GERMANY’S HITLER 


Herr Heinz A. Heinz 5 o.im has been to 
draw a picture of the Fuhrer from details 
supplied at first hand by those friends and 
helpers and comrades of his who believed 
in him from the first , who joined him at the 
beginning , stood by him through the darkest 
days , and have lived to see one of the most 
astounding achievements of modern times. 

Revised throughout and brought fully up 
to date. 






THE BERGHOF, THE FUHRER’S COUNTRY HOME 
IN THE OBERSALZBERG, BAVARIAN ALPS 













GERMANY'S HITLER 

by Hein ^ A. Hein% 




Revised Edition 


HUKST & BLACKETT LTD. 

34 Paternoster Row, E.C.4 



First Published November 1934 
Library edition ( revised) October 1938 


Made and Printed in Great Britain for 
Hurst & Blackett Ltd. Paternoster House, London E.C. 4 , at 
1 he Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. 



DEDICATED 


TO MY SINCERE ENGLISH 
AND AMERICAN FRIENDS 


I am very much indebted to Herrn 
Hans Rolf Hoffmann, Munich, for 
his kind support. 


THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Birth and Boyhood . . . . n 

II. Vienna ....... 30 

III. Munich ....... 49 

IV. With Hitler in the War . . . .57 

V. Hitler returns to Munich after the War : 

Herr Ernst Schmidt’s Story . 85 

VI. Hitler joins the “ Deutsche Arbeiter- 

Partei ” . . . . . .109 

VII. Early Struggles of the Movement : Gott¬ 
fried Schmitt’s Story . . . .124 

VIII. Herr Drexler continues his Story . . 138 

IX. “ Und ihr habt doch gesiegt ” . . . 147 

X. Hitler in Landsberg : Oberwachtmeister 

Hemmrich’s Story . . . . .167 

XI. Second Founding of the Party . .196 

XII. Hitler sets his Hand to the Plough . 208 

XIII. Hitler, the Workless and the Needy . 217 

XIV. What the “Socialism” really means . 231 

XV. Hitler, Germany and the World . . • 240 


9 




GERMANY'S HITLER 

CHAPTER I 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 

T RAVELLING from Vienna on a small branch line 
of the railway tending north, one comes presently 
to a beautiful hilly and wooded district called the 
“ Waldviertel . 55 The character of the country gives it 
the name. The foothills and mountains are covered 
with forest, only broken here and there by the fields 
and patches of cultivation which have been cleared by 
Bavarian peasants who with toil and hardihood have 
wrung a frugal living from the soil in this region for over 
a thousand years. It has, indeed, bred a sturdy and 
dogged race, used generations long to a fierce fight with 
the forces of nature. Every clod of soil, every foot of 
arable land had to be wrested from the forest at the cost 
of human sweat and sinew. The country folk of the 
Waldviertel have gone back no whit to-day from the 
toughness of their ancestors, neither in physique nor 
character. 

One observes in the rugged weather-beaten face of 
a man of these parts, bright defiant eyes like those of 
a falcon under a rugged forehead, and finds himself in 
the presence of a typical “ German / 5 wrought by a 
lifetime of struggle to the temper of stoutest, finest steel. 
The realization forces itself upon one what it is that has 
enabled these people to resist the hardships of a thousand 
years. They have isolated themselves here in the recesses 



112 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


of the forest from easy access, and the race has been 
kept absolutely clear of any Slavonian admixture. In 
the Waldviertel to-day, albeit a part of the racial “ mish¬ 
mash ” of the one-time Austrian Empire, the Bavarian 
dialect is spoken, and life is wholly German still. 

In the Lower Austrian Waldviertel, utterly lost to the 
world, lies a tiny village called Walterschlag. 

In one of the white wooden houses in the recesses of 
this forest, and to a father and mother wearing the lovely 
old German costumes of Grimm’s fairy-tale pictures, a 
baby was born in 1672 who bore the name of Stephan 
Hitler. He grew up in the Waldviertel, and came in 
time to possess the cottage and the clearing which had 
been his father’s, when the latter died. Stephan’s son, 
Johannes, followed him ; there was an Uncle Martin— 
all “ Bauern,” small peasant proprietors of the soil, and 
Waldviertel peasant farmers at that. 

Martin Hitler’s son Georg, however, became the 
village miller. It was but a poor living he made, very 
toilsome, and with little result. When he grew too old 
to carry on any more, he had not enough put by to 
prevent his becoming a charge on the little community 
in general. 

This Georg, however, possessed a son, Alois, with a 
streak of originality and ambition in him. Something 
marked him out among the village children. At the age 
of thirteen Alois Hitler had made up his mind to clear 
out of the still and lonely forest and see something of life 
outside and the big world for himself. He bundled his 
few little possessions together, and set off on foot for 
Vienna “ to make his fortune,” three gulden in his 
pocket from his mother. 

This was in the year 1850. We see a sturdy youngster 
clad in short leathern breeks, curiously laced at the 
knee, with green suspenders and an embroidered band 
across the breast over a linen shirt, low thick heavy nail- 
studded shoes, and a green Jager hat with a tuft of 
chamois hair—a “ Gemsbart ”—in it, trudging through 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 




the sombre aisles of the pine forests as hundreds and 
hundreds of boys, from Whittington’s time onward, have 
trudged to the great city with dreams all about their heads. 

Vienna in 1850 was a very different place from what 
it is to-day. The young Emperor Francis Joseph, then 
only about twenty years of age, had not long acceded to 
the throne abdicated by his uncle. There had been, in 
this big outside world, a short-lived revolution going on, 
and Kossuth’s attempt to wrest Hungary away had 
already called down upon the Emperor’s youthful head 
the terrible curse of the Countess Karolyi which was to 
pursue him, and the strange Habsburg House, relentlessly 
for nearly seventy years, and who knows—perhaps to 
this very day. 

Vienna in 1850 was the brilliant capital of an extra¬ 
ordinary Empire which was never a nation at all in the 
same sense as geographical and national characteristics 
and aspirations made a nation of the French or of the 
English. Austria-Hungary was just a medley of races 
which chiefly detested each other, bound loosely together 
for the convenience of the rest of Europe as Napoleon 
left it, and unified only by the fact that the Habsburgs 
everywhere, were dominant. The Vienna to which 
young Alois Hitler came in 1850 was the Vienna so soon 
to be graced by that strange figure of imperial beauty, 
moodiness and tragedy, the Empress Elizabeth. He, 
however, cannot be presumed to have had much to 
do with the great world of the Ballhausplatz and the 
Ringstrasse. At that time and in that place humanity 
was held only to cc begin at the baron.” The peasant 
boy from the Lower Austrian hinterland was absorbed 
by the common folk living in the old picturesque but 
ever windy Gassen, of the working-class parts of the city. 

He bound himself apprentice for a couple of years to 
a shoe-maker, but when his time was out, resolved to try, 
yet again, for something better. Nothing but poverty 
and struggle seemed to offer him as a hand-worker in 
imperial Vienna, 



14 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


The boy’s ambition was by no means satisfied by this. 
Away back at home in the forest it had seemed to him 
that the village priest’s position was a pretty good one, 
but now he saw that to become a State official offered 
still more distinction. Such then became the goal of 
Alois Hitler’s striving desires—to become a non-com¬ 
missioned officer of the Austrian Customs. With all the 
purpose and tenacity born in a boy of the Waldviertel 
he struggled forward to this end, and indeed he did 
succeed at last in qualifying for and obtaining a post in 
this force. 

Years ago, as he left Walterschlag, Hitler had sworn 
never to turn up there again until he had made some¬ 
thing of himself—got somewhere—but now, when this 
really seemed to have been accomplished the young 
fellow was proud and free to recall the girl he had left 
behind him ! So now he said good-bye to Vienna, 
returned home, married Klara Polzl, the daughter of a 
neighbour there with whom he had been playmates, 
and found himself appointed as Customs Officer to the 
small Austrian frontier town of Braunau on the 
Inn. 

A daughter was born to the couple, and then, a good 
many years later, came a boy. 

Barely two months before, mysterious and shocking 
tragedy had overtaken the Crown Prince Rudolph at 
his hunting-box at Meyerling in the forest not many 
miles north of Vienna. The whole German world was 
still ringing with the scandal and wrought up to a fever 
pitch of curiosity about it. 

To recall it, and in connection with the absolutely 
obscure and unimportant birth of a child to an equally 
obscure and unimportant functionary in the Customs 
Service is to contrast the world into which Adolf Hitler 
came on April 20th, 1889, with the world as he was to 
refashion it forty-four years later. An heir had appeared, 
but it was not such an heir as had disappeared ! The 
consequences of the death of Rudolph were to be as 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


15 

nothing compared to the consequences of the birth of 
Adolf! 

This little Adolf was a likely youngster, true to stock 
and type, who throve lustily under his mother’s care. 

But few particulars, really, are available about his 
childhood. The Fiihrer himself has made only the 
scantiest reference to matters of purely family or bio¬ 
graphical interest in Mein Kampj ’ and obviously attaches 
little importance to them. The Reichskanzler’s elder sister, 
Frau Angela, kept house for him for many years in the 
famous retreat Berghof (of which more later). His 
mother, Frau Clara Hitler, had a sister who married a 
farmer somewhere near Linz, and it is her children, among 
them Herr Ludwig Schwatz, farmers also, who are the 
cousins and relations in Austria to-day. 

We know this much, that in the course of a few years, 
Alois Hitler was posted to a more important town, Passau, 
at the junction of the Inn and the Danube. Foreseeing, 
however, that he might constantly be shifted from pillar 
to post, and being unwilling to incur the expense of 
removing his household every time, Hitler bought a 
small holding, a “ Bauerngut,” in a village called Hafeld, 
and there established them in modest comfort. For 
himself he remained in Passau, perforce contenting him¬ 
self from time to time with such visits to Hafeld as time 
and duty permitted. 

Here, then, in Hafeld, near Passau, young Adolf 
grew to boyhood. His mother looked after the little 
farm, and no doubt the child ran wild about the lovely 
country-side, played in the meadows and paddled in the 
brook with others of his age. Hafeld is one of those 
villages which appear to be bigger than they really are, 
owing to the houses being widely separated from each 
other by fields or fruit gardens. The Hitler house stands 
on a little elevation. It is a pretty, small, one-story house 
absolutely hidden in an orchard. Another orchard runs 
up by the side. Like all the other dwellings in Hafeld 
it has stabling built on to it for one or two horses or 



i6 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


cows, and over this is the hayloft—always a happy 
hunting-ground where children are concerned. 

When Alois Hitler reached the age of sixty he was 
pensioned off. Doffing the two-peaked hat of officialdom, 
he reverted to the country and betook himself to his little 
place at Hafeld in Upper Austria, there to revert to the 
life and occupations of the “ Bauer. 55 Hence his son 
wrote of him many years later : “ So it came about that 
after a long life of work and duty, my father reverted to 
his original standing. 55 

Previous to this, however, the family had spent two 
years in Lambach, a small town between Linz and 
Salzburg with some important-looking buildings. Adolf, 
now eight or nine years old, was sent to school at the 
eleventh-century Benedictine Monastery there. Here it 
was that he learnt the rudiments of music. He figured 
as a chorister on occasions of festive or of religious 
solemnity, and naturally aspired to become a prior. 
Hitler, senior, need not have disturbed himself so much 
about this notion as he seems to have done. New ideas 
new contacts, new experiences soon drove all thought of 
this sort out of Adolf's head. 

It is interesting to recall these singing practices of his 
at Lambach, though, in view of the Reichskanzler's 
well-known passion for music. A good sketcher, indeed, 
he did become, and a man of immensely wide and deep 
reading, but the monastery probably represents all the 
technical instruction he ever had the opportunity of 
receiving in music. The modern monastery is a wide¬ 
spread picturesque building in simple and restrained 
Renaissance style, with a deep roof and a well-pro¬ 
portioned clock tower and belfry rising in the midst over 
an ornate main entrance. It consists of three stories, 
with rows of eight plain windows the whole length of the 
facade. 

In the courtyard of this institution there is a well with 
a massively built stone archway over it, the keystone of 
which displays a shield with a date, i860, on the upper 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


i7 

half, and a swastika below. The swastika figured else¬ 
where at Lambach, noticeably as the central device in a 
coat of arms surmounting an elaborately carved prie- 
dieu. The Superior here in 1859 had adopted the swas¬ 
tika, and it may be that the force of this boyhood associa¬ 
tion had something to do with the Fiihrer’s thought of 
it when designing the flag for his Party, later. But it is 
well known that his final decision to adopt the swastika 
for the symbol of his movement resulted chiefly from his 
intensive study of racial development in the history of 
the world. 

The house in which the Hitlers lived in Lambach 
was but a stone’s-throw from the school. It was a solidly 
built, well-designed block of buildings on the corner of 
the Linzerstrasse and the Kirchengasse, facing an irregular 
picturesque square. 

The next milestone was reached for Adolf when, 
rummaging one day through his father’s collection of 
books, he came across some bound copies of an old 
illustrated newspaper of the time of the Franco-Prussian 
War. He seized upon these with avidity and made off 
into the fields, to lie upon his stomach in the sun by the 
singing brook, as was his wont, there to pore over the 
fascinating pages undisturbed. 

The story gripped the boy’s imagination and filled it 
with heroic aspiration. And to this encounter may be 
ascribed the beginning of Hitler’s Kampf after union with 
Austria. The first thing that occurred to the child, 
poring over the story of ’70 and ’71, was why had 
Germany to fight alone ? Why hadn’t the Austrians 
fought too ? Were they not also Germans ? 

The figure of Bismarck claimed a passionate hero- 
worship, and then it dawned upon this little Austrian 
Adolf that not every German could pride himself on 
belonging to the Reich ! Disturbing as this was, the 
problem proved far too abstruse at that period for him 
to unravel. But it stayed with him, and occupied his 
thoughts and worried him, for there seemed no jot of 



i8 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


difference to him between an Austrian and a German, 
or rather between one German and another German— 
with just a frontier between. 

With the idea of sending Adolf to the Realschule in 
Linz, Hitler moved to a village called Leonding, in the 
neighbourhood of that place. Linz was already at this 
period the chief town of Upper Austria, very beautifully 
situated on an open plain on both sides of the Danube. 
Ambitious as he was for the boy, he judged it better to 
send him to the Realschule than to the Gymnasium, 
deeming it waste of time to spend years over the dead 
languages, and imagining that Adolf’s newly evinced 
turn for drawing would be better fostered in the more 
practical type of school. He had set his heart on his son 
obtaining a desk of some sort in one of the Ministries, 
“ becoming something,” as he himself had become, and 
considered everything to that end. 

It never entered into his head to consult Adolf’s own 
inclinations. A boy of his age was not entitled to have 
anything at all to say in the matter, but just to do as he 
was bid, and allow his father to know best. Alois Hitler 
belonged to the old school of authoritative martinet 
parents, and like many another, was destined to encounter 
fierce, tenacious opposition. 

It suddenly appeared that Adolf had no intention 
whatever of embracing the career designed for him. He 
was going to be an artist ! At eleven he decided that, 
and launched himself with characteristic impetus into a 
terrific, if tacit, struggle on the question. It was a case 
of will against will, neither ready to yield one inch. 
Adolf was lightning quick at school, and learned with 
astonishing facility. This fact afforded him ample leisure 
to spend his time otherwise than at his desk. He was 
for ever running about in the woods, glorying in fresh 
air and freedom, and hardening his resolve never to 
shut himself up in a stuffy office all day, say what his 
father might ! 

They scarcely argued it out. “ You’re going to be an 


BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


19 

official, my boy,” insisted old Hitler, and would have 
enlarged on the theme. “ I’m not,” exploded Adolf, 
“ I’m going to be a painter ! ” But it was useless to try 
and explain. “ Never, as long as I’ve a ha’porth of 
authority in my own house,” countered the father, to 
which all the reply he got was : “ You just wait and 
see ! ” 

Here, then, was where the mother stepped in to heal 
the breach. These altercations, as obstinate on the one 
side as on the other, somewhat disturbed the peace of the 
family for more than a year. It was only because he 
hated to see his mother distress herself that young Adolf 
would “ shut up ” with as good a grace as he did. He 
devised another means of bringing it home to his father 
that his mind was set on painting and on nothing else. 
Purposely he neglected his schoolwork in order that the 
ever-recurring plaints of “ insufficiency ” recorded on 
the pages of his exercise-books, might convince his parent 
that he meant what he said—he would never become an 
office quill-driver. But for all this young Adolf could 
not help coming out top of the class always in the three 
subjects which did happen to interest him, in drawing, 
in geography, and above all, in history. 

He seems to have had a teacher in the latter subject 
with a singular and original gift for lifting it right out 
of the dreary atmosphere of the schoolroom. At this 
time Austrian boys were trained to take an interest 
in dynastic history by way of stimulating their allegiance 
to the Habsburg idea. Hitler writes, many years after¬ 
wards, in Mein Kampf, of his history master with the 
greatest possible appreciation and gratitude. This 
Professor, Dr. Leopold Potsch, seems to have taken much 
the view of this subject that Mr. H. G. Wells has always 
claimed for it in any modern scheme of education. 

History for Adolf Hitler was by no means a story 
of the past, of very dead and gone people, and of happen¬ 
ings long since finished. History was made for him 
the very basis of the present, with living relationships 



20 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


reaching forward to the future. Adolf’s school history 
began that fundamental and far-reaching preparation 
in his mind which was to issue later in no less portentous 
a guise than the “ Weltanschauung,” upon which the 
structure of his State is to be built up. He was, demon¬ 
strably, a very thoughtful boy. And here again at this 
point in his development we find the beginnings of that 
militant nationalism which latterly has so astounded 
our post-war world. 

He has already been cracking his brains over 
obstructions which are merely territorial and not racial, 
as between Austrian Germans and German Germans, 
and now we find him distinguishing between the national 
feeling of an entire people and a mere dynastic patriotism. 
As has been already remarked, Austria was never at 
any time a “ nation,” merely the happy hunting-ground 
of a dynasty reaching back to the seventh century. 

Austria existed only for the Habsburgs, as Vienna 
existed for the Court. All this clarified itself in the 
boy’s mind very sharply and distinctly. He saw plainly 
enough that there could be no question of an Austrian 
nationality to become enthusiastic about in a great 
sprawling country inhabited by Czechs, Slavs, 
Ruthenians, Serbs, Croatians, Rumanians, Poles, 
Magyars, Italians and Gypsies, all in various stages 
of culture and civilisation some way behind that of 
the fortieth part of this numerical whole, the German 
Austrians just across the borders of the Reich. 

It belongs to the history of the period to show how 
the Hungarians and the non-German races in the un¬ 
wieldy Dual Monarchy were restive under the adminis¬ 
tratively Germanising tendencies of the Government. 
While the idea of nationality and any inclusion in the 
German Reich was obnoxious to the Austrian Govern¬ 
ment, which itself did not repose upon a national basis, 
nevertheless, under the “ Bach ” system every effort 
was made to Germanise the Croats and Hungarians 
most unacceptably to themselves. 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


21 


The steady opposing growth of non-German feeling 
and tendency waxed ever stronger and stronger until, 
indeed, it was this which, together with the growing 
pan-Slavistic propaganda of Romanoff Russia, set the 
spark to the gunpowder in Europe in 1914. The heir- 
apparent to the throne of Austria, the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand, a nephew of the childish old Emperor, was 
hated by dominant cliques in Government circles on 
account of his alleged pro-Czech and pro-Croatian 
sympathies, and his suspected intention of admitting 
Slavs to a greater share of political power when he 
should attain the throne. 

All this, of course, is common property and past 
history, but to recall it here and now serves to show 
what were the formative influences brought to bear 
upon the mind of that singularly receptive boy, young 
Adolf Hitler. He brought the test of his history lessons 
under Dr. Potsch to bear upon the everyday events 
and current talk of his own world, and unconsciously 
laid the groundwork for future activities in the political 
sphere as yet undreamed of. 

The thing, of course, only came home to him then 
in concrete example. 

First of all in the village school, when it came to 
singing the Austrian National Anthem, this Waldviertel 
youngster and other intrepid spirits of like mind would 
substitute a German hymn. Whereupon, instant casti¬ 
gation followed, with the inevitable result of toughening 
their youthful defiance. And then again in Linz in 
the Realschule : were a boy to dare to turn up with a 
cornflower stuck behind his ear—the symbol of Germanic 
sympathies—the Herr Direktor was down upon him at 
once like a cartload of bricks, and he was sure of a couple 
of hours’ detention. 

If on the occasion of some local junketings a few 
poor German acrobats from across the border were to 
make a bid for popular favour, the schoolboys had 
to use every precaution not to get found out if they 



22 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


hobnobbed with them. If anybody “ peached ” the 
delinquents incurred the disgrace of having a mark 
made against their names for “ bad behaviour.” The 
bad behaviour, young Hitler soon realised well 
enough, was neither here nor there : what mattered 
was his “ Deutschtum.” Here, then, and thus early 
was one point of departure for his universal Kampj\ 

Adolf’s keen study of the Franco-Prussian War and 
his intelligent interest in history made him even at 
this age thoroughly conversant with the politics of 
Middle Europe throughout the preceding century. 
This fact must be well realised if we are to understand the 
schoolboy’s heat on this question of “ Deutschtum,” 
and his ardour about “ nationality.” Otherwise he 
comes before us a prig, as a somewhat doctrinaire and 
precocious youngster. He was not that, in the least, 
but a boy of flaming enthusiasms and all-devouring 
intelligence. 

It may not be beside the point briefly to refresh the 
English reader’s memory of an involved period of conti¬ 
nental politics. 

The question of the inclusion of Austria with 
Germany had been a more or less burning subject of 
mid-European debate from the time of the German 
Federation in 1815 (when the Austrian Ambassador 
occupied the chair of the great Assembly in Frankfurt), 
right until spring 1938. This loose German Federation 
of Central European States centred more and more 
upon Prussia, especially after the Prussian-Austrian 
War of 1866, ending in victory for Prussia. This and 
the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War altered the 
position and the outlook of affairs. In 1879 Austria 
and Prussia pledged themselves to build up a common 
future, much after the type foreshadowed by Naumann 
in his classic work Mitteleuropa , written in 1916. 

How strange it is, in the light of to-day, to read such 
a passage as the following. “ For centuries the Empire 
of the Carolingians . . . has been non-existent. Neither 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


23 


Imperial Austria nor Royal Prussia, when separated 
from each other, were quite in a position to carry on 
the imperial tradition because each only possessed a 
part of the original power. This will be so until it 
(the Empire) is born again out of the union of the 
Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns ” (!) 

In 1916 the old Emperor Francis Joseph died, and 
the succession devolved upon an unfortunate man 
who himself died miserably in exile only two years 
later, execrated for his efforts to desert Germany, and 
to make a separate peace with the Allied Powers on 
behalf of a demoralised and exhausted Austria. These 
pitiable royalties, and the musty old concepts they 
stood for, constituted the political world in which a 
boy, and then a young man, was growing up who was 
to sweep them into such limbo of the forgotten as has 
never yet been known. Nothing at first but a schoolboy 
at Linz, and then yet'but an individual bit of cannon 
fodder, fighting shoulder to shoulder in the trenches 
with comrades as indistinguishable as himself, Adolf 
Hitler was as yet—to come ! 

No one foresaw Hitler. If anyone had told Francis 
Joseph in 1916 that the Habsburgs were even then 
petering out and that it did not matter in the least ; 
if anyone had told the Kaiser William hesitating at 
Spa in November, 1918, whether or not to flee, that 
the destinies of the Vaterland were to pass from his 
incapable hands to those infinitely stronger of one of 
his soldiers of the line of whom nobody more important 
than his company officer had as yet ever heard ; if 
anyone a few years ago had told the venerated President 
of the German Republic that the ex-service man from 
Munich who had founded such a tiresome and noisy 
Party was to be the last hope of a country tottering to its 
final collapse—Emperor, Kaiser, and President alike would 
have exploded with incredulous and aristocratic scorn. 

If anyone, indeed, in 1903 had told the Herr Direktor 
of the Realschule in Linz that the boy who had just 



24 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


incurred reproof and punishment for appearing in 
school with a cornflower stuck in his hair—that this 
boy was to rule the German world, leader and saviour, 
he too could not have believed. . . . 

But so it was to be. And in consequence of all this 
historical reading and cogitating came the Austrian 
££ Schulbub ” by his concept of the value and dignity 
of strong national roots and ardent pride. Adolf felt 
himself German through and through : German to 
the core. He felt about that cornflower as a British 
youngster would feel about the Union Jack. 

It is a very remarkable thing, in view of the more 
recent developments in Austria, that the proclamation 
made at three o’clock on the afternoon of the fateful 
November 18th, 1918, when the Austro-German National 
Assembly met in the Herrenhaus on the Franzenring 
in Vienna, should have confirmed to the letter all this 
passionate nationalistic feeling on the part of the youthful 
Hitler. ££ At this hour,” said Dr. Renner (the man who 
drew up a Constitution for Austria after the collapse of 
the Habsburgs), £< the German race throughout the 
world shall know that we are a single race with a single 
destiny.” No answer was given in Berlin. 

The German Government there was grappling with 
the hydra of immediate internal problems. Since 
then the European kaleidoscope has taken on another 
pattern, but all this brings out for foreigners the force 
of the impressions and convictions which went to the 
making of Hitler’s mind as a boy and youth, and latterly 
as a young ex-service man. 

In order to obtain a little first-hand information 
about Hitler’s school days, the writer took a trip to Linz, 
where Hitler attended the Realschule, 1 and had a chat 
with some of his former school comrades. It was no 
easy matter hunting these up, for most of them are by 
now scattered to the four corners of the earth. 

1 In the “ Realschule,” chief stress is laid on living languages and 
sciences. 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


25 

“ I met him/ 5 said Herr Joseph Keplinger, now 
working as an architect in Linz, “ in 1901, here in the 
Realschule. We were thirty-two boys all told, all from 
the same class of life. There was no private school in 
Linz at that time. 

“ Hitler didn’t live right in Linz, but just outside, at 
a place called Leonding. He ate his midday meal 
somewhere roundabouts, and was generally off home 
in the afternoon as soon as school was over. That’s 
how it happened we didn’t see so very much of him, 
except during school hours, and playing Indians, when 
he was always on hand. 

“ We all liked him, at desk and at play. He was no 
more hefty than the rest of us, but an enterprising little 
chap. He had 6 guts.’ He wasn’t a hot-head, but 
really more amenable than a good many. He exhibited 
two extremes of character .which are not often seen 
in unison, he was a quiet fanatic. The whole class 
acknowledged this boy as the leader. 

“ His favourite lessons were history, geography and 
German. The history master was often astonished at 
Hitler’s aptitude for this study.—Herr Dr. Huemer was 
our teacher for German. He always picked on Hitler 
for Repeater, that is, something would be read aloud 
to us and then one of the boys had to get up and tell it 
again in his own words. As a rule Hitler made the 
Repeat a jolly sight more interesting than the original. 

“ He was good at gym, too. He topped the gym 
class as long as he was at school. 

66 Hitler didn’t bother very much about what he’d 
got to learn, only over what he wanted to learn ! When 
things were taught which did not interest him he read 
Cooper’s Leather Stocking or something of that sort; 
subjects which he liked, such as history, however, he 
followed with close attention. 

The accounts of battles we played out for ourselves, 
in our £ Indians ’ games, down by the Danube meadows. 
Hitler loved this sort of thing. He gloried in a scrum, 



26 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


and always made for the most redoubtable enemy, 
when the two would have a first-class wrestle. Hitler 
got c all het up 5 over this. 

“ He was very hot, too, like most of us youngsters, 
about being German. The stricter the measures taken 
by the Government to suppress this feeling about 
nationality the more dogged we became. Bismarck 
was for us a national hero. The Austrian authorities, 
of course, held his memory in the utmost detestation. 
The Bismarck song, and lots more German hymns and 
songs of the same character, were forbidden to be sung. 
It was a crime even to possess a sketch of Bismarck. 
Although, privately, our teachers felt well enough that 
we boys were in the right of it, they had to punish us 
severely for singing these songs and brandishing our 
German loyalties. 

“ Hitler attended our Realschule here for four years, 
when he suddenly fell ill. Oddly enough I never heard 
any more of him until I chanced on his name in the 
paper one day years and years afterwards. It said he 
was busying himself with politics in Munich. 

u I saw him again in 1926. I weht to his lodging 
there. He was awfully pleased to hear of old Linz 
again, and told me not to fail to look him up now and 
again. So, I’ve done so a few times, and always found 
him friendly, always the old 6 Schul-Kamerad.’ ” 

Herr Keplinger was kind enough to introduce me to 
another “ old boy ” of the Linz Realschule, Herr Werner, 
who had pretty much the same account to give of Adolf 
Hitler. One particular stands out. 

“ Once,” said Herr Werner, “ during his school days, 
Hitler stayed for a little time with an old lady in Linz. 
This old lady herself told the tale of how the boy was 
always buying candles, and she couldn’t make out 
what it was he did always to be needing a light at night. 
She surprised him on one occasion, and found him 
doubled up over maps, very busy doing something to 
them with coloured pencils. She asked : £ Why, Adolf, 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 27 

what on earth do you suppose you are doing ? 5 and he 
looked up and smiled and said : c Studying maps. 5 55 

Herr Werner showed me quite a treasure, a little 
water-colour he himself had once begun, as a boy at 
school, and which Hitler had finished for him. The 
subject was a picturesque little mill among the mountains. 
It was quite obvious where one artist had left off and the 
other had taken on. “ Hitler was the best boy in the 
drawing class, 55 said Herr Werner, “ he used shades 
in painting which never occurred to us, and painted 
things so lifelike we were all astonished. 55 

I went on to Leonding in company with these two 
friends of Hitler’s boyhood. We traversed the same 
road that he had trudged to and fro for four years, a 
green “ Rucksack 55 on his back containing his books 
and pencils. For the most part it was steeply hilly, 
for Linz lies on the Danube plain. Then we came to 
fields and meadows set here and there with low but 
massy towers, relics of a Napoleonic day when watch 
was kept from these over the river below. The 
Kiirnberg towers aloft on the right, crowned by the 
famous Kiirnburg (Castle) in which the Nibelungenlied 
is said to have been composed. 

We had been walking about an hour when we came 
upon the outlying houses of Leonding. It is a typical 
little highland village, only to be found in Bavaria and 
Upper Austria. In the middle stands the village church, 
and a few steps further along, just across the street, lies 
the grass-grown cemetery. Here one discovers the 
grave of Hitler’s parents. 

In the immediate neighbourhood stands the peasant 
house in which the Hitler family lived. It has often 
changed hands since, hence the present occupant could 
tell me nothing of the former owners. Here, however, 
I came across yet a third school companion of young 
Adolf. Herr Huber had not much to add. “ Some¬ 
times we went after apples together,” he said, “ like the 
rest of the kids hereabouts,” but Hitler never began 



28 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


munching his before everybody else had got one. Other¬ 
wise he tossed his over. Sometimes he’d sit on the 
churchyard wall, staring up at the stars. No one bothered 
about the boy staring up into the Austrian night. . . . 

But to revert. 

The tension at home over the question of Adolf’s 
future was to resolve itself with tragic suddenness. 
Returning home one afternoon after a visit to a neigh¬ 
bour the father was seized in the street with a heart 
attack and died in the arms of a passer-by. This was 
on January 5th, 1903 ; Adolf was thirteen years old. 

The shock had a characteristic reaction on Frau Clara 
Hitler. She felt herself bound to further her husband’s 
design for the boy, and so he continued going to school 
for another three years with officialdom as the goal still 
before his eyes. 

