Other insights include the revelation that Paula, always thought of as the innocent bystander of the Hitler family, was engaged to one of the Holocaust's most notorious euthanasia doctors. Dr Ryback told the Guardian: "This is the first time that we have been able to get an insight into the Hitler family from a very young age.
He was very strict with Paula and slapped her around. But she justified it in a starry-eyed way, because she believed it was for the good of her education. The two historians have also located a joint memoir by Hitler's half-brother, Alois, and half-sister, Angela. One excerpt describes the violence exercised by Hitler's father, also called Alois, and how Adolf's mother tried to protect her son from regular beatings.
Without a sound she absorbs it. Mr Beierl said: "This is a picture of a completely dysfunctional family that the public has never seen before. Mr Beierl's research also led him to Russian interrogation papers, which exposed the fact that Paula Hitler was engaged to Erwin Jekelius, responsible for gassing 4, people during the war. Mr Beierl said: "Until this point, Paula Hitler had a clean slate. But the portrayal of her being a poor little creature has suddenly shifted. At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union by forcing one of them to make peace with him.
Beginning in , the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime. After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.
With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad, as well as the landing of U. As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.
Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July , when Col. Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June , the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.
But after January , he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.
After dictating his political testament, Hitler shot himself in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, , bringing the war in Europe to a close.
William L. Holocaust Memorial Museum. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.
Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Since , the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the ideological and systematic state-sponsored Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.
Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Along with members of the newly Followers of Judaism believe in one God who revealed himself through ancient prophets.
The history of Judaism is essential to understanding the Jewish faith, which has a rich heritage of law, Malkin uttered the words to a balding Mercedes-Benz factory worker headed home from work on May 11, In these two weeks I came to know the men around me more closely, and no power in the world could have moved me to join an organization whose members had meanwhile come to appear to me in so unfavorable a light.
Hitler's hatred of the Social Democratic Workers' Party and trade unionism increased after a mass demonstration in Vienna.
With what changed feeling I now gazed at the endless columns of a mass demonstration of Viennese workers that took place one day as they marched past four abreast! For neatly two hours I stood there watching with bated breath the gigantic human dragon slowly winding by.
In oppressed anxiety, I finally left the place and sauntered homeward. It was available in a cheap people's cafe, to which I often went to read newspapers; but up to that time I had not been able to bring myself to spend more than two minutes on the miserable sheet, whose whole tone affected me like moral vitriol. Depressed by the demonstration, I was driven on by an inner voice to buy the sheet and read it carefully.
That evening I did so, fighting down the fury that rose up in me from time to time at this concentrated solution of lies. More than any theoretical literature, my daily reading of the Social Democratic press enabled me to study the inner nature of these thought-processes.
For what a difference between the glittering phrases about freedom, beauty, and dignity in the theoretical literature, the delusive welter of words seemingly expressing the most profound and laborious wisdom, the loathsome humanitarian morality - all this written with the incredible gall that comes with prophetic certainty - and the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy, employing every means of slander, lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams, all in the name of this gospel of a new humanity.
I now understood the significance of the brutal demand that I read only Red papers, attend only Red meetings, read only Red books, etc. With plastic clarity I saw before my eyes the inevitable result of this doctrine of intolerance. The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak. Like the woman, whose psychic state is determined less by grounds of abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional longing for a force which will complement her nature, and who, consequently, would rather bow to a strong man than dominate a weakling, likewise the masses love a commander more than a petitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctrine, tolerating no other beside itself, than by the granting of liberalistic freedom with which, as a rule, they can do little, and are prone to feel that they have been abandoned By the turn of the century, the trade-union movement had ceased to serve its former function.
From year to year it had entered more and more into the sphere of Social Democratic politics and finally had no use except as a battering-ram in the class struggle.
Its purpose was to cause the collapse of the whole arduously constructed economic edifice by persistent blows, thus, the more easily, after removing its economic foundations, to prepare the same lot for the edifice of state.
Konrad Heiden , a journalist who investigated Hitler's time in Vienna , pointed out that the fact Victor Adler was Jewish had a major impact on the development of his political philosophy. And this opponent, whom he combated from the profound hatred of his soul, is and remains plain ordinary work.
