41. Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher speaking in the Berlin Sportpalast, 15 January 1933
42. A photo taken of Hitler in the Kaiserhof Hotel, Berlin, in January 1933, just before his appointment as Chancellor, to test how he looked in evening dress
43. The ‘Day of Potsdam’, 21 March 1933: a deferential Hitler bows to Reich President von Hindenburg
44. SA violence against Communists in Chemnitz, March 1933
45. The boycott of Jewish doctors, April 1933. The stickers read: ‘Take note: Jew. Visiting Forbidden’
46. An elderly Jew being taken into custody by police in Berlin, 1934
47. Hindenburg and Hitler on their way to the rally in Berlin’s Lustgarten on the ‘Day of National Labour’, 1 May 1933. The following day, the trades union movement was destroyed
48. Hitler with Ernst Röhm at a parade of the SA in summer 1933, as problems with the SA began to emerge
49. The Führer cult: a postcard, designed by Hans von Norden in 1933, showing Hitler in a direct line from Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Paul von Hindenburg. The caption reads: ‘What the King conquered, the Prince shaped, the Field Marshal defended, the Soldier saved and united’
50. The Führer cult: ‘The Führer as animal-lover’, postcard, 1934
51. Hitler justifying the ‘Röhm purge’ to the Reichstag, 13 July 1934
52. Hitler, Professor Leonhard Gall, and architect Albert Speer inspecting the half-built ‘House of German Art’ in Munich. Undated cigarette-card, c. 1935
53. Hitler with young Bavarians. Behind him (right) in Bavarian costume, Hitler-Youth leader Baldur von Schirach. Undated photograph
54· The Mercedes-Benz showroom at Lenbachplatz, Munich, April 1935
55. Hitler during a visit to the Ruhr in 1935, accompanied (left to right) by his Valet, Karl Krause, and the leading industrialists Albert Vögler, Fritz Thyssen, and Walter Borbet, all important executives of the United Steel Works
56. ‘Hitler in his Mountains’: cover of a Heinrich Hoffmann publication of 1935, featuring 88 photographs of the Führer in picturesque settings
57. The swearing-in of new recruits at the Feldherrnhalle in Odeonsplatz, Munich, on the anniversary of the putsch, 7 November 1935
58. German troops entering the demilitarized Rhineland across the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, 7 March 1936
GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS
AdR
Akten der Reichskanzlei
ADGB
Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (General German Trade Union Federation)
AG
Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Working Community)
AO
Auslandsorganisation (Foreign Organization of the Nazi Party)
BAK
Bundesarchiv Koblenz (German Federal Archives)
Bayern
Bayern in der NS-Zeit, ed. Martin Broszat et al., 6 vols., Munich, 1977–83
BDC
Berlin Document Center
BDM
Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls; girls’ organization within the Hitler Youth Movement)
BHStA
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (Bavarian Main State Archive)
BVP
Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party)
DBFP
Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, 2nd Series, 1930–1937, London, 1950–57
DAF
Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front)
DAP
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party)
DBS
Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, 1934–1940,7 vols., Frankfurt am Main, 1980
DDP
Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party)
DGFP
Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series C (1933–1937) The Third Reich: First Phase, London, 1957–66
DNF
Deutschnationale Front (German National Front)
DNVP
Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party)
Domarus
Max Domarus (ed.), Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, 2 vols., in 4 parts, Wiesbaden, 1973
DRZW
Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, 6 vols, so far published, ed. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Stuttgart, 1979–
DSP
Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Partv)
DVFB
Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung (German Folkish (= ethnic-nationalist) Freedom Movement)
DVFP
Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (German Folkish Freedom Party)
DVP
Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party)
Gestapo
Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)
GS
Gendarmerie-Station (police station)
GVG
Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft (Greater German National Community)
HA
NSDAP-Hauptarchiv (the Nazi Party’s archive, microfilm collection: see ΝSDAP-Hauptarchiv. Guide to the Hoover Institution Microfilm Collection, compiled by Grete Heinz and Agnes F. Peterson, Stanford, 1964)
Hitler-Prozeß
Der Hitler-Prozeß 1924. Wortlaut der Hauptverhandlung vor dem Volksgericht München I, Teil I, ed. Lothar Gruchmann and Reinhard Weber, assisted by Otto Gritschneder, Munich, 1997
HJ
Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth)
HMB
Halbmonatsbericht (Fortnightly Report)
IfZ
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München (Institute of Contemporary History, Munich)
IML/ZPA
Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Zentrales Parteiarchiv (East Berlin, GDR)
IMT
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, 42 vols., Nuremberg, 1947–9
JK
Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, Stuttgart, 1980
JMH
Journal of Modern History
KPD
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)
Lagebericht (Situation Report)
MB
Monatsbericht (Monthly Report)
MF/OF
Mittelfranken/Oberfranken (Middle and Upper Franconia, administrative regions of Bavaria)
MK
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 876–880th reprint, Munich, 1943
MK Watt
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, London, 1969, trans, by Ralph Manheim, with an introduction by D. C. Watt, paperback edition, London, 1973
Monologe
Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944. Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, 1980
NA
National Archives, Washington
Nbg
Nürnberg (Nuremberg)
NCA
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, ed. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, 9 vols, and 2 supplementary vols., Washington D.C., 1946–8
NB/OP
Niederbayern/Oberpfalz (Lower Bavaria/Upper Palatinate, administrative regions of Bavaria)
NSBO
Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation (Nazi Factory Cell Organization)
NSDAP
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)
NSDStB
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist German Students’ Federation)
NSFB
Nationalsozialistiche Freiheitsbewegung (National Socialist Freedom Movement)
NSFP
Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (National Socialist Freedom Party)
NS-Hago
Nationalsozialistische Handwerks-, Handels-und Gewerbeorganisation (Nazi Craft, Commerce, and Trade Organization)
OB
Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria)
Pd Mü.