Then Adolf fell ill and was confined to bed for some 
considerable time with lung trouble. After that the 
doctor persuaded Frau Hitler that a sedentary life in 
an office was not going to be the best thing for the 
boy : in fact, he must not even go back to school for 
a year. The poor mother had another characteristic 
reaction, and now promised he should be taught drawing 
and painting instead. 

But even now his hopes were to be frustrated. After 
a protracted illness Frau Hitler herself died on December 
21 st, 1908 ; not before the modest savings amassed by 
the husband had been exhausted. Nothing remained 
for Adolf but a negligible “ orphan-pension,” insufficient 
to keep body and soul together. The home was sold up, 
and at eighteen Adolf Hitler came face to face with the 
problem of earning his livelihood. 

He does not seem to have been in any two minds 
about what he meant to do. 

He was going to Vienna to study art—to join the 
picturesque and adventurous ranks of those who have 
been content in every age and centre to live on a crust 
in a garret, upborne by flowering genius and the glorious 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 


29 

comradeship of fellow-students, miserable and enthusiastic 
as himself. 

That he turned his steps to Vienna instead of to 
Munich, the art capital of Germany, can be accounted 
for in two ways. During the latter half of the nineteenth 
century there had been a great flowering of painting 
and architecture in Vienna. All sorts of princely palaces 
had recently been erected in that city. It abounded in 
art galleries and in magnificent collections of pictures 
from the masterpieces of almost every school in the 
world, to the works of contemporary men. Vienna was 
a much bigger capital than Munich, and Hitler had 
gathered every bit of information he could about the 
great academy schools there on the Schillerplatz, a 
stone’s throw from the wonderful Hofgarten and the 
Opernring. 



CHAPTER II 


VIENNA 

T HE Ftlhrer has often been acclaimed as an artist. 

In him we have that very unusual combination, 
an artist and a keen man of practical affairs. His passion 
for music is well known, especially for Wagner. But, 
indeed, his highest and most persistent aspiration as a 
young man was for painting. He had, as a matter of 
fact, the architect’s eye. Grandiose building, imposing 
vistas, grandly planned elevations, the fine light and 
shade of dome, architrave, column, lintel, inspired him, 
as landscape or portraiture inspires others. 

It does not appear that young Adolf had ever been 
in Vienna before the fateful day, when with fifteen 
gulden in a bag slung round his neck, his sketches clipped 
under his arm, and all his worldly goods in a small case 
in his hand, he arrived at the Westbahnhof full of the 
highest boyish hopes and purpose. Undismayed by the 
magnificence of one of the most beautiful cities of Europe 
—perhaps intoxicated by it—or by the stir and traffic 
in the streets, he made a bee line down the Mariahilfer- 
strasse to the Schillerplatz and the heart of imperial 
Vienna. 

His idea was to apply for entrance to the schools of 
the Academy of Art. 

As he entered the beautiful square, dominated by 
one of those public statues than which nothing more 
fittingly artistic is to be seen in any other city, and 
confronted the imposing academy at last, the young 
man’s spirits could not but sink a trifle. Heavens ! 
here were tens— §CQF€§ —perhaps hundreds of aspirants 

3 ° 



VIENNA 


3i 

like himself swarming up the steps between the two great 
bronze Centaurs which flanked the entrance to the 
vestibule. How would his work stand comparison or 
competition with so many others ? . . . Everybody else 
seemed full of confidence and energy. 

Bracing himself for more of an ordeal than he had 
quite expected, Adolf joined the throng and presently 
found himself but a unit of the long queue of candidates 
awaiting admission to the schools. Everything depended 
on his sketches now ! He thought of them with a fresh 
access of hope and confidence, and clipped the humble 
portfolio containing them more closely to his side. With 
the pride of utter inexperience he could not but reassure 
himself the examiners would be suitably impressed. 


The writer of these pages has been very kindly favoured 
by the present Director of the Viennese Art Academy 
with the names of the professors who directed its various 
activities about this time. It might have been Herr 
Professor Christian Gripenkerl, Franz Rumpler, Julius 
Schmidt or another who at length ruffled over the young 
Hitler’s sketches with rapid and none too readily arrested 
hand. The youth himself was not necessarily aware of 
the gentleman’s identity—who cares on these critical 
occasions for who the examiner may be ? All Adolf 
knew was that the hand summarily clapped his portfolio 
to, and pushed it back to him. 

“ No, my boy,” came the verdict crisply, “ you’re 
not cut out for a painter. You’ve come to the wrong 
place here.” 

Hitler could hardly believe his hears. But this was 
incredible—! 

“ Your aptitude,” added the professor, softening the 
blow, “ appears to be for architecture. I should advise 
you to apply to the School of Building. The porter will 
show you the way.” 

Speechless, Adolf had no option but to make way 



32 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


for the next candidate for summary extinction. Not 
quite extinguished, though ; bewildered, incredulous, 
unbelievably quenched. Was there really no promise 
in his work ? Hadn’t it been worth the pains and hopes 
and all the fond delight he had taken over it ? Had there 
been any pause, the blow might have sent him stunned 
and irresolute away, but then and there Adolf found 
himself being ushered elsewhere down a long, imposing 
corridor lined with Greek statuary, only to be brought 
forthwith into the presence of another Herr Professor. 

Again the portfolio was lugged forth, and Professor 
Wagner or Professor Oliman (whichever it might have 
been), claimed possession. 

This time there was less haste ; less prompt decision. 
In fact, one or two of Adolf’s drawings rather seemed to 
take the master’s fancy. 

“ H’m, not bad ! Not at all bad ! ” 

A scrutiny, a pause—more sketches turned over— 
then came a sharp bespectacled glance into the candidate’s 
anxious and eager face. 

Where have you studied architecture ? ” 

“ Nowhere,” Adolf was obliged to own, “ I’ve not 
had any lessons--” 

The examiner seemed loath to credit it. Turning 
over yet more sketches with an approving eye, he insisted : 

“ You mean to tell me you were never in a School of 
Building ? Not even at a School of Art Industry ? ” 

“ No,” repeated Adolf, “ never.” 

The professor shrugged his shoulders disappointedly. 
££ That’s unfortunate,” he said, <£ I’m afraid there’s 
nothing to be done, then, here. This is no place for 
beginners. You must try elsewhere—get some ground¬ 
work in first.” 

And again the portfolio, clapped to, came back to 
him rejected. 

Adolf realised, dully, there was nothing for it but 
to go. Presumably he suffered all the agonies charac¬ 
teristic of the beginner’s experience. The way had 



VIENNA 


33 


failed to open. His pictures had proved no Open 
Sesame to the career for which he had put up so strenuous 
a fight at home. 

At a total and sudden loss, Adolf came out again 
into the gay Viennese sunshine, into the proud white 
and green of the squares and boulevards, nothing now 
but a stranger, and one at a frightfully loose end. . . . 

He made his way, somehow, to the humbler parts 
of the city and found some sort of a cheap lodging. 
Then in a few days his money was gone and he came 
face to fadfe with the fact that to eat he must work and 
earn. 

Adolf wandered about Vienna before he found a 
job, as indeed he was often to wander about it hungry 
and workless during the next two years, with nothing 
but the cold comfort of the city’s historicity and beauty 
upon which to stay his hope and courage. His talent, 
they said, lay in the direction of architecture—here, 
indeed, was architecture enough to stare at all day long, 
and wonderful gardens to sit in, and great galleries to 
visit. 


The Fiihrer has written at some length in Mein Kampf 
upon art. 

It is quite obvious that the Fiihrer adheres in his taste 
to the strictly academic in painting. He has no sympathy 
whatever for “ Bolshevism in art ” by which he designates 
its modern post-War tendencies. This fact may certainly 
be ascribed to the impressions he received at this period 
in Vienna from his wanderings at a loose end through 
the great collections there. In the Historical Museum 
of Art he could follow all that is finest in painting from 
the Italian Primitives down to the great Dutch land¬ 
scapists of the seventeenth century, and at last to 
Velasquez. 

It would require more space than is at the writer’s 
disposal to offer here any notes on the reaction of 

c 



34 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


German and Austrian art over the turn of the century 
to the influence of the various new schools in Paris 
which were already developed far ahead of those in 
any other country, and which had already laid the 
foundations for those wildest departures from the 
accepted (the academic), which only really soared into 
complete incomprehensibility after the Great War. 

Had Adolf succeeded in passing the august Renaissance 
portals of the Art Academy in Vienna, it is possible he 
might have viewed some of the expressions of con¬ 
temporary art with the insight which only comes of 
technical artistic training, and of interest in technical 
artistic problems. For although the first decade of the 
twentieth century was marked by no particular “ ism ” 
in the art life of Vienna, the students there were yet 
quite free to follow the dictates of their own inspiration, 
to make their own incursions into the unknown and as 
yet unattempted. 

As it was, Adolf Hitler remained outside, as the 
Fiihrer may remain a “ groundling.” The problems 
of art are not exercising the credulity of the public 
and the ingenuity of the critics to-day as they exercised 
both perhaps a decade ago. The Fiihrer in Mein Kampf 
has delivered himself of an indictment of extravagance, 
decadence and insanity in painting, not so much as an 
artist as a moralist. He does not like the type of mentality 
expressed by that art which has thrown overboard all 
the aspiration and the technique of the painting he saw 
as a boy in Vienna. He hopes little from modernism in 
art as an educative factor in the life of the sound nation. 
There will be hundreds of people who can endorse his 
forceful pages on painting, who cannot, perhaps, see 
eye to eye with him on all other matters. 

As we shall have occasion to relate later on, Adolf by 
no means abandoned his drawing after the rebuff he 
received on his arrival in Vienna. He persevered with 
his pencil, confining himself almost exclusively to archi¬ 
tectural subjects, and attained sufficient proficiency to 



VIENNA 


35 


fall back upon this sort of work for a living when all else 
failed. During the War he had done some sketching in 
the trenches. Some of his things are likely to be seen in 
the Brown House at Munich to-day. 

The late Professor Troost designed the Brown House 
after a rough design and plan of the Flihrer. It was 
to the Studio of this artist that Adolf Hitler always 
betook himself in later years when affairs of State per¬ 
mitted. Hitler personally drew the plans for the various 
alterations which became necessary at the Berghof (his 
country place near Munich) after his assumption of office. 
He is still keen about architecture and building, notwith¬ 
standing the immense press of affairs which otherwise 
occupy his time and attention. His artistic talent lies 
chiefly in this direction. Instead of becoming an archi¬ 
tect in bricks and mortar, however, he has become the 
architect of rebuilt Germany. 


Wandering about Vienna, wondering what on earth 
he was to do, penniless and alone, Adolf noticed that 
everywhere building seemed to be going on. Enormous 
palaces were in course of construction all over the city. It 
occurred to him one day in some such busy spot to beard 
the foreman and ask to be taken on, bricklayer, mortar 
mixer, hod carrier—anything—for a daily wage. The 
foreman eyed him over, bethought himself a moment, 
then with a nod assented. 

There could not have been much unemployment in 
Vienna at that date. Adolf, at any rate, was fixed up 
for a while. They took him on as a day labourer, liable 
any time to dismissal, and paid him scarcely enough to 
keep body and soul together. It was a mere pittance. 
He found a lodging, but a pretty wretched one, in a dim, 
damp, sunless hovel, shared with a work-mate at the back 
of a cellar used as a dwelling-place. The work was hard, 
and for five solid years Hitler never knew what it was not 
to go hungry, daily. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


36 

The story of these years in Vienna has been more 
fully and more biographically recounted in the Kampf 
than anything preceding them. To many students of 
Hitler’s life they are the most significant of all. It was 
in Vienna, in constant need and poverty, losing a job 
as soon as finding it, rubbing shoulders with want and 
vice and misery in every form, having endless political 
wrangles with fellow-workmen, none too friendly disposed 
towards one, somewhat hard of persuasion, tramping the 
streets, observant of all who passed—that Adolf Hitler 
sensibly or insensibly laid the foundations for all his 
future thinking, study, and activity. 

Still a lad in his teens, he had these hard times to pass 
in the school of adversity. As a result he laid it down 
afterwards in one of the stressed passages in his book 
that the Social Problem must be tackled from below and 
not from above. That is the dictum of the man who 
has been through the mill, not of the theoretical economist. 

His mind was acutely busy, taking in every problem 
that presented itself, from the problem of the despairing 
woman who on pay day fails to wring a coin from the 
still more despairing and therefore drunken father of her 
starving children, to the most philosophical problems of 
impossible political expediencies. The Vienna of that 
time furnished an extraordinarily strong and analytical 
young mind with an amazing human phantasmagoria 
upon which to exercise itself. Hitler confronted, as a 
boy of sixteen and seventeen, the Gordian knots which as 
Fiihrer and Chancellor he cuts without further ado. 
But it was as that boy under twenty that his decisions 
were reached how these things were each and severally 
to be dealt with. 

He came face to face with Communism, Marxism, 
Jewdom, with Capital and Labour, with problems of 
race deterioration, immorality and disease, and instead 
of accepting the proffered panacea of any already 
existing theories of betterment, he smashed, as it were, 
every one of these hard stones to powder in the powerful 



VIENNA 


37 

machine of his own thought, and began afresh, from the 
very beginning and with very far-reaching vision, to build 
up in his own mind the entire State afresh as a State fit 
for decent human beings to live in. 

He tells of a discussion, one day, on a scaffolding high 
up on one of the palaces of Vienna, between himself and 
some Communist fellow-workmen. The young Hitler 
had not yet made up his mind as to his own political 
creed. The Communists were impatient and offered him 
the alternative of joining their lot or of being summarily 
stood off the job. It was in the midday pause : they had 
been arguing and munching bread on the scaffolding. 

When the hour struck for turning to again young 
Hitler found he wasn’t wanted any more. The foreman 
dismissed him. . . . He could not persuade himself that 
these Marxist mates of his were in the right of it. Merely, 
so far, from observation, it seemed to him that the Marxist 
theory offered a paradise quite impractical in reality ; 
he had no sympathy with its anti-religious side, and no 
faith in its message to the working man. 

So things went from worse to worse. Presently he 
could no longer afford to share the hovel behind the 
cellar. He crept at night into some more or less sheltered 
corner of a courtyard or alley in any one of the narrow 
streets in the older quarter of the city, if any such spot 
could be called sheltered in notoriously “ windy Vienna.” 
His sleep, there, on the cold hard ground, was broken by 
the noises of the town and by the sound of distant military 
music in the cafes and the parks. 

By day the gorgeous panorama of the gay and polished 
life of the great Viennese thoroughfares of pleasure 
offered itself to his moody contemplation. He contrasted 
not only his own wretched lot and hopeless outlook 
with that of the bespangled men and women of the 
Graben, the Kaerntnerstrasse, the Ring, but the lot of the 
hundreds, nay, thousands of others in like cases with 
himself. Instead of driving Hitler into the ranks of the 
Reds, the spectacle had the opposite effect upon him. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


38 

He believed that the hideous contrast he saw between 
rich and poor in Vienna was due to “ Marxismus ”— 
a radical (and later on he came to believe it was a 
purposeful) misdirecting of the proletariat. 

From time to time he got a job. But sooner or later 
the question was sure to crop up whether he would join 
a Workers’ Union. It speaks volumes for the young 
man’s conscientiousness, that in spite of the inevitable 
consequence of refusal, he was immensely chary of 
committing himself. He always got involved in the 
lunch hour in hot political discussion with his mates. 
He braced himself to refute such postulates as that the 
“ Nation ” was nothing but a concept invented for the 
advantage of the ruling classes, that the “ Law ” was 
only a means of oppressing the poor, that the “ School ” 
was a system of punishment, and that “ Religion,” and 
“ Morality ” only amounted to an opiate for the common 
folk. 

It was all new and strange to him, since hitherto he 
had heard nothing of Karl Marx and his theories, or 
of the system of Trade Unions. These debates helped 
him to hammer out his own ideas on the hard anvil of 
theses utterly repugnant to his personal sense and feeling. 
He began now to distinguish between the different party 
programmes of the time, but viewed them each and 
every one with reserve and criticism. For one thing, he 
distrusted the universal vote of the Social Democrats 
to better the state of things just as profoundly as he 
distrusted Communism. 

We get the impression of a fearfully serious and 
responsible-minded young man debating these things 
as youths of his age in England might debate the chances 
of the cup-tie. Undernourished and wretchedly clothed, 
there was nothing he could afford by way of interest in 
life except these wordy arguments—no fun, no recreation, 
no friendships,—no girls. As soon as it appeared to him 
demonstrable that the Trade Unions were nothing but 
the tools of “ Marxismus,” he decided absolutely against 



VIENNA 


39 

them. It was no use bothering him to join any such 
thing. 

“ All right, then,” his mates would greet him as 
he turned up at work next day, “ you won’t join the 
class-conscious Workers’ Front ?—you’re a traitor. 
We’ve only short shrift for the likes of you. You can 
clear-” 

Once an older man, sorry for the youth, mumbled 
in his ear as he turned to go : 

“ What’s the use ? It’s no good holding out against 

’em. They’re in the majority, they are- You’ve 

got your grub to earn.” 

Out on the streets again. Adolf found a queer shelter 
in the lamp-room of a sort of labourers’ barracks. He 
could roll up here among a collection of indescribable 
lumber, and, sleepless in the dirt and fetid air breathed 
over and over again by a number of wretched companions 
in the night, cudgel his brains as to the outlook. Not 
the least of his misery came from neighbouring sounds 
of children crying and of a wife being beaten by her 
drunken husband. 

Everything around him, especially this screaming and 
these blows, convinced him that these were the con¬ 
sequences and the victims of a teaching criminally false 
in essence. In the reek and dirt of that place Hitler’s 
youthful resolution hardened to fight “ Marxismus ” 
tooth and nail. 

But, meanwhile, for himself something else must be 
tried. Two years of these experiences had sufficed to 
make it' clear that there was no place for him as an 
unskilled workman and a political free thinker in the 
ranks of Viennese labour. 

He harked back to his old love—drawing. In spite 
of the death blow to his artistic ambitions with which 
he had been greeted on arrival in the capital, Adolf 
felt that this after all offered the only way out of his 
difficulties. He scraped together somehow or other 
the few Groschen necessary to buy the most essential 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


40 

tools of the poor painter’s trade, and hit on a fourth- 
story attic in a third-class lodging house by way of a 
studio. 

For the next three struggling, saving, starving, working 
years Adolf Hitler’s life took on a strange complexion. 
His was not the picturesque and harrowing story of the 
garret artist living on the flame of his own unrecognised 
genius with which we are so familiar. What sketches 
he made, he sold, and so managed to live, but neither 
his talent nor his market led to much. His interest in 
politics, so rudely awakened, really coloured all this 
period. Now that he had time to read, he read, he 
studied ! Fie laid hands on every pamphlet, paper, 
book or manifesto going which might throw light for 
him on the theories and principles by which the working 
lives of his former associates were determined, and 
to whose ruthlessness his own experience bore witness. 

Hitler’s serious political study began in this studio 
of his in a Viennese attic. 

And then something else attracted his attention, 
infinitely far-reaching in its consequences. 

Prior to his arrival in Vienna Adolf Hitler had never 
seen a Jew. In Vienna at that time, however, out of a 
population of some 1,364,500 inhabitants, 118,000 were 
Jews. One of their synagogues, a brick building in 
Moorish style, stood in the Tempelgasse, not far from 
the great Praterstrasse, and in the same Bezirk or quarter 
of the city, Leopoldstadt, was to be found the synagogue 
of the Turkish Jews. 

It was the odd appearance of a passer-by in his 
gaberdine caftan which arrested the country youth’s 
eye. He was standing looking in a bookshop window 
at the moment. Was this tall black figure with the 
sharp black eyes and queer locks pendant on either 
side of the face a Jew ? Well, then, what was a Jew ? 
Was a Jew a German ? 

In Linz there had been but few, and these so indis¬ 
tinguishable from the rest of the townsfolk that Adolf 



VIENNA 


4 1 

knew no other distinction than that they professed a 
different religion. That they had often been oppressed 
and persecuted on account of this was also within his 
knowledge, and the fact was capable of calling up his 
sympathies. He thought such a thing as Jew-baiting 
was barbarous. The sudden encounter with this Rabbi 
gave a new turn to his all-devouring political curiosity, 
and he determined, next, to study some of the anti- 
Jewish literature disseminated by the anti-Semite Party. 

All the time it hardly satisfied him. He saw in it 
mere propaganda. Only later when the “ Judenfrage 55 
came to be identified in his mind with the “ Marxismus,” 
about which it was already fully made up, did he develop 
that attitude towards the Jews which it has been so 
particularly hard for English people to understand. 

Those who have had no occasion to study the long¬ 
standing question of anti-Semitism in Europe, and to 
whom the Jewish question as it may present itself in 
England presents no particularly urgent or dangerous 
features, must turn to the pages of Mein Kampf to learn 
the reasons for Hitler’s hatred of the machinations of the 
Jews in Germany. As a youth he had opportunity 
enough for observations on this head in Vienna. 

The first unpleasant discovery he made was that most 
of the pornography to be observed in the book shops, 
photo-shops, films, etc. etc. (and Vienna could rival 
Paris in this respect), in nine cases out of ten issued from 
Jewish sources. He turned his attention to the Viennese 
press, and from respect and admiration passed to con¬ 
tempt for the venality and partisanship. He pursued 
his solitary and brooding studies and enquiries, as the 
questions arising out of these observations assumed ever 
more and more importance for his comprehension of 
the Social-Democratic system which appeared to be 
responsible for much that struck him as politically 
iniquitous. He traced everything ultimately to 
Marxismus, and Marxismus itself to Jewish support and 
sponsorship. 



42 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


The National-Socialist case against the Jews has been 
set forth lucidly enough over and over again. It has 
received much attention abroad at the hands of friendly 
or unfriendly exponents of the Third Reich. It would 
serve little purpose to cover the ground again here, 
especially as we have only to do with those interests of 
the young Hitler in Vienna, which had so great a share 
in the formation of his political ideas. It was in these 
years of bitterness and poverty he came to hate the Jew 
for his financial stranglehold on all classes of the popula¬ 
tion, and for the cosmopolitan and materialistic influence 
he exercised, fatal to the existence of a healthy national 
growth and sentiment. 

Even after the drastic steps recently taken to reduce 
the number of Jews in Germany and to curtail their 
disproportionate activity in every sphere of German life, 
a high percentage of the Jewish population of the Reich 
still remain. 

“ I am an ex-Service man,” a Jew in Munich recently 
told the writer, <£ and a strictly orthodox Hebrew. Bui 
I have all the rights of a German because I fought in the 
War. Hitler is against us but he is as just as anybody 
can be.” This ex-soldier is in fact actually living in a 
house once occupied by the Ftihrer for eight years. He 
showed the writer Hitler’s room, and spoke of him with 
extraordinary appreciation. “ He did more for his 
people than any man before him has done,” he observed. 
“ and made a favourable exception for all of us ex- 
Service Jews. We have nothing to fear, even to-day.” 

The idea of the present book is far more to offer a 
human picture of the Ftihrer, than to make any further 
contributions (from the Nazi standpoint or any other) 
on matters which are looked upon outside the Reich 
as highly contentious. But should the reader, especially 
the English reader, desire to arrive at some real under¬ 
standing of the grounds upon which Adolf Hitler as a 
young open-minded man, new to the “ Judenfrage ” ir 
all its aspects, conceived so deep a hatred of the Jewish 


VIENNA 


43 

race, he cannot do better than spend the inside of five 
minutes over a statement of the case against the Jews in 
Austria and in Vienna which precedes Nazi sources 
altogether. 

It was written, in fact, just about the very time Hitler 
first turned his attention to the question. In The Modern 
Jew , by Arnold White (Heinemann, 1899), two works 
are quoted which put the matter in a nutshell, and put 
it beyond dispute, the Antisemiten Katechismus of Theodor 
Fritsch, and Die Judenjrage in Oesterreich , by Cremieux. 

It was not Hitler who discovered that “ the Jews 
. . . form in reality a political and commercial company 
. . . which aims at the subjugation and exploitation of 
non-Jewish peoples. ... By the practice of usury they 
have completely ruined many . . . and by dishonourable 
means and secret co-operation have so undermined 
established trades and industries, and have got so many 
branches of business into their own hands that honest 
non-Jewish tradesmen can scarcely remain in them any 
longer.” 

Hitler discovered, and with truth, Cfi that they have 
obtained possession of the public press and use it for 
their own purposes.” Even his observations about 
pornography and prostitution were not wrongfully 
ascribed. The contemporary indictment continues : 
C£ One would scarcely assert too much if one said that 
the majority of unfortunate girls who form the prosti¬ 
tutes of the larger towns have fallen through Jewish 
depravity : also that the notorious 6 girl-commerce 5 
will soon be carried on exclusively by the Jews.” 

“ The trouble,” commented the English author, 

grows as the years roll by, and the time is not far 
distant when Jewish ascendency in Austria will bring 
new forces of resistance into being.” 


On the western side of the Ring in Vienna, facing 
the Volksgarten, itself part of the gardens of the Imperial 



44 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


Palace, stand the Houses of Parliament. The curving 
sweep of a broad approach leads to a fine Greek portico, 
with fluted columns and majestic tympanum above. 
The Chamber of Deputies on the left and the Upper 
House on the right form two independent buildings 
adorned with marble statuary and bas-reliefs and great 
bronze quadrigae. 

Adolf Hitler, out of a job, came here, pencil in hand, 
to distract his thoughts with the problem of these classic 
and dignified perspectives. It was a great change oi 
subject from the wonderful Gothic of St. Stephen’s or 
the cheerful baroque of the Pigtail 1 Period represented 
in the old Rathhaus in the Wipplingerstrasse. But as 
the young man’s preoccupation with political ideas 
came to account for more and more of his time, he 
found himself rather concerned with what might be 
going on within the Parliament House than with its 
exterior attractions. 

One day, in fact, he essayed to enter the peristyle. 
A functionary enquired his business. 

“ I would like to hear a debate,” replied Hitler. 
“ that’s all.” 

“ You can’t go in without a ticket,” the man replied, 
indicating a notice to this effect, “ you must obtain one 
the day before.” 

So that was that ! Hitler departed, bought his ticket 
and turned up promptly on the morrow, full of interest 
respect and anticipation. This was a tremendou; 
occasion for him, actually to be going to witness some¬ 
thing of history in the making. 

“ You’ll find a seat in the Second Gallery,” he wa. 
told, and up he found his way. Along a corridor witl 
endless doors, on the one side he went. Opening ont 
of these with noiseless care, he peeped within. Yes 
this seemed to be it, all right—this was the Seconc 
Gallery. Hitler went down a steep little gangway anc 


1 Zopfzeit, Anglic4 Georgian . 


VIENNA 


45 

insinuated himself into the first vacant seat which offered 
itself without inconvenience to anybody. . . . 

But, after all, was this the right place ? Things seemed 
rather odd. Down there in the Chamber people were 
jostling each other in the most unruly sort of groups, 
shouting, laughing, joking, gesticulating like an excited 
mob on ’Change. All was inattention and confusion. 
It took the astonished young man quite a few moments 
before he was able to distinguish that somebody actually 
seemed to be addressing the House ! A Member occupied 
the Rostrum and was short-sightedly reading from a 
paper held close to his face, while his right arm made 
sundry gestures by way of emphasis and accompaniment. 
Only by this token, however, could it possibly be supposed 
that he was speaking ! No one took the remotest notice. 

The universal uproar around suggested nothing so 
much as an annual fair. Then suddenly the Member 
finished : stuck his speech in a case, and came down 
the few steps which led from the Presidium to the floor. 
A few of his partisans, apparently, chancing to notice 
the fact, applauded perfunctorily. Whereupon an 
extraordinary individual, half-hidden behind stacks of 
books and papers, rose up behind the Rostrum and rang 
a delirious little bell for silence. 

For the space of a moment the universal cachinnation 
died down ; a few heads were turned in the direction 
whence the new noise came. A second Member sprang 
up the steps, two at a time, and burst into a flood of 
extempore speech. Hitler could not understand a word 
of it. Then it suddenly occurred to him—this wasn’t 
German. This was some Slavonic tongue ! “ What 

the deuce is it all about ? ” he wondered, “ and however 
many of them follow him ? ” 

Hitler had scarcely been sitting in the Second Gallery 
an hour before he discovered that here in the Austrian 
Parliament were represented four or five nationalities, 
no Member of which understood a word of what the 
others in turn might chance to orate about. Now it was 



GERMANY'S HITLER 


46 

a Czech speaking, now a Ruthenian, now a Serb, now a 
Croatian, and none but the Czechs, Ruthenians, Serbs 
or Croatians in the House understood each orator in turn. 

The speeches were punctuated by wild outcries ol 
approval or disapproval as the case might be from the 
parties concerned. Not infrequently a hand-to-hand 
fight seemed imminent, when the piercing clamour oi 
the little bell did what it could to call the House to order. 
Whereupon the speaker would resume, and again work 
himself up to oratorical frenzy, when the chance passing 
of a German Member across the floor would provide an 
opportune diversion. 

Incited to fury, every member of the speaker’s party 
would precipitate himself upon the offender, and the 
next instant the whole Chamber would be involved in 
a ding-dong fight. A bundle of papers, accurately flung, 
landed bang in the honourable and gallant Member’s 
face, whereupon he immediately collapsed. The German 
delegates got together and hung together, and made 
common cause against the rest of the heterogeneous 
assembly. Whatever could be seized and used as a 
weapon was snatched up and flung or banged or whacked 
or transformed into some wildly launched projectile. 

The din waxed indescribable. One couldn’t hear 
oneself speak. One couldn’t even hear the frenzied 
bell however desperately it was plied by the man behind 
the Rostrum. This individual suddenly gave up— 
grabbed his portfolio—and shot off out of a side door. 
Next thing the astonished onlooker knew was that the 
various international scrums going on all over the floor 
of the House seemed to come unstuck, and a general 
rush ensued towards the exits. 

Horrified and amazed Hitler turned to a neighbour 
in the gallery and ventured to enquire if this was the 
conclusion of the sitting. 

“ Oh, no,” the other answered indifferently, “ it’s 
only an interval.” He seemed to consider things quite 
in order. 


VIENNA 


47 

Presently, to be sure, the Members came trooping 
)ack, heralded by the President who himself, this time, 
vas busy with the bell, very self-assured and bland. 
\ few of the Deputies came down into the Chamber 
md duly seated themselves. Then one of them, a tall 
:hin man with a dry savant’s face, rose and with dignity 
iscended the Rostrum. Here and there the Members 
prepared to listen, many individuals dotted about in 
lingular isolation. 

The speech had to do with Agriculture—mainly. 
\s it dragged its length along all pretence was gradually 
abandoned of paying it any sort of attention. The 
Deputies foregathered in knots to talk, or sat reading the 
lewspaper, or scribbled letters. Only the speaker’s 
adherents made the slightest show of supporting him. 
rhe majority of the House had departed to the restaurant 
ind was refreshing itself after the previous exciting 
passage. . . . 

Adolf Hitler, up in the second gallery, had had enough ! 

To the serious-minded young man who had come 
here, full of respect, for a sort of object lesson at first 
hand in the working of that grand idea, the parlia¬ 
mentary system, the scene he had witnessed was neither 
laughable nor despicable. It was tragic. Hitler had 
already read everything upon which he could lay his 
hands about the English parliamentary system, and he 
had come to the Houses of Parliament that day with 
his head full of fine political theory. What he saw 
seemed to bear it out in no single jot or tittle. 

He couldn’t laugh ! Rather he went down into the 
streets of Vienna once more sick with incredulous dis¬ 
appointment. He retreated to his studious attic and 
turned to his books again, and wrestled week after week 
with the tough problem of the wide discrepancy between 
:heory and practice. He took to haunting the Parliament, 
massing whole hours in the listeners’ gallery, loath to 
:redit that the shocking impression he had at first received 
here was anything but transitory and accidental. Such 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


48 

a conclusion, however, could not be sustained. Th 
Austrian Parliament continually displayed itself to hir 
in the light of an irrational beer garden. 