Organized, it calls itself labour movement, trade union, Socialist Party. And, or so it seems to him, Jews are always the leaders. The intellectual of the bourgeois era had not yet discovered the workers, and if the workers wanted to have leaders with university education, often only the Jewish intellectual remained - the type which might have liked to become a judge or Government official, but in Germany, Austria, or Russia simply could not.
Yet, though many Socialist leaders are Jews, only few Jews are Socialist leaders. To call the mass of modern Jewry Socialist, let alone revolutionary, is a bad propaganda joke. Heiden rejected the idea that Hitler's anti-semitism had anything to do with the role that Jews played in capitalism: "It was in the world of workers, as he explicitly tells us, that Adolf Hitler encountered the Jews.
The few bourgeois Jews. The few bourgeois Jews in the home city did not attract his attention But he did notice the proletarian and sub-proletarian figures from the Vienna slums, and they repelled him; he felt them to be foreign - just as he felt the non-Jewish workers to be foreign. With amazing indifference he reports that he could not stand up against either of them in political debate; he admits that the workers knew more than he did, that the Jews were more adept at discussion.
He goes on to relate how he looked into this uncanny labour movement more closely, and to his great amazement discovered large numbers of Jews at its head. The great light dawned on him; suddenly the 'Jewish question' became clear.
If we subject his own account to psychological analysis, the result is rather surprising: the labour movement did not repel him because it was led by Jews; the Jews repelled him because they led the labour movement. For him this inference was logical. To lead this broken, degenerate mass, dehumanized by overwork, was a thankless task.
No one would do it unless impelled by a secret, immensely alluring purpose; the young artist-prince simply did not believe in the morality of pity of which these Jewish leaders publicly spoke so much; there is no such thing, he knew people better - particularly he knew himself. The secret purpose could only be a selfish one - whether mere good living or world domination, remained for the moment a mystery.
But one thing is certain: it was not Rothschild, the capitalist, but Karl Marx, the Socialist, who kindled Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler had refused twice to respond to letters calling him to join the Austro-Hungarian Army. However, he did attend the third call and reported to the army office in Salzburg in the summer of Hitler was bitterly upset when after being medically examined on 5th February, , he was rejected as being: "Unfit for combatant and auxiliary duty - too weak.
Unable to bear arms. The outbreak of the First World War provided him with an opportunity for a fresh start. It was a chance for him to become involved in proving that Germany was superior to other European countries. Hitler claimed that when he heard the news of war: "I was overcome with impetuous enthusiasm, and falling on my knees, wholeheartedly thanked Heaven that I had been granted the happiness to live live at this time What a man wants is what he hopes and believes.
The overwhelming majority of the nation had long been weary of the eternally uncertain state of affairs; thus it was only too understandable that they no longer believed in a peaceful conclusion of the Austro-Serbian conflict, but hoped for the final settlement. I, too, was one of these millions. Rejecting the idea of fighting for Austria , Hitler volunteered for the German Army. On 1st August he was a member of the cheering, singing crowd which gathered on the Odeonsplatz in Munich to listen to the proclamation of the war.
Within a few days I was wearing that uniform which I was not to put off again for nearly six years. Another volunteer in the same regiment was Rudolf Hess and the regimental clerk was Sergeant Max Amann.
After initial training in Munich Hitler arrived on the Western Front on 21st October , where his regiment took part in the Battle of Ypres. It has been claimed that Hitler's regiment was reduced from 3, to men during this first period of fighting.
Hitler had very few friends but he did write a detailed letter to Ernst Hepp , a man who he had rented a room from in Munich about the fighting that had taken place: "Early in the morning of October 29 we were sent into battle Just as we were getting our marching orders, Major Count Zech rode by: 'Tomorrow we're attacking the English! Every man of us was overjoyed. Out there the first shrapnel were flying over us, bursting at the edge of the woods, and tearing apart the trees like so much brushwood.
We looked on curiously. We had no real idea of the danger. None of us was afraid. Hitler was then given orders to charge the enemy trenches: "We swarmed out and chased across the fields to a little farm.