Polizeidirektion München (Munich Police Administration)
PRO
Public Record Office
RGBl
Reichsgesetzblatt
RGO
Revolutionäre Gewerkscharts-Opposition (Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition; Communist trades union organization)
RP
Regierungspräsident (Government President, head of state regional administration)
RSA
Hitler. Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen: Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols., in 12 parts, Munich/London/New York/Paris, 1992–8
Schwaben (Swabia)
SA
Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop)
SD
Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)
Sopade
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (exiled SPD executive based in Prague (1933–8), then Paris (1938–40), and from 1940 onwards in London)
SS
Schutzstaffel (lit. Protection Squad)
SPD
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)
StA
Staatsarchiv (State Archive)
StdF
Stellvertreter des Führers (Führer’s Deputy)
TBJG
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragmente, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1924–1941, 4 Bde., ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich etc., 1987
Tb Reuth
Joseph Goebbels. Tagebücher 1924–1945, 5 Bde., ed. Ralf Georg Reuth, Munich/Zurich, 1992.
UF
Unterfranken (Lower Franconia)
VB
Völkischer Beobachter
VfZ
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
VVM
Vaterländische Vereine Münchens (Patriotic Associations of Munich)
VVVB
Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände Bayerns (United Patriotic Associations of Bavaria)
NOTES
REFLECTING ON HITLER
1. The title of the masterly analysis by Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, London, 1994.
2. An attempt to speculate counter-factually on how different world history would have been had Hitler been killed when the car in which he was travelling was struck by a large lorry in 1930 is offered by Henry A. Turner, Geißel des Jahrhunderts. Hitler und seine Hinterlassenschaft, Berlin, 1989. The accident is described in Otto Wagener, Hitler aus nächster Nähe. Aufzeichnungen eines Vertrauten 1929–1932, ed. Henry A. Turner, 2nd edn, Kiel, 1987, 155–6.
3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow, 1954, 10.
4. A number of general analyses of the history of the Third Reich in recent years have made impressive advances in synthesizing and interpreting a vast outpouring of detailed research. These include: Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Verführung und Gewalt. Deutschland 1933–1945, Berlin, 1986; Norbert Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany: the Führer State 1933–1945, Oxford/Cambridge Mass., 1993 (an extended version in English of the original German edition, Der Führerstaat. Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft 1933 bis 1945, Munich, 1987); Jost Dülffer, Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945. Führerglaube und Vernichtungskrieg, Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne, 1992 (Engl.: Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation, London, 1996); Karlheinz Weißmann, Der Weg in den Abgrund 1933–1945, Berlin, 1995; Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: a New History, London, 1995; and, a particularly valuable interpretative synthesis, Ludolf Herbst, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, Frankfurt am Main, 1996.
5. See the comment, still thought-provoking, of Wolfgang Sauer, ‘National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?’, American Historical Review, 73 (1967–8), 404–24; here 408: ‘In Nazism, the historian faces a phenomenon that leaves him no way but rejection, whatever his individual position. There is literally no voice worth considering that disagrees on this matter… Does not such fundamental rejection imply a fundamental lack of understanding?’
6. This was the essential criticism of the incisive review of Joachim C. Fest, Hitler. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Vienna, 1973, by Hermann Graml, ‘Probleme einer Hitler-Biographie. Kritische Bemerkungen zu Joachim C. Fest’, VfZ, 22 (1974), 76–92. Graml regards (78, 84) the problems posed by the writing of a biography of Hitler – integrating a history of the individual into an analysis of his impact on German society – as ‘insoluble’. A harsh judgement on biographies of Hitler in general, in a thoughtful and interesting approach to the social sources of Hitler’s power, was also offered by Michael Kater, ‘Hitler in a Social Context’, Central European History, 14 (1981), 243–72, here esp. 243–6. A less pessimistic evaluation is provided by Gregor Schöllgen, ‘Das Problem einer Hitler-Biographie. Überlegungen anhand neuerer Darstellungen des Falles Hitler’, Neue politische Literatur, 23 (1978), 421–34, reprinted in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.), Nationalsozialistische Diktatur 1933–1945. Eine Bilanz, Bonn, 1983, 687–705.
