Unlike most political parties, the Nazis never offered the voter a well-defined program of politics and economics that would bring peace and prosperity. Rather, they warned of Jewish conspiracies that would destroy the world and Slavic invasions that would bring doom to pure-blooded Aryan man. Opponents were classified as Communists or Jews, or both. Vagueness was a deliberate basis of Hitler’s fascism. Thus, as the Nazis assumed power, they had no coordinated machinery of government to impose. Hitler preferred that his lieutenants fought among themselves as they built empires. Nor were those empires always so specialized as Goebbels’s control of press, radio, and propaganda. For instance, Goring’s influence extended from the secret police to the Air Ministry. Vague policies and squabbling subordinates all served to center the power in one man.
Hitler’s climb to preeminence is more sinister in the light of his continuing remarks about the gullibility of the electorate. By 1933 this abstemious forty-four-year-old Austrian had achieved almost unprecedented personal power. He had achieved it by systematically telling the German people the things they wanted to hear, while doing secret deals with anyone who could be of use to him, no matter how much difference there was between secret promises and public oratory.
Adolf Hitler’s medical reports show him to be without any important physical or psychological handicaps. In 1939, at 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 155 pounds, he would have been considered a better than average risk by most insurance companies. His only serious surgery had been a minor operation to*remove a polyp from his vocal cords in 1935, but this had fomented in him a terrible fear of cancer, from which his mother had died.
Stomach cramps, however, caused him considerable pain and loss of sleep. The trouble dated from June 1934, when he had had Rohm and his other old Party comrades murdered. Like his other ailments—ringing in the ears and eczema—these symptoms are commonly associated with tiredness, stress, and hysteria. A fashionable Berlin doctor treated Hitler with injections and pills—mild doses of glucose, vitamins, and caffeine in various proportions—and thereby made a fortune. Hitler was convinced that this medical care had saved his life and became dependent, to some extent, upon such shots before particularly important displays of energy.
Hitler abstained from alcohol and tobacco. Eventually he prohibited smoking in his presence. He was a vegetarian but ate eggs. His conversation was repetitive and monumentally boring—as reading the transcripts of his everyday conversation proves beyond doubt— but his listeners succumbed to his compelling personal qualities. The combination of boundless energy and immense charm is a quality often glimpsed in world-famous actors. Hitler was able to focus his entire attention on the people he met and, in doing so, persuade them that their problems were henceforth his too. 10
Even in 1935 men came from meetings with Hitler convinced that the repressive totalitarian regime he had created was distasteful to him and that he was searching for ways to relax conditions. Whatever you wanted to hear. Hitler supplied it.
His reading provided a fund of “digest” information that gave him instant rapport with experts, prophets, and bigots alike. His military knowledge was limited and he had no real understanding of technical matters, but he could patch fragments together by means of his truly amazing memory. He liked to confuse his generals by arguing specifically about equipment newly issued to some remote regiment or talk about some other minute detail. But he would often fail to understand the larger-scale logistics or strategy about which he was deciding.
Most of his difficulties centered upon his social insecurities. The coarse voice, imperfect grammar, and strong country accent that had been essential for his early successes at the polls became shortcomings as he moved into the highest circles of the land. Similarly, his war service as a Catholic Austrian corporal in a Bavarian infantry regiment put him at a disadvantage when talking to the Prussian Protestants of the Army General Staff, whose military antecedents peopled German history bool«. In the presence of Fritsch, for instance. Hitler was always subdued and ill at ease.
There is no evidence that he had any kind of sexual problems or was in any way abnormal. It is true that he loved his niece dearly and was shattered by her suicide in 1931. But armies of sensation mongers have tried, and failed, to find evidence of any sexual relationship between them. Hitler was not influenced by women in the way that so many of his contemporaries were. He had a mistress, but she did not seek to change history as did the mistresses of the French statesmen Paul Reynaud and Edouard Daladier. To think of Hitler as a deviant or a monster is to miss the point. He was the epitome of the common man. He went to the First World War in a mood of idealism. He returned home to a chaos of social inequality and became embittered. His knowledge lacked the pattern that formal education grants and was unsupported by languages or by foreign travel— Hitler saw the Slav races and the French that he hated so much only after his armies had conquered them.
Hitler’s type of crazy rhetoric about Jewish blood, capitalist conspiracies, and slave nations could be heard in every factory canteen throughout Europe, and perhaps still can be. It was the fact that the men took it seriously enough to commit murder, build concentration camps, and march against the world because of it that turned Hitler’s mind. But it might have had just that effect upon you.
Hitler’s instinct enabled him to sell his vague “National Socialism” to the German people, but once in power he concentrated on providing full employment and then on raising the standard of living. Deprived of effective trade unions, the unemployed were given jobs on public works projects and factories. The workers did not complain. A plebiscite to confirm Hitler’s actions not only brought 95.7 per cent of the eligible voters to the polls, but got 89.93 per cent yeses.