Hitler has said of himself that his impression one 
strongly recorded, his judgment once clearly formed 
he never went back on it. This chaotic and ridiculou 
Austrian assembly certainly had a decisive and fai 
reaching effect upon his earnest and searching mine 
It did much at its own date and in its own way to hel 
Hitler to form the idea of the responsible individuc 
as Leader as contrasted with a contradictory, irresponsibl 
and incapable majority. 

In such adventures, such hardships, and such studiej 
five years went by for Hitler in Vienna, two years a 
casual labourer, and three years as starveling paintei 
They had been years of grinding poverty, but of ric" 
experience. He had come thither as a mere youth 
He was to leave the city a grave-minded man. Thes 
years in Vienna are looked upon as the formative yeai 
in his life, the most significant for all that was to come. 

Looking back upon them, later, the Fiihrer has neve 
seen the necessity for changing conclusions arrived a 
during that time. He left Vienna at last in despair c 
making good there, and turned his face to Munid 
instead. A confirmed enemy of Marxism, and of th 
Jews, he had as yet no idea of politics as a career. H 
does not seem to have considered himself in such a rol 
at all. He was devoted to his pencil and dependent on ii 
He came to Munich seeking nothing but some sort of 
studio, and some fresh opportunity to dispose of hi 
unassuming artistic wares. 


CHAPTER III 


MUNICH 

O NE sunny day, then, in the spring of the year 
1912, Adolf Hitler arrived in Munich. He came 
down the steps of the Central Station with a delighted 
sense of having left Vienna. Here, rather, was the 
city of his choice, where everything German in him 
could expand and flourish ! The speech of the streets 
sounded familiar to his ear ; it was glorious to have 
got away from the hotch-potch of Vienna and to find 
himself among the friendly cordial Bavarians. From that 
day to this, indeed, Munich has been first of all German 
cities in the Fiihrer’s heart. 

On that bright morning, the young man turned left 
at the Karlsplatz and presently came into the Konigsplatz. 
He was enormously impressed at the sight of it. On the 
one hand stood the column of the Glyptothek and on the 
other those of the Staatsgalerie, while the Propylaen 
closed the majestic vista. 

After a moment or two of absorbed admiration, he 
pursued his way up the broad Briennerstrasse, glancing 
about him right and left taking in every detail of the 
handsome street. At last, however, he found himself in 
the Schleissheimerstrasse. At that time this was an 
unpretentious thoroughfare, somewhat narrow and with¬ 
out much traffic. On either side were rows of long grey 
lodging-houses with smallish shops on the ground floor. 
Hitler fetched up in front of one of these little windows 
on which was stuck a handwritten notice, “ Furnished 
rooms to let to respectable man.” (“ An soliden Herrn 
mobliertes Zimmer zu vermieten.”) Just the thing, he 

49 


D 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


50 

thought, for him ! He glanced again at the shop window. 
It was that of a master tailor rejoicing in the name of 
Popp. 

Quickly making up his mind, Hitler opened the door 
of the house and clambered his way up the dark and 
narrow staircase until he came to the third floor, where, 
apparently, was this room to let. 

Frau Popp herself loves to tell the tale to this day. 

“Yes, I remember it all as if it were yesterday. It 
was a fine Sunday afternoon in springtime, 1912, when 
somebody knocked and I went to open the door. A 
young man stood there and said he’d like to see the 
room we had to let. So I showed it to him. It wasn’t 
quite so well furnished then as it is now. There was 
only the bed in it, a table, a sofa and a chair. But those 
two oleographs still hanging on the wall were there then. 
The young man and I soon came to terms. He said it 
would do him all right, and paid a deposit. 

“ I remember I went back into the kitchen and told 
our Peppi and our Liesel—they were only eleven and 
seven then—not to make so much noise, we’d got a new 
lodger. 

“ Then later I went in again to ask the young man 
to fill up his registration particulars. In small somewhat 
cramped handwriting he scribbled : 4 Adolf Hitler, 

Architekturmaler aus Wien ’ (Architectural painter from 
Vienna). 

“ Next morning my Herr Hitler went out and came 
back again in no time with an easel he had picked up 
somewhere. He began his painting straight away and 
stuck to his work for hours. In a couple of days I saw 
two lovely pictures finished and lying on the table, one 
of the Cathedral, and the other of the Theatinerkirche. 
After that my lodger used to go out early of a morning 
with his portfolio under his arm in search of customers. 
He generally visited the same set of people who got 
interested in his work and sometimes purchased his 
sketches. 



t 


MUNICH 51 

4 4 But he spent a tremendous lot of time, too, in the 
State Library. He was always getting new books from 
there. After he’d spent the livelong day at his painting 
and drawing and what all, he’d often and often sit up 
all night over these books. I had a look, too, what sort 
they were—all political stuff and that, and how to go on 
in Parliament! I couldn’t make it out a bit what he had 
to do with such things, and why he bothered his head 
over them. 

“ At the beginning he used to go out to eat in some 
restaurant or other. Then, after a week or two, he 
began bringing home a bit of sausage for dinner or a 
Nuss-Zjopf (small white loaf). I supposed he had a bit of 
money put by somewhere. I know he must have pinched 
and scraped all that first year he was with us, and often 
got up hungry from table. He was very well behaved, 
and never thought of coming into my kitchen when he 
wanted a drop of water for his tea without knocking. I’d 
holler, * Come in ! ’ and he’d open the door and say, 

€ Do you mind ? ’ polite as anything. 

cfi Of course, we said he was to come right in and sit 
down. Then he’d ask permission to make his tea. 
We said he didn’t need to make any fuss, he was welcome 
any time, but he was always like that. I never in all 
my life knew such a good-mannered young man ! 

“ My husband was sorry for him having to stint himself 
so hard, and more than once asked him to sit down and 
have a bite with us. But he never would, he never did. 
I liked that in him very much. 

“ Then whole weeks would go by without Hitler so 
much as budging out of the house. He just camped 
in his room like a hermit with his nose stuck in those 
thick, heavy books and worked and studied from morning 
to night. 

“ During the whole of the two years he was with us 
I can’t call to mind that he ever had a visitor. Only 
once in a while did he ever get a letter—from his sister 
who was married and lived in Vienna. Anyhow I 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


52 

imagined that was who it was from. He never spoke o: 
having any relatives. 

££ We often asked him to come in the little kitcher 
of an evening and be with us a bit. But he always 
excused himself very nicely and said he’d got to work. 
Once, I remember, I said right out : ‘ Herr Hitler, 

don’t take it amiss, but you’ll make yourself ill with 
those books and keeping on reading and reading as 
you do ! What’s all that reading got to do with youi 
painting ? ’ Hitler got up and smiled, and took me by 
the arm, c Dear Frau Popp,’ he said, £ does anyone know 
what is and what isn’t likely to be of use to him in life ? : 

££ Well—that’s just how he lived here with us those 
two years. He never changed his ways, painting all 
day, and studying, studying, studying all evening and 
night. Things seemed to look up a bit for him as time 
went on ; he found a better market for his pictures. 

££ And then came August, 1914, and the War ! I can 
see him now, that young Hitler, standing showing me 
the card he got from the Kabinettskanzlei letting him 
join the German Army.” (Hitler as an Austrian 
subject had to obtain his Government’s permission to 
enlist in a Bavarian regiment.) 

££ When he was in training he used to come along 
and see us sometimes, glad of a rest from drill and 
exercises. My husband used to send young Peppi out 
to get him a glass of beer. Hitler’d drink it, just to please 
the youngster and us, though I know well he didn’t 
hold with alcoholic drink even then. Only he was that 
obstinate—he would pay for it himself! We didn’t want 
him to, but if we hadn’t let him he’d say, £ All right, Frau 
Popp, then I don’t blow in again ! You haven’t any too 
much to spend.’ 

££ He came the day before the regiment left Munich 
to say good-bye. He gripped my husband by the hand 
and said, £ If I go west, Herr Popp, you’ll write my 
sister, won’t you, in case she’d like to have my bits oi 
things ? Otherwise—keep ’em yourself. Sorry to give 


MUNICH 


53 

you the trouble. 5 He shook hands with me, too, while 
I stood there and cried—we were all that fond of him ! 
He hugged Peppi and Liesel, they 5 d always been such 
favourites of his, and turned tail and ran. 

“ Then he wrote to us from the Front. Once, though, 
when we sent him a little parcel at Christmas he was 
downright angry. He wrote back he had quite enough 
to eat, and we weren’t to deprive ourselves on his account. 
He was very strong on the point, was Hitler. 

“ Yes, well then, when the War was over he turned 
up in our street again and would have come back to 
us, but that the boy and girl were growing up now and 
we no longer had that room to let. Otherwise we’d have 
been as glad as glad to have him. So he bundled his 
things together and hunted round for somewhere else to 
go. He left his easel and gave it to Peppi, 4 Peppi shall 
paint pictures on it, eh ? ’ 

u He often came to see us, though, after that, and 
my husband went on making his clothes until 1928 when 
we gave up the shop. Yes, indeed—the Herr Hitler— 
he was the sort one don’t come across in a hurry ! ” 

So much for Frau Popp. What a picture she draws 
in her own homely fashion, of this lonely ascetic young 
lodger, engrossed in his painting and in great big dry 
and dusty books from the State Library ! There is no 
suggestion in the naive recital of any recreations, any 
youthful gaieties or follies. But a very pleasant impression 
is derived from it of the sober-minded quiet young fellow’s 
appreciation of the good-hearted folk in the hospitable 
little kitchen, and of his affection for the—doubtless— 
radau 1 children. 


I thanked Frau Popp for all she had been so good 
as to tell me* and asked her if she had ever seen her 
lodger again since he had become Chancellor of Germany. 
“ Yes, indeed,” she answered, beaming. “ I heard, 

1 Tomboy. 



54 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


one day, that he was in Munich on a visit to his architect, 
Professor Troost, so I put on my Sunday best and went 
there to see him. Only two S.S. men (Picked Guards) 
stood in the doorway of the house and wouldn’t let me 
pass. I said I only wanted a minute with the Herr 
Reichskanzler—I had known him so long. They asked 
how long, and when I said over twenty years, they changed 
their tune at once. They took me into the courtyard of 
the house and asked me to wait a couple of minutes. I 
did so, standing near his automobile. Then Hitler came, 
accompanied by two other gentlemen. He caught sight 
of me and strode towards me, both hands outstretched, 
his face alight with pleasure, 4 My dear Frau Popp,’ 
he exclaimed, c it is jolly to see you again ! How good 
of you to come along ! 5 I was all of a flutter like and 
half-forgot all I’d been planning to say to him. I managed 
to stammer out a few words, calling him, of course, 
Herr Reichskanzler, but he cut me short at that. 

44 c Oh, no, the old way’s best, please, Frau Popp— 
I’m still Herr Hitler to you.’ And waiving the rest, 
4 Now tell me all about Liesel and Peppi. How are 
they ? ’ 

44 He was putting me at my ease asking about the 
children so, just because I was all of a dither. 

44 1 told him as the two of them was married by now 
—Peppi was in Hamburg and Liesel at The Hague in 
Holland. 

44 4 Dear me ! ’ he said, 4 they’re both a pretty long 
way off, aren’t they ? So you’re all alone now with 
your husband ? How are you two getting along ? ’ 

44 Nothing would do but I must tell him all about it, 
and all about the time in between since he left us. At 
last he declared once more how delighted he’d been to 
see me, and made me promise I’d come again. He sent 
no end of messages to my husband, but especially to 
Liesel and Peppi.” 



MUNICH 


55 

In Munich, of course, the art centre of Germany, 
the young man had greatly extended facilities for the 
study of painting. In the innumerable Bierhallen, too, 
he had opportunities for forgathering with many a 
discursive chance acquaintance only too ready to argue 
with him upon politics. In Mein Kampf the Ftihrer 
records a number of these sittings. Overhearing a remark 
made one day of that pre-War time to the effect that Ger¬ 
many had nothing to fear so long as she could count on 
the friendship of Austria and Italy, the new-comer from 
Vienna was obliged to throw his newspaper aside, and 
give the speaker the benefit of his first-hand better 
knowledge of the subject. “Just get this / 5 he made it 
plain, “ it’s only the German part of the Habsburg 
conglomeration we can reckon on : the other element is 
dead against us everywhere ! As for Italy, she has never 
yet forgotten or forgiven the Austrian domination.” 

The Bierhallen in Munich are by no means mere 
drinking resorts. They serve a variety of public purposes, 
and offer spacious accommodation for every sort of 
festivity or gathering. They are frequented by all classes. 
Everyone has its own particular patrons, and every table 
serves as a nucleus for one of a dozen informal clubs and 
groups of like-minded acquaintances. Hitler brought the 
same powers of observation to bear upon the Mlincheners 
as he had brought to bear upon the people in Vienna. 

In the course of a month or two it amazed him to 
discover how blind or how indifferent many of them 
appeared to be to the signs of the times, the menace of 
Marxismus, for instance, and the need for another sort 
of national expansion than that merely brought about by 
trade. He had many an opportnity of sharpening his 
dialectic in the various Volks Cafes or in the Hof brauhaus, 
and every such discussion spurred him on to further and 
protracted study in the public libraries. Hence Frau 
Popp’s concern over the amount of midnight oil he con¬ 
sumed up in the third story of the Schleissheimerstrasse. 

The two years that elapsed between Hitler’s arrival 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


56 

in Munich and the outbreak of the Great War saw him 
making strides, indeed, both as an artist and as a student. 
His mind, fed by such a persevering course of solid reading, 
was inwardly shaping itself for the work of the future. 
It is possible that his self-education owes as much to this 
period as to that of his preceding precarious existence in 
Vienna. One thing is certain. Adolf Hitler was happier 
and more comfortably circumstanced under Frau Popp’s 
kindly roof than he had been since he left his home. 



CHAPTER IV 


WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


H ERR IGNAZ WESTENKIRCHNER, ex-Service 
man, and war-time comrade of the Fiihrer, 
received the writer in the waiting-room of the offices of 
the Volkischer Beobachter in Munich. But we repaired 
immediately to a quieter room where we could talk in 
comfort. 

“ Dear me, yes, 55 said he, “ the Fiihrer remains ever 
the good comrade that he was ! They published that 
story of how he brought me home from America at 
his own expense, but I 5 11 tell it in full to you. Then 
you shall have the whole account of our doings on the 
Western Front. . . , 55 

A somewhat small-built man, this Ignaz Westen- 
kirchner, thin, with a clean-shaven face much lined 
and worn, and, of course, somewhere about the Fiihrer 5 s 
own age. He wore a simple blue suit and had a regular 
galaxy of various-coloured pencils sticking out of the 
pocket in his jacket. He had a job in the dispatching 
department of the paper, hence the multi-coloured pencils. 

“ After that hideous night in Flanders in 1918 when 
he got gassed, 55 said Westenkirchner, “ I never bumped 
up against Hitler again until we ran across each other 
here in Munich, in the Sterneckerbrau. That was in 
the beginning of 1920. I belonged to the Green Police 
just then—I 5 d enrolled just after the great bust-up of the 
Revolution. We old comrades of the List Regiment 
forgathered at the Sterneckerbrau : Hitler used the place 
regularly. 

“ But in the March of that year I left the police and 

57 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


58 

went home to my own town not far from Munich. 
Hitler was against it. He did all he could to persuade 
me to stop where I was. He said he was dead certain 
he would himself succeed over his own plans and political 
ideas, and that if I’d only hang on, he would give an eye 
to me as well. But I wasn’t to be turned aside. After 
a year or two I got into difficulties—couldn’t make a go 
of it—and found myself among the workless and the 
unemployed. 

“ I decided to clear out, family and all, to the U.S.A. 
At first it wasn’t too bad, but things were none too 
cheerful even over there, and by the beginning of ’33 
I was as poorly fixed as ever, and out of a job. 

“ Anyhow I’d kept up with some of the old List 
comrades and in the autumn of that year one of them 
sent me word that Hitler’d like a line from me from 
time to time. I wrote straightaway to him in Berlin, 
but got no answer. So I had another shot at it and 
wrote to his sister at Obersalzberg. And she sent him 
my news. Not particularly good news—mine ! 

“ Then, suddenly, one day at Reading in Pennsylvania, 
where I happened to be living, I got a telegram from a 
German shipping office informing me that the Flihrer, 
Adolf Hitler himself, had defrayed all the expenses of 
my return with my family to Germany, and that I could 
set out to come home just as soon as I liked. 

“ Overjoyed, the whole lot of us set sail early in 
December. We reached Hamburg and went on straight 
to Berlin. I just longed to see my old comrade again— 
Reichskanzler though he be—and thank him from the 
bottom of my grateful heart for having come so splendidly 
to our rescue. 

44 1 got to the Chancellery and found him just the 
same as ever. His greeting was as warm as man could 
wish. He spoke, too, in our local dialect, 4 Jolly glad to 
see you back, Westenkirchner ! Suppose you just sit 
yourself down and tell me all the yarn.’ 

“ That was all right, of course, but I had to show him 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


59 

my kids ! Hitler was always fond of the kiddies. We 
had a good old talk, as you may imagine, and he wound 
up by saying he’d got a job for me on the party paper 
here in Munich. Wouldn’t hear a word of thanks. I 
just tried to tell him what I felt and what I thought of 
him, but laughingly he waived it all aside, e Take it as 
read ! Take it as read,’ 1 he said, and so I had to.” 

Here, then, we have the full text of the Westenkirchner 
story which everyone so liked. 

The Fiihrer himself has written of his War experiences 
in Mein Kampf, but it is a contribution to the rapidly 
growing Hitler literature to have Herr Westenkirchner’s 
verbatim story. 

In the few pages in which Hitler describes the atmo¬ 
sphere of Europe just prior to the outbreak of the Great 
War, using the oncoming of thunderstorm as his metaphor, 
he attains great impressive dignity. One feels the 
oppression, the fulminating dread. . . . 

Hitler went through the War, on the Western Front. 

He was wounded in October, 1916, went into hospital 
near Berlin and was returned later to his battalion at 
Munich. Then, two years afterwards, in the same month, 
he was gassed at Ypres and blinded. 

It was in hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania, that 
Adolf Hitler heard of the Revolution, the flight of the 
Kaiser, and the collapse of the Fatherland. He writes 
that he had not wept since he stood by his mother’s 
graveside. Now, however, with the gas still ££ ravening ” 
on his eyes, and threatening him with their total loss, he 
weeps again. He stumbles away, falls down on his 
hospital cot, and cries out in anguish all the sacrifice had 
been in vain ! ££ Would not the graves open of all the 

hundreds and thousands of those who had left the Father- 
land full of high belief and hope, never to return. . . .” 

It was at this moment, at this heart-breaking crisis, 

1 A rather free translation for ** Schon gut, schon gut,” perhaps, but 
the sense is there. 



6o 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


Adolf Hitler made his great decision. He would devote 
himself to the rehabilitation of his country. 


» • • • • 

“ Yes, yes,” says Herr Ignaz Westenkirchner, “ Hitler 
was always the one to buck us up when we got down¬ 
hearted : he kept us going when things were at their 
worst—but he couldn’t cook ! That was the one thing 
he couldn’t do. 

“ One thing we couldn’t understand—the rest of us— 
Hitler he’d always attend church parade, even towards 
the end, when most of us had given all that up.” 

Another comrade, Herr Max Amann, formerly regi¬ 
mental clerk, adds that Hitler never wanted a commission. 
He’d joined up in the ranks, and in the ranks he wanted 
to remain. “ Often,” he says, “ Hitler’d take another 
man’s place, if he could—preferably a family man’s— 
and volunteer for the extra dangerous job in his stead.” 

On September 17th, 1917, they gave him the Military 
Service Cross with swords ; on May 9th, 1918, he got the 
regimental diploma for signal bravery in attack ; and 
on August 4th, 1918, he received the Iron Cross, first class. 

It was in his lodgings at Frau Popp’s that the young 
student painter first heard of the shot at Sarajevo. There 
was a tremendous babble going on suddenly outside ; 
in the street below people came running together ; a 
word floated up to his ears, and on his going down 
presently to find out what the commotion was all 
about ... 

Thus Frau Popp, breathless with excitement, “ Der 
osterreichische Thronfolger Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 
ist ermordet worden ! ” (The Austrian heir, Archduke 
Franz Ferdinand, has been assassinated !) 

Hitler pushed past her into the street. Thrusting his 
way into a press of people, staring open-mouthed at a 
placard, he read the announcement of the crime for 
himself. The perpetrators, it seemed, had already been 
arrested. 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


61 


The whole world gasped at the news. No one in 
Munich required to be particularly well posted as to the 
political situation just then to realize that this must 
mean an explosion in the Balkans. The Bavarian 
royalties themselves, to whom the unfortunate Archduke 
and his wife had paid a visit only so recently as the 
previous March, certainly foresaw great political conse¬ 
quences in Austria and Russia, but never dreamed of an 
imminent World War. The city seethed with indignation. 

In Vienna, too, the populace were furious : mobs 
threatened the Serbian Legation. This murder was 
understood there as the overt act of a conspiracy which 
Austria-Hungary suspected to have its origin in Serbia. 
The bomb throwers at Sarajevo, and Princip, the man 
who shot the Archduke, were the emissaries of certain 
secret societies whose aim was a dissolution of the Dual 
Monarchy and the setting up of a Pan-Serb State with 
the assistance of France and England. 1 

A well-posted man like Hitler could grasp the fearful 
impending consequences better than most people. There 
followed a few days of high tension, then, on August ist, 
in view of the Russian mobilisation, came the reluctant 
Imperial order for the mobilisation of Germany’s great 
war machine. Bavaria, of course, contributed her 
Army. Munich got marching orders from Berlin. The 
aged prince-regent, Ludwig, remained at the Residenz ; 
his son, Crown Prince Rupprecht, however, departed 
for the Front, Prince Ludwig Ferdinand at once presented 
himself for a military surgeon, and his sister, Princess 
Pilar, became a nurse. 

Munich was filled with field-grey uniforms, and an 
immense military activity. Youth everywhere was 
sanguine and high-spirited. The sense of war flew to 
everybody’s head like wine. There were processions 
and great cheering. If peasants called to the colours 

1 Amazing details about the background of Pan-Serb conspiracies 
may be found in the interesting novel Apis and Este (by Bruno Brehm), 
published in England by Geoffrey Blfcs, under the title They Call it Patriotism . 



62 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


from the Bayerischer Wald, the mountains and the 
Franconian plains scarcely knew what it was all about, 
they only needed to learn that the Fatherland was 
threatened, to become as conspicuous for their enthusiasm 
at this moment as later they were to become conspicuous 
for bravery. 

Every day troops were moving off. There were 
enormous parades. The companies massed in great 
open spaces swore their oath of allegiance anew ; the 
priests and bishops of the Protestant and Catholic 
churches blessed their departure ; the trumpeters 
sounded the Zum Gebet; and to the accompaniment 
of blood-stirring martial music, and the tumultuous 
leave-taking of the townsfolk, masses of men entrained 
for the Front. 

Day after day crowds assembled in dense thousands 
before the Feldherrnhalle on the Odeonsplatz and burst 
into “ Die Wacht am Rhein.” The quiet-seeming 
student painter from Vienna sang with them as lustily 
as the rest. No sooner had the war bomb burst than he 
rushed upstairs to his t£ Studio ” in the Popp appartement 
and dashed off an application to the Kabinettskanzlei 
of the King for permission to enlist in a Bavarian Regi¬ 
ment and to fight with the German Army. 1 

Immensely to his astonishment and jubilation the very 
next day brought the answer ! The Herr Kabinettschef 
of the Prince-Regent Ludwig accepted the young 
Austrian’s proffer of service, and directed him to report 
himself immediately at the nearest barracks. Hitler 
fell on his knees . . . and thanked God . . . typical, this, 
of the passionate enthusiasm of those first few weeks 
of the War ; typical of high-spirited, patriotic, untried 
youth debouching on every Front. 

1 One of the gibes levelled by his opponents at the Fuhrer is that he 
was a “ deserter ” from the Austrian Army, otherwise how came it that 
he volunteered in Bavaria ? The sufficient answer to this calumny is 
contained in a document issuing from Austria itself. It states that Adolf 
Hitler duly reported himself to the military authorities at Salzburg, on 
February 5th, 1914, but was found to be “ unfit ” (zu schwach) for military 
service. 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


63 

He joined up on the instant as “ Kriegsfreiwilliger ” 
(volunteer), and found himself enrolled as Number 148 
in the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Infantry 
Regiment, called for short the “ List 55 after its original 
Commander. 

On the Exerzierplatz of Munich he went through a 
period of intensive training, of drilling, forming fours, 
evolutions, then route marching and bayonet practice, 
such as was claiming the energies of young men all over 
the world, to fall upon his cot night after night drunk 
with fatigue. 

Not for long, however, was he to remain in the Munich 
Barracks. The regiment was to put in a few weeks at 
Lechfeld, a spot at the confluence of the Lech and the 
Danube about seventy miles west, for further training. 
The men were all glad of the change, and left the city, 
after a tremendous send-off from the populace, only 
eager to come to grips with the enemy before the War 
should be over ! 

They had not long to fret on the leash at Lechfeld. 

On the 21st of October the Regiment List entrained 
for the Front. 

It is at this point Private Wfcstenkirchner, Hitler’s 
trench comrade, takes up the tale. 

“ We were all in topping spirits that day,” he says, 
“ our heads stuffed with no end of war nonsense, sure 
as eggs is eggs the glorious fighting would be all over 
by Christmas or the New Year at latest. We reached 
the Rhine that night. Lots of us south Bavarian chaps 
had never seen the Rhine before, and then in the dawn, 
I remember as if it were yesterday, how it just struck us 
all to see the sun drawing up the mist from the river 
and unveiling before our dazzled eyes that splendid 
statue of Germania which looks down from the Nieder- 
wald. How we yelled the ‘ Wacht am Rhein ’—the 
whole lot of us for the first time going out to war ! 

“ It took us two days to reach Lille as our train only 
crawled from that point onward. Across war-ravaged 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


64 

Belgium we poured reinforcements for the 6th Bavarian 
Division of the Army of the Crown Prince Rupprecht. 
The great battles of the Marne and the Aisne were over 
by this time ; Antwerp had fallen ; the first phase of the 
battle of Ypres in which the Allied enemy had made 
every effort to effect a great turning movement round 
our right flank, clearing the Belgian coast line, and 
forcing us out of Bruges and Ghent, had failed. We had 
established a line to the sea, and we Bavarians amongst 
the rest coming up in time for the great offensive of the 
31st of October and the 1st of November, when for 
forty-eight hours two and a half German Army Corps 
stormed the Wytschaete Messines Ridge, saw the begin¬ 
ning of the second phase of that enormous struggle. 

“ From Lille where we put in perhaps half a day we 
proceeded by train again to a place called Ledeghem, 
but after that it was all marching. Now we were within 
earshot of the guns : the thunder on the Front became 
even nearer. The country seemed awfully flat and 
monotonous ; the only villages we passed were nothing 
but heaps of gaping ruins. Dead horses blown up like 
balloons lay in the ditches. We got the stench of them. 
We went through places called Dadizeele and Terhan, 
and approached Becelaere, 1 a half-demolished village, 
the centre of the enemy’s First Division. Here the fire 
was intensely hot. We advanced in the face of a bombard¬ 
ment. It was already night, cold and wet. We came 
well within range, scrambling over the muddy broken 
ground, taking whatever shelter we could behind hedges, 
in ditches and in shell-holes, our way lit by the glare 
of houses burning like torches in the lurid blackness,— 
and fell at last upon the enemy, in a hand-to-hand fight, 
man to man, fiercely thrusting with our bayonets and 

1 This was on November nth, 1914, when the Sixth Army, under the 
Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, and the new Fourth Army, under 
Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg, rallied their forces for a third great 
attempt upon Ypres. It was recorded by Headquarters how the young 
reinforcements from home had hurled themselves into the enemy's lines 
singing “ Deutschland, Deutschland iiber AUes.” 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 65 

blindly stumbling over fallen friend and foe alike. It 
was our baptism of fire. Four days we had of this at 
Becelaere and Polygon Wood and Gheluvelt, four days 
and nights—sheer hell ! Of the three thousand men of 
the Regiment List, only five hundred came safely out of 
it. The rest were killed, or wounded, or had vanished. 
We had gone into battle as youngsters, we came out of it 
worn, scarred, exhausted men. No longer recruits, we 
were soldiers of the fighting line. 

“ We went into rest billets for a couple of days at a 
place called Werwick ; then found ourselves in the 
thick of it again at Wytschaete. We broke through the 
enemy line north of Messines and turned the left flank of 
the trenches held by the London Scottish. But what 
ground or advantage we gained at one moment was lost 
the next. The enemy was forced to retire ; but he came 
on again a few hours later. The List withdrew, decimated 
and exhausted, to Commines. 

“ The weather got ever colder and colder. As the 
winter set in the line hereabouts established itself and 
the fighting was no longer so fierce until the turn of the 
year. When I say this I mean it wasn’t so fierce in com¬ 
parison with what was to come later ! Looking back 
now, all that business at Becelaere and Wytschaete was 
child’s play to the fighting still ahead. For the most part 
all that first winter we occupied trenches between 
Messines and Wulverghem. Our line was consolidated 
by then and it held like steel for four years. 

“ I was a Meldeganger, 1 like Adolf Hitler. There 
were eight or ten of us altogether. We were very pally 
and made a mob by ourselves. There were even times 
when things couldn’t be said to be too bad—when we got 
parcels from home and letters. We shared out, of course. 
Sometimes, even, we had a game with ‘ Tommy.’ We 
stuck a helmet on the point of a bayonet and shoved it 
above the parapet, when it would be sure to draw immediate 

1 Messenger, trench runner, whose duty was to keep up communication 
between Company and Regimental Headquarters. 



66 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


fire. Even Hitler, who was usually so serious, saw the 
fun of this. He used to double himself up with laughter. 

“ For the most part he was always on about politics. 
Two things seemed to get his goat—what the papers were 
saying at home about the War and all, and the way the 
Government, and particularly the Kaiser, were hampered 
by the Marxists and the Jews. 

“ ‘ It was pretty plain, 5 he said, c what the working- 
classes thought about “ Socialism 55 when the War broke 
out. They just chucked it clean overboard, and joined 
up to a man. Then, again, it didn’t need all that shouting 
in the papers whenever we gained a victory : it stood to 
reason that the German Army was equal to its job. Nor 
did the folk at home need to have their courage damped 
when things didn’t look so well. Going on like that 
would sooner or later only lead to public indifference 
about the War altogether. As for the Kaiser encouraging 
the Marxists, they’d only take advantage of that, to 
stab the Army in the back.’ ” 

• • # • • 

It was that first winter of the War “ that soon after 
daylight on Christmas morning,” writes the English 
Field-Marshal French, “ the Germans took a very bold 
initiative at several points along our Front in trying to 
establish some form of fraternisation. It began by 
individual unarmed men running from the German 
trenches across to ours holding Xmas trees above their 
heads. These overtures were in some places favourably 
received and fraternisation of a limited kind took place 
during the day. It appeared that a little feasting went 
on, and junior officers, non-coms, and men on either 
side conversed together in ‘ No Man’s Land.’ 

“ When this was reported to me I issued immediate 
orders to prevent any recurrence of such conduct. . . .” 

In England, however, the public liked this, and 
credited the Christian gesture, to the “ gentler 
Bavarians ” in the German Army. 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


67 

“ After a time, 55 continues Private Westenkirchner, 
“ the regiment found itself in Tourcoing, and then, 
in the spring, when the British offensive hurled itself 
against Neuve Chapelle, we moved up in that direction, 
and occupied trenches in the neighbourhood of Fromelles. 
Here we remained, more or less, until the following 
autumn. 

