intentions for the Jews is the "prophecy" quote from the 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech:
I want to be a prophet again today: if international finance Jewry in Europe and beyond should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war, then the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.[168]
German historian Klaus Hildebrand insisted that Hitler's moral responsibility for the Holocaust was the culmination of his pathological hatred of the Jews and his ideology of "racial dogma" formed the basis of Nazi genocide.
See also
- Adolf Hitler's rise to power
- Big lie
- Early timeline of Nazism
- List of books about Nazi Germany
- Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Notes
- ^ Hitler believed the Jewish people were "the plague of the world."[1]
- ^ An insightful book as to Hitler's outlook on the world, including his political philosophy, is Eberhard Jäckel’s work, Hitler's Worldview: A Blueprint for Power. Jäckel details the sophisticated and contradictory nature of Hitler's views, which he fashioned according to need on his path to power. According to Jäckel, the one thing that remained consistent throughout Hitler's life was his single-mindedness, even if it was derived from a lengthy synthesis "haphazardly" brought together; there can be no denying that Hitler possessed an "unusual programmatic mind", which was also "an unusual political force".[3]
- ^ Historian Peter Longerich described Lueger (along with Georg Ritter von Schönerer) as Hitler's potential "anti-Semitic mentors" but also points out how Hitler took a different approach "portraying his development into a radical anti-Semite as the result of personal experiences and as his ‘most difficult transformation’, lasting more than two years and a phase of ‘bitter internal struggle’".[9]
- ^ Historian John Connelly notes that when one "examines the early writings of Adolf Hitler... one finds few signs of intentions toward Slavs. Especially noticeable... is an absence of hostility toward Poles. If any Slavic people provoked Hitler's ill will it was the Czechs, about whom, he had formed opinions as a young man in Austria"[14]
- ^ According to reports from Baldur von Schirach, Hitler once tellingly remonstrated him in April 1943 at Berchtesgaden for suggesting that it might benefit the Nazis more if Ukraine governed itself, to which Hitler exclaimed, "Please do not speak, Schirach, about matters that do not concern you. The Slavs are utterly incapable of governing themselves".[19] Original From: Baldur von Schirach, Ich glaubte an Hitler (Hamburg, 1967), pp. 290–291.
- Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavariain November 1918, which led to his being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution".
- ^ Toland suggests that Hitler's assignment to this department was partially a reward for his "exemplary" service in the front lines, and partially because the responsible officer felt sorry for Hitler as having no friends, but being very willing to do whatever the army required.[27]
- ^ Apparently someone in an army "educational session" had made a remark that Hitler deemed "pro-Jewish" and Hitler reacted with characteristic ferocity. Shirer states that Hitler had attracted the attention of a right-wing university professor who was engaged to educate enlisted men in "proper" political belief, and that the professor's recommendation to an officer resulted in Hitler's advancement.[36] "I was offered the opportunity of speaking before a larger audience; and ... it was now corroborated: I could 'speak.' No task could make me happier than this; ... I was able to perform useful services to ... the army. ... [I]n ... my lectures I led many hundreds ... of comrades back to their people and fatherland."[37]
- ^ More than that, Hitler thought the Jews were a problem for the entire world and their elimination essential to survival.[41]
- ^ For more on European conceptions about the Jews, see the two chapters, "The Jews: Myth and Counter-Myth", and "Infected Christianity" in Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism by George Mosse.[52]
- ^ For a comprehensive analysis of this salute, see: Allert, Tilman. The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Gesture. Henry Holt and Company, 2009.
- ^ Historian Sebastian Haffner claims that at the basest or lowest of levels, Hitler's philosophical "bedrock" was a fusion of "nationalism and anti-Semitism."[85]
- ^ Hitler had very clear ideas about the woman's role in the Nazi state - she was the centre of family life, a housewife and mother.[126]
- ^ Democracy or more specifically "Germanic democracy", according to Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, consisted of "unconditional authority downwards, and responsibility upwards." This hierarchical image of democracy was anything but democratic in nomenclature and was most likely an ironic remark.[134]
- ^ Later when the Nazi–Soviet agreement was made, otherwise known as the Molotov–Robbentrop Pact, the British were stunned. This surprising (and temporary) treaty was signed by the Nazis for the sake of geopolitical convenience. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union dissolved its contents.