7. Gerhard Schreiber, Hitler. Interpretationen 1923–1983. Ergebnisse, Methoden und Probleme der Forschung, Darmstadt, 1984, 13.
8. Guido Knopp, Hitler. Eine Bilanz, Berlin, 1995, 9.
9. The essential survey is that of Schreiber, Hitler. Interpretationen; a more recent critical and thoughtful assessment of the interpretations advanced by biographers of Hitler is provided by John Lukacs, The Hitler of History, New York, 1997. See also Ron Rosenbaum, ‘Explaining Hitler’, New Yorker, 1 May 1995, 50–70. For further evaluations of the differing approaches, see Klaus Hildebrand, Das Dritte Reich, Munich/Vienna, 1979, 132–46, and Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 3rd edn, London, 1993, chs. 4–6. Earlier historiographical analyses and attempts to address the problem of the ‘Hitler factor’ were provided by: Klaus Hildebrand, ‘Der “Fall” Hitler’, Neue politische Literatur, 14 (1969), 375–86; Klaus Hildebrand, ‘Hitlers Ort in der Geschichte des Preußisch-Deutschen Nationalstaates’, Historische Zeitschrift, 217 (1973), 584–631; Wolf-Rüdiger Hartmann, ‘Adolf Hitler: Möglichkeiten seiner Deutung’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 15 (1975), 521–35; Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Rückblick auf die sogenannte Hitler-Welle’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 28 (1977), 695–710; Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Tendenzen, Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Hitler-Forschung’, Historische Zeitschrift, 226 (1978), 600–621; Wolfgang Mich-alka, ‘Wege der Hitler-Forschung’, Quaderni di storia, 8 (1978), 157–90, and 10 (1979), 125–51; John P. Fox, ‘Adolf Hitler: the Continuing Debate’, International Affairs (1979), 252–64; and William Carr, ‘Historians and the Hitler Phenomenon’, German Life and Letters, 34 (1981), 260–72.
10. Alan Bullock, Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, revised edn, Harmondsworth, 1962, 804. Bullock later completely revised his early views (see Rosenbaum, 67). The centrality of Hitler’s ideology is fully incorporated into the analysis in Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin. Parallel Lives, London, 1991.
11. See, for example, the comment of Karl Dietrich Bracher, ‘The Role of Hitler: Perspectives of Interpretation’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism. A Reader’s Guide, Harmondsworth, 1979, 193–212, here 201: ‘It was indeed Hitler’s Weltanschauung and nothing else that mattered in the end, as is seen from the terrible consequences of his racist anti-semitism in the planned murder of the Jews.’ In the realm of foreign policy, the programmatic driving-force of Hitler’s ideology is most strongly emphasized by Klaus Hildebrand, Deutsche Außenpolitik 1933–1945. Kalkül oder Dogma?, 4th edn, Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne, 1980, 188–9. The internal coherence of Hitler’s ideas was fully illustrated for the first time by Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft, Tübingen, 1969, extended and revised 4th edn, Stuttgart, 1991.
12. Cit. H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, 3rd edn, London, 1962, 46.
13. This stan
dard line of GDR historiography was nowhere more expressively captured than by Wolfgang Ruge, ‘Monopolbourgeoisie, faschistischer Massenbasis und NS-Programmatik’, in Dietrich Eichholtz and Kurt Gossweiler (eds.), Faschismusforschung. Positionen, Probleme, Polemik, Berlin (East), 1980, 125–55, who saw (141) Mein Kampf as having ‘the role of a testimonial (Empfehlungsschreiben) to the great captains of industry (Wirtschaftskapitäne)’, and spoke (144) of Hitler as the ‘star agent’ (Staragenten) of’ the most extreme monopolists (Monopolherren)’ of big business. The full version of this interpretation is brought out in Wolfgang Ruge, Das Ende von Weimar. Monopolkapital und Hitler, Berlin (East), 1983, where Hitler is referred to (334, 336) as the ‘compliant creature’ (willfährige Kreatur) of the ‘backers’ (Hintermänner) from big business. Given such a premiss built into official state ideology, no biography of Hitler was possible in the GDR. Two historians who had produced the only general history of the Nazi Party to be published during the existence of the GDR (Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP, Cologne, 1981; originally Hakenkreuz und Totenkopf. Die Partei des Verbrechens, Berlin (East), 1981) have subsequently brought out a personalized study of the German Dictator which had been impossible in their former State, expressly emphasizing (589) ‘that the fascist Leader was no marionette’ (Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Adolf Hitler. Eine politische Biographie, Leipzig, 1995).