“As I said, Hitler and I were Meldeganger. We 
carried no arms except a small revolver, for the sake 
of mobility. Our despatch wallets were attached to 
our belts. Generally two of us were sent out together, 
each bearing the same despatches, in case anything 
happened to the one or the other. The despatches 
were always sealed and marked with one, two or three 
crosses, according as they required time, haste, or express 
speed. It was no joke this despatch bearing, especially 
as Fromelles stood on a bit of a height, and to reach it 
from the troops in the plains and valleys below we had 
to toil up slopes raked by the enemy’s machine-gun fire 
every inch of the way. I can see Hitler before my eyes 
now, as he used to tumble down back into the dug-out 
after just such a race with death. He 5 d squat down in 
a corner just as if nothing’d happened, but he looked a 
sketch—thin as a rake, hollow-eyed and waxy white. 

“It was pretty beastly in those dug-outs all that 
summer. I shall never forget it. Nothing got on a 
man’s nerves more than to have the ground blow up 
right under his feet. You never knew whether or not 
you were sitting bang on top of a powder magazine. 
Suddenly there’d come the most sickening sensation as a 
mine was sprung, and the next thing you’d know was 
that ten or twenty of your pals and comrades, chaps 
who’d been at your elbow only a minute before, were 
flying around in ten thousand bloody bits. That wanted 
some sticking, I can tell you ! 

“By September (1915) the English were pressing the 
attack all along our Front harder and harder. On the 
night of the 25th our position was pretty precarious ; it 



68 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


seemed as if something decisive one way or the other 
must at last come off. The air was full of the screaming 
of shells and of the hideous hissing and crashing of the 
whizz-bangs. Suddenly our Company Officer dis¬ 
covered that telephonic communication with the next 
section had broken down, and Hitler and another man 
got the order to go and find out what was wrong. They 
made it somehow, but only got back by the skin of their 
teeth utterly done in. The wire had been cut : an 
attack in force was imminent. Warnings must be sent 
further afield. Hitler received the order a second time. 
It was nothing less than a miracle how he escaped with 
his life as he came out on the road between Fromelles 
and Aubers. It was literally raining shells. 

“ The attack, however, failed. How we withstood 
it I can’t tell. I only thought to myself at the time how 
lucky our English and Indian prisoners ought to think 
themselves to be out of such a hell. 

“ The second winter came along, and whatever 
trouble the enemy gave us, the water and the mud gave 
us a rare sight more. It’s a marvel we weren’t all drowned. 
We lived waterlogged. Whole sections of the trenches 
had to be evacuated altogether. The pumps couldn’t 
make any impression on the water. It just gained all the 
time. When we weren’t carrying messages, Hitler and 
the rest and I, we were slopping about on the duck- 
boards baling with buckets. He’d carry on with the 
job long after everyone else was fed up with it, and had 
given it up in despair. There was no snow, but ceaseless 
rain filled all the shell-holes around with water so that 
the whole expanse of No Man’s Land was pitted with 
hideous lakes and looked like anything on earth rather 
than a battlefield. 

“ One of our fellows had been hoping against hope 
for a spell of leave. In December that year things were 
a bit quiet on our sector, so he put in for his pass. They 
said he could go on leave for a fortnight if he could get 
anyone to work double tides and take his place. He 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 69 

didn’t need to think that over twice. He knew that Adolf 
Hitler’d do it for him. ... 

“ Christmas came round again without any of us 
yet knowing how soon the War’d be over, or how much 
more of it we’d got to face. It was pretty miserable, but 
they’d concocted some punch in the canteen, and at 
least every man had got letters or parcels from home. 
Everyone, that is, except Hitler. Somehow Hitler never 
got a letter even ! It wasn’t a thing that called for 
remark exactly. But we all felt sorry, inside, and wanted 
him to share and share alike with us. But he never 
would ! Never accepted so much as a Kuchen ! (cake). 
It was no use to keep all on at him. Not that he wasn’t 
free-handed enough when he had anything of his own 
to share, a cigarette or bit of sausage. The measly pay 
we got he’d spend on jam. It was jam first and butter 
afterwards, that is whenever the two things did happen 
both to be within reach at the same time. It was bread 
and scrape anyhow, but Hitler, he was a rare one for 
jam ! 

ct He owned up to me sometimes how stony broke he 
was. Poor chap, he never had a cent ! I blurted it 
right out once : ‘ Haven’t you got anyone back home ? 
Isn’t there anyone to send you things ? ’ c No,’ he 
answered, ‘ at least, no one but a sister, and goodness 
only knows where she is by this time.’ 

“ It was in the summer of 1915 that the enemy began 
to drop bundles of leaflets into our trenches and behind 
our lines. This was their idea of making propaganda, 
sowing seeds of discontent and doubt in our minds as to 
what the fighting was about and how the Kaiser and not 
the German people was responsible for the War. At 
first we didn’t pay much attention to them, but as time 
went on we’d read them just for something to do. Mostly 
we chucked them away. They dropped leaflets against 
the Prussians on us Bavarian chaps. . . . Hitler knew 
what they meant by that. He read the things seriously 
and thought a lot about it all. He seemed to think the 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


70 

English understood propaganda better than we did, 
and this leaflet dropping certainly did have its effect. 
Arguments got up. Grousing increased all along the 
line. The wet and the mud and the weariness, the filth, 
and the wretched grub were all bad enough, without the 
men forever scrapping about what the enemy thought 
fit to tell them. Hitler seemed to expect H.Q. would 
contradict it. But H.Q,. never did. Nothing was done 
to counteract the bad effect among us of those enemy 
leaflets. 

“ Another thing where we found we’d gone wrong 
—the humorous papers had always given us to under¬ 
stand there wasn’t such a dolt on God’s earth as the 
French or British soldier. Now we had to meet them, 
face to face, we knew a jolly sight better. They were 
men, and tremendous fighters. We knew, too, how 
it was all the other way about in France and England. 
The War propaganda there, making out we Germans 
were € Huns ’ and savages, capable of every sort of 
crime, just stiffened the people up to go on. Hitler 
was bitter over this. The enemy was much cleverer 
than we were about propaganda. He only wished he 
could have a say himself! But Hitler then was a 
nobody like the rest of us, nothing but a man in the 
trenches. 

“ The year wore on towards spring. The poor bits 
and stumps of trees left sticking up here and there like 
splintered posts in the mud actually began to put out 
leaves : sometimes a gleam of sun dried the morass a bit. 
Then the fighting renewed itself: new and terrific 
offensives developed all along the line. This was when 
the gas attacks began. The battle of the Somme went 
on right through July without the enemy breaking our 
line anywhere. I shall never forget the night of the 15th 
or the 16th as long as I live. It was an inferno of fire. 
All our field telephones were out of action and we 
* Meldeganger ’ were on the go incessantly, our lives at 
stake every moment. At one time we were opposed to 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


7i 

Australians. They came on over and over again only 
to be mowed down by our machine-gun fire. 

“ News came that the enemy were breaking through 
the line held by the 21st Infantry Regiment : word 
had to be sent along to the 17th and then on to the 
threatened sector. Hitler and another trench runner 
got the order. They set off in the face of almost certain 
death, peppered with shot and shell every yard of the 
way. Half the time they were cowering for shelter in 
shell-holes and ditches. They were wet through and 
half-frozen. Hitler’s companion gave out. Buckled 
right up, unable to stick it another step ! Hitler hoisted 
him along somehow, rather than leave him to his fate, 
and the two of them came at last, God only knows how, 
back to the dug-out. 

c ' 6 On the 20th we delivered a counter-attack and 
wrested back again the few yards of trenches gained 
previously by the enemy. There came a bit of a lull 
after that and we runners did what we could to repair 
damage to our dug-out. Presently with over one hundred 
dead we marched into rest billets at Fournes. 

“ There were letters and parcels awaiting us there 
—all except for Hitler. He just looked the other way 
and busied himself knocking the mud off his boots and 
doing what he could to clean his shirt. 

“ That Somme Battle, a witches’ cauldron of horror 
and fire and death, went on for weeks. Some time 
before we’d all been issued with fresh equipment. Now, 
on the 25th of September, we were marched off to 
Haubourdin, there to entrain next day for Longwy. 
From there we marched endlessly it seemed to us through 
Cambrai to Fremicourt, where we set to work at top 
speed to dig ourselves in, constructing trenches, traverses 
and dug-outs day and night. We took part in the battle 
on the 2nd of October and found ourselves in the sector 
between Bapaume and La Barque. It was all new ground 
to us, and we messengers were lost half the time. 

“We relieved the 21st Regiment. The men came 



72 GERMANY’S HITLER 

straggling back scarcely recognisable in their mud, 
blood and rags. 

“ Once a shell dropped plump into the middle of 
our dug-out. For the moment the lot of us were too 
stunned to know what had happened. The four of 
us lay dead, and seven others lay hideously wounded 
spouting blood on the ground. That was the first time 
Hitler caught one. A splinter had gashed him in the 
face. . . . 

“ On the night of the 5th and 6th of October he was 
on the go with messages between our lot and the 17th 
the whole time. For the most part he and his comrade 
were dodging high explosive in the open, just waiting 
between earthquakes and volcanoes to make the next 
bit there and back. The enemy was doing his utmost 
to smash the German line, but in spite of unprecedented 
ferocity, the attack was completely foiled. We didn’t 
give way an inch. By day we lay as close underground 
as we could. Otherwise, the slightest sign of life on our 
part brought the enemy aeroplanes into play and bombs 
were dropped right from overhead. Of an evening, as 
a rule, Hitler was despatched to Brigade Headquarters at 
Bapaume. To get there he ran such a gauntlet between 
exploding mines and burning houses, that for the most 
part his own clothes singed on his back. Over and over 
again the company was only saved by our artillery from 
the English onslaughts. 

“ From the 7th of October for five days and nights 
it isn’t too much to say that we trench runners got no 
sleep and nothing but snatch grub to eat. Our numbers 
grew ever fewer and fewer. The stunning din in the air 
never let up for one moment. All was the wildest uproar 
of death by shot and shell and cannonade. The thing 
grew unendurable, not to be believed. It took six 
runners now to get a message through, three pairs of them 
set out on the off chance that one man, perhaps, might 
succeed. Our Lieutenant called for volunteers—only 
Hitler responded, and a chap named Ernst Schmidt. 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 73 

The thing was rank suicide. This time only Schmidt 
got back. Hitler had been hit in the left leg. Later on 
the regimental stretcher-bears brought him in. . . . 

“ They took us out of the line on the 13th of October. 
Only a handful of us, apathetic with shock and exhaus¬ 
tion, stumbled off, making our way as best we could 
over the corpses of our comrades. 53 

The Battle of the Somme, as Meldeganger Westen- 
kirchner says, was a long-drawn-out affair. It lasted, 
in fact, some three and a half months, from July well 
on into the autumn. The Allied offensive was planned 
on a single front of about twenty-five miles and was 
preceded by immense preparations and reinforcements 
in men and material. It failed to break our line, in any 
sense that the enemy, public or military, hoped to break 
it, and this for the reason that our line was an entire belt 
of territory scored with lines behind lines, every one of 
which must be taken and cleared and held before the 
enemy could be said to have broken through. They 
failed most signally and at frightful cost. Over two months 
were spent in trying to secure objectives marked down 
for the first day or two of the battle : it took weeks upon 
weeks to decide the possession of a single patch of wood¬ 
land ; prolonged struggles waged backwards and for¬ 
wards over a few metres of contested ground. Verdun 
was balanced by Bapaume. 

“ The companies, 35 pursues Private Westenkirchner, 
“ got smaller and smaller ; hardly thirty men went to 
a company now. And in this shape we awaited new 
onslaughts. The bombardment was incessant. At 
length, however, we went into rest billets at Sancourt. 

“ Hitler’s wound was not too serious, but it would 
incapacitate him for some months. He was sent to 
the rear to the ‘ Sammellazarett 3 Hermies. For two 
long years he had been at the Front : here, for the first 
time in all that while, he heard a German woman’s voice 
again. It was that of the Sister at the Base Hospital 
It gave him quite a shock. But he went on in the Am- 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


74 

bulance Train, through Belgium, back home to Germany 
—after two years ! It was amazing at last to find himself, 
clean, and lying in a soft white bed in hospital at Beelitz 
near Berlin. He had become so unused to all this refine¬ 
ment ! It took him quite a while to get accustomed to 
these new surroundings. 

“ The thing, though, that struck him most, back 
there at home in hospital, was the demoralisation that 
seemed to have got hold of the men. There were chaps 
there making a boast of how they’d purposely maimed 
themselves to get out of the fighting line, and, what was 
a jolly sight worse, no one in authority took notice of it, 
no one seemed to think the less of them for it. What they 
said was ‘ Better to play the coward for a minute than 
to be dead for eternity.’ Everybody was grousing over 
the beastliness of the Front, and the uselessness of the war 
in - general. Hitler could hardly believe his ears. It 
might have been true, but it was unworthy and unsoldierly. 

“ Then one day, when he was fairly convalescent, he 
got leave to go to Berlin. Everything there looked 
baddish, he thought; poverty and hunger and anxiety 
were stamped on every face. He went into one or two 
of the Soldiers’ Homes, but found the chaps there much 
in the same frame of mind as in the hospital, only worse. 
The grousers seemed to have it all their own way. Hitler 
felt pretty sick I can tell you. ...” 

Lance-Corporal Adolf Hitler (as he was now) had, 
indeed, come back from the Front (as he was to emerge 
from the War at the end), with all his ideals and loyalties 
intact. He had gone from the high untried courage of 
the beginning through shock and horror and exhaustion 
to admitted cowardice and fear, but this in turn he had 
conquered and steeled to dogged endurance. It had 
never yet entered his head to start malingering ; or to 
question the obvious rightness of the War. He was 
utterly disgusted by all this, back in Berlin. 

When he was fit for discharge, the “ iron train,” 
which carried men on leave, took him to his Reserve 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 75 

Battalion in Munich. Here things were no better than 
in Berlin. Glowering faces, grumbling speech, and 
incessant invective against Prussians and militarism were 
to be noted on every hand. Hitler couldn’t make it out 
how all this seemed to have got up, and got up so suddenly. 
He found out, however, that a lot of newspaper men 
having gone to the Front, their places had been taken by 
Jews, and that these men were using their opportunity 
to foment discouragement and disunion. Everything 
tracked to a nicety with the enemy propaganda in the 
trenches. If the Bavarians and the Prussians could be 
brought to loggerheads, so much the better for those who 
would like to see both go under. The upshot of it all 
was Hitler put in to return to the Front. Anything 
to escape the state of affairs at home : to be still fighting 
for Germany ! 

66 We chaps in the line were glad to have him back, 
I can tell you. He was one of the best comrades we 
ever had. The company cook excelled himself that 
night and turned out an extra special mess in his honour, 
Kartoffelpuffer, bread and jam and tea. Hitler was 
cheery, too. Long after the rest of us had turned in, 
he was still fooling about with a flashlight in the dark 
spitting the rats on his bayonet. Then somebody chucked 
a boot at his head, and we got a little peace. 

“ On March 4th we left and entrained, via JDouai, 
for Hantay on the La Bassee Canal. Things were 
gingering up and we were preparing for the big spring 
offensive at Arras. By April 28th we were in position 
at Biache. There was nothing to see but a waste of 
water-logged shell-holes. On May 3rd we were in action 
at Roeux ; and five days later we relieved the 20th, in 
the middle of a gas attack from the English. The effect 
of it was appalling. We messengers had a severe time of it, 
continually under fire, rain in our faces cutting like knives, 
mud up to our knees. The earth was going up in cascades 
all about us ; we continually fell headlong into shell- 
holes old and new. The company got scattered anyhow ; 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


76 

many of them never turned up again. Hitler and the 
rest were kept hard at it all night. At one time they were 
within an inch of capture by the English. 

Cl6 But Ypres was the worst experience of all. Fifteen 
hundred strong the List Regiment was moved up into the 
salient on July 13th. We had come by night from 
Roulers to Ledeghem ; from there we marched via 
Terhand to Gheluveld. All this was covering old ground 
for us, but it was no longer recognisable. We saw nothing 
but ruined villages, whole towns lying in masses of rubble, 
the very configuration of the streets all gone, here and 
there a gaunt and jagged gable still gaped to the sky. 
Then for ten days and nights on end we were bombarded 
without pause or slackening. There was the sound 
underground of mining and boring, and fleets of war 
planes rained bombs from overhead. For twenty-four 
hours at a stretch we suffocated in our gas masks. 

66 Then three days of rest billets in Dadizeele. Then 
in the line again between Gheluveld and Becelaire. 

“ On July 31st the English brought their monsters of 
tanks into action over a frontage miles long. They were 
accompanied overhead by planes, and heralded by intense 
machine-gun fire. Our artillery checked their advance. 
The rain foiled them still worse. It came down the 
whole time as if the heavens had opened. The field of 
battle was turned into one vast flooded area in which 
the enemy tanks were useless, and men and horses on 
either side were in as much danger of being drowned as 
shot. It went on, like a second deluge, for four days and 
nights, and was succeeded by weather black as winter. 

6 6 Anyhow, Regiment List was sent southward for a 
spell, to Hochstadt, near Miihlhausen in Alsace. After 
Flanders this was a foretaste of paradise ! We only had 
a couple of months’ rest there, however, and then went 
up into the line again near Lizy on the Aisne. The 
fighting here was dogged and obstinate and lasted 
practically all that winter. Only at the end of January, 1918, 
were we withdrawn to Commines for another spell of rest. 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 77 

£C Hitler’s interest in things in general never dwindled 
away to just concern for nothing more than what the 
day brought forth. That winter the Russian Front 
buckled up, which was an immense thing for us, and so 
did the Italian ; but then came the munitions strike at 
home. For three long years we’d held the Russian hordes 
at bay on the east. Endless columns of Russian prisoners 
swarmed over the high roads in Germany and yet there 
seemed to be illimitable numbers yet to come. It seemed 
almost laughable to us that the German Army, strung 
out on half a dozen fronts, should hope to resist this 
perennial flood. It held out successfully until the events 
of this winter allowed us to concentrate on the west. 

“ For the first time it almost looked as though we could 
change over from a war of defence to one of attack. 
The spirits of the men went up, and one even heard 
snatches of song again in the trenches. We got the idea 
that the enemy was losing heart : it could only now be a 
matter of one last terrific effort, before they, too, collapsed 
like Russia. As the spring advanced it was pretty plain 
they were jumpy and uneasy in those opposite trenches. 

“ Then came the munitions strike at home, the most 
incredible bit of treachery and knavery the world has 
ever seen. The German Army was knifed in the back. 
The lives of hundreds and thousands of our men yet to 
be slaughtered were to lie at the doors of those who 
fomented and engineered this monstrous treason. 
Although the strike was called off too soon for the effects 
of it, as far as armaments were concerned, to be much 
felt at the Front, the consequences on our morale were 
deadly. Everyone began to ask what was the good of our 
carrying on out here if the people at home had thrown up 
the sponge ? The Army began to be divided against itself. 
The enemy wasn’t slow to take advantage of all this. They 
peppered our lines again with propaganda leaflets : 
c Germany in the throes of a general strike,’ c Give it up : 
we’ve won.’ Nevertheless, somehow, we fought on. 

“ In March, 1918, we List fellows evacuated our old 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


78 

position on the Oise-Aisne sector, and pushed forward 
on a four-days’ march which I shall never forget. Forty 
miles covered, every day of it, and this over roads you 
couldn’t call roads any longer, they were so ploughed and 
shot to pieces. We had to make way all along the march 
for endless trains of munition waggons, and the incessant 
struggling forward of heavy artillery. 

44 Every now and again the whole advance would be 
held up by some heavy trench mortar having got stuck 
in a shell-hole. Horses had to be taken from the limbers 
of the other guns to try and haul it out, and masses of men 
turned to lend a hand. A dozen or so gunners hauling 
on long ropes, a grey coil of exhausted men, would bow 
forward at the word of command, 4 Heave,’ and strain 
till the sweat poured down their powder-blackened faces, 
while the horses floundered up to their bellies in the mud. 
If at last the monster at which they pulled reared itself 
by degrees out of the hole, there might be some chance of 
getting forward again. In silence and haste we struggled 
forward, our wide coats flapping and waving, with the 
belts unfastened, the covers of our helmets all in rags. 

44 By evening, one day, we reached Fourdrain. We 
camped three nights in the open air and did fifty miles 
at a stretch. The horses of the batteries ahead went 
down literally in dozens, and had to be summarily put 
out of their misery. 

44 We marched on through heaps of unrecognizable 
ruins, once villages, past La Fere, Vouel and Noyen, 
themselves nothing but burnt and shattered shells. On 
the third day we came to Lassigny and Amy. The farther 
ahead we pushed the more cumbered grew the way with 
the corpses of shot horses and the wreckage of heavy 
ordinance. 

44 The French made terrific efforts to hold Montdidier ; 
they hurled their coloured troops into the battle here. 
After indescribable struggles on March 28th we reached 
Fontaine, about five kilometres west of that place. Here 
we went into the line again for about three weeks. The 



WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 79 

whole Front was in an unceasing uproar day and night. 
It blazed and roared and quivered with incessant 
explosions. 

“ The air was for ever filled with the screaming and 
the whistling of the shells, the flash and thunder of 
explosives and their sickly smell. If this wasn’t enough, 
we were on starvation rations now, and suffered agonies 
from thirst. The baggage waggons and the field kitchens 
got held up and hopelessly stuck in the wrecked roads to 
the rear, or came within range of the enemy guns, so 
that we were cut off even from such supplies as there 
were. One whole week we got practically nothing. I 
remember how Hitler and I sometimes, on an extra black 
night, would crawl out of the trench to scrounge round 
for something to eat. He’d have an empty petrol can, 
and I’d have a knife. We hunted round where they’d 
been slaughtering the horses, and if we could hit on some 
poor shot beast which didn’t stink too badly as yet, we’d 
slice a bit off his quarter. Hitler’d fill the can with shell- 
hole water, and, stumbling back again to the dug-out, 
we’d deliver this booty to the cook ! 

“ We were a crew of scarecrows, I can tell you, when at 
last we were relieved, half-starved and with the sore, 
red eyes of men who haven’t had what you could call 
one decent sleep for nearly a fortnight ! We were nothing 
but a handful of tramps, mud from top to toe, not a whole 
tunic amongst us. We came out of the line over twelve 
hundred fewer than we went in. 

“ They marched us another two or three days to 
rest billets at Chery les Poully. For weeks we’d never had 
our clothes off—now, first to sleep, and then to eat! After 
that we had a clean-up, if out bits of once-upon-a-time 
shirts, or remnants of once-upon-a-time boots were yet 
worth the time and trouble. In the middle of it, though, 
the alarm was sounded ; we were to be rushed to a sector, 
Anizy-Lizy. Grousing and swearing we limped off again 
towards the trenches. 

“ The Front was roaring and blazing away in full 



8o 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


blast. We were only a few hundred strong now, and 
were sent to hold a line some four miles long, for ten days 
and nights. We spent hours sheltering in shell-holes, 
battered with flying clods of earth—when not directly hit 
by shot and shell—which hit like fists and knocked a man’s 
breath out of his bellows. 

“ Then at last, on May 15th, when the 6th Division 
was relieved, the strength of the List Regiment had 
dwindled to that of a single company. Many of the 
chaps had to be carried on stretchers, or helped along 
somehow, or they couldn’t have made the retreat. Two 
of us messengers were senseless, and the rest were ghosts 
rather than men. We filed out of the trenches, as usual, 
before the greying of the dawn. Muddy and sunken¬ 
eyed came the pitiable line of stumbling figures, lots oi 
them with flapping empty sleeves, unbuttoned tunics, and 
blood-soaked rags bound round head or arm or hand. 
Others came two by two, leaning on each other, dragging, 
limping. The stretchers got knocked about over the 
broken ground. Single figures brought up the rear laden 
with rifles and equipment, packs, buckets, and gear oi 
every indescribable description. 

“ On May 26th our artillery began a fresh attack on 
the French trenches. Gas followed. The enemy was 
completely overborne on the Soissons-Fismes sector. We 
List found ourselves in Juvigny. Then we marched 
without pause to Epagny. We remained a good long 
time in trenches between Vezaponin and Nouvron, and 
spent the first part of June reconnoitring in that region. 

“ Then a queer thing happened. It was still day, the 
4th, as a matter of fact, and the firing had died down foi 
the nonce. The sun was hot. Men were sitting about, 
silent, weary, unsociable, sleepy, reading letters or 
writing home. Hitler had gone off by himself and must 
have been half a mile away. He had just surmounted 
a slight rise in the apparently vacant landscape when 
suddenly he heard the whirring of a machine-gun and 
bullets peppered all the air about him. He flung himself 


WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


81 


face downwards on the ground. The gun ceased fire. 
Gingerly Hitler essayed to move. Instantly it spat again, 
lead and fire. 

44 At length, however, he managed to worm his way 
to the next hole, 4 Evidently a French ambush,’ he 
thought, 4 with a camouflaged gun, 5 and paused, and 
thought things over. 4 Quite a number of men, 5 he 
supposed, and rightly. For within the next ten minutes 
or so, at least half a dozen of them, fully armed, appeared 
climbing over the top of the trench. 4 One, two, three— 
five—eight— Donnerwetter ! 5 he thought, 4 however many 
more ? 5 Then like a flash, he leaped to his feet, dragged 
his revolver from his belt, and levelling it at the enemy, 
shouted at them to surrender. 4 Whichever of you budges, 
he’s a dead man ! 5 Whether the Frenchmen understood 
what he said or not, they understood what he meant 
and promptly fell into line as ordered. 4 You’re my 
prisoners ! March ! 5 Hitler signalled the way. Off 
they went, Hitler in the rear. Perhaps they’d covered 
a hundred metres this way, perhaps two, when the whole 
twelve of them began to wonder where the rest of the 
German detail might be which had captured them. 
Another hundred metres they plodded silently forward 
without a single enemy more showing up than this fellow 
with the revolver. 4 Sacre Nom ! 5 —exclaimed one of 
them—but got no farther. He found himself directly 
menaced by that shining barrel. Forwards ! Half a mile 
farther and they came to the German trenches, when 
Hitler turned the lot over to the company, amid roars of 
laughter. 4 Heavens ! if we’d only known ! 5 muttered the 
prisoners, 4 but the blasted blighter carried the thing off 
so mighty high handed ! ’ 

44 The fighting between the Oise and the Marne was 
stubborn and bitter beyond description. Step by step 
we were forced back by overwhelming numbers. We 
made a stand along the line Aisne-Marne, however, 
from July ist to the 14th, from which the enemy failed to 
dislodge us. 



82 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


“ On the 15th our big offensive opened in Champagne 
and we succeeded in retaking a good slice of the country 
from the enemy. The battle was waged without cessation 
day or night; from a huge defensive action between 
Soissons and Reims it gradually involved the whole 
Front from the Marne to the Aisne. The barrage was 
unintermittent. For fourteen days shot and shell rained 
on the trenches. We crouched in a veritable hell of 
fire and flying iron. 

66 We were relieved on July 30th. They brought us 
out on the line to go through a ten-days’ course of instruc¬ 
tions, of which interval we took advantage to get back 
somewhat to the semblance of ordinary mortals. By the 
middle of August we entrained to a point whence we 
could take part in the defence between Arras and Albert. 
We stuck fast to our trenches in a line Monchy-Bapaume, 
and the most savage onslaughts failed to dislodge us. We 
remained there until the end of August, and then marched 
east towards the frontier between Belgium and Holland. 
Not far from Bruges we put in a spell of guard work on 
the frontier. Once we touched Ostend. By September, 
however, this interlude was over, and we found ourselves, 
Hitler and I, in the middle of the last of the fighting we 
were to see together. 

“For the third time we were back on the old ground 
fought over in 1914. Now we had to defend it, inch by 
inch, all over again. We were in the neighbourhood of 
Commines ; dazed and bewildered with the ceaseless 
flash and thunder of explosives. Fiercer and fiercer grew 
the firing. On the night of October 13th-i4th the crashing 
and howling and roaring of the guns was accompanied 
by something still more deadly than usual. Our company 
lay on a little hill near Werwick, a bit to the south of 
Ypres. All of a sudden the bombardment slackened off 
and in place of shells came a queer pungent smell. Word 
flew through the trenches that the English were attacking 
with chlorine gas. Hitherto the List hadn’t experienced 
this sort of gas, but now we got a thorough dose of it. 


WITH HITLER IN THE WAR 


83 

As I stuck my head outside the dug-out for a quick look 
round I found myself confronted by a hideous lot of 
bogies. In the place of men were creatures with visages 
of sheer horror. 

“ At that I shot into my own gas-mask ! For hours 
we lay there with this foul stuff poisoning every gulp of 
air outside. Suddenly one of the chaps could stand it 
no longer. He sprang up, wrenched the mask from his 
head and face, gasping, only to encounter a waft of the 
white-green poison. It caught him by the throat and 
flung him back choking, gurgling, suffocating, dying. 
The gas let off by morning and the shelling began again, 
to our unbounded relief. Better the deadliest bombard¬ 
ment than that poisoned drowning stifling. How we 
tore off those masks, and gulped in the air ! It was still 
stinking of the stuff, and reeked again of high explosive, 
but to us it was the very breath of Heaven. Every now 
and then the enemy still sent a gas bomb over together 
with the rest. 

“ A man would shriek, throw up his arms, and fling 
them across his eyes. There was nothing for it but to 
clap the filthy masks over our heads again. The ferocity 
of the attack increased. Hour after hour of this inferno 
went by. It seemed as though that paling in the east 
which heralded the longed-for dawn would never come 
again. We chaps just hugged the ravaged and shattered 
ground, lying, indistinguishable lumps of filth and earth 
ourselves, within the sheltering lip of the water-filled 
craters torn up by previous shelling. We were practically 
finished. Only a handful of us yet remained. Most of us 
lay there, black bundles, never to move again. As for 
me, I was at my last gasp. I began vomiting into my 
own face—wrenched the gas-mask off—and knew no 
more. 

“ About seven next morning Hitler was despatched with 
an order to our rear. Dropping with exhaustion, he 
staggered off. It was useless by now to count up how 
many days and nights we’d gone without sleep. His 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


84 

eyes were burning, sore, and smarting—gas—he supposed, 
or dog weariness. Anyhow, they rapidly got worse. The 
pain was hideous ; presently he could see nothing but a 
fog. Stumbling, and falling over and over again, he 
made what feeble progress he could. Every time he went 
down crash, it was harder and harder to drag himself to 
his feet again. The last time, all his failing strength was 
exhausted in freeing himself from the mask ... he 
could struggle up no more ... his eyes were searing 
coals . . . Hitler collapsed. 

“ Goodness only knows how long it was before the 
stretcher bearers found him. 

“ They brought him in, though, at last, and took him 
to the dressing-station. This was on the morning of 
October 14th, 1918—just before the end. 

u Two days later Hitler arrived in hospital at Pasewalk, 
Pomerania.” 

• • • » • 

Among the innumerable libels with which the Fiihrer 
has no time to concern himself, if he is to get on with the 
job of governing Germany at all, is that which accuses him 
“ of skulking 55 during the War. He is supposed to have 
managed somehow or other to have kept well out of the 
firing line. A substantial array of well-authenticated 
official military testimony goes to contradict any such 
supposition. Many of Private Hitler’s commanding 
officers have written with the highest appreciation of his 
soldierly qualities. 

“ I cannot remember that Private Hitler ever failed 
in his duties,” writes one of these. “ He carried out his 
dangerous duties, not only with alacrity but with 
distinction,” testified another. General-major Engelhardt 
gives us this glimpse of him. “ Once,” he relates, “ as I 
emerged from the wood at Wytschaete during a fierce 
attack, in order to make some observations, Hitler and 
an orderly from the Regimental Staff, planted themselves 
bang in front of me to shield me with their own bodies 
from machine-gun fire.” 