- ^ See: [DNA Nuremberg NO-4145/2 (deposition of Walter Blume 29 VI 47)]
- ^ In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a fear among German industrialists, not wholly unfounded, that Germany would likely suffer an October-style Bolshevik revolution at some point and become a Soviet republic of the "World Soviet Federation" envisioned by international communists, unless drastic anti-communist measures were taken. For example, Fritz Thyssen, who had been arrested by German "Reds" in 1918, did not trust that the Weimar Republic would indefinitely succeed in fending off a Bolshevist-type revolution.
- ^ Stackelberg claims Hitler's "attack on the Soviet Union was the fulfillment of the mission of his life."[155]
- ^ Hitler's attempt to acquire Lebensraum eventually brought untold suffering to his beloved German Volksgenossen as the British and American bombers unleashed their wrath on German cities, demoralizing the German people.[159] Meanwhile, the Red Army counter-attacked at Stalingrad late in 1942, reclaimed once German-occupied territory, and killed upwards of 500,000 German troops and their allies by February 1943; they also held captive some 91,000 prisoners—among them twenty-two German generals.[160]
- Functionalism versus intentionalism. According to historian Richard Bessel, most academics studying Hitler and the Nazi regime have embraced and synthesized these once divergent schools of thought and now see the merit in both. Richard Bessel, "Functionalists vs. Intentionalists: The Debate Twenty Years on or Whatever Happened to Functionalism and Intentionalism?" German Studies Review 26, no. 1 (2003):15–20. Retrievable from JSTOR at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1432899
- ^ Also see: * Klöss, Erhard, ed. Reden des Führers. Politik and Propaganda Adolf Hitlers, 1922–1945 (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967), 49. ASIN: B0035ZBVNM
References
Citations
- ^ Lukács 1954, p. 565.
- ^ McDonough 1999, p. 79.
- ^ Jäckel 1981, pp. 108–121.
- ^ Meinecke 1950, p. 96.
- ^ a b c Kershaw 2008, pp. 170, 172, 181.
- ^ Nicholls 2000, pp. 153–154.
- ^ Stern 1975, pp. 45–53.
- ^ Shirer 1960, p. 26.
- ^ a b Longerich 2019, p. 29.
- ^ Hamann 2010, pp. 243–246.
- ^ Hamann 2010, pp. 233, 341–345.
- ^ Pinkus 2005, p. 27.
- ^ Davies 1997, p. 850.
- ^ Connelly 1999, p. 3.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 50, 60–64.
- ^ Bendersky 2007, p. 31.
- ^ a b Bendersky 2000, p. 23.
- ^ Nicholls 2000, pp. 236–237, 274.
- ^ Borejsza 2017, pp. 44–45.
- ^ Ullrich 2016, p. 37.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 97, 102.
- ^ Hitler 1999, p. 206.
- ^ Ullrich 2016, p. 73.
- ^ Ullrich 2016, p. 75.
- ^ a b Shirer 1960, p. 34.
- ^ a b Toland 1976, p. xx.
- ^ Childers 2017, p. 25.
- ^ Schwarzwäller 1988, p. 44.
- ^ Ullrich 2016, p. 79.
- ^ a b Ullrich 2016, p. 80.
- ^ Mitchell 2013, p. 37.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, pp. 72–74.
- ^ Rees 2012, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Ullrich 2016, p. 82.
- ^ a b Shirer 1960, p. 35.
- ^ Hitler 1999, pp. 215–216.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 61–62.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 61–63.
- ^ Jäckel 1981, pp. 51–57.
- ^ Jäckel 1981, pp. 47–66.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 60–67.
- ^ Shirer 1960, p. 25.
- ^ Hamann 2010, p. 58.
- ^ Hitler 1999, p. 52.
- ^ Toland 1992, pp. 55, 63.
- ^ Hamann 2010, p. 174.
- ^ Evans 2011.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, p. 82.
- ^ Deuerlein 1959, p. 207.
- ^ Pilkington 2011.
- ^ Mosse 1980, pp. 113–149.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 170.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 75–76.
- ^ Mitcham 1996, p. 67.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, p. 127.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 93.
- ^ Heiden 2002, p. 80.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, pp. 89–92.
- ^ Bullock 1999, p. 376.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 105–106.
- ^ Bullock 1999, p. 377.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 100–101.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 102.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 103.
- ^ Toland 1976, pp. 111–112.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 112.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 268–269.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 126, 129, 130–131.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 129.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 130–131.
- ^ Shirer 1960, pp. 73–74.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 132.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, p. 131.
- ^ Nova 1986, p. 246.