Having no colonies, Germany’s most pressing need was foreign exchange to buy raw materials. Short-circuiting all the normal methods of world trade, Germany exchanged goods with countries that could provide such things as raw cotton, raw wool, and iron ore. When necessary, the government subsidized the exports to make the deal more attractive. This gave the Nazis a tight control of the economy. They could subsidize whichever exports they chose; they could give the raw materials to whichever manufacturers they favored. Even more important, they could vary the value of the mark according to the climate of world trade and according to the bargaining power of the supplier. These ideas were those of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank and from 1934 until 1937 the Minister of Economics. However, Schacht’s genius would have counted for little had it not been for the generous terms with which the creditor nations—particularly Great Britain—settled Germany’s international debts.
In the three years from 1933 until 1936, Germany climbed from depression to a prosperity as high as that of any country in Europe. Its social services were incomparable, and, although from 1938 onward military expenditure increased rapidly, German living standards continued to rise and remain higher than those of Britain even into the early 1940s.
German economists found Hitler open to new ideas about money and barter, just as tank experts found him quick to understand their theories about tanks. The airmen soon realized that he was one of the few politicians who understood the importance of air power, and steel manufacturers realized that he was one of the few men who understood how much easier it was to make steel without the trade unions or Communist interference.
Helped by his propaganda experts, who were, needless to say.
Delighted that he understood propaganda, Hitler had managed to link the heroic appeal of self-sacrifice for the community with a system of elitism and privilege to which only such heroes could aspire. This was the essence of the National Socialist state. In a postwar world racked by cynicism, greed, and despair, it was the idealist nature of Germany’s finest young men that beguiled them into joining the Nazi machine. Any attempt today to define the Second World War in terms of armies of “fascist barbarians” will fail, as surely as any attempt to see the U. S.S. R.’s victory as a triumph of communism.
If there was one factor above all others that was to lead to Hitler’s downfall, it was his absurd obsessive hatred of Jews. In the field of science alone, the persecution of the Jews deprived Hitler of military technology he would desperately need. A Nazi regime without antiSemitism would probably have had some form of atomic warhead and V-2 rockets to deliver them by the late 1930s. Thus I am of the opinion that but for his anti-Semitism Hitler might have conquered the world.
At first, Nazi anti-Semitism was regarded by many as an electioneering gimmick, one that would be dropped after an assumption of power. But when it continued, Europe was not shocked: Hitler’s pogroms were simply a continuing and better organized outbreak of a disease that Europe had suffered and tolerated for centuries.
Gradually the lies, the ruthlessness, the brutality, and the depravities took effect. A subtle change of climate brought into antiNazi alignment many in other countries who would not have opposed them politically. It brought together disparate elements that would not otherwise have cooperated. Evidence of this is the conciliatory attitude shown to Italian Fascists during the same period. This hardening of anti-Nazi attitudes across a wide spectrum of European society was something that German diplomats and politicians failed to see.
Considering his background and his complete lack of training. Hitler’s military skills were astonishing. The way in which he gained complete control of both the military and civil life of Germany while remaining, right up until his death, the most popular ruler that Germany had ever known* is perhaps unique.
But as the war continued, it was Hitler’s political dogma that ensured the failure of his military aims. His worst military decisions— the refusal to let units withdraw to better positions, the obsession with towns that had strong psychological overtones (such as Leningrad
* According to the historian A. J. P. Taylor, writing in the Observer newspaper in October 1978.
And Stalingrad), and the political interference with the army—all these stemmed from his fears of political consequences. Politically motivated plans can be fatal to world conquest as to car factories. Worst of all, in promoting himself to command the army, he saddled himself with an incumbent he could not dismiss.
Men and women who spent time at Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof, remember the boredom, the monotony, and the oppressive silence. Hitler’s day began when he unlocked his bedroom door and reached for the newspapers that were placed on a hassock outside it. The morning continued in silence as servants dusted the furniture and polished the marble and aides tiptoed about and spoke in whispers. After a frugal lunch, at which the world of theater and fashion were staple topics. Hitler, dressed in tweeds and soft hat, went for a stroll with his guests as far as the tea pavilion built to exploit views of the mountains. Rich cream pastries provided a temptation which Hitler found too hard to resist.
In the evening a spartan supper would be followed by a film show. Light comedies and sentimental stories were preferred, although Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hound of the Baskervilles were top favorites repeated again and again. Obedient servants catered to the Fuhrer’s every whim. His adoring mistress, Eva Braun, was kept out of sight until her presence was required, and the guests were chiefly old cronies who sat up with him until the small hours of morning, exchanging gossip and stories of the good old days. So might have been the life of any working man who had won a magnificent lottery.
Few men felt entirely at ease in Hitler’s company, which was evident from the change in mood when the Fuhrer got up from his place by the big log fire and went to bed. One man who did enjoy Hitler’s company was Erwin Rommel, whose meteoric career in the military was a direct result of the Fuhrer’s favor.
World History