CHAPTER V 


HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH AFTER THE WAR : 
HERR ERNST SCHMIDT’S STORY 

I T would be a superfluous task in this place again to 
describe the state of political chaos into which Germany 
fell after the revolt of the marines at Kiel, the flight of the 
Emperor and the proclamation of the Republic in Berlin. 
The tale has often been told. 

But if we are to arrive at any idea of the state of things 
obtaining at this period in Bavaria, in order to form 
some picture of the despair and hopelessness in Munich 
during the first months after Adolf Hitler’s return thither 
from Pasewalk, we must go to Herr Ernst Schmidt for our 
history. 

It is a highly confusing interlude for the English reader 
to grasp. The whole purport of Herr Schmidt’s story is 
less to elucidate kaleidoscopic affairs in Bavaria than to 
show how Adolf Hitler reacted to the situation. It was 
a period of internecine violence, and of acute crisis. 

About a hundred and twenty miles east of Munich 
lies the little village of Garching, on the Alz. I took a 
trip to this spot to meet a former war comrade of Adolf 
Hitler’s, a man called Ernst Schmidt, one of his original 
intimates. Herr Schmidt, indeed, met me at the little 
station, and was delighted to receive me. He is a man 
of about the Fiihrer’s own age, thin and sunburnt, and 
unmarried ; leads a somewhat lonely life. He is a 
painter by trade, and works with two mates in Garching 
and its neighbourhood. 

He rents a room of his own in an inn here, and has 
furnished it with his own things, very simply but effec¬ 
ts 



86 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


tively. The most outstanding piece of furniture is a large 
bookcase well filled with such works as those of Goethe, 
Schiller and Shakespeare. Herr Schmidt noticed my 
interest in all this, and immediately reached down a 
couple of volumes to show me. One was Bavaria in the 
War , and the other Mein Kampf. He showed me an 
inscription on the flyleaf of the latter : “To my dear 
and faithful war-time comrade Ernst Schmidt, in remem¬ 
brance, Adolf Hitler.” Of course I recognised the well- 
known handwriting. 

We sat down at a table and Herr Schmidt began his 
story. 

“ I took to the painter’s trade as a youth,” he said, 
“ and after my apprenticeship, began by being a journey¬ 
man, and travelled all over France, Switzerland and 
Italy. When war broke out I returned home, and by the 
middle of November, 1914, I was already at the Front. 
That was at Messines. I belonged to the trench runners. 
And because of that, I came across Hitler. We messengers 
were a chummy crowd generally, but three of us in 
particular seemed to hang together, Hitler, Bachmann 
and I. Personally I was very much attracted to Hitler, 
and not the less as I had so often occasion to notice how 
he risked his life for somebody else, and never said a 
syllable about it. Seemed to think a thing like that was 
all in the day’s work, nothing to go and make a song 
about, anyhow. They used to call for volunteers when 
any particularly nasty job was on hand, and Hitler always 
answered. When I saw him step forward, I stepped 
forward, too, and so did Bachmann. We sort of belonged 
together, especially facing death. 

“ This was how it happened we all three got wounded 
at the same time and place, in October, 1916. Hitler 
and Bachmann made it, somehow, to the first field 
dressing-station, whence they got sent down to Beelitz. 
But I collapsed on the way, and was picked up later and 
shunted to hospital in Brandenburg. 

“In December we all knocked up against each other 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 87 

in barracks at Munich, and presently, one by one rejoined 
our regiment. Bachmann got sent to Roumania where 
he was killed. In October, 1918, I got leave and went 
home, but by the beginning of November I was on my 
way back to the Front. I got no further than Cologne. 
It was the 6th of the month and everyone was saying the 
War was finished . . . anyhow I got the right-about-face, 
and fetched up again in barracks at Munich where I 
heard all about what Hitler called the greatest crime a 
people ever suffered, the November Revolt. 

44 I suppose you know what happened in Berlin ? 
The Revolution began in the fleet at Kiel. The mutiny 
reached its climax on the 4th. Next day the whole town 
was in the hands of the mutineers, and the Red Flag was 
everywhere hoisted aboard the ships. Very soon Ham¬ 
burg, Bremen and other ports were in the hands of the 
revolutionaries. On the 8th the Social Democrats 
Ebert and Scheidemann had an interview in Berlin with 
the Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, the 4 Red Prince, 5 
and persuaded him that the people were behind them, 
that there was nothing for it but that the Kaiser must 
abdicate. Without consulting Wilhelm II, who was at 
Army Headquarters at Spa, Prince Max fell in with this, 
and Scheidemann declared the Republic from the steps 
of the Reichstag. 4 The German people have won all 
along the line, 5 he declared—a glaring lie— 4 and now 
it is our duty to see that this glorious victory is not 
defiled. 5 

44 On the 10th the Kaiser fled to Holland, and the 
Revolution was an accomplished fact. 

44 It was on the morning of the 7th that I arrived at 
the Hauptbahnhof in Munich. I repaired to the Luisen- 
schule where our regiment was quartered, and reported. 
The place was swarming with young fellows loafing about 
with their hands in their pockets, anyhow. They had 
never been at the Front, they were doing nothing but 
waiting for something to happen. And sure enough 
something did happen ! 



88 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


“ As I turned out in the street again I saw a mob of 
people coming along with placards displayed in front, 

‘ Come to the Meeting on the Theresian Field ! Down 
with Capitalism ! Up with the Proletariat ! 5 It sud¬ 
denly struck me what this was—the Majority Socialists 
and the Independent Socialists were making common 
cause against the Monarchy. I wasn’t much inclined to 
mix myself up in the thing, but went along out of a 
certain amount of curiosity. 

“ Thousands of people assembled on the meadow. 
Kurt Eisner harangued them and worked them up to a 
tremendous pitch of excitement. Loud speakers were 
bawling ‘ Down with the Kaiser, 5 ‘ Down with the 
Crown Prince,’ ‘ Clear out the Wittelsbachs.’ 1 The 
crowd seethed like a cauldron. And the cauldron boiled 
over. Like an all-devouring stream of molten lava 
pouring from a volcano, the mass came surging back 
into Munich ; yelling and exulting it poured into the 
streets and made for the prison. The doors were locked 
and guarded. But in a trice they were beaten down, 
keys were torn from the warders, and every murderer 
and criminal in the place set immediately at large to 
join the triumphant rioters without. Meantime over a 
thousand mutineer sailors had come into Munich, and 
these now swelled the throng. The uproar was terrific. 
Shops were universally plundered. 

“ The King, old and grey-headed, fled the city after 
nightfall that same wild November day. The military 
had been forbidden to fire on the crowds so that the 
mutineers could have things all their own way. 

“ During the night a Workmen’s, Peasants’ and 
Soldiers’ Council was set up and Bavaria was declared 
a Free State. Kurt Eisner, an old man and a Jew, an 
erstwhile journalist and ever a firebrand, was nominated 
President. All night long there was fighting in the 
streets as the shopkeepers tried to defend their goods and 


1 The reigning family in Bavaria. 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 89 

property from the mob. Hand-grenades were thrown, 
and the shooting never let up until dawn. 

“ Eisner proceeded to get some sort of a government 
together, and in the course of the next few hours the 
tumult was allayed and comparative order restored. He 
enjoyed at first a certain prestige and had an undoubted 
following, but he quickly forfeited the people’s trust and 
favour by introducing Jews everywhere to office, and 
Jews moreover out of Poland and Galicia who could 
scarcely speak German. The Bavarians weren’t going 
to stand for too much of that. 

“ Meantime Hitler had turned up, back from Pase- 
walk. We met, we two, and cemented our old friendship. 
This was the first I heard of his being gassed and in 
hospital. He hadn’t much to say about the Revolution, 
but it was plain enough to see how bitter he felt. I too 
saw red over the way things were going, especially over 
the demoralisation in barracks. The laziest and most 
impudent among the men were, naturally, those who had 
never been anywhere near the trenches. The place was 
full of laggards and cowards. 

“ Then, one day, volunteers were called for as guards 
for the prisoners’ camp at Traunstein, a little town not 
far from the former Austrian frontier. Hitler said to me, 
4 Say, Schmidt, let’s give in our names, you and me. 
I can’t stick it here much longer.’ Nor could I ! So we 
came forward. Lots of others did, too, but they were the 
sort I’ve just been speaking of—make-believe soldiers, no 
decent stuff in ’em. It was mid-December when we 
went to Traunstein. They were mostly Russian prisoners 
there, and a few English. An officer met us at the station 
and saw us detrain. When he went to fall us in, the 
Revolution men grinned in his face and asked if he didn’t 
know drill had been done away with ? He made no 
reply, but packed them off to barracks. Then he 
assembled us men from the Front and instructed us that 
this sort of insolence wasn’t to be too much regarded, or 
all the prisoners would get away. He merely returned 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


90 

the whole company to Munich by the next train, retaining 
only we Front soldiers, Hitler among the rest. 

“ We hadn’t a great deal to do. We mounted guard 
at the gate over the outgoings and incomings, for twenty- 
four hours at a stretch. The next twenty-four hours 
were off duty. At the end of January they broke up the 
camp, and sent most of the prisoners back home. So 
we, too, returned to barracks at Munich. There, there 
was absolutely nothing to do. We got perfectly sick of it, 
especially Hitler. So one day we reported, and asked to 
be put on a job. We must have work of some kind ! 
They hunted up something for us to do—old gas-masks 
to test. There were whole mountains of these things. 
We had only the mouthpiece to unscrew and examine, 
and if anything was wrong, to put it on one side. The 
work was easy, and to our joy, we got three marks a day 
for it. At this rate we could manage sometimes to go to 
the Opera. Hitler was a regular Opera ‘ fan.’ 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. 

“ Meanwhile Kurt Eisner lost ground day by day. 
His throne was very soon tottering. Bolshevik ideas 
were rapidly gaining in every direction, and every day 
witnessed mass demonstrations in the streets. On 
February 21st, 1919, the members of the Landtag 1 
were assembled in session and awaiting the President. 
Suddenly the cry was raised, ‘ Eisner has been shot.’ 
The utmost consternation ensued. As this somewhat 
subsided and Auer, the Leader of the Majority Socialists, 
could make his voice heard, he was attempting to address 
the assembly when the doors were suddenly flung open, 
a shot rang out, and he instantly collapsed. A panic 
stampeded the members. More shots added to the 
terror and confusion, and two other delegates fell bleeding 
to the ground. 

1 Landtag as distinguished from Reichstag. State as distinguished 
from Central Parliament. 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 91 

“ The news of the assassination of the President flew 
like wildfire through the city, and, although Eisner had 
practically lost the popular favour, the Communists 
made capital out of his death and proclaimed a general 
strike to revenge it. Again masses of excited demon¬ 
strators gathered in the streets. Again newspaper offices 
and shops and warehouses were raided and plundered. 
The ‘ Bolshevik 9 Revolutionaries marched to the spot 
where young Count Toni von Arco Valley had shot 
down Kurt Eisner, erected a portrait of him there, and 
obliged every passer-by to uncover before it. The late 
President was buried on February 26th, with almost 
royal pomp on the Munich ‘ Ost-Friedhof. 5 

“ Followed a period of muddle and confusion with half 
a dozen so-called Governments all in power at once. A 
stop-gap ministry was formed to carry on, but the working- 
classes came forward demanding the arming of the pro¬ 
letariat. They sought to overthrow the Council. The 
Communist Central Office in Berlin sent the Jew Levine, 
a man of their own, to Munich, and on the night of April 
17th, 1919, a ‘ Red 5 assembly was held in the Wittelsbach 
Palace which inaugurated the brief ‘ Red 5 regime, with 
yet another Jew, Ernst Toller, at its head. 

“ Nothing in all this sufficed to allay the unrest in 
State and city. The peasants in the country were losing 
all patience, and now threatened to withhold foodstuffs 
from entering Munich. This menace was so serious that 
a new Social Democratic regime under Hoffmann was 
set up. Like all its predecessors, this also was destined 
quickly to fail. Severe strikes in the Ruhr, inspired by 
the Communist leader, Karl Liebknecht, the proclama¬ 
tion of a republic in Hungary by the Jew, Bela Kun, and 
the general unrest everywhere, had their repercussions in 
Munich. Strife of every sort broke out among the 
various parties in the city, all led, without exception, 
by Jews. By April, 1919, the Hoffmann Government 
was obliged to betake itself to Bamberg, from whence 
it ruled the northern half of Bavaria, leaving Munich 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


92 

and the southern half of the country in the hands of 
the Bolshevists who sought to link it up with the Hungary 
of Bela Kun and Russia of Lenin. 

“ Then one day armoured cars were to be seen racing 
through the streets distributing leaflets in favour of the 
Hoffmann administration. Those who opposed such 
propaganda were at once shot down by machine-guns. 
Next came armoured cars advertising the Red regime 
in the same manner, with placards demanding the fall 
of Hoffmann. Those who failed to comply with this new 
coercion were also at once shot down by more machine- 
guns. Hardly had both sets of armoured cars dis¬ 
appeared than a force of Spartakists, three thousand 
strong, marched on the principal railway station which 
was already held by Hoffmann’s troops. Firing broke 
out and the Spartakists gave back, only to rally, and 
bombard the place in their turn for over half an hour. 
The station was captured and its defenders all shot, to 
a man. This seemed to break the back of the resistance 
to the ‘ Red ’ regime for the moment. New strikes were 
immediately organised. 

“ Hitler and I looked on at all this with the 
utmost repugnance, as you can well suppose. Hitler 
had already come up against the Communists, for 
disobeying some of their orders. They already had an 
eye on him. It seemed better, they thought, to get him 
out of the way. 

“ One morning, very early, three Red Guards entered 
the barracks and sought him out in his room. He was 
already up and dressed. As they tramped up the 
stairs Hitler guessed what was afoot, so grasped 
his revolver and prepared for the encounter. They 
banged on the door which immediately opened to 
them : 

“ ‘ If you don’t instantly clear out,’ cried Hitler, 
brandishing his weapon, c I’ll serve you as we served 
mutineers at the Front.’ 

u The Reds turned instantly, and tramped down- 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 


93 

stairs again. The threat had been far too real to face 
an instant longer. 

££ Just think of it ! The City Commissary, and the 
Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army at this time, was 
one of the sailor mutineers, a man of no more than 
twenty-one, who had already served terms of imprison¬ 
ment, and who in 1917 had been condemned to death 
—unfortunately the sentence hadn’t been carried out ! 

££ It was winter time, and snow lay deep in the streets. 
Soldiers were streaming back into Munich still, from all 
the battle-fronts, weary, battered, disorientated men, 
coming home to a foundered country where neither food 
nor peace nor work was to be had. There were thirty 
thousand unemployed hanging about the streets. Food 
grew ever scarcer and more scarce. The people ate 
anything they could lay hands upon that was remotely 
eatable. A fallen horse was a godsend. Such a carcass 
was immediately pounced upon by the starving populace, 
and in quicker time than it takes to tell every shred of 
flesh was stripped from the bones. 

££ During all this confused and calamitous time Hitler 
remained with the Army (which endeavoured to take up 
a neutral position among the warring factions), but I got 
demobbed, and sought work in Munich. I still met 
Hitler every day, because we used the same £ Steh- 
restaurant 51 to have our meals in. At that time soldiers 
were not boarded in barracks as formerly, but drew 
ration money and could lay it out where and how they 
pleased. That’s how it happened that Hitler and I 
could feed together. The grub was pretty poor, you 
may be sure, the place was dirty and crowded, the 
tables bare, and one had to fetch and carry for oneself. 
We paid about thirty pfennige for this. We used, often, 
to get through an evening here, too, drinking tea— 
Hitler seldom drank coffee—and talked over things. 
Hitler used to get all worked up and hot and angry, 
and I often thought to myself he’d make short work 

1 Emergency restaurant. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


94 

of the mob at the top just now, if he’d had any sort 
of a say. But we were nothing but a pair of nobodies, 
without a pull anywhere. 

“ In the middle of April, 1919, the Hoffmann Govern¬ 
ment decided to call upon Berlin for help against the 
Bolshevists in Munich. Berlin sent help and the 
Reichswehr, men consisting of old Front-line soldiers. 
These were glad enough to take up arms against the 
Reds, not out of any love for the Republic, be sure, but 
for the sake of the Fatherland. Independent bodies of 
men gathered together to the same end, especially the 
Freikorps Epp which later on put in some particularly 
good work. Four groups of these gradually approached 
Munich. Each group possessed artillery, cavalry, sappers 
and armoured cars. The Red Army numbered some 
20,000 men. On April 15th, 1919, 15,000 of these, 
fully armed, marched through the city to meet the 
£ White 5 invaders. 

“ The Whites, led by experienced officers, gradually 
closed in round Munich. On April 29th they were at 
Dachau, a small town some ten miles to the north, which 
formed a good strategical objective. It was quickly 
captured. Meantime the Reds in Munich, feeling their 
ascendancy was at an end, gave themselves over to an 
orgy of destruction. Again the shops were wrecked, 
streets were barricaded, machine-guns mounted, and 
everything got ready for cramped and intensive urban 
fighting. £ For every Red, five citizens/ was the slogan 
of the Bolshevists. 

££ Just as the White Army was drawing nigh, ten 
people of the city’s upper ten, including the young 
Countess von Westarp, were arrested and brutally shot 
in the courtyard of the Luitpold Gymnasium. This 
barbarity inflamed the Muncheners more than ever 
against the Reds, and the news of it served to quicken 
the relieving troops. On May 1st, battle was joined, and 
once again the streets of Munich were filled with fighting 
men. The Whites had a hard task before them. They 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 


95 

were fired upon from every vantage point and corner, 
from every roof and window. They had, literally, to 
take every single house on their way towards the centre 
of the city. The battle raged hottest of all in Giesing, 
the ‘ Red 5 quarter, where General von Epp was in 
command. 

“ Although non-combatants were forbidden to go out 
of doors, I couldn’t stay quiet within. I had to get out 
and see things for myself. Everywhere there was firing. 
It reminded me of Flanders ! It was risking death to 
attempt certain crossings. Most of the public buildings 
had first been stormed by artillery and then attacked by 
hand grenades. . . . The fight went on all night. By 
dawn the Reds had entrenched themselves, as it were, 
in the Mathaser Brau in the centre of the city, from which 
place it would be difficult to dislodge them. But a severe 
bombardment did it at last, and their resistance was 
practically broken. Desultory fighting went on for a day 
or two yet, but on May 3rd the Whites and the Free 
Companies entered the city in triumph to the jubilation 
of the population. 

€< The new masters of the situation had the leaders 
of the Reds arrested—those of them who had not already 
escaped—and imprisoned, or shot on the spot. Order 
was soon restored. But the wresting of Munich from the 
Red Terror was a costly business. The Whites lost 
twenty-eight officers and one hundred and ninety-four 
men. The Reds lost four hundred and fifty—one hundred 
and thirty-five of these were shot out of hand. 

“ This one month of bolshevism had cured Munich 
once and for all of alliance with the Reds. Munich had 
had enough of Communism. 

“ One day, shortly after all this business was over, 
I met Hitler in the street. He looked pretty pinched 
and peaky, but he was glad enough to see me. * I’ve 
just come out of chink, Schmidt,’ he explained. 

€€ 4 How’s that ? ” I demanded, astonished. So he 
told me. The military in Munich had held themselves 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


96 

a bit too much aloof. When the Whites entered a few 
stray shots seemed to come from the barracks. No one 
could account for them, but the Whites made short work 
of the business. They took every man in the place, 
including Hitler, prisoner, and shut them up in the cellars 
of the Max Gymnasium. A few days later, however, an 
officer who had been at the Front, happened to come 
along and spotted Hitler among the prisoners. 

££ £ Why how’s this ? ’ he demanded, c you’re no 
Communist-’ and had him immediately set free. 

££ With the disruption of the Reds, order was re¬ 
established in the Army. Discipline was tightened up. 
Hitler remained a soldier and was given the job of 
testing every man’s political soundness. It was to be 
avoided at all costs that former £ Reds ’ should now try 
and re-enlist in the Reichswehr. Hitler was specially 
fit for this job on account of his political acumen, and 
because he was considered to be a good judge of 
men. 

££ He put the thing through so well that later on they 
promoted him to Regimental Instructor. Hitler had 
now to hold regular classes to instruct the men on 
political matters, and in a true sense of patriotism. 
He had to eradicate the last traces of the poison which 
had led to the setting up of £ Soldiers’ Councils,’ and 
abortive revolutionary measures of that sort. Hitler did 
all this extraordinarily well. He discovered his own 
gift for public speaking and exposition. He rather 
imagined he had such a talent, but these classes in Barracks 
were useful enough to exercise and prove it. 

“ As a matter of fact this military duty gave him 
the key to his own future. He decided to leave the 
Army and go in for politics altogether. After a few 
more months he returned to civilian life. He would 
have had, perhaps, an easier time had he remained 
with the Reichswehr, but by now he had conceived 
his great idea, and was convinced that, whatever it 
might cost to realise it, he would bring it to fruition 


HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 


97 

in the end. He had already joined the Deutsche Arbeiter- 
Partei. 1 . . . 

“ I joined it, too, almost from the start. Hitler never 
brought any pressure to bear upon me to do so, but I was 
ready enough to follow his lead wherever it led. And 
that he was filled with the* noblest and most unselfish 
passion was never for one moment to be questioned by 
any one who really knew Hitler then. 

“ I often met him during the week, either in the 
Barracks, and later in his lodging in the Thierschstrasse, 
or in the now famous Sterneckerbrau, and came to have 
my share of all the first ups and downs of the Party. 
But you know about those—let’s stick to Hitler himself. 

“ There’s one thing I must tell you ; he’s passionately 
fond of animals. One of the Party friends had the lucky 
idea of us giving him a dog 2 for his birthday in 1920. 
He rather thought a Deutscher Schaferhund (German 
shepherd’s dog) would be the thing and we bought one 
remarkable for size rather than for breed since funds were 
none too flush—Hitler was awfully pleased with it. But 
the dog was ill—we hadn’t known that—and it went and 
died. So early next year somebody else sent him a young 
Wolfhound. Hitler fell in love with him, and they 
became inseparable companions. When, later on, he 
got more dogs (they are still living at his country place), 
this one remained his prime favourite. He kept him 
some ten years or more and then some enemy managed 
to poison him—some Communist belike. He must 
have known that to kill Hitler’s dog would hit him harder 
than any political revenge. Shows, doesn’t it, how vile 
this enmity was—to wreak it on that sort of friend ! 

“ I came here to Garching in 1922. But I’ve often 
seen Hitler since then—once at Landsberg, when he 
was in prison in 1924, and afterwards on happier occasions. 


1 German Workers’ Party. 

2 During the war a little dog deserted from the English lines and came 
over to us. Hitler adopted him and called him “ Foxl.” 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


98 

“ By the way,” added Herr Schmidt, as I thought 
he had concluded, “ I might as well say that the War 
knocked Marxian ideas out of me. It wasn’t Hitler. 
He didn’t try to bring any political influence to bear 
on one at that time. But he certainly did live up to 
his convictions and the rest of us fellows saw it. He was 
a walking example of the motto he afterwards gave the 
Party, ‘ All for one, one for all.’ One doesn’t fight like 
that for vague international generalities. This is the 
reason why so few old ex-service men went over to the 
Revolution.” 

In those first terrible months after Hitler’s return to 
Bavaria, away in Versailles the German delegates to the 
Peace Conference waited like prisoners behind wire and 
partitions to be informed as to the terms of a Treaty 
which they had no option but to sign. The soldiers in 
Munich and the people in the streets waited, too, for the 
news from Versailles. Then it came—to such a city, and 
to such people, at such a time ! Seven million Germans 
were to be lost to Germany by expatriation, and so in¬ 
conceivable a sum of money was to be paid by way of 
war indemnity that it exceeded the total wealth of the 
Reich. The work of whole generations would not suffice 
to pay it. 

Hitler as Bildungsoffizier (Regimental Instruction 
Officer) in Munich watched the course of events with 
closest attention. Of one thing he soon became fully 
convinced and dangerously aware, so desperate was 
his anxiety for rational effective creative effort in some 
promising direction, namely, that the last hour had 
struck for Germany—was then striking at Versailles— 
unless this wild political welter could be reduced to 
order, and a national unity, bigger far than a mere 
Bavarian unity, powerful, purposeful and enthusiastic 
could be welded out of it. Something more must come 
out of this endless talk around the tables in the Bierhallen 
than mere jeremiads, sighs and theories, and hot air. 

Hitler perceived that all political experimentation in 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 


99 

Germany was beside the point so long as no voice was 
raised against the crushing exactions of the Versailles 
Treaty. No resurrection was even thinkable for the 
prostrate shattered country, unless apathy could be 
overcome, despair could be counteracted, violence could 
be harnessed and national feeling could be awakened 
to the one supreme creative end of rebutting the exactions 
and denying the imputations of the Treaty under which, 
otherwise, Germany was condemned to speedy death. 
He went everywhere ; noted everything ; measured to a 
nicety the worth or worthlessness of the speakers and 
things spoken ; plumbed the people’s hopes, fears, 
aimlessness, incapacity, and—readiness to respond, when 
and if it should come, to some Trumpet Call to life ! 
By February, 1920, within a year of Kurt Eisner’s death, 
Hitler himself sounded such a reveille in Germany that 
it rang through the entire German world. 

He saw the road to take—the straight road, the only 
road. 

But how was he to point it out not only to the Miin- 
cheners, not only to Bavaria, but to the nation at large ? 
How was he to start the march, to lead the way, to form 
the vanguard, to draw all Germany along behind him 
until the goal should be in sight—the goal that he reached 
indeed, for Germany, in March, !933 ? 


Fate at this moment made use of three little mice. 

Hitler went on frequenting the small clubs and groups 
of ineffectual men who met here and there under that 
or the other rather high-sounding name to discuss the 
political situation. To him they all seemed tragically 
laughable. None of them had the slightest spark of life 
in it; no constructive idea ; no programme ; no policy. 
The personnel of no single one seemed to furnish a man 
of any parts. They were all alike—mere talkers, in- 
effectuals. Hitler’s search for a point <Pappui wearied and 
disgusted him. He was actually driven back upon 



100 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


the question as to whether or not he himself should 
found a party. But he asked himself, how could he, 
a “ Namenloser 55 —an unknown soldier—without back¬ 
ing, or any sort of influence, succeed in such a step ? 
It would probably be better, willy-nilly, to associate 
himself with the least feeble and ridiculous of the little 
groups he had already surveyed. 

Three little mice, scampering about the barracks 
floor, one morning early, kept Adolf Hitler awake. 
He found it impossible to drop off again to sleep. Idly 
he reached out for something to read—anything that 
came within grasp. Somebody overnight, at some little 
gathering or other, had thrust a pamphlet into his hand 
as he went out. He remembered an urgent word or two 
impressing it upon his notice. All right then—let’s have 
a look at it now ! In the early hours of the morning 
while the mice squeaked and gambolled without let or 
hindrance, unwashed, unshaven, Hitler lay in a poor 
tumbled bed—and found what he had sought so long, so 
vainly, found that of which he had well-nigh despaired. 
This pamphlet thing, Mein politisches Erwachen , 1 seemed 
to hit things exactly on the dot ! It sort of crystallised 
ideas of his own—Hitler’s—put them in a nutshell, 
suggested lines to him on which things might be got 
going. ... 

He read the slight thing from cover to cover, slapped 
it down with decision, and promptly sprang up. 

Hitler had found his starting-point. 

It is, to-day, Anton Drexler’s proudest remembrance 
that through the perusal of this little brochure of his, 
Adolf Hitler came to join the German Workmen’s Party, 
to bring to it those qualities of energy, enthusiasm, vision 
to demand from every member of it that spirit of ready 
sacrifice and unbounded daring, without which neither 
the still-born movement nor this little writing would 
ever have been heard of again. Drexler had dreamed of 
such a man, but it had scarcely ever entered his head to 

1 My Political Awakening. From a Working Man’s Diary , by Anton Drexler. 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH ioi 


hope that such a one would actually materialise, and in 
the little Bierkeller where he and his friends forgathered ! 

Who, then, was Anton Drexler ? 

To revert a little. Leading to the principal Bahnhof 
in Munich is a long street of buildings entirely occupied 
by the management of the Bavarian Railways. The 
largest of them is the Reichsbahn Zentralamt. When the 
author of this book found his way inside he had to 
traverse innumerable halls and corridors, to pass hundreds 
of doors with all sorts of names and inscriptions on them, 
and came at last to room No. 553. Here the legend ran 
“ Anton Drexler, Foreman.’* 

I knocked and was bidden to enter. 

I encountered a sharp bespectacled scrutiny from 
an individual seated behind an enormous desk. I men¬ 
tioned my name, whereupon he got up and stretched 
out a cordial hand. 

“ Oh, yes, I know, all about you. Come in and sit 
down. I’ll attend to you in a minute—just let me finish 
what I am about, and then we’ll get going.” 

I liked the look of Anton Drexler. He is to-day a 
man in the early fifties ; not a bit the stereotyped official, 
but the craftsman and the worker. 

“ Before I begin about Hitler,” he said at last, “ and 
how he and I met in 1919, and about the politics of that 
time, perhaps I’d better say a word or two as to myself. 
It sort of leads up. 

“ My father was a working man here in Munich. 
He belonged to the Social Democrats. I remember how 
he and my mother used to take me out into the woods 
on the first Sunday in May and how lovely it was. It 
was a festival, a springtime festival ; we all looked 
forward to the first of May so much. Then I went to 
school, and later joined a Munich Schiitzen-Verein 
(Rifle Club). I remember how when strikes came along 
there was no more wandering in the springtime woods 
for us. Politics knocked all that sort of thing on the head. 

“ I took to the locksmith’s trade, and when my 



102 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


apprenticeship was over, set out on my journeyman’s 
travels. Shortly before 1900 I got as far as Berlin in the 
course of time. I found work there, but soon struck a 
snag. Berlin’s commanding proletarian leader of that 
time was Adolf Bebel, who was never tired of spreading 
the unions everywhere. Everybody was after me to 
join the union. I didn’t want to do so straight away, 
although I knew, of course, one had to join a union 
sooner or later. The trouble was one got drawn into 
politics. Not only that—one got involved in communistic 
scraps. I wasn’t having any. So I got the cold shoulder. 
Found myself out of work. It wasn’t any use hanging 
on in Berlin, so I started off home again, taking what jobs 
I could on the way. I worked on the farms. There was 
always something for a handy man in the locksmith line 
to do about the farms and smithies. 

“ Back in Munich I got a job in the railway works. 
Even now I wasn’t keen about joining a union, but 
somehow I managed to keep my end up and hold on. 
I kept on in the works for some years, in fact right up 
to 1914 when Europe burst into flames after Sarajevo. 
With the outbreak of war came an enormous demand 
for railway material of all sorts, and the pressure at the 
works was terrific. There was no question of my joining 
up. I’d just got to stay put and fight for the Fatherland, 
not in the trenches, but at my vice. 

“ But I kept my eyes open, I can tell you, as to how 
things went, and from now on began to get interested 
in politics. Why, right from the first those blessed 
Social Democrats were kicking against spending the 
money necessary to keep the Army in the field. But 
there were splits, too, in the camp. Half of them 
remained where they were (the Majority Socialist Party) 
and the other lot formed a sort of radical wing called the 
Independent Socialists. They engineered a strike of 
55,000 munition workers as early as May, 1916. 1 After 

1 And yet we so constantly encounter the objection that Hitler ascribes 
the collapse of the German Front in 1918 to the wrong causes. The black- 
red “ Stab in the Back ” was the main cause, despite a thousand others. 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 


103 

that strikes were always happening. Then things were 
so jockeyed in Parliament, as to bring about the 4 Black 
Red Coalition, 5 which ultimately was responsible for the 
Revolution of the 9th of November, 1918, and culpable 
of signing the Versailles Treaty. 