To left and right the shrapnel were bursting, and in between the English bullets sang. But we paid no attention. For ten minutes we lay there, and then we were again ordered forward. I was way out in front, ahead of our squad The first of our men began to fall. The English had set up machine-guns. We threw ourselves down and crawled slowly forward through a gutter.
From time to time a man was hit and couldn't go on, and the whole column was stuck We ran fifteen or twenty yards, then we came to a big pool of water. One after another we splashed into it, took cover, and caught our breath. But it was no place to lie still. So we dashed out quick, and double-quick, to a forest that lay about a hundred yards ahead of us. There we found each other after a while We crawled on our bellies to the edge of the woods.
Over us the shells were howling and whistling, splintered tree-trunks and branches flew around us. And then again grenades crashed into the wood, hurling up clouds of stones, earth, and stifling everything in a yellowish-green, stinking, sickening vapour. We couldn't lie there forever, and if we were going to be killed, it was better to be killed outside.
I jumped up and ran, as fast as I could, across meadows and turnip-fields, jumping over ditches, over wire and living hedges A long trench lay before me; a moment later I had jumped into it.
Before me, behind me, to the left and right others followed. Beside me were Wurttembergers, under me dead and wounded Englishmen. The Wurttembergers had stormed the trench before us. And now I knew why I had landed so soft when I jumped in.
Between and yards to the left of us there were still English trenches; to the right, the road to Leceloire was still in their possession. An unbroken hail of iron was whistling over our trench. After shelling the British trenches Hitler and the other members of the regiment were ordered forward: "Finally, at ten o'clock, our artillery opened up in the sector.
One - two - three - five - and so on. Again and again a shell burst in the English trenches ahead of us. The fellows swarmed out like ants, and then we rushed them. We ran into the fields like lightning, and after bloody hand-to-hand fighting in different places, we threw them out of one trench after another. Many of them raised their hands. Those who wouldn't surrender were knocked down. In this way we cleared trench after trench. For three days we fought on like this, and on the third day the Britishers were finally licked.
The fourth evening we marched back to Werwick. Only then did we see what our losses had been. In four days our regiment of thirty-five hundred men had melted away to six hundred.
There were only thirty officers left in the whole regiment. Hitler, like all those who survived the battle, was promoted to the rank of lance-corporal. Hitler was assigned on 9th November as an orderly dispatch runner. His task was a runner whose job was to carry messages between the front-line and Regimental Headquarters, three kilometres away. Although he was not actually in the trenches, it was a dangerous job. On one day alone, three out of eight of the regiment's dispatch-runners were killed and another one wounded.
On 2nd December Hitler was presented with the Iron Cross, Second Class , one of four dispatch runners in his regiment to receive the honour. It was, he said, "the happiest day of my life". It is claimed that he received the award for saving the life of Lieutenant-Colonel Philipp Engelhardt. Thomas Weber , the author of Hitler's First War has raised doubts about the truth of the incident. If we can believe a report by Georg Eichelsdorfer, the former regimental adjutant, Hitler and Bachmann dramatically leapt forward, covering Engelhardt's body and taking him back to safety.
However, there is other evidence that Hitler did save the life of his commanding officer. Engelhardt wrote to the Hamburg Provincial Court in "As commander of the 16th Regiment of Bavarian Infantry at the Battle of Tpres in the period from November 10 to November 17, , I came to know Adolf Hitler as an exceedingly brave, effective and conscientious soldier.
I must emphasize the following: As our men were storming the wedge-shaped forest, I stepped out of the woods near Wytschaete to get a better view of developments.
Hitler and the volunteer Bachmann, another battle orderly belonging to the 16th Regiment, stood before me to protect me with their bodies from the machine-gun fire to which I was exposed. Adolf Hitler liked being in the army. For the first time he was part of a group that was fighting for a common goal.
Hitler also liked the excitement of fighting in a war. Although fairly cautious in his actions, he did not mind risking his life and impressed his commanding officers for volunteering for dangerous missions. However, his fellow soldiers described him as "odd" and "peculiar".