- ^ Spotts 2009, p. 43.
- ^ Spotts 2009, pp. 43–44.
- ^ Bullock 1962, p. 121.
- ^ McNab 2011, p. 16.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 148–149.
- ^ Shirer 1960, pp. 80–81.
- ^ McNab 2011, p. 15.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 148–150.
- ^ Hitler 1943, pp. 8–10.
- ^ Haffner 2004, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Fest 2002, pp. 18–23.
- ^ Lukacs 1997, p. 71.
- ^ Kaplan 2012, pp. 82–83.
- ^ Toland 1976, p. 124.
- ^ Heiden 2002, p. 254.
- ^ Heiden 2002, p. 255.
- ^ Hitler 1971, p. 646.
- ^ Weikart 2013, p. 540.
- ^ Joll 1978, p. 332.
- ^ Hillgruber 1981, p. 50.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 500.
- ^ Fest 2002, p. 203.
- ^ Williamson 2002, pp. 15.
- ^ McDonough 1999, p. 15.
- ^ McDonough 1999, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Hett 2018, pp. 14, 101–04.
- ^ Overy & Wheatcroft 1999, pp. 32–34.
- ^ Kershaw 1989, pp. 18–21.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 223–225.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 226.
- ^ Stern 1974, pp. 147–149.
- ^ Mosse 1964, pp. 204–207.
- ^ Mosse 1964, p. 243.
- ^ Mosse 1964, pp. 312–317.
- ^ Bessel 2006, pp. 35–38, 41–43, 50–56.
- ^ Koonz 2003, pp. 10, 106.
- ^ Grunberger 1971, pp. 423–426.
- ^ Grunberger 1971, pp. 15, 30, 208, 234, 239, 245–249, 262–264, 273.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 299.
- ^ Mosse 1964, pp. 67–87.
- ^ a b Hitler (1939), p. 204
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 171–177.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 316.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, p. 45.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 198.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 201.
- ^ Grunberger 1971, p. 121.
- ^ Bracher 1970, p. 353.
- ^ Stephenson 2001, pp. 16–18.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 331–332.
- ^ BBC 2019.
- ^ Pine 2010, p. 13.
- ^ Kater 2004, p. 69.
- ^ Stern 1975, p. 24.
- ^ Stern 1975, p. 104.
- ^ Gellately 2007, p. 13.
- ^ Hillgruber 1981, p. 51.
- ^ Fest 2002, p. 279.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, p. 294.
- ^ Grunfeld 1974, p. 109.
- ^ a b c Kershaw 2008, p. 258.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 258–259.
- ^ Bullock 1962, p. 128.
- ^ Hitler 1941, p. 203.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 419.
- ^ McNab 2011, p. 17.
- ^ Hitler 1939, p. 475.
- ^ Bullock 1962, p. 334.
- ^ Hildebrand 1973, p. 88.
- ^ Victor 2007, p. 198.
- ^ Bullock 1962, p. 130.
- ^ Binion 1991, p. 61.
- ^ Hildebrand 1984, p. 61–62, 70–71.
- ^ Turner 1985, pp. 340–359.
- ^ Viereck 1923.
- ^ Borejsza 2017, pp. 8–13, 57–58, 152, 155, 168, 171, 174–176.
- ^ Borejsza 2017, pp. 161, 165–166.
- ^ Stackelberg 1999, p. 188.
- ^ Hillgruber 1972, p. 140.
- ^ a b Stackelberg 1999, p. 189.
- ^ Bracher 1970, p. 403.
- ^ Bergen 2009, pp. 36, 101, 150, 154.
- ^ Bessel 2006, pp. 114–132.
- ^ Childers 2017, pp. 512–513.
- ^ Childers 2017, pp. 517–518.
- ^ Kershaw 1993, p. 4.
- ^ Browning 1992, pp. 88–101.
- ^ Longerich 2001, p. 15.
- ^ Binion 1991, p. 1.
- ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 125–126.
- ^ Hitler 1969, p. 155.
- ^ Hitler 1969, p. 620.
- ^ Confino 2014, p. 151.
- ^ Hildebrand 1984, p. 149.
- ^ Welch 2001, pp. 88–89.
- ^ Fleming 1994, pp. 8n, 20–21, 53–54, 112, 148, 174, 177, 185.
- ^ Wistrich 2001, p. 113.
- ^ Welch 2001, pp. 89–90.
- ^ Welch 2001, p. 90.
- ^ Neumann 1967, p. 74.
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