“ The Social Democrats owned it themselves that 
they were out to sabotage the War. They weren’t, 
of course, at one with the enemy, but they went about the 
way to realise their objects as though they had been. 
Both aimed at the overthrow of the Monarchy, the 
destruction of the German Army, and the lasting dis¬ 
armament of Germany. The Marxists saw in all this the 
best possible augury for the realisation of their own 
schemes. Hundreds and thousands of our men at the 
Front fell, victims of the strife at home and of the rascality 
and treachery of those who fomented it, far more than 
victims of the War itself. The whole thing was a hideous 
tragedy. There was another disastrous strike in the 
munitions industry in January, 1918. The spirit which 
animated people and Army alike at the outbreak of War 
was evaporated. Even 1 the Socialists had marched in 
1914 to the defence of Home, Hearth, Family and 
Fatherland, at one with their fellow-countrymen. Had 
any one dared breathe the word 4 Strike ’ at that time, he 
would have been strung up on the nearest lamp-post. 

“ Where I come in, in all this, is that in January, 
1918, the Miinchner Z e ^ U7l S published an article of mine 
in which I had my say, hot and strong, about the muni¬ 
tions strike, and a good lot of other things as well. I 
was all for carrying the War on till we won it, and dead 
against profiteering and usury and all that dry-rot at 
home. So was the somewhat bourgeois 4 Vaterlands- 
Partei ’ of Tirpitz. 

1 The use of this word “ even ” in such a connection serves to show, 
plainly enough, how deep and bitter was the cleft separating party from 
party in Germany. Herr Anton Drexler’s narrative is given at some slight 
length here by way of commentary upon what has been said above as to 
the political condition of things in general, and of Bavaria in particular, 
by way of setting the stage for the entrance of the dramatic figure of the 
Fiihrer. 



104 GERMANY’S HITLER 

“ As a result I got it in the neck all round ! The 
men at the works had nothing for me but hatred and 
scoffing. Some of them went and dug a grave near 
the place where I worked, and stuck up a post and 
nailed the top of a box on it, on which they painted 
in big black letters ‘ Died of Hunger for the Fatherland. 
Gentleman 1918.’ 1 

“ . . . There is one thing to be said though. The 
leaders of the ‘ Vaterlands-Partei,’ decent men enough, 
had no real idea of the state of common people’s feelings, 
how everything was boiling up to bursting point. Anyhow 
a tiny group of us workmen got together somehow, 
among the workshops, and founded a sort of forerunner 
of the German Workmen’s Party. I was chairman of the 
committee. But we were all poor, powerless, unknown. 
We didn’t succeed, really, in getting anywhere with our 
‘ Free Workmen’s Committee ’ as we called it. We only 
made things impossibly difficult for ourselves all round. 
Nevertheless we managed to get into touch with another 
like-minded little group in Bremen. We even got so far 
as to hold a small public meeting in Munich, in October 
(1918), but I can’t say it had any results worth mentioning. 
It ended up with a row. 

“ Then next month they went and let that Jew Kosma- 
nowsky, who called himself Eisner, out of prison. What¬ 
ever induced them to do it passes my understanding to 
this day. A friend of mine and I went to some of the meet¬ 
ings of the Independent Socialists and did what we could 
to protest against the speakers and the speeches. We 
only got howled down for it, and often barely escaped. On 
November 7th there was.a big meeting on the Theresien- 
wiese when they yelled ‘ Down with the Kaiser, down 
with the Crown Prince, and clear out the Wittelsbachs !’ 

1 The mere translation of this epitaph entirely fails to convey its scorn 
and sarcasm. It represents the German equivalent to the English offer 
of a white feather. It suggests that this self-conceited nobody, a mere 
workman like themselves, who yet thinks so much of himself and aspires 
to print (“ Gentleman ”) might die of hunger for his country (anybody 
could do that in Germany in 1918) but would manage conveniently to 
evade the Front. 



HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 105 

and the whole mob surged into the city and broke 
open the gaols and let loose upon Munich all the criminal 
riff-raff together with the political prisoners held in them. 
The Mtinchener underworld went mafficking through 
the streets with a murderer still in chains at the head of 
it ! The riot kept up for days—there was shooting when 
the tradespeople attempted to defend their goods and 
shops—and in the middle of everything the King, 
Ludwig III, escaped from the city. The only thing 
which might have quelled the Revolution would have 
been if the troops had been called out against the mob— 
but they weren’t—for fear of inciting it to further violence. 
Anyhow Eisner had got the upper hand. You know the 
rest. What sort of a government he set up, and what 
ultimately became of him and it. 

55 As for me and the Freien Arbeiter-Ausschuss, we had 
a meeting to protest against the doings of December, 
1918, in Berlin and Hamburg. It so happened just 
when things were at their worst I had to go as the 
Bavarian representative of our little group to a conference 
about Bolshevism in Berlin. It was held at a place in the 
Potsdamerstrasse. I had no sooner put my nose inside 
the door than I was arrested by a couple of heavily- 
armed Reds. They clapped me into a dark little room at 
the back while they proceeded to break up the concern 
there, an editorial office, where we had proposed to have 
our meeting. In the end, though, I was allowed to com¬ 
municate with some relatives living in Berlin, and 
found myself once more at liberty. 

“ After that I brought the Freien Arbeiter-Ausschuss 
into touch with another little group called the Politischer 
Arbeiter-Zirkel, run by a journalist of the name of 
Harrer. He had got together all sorts of books and facts 
about the War, the Russian Revolution—and our own 
Revolution—which we all set to work to study hard, 
by way of trying to find some way out of the debacle. 
We discussed a new name for our combination, and 
decided on a new departure. United, we numbered 



io6 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


perhaps thirty-five members. We agreed to meet on 
January 5th in a little eating-house in Munich called 
the £ Furstenfelder Hof’ to found the c Deutsche Arbeiter- 
Partei.’ 

“ But before the day came the animosity of the Reds 
was already awakened. Some of our would-be members 
were arrested and done to death : I myself only escaped 
the same fate, one dark night waiting for Harrer, by a 
hair’s breadth. These Reds were Marxists, Jew-inspired. 
That’s another reason why we hated the Jews. 

“ Perhaps I ought to say that our Party didn’t really 
aspire—yet—to be a party. It only consisted of the 
committee of six men. But, of course, we couldn’t make 
any sort of headway. Our meetings were private because 
of this Red threat. We seemed to have got ourselves 
into a blind alley. We could do little but discuss and 
study. I embodied my own ideas in a slight brochure 
called Mein politisches Erwachen. From the diary of a 
working man.” 

Here Drexler turns to a drawer in his writing-desk 
and brings a copy of it into the light. A little affair, 
this, of some forty pages bound in a tattered blue cover. 

c< Let me read you a bit,” says the author eagerly, 
“just one or two of the most telling passages- 

“ Oh, no, first I ought to make it clear that this didn’t 
pretend to lay down lines for a Party exactly. I only 
aimed really at setting down the views and thoughts of 
a starred man of the street, of the War, the Front, and 
the Revolution, and to draw out the necessary conse¬ 
quences-” 

Then he reads, jumping from page to page (the book is 
evidently known to him by heart), and I gather the 
impression of a hefty invective against usury, profiteering, 
cowardice, and class privilege. . . . The whole thing, I 
know, merely voiced the passionate conviction of hundreds 
and thousands of inarticulate workers here at home in 
Germany. It suggested, however, no solution for the 
problems so trenchantly envisaged and presented. How 


HITLER RETURNS TO MUNICH 107 

could a group consisting of merely six men, with no 
following worth speaking of, and no representation in the 
Landtag, make its voice heard in the political world at 
that time ? 

No one was more aware of the futility of it all than 
Anton Drexler in 1919. 

“If only someone would turn up, 55 he breaks off reading 
and resumes his story, “ I used to think if only someone 
would turn up with go and grit in him, who could make 
something out of us and this, 55 slapping the pamphlet, 
“ and contrive a real driving force behind us. It would 
need to be an outstanding personality, anyhow, who could 
even attempt to do such a thing, a man of intense convic¬ 
tion, single-eyed, and absolutely fearless. I never really 
hoped or dreamed that such an individual would ever 
blow in at the Sterneckerbrau ! A genius such as we 
needed—such as Germany needed—only turns up once 
in a century ! 

“If we carried on, it was only in some unexpressed 
sort of dream and hope that our little group might at 
least offer a starting-point—sooner or later—for greater 
and more efficient things. 

“ A little bit before this I happened to have come 
across the writer and poet Dietrich Eckart. He had read 
my articles in the Munich paper, and was good enough 
to say it was fine that at last a working man had expressed 
himself about all the corruption going on in high places. 
In fact we became good friends, Eckart and I, and I 
asked him to come and speak at one of our little gather¬ 
ings. He would have done so but that he fell ill. So I 
got Gottfried Feder 1 instead. 

“ My goodness, but it is well known now—that story 
of our little meeting at eight o’clock one evening in the 
Sterneckerbrau, when Feder got up to speak ! First 

1 Eckart and Feder. Famous names, to-day, as those of two of the 
Filhrer’s first firm friends. These are names which are household words 
in Germany. Eckart was a writer, and Feder an expert on financial 
matters. With the introduction of these two names into Drexler’s narrative 
the curtain rises on Adolf Hitler. 



io8 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


there’d been a bit of a clash between our first speaker— 
who suggested a union between Austria and Bavaria 
and the formation of a Danubian State—and a new-comer 
at the back of the room. Then Feder seemed to grip the 
audience. He had something very interesting to say about 
the difference between loan (or unproductive) capital, 
and industrial capital which feeds productive industry. 

“ I had been much struck by the objector from the 
back. He spoke uncommonly well, and used his argu¬ 
ments with force as telling as a flail. He seemed to 
know his ground, too, better than most. I thought to 
myself £ Herr Gott ! here’s a chap worth getting hold 
of! ’ I kept an eye on him and when the meeting broke 
up, made a bee-line for him just as he was leaving. I 
gave him a copy of my pamphlet—asked him to come 
again—hoped he’d read it- 


tc 


55 


AND THAT MAN WAS ADOLF HITLER. 


CHAPTER VI 


HITLER JOINS THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER- 

PARTEI 5,1 

A DOLF HITLER himself tells the story better than 
XX anyone has told it since. He read Drexler’s little 
pamphlet. Still, curiosity rather than anything as yet 
quite like decision, led his steps once more in the direction 
of the Sterneckerbrau, or perhaps it was to the “ Alte 
Lilienbad 55 in the Herrnstrasse, where the queer folk 
he had unearthed there a few nights previously, seemed 
wont to forgather on a Wednesday evening. . . . There 
was certainly a good lot in what that chap Feder had been 
saying. . . . 

Hitler says : “ I crossed the badly-lighted common 
room where no one at all was to be seen, and sought the 
door leading to a room at the back. . . . There in the 
glimmer of a semi-broken gas-lamp four young men were 
sitting at a table, among whom was the author of the 
little brochure 55 (previously given him to read, mark 
and digest), “ who at once came forward and greeted me 
in the most friendly manner and bade me welcome as a 
new member of the German Workers 5 Party. 55 

Hitler was a trifle nonplussed. However, he meant to 
see the evening through, and bit by bit got hold of the 
names of those present. They read the minutes of the 
last meeting, and then went into Party finances—a 
matter of some 7.50 marks—and read letters from absent 
members. 

“ Fiirchterlich, furchterlich. Das war ja eine Vereins- 
meierei Allerargster Art und Weise. In diesen Klub 
also sollte ich eintreten ? 55 

1 German Workers* Party. 



no 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


(“ Dreadful, dreadful ! This was a wretched little 
group of the feeblest sort and kind. Was I going to enrol 
myself in a Club like this ? ”) 

Yes, indeed. So it fell out, for want of an alternative. 
Hitler was not the founder of this party. Those poor 
ineffectuals in the “ Alte Lilienbad ” at Munich gave him 
his opportunity. But it seemed all too negligible and 
hopeless. How, in God’s name, Hitler asked himself, 
was anything to be made of such a beginning ? How was 
a miserable little knot of pale people like this (he was 
the only soldier among them) to be welded into any 
decent sort of a going concern—club, or whatever it 
liked to call itself? How was any kick to be got into it ? 
How was such a club to be carried any farther, brought 
to the semblance of some sort of a society ? How was 
this society to become a significant movement ? How 
would such a movement proceed to the uplifting of a 
prostrate, demoralised, humiliated country ? For that 
and no less an aim from the first was in Hitler’s mind as 
he stumbled through the dark of the empty guest room in 
the “ Alte Lilienbad.” 

The new associate was dutiful enough to attend the 
next little meeting of the “ Deutsche Abeiter-Partei,” and 
the next and the next. Nothing happened. Numbers 
did not increase. The all-devouring question stil 
hammered in the brain that would not despair. Hitlei 
discovered three radical reasons why this little associatior 
should be so feeble. 

First of all it had no faith in itself, its purpose, oj 
the possibility of its ever amounting to anything 
Secondly, no remotest likelihood seemed to exist of an} 
increase of its membership. Various efforts to this end 
including a hand to hand distribution of hand-writtei 
invitations to its meetings, met with no sort of response 
Thirdly, it was possessed of no funds. It could not afforc 
the cheapest sort of leaflet publicity. 

Hitler felt at once that much was needed here if tin 
“ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei ” was to constitute any sor 


THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” hi 


of a starting-point for the energetic political campaign 
he had in view. Instead of the mere little weekly com¬ 
mittee meetings, it must embark on frequent public 
assemblies, whence it might he hoped (and the event 
amply justified the aspiration) that money for propa¬ 
ganda might be forthcoming. Also the nucleus demanded 
fresh young energetic blood ! “ During the long years 

of my military life,” he says, “ I had come across a lot of 
sterling comrades, many of whom through my per¬ 
suasion began now to join the group. . . . They were 
sound energetic young fellows, well disciplined, and 
schooled through army life to the axiom that nothing is 
impossible, everything is attainable by the man of strong 
will.” 

The first few of the new series of meetings thus in¬ 
augurated were not particularly successful, but at last 
Hitler’s driving and energetic power made itself felt. 

cc Our audiences,” he says, “ mounted very, very 
slowly in number. From eleven hearers we went on to 
thirteen : presently to sixteen, three and twenty— 
perhaps even to four and thirty ! ” 

Something more, obviously, had to be done about it. 

Enough marks were scraped together to insert a small 
advertisement in a Munich newspaper of an amibitious 
meeting proposed to be held in the Miinchener Hof- 
braukeller, a smallish room capable of seating some 
hundred and thirty people. This was to be the sort of 
meeting which, it was hoped, would really attract some 
public attention. All depended upon Adolf Hitler 
himself. As he went down to the hall that night his 
heart was in his mouth. He scarcely dared hope the 
place would be more than a third, or at very most, 
half-full. . . . 

By seven o’clock a hundred and eleven people had 
actually turned up, and proceedings began. This was 
the first occasion (apart from his lectures to soldiers) 
upon which Hitler was to speak in public. He was 
allotted twenty minutes. . . . Then it was that both 



112 GERMANY’S HITLER 

he and the audience made the discovery upon which 
the future of the German nation was to turn. The 
moment this ex-service man, this energetic recruit to 
the flabby little group which called itself the German 
Workers 5 Party, got upon his legs to speak was the 
decisive moment for the Germany we see to-day. His 
tiny audience was electrified—transported ! 

Amazed himself, Hitler perceived in an illuminating 
flash wherein the secret lay,—in oratory, convinced and 
dynamic ! He had not dreamed that he possessed 
such a gift. He tried it out that night with staggering 
success. The message he had to proclaim was not that 
with the German Workers’ Party nothing but a new 
election cry had been added to the existing political 
babel, but that the foundation stone had been well and 
truly laid for the rebuilding of the shattered nation. In 
the American phrase, Adolf Hitler “ got that message 
across ” ! The money required 1 poured in. When all 
was over the hall emptied to scatter Hitlerism broadcast 
throughout the city. 

From now on big meeting followed big meeting, with 
ever mounting success until early in 1920 Hitler (who 
had, naturally, assumed the leadership of the group) 
determined upon the first great mass meeting, despite 
the danger, by now grown to appreciable proportions, 
of its being suppressed by the authorities, or broken up 
by the opposition. It was held on February 24th, in 
the famous Festsaal, (not the Keller), of the Hofbrauhaus, 
and numbered an audience of two thousand. Hitler’s 
business was to lay before it nothing less than the reasoned 
and detailed programme of the new party. 

“ As the time went by,” he says, “ hostile inter¬ 
ruptions gave way to acclamations. As one by one, 
point for point, I laid down the five and twenty planks 
in our platform, and submitted them to the judgment 
of the audience, there gradually arose an ever-swelling 

1 Hitler seldom appealed directly for funds. He appealed to the 
audience to support the movement. 


THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” 113 

jubilation in response, and as my last words made their 
way to the very heart of the mass, the whole room surged 
before me unanimous in a new conviction, a new belief, 
and a new determination.” 

The “ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei ” was now fully in 
shape to draw upon itself the implacable enmity of the 
constituted authority, the Communists, the Marxists 
and other political organisations whom its programme 
affronted or threatened. It had become a force in 
Munich. It took to itself a flag and a symbol. Hitler 
himself, after many attempts, designed this standard. 
“ We National Socialists see our purpose in our flag. 
The red stands for our social programme, the white 
for our national, and in the hooked cross we symbolise 
the struggle for the supremacy of the Aryan race.” 

In 1920 it had already become dangerous to hold 
meetings and to flourish this flag, and the worthy 
Mtincheners who frequented Nazi 1 demonstrations did 
so at increasing risk not only of bodily injury, but to life 
itself. It was this state of affairs which gave rise to the 
so-called “ Saal-Schutz.” 2 

About a year after Hitler’s first great successful mass 
meeting in Munich, he decided upon holding a still 
greater one, upon which, in fact, the whole future of the 
young Movement might be held to turn. Were it to 
prove a fiasco, the “ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei ” would 
disappear in the welter of mushroom parties of that 
date : were it to succeed it would dominate in Munich 
and gird itself for a Reich-wide struggle. 

Already the local forces of opposition were fully alive 
to the significance of the new political activity, and the 
occasion of this unprecedented effort on its part was 
chosen for a decisive counter-demonstration. The Reds 
in Munich determined once and for all to smash up the 

1 Nazi short for “ Nazi-onal (National) Socialist,” a nickname given 
the new movement. 

2 Party-body organised with the express purpose of protecting the 
meetings against red disturbances. 


H 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


114 

“ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei.” Hitler tells us that not 
only was appeal for police protection futile, but beneath 
the dignity of the Movement. The Movement must 
defend itself. Only so could it command the respect 
of those it would attract, or ensure the safety of its 
audiences. 

A band of hefty and enthusiastic young supporters 
were specially told off by Hitler himself to keep the doors, 
and to act as ruthless chuckers-out at the very first sign 
of disorder. They were to fight with the gloves off an 
to show no quarter. 

The event fully justified these precautions. After an 
enormous gathering in the Zirkus Krone in Munich, 
which had been an unqualified success, another meeting 
was held well packed with opponents only too eager 
to snatch the next best opportunity to wreck the whole 
business once and for all. Hitler was on his legs speaking 
on “ The Future or Collapse ” when the signal was given. 
Thereupon followed such a scene, such a smash up, such 
an uproar and such a blood shedding, that it actually 
recalled to the ex-service man moments at the Front ! 

The “ Saal-Schutz ” received their baptism of fists 
and chair legs, but bit by bit, fighting literally like 
berserkers, they hurled the enemy out, slung him head 
foremost through the doors, drove him into a corner and 
pummelled him into a jelly. Hitler stood still and 
looked on. His threat to rip the brassard from the arm 
of any one of his troopers who showed the white feathei 
in this scrum, called for no fulfilment. Within appreci¬ 
able time order was restored—the speaker took up the 
thread of his speech, and the meeting closed to th€ 
echoing strains of a patriotic song. 

We have indeed an account of it from one of the eye¬ 
witnesses still living in Munich, from an old lady callec 
Frau Magdalena Schweyer. 

When Hitler was first demobilised he would have 
liked to have returned to his old lodgings with Frai 
Popp, but since she no longer had a room to spare he 


THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI 55 115 

took up equally modest quarters in a little street called 
the Thierschstrasse near the Isar. 

Immediately opposite the house stood a little shop 
—it still stands there. One could buy everything in it 
from matches to a cabbage. The legend over the door 
ran “ Spezeri-Waren, Obst und Gemtise,” 1 with the 
shopkeeper’s name underneath, “ Magdalena Schweyer.” 

Frau Schweyer still stands behind the old-fashioned 
little counter within. She is an aged woman now, 
short of stature, and with grey hair. She came forward 
as I entered one day, glancing sharply up at me through 
her spectacles, and briskly smoothing down her apron 
with her toil-worn hands. 

“ I want to know something about Herr Hitler in the 
old days—in the beginnings of it all-” 

Her eyes instantly lighted up. No one in Munich 
to-day is more proud than little old Frau Schweyer of 
her friendship with the Fuhrer from the first, of the fact 
that she joined the Party in 1919 when it was utterly 
obscure. 

“ How I got to know him ? ” she asked, and planked 
herself down on a little stool, happy to expand on this 
theme. I leant on the counter and watched her animated 
expressive face. Here was one of those working women 
who befriended Hitler through some of the thinnest 
times he had to experience ; here was one of the people 
to whom he so urgently and so clearly and so simply 
aimed to bring his message home, here was one of the 
women whom he sought to place in positions of least 
danger at his meetings. 

“ Ja, ja, ganz richtig,” said Frau Schweyer, “ it was 
in November, 1919. A young man came in here to 
buy some little thing or other—probably some fruit. 
He was rather poorly dressed : he never seemed to 
have more than one coat. I shouldn’t have taken no 
more stock of him than of another, most likely, if it 
hadn’t been he struck me as so well spoken. He was that 

1 Spices (i.e. general chandlery), fruit and vegetables. 



116 GERMANY’S HITLER 

polite. It didn’t seem to go with the poor clothes, 
somehow. I watched him out of the shop, and noticed 
that he went into the house over the way. So that, 
I supposed, was where he lived. 

“ I didn’t notice him come in again for a bit, and 
thought no more about him. 

“ Then one day—just about the turn of the year it 
was—a neighbour of mine happened to tell about him. 
She said his name was Adolf Hitler and he had something 
to do with a lot called the ‘ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei.’ 
By all accounts he was a brilliant speaker—talked some¬ 
thing astounding. My neighbour wanted me to go and 
hear him. She said the very next time there was a 
meeting on I had to go. She’d take me along with her. 

“ So we went. She came in one evening and said 
there was to be a meeting in the Leiberzimmer 1 of the 
Sterneckerbrau. 

“ Well, I did go, and I got all worked up. It was 
wonderful, what he said and all—I could understand 
every word. He seemed to think there was a way to 
be found out of all our troubles and miseries. We was 
all to join his party and help. I joined then and there. 
They gave me a number—90. 

“ I went to all Hitler’s meetings after that, and got 
to know him himself. It didn’t take much to find out 
how poor he was. I had more than half a notion that 
often he wouldn’t have had nothing to eat but for folks 
giving him a bit now and then. It gave me an idea, 
that did. I thought I’d be able to help by sending him 
across a few things now and again—a pot of jam, or a 
snack of sausage, or a handful of apples. But it was as 
plain as daylight he hated to take them. He only did it 
because he was so poor. He never failed once to come 
across to me, after I’d sent him something, to thank me 
for it. Often though, when I was thinking to myself 
that would pretty well do him till next day, one or 
another of his pals come in and just let on as Hitler’d 

1 Name of a room reserved for the members of the Infantry Life Guards. 



THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” 117 

given every bite away to them. They was such a hungry 
crowd, the whole lot of them ! Anyhow he must have 
kept something for himself once in awhiles or he wouldn’t 
be where he is to-day ! 

“ Then there was a Herr Esser 1 ’d pop in sometimes, 
one of Herr Hitler’s friends, and buy a couple of Rettiche 
(large white radishes) for the pair of them. That was 
their idea of a supper. 

“ Things must have gone on just like that for a twelve- 
month—them just living on folks remembering that they 
hadn’t got nothing in their insides. But the Party 
presently began to grow a bit, and when everyone helped 
as well as they could things got a little easier for Hitler. 
Even when I knew he must have a bit coming in like, 
now, I used to send him them apples now and again. 
He was that fond of fruit. 

“ It was wonderful how the Party grew. I know 
because I hung on all those first hard months, and 
went to every meeting, and saw how they had to be 
held in a bigger room every time. We soon outgrew 
the Sterneckerbrau. We went after that to the Hof- 
braukeller, then to the Eberlkeller. Then Hitler rented 
a little sort of office called the * Deutsches Reich.’ Things 
was really looking up. 

“ But the meeting I remember best was that big 
one they held one November, 1921—the 4th to be exact 
—in the assembly room of the Hofbrauhaus, when they 
had that terrific dust up with the Communists. A real 
battle that was ! I shan’t ever forget it as long as I live. 
If I hadn’t kept my head low over the table that night 
and folded my arms above it, like all the rest of us 
women was told to do, sure as fate it would have been 
clean knocked off my shoulders. The beer mugs was 
flying around that night something alarming ! 

“ Not long before this meeting was billed to come 
off there’d been an attack made on one of the members 

1 Herr Herrmann Esser, to-day President of the Reichsfremdenver- 
kehrsverband. 



118 GERMANY’S HITLER 

of the Landtag, Herr Auer. No one seems to have 
witnessed it. Auer himself seemed to think his own 
bravery saved him. But the Party he belonged to 1 
set it about that it was the new Hitler Party what had 
done it. They went about all they knew to stir up the 
people and egg the working folk on to get a blow in at 
the Nazis. Everyone knew—everyone of us I mean— 
knew that something would be tried, that night, to bust 
up our meeting. We didn’t take it too serious as we was 
pretty well used to this sort of threats which so far hadn’t 
gone no further. This time, though, was to be different ! 

cc It was to begin sharp at eight o’clock. My neighbour 
came to fetch me as usual. The first thing we saw as 
we went in was a group of young men standing about the 
entrance each with a band round his arms with a hooked 
cross on it. They were ex-service chaps, friends of 
Hitler from Traunstein. I heard him come up and tell 
them to keep order at all costs. He spoke sharp and 
soldier-like ; said he’d rip them bands off their arms if 
so much as one of them showed the white feather. No 
one of them was to clear out unless he cleared out dead ! 
He smiled though, and added he knew well enough as 
they wouldn’t ! 

“ The place was pretty well full. We womenfolk 

1 Auer belonged to the Social Democratic Party, then strongly 
represented in Parliament in Munich. Dr. Gustav von Kahr had been 
appointed as General State Commissioner with dictatorial powers. This 
regime was inimical to the Republic as represented at Berlin. It favoured 
the dispossessed Wittelsbachs. Its members took oath to the Bavarian 
State, not to the Reich. It is necessary to recall these political facts in 
order that the reader may obtain some idea of what and who the “ author¬ 
ities ” were, in Munich, with whom the newly constituted National Socialists 
(Hitler’s Party) were soon to find themselves in conflict. From what has 
already been written about the bitterness of party warfare in Munich it 
can be well understood that the danger which threatened the big meeting 
described by Frau Schweyer was by no means negligible. The break-up 
of a political gathering in Munich at that time might easily involve fatalities. 
It may be confusing for the reader to hear that Hitler’s Movement was 
opposed by the working people (that it was the Workers themselves who 
proposed to smash up his meetings and his party), since it was the interests 
of the common folk he had so supremely at heart. When it is remembered, 
however, that these workers were Marxists and Communists, light is at 
once shed on this matter. Hitler was all out against Marxism and Com¬ 
munism, for reasons already given in a previous chapter. 



THE “DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” 119 

■ 

were told to get well up in front : it would be safest 
there, far from the doors. I was too excited really to 
be frightened. It was plain there’d be some trouble : 
half the people in the place belonged to the Reds. I 
found a table right in front. Then they came and set 
another near it, and a Herr Esser got up on it to open 
the meeting. As soon as he jumped down again, Herr 
Hitler took his place. They greeted him with a few boos 
and yells, but after a bit he gripped even the enemy, 
and was speaking without interruption for quite an hour, 
before things began to look threatening again. 

“ People were drinking and attending all ears. Then 
I noticed that whenever more beer was called for, 
instead of giving up the empty mugs, fresh ones were 
brought, and the old ones were piled under the tables, 
whole batteries of beer mugs grew up under the tables.. .. 

“ Hitler had been speaking some time when the sign 
was given. Someone shouted 4 Freiheit,’ 1 and a beer pot 
went crash ! That was the signal for things to begin. 
Three, four, five heavy stone pots flew by within an inch 
of the speaker’s head, and next instant his young guards 
sprang forward shouting to us women to 4 duck down ! 5 
“ We ducked sharp enough ! The row was ear- 
splitting. Never heard anything like it in your life ! 
Pandemonium had broken out ; it’s no use me trying 
to describe it. One heard nothing but yells, crashing 
beer mugs, stamping and struggling, the overturning 
of heavy oaken tables, and the smashing up of wooden 
chairs. A regular battle raged in the room. 

44 Hitler stuck to his post. Never got off that table ! 
He made no effort to shield himself at all. He was 
the target of it all : it’s a sheer miracle how he never 
got hit. Them murderous heavy mugs was flying at 
his head all the time. I know because I got a sharp 
look round just between whiles : there he stuck, quiet as 
a statue waiting for those boys of his to get the tumult 
under. Goodness only knows how long it went on— 

1 The Marxist battle cry, “ Liberty.” 



120 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


twenty minutes perhaps, but it seemed never ending. 
The Reds was five times as many as we Hitlerites. The 
boys with the arm-bands were enormously outnumbered. 
They were in a fine state I can tell you before order was 
restored, their jackets torn half off their backs, and their 
faces all patched and dabbled with blood. Anyhow, they 
did get the Reds outside somehow, and then, cool as a 
cucumber, up gets Herr Esser beside Herr Hitler and 
calmly announces that the meeting will go on. The 
speaker was to continued. 

“ That’s famous now. Everyone in Germany remem¬ 
bers them words : ‘ Die Versammlung geht weiter ’ 

. . . ‘ The Speaker will proceed.’ 

“ The room was simply wrecked. There was over 
four hundred smashed beer mugs lying about everywhere, 
and piles of broken chairs. 

“ This, you know, was the first time them Reds got 
as good as they gave. This was the first time since the 
Revolution as anyone got up and gave ’em the no to 
their face—the first time they got roundly trounced and 
walloped themselves. / say it was the real beginning 
of our Party as a force and power. 

“ Ever after this Hitler’s young men what he told 
off to keep order were called the Storm Troops. People 
ought to have seen that fight and that room afterwards 
to know how necessary they were. We should have gone 
under, for good, then and there, without the 8 Saal- 
Schutz.’ Because from now on the Movement had to 
fight and fight and fight, and always—at first—at tre¬ 
mendous odds. Up to now the Reds had had it all their 
own way. It was always them what did the smashing 
up and the storming of other people : they’d done 
enough here in Munich ! Now they was to meet a Party 
what wouldn’t take it from them lying down no more....” 


Frau Schweyer had become quite excited as she 
retailed the story. Something of the light of battle 



THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” 121 


flashed in her eyes again. They were brave women 
who attended Hitler’s first meetings. 