It is significant that the fact he was a dispatch-runner was omitted from Mein Kampf. This was probably because most soldiers saw the job as a "shirker's post. One soldier from his regiment, Hans Mend , claimed that Hitler was an isolated figure who spent long periods of time sitting in the corner holding his head in silence. Then all of a sudden, Mend claimed, he would jump up and make a speech. These outbursts were usually attacks on Jews and Marxists , who Hitler claimed were undermining the war effort.
He was nicknamed "crazy Adolf" by the men he came into contact with. He often flew into a rage when contradicted, throwing himself on the ground and frothing at the mouth". A close friend, Ernst Hanfstaengel , claims that Hitler was the victim of sexual bullying while in the army: "Old army comrades, who had seen him in the wash-house, had noted that his genital organs were almost freakishly underdeveloped, and he doubtless had some sense of shame about displaying himself.
It seemed to me that this must all be part of the underlying complex in his physical relations, which was compensated for by the terrifying urge for domination expressed in the field of politics.
When one of the soldiers asked him: "Haven't you ever loved a girl? Hans Mend , a fellow dispatch-runner, has claimed that Ernst Schmidt and Hitler had a sexual relationship. We suspected him of homosexuality right away, because he was known to be abnormal in any case. He was extremely eccentric and displayed womanish characteristics which tended in that direction. He never had a firm objective, nor any kind of firm beliefs. In we were billeted in the Le Febre brewery at Fournes.
We slept in the hay. Hitler was bedded down at night with Schmidt, his male whore. We heard a rustling in the hay. Then someone switched on his electric flashlight and growled, Take a look at those two nancy boys. I myself took no further interest in the matter. Every old soldier knows that the rank of lance corporal is only brief and temporary, only a preliminary to more senior noncommissioned rank. Hundreds of thousands of men can be infantrymen and never make lance corporal, but a lance corporal who never makes sergeant in four years' front-line service must be a very suspect type.
Either he shirks commanding a squad, or he is incompetent to do so. Sergeant Max Amann , recommended Hitler for officer training. However, Fritz Wiedemann , Hitler's regimental adjutant, rejected the idea as he considered Hitler lacked leadership qualities. He wrote in his memoirs, The Man who Wanted to Command : "By military standards Hitler really didn't at that time have potential for promotion.
I'm disregarding the fact that he wouldn't have cut a specially good figure as an officer in peacetime; his posture was sloppy and when he was asked a question his answer would be anything but short in a soldier-like fashion. He didn't hold his head straight - it was usually sloping towards his left shoulder.
Now all that doesn't matter in wartime, but ultimately a man must have leadership qualities if you're doing the right thing when you promote him to be a non-commissioned officer. Lothar Machtan , the author of The Hidden Hitler provides a different reason why Hitler did not become an officer: "Why did Hitler remain a lance corporal throughout the war?
His toadying to higher authority, if not his efficiency, should have earned him promotion. We are told that he was offered it but refused. It would probably be more correct to say that he could not bring himself to accept.
As a noncom he would sooner or later have been obliged to give up what had hitherto enabled him to tolerate war service so well: Ernst Schmidt, his other faithful partners, a relatively safe existence in the rear echelon, and possibly also, a toleration of the homosexual tendencies he could not have pursued as a noncommissioned officer.
A fellow soldier, Balthasar Brandmayer , described Hitler in May, , as "almost skeletal in appearance, dark eyes hooded in a sallow complexion, untrimmed moustache, sitting in a corner buried in a newspaper, occasionally taking a sip of tea, seldom joining in the banter of the group". Brandmayer claims he asked Hitler: "Haven't you ever loved a girl?
It has been claimed that Hitler appeared to be unaffected by his fellow soldiers who he saw killed on the Western Front. Hitler taught it tricks, revelling in how attached it was to him and how glad it was to see him when he returned from duty. He was distraught late in the war when his unit had to move on and Foxl could not be found The emptiness and coldness that Hitler showed throughout his life in his dealings with human beings were absent in the feeling he had for his dog.
Hitler remained confident that Germany would win the war. In February he wrote to Ernst Hepp : "Those of us who have the fortune to see their homeland again will find it purer and cleansed of alien influence, that through the sacrifices and suffering that so many hundred thousand of us make daily, that through the stream of blood that flows here day for day against an international world of enemies, not only will Germany's external enemies be smashed, but that our inner internationalism will also be broken.
That would be worth more to me than all territorial gains. Hitler's regiment was at the Battle of the Somme and on 2nd October , Hitler was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dug-out, killing and wounding several of them. His close friend, Ernst Schmidt , was also injured in the blast. After treatment in a field hospital, he spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz , near Berlin.
Hitler was appalled to hear men in the hospital bragging about how they had managed to inflict minor injuries on themselves to make sure they could escape from the Western Front. In January, , Hitler wrote to the regiment's adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann , for permission to return "to the 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment" and serve with his "former comrades". Hitler also wrote to Sergeant Max Amann to see if he could use his influence to be reassigned to his regiment, his "elective family".
Hitler later recalled that his regiment had taught him "the glorious meaning of a male community". Hitler was allowed rejoin his regiment on 5th March Hitler's regiment took part in fighting at Passchendaele in July but the following month they moved to Alsace. At the end of September he went on day leave to Berlin. Hitler later commented: "Towards the end of it seemed as if we had got over the worst phases of moral depression at the front.
After the Russian collapse the whole army recovered its courage and hope, and all were gradually becoming more and more convinced that the struggle would end in our favour We could sing once again. The ravens were ceasing to croak. Faith in the future of the Fatherland was once more in the ascendant This inspiring thought now became dominant in the minds of millions at the front and encouraged them to look forward with confidence to the spring of It was quite obvious that the enemy was in a state of depression.
In April Hitler's regiment took part in the Spring Offensive. It was decided to attack Allied forces at three points along the front-line: Arras , Lys and Aisne.
At first the German Army had considerable success and came close to making a decisive breakthrough. However, Allied forces managed to halt the German advance at the Marne in June, After suffering , casualties during the battle, the exhausted German soldiers were forced to retreat. He was nominated by a Jewish officer, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann.
His wrote: "As a dispatch-runner, he has shown cold-blooded courage and exemplary boldness. Under conditions of great peril, when all the communication lines were cut, the untiring and fearless activity of Hitler made it possible for important messages to go through". In October , Hitler was blinded in a British mustard gas attack. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf : "On a hill south of Werwick, in the evening of October 13th, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night with more or less intensity.
About midnight a number of us were put out of action, some for ever. Towards morning I also began to feel pain. A few hours later my eyes were like glowing coals and all was darkness around me. Adolf Hitler was sent to a military hospital and gradually recovered his sight. While he was in hospital Germany surrendered. So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; in vain the death of two million who died.
Had they died for this? Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the Fatherland. I knew that all was lost. Only fools, liars and criminals could hope for mercy from the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed. Miserable and degenerate criminals! The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous events in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow. Hitler went into a state of deep depression, and had periods when he could not stop crying.
He spent most of his time turned towards the hospital wall refusing to talk to anyone. Rudolf Olden , who researched Hitler's time in the war, was unable to locate his medical records: "Doctors have declared the description of Hitler's illness as he gives it in Mein Kampf to be impossible. If he is correct about the symptoms, then it is impossible to explain how it was that the illness lasted only three weeks Blindness has sometimes been called a symptom of hysteria, not infrequently observed towards the end of the war.
It is hardly likely that the medical reports which might enlighten us will ever be found. At the end of the war Hitler returned to Munich. Approaching thirty years of age, without education, career or prospects, his only plans were to stay in the German Army. The barracks to which he returned were run by soldiers' councils. Left-wing socialists were in control in Bavaria , where Kurt Eisner , the leader of the the Independent Socialist Party , had formed a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party.
Not only was Eisner a Marxist , he was also a Jew and an opponent of a war that he considered to be "imperialistic". As the whole administration was quite repulsive to me, I decided to leave it as soon as I possibly could. With my faithful war-comrade, Ernst Schmidt, I came to Traunstein and remained there until the camp was broken up. In March we were back again in Munich.