“ But then,” she said, “ you see we knew him, what 
sort of a man he was ! I’ll tell you—just one little thing : 

“ In the middle of December the year after he’d been 
shut up in Landsberg, we National Socialists in Munich 
heard that he was to be set free. Just before Christmas, 
too, on the 20th. We was wild with joy ! We hadn’t 
expected that. We’d been thinking how miserable 
everything would be this year. Then between us we 
struck on a bright idea to welcome him. He would 
come out of the fortress just as desperately poor as he 
went in. So we arranged to have a bit of a collection, 
just in our part of the city, so as he should have a little 
money to put in his pocket straight away. Altogether 
we scraped up about fifty marks. But more than that— 
on the day itself we filled his old room in the house 
opposite my shop with flowers (although it was winter 
time), and covered the poor table with good things to 
eat, and saw that there was fruit and stuff in the cupboard. 
We even secured a bottle of wine for the occasion, 
although we knew he never touched it. 

“ It was December 20th, 1924, a raw, grey, miserable 
day. The hours dragged by ; I began to be mortal 
afraid somehow that he wouldn’t come after all. I was 
always running to the door and looking up and down our 
street. And then, sure enough, about two o’clock in the 
afternoon a motor drove up to the house opposite. Hitler 
was in it. I saw him through the window. He got out 
and was just going in at the door, when he turned round 
and caught sight of me standing staring across the way. 
He just came over and shook me by the hand and said : 
‘ Griiss Gott, Frau Schweyer,’ as though nothing had 
happened at all in all that long sad time since we’d seen 
each other last. 

“ His hand was icy cold and his grip was like iron. 
It gives me the creeps to think how cold and how hard 
it was, to this day. I remember the thought went 



122 


GERMANY'S HITLER 


through my head—how awful to incur the enmity of such 
a fist as that ! I couldn’t say a word. My throat swelled 
and the tears would come. It was such a joy to see him 
back again. 

£c Well, he had come, anyway ! I went back into the 
shop all flustered, thinking of his climbing those stairs 
opposite and coming into his old room, and finding the 
flowers and the eatables and our little preparations for 
his welcome. I could just imagine him sitting down in 
the middle of it all and starting to think of nothing but 
how to get the Party going again. 

44 An hour or two went by and then a neighbour of 
mine come into the shop asking for a subscription to 
the organ fund for St. Anne’s Church. She had a list 
with her. I couldn’t afford much ; nor could anybody 
else apparently. All down the list people had only been 
able to give a few Pfennige each. We were only poor 
folks round about there. Frau Pfister agreed. We had 
a little talk together. She said what awful difficult work 
it was to get anybody to subscribe for the organ, times 
was that hard. And I suddenly said, 4 Well, go over to 
Herr Hitler, see if he’d give you anything. I know he’s 
got a bit. Tell him what it’s for. He’s not the one to 
say no.’ 

44 Frau Pfister got up and crossed the street. I watched 
her enter the house opposite. 

44 In a few minutes she came flying back, radiant, and 
thrust the list under my nose, so that I could see for 
myself what an incredible lot Herr Hitler had given. 

44 Fifty marks ! There it was, just under his name, 
Adolf Hitler. 

44 I could scarcely believe my eyes. I stared at the 
figure, stared at Frau Pfister, took off my glasses and 
looked again— 4 Adolf Hitler, fifty marks.’ 

44 4 Well, I never ! ’ I exclaimed, 4 if the Fiihrer hasn’t 
gone and given the whole lot away-! ’ 

44 Frau Pfister nodded, beaming. 

4 4 4 He was that kind,’ she said, 4 do listen ! He 



THE “ DEUTSCHE ARBEITER-PARTEI ” 


123 


opened the door to me himself and asked what I wanted. 
When I told him, he made me come in and sit down. 
So I did and Herr Hitler catched hold of a glass and 
filled it with wine and gave it to me, with a cake and said 
I was to eat and drink. I didn’t like to. I tried to excuse 
myself. I said as how the things on the table was all for 
him. But he would have it, ‘ Now you do as I bid,’ he 
said, £ I don’t drink wine, but that little drop it won’t 
hurt you.’ Then he reaches for my paper, glances at it 
and scribbles something under his own name. He puts 
it down and goes over to a little side table, pulls out a 
drawer and comes back and pushes fifty marks over 
to me. £ There you are,’ he says, £ I’d give you more, 
but that’s all I’ve got. Some friends of mine have just 
dotted that up for me.’ I gaped and couldn’t for the 
moment find a blessed word to say, but he read my face 
clear as a book and laughed and added, fi Believe it or 
not as you like, but I’m jolly glad to have it to give. 
It’s a good object. The priests don’t particularly love 
me, but that’s neither here nor there.’ 

££ £ I tried to thank him, but he shut me up. He 
wouldn’t hear a word . . .’ 

££ He used,” Frau Schweyer concluded, ££ to come 
across to the shop as long as he lived in our street, and 
often afterwards when he had become a very much 
bigger man. He didn’t forget me. When my husband 
died in 1929 Hitler was in Leipzig. But he sent me a 
lovely wreath and wrote ever such a nice letter with it. 

££ People needn’t wonder why we love the Fuhrer. 
He was always for us small folk. He never had no time 
and no wish to think of himself. He was always out for 
everybody but himself. ...” 



CHAPTER VII 


EARLY STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT: 
GOTTFRIED SCHMITT’S STORY 

G ERMAN people express themselves very differently 
from English people ; moreover, they are highly 
metaphysically minded. The everyday Englishman never 
talks metaphysics : the German does little else. The 
German, and particularly the young German of to-day, 
is intensely serious, desperately in earnest. He can’t for 
the life of him see anything to be funny about in politics. 
Unlike the Englishman he does not seek to mask his 
thinking, his dearest convictions and strivings, under an 
apparent carelessness or a rampant humour. It has 
been said that a sense of humour would be fatal to the 
make-up of a dictator. It would be fatal to a revolution, 
too, and to the revolutionaries. 

Gottfried Schmitt tells me his story as only a German 
working man would tell it. For the English reader it 
needs not merely to be translated, but to be put into a 
wholly different vernacular. “ To my idea,” diffidently 
says the Englishman when he can be got going at all, 
whereas the German readily speaks of his “ Weltan¬ 
schauung 991 and of his “ innere Einstellung.” 1 2 

When I made my way to Herr Schmitt’s simple 
dwelling, I was bidden to enter and welcome. Schmitt 
lugged a box out from under the table, on which I sat 
down. It is a narrow little room this, a “ Schlauch ” as 
they call it here. A few poor sticks of furniture don’t 

1 Cosmic view of things. 

2 Innermost spiritual conviction. 


124 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 125 

leave much elbow room either. A laundry basket perches 
on an old sofa with the latest little new-comer in it. 
Five people live in this room which also serves as a 
kitchen. 

I blurt out: cc But good Lord ! Herr Schmitt, how 
can you stick it in this hole ? Why on earth haven’t you 
got a better place to live in after all the yeoman service 
you’ve done for the Cause ? ” 

He gives me a serious square look. “ We National 
Socialists weren’t out to feather our own nests,” he 
implicitly rebukes me, “ we weren’t out for mere selfish 
personal material improvement. Our struggle was for 
Germany ! I was nothing but a working man, and 
I’ve never been nothing but a working man since—nor 
wanted to. We working men wasn’t counting the 
Revolution just to fill our pockets. We wanted to bring 
about the sort of socialism which had been dangled 
before our eyes for decades without its never coming to 
anything at all. What I’ve got to say for Adolf Hitler 
is that he, and he alone, ever made a practical reality of 
it. He kept faith with the working man. He’s not only 
a Workers’ Leader, but he himself is a working man. He 
gave us back our honour. That’s what it amounted to. 
He put it short and straight himself, ‘ There is no patent 
of nobility,’ he said, c but that of work.’ * 

“ But don’t you worry about me. I’m going to get 
out of this sure enough, and pretty quick now. All 
round Munich there’s hundreds of little houses been 
going up, each with its own bit of garden, all destined 
for the working man of the future. It’s the Hitler State 
what’s building them. Hitler says every man ought to 
have enough ground just to dig his spade into for himself, 
so as he grows up on and with his own bit of soil. He’s 
all against these mammoth block buildings like human 
rabbit warrens. He says they drag the people’s roots 
right out of the land. And so they do ! 

. . Well, well,” he gives the subject a turn, “ about 
the beginnings of our Kampf -? You’ve got to know 



126 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


as after the Revolt in 1918 I was a Communist. I couldn’t 
see any other way to bring the sort of Socialism about 
that we wanted. They’d always been painting the 
future so rosy what with their ‘ Life in beauty and 
worthiness.’ 1 And nothing has come of it. It wasn’t 
what you could rightly call a Revolution in 1918, only a 
lot of places emptied to be filled up with nincompoops 
with no idea in their heads but to fill their own stomachs, 
and to have a good time themselves. They forgot all 
about us workers. The only people we’ve got any use 
for is those what don’t confine themselves to words, but 
who go and do something ! That sort of thing turned 
me Communist. 

“ Then in 1921 or thereabouts everyone in Munich 
seemed to be talking about some new Party or other 
here what called itself c Nationalist.’ The name alone 
was enough to make us hate it. Not that I worried 
myself much about it at first. Never give it a thought, 
until one day some of our chaps turned up in the factory 
with their heads in bandages. At first they wouldn’t let 
on what had happened, only mumbled something and 
turned aside. But it must have been pretty lively, that 
scrap, the way them chaps seemed to have got it in the 
neck ! It all came out, of course, sooner or later. A 
hundred or more of them had made it up together to 
go to one of this new Party’s meetings and smash it up. 
They hadn’t succeeded. 

“ I couldn’t rightly believe my ears when I heard as 
it was only a handful of fellows at the meeting as had 
chucked them out. But everybody was talking of it. 
It was a sort of sensation for a day or two in Munich. 

“ That attracted my attention. I thought I’d go 
and have a look in at the next meeting of these here 
Nationalists. 

“ I stuck myself in a corner and kept my eyes and 
ears well open. The first thing I seemed to notice was 


1 Something like the English “ Land fit for heroes to live in.” 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 127 

that this wasn’t no mere ‘bourgeois’ 1 gathering, and 
no ‘ high-brow 9 one neither. The audience was made up 
of plain folk like myself, working men and petty shop¬ 
keepers. 

“ Then this man Hitler got up to speak. . . . 

“ I saw at once this wasn’t no common or garden tub- 
thumper, no gasbag like the most of them. Everything 
he said was just common sense and sound. Although I 
wasn’t one to be won over all in a moment, it didn’t take 
me no longer than that first meeting to realise that Hitler 
was straight as a die, and a safe one to put your shirt on. 

“ I went to every one of his meetings after that. Bit 
by bit he won me round. He got in blow after blow at all 
the ideas I’d been holding on to up to now and laid them 
out flat! He knocked the Red nonsense out of me—all 
about the World Revolution to put the world right, and 
hot air like that. Instead, I seemed to see what he was 
driving at. Instead of prophecies and far-off Utopias 
like, in National Socialism, he gave us a good working 
scheme of things we could get busy on right away. 2 

“ The first thing for me to do was to break with the 
Communists. So I did, and in the spring of 1922 I 
joined Hitler’s Party. They shoved me into the guard 
straight away, the Storm Troops they were called, whose 
job it was to keep order at the meetings. 

“ People were flocking into the Party every day, 
deserting the Reds and the Democrats and the rest for 
the National Socialists. Hitler made his aim so clear, 
any right-thinking man could follow his ideas. We 
learnt to trust them. 

“ It was about this time Hitler organised the ‘ Storm 
Troops.’ The number of us had so greatly increased it 

1 The epithet “ bourgeois ” or “ biirgerlich ” in Germany means some¬ 
thing more opprobrious than its mere equivalent “ middle class ” in 
English. The bourgeois and his class in the eyes of his political opponents 
means the miserably small-minded section of the community which cares 
for nothing but self-interest and cannot see beyond the end of its nose, a 
class incapable of high endeavour, long vision or self-sacrifice, hence a 
drag and a menace upon any Party out for the common good. 

2 See the end chapters of this very book. 



128 


GERMANY’S HITLER 

was necessary to give us a proper standing. We met one 
day at the beginning of August in 1922 in the c Alt- 
Mtinchner Saal ’ in the Blirgerbraukeller, about three 
hundred of us, and Hitler divided us up into hundreds, 
and these hundreds again into smaller divisions. I was 
posted to the third hundred.” 

These “ Storm Troopers ” had indeed become oi 
such vital and ubiquitous necessity in the propaganda 
campaign of the Party, that the Leader had now to turn 
his attention to giving them a thorough-going special 
organisation of their own. In the beginning the Storm 
Troopers were generally enormously outnumbered at the 
meetings, but it was seldom, if ever, they encountered 
defeat. 

Hitler was confronted—as time went on—with mortal 
danger from the State (the Government in Munich at 
that time envisaged his Movement as Monarchist and 
reactionary in intent), and from the marshalled might of 
all those proletarian forces he sums up under the heading 
of ££ Marxismus.” He was confronted by the terrorist 
methods of experienced opponents. Force and terror, he 
decided, were only to be countered by a still more active 
and ready force and terror. It had been an axiom of the 
Party, laid down from the first, to hold no sort of parley 
with opposition and obstruction and with the forces ol 
destruction, but to grapple with them on the instant, 
ferociously enough to down and quash them then and 
there. 

Conviction in the rightness and supreme necessity foi 
Germany of his gigantic undertaking, in its ultimate 
triumph for all and any temporary or individual cost 
underlay the constitution and the morale of the Storm 
Troops. Hitler made a considered study of the Reds : 
terrorist methods in order to meet them by something still 
more decisive and more adequate—thus at the beginning, 
to obtain a hearing for National Socialist speakers ai 
National Socialist meetings, and to ensure safe conduci 
for sympathisers and possible converts. 


STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 129 

The name “ Storm Troops ” which sounds so ominous 
in foreign ears, was all of a piece with the political 
nomenclature of the moment. All the parties had their 
organised chuckers-out, who went under some such 
name. The “ Sturm-Scharen ” of the Roman Catholic 
Centre Party, indeed, were called almost exactly in the 
same way. 

In the beginning, at least, the National Socialist Storm 
Troops were allowed to have nothing whatever to do with 
military organisation and military aims. They were, 
writes Hitler, “ purely an instrument for protecting and 
educating the National Socialist Movement. 55 Here, very 
briefly, are the lines he laid down for their development : 

“ The Storm Troops are not to be trained from the 
military point of view, but from that of how to carry out 
the principles and objects of the Party. Since the men 
must be strong and fit, store must be set far more on 
sport (such things as boxing and jiu-jitsu) than on military 
drill. . . . When, and if, in the future an army should 
become necessary to the Nation, here would lie its finest 
material.” (Mein Kampj\ p. 611 ; or in the abridged 
English translation, p. 217.) The formation of the Storm 
battalion was not to be a copy of the old Army either in 
arms or equipment, but at the same time the leader most 
emphatically exacted that every manly hardihood, every 
highest soldierly excellence of discipline and obedience 
should be required of his “ Troopers.” 

“ At the end of August,” continues Herr Schmitt, 
“ there was to be a big meeting held by some of the 
societies in the city (the Vaterlandischen Verbande) to 
protest against a new law what had been passed in protec¬ 
tion of the Republic. We National Socialists were also 
invited to take part. Hitler thought it an A 1 opportunity 
to bring his Troopers for the first time into the open, and 
to give Munich an idea of their strength and discipline. 
We were six companies 1 strong by then, we had fifteen 

1 A company consisted officially of one hundred men, but not all of 
these were as yet up to strength. 



130 GERMANY’S HITLER 

flags and two bands. We turned out and marched with 
music at the head of the column into the Konigsplatz where 
the meeting was to come off. At first we encountered 
little that was unpleasant. They flung a few stones 
at us from some of the side streets, but we was under 
strict orders to take no notice of such petty manoeuvres, 
so we kept straight on. But then things got a bit livelier. 
Just before we reached the square Hitler right about 
faced and gave the signal to clear the streets. We flung 
ourselves upon our attackers, and with two shakes of a 
lamb’s tail there wasn’t a man of them left to be seen. 
And in the Konigsplatz itself we got a downright ovation. 
The people hadn’t seen anything like us with our forma¬ 
tion, flags and bands, for ages. A crowd of forty thousand 
greeted our appearance. 

“ Hitler addressed it. He said we weren’t there to pro¬ 
test against any law about the Republic, but to protest 
against time-servers and swindlers in high places. It 
was because of them that the Republic wanted protection. 
He carried the crowd with him. Munich was downright 
impressed that day with Hitler’s sheer ability and with the 
solidity of us Troopers. 

“ By now the Movement was really making headway 
in Munich itself and the time was ripe for us beginning to 
spread ourselves a bit. We began to look farther afield. 

“ In the September (1922) we Storm Troops had our 
first propaganda outing. We was loaded into two lorries, 
and drove out to Tolz, 1 where our coming had already 
been billed and placarded. Hitler rode in front, as usual 
in his old trench coat and black velours hat. In fact I 
don’t suppose he had any other. Not that he would have 
worn another if he’d owned it. For years he clung to 
that old hat. 

“ Well, as I was saying, we got to Tolz. It wasn’t to 
be a big affair, only a small meeting in a little inn. Any¬ 
how the room was full when we arrived so that things 
could start straight away. I took a place near where the 

1 A town about forty miles south of Munich. 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 131 

Fiihrer was to stand and to speak. He turned round to 
me, and said softly, ‘ Look out, Comrade, it’s pretty 
sultry in here. If anyone starts a racket you scrag him by 
the collar, and you—to my mate—shove him along behind. 
Get the door open, slick, and chuck him out. Only 
don’t start unless I give you the tip.’ 

“ We didn’t have long to wait. A heckler soon bobbed 
up. My mate and I exchanged looks, but Hitler put up 
with the yelling and the nuisance for a bit. When the 
fellow showed no sign of shutting up, he at last signalled 
with his hand to me. In a trice we’d nabbed the chap 
and run him to the door. A good one on the backside 
sent him flying down the steps. . . . We didn’t have to 
repeat the lesson, Hitler finished what he had to say to the 
good folks of Tolz without further interruption. 

“ That, of course, was what we was for. 

“ But the affair at Koburg was on a much bigger scale. 
There was to be a ‘ German day ’ held there, a sort of 
whooshing up of patriotic feeling. Hitler was invited 
to attend it and to ‘ bring a few friends.’ He wasn’t 
slow to seize the opportunity. It was a rare joke about 
those few friends.’ 1 The order came as the whole lot 
of the Storm Troops was to turn out. We was about 
six hundred strong ! It was a Saturday, in the middle of 
October. We were to assemble early at the Central 
Station and bring along rations for two days. The band 
was to march in our van. Hitler turned up well before¬ 
hand and we found a special train awaiting us. The 
music rang out gaily in the early morning air, and the 
people had hung out flags to make a sort of festival of 
the occasion. We stopped once or twice during the 
journey to pick up a few more of our comrades from the 
more outlying places, and arrived at last eight hundred 
strong. 

“ There was a deputation of the big-wigs in Koburg 
awaiting us at the station, all very solemn and proper in 
frock coats and top hats. But they got the shock of their 


1 “ Etwas Begleitung erwartet.” 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


132 

lives, I can tell you, when they saw what sort of c accom¬ 
paniment ’ Herr Hitler had brought along. I was close up 
to them, there on the platform, and heard what they said 
to him. 

“ ‘ We must earnestly beg you to control your following ! 
The city of Koburg explicitly forbids these men to march 
through the streets in rank and file with flags flying. It 
would be highly provocative of disorder.’ 

“ Our Leader was a bit astonished at this and asked 
for explanations. What sort of trouble, then, did they 
expect ? They said there’d been a bit of a misunder¬ 
standing in the City over the organisation of the festival 
and its promoters had had to give a strict guarantee that 
nothing would be done in the least likely to provoke 
the Communists. 

“ Hitler received this with undisguised scorn. What 
kind of a ( patriotic ’ day did they suppose could be held 
if the Communists were to have it all their own way ! 
6 Good Lord ! ’ he said, ‘ aren’t we in Bavaria ? Haven’t 
we the right to move about as we like ? ’ 

“ Whereupon he turned sharp round, much to the 
discomfiture of the deputation, and gave us the word 
to move off. 

“ We of the 3rd Company marched two by two into 
the town on both sides of the band, and sure enough soon 
encountered storms of abuse from the crowds en route. 
Hitler led and we followed. At the fire station they were 
ready to turn the hoses on to us, but just didn’t—at the 
critical moment. Stones, however, began to fly around. 
Then things got hotter. The Reds set upon us with iron 
rods and cudgels. That was going a bit too far. Hitler 
swung round, flourished his walking-stick (that was the 
signal), and we flung ourselves upon our assailants. We 
were unarmed save for our fists, but we put up so good a 
fight that within fifteen minutes not a Red was left to 
be seen. So we arrived finally at the place in the centre 
of the city where the meeting was to be held. 

“ When it was over we formed up to betake ourselves 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 133 

to the Schtitzenhalle, a big hall on the outskirts of Koburg 
where we were to spend the night. On the way the former 
racket got up again. Hitler decided once and for all 
to lay this Red menace here, and gave us the word of 
command. We counter-attacked for all we knew. It 
was jolly hard work, I can tell you ! They rained tiles 
on us from the roof and windows and tore up the cobble 
stones for missiles. I got a thundering blow on the head 
which had to be attended to before I could carry on. I 
only found out afterwards how serious the wound was. 

“ We reached the Schtitzenhalle and dossed down, 
without undressing, on a thin spreading of straw. Hitler 
turned in amongst us, on the floor like the rest. But first 
he set the watches, and arranged for patrols. He came 
in quite the old soldier over this, anxious to provide 
against possible surprise. 

“ I was detailed, with another man, for patrol work. 
Our watch begun at 2 a.m. We cast around a bit at some 
distance from the hall and found ourselves creeping 
through a spinney in its neighbourhood. We caught a 
glitter—made cautiously in that direction. Detected two 
of the enemy with their party-masks off. One of them had 
a revolver in his belt, the other carried hand-grenades. 

“ c So they’d try that dirty trick,’ I thought, and rage 
seized me at the thought of that whole barnful of sleeping 
men being suddenly blown sky-high into the night. 
At a concerted signal my comrade and I flung ourselves 
upon the pair, and for the next few seconds there was a 
berserker struggle in the underbush. We got them under, 
and unarmed them. We tied them up good and tight, 
and went through their pockets. There were a few 
£ egg bombs ’ to be sequestered in the latter. Then 
we marched them into quarters. I could hardly stand, 
myself; the blood was pouring from the wound in my 
head, and blinding my eyes. I turned the precious pair 
over to Hitler and showed him the bombs. 

“ He looked ugly at that, but made no further sign. 
Quietly he ordered the captives to be taken to a room 



134 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


at the back, beckoned to a hefty couple of our chaps, 
furnished them with a stout stick apiece, and signed to 
them to get busy within. Some time afterwards the 
two would-be bomb throwers were seen to leave our 
camp, very much sadder and very much wiser men. It 
is to be doubted if they’ll forget the walloping and basting 
they got that night to the last day of their lives. 

“ On the Sunday morning we all took an oath of fidelity 
to the Cause, and then marched off to have a look at the 
Castle Koburg. 

“ Meanwhile it came to Hitler’s ears that a mass 
meeting in protest was to be staged in the market-place 
that afternoon. The Reds were calling in supports from 
the outlying villages, and these men were rolling up by 
the lorryful. There might be ten thousand of them, 
altogether, by two o’clock. 

“ Undeterred by the news Hitler at once decided to 
face the issue. The decisive blow, it seemed, had not yet 
been struck by which the Red domination here was to 
be broken. At twelve we were again on the move, 
marching back to the market-place. But the upshot was 
ludicrous. Instead of the crowd we had been led to 
expect, we encountered no more than a hundred people 
at the most, and these, too, melted away into doorways 
and down convenient turnings at our approach. Here 
and there a knot of fellows who had come into Koburg 
from the country, and had not so far had a taste of our 
mettle, put up a bit of a fight, but we soon scattered them. 
We betook ourselves to the meeting-hall of the previous 
day, and stayed there until the time came to leave the 
town. 

“ Then a queer thing happened. We was all sitting 
about, quiet and waiting, when what should show up 
in the entrance but a trickle of chaps coming in, by ones 
and twos, or perhaps a little group at a time, most of ’em 
with their heads or arms tied up and bandaged. They 
were our erstwhile enemies. At first they hesitated about 
putting their noses inside the door, but then one of them 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 135 

came forward and said, ‘ Look here, you fellows—what’s 
all the trouble about? You’re workmen like us. Why 
are we at each other’s throats ? ’ 

“ Someone said, c Why didn’t you think of that before, 
mate ? ’ 

“ 6 Well, they told us as your Leader was against the 
working man ; as you belonged to the bourgeoisie and 
had got to be resisted regardless.’ 

66 It turned out that not long before our column 
entered Koburg, Schnaps had been circulated to such 
purpose among our opponents that few of them knew well 
what they were doing. Money had been spent, too, and 
word had gone round that if anyone defaulted he was to 
be done in on the spot. 

“ Anyhow we got talking. More and more of them 
turned up. We laid ourselves out to explain things and 
make them see what we were standing for. Lots of them 
felt like joining us. By evening, when we were to march 
off again to the station, quite a few came along too. It 
was a bit of a triumph, that. The whole town seemed to 
breathe more freely ; people cheered us, and flowers 
was thrown. 

“ But at the station, although the train stood ready, 
there seemed to be nothing doing. There wasn’t an 
engine-driver on hand. This was another snag. So 
Hitler threatened the officials that his men would capture 
every Red in the place. If the worst came to the worst, 
one of his troopers could drive the train to Munich, but 
in every coach one of the prisoners must travel with it. 
If the whole thing went smash, at least these would be 
involved in the catastrophe. He would have been as 
good as his word, too, if just then an engine-driver hadn’t 
come forward and volunteered ! 

“ That was the Koburg affair. 

“ As the time went on we used to have ever bigger and 
bigger meetings in Munich. Sometimes Hitler would 
turn up with some of his Troopers at the House of Call 
used by us men from the East Station quarter. I remember 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


136 

once I put him a question about the Unions. 4 What 
are we going to do, Herr Hitler, about these here Trade 
Unions ? 5 I asked. 4 Wouldn’t it be a good thing if they 
was all to be united ? ’ 

“ But he said no, there was no point in that. 6 Such a 
combine,’ he said, 4 would perforce be, par excellence , an 
international organisation ; what we want is to form a 
united Front of German labour.’ 

“ Then, on January 28th, 1923, we celebrated the first 
Party Day of the Movement. About one thousand 
Troopers assembled on the Marsfeld, together with at least 
four thousand members of the Party. 

“It was always becoming necessary to do something 
about the ever-growing numbers of the Storm Troops, 
so that now again the units were reorganised. Hitler 
designed and gave us our standards ; Munich got two of 
these, Landshut got a third, and Nuremberg the fourth. 
A month or two later, in the spring, the famous war-time 
ace, Captain Goering, was appointed to the leadership 
of the whole body. 

44 In the September of that year, Sedan Day was cele¬ 
brated in Nuremberg. We National Socialist Troopers 
found ourselves there in company with three or four 
other similar organisations, the 4 Reichskriegsflagge,’ and 
the 4 Bund Oberland ’ and the 4 Waffenring,’ destined to 
play a momentous part in the events of the following 
winter. 1 We got a splendid welcome in Nuremberg ; 
better than any we’d experienced as yet at home. The 
celebrations were to take place in the Herkules Saal. 
There were over eight thousand Muncheners there who 
one and all acclaimed Hitler with enthusiasm. Nurem¬ 
berg hadn’t expected anything like it. The Leader was 
enormously heartened by the whole thing. The Nurem- 

1 More will be said about these bodies later. The “ Reichskriegsflagge ” 
was an informal army composed of ex-service men. Then there were the 
“ Young German Order ” ; the“ Oberland,” commanded by Dr. Friedrich 
Weber, the “ Black Reichswehr ” and others. All were destined to side 
with (and be merged in) or against the National Socialists in the course of 
the next few dramatic months. 



STRUGGLES OF THE MOVEMENT 137 

bergers have stuck to him through thick and thin ever 
since, so much so that when this same anniversary came 
round again in 1933 the Flihrer ordained that in future, 
as a sign of his gratitude and recognition, the Party Day 
should always be held in Nuremberg. 55 


CHAPTER VIII 


HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY 

F ROM the date of Adolf Hitler’s joining the 
“ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei,” to that of the apparent 
ruin of all their hopes, in November, 1923, an enormous 
amount of spade work had been accomplished. Adolf 
Hitler, without home and ties of any sort, gave himself 
body and soul to the nascent movement. He lived for it 
alone : had no other thought. It was quickly perceived 
by Anton Drexler and his five original companions that 
Hitler was the only man among them with the force and 
drive and will to bring this thing into the open and to 
make of it a nation-wide affair. The whole direction of the 
infant Party was soon to be confided, with the utmost 
enthusiasm and unanimity, to his hands alone. 

Hitler’s colleagues perceived just what his audiences 
were soon to comprehend, that with him this Movement 
meant action and not merely talk. This man, with his 
gift of apt and ready political speech, could conceivably 
have won for himself a sufficient position with one or 
other of the big established factions ; as it was he devoted 
all his time and strength and powers to the promotion 
of one of the obscurest efforts to find a way out of the 
despair and confusion of the time. From the date of his 
first taking over entire conduct of the propaganda, 
January 5th, 1920, the Party took to itself a more compre¬ 
hensive name. Since Germany owed the sad plight in 
which she found herself to the un-Socialistic Nationalists, 
and to the anti-National Socialists, so it must be through 
the programme of a properly conceived National Socialism 
that she must be rehabilitated. 

138 


HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY 139 

It has been the endeavour of a great many writers to 
make these distinctions intelligible and significant to 
foreign students of German politics. Whether or not 
they have succeeded may be open to question. It is no 
part of the present writer’s intention to essay the attempt 
again. Suffice it in this place and in this connection to 
say that the revolution of thought and programme indi¬ 
cated by this new juxtaposition of old political labels, 
was abundantly plain to the man-in-the-street in Germany 
in 1920. It was not only plain to him, but the combination 
was, through Hitler’s exposition, so peculiarly apt, that 
none other would have captured public attention so 
sharply. 

The programme of the party was epitomised under some 
twenty-five headings, the very first of which, of course, 
pledged it to loud and insistent repudiation of the terms 
of the Versailles Treaty. But to recapitulate this “ plat¬ 
form ” here, would be to postulate some adequate explana¬ 
tion of it, and an adequate explanation would entail a 
book in itself. The writer rather proposes to confine 
himself to the story of how Drexler and Hitler put their 
heads together to draw up this momentous document, 
and how it was received by the public in the great 
gathering of February 24th, 1920, in the Hofbrauhaussaal. 

“ Hitler and I had been hammering hard for a real 
big meeting for some time,” continues Herr Drexler, 
<c but Herr Harrer feared the risk of failure was too 
great.” 

It was Herr Harrer who had doubted, at first, if this 
new associate, Hitler, could really address and hold an 
audience. At this point he retires from the chairmanship. 
Hitler and Drexler were all for bold measures. <c We 
had all long decided,” the founder goes on, <c that if 
we could attract five hundred people we might hope to 
attract double the number. Events seemed to have 
proved that our audiences were steadily augmenting. 

“ We used to meet, he and I, three or four times at 
[east every week, and we’d sit up to one o’clock in the 



140 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


morning working out our plans and ideas. Hitler would 
have come even oftener, but I lived some way out of the 
city at that time, and he couldn’t always afford the tram 
fare. We’d get to work the moment he turned up, and 
grind right on until my wife called us to table for supper. 
She had to call more than once, too, I can tell you ! 
We’d shove our writing aside then and fall on the 
potatoes. My little girl used to climb on Hitler’s knee ; 
she knew as she was always welcome, and as he’d share 
all he’d got with her. He was ‘ Uncle Hitler ’ to her 
—she was only three then—and always a prime favourite. 

“ I had already written a pamphlet called Whence 
comes the ‘ Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei! What are its aims ? ’ 
and had read it at one of our meetings. A lady had been 
so struck with it that she volunteered three hundred 
marks, then and there, to have it printed. Herr Gott! 
What a joy that was ! We sold copies at ten Pfennig 1 
each, so that more cash might be raised for more 
pamphlets and more printing. We got what we could 
out of our members for the same purpose. 

“ It was about this time Hitler came to know oui 
never-to-be-forgotten Dietrich Eckart. Eckart and Hitlei 
both spoke at the last meeting we held in the Deutschen 
Reich, when the people were packed like herrings in 
a box. 

“ Up till now the Press had taken little notice of us. 
unless it were to hold us up to ridicule. This made 
Hitler all the more keen about coming right out intc 
the open and doing something spectacular. The 
Hofbrauhaussaal could seat two thousand people. 
There were at least a couple of hundred tables in it 
That was the sort of hall we wanted. And next —z 
well-known man to speak. A Dr. Johannes Dingfeldei 
had written a striking article lately, in the Miinchene\ 
Zeitung , called ‘ Was uns not tut’ (what we need). He 
had quite good things to say about usury and profiteering 
and all that, and people had been struck by it. So we 

1 Roughly id. 


HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY 141 

invited this man on to our platform for that night, to 
open the proceedings. 

“ Beforehand, Hitler and I had worked hard to draw 
up our official Party programme. He turned up at my 
place one evening armed with a sheaf of manuscript in 
which he’d roughly sketched it out. For hours we 
worked at it, boiling it down and condensing it, and 
making it as short and pithy as we could. We knew it 
mustn’t be long-winded, and yet it was all-important to 
get every point clear and comprehensive and exact. 
We cracked our brains over it, I can tell you ! It was all 
hours in the morning before we got the thing into final 
shape. It consisted then of twenty-five headings. Adolf 
Hitler sprang up, when we’d really done, and banged 
his fist on the table under my nose. 

“ ‘ Old boy ! these points of ours are going to rival 
Luther’s placard on the doors of Wittenberg ! ’ 

“ Well—indeed it looked like it ! When the great 
evening came, and Dr. Dingfelder had finished his 
address, Hitler got up to speak. So far all had been 
quiet. No one had been rubbed up the wrong way, and 
the Communists in the audience had made no sign. 

“ Hitler began quite simply, without particular 
emphasis. He just outlined the history of the past ten 
years or so, came to the War, and then got into his 
stride over the Revolution. His manner altered ; 
passion crept into voice, look, gesture. And now 
opposition awoke. Cries came from all parts of the hall. 
The story of what happened is well known. The yells 
waxed to a storm. The beer mugs began to fly. There 
was soon a ding-dong battle in full swing. When at 
length our Saal-Schutz managed to restore order, Hitler 
just went on as if no interruption had occurred. At last 
he came to the outlining of our Party objects. 

66 Point for point he went through the programme, 
explaining and illustrating as he went along. He never 
passed from one head to another without demanding of 
the audience if they fully understood and if they fully 



142 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


agreed. And every time a storm of assent replied : 
two thousand throats cried £ Yes/ and two thousand 
hands showed high. Enthusiasm waxed from minute to 
minute. The great hall was half-wild with joy. People 
who had suffered so much and so long felt that at last 
they could lift their heads again and draw breath, and 
trust that the unbelievable had come to pass, a man had 
arrived who could and would lead them out of the Swamp 
of Despair ! 

cc As for Adolf Hitler himself, it was here in the 
Hofbrauhaussaal this night that he received his 
Mandate. . . . 

<c Four hours long that meeting lasted. When it 
was over two thousand propagandists were let loose 
on Munich. The seed had fallen on good ground. 
Never had Hitler been so happy in his life ! 

“ From this point on we held meetings and meetings, 
and then more meetings ; meetings galore ! The 
opposition in Republican Germany had never dared so 
much before. Every week one or two meetings were held 
in this, that or the other of the bigger halls in Munich. 
People swarmed into the Party. 1 The time came when 
its headquarters could be moved into three decently 
furnished rooms in the Corneliusstrasse, but far more 
significantly and far more importantly, the time came 
when the Movement could begin publishing a newspaper. 

“ There was a paper going called the Volkischer 
Beobachter , which was for sale. It represented the affairs 
and interests of the man in the street, and had hitherto 
been supported by various popular societies and clubs. 
In December, 1921, Dietrich Eckart and I busied our¬ 
selves to see if we couldn’t buy the thing up. It would 
mean an enormous pull for the Party to have its own 
press. We brought off the deal, and the Beobachter , as our 
paper, began with a bi-weekly appearance. But by the 

1 In Germany to belong to the National Socialist Party did not merely 
mean that this party represented one’s own political opinions and therefore 
attracted one’s allegiance, but that one was actually registered with a 
number as an active working member of the Party. 



HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY 143 

turn of the year we were in a position to make a daily 
of it, and it has been of the greatest service to us all along, 
right down to the present day. 

“ Hitler next designed the Party flag. A whole lot 
of considerations had to be brought to bear upon that. 
We wanted something red enough to out-Herod Herod, 
i.e. to challenge and outdo the Reds on their own red 
ground, and get something quite different. A black- 
white-red flag still existed which denoted little but the 
vain hope of re-establishing the pre-War German 
Monarchy. Our flag was to embody not a reactionary 
aspiration, but a counter-revolutionary one. Hitler was 
well used to designing posters for us ; at last he achieved 
our flag. He kept the colours black-white-red, because 
Germany had fought under the black, white and red in 
the War. The red ground stood for Socialism, the white 
inset for Nationalism, and the swastika 1 for racial purity 
and creative work. 

“ The Party was delighted with the flag, but it didn’t 
at all please the Reds.” 

As time went on Adolf Hitler’s work increased by 
leaps and bounds. By the year 1922 the Party had 
made such great progress in Munich, and indeed through¬ 
out Bavaria, that it began to be heard of in Germany at 
large. The Leader was kept incessantly busy addressing 
mass meetings in one city after another. Everywhere 
he became immensely popular. Important men in 
foreign countries turned their eyes upon him. The 
National Socialist Party, however, still ranked merely 
as one of a perfect legion of political groups. 

From the date of the French Occupation of the Ruhr 
in January, 1923, onwards, Germany may be said to 
have touched bottom. Perhaps it has never been fully 
and vividly enough realised in England how this Occupa¬ 
tion, apart from Reparations, and every other crushing 
thing in the Versailles Treaty, really broke the German 
people. What the invasion of Belgium was to the Belgians 

1 Nordic Sign of the Sun. 



144 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


in 1914 was the invasion of the Ruhr to Germany—and 
the latter took place in “ peace time.” 

The Hitler Movement was not yet far flung enough 
or powerful enough to cope with this national shame and 
misery, but a small body of desperate men, already 
inspired by the Munich idea, gave themselves up to acts 
of “ passive resistance ” (derailing the trains transporting 
coal to France), in the Ruhrgebiet, which sooner or 
later cost them their lives. An outstanding name in this 
connection is that of Schlageter—the man to whom an 
undying flame burns now on the Rhine. “ These Ruhr 
fighters,” says an English writer, Mr. Geoffrey Moss 
(I Look to the Stars), “ kept the soul of Germany alive when 
all seemed lost.” 

It was at this time that “ the great delirium called 
* Inflation ’—a new word in human history—reached 
its apex.” This, continues another very fair-minded 
Englishman, Sir Philip Gibbs (in The Cross of Peace , 
p. 137), was “ when the greatest industrial nation in 
Europe lurched into bankruptcy and lived through a 
nightmare in which many went mad. Money meant 
nothing but astronomical figures printed on a bit of 
paper. Trade came to a standstill in great cities. The 
wheels of industry ceased to turn. Armies of unemployed 
men stood outside deserted factories where no chimneys 
smoked. . . . There was an epidemic of suicide among 
young people on the threshold of life. Despair crept 
into the soul of the nation.” 

As we have shown, the Great War cannot be said to 
have ended for Germany when it ceased for the Allies, in 
November, 1918. The very vitals of the nation were 
being internally torn and ravaged for years after that. 
There was an effort made to tear away the Rhineland. 
. . . War veterans back from the Front had to arm 
afresh and fight again in the streets of their own German 
cities. Every centrifugal force in a country only welded 
together after 1870-71, reasserted itself, and threatened 
to break up Bismarck’s Imperial creation. 


HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY 145 

“ The winter of 1921,” continues Herr Drexler, 
“ was a severe one. Food riots were breaking out 
everywhere ; tragedy was piled on tragedy. Pressure 
was being put upon Germany from Paris and from 
London to pay her impossible reparations. 

“ Daring more than he had ever dared before, Hitler 
chose the Zirkus Krone in Munich for a gigantic protest 
meeting. This place could accommodate an audience 
of six thousand. At first it looked as if the thing would 
be a spectacular fiasco. The weather was inclement to 
the last degree. People would never turn out en masse 
through so much sleet and snow ! Owing, however, 
wholly to the vigour of Hitler’s last moment publicity 
campaign, the opposite result was achieved. The 
Zirkus Krone was filled to the doors. Hitler spoke for 
two and a half hours and was received with tumultuous 
acclaim. 

“ It was in the July and August of this year that 
Hitler thoroughly reorganised the Party. As now its 
sole responsible Leader we had got rid of the slow and 
clumsy method of submitting our decisions to the con¬ 
sideration of a voting Committee. It was ever so much 
more practical to turn affairs over to departmental 
chiefs directly responsible to the Leader. We found we 
could get on in this way far more quickly, and do better 
work. You never could quite reckon on a majority in 
Committee, and altogether the new system was vastly 
superior to the old. Hitler was always anxious to make 
individuality tell. He had long ago studied the parlia¬ 
mentary way of conducting affairs, and was now glad 
to throw it overboard in the Movement. 1 

1 That Hitler builds all on personal (and national) individuality may 
strike the reader as an extraordinary assertion. People outside Germany 
appear to imagine that “ individuality ” is the one thing above all others 
likely to disappear in the completely “ Naziiied ” State. They suppose 
the average German under the Hitler regime to be cut strictly to pattern, 
soul, mind, clothes, and body. But this is not the case. By individuality 
Hitler means something the reverse of mass. He does not want things 
done by committees, by majorities, by groups of people no single one of 
whom can be held personally responsible for what is done. He wants 
the capable individual, and the individual alone, to emerge in factory, 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


146 

“ In the spring of 1923 I, personally, met with a 
serious disaster. Some of the men at the works made 
up their minds to take it out of me pretty thoroughly. 
They were Marxists—inveterate haters of us National 
Socialists. One day one of them attacked me in the 
shops with a shovel. I was knocked senseless and all 
but killed. I was in hospital for weeks after that, and 
then spent from May to July in a sanatorium on the 
Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden. Hitler often came 
to see me there. This, really, is how he got to know the 
Obersalzberg. He loved it from the first, and when 
things developed still further he rented and later on 
bought a little house 1 near there, in the Bavarian Alps, 
as a sort of refuge and rest-place. 

“ Things in Germany were at a desperate pass in the 
autumn of 1923. They’d shot Schlageter in Dtisseldorf, 
and the French were still in the Ruhr. The inflation 
was at its height. People were facing ruin everywhere, 
and those who couldn’t face it were putting their heads 
into the gas oven every day. Adolf Hitler, with practi¬ 
cally over a third of Munich behind him, could stand it 
no longer. There was talk of cutting Germany in two, 
so as to have an agricultural South and an industrial 
North—the knell had struck for the National Socialist 
Party to make a bid for power and to stem this tide of 
national suicide and despair ! ” 

“ Had it succeeded,” added Frau Schweyer as she, 
too, came to the story of the Putsch of November 9th, 
1923, when relating her own version of these events, 
“ had it succeeded not only Bavaria, but all Germany 
would have been saved ; as it was we had another 
ten years to wait.” 

workshop, office, institution, as the Ftihrer, the Leader. He holds the 
opposite method, the parliamentary method, to be the antithesis of 
individualism. He wants the Nation itself to produce the one responsible 
individual at its head. He wants the individual home rather than the 
block tenement ; he wants the individual shop rather than the depart¬ 
mental store. Under a Dictatorship, perhaps, individuality is impossible. 
But Hitler is a Leader, not a Dictator. 

1 Now the famous Berghof, to be described later. 



CHAPTER IX 


“ UND I HR HABT DOCH GESIEGT 

S TURM Abteilung Gruppenfuhrer 2 Joseph Berchtold, 
Editor of the Volkischer Beobachter , is a man of many 
activities. At one minute he is to be found in his office, 
at the next in the City Council (he is a Councillor of 
Munich) ; every Ministry knows him ; he is to be met 
with in every hole and corner of the city. But he never 
has a moment to waste. One is supposed to catch him 
in his own office between n a.m. and 12 noon, but so 
many people are awaiting him then, only the half of 
them can expect a hasty interview. 

He was good enough indeed to receive me at eleven 
o’clock at night at the printing works, Schellingstrasse 39, 
where all was in full blast turning out the paper’s daily 
edition of about 300,000 copies. 

I sent in my name, and was requested to wait a moment 
or two. I glanced through the window across a yard at 
the printing house where gigantic machines could be 
seen stamping and pounding at top speed, setting the 
whole place humming. Everything over here, too, was 
in a perfect fever of work, messengers rushing hither and 
thither, people coming and going without an instant’s 
pause. Telephones were ringing, type machines clacking, 

. . . a messenger appeared : “ Herr Berchtold will see 
you,” and my turn had come. 

I found myself ushered into a fair-sized room in the 
middle of which was planted an enormous writing- 

1 “You have conquered after all.” The inscription of the Monument 
on the Odeonsplatz, Munich, marking the spot where sixteen of Hitler’s 
followers fell on November 9th, 1923. 

2 General of Storm Troops. 


147 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


148 

tabic. There were others round about. Huge fireproof 
cupboards lined the walls. Herr Berchtold was bending 
over a paper as I entered, doing busy things with a big 
blue pencil, but he looked up at once, extended his 
hand, and indicated a seat. 

I got this impression instantly—no sedentary 
individual, Herr Berchtold, and no one bound down 
by red tape. A practical man ; agile and decisive 
both in mind and body. Full of temperament, but no 
neuropath. 

“ Lots of people,” he began, “ look upon that so-called 
Putsch 1 of November 9th, 1923, as a bolt from the blue 
which split up the Movement. But it wasn’t really 
anything of the sort. It was a perfectly logical and 
necessary outcome of all that had gone before. We 
National Socialists knew well enough that some such 
gesture was bound to come ; what we didn’t know, 
and what we weren’t prepared for in the least, was the 
betrayal of the whole thing by sheer reactionary 
cowardice. 

“ I will mostly confine myself to telling you what 
I know about it at first hand and content myself with 
a mere sketch of what happened when I wasn’t, myself, 
actually present. I had been attracted to the c Deutsche 
Arbeiter-Partei 5 so far back as 1919, not so much for 
itself as on account of this Adolf Hitler. To hear him 
was to be convinced that he had got hold of the right end 
of the stick. But for all that, there weren’t many who 
believed then any use could be made of the fact. What 
exactly was Hitler’s message ? He appealed to reason 
when nobody else had hope of things being reasonable 
any more. He took his stand on re-establishing order in 
Germany, since without it the whole country trembled on 
the brink of final collapse and ruin. 

“ I felt that no Party could achieve such an end. It 
was not the job so much for a political Party as for a 
sort of superman. Only he could set himself to such 

1 Uprising. 



“UND IHR HABT DOGH GESIEGT ” 149 


a task who possessed a strong hand, great decisive power 
and an incorruptible purpose. The last quality seemed 
to be remarkable for its absence in all parties at that 
time. 

“ As for me, I no sooner heard Hitler in the 
Sterneckerbrau than I became a convinced adherent. 
I resolved to follow this man no matter whither he led. 
I ‘joined up’ with the Party in January, 1920. As 
an active sort of man I didn’t want to be merely a passive 
member, but an energising one. From this it follows I 
was pretty well mixed up with all the frays and conflicts 
in the beer halls and the streets which marked the rise of 
National Socialism—particularly did I lend a hand on 
the famous occasion of the Battle of the Hofbrauhaus. 
I was one of the Guards that night. We laid about us as 
we did, simply because our opponents left us no choice. 
It may seem pretty brutal to have to defend ideas with 
beer mugs and broken chair legs, but necessity knows no 
law. We weren’t pummelling people out of an irrespon¬ 
sible love of fighting, but to gain a hearing for our 
Leader. 

“ The S.A. 1 took its rise, as you know, from all this. 
By the spring of 1923 it already amounted to a respectable 
number of men. Among these, however, were many 
who, despite all the goodwill in the world, were not 
fitted for the rougher work for which the Abteilung was 
constantly called upon. So it gradually became necessary 
to form a small body of specially picked men on whom 
the most absolute dependence could be placed. They 
had to be ready to deal with the worst elements of the 
underworld under all and instant circumstances. Such 
a detachment was organised in May, 1923. It went by 
the name of ‘ Strosstrupp Hitler,’ 2 and came under the 
Leader’s immediate orders. Later these men were 
commanded by Captain Goering. One of the units 
was placed under me. In a few weeks’ time my detail 

1 Sturm Abteilung—Storm Troops. 

2 Hitler—Shock Troops. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


150 

reached full company strength of 120 men. For the most 
part they were all old Front-line soldiers, thoroughly 
dependable men. 

“ The Storm Troops at that time wore grey water-proof, 
and grey cloth caps, like the former Austrian Infantry. 
The uniform of the Shock Troops was the old field grey 
uniform of the War ; with the addition of high black boots 
or gaiters, and a black cloth cap with a silver death’s head 
on a red ground. Our shoulder straps exhibited the 
initials ‘ St. Tr. H.’ 1 We had arm-bands with the hooked 
cross in red. On special occasions of danger we exchanged 
our cap for a helmet with death’s head and swastika 
upon it. 

“ The Shock Troops were designed for specially dangerous 
work at specially dangerous places. Whenever the S.A. 
went on the march we led the van, or followed up the 
rear. We were put through continuous courses of training 
especially with a view to street fighting and fighting in 
assembly rooms. When, on our National Socialist expedi¬ 
tions, the spitting or stone-throwing of the onlookers 
(the Reds) waxed beyond a joke, I blew my whistle, and 
in no time at all the Shock Troops had cleared the streets. 
Their efficiency and discipline soon won the admiration 
of the populace. After a while the enemy learnt to let 
us alone : only those who had not yet had a taste of our 
quality still ventured to dispute our passage. 

“ Hitler had his own method of attaching each and 
every man to himself. He would appear unannounced 
in our quarters, here in these offices in the Schellingstrasse, 
on a drill night, and after a word or two with me he would 
address the men in the most comradely way possible. 
Then he’d inspect the Company, but not so much like 
an officer as like a friend. He would shake each man’s 
hand, and look him squarely in the eyes. It was this 
glance, more than anything, which made every trooper 
Hitler’s man to the death ! 

“By the first week in November, 1923, it was abun- 

1 57 oss- 7 rupp //itler. 



“UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT 55 151 


dantly plain that things could not go on as they were ; 
something was bound to happen. Dr. von Kahr, the 
head of the Bavarian Government, himself declared, 
c The critical moment is at hand. 5 Even he knew that 
something decisive, something spectacular, had to be 
done. And yet he hum’d and ha 5 d and hesitated. Hider 
saw plainly enough that the people’s hopes were all 
destined to be dashed, and wasted, if things were to be 
allowed to drag on indefinitely to no purpose and no 
end.” 

It would be as well, perhaps, at this point to interrupt 
Herr Berchtold’s narrative briefly to epitomise the state 
of affairs in Bavaria and in Munich at this crisis. 

The National Socialists under Adolf Hitler in Munich 
—and by now in many other cities of Bavaria—were not 
alone in their distrust of President Ebert, Chancellor 
Stresemann, and the other Republican authorities in 
Berlin, under whom the whole country had come to so 
deplorable a pass. Many other patriotic associations were 
raising the cry : “ Down with Ebert ! Down with 

Berlin ! ” Bavaria, indeed, cut herself clean away from 
the Republic, and showed herself generally ready for 
some decisive action should the word be spoken. 

After the celebrations in Nuremberg on “ Sedan Day,” 
in September, both organisations known as the “ Reichs- 
kriegsflagge ” and the “ Bund Oberland ” amalgamated 
under Hitler’s political leadership with the National 
Socialist Party. The whole body was then called the 
“ Deutscher Kampfbund,” and was commanded by 
Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel. 

The Presiding Bavarian Minister, von Knilling, looked 
with distrust upon this very considerable augmentation 
of the Party’s forces, and appointed Herr von Kahr, an 
out and out Monarchist, as General State Commissary 
to watch over and control events. This was on the 26th 
of September. Herr von Kahr had more than once 
been obliged to give way to the feeling of the people which 
was veering more and more towards National Socialism. 



J 52 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


And ever more and more was he drifting towards an 
open rift with Berlin where Communism was getting the 
upper hand. 

On the 29th of September von Kahr withdrew the State 
of Bavaria from the control and from the protection of 
Berlin. The step met with general approval in Bavaria 
and also with that of the National Socialist Party. Dr. 
von Kahr, indeed, hated the Republic, and would like 
to have seen the Wittelsbachs, the Bavarian royal house, 
restored. He had been given dictatorial powers, and at 
once took steps and gave orders in Munich which meant 
open revolt against the Central Berlin Government. 
The Bavarian railways were withdrawn from central 
control, and the Bavarian Reichswehr under General 
von Lossow took oath of allegiance to the Bavarian State 
rather than to the Republic. 

This last step was occasioned by the following sequence 
of events : 

In the middle of October an article appeared in the 
National Socialist organ, the Volkischer Beobachter , criticis¬ 
ing certain matters concerning the Reichswehr. Where¬ 
upon the publication was suppressed throughout Germany. 
It continued, however, to appear in Bavaria without let 
or hindrance. Presently, however, von Lossow received 
orders to bring Bavaria to heel. He laid them before von 
Kahr, who set them aside, declaring that it was his firm 
determination to weld all national aspirations into one 
firm body of political opinion. 

Berlin insisted : von Lossow replied it was impossible 
to carry out the order. He gave his chiefs to understand 
that the Bavarian temper was so exasperated against 
Berlin, that the least injudicious move at this moment 
might precipitate a crisis. Von Seeckt, the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Reichswehr in Berlin, was not to be 
moved ; Lossow would have been court martialled for 
insubordination but that he was stoutly supported by 
von Kahr and Knilling. The Minister for War retorted 
by cashiering him. 


“UND IHR HABT DOGH GESIEGT 55 153 


Whereupon von Kahr took a decisive step. As already 
related, he appointed von Lossow Commander of the 
Bavarian Reichswehr, and so withdrew the Bavarian 
forces from the control of the Republic. Orders came 
to re-establish constitutional 1 authority over this body, 
but they were ignored. 

President Ebert in Berlin foresaw a rising. The 
Reichswehr were furnished with extraordinary powers 
to counteract it when it came, although the President 
was in the dark as to how the Reichswehr itself might 
react to the Movement in Bavaria. 

Dr. von Kahr had, meanwhile, come closely into 
contact with Hitler. The latter understood that the 
Commissary was fully prepared to take upon himself 
the consequences of a break with Berlin. The two men 
were fully agreed that this was a necessary step to take. 
The public tension was waxing even greater and greater. 
Expectation of a crisis was on tiptoe. Everyone was 
talking of a “ March on Berlin.” Hitler, von Kahr, von 
Lossow and Seisser were all persuaded that the Govern¬ 
ment there must be overturned. 

All waited for von Kahr to appoint the exact moment 
for action. 

He hesitated. Failed to decide. Whereupon Hitler 
determined to force his hand. Hitler felt sure Kahr 
would follow if the lead were given, however incapable 
he were himself of giving it. 

On the evening of November 8th, 1923, the fifth 
anniversary of the “ Stab in the Back 5 5 which put the 
German Army out of action at the end of the War, the 
State Commissary convened an enormous meeting in 
the Btirgerbraukeller, representative of every patriotic 
association in Bavaria. All the officials of the Bavarian 
Government were present, including Colonel Seisser, the 
Chief of Police and General von Lossow, the Chief of the 
Bavarian Reichswehr. Herr von Kahr was to address 
the Bavarian people. . . . 

1 The Republic of 1918 was established by the Constitution of Weimar. 



154 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


This, then, Hitler decided, was to be his great, his 
unique and psychological opportunity ! With the 
utmost expedition he prepared his plan. 

Now to revert to Herr Berchtold’s story : 

“ Adolf Hitler chose the day of von Kahr’s great 
meeting for his attempt. About eleven o’clock on the 
morning of the 8th of November I got the order to stand 
ready for the National Revolution. 

“ My men took a last oath, to serve true to death if 
needs be, and we got our final instructions from Captain 
Goering. I busied myself all day with preparations, 
and then at six in the evening assembled the troops, in 
instant readiness for action in the Torbrau, opposite the 
Sterneckerbrau. I harangued my fellows, ‘ Any one of 
you,’ I said, c who isn’t going into this thing heart and 
soul had better get out right now.’ As no one budged by 
so much as an inch, I pursued, c It’s our job, as Shock 
Troops, to bear the brunt of what’s coming. We’re going 
to run the Government out. Hitler and Kahr are united 
over this, they are going to set up another one.’ Everyone 
of us gripped hands, and we were ready. 

“ We marched off and took up a position in the 
neighbourhood of the place where von Kahr’s great 
gathering was to be held. It was already crammed to 
bursting ; a group of police near us could find no 
standing room within, so hung about outside. 

“ I glanced at my watch. Now for it! 

“ Shouting orders to the Troop I sprang forward 
brandishing my revolver. 

“ c Out of the way—you there ! ’ I yelled to the police, 
who incontinently fell back amazed and unprepared, 
and burst our way into the entrance. I ordered my men 
to cover every window and exit, but pressed on myself 
with the rest into the hall. 

tc Hitler was already there. Catching sight of us, he 
at once placed himself at our head, and led us quickly 
and quietly right down the main gangway until we 
reached the platform. The audience numbered several 



“UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT ” 155 


thousand. It was listening to von Kahr who was address¬ 
ing them on the subject of * The People and the Nation. 5 
The State Commissary was supported by the Minister 
President von Knilling, by General von Lossow, by Chief 
of Police Seisser, Advocate Pohner and other notabilities. 

“ Our sudden appearance in their midst caused 
consternation. Von Kahr was struck dumb. People 
began shouting to know what was the matter. Women 
fainted ; here and there panic was imminent. Mean¬ 
time we had mounted the platform, and Hitler made an 
attempt to speak. But the excitement was so great he 
could neither make himself heard nor understood. So 
he drew his revolver and a loud report rang out. He had 
pointed it upwards, to the ceiling. An instant silence 
fell in which his voice could be heard proclaiming the 
end of the Red regime. 

“ Immediately thereupon he left the platform in urgent 
speech with Dr. von Kahr. This personage, together 
with von Lossow and Seisser all disappeared with Hitler 
into a room at the back. 

“ No one in the hall knew what this might portend. . . . 

“ So Captain Goering sprang into the gap. He made 
a timely bid for attention and came forward and soon 
managed to dominate the uproar in the assembly. 

“ € This is a new start altogether, 5 he shouted, ‘ we’re 
going to found the State afresh. No harm is meant to 
Dr. von Kahr. We all respect him. We’re not fighting 
the military or the police—they’re on our side—we are 
only fighting the Jew regime in Berlin. 5 

“ The announcement provoked a storm of applause, 
which broke out afresh, as the speaker managed to add : 

“ 6 We’ve taken this step because we’re convinced 
that the men who stand at the head of us here in Bavaria 
will help us wrench free from Berlin and the Jews. The 
new Government will form itself round Hitler, Ludendorff, 
Pohner and von Kahr ! ’ 

“ In the meantime General Ludendorff had been 
urgently summoned by telephone. On arrival he 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


156 

declared himself fully in sympathy with Hitler’s action. 
The two betook themselves to the three others in the 
room to the rear, convinced that the decisive hour had 
struck. Only Lossow hesitated for an instant. Luden- 
dorff, however, scattered his scruples to the winds. 
4 Throw in your lot with us, man, give me your hand 
upon it,’ he urged, and the other complied. All four 
men vowed themselves then and there to further this 
business to the utmost of their power. 

“ Then, hastening back to the platform, Hitler became 
spokesman. In very few words he related what had 
passed and declared for the new Government. His 
announcement, and the reappearance of his supporters, 
together with the presence of General Ludendorff, aroused 
the utmost enthusiasm. Enormous jubilation broke out; 
everything that had been done was unanimously carried 
by von Kahr’s great meeting. 

“ The Commissary declared himself willing to take 
over the Regency of Bavaria. . . . € I will take,’ he said, 
* the destinies of Bavaria into my own hands, let us hope 
to the universal betterment of our beloved country and 
of Germany at large.’ 

“ £ To-morrow,’ rang out Hitler’s voice at last, c finds 
either a National Government established in Germany, 
or the lot of us dead ! ’ ” 


Although Hitler had grounds, as has been shown, 
for believing that Munich and Bavaria in general would 
support his coup d'etat , the men at the head of the Munich 
administration in 1923 were not of heroic cast. They 
were only to be depended upon in the event of success. 
Hitler browbeat them, in that private room behind the 
scenes of the Biirgerbraukeller, for Germany’s and their 
own good, and sugared the potion with important 
Cabinet posts under the new regime. All might yet 
have gone according to plan but for the “ General with 
the Unlucky Fist ! ” When the meeting broke up and 



“ UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT ” 157 

Hitler himself had to get busy over a thousand last- 
moment arrangements all over the city, three men, 
von Kahr, von Lossow and Seisser, were left, practically 
as prisoners, under Ludendorff’s eye. 

As Herr Berchtold explains : 

“ Hitler again invited the three of them into that 
room at the back until he himself should return thither. 
The General was on no account to let them go. 

“ The Storm Troops had withdrawn meanwhile into 
the garden of the Burgerbrau, and presently we got orders 
to go and clear out the offices of the Munich Post , a much- 
detested Social Democratic paper, often styled the 
‘ Munich Pest. 5 We forced the doors of this place, 
ransacked the building, and flung all the printed stuff 
we could lay hands upon out into the street where it was 
promptly burnt. This was about eleven o 5 clock at 
night. 

“ Then came a Sergeant of Police to request that 
we abstained from doing any damage to the building 
and its fittings, to which I was quite ready to accede. 
The officer cared, probably, no whit for the destruction 
of the Press ; he might even have been privately delighted. 
I reassembled my men before the main doors of the 
premises and ordered them to wait there until I should 
return, with a convoy of perhaps twenty men, from a 
visit I intended to pay to the house of the notorious 
Social-democrat Auer. We drove off thither in an 
armoured car, but Auer was not at home, and there was 
nothing for it but to return to the Munich Post , fall in the 
rest of the men, and return to the Burgerbraukeller. 

“ When Hitler returned from his last-minute activities 
all over the city he was aghast to find nobody but General 
Ludendorff awaiting him in the room behind the Burger¬ 
braukeller. 

“ ( How’s this, Excellence ? 5 he demanded, 4 where 
are von Kahr, von Lossow, Seisser ? 5 

“ ‘ Gone, 5 replied Ludendorff, 4 they gave me their 
word of honour- 5 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


158 

“ ‘ Good God ! 5 Hitler exclaimed, ‘ then the game’s 
all up ! 5 55 


Scarcely indeed had the meeting in the Biirgerbrau- 
keller dispersed ; scarcely had Hitler’s almost unarmed 
columns from places as far afield as Ingoldstadt and Land- 
shut begun to converge on Munich in order to take part 
in the morrow’