By the time he returned to Munich Kurt Eisner was dead. It is claimed that before he killed Eisner he said: "Eisner is a Bolshevist, a Jew; he isn't German, he doesn't feel German, he subverts all patriotic thoughts and feelings. He is a traitor to this land. At that juncture innumerable plans took shape in my mind. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done, but unfortunately every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown and therefore did not have even the first pre-requisite necessary for effective action.
Hitler saw socialism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy. So also were many of the leaders of the October Revolution in Russia. It had not escaped Hitler's notice that Karl Marx , the prophet of socialism, had also been a Jew.
It was no coincidence that Jews had joined socialist and communist parties in Europe. Jews had been persecuted for centuries and therefore were attracted to a movement that proclaimed that all men and women deserved to be treated as equals. This message was reinforced when on 10th July, , the Bolshevik government in Russia passed a law that abolished all discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.
Konrad Heiden , an early biographer of Adolf Hitler, and a Jewish journalist living in Vienna , wrote: "The relatively high percentage of Jews in the leadership of the Socialist parties on the European continent cannot be denied The Jewish Socialist leaders of Austria in Hitler's youth were for the most part a type with academic education, and their predominant motive was just what Hitler at an early age so profoundly despised, 'a morality of pity', an enthusiastic faith in the oppressed and in the trampled human values within them.
The Jewish Socialist, as a rule, has abandoned the religion of his fathers, and consequently is a strong believer in the religion of human rights Ernst Schmidt and Hitler spent a lot of time together in Munich. According to Schmidt they also attended the opera in the city: "We only bought the cheapest seats, but that didn't matter. Hitler was lost in the music to the very last note; blind and deaf to all else around him.
During this period he made contact with the well-known artist, Max Zaeper , to whom he "gave several of his works for expert appraisal". I bumped into him on the Marienplatz in Munich, where he was standing with his friend Ernst Schmidt Hitler was then living in a hostel for the homeless at 29 Lothstrasse, Munich.
Soon afterward, having camped at my apartment for several days, he took refuge at Traunstein barracks because he was hungry. He managed to get by, as he often did in the future, with the help of his Iron Cross 1st Class and his gift of the gab.
In January I again ran into Hitler at the newsstand on Marienplatz. It is believed that night Hitler was recruited as a spy and informer on left-wing organisations.
William L. Like Hitler he was possessed of a burning hatred for the democratic Republic and the 'November criminals' he held responsible for it. His aim was to re-create a strong nationalist Germany and he believed with Hitler that this could be done only by a party based on the lower classes, from which he himself, unlike most Regular Army officers, had come.
A tough, ruthless, driving man - albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual. Hans Mend , who spent time with Hitler in Munich that year later claimed: "Hitler Since he promptly requested a senior Party post that would have exempted him from the need to work - his perpetual aim - the Communists distrusted him despite his mortal hatred of all property owners. Over the next two days the Freikorps easily defeated the Red Guards.
Allan Mitchell , the author of Revolution in Bavaria , pointed out: "Resistance was quickly and ruthlessly broken. Men found carrying guns were shot without trial and often without question. The irresponsible brutality of the Freikorps continued sporadically over the next few days as political prisoners were taken, beaten and sometimes executed. Adolf Hitler was arrested with other former soldiers in Munich and was accused of being a socialist.
Hundreds of socialists were executed without trial but Hitler was able to convince them that he had been an opponent of the regime. Hitler volunteered to help to identify soldiers who had supported the Socialist Republic. The authorities agreed to this proposal and Hitler was transferred to the commission investigating the revolution. He was given considerable funds to build up a team of agents or informants and to organize a series of educational courses to train selected officers and men in "correct" political and ideological thinking.
Mayr was also given the power to finance "patriotic" parties, publications and organizations. Mayr later recalled that Hitler was "like a tired stray dog looking for a master" and someone "ready to throw in his lot with anyone who would show him kindness".
Mayr argued that at the time Hitler "was totally unconcerned about the German people and their destinies". Mayr added that Hitler was "paid by the month, from whom regular information could be expected. On 5th June , Hitler began a course on political education at Munich University that had been organized by Mayr.
The main aim was to promote his political philosophy favoured by the army and help to combat the influence of the Russian Revolution on the German soldiers.
As a result of this recommendation, Hitler was selected as a political officer in the team of instructors that were sent to lecture at an German Army camp near Augsburg. This was arranged by Mayr in response to complaints about the political unreliability of men stationed there. The task of the squad was to inculcate nationalist and anti-Bolshevik sentiments in the troops, described as being "infected" by Bolshevism and Spartacism.
His students were impressed with Hitler's lectures. Hans Knoden pointed out that Hitler "revealed himself to be an excellent and passionate speaker and captured the attention of all the listeners with his comments". Another soldier, Lorenz Frank, argued that "Hitler is a born popular speaker who, through his fanaticism and his populist style in a meeting, absolutely compels his audience to take note and share his views. Adolf Hitler, who had for years been ignored when he made political speeches, now had a captive audience.
The political climate had also changed. Germany was a defeated and disillusioned country. Germany also lost all her overseas colonies. Under the terms of the treaty Germany also had to pay for damage caused by the war. Ian Kershaw the author of Hitler , has argued: "He Hitler threw himself with passion into the work.
His engagement was total. And he immediately found he could strike a chord with his audience, that the way he spoke roused the soldiers listening to him from their passivity and cynicism.
Hitler was in his element. For the first time in his life, he had found something at which he was an unqualified success. Almost by chance, he had stumbled across his greatest talent. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf : "I started out with the greatest enthusiasm and love. For all at once I was offered an opportunity of speaking before a larger audience; and the thing that I had always presumed from pure feeling without knowing it was now corroborated; I could speak And I could boast of some success; in the course of my lectures I led many hundreds, indeed thousands, of comrades back to their people and fatherland.
Hitler was no longer isolated. The German soldiers who attended his lectures shared his sense of failure. They found his message that they were not to blame attractive. He told them that Germany had not been beaten on the battlefield but had been betrayed by Jews and Marxists who had preached revolution and undermined the war effort. They lacked a number of requisites without which such a task could never be successfully undertaken.
The years that followed have justified the opinions which we held at that time. Harrer was elected as chairman of the party. Alan Bullock , the author of Hitler: A Study in Tyranny has pointed out: "Its total membership was little more than Drexler's original forty Committee of Independent Workmen , activity was limited to discussions in Munich beer-halls, and the committee of six had no clear idea of anything more ambitious.
I found approximately 20—25 persons present, most of them belonging to the lower classes. Therefore, I could concentrate my attention on studying the society itself. The impression it made upon me was neither good nor bad.
I felt that here was just another one of these many new societies which were being formed at that time. In those days everybody felt called upon to found a new Party whenever he felt displeased with the course of events and had lost confidence in all the parties already existing.
Thus it was that new associations sprouted up all round, to disappear just as quickly, without exercising any effect or making any noise whatsoever. Hitler discovered that the party's political ideas were similar to his own.
He approved of Drexler's German nationalism and anti-Semitism but had doubts about the speech made by Gottfried Feder. Hitler was just about to leave when a man in the audience began to question the logic of Feder's speech on Bavaria. Hitler joined in the discussion and made a passionate attack on the man who he described as the "professor". Feder was impressed with Hitler and gave him a booklet encouraging him to join the GWP. Hitler commented: "In his Feder's little book he described how his mind had thrown off the shackles of the Marxist and trades-union phraseology, and that he had come back to the nationalist ideals.
The pamphlet secured my attention the moment I began to read, and I read it with interest to the end. The process here described was similar to that which I had experienced in my own case ten years previously. Unconsciously my own experiences began to stir again in my mind.
During that day my thoughts returned several times to what I had read; but I finally decided to give the matter no further attention. Snyder has argued that Feder's views appealed to Hitler for political reasons: "For Hitler, Feder's separation between stock exchange capital and the national economy offered the possibility of going into battle against the internationalization of the German economy without threatening the founding of an independent national economy by a fight against capital.
Best of all, from Hitler's point of view, was the fact that he could identify international capitalism as wholly Jewish-controlled. Hitler became a member of the German Workers' Party and Feder became his friend and guide. Anton Drexler had mixed feelings about Hitler but was impressed with his abilities as an orator and invited him to join the party.
Adolf Hitler commented: "I didn't know whether to be angry or to laugh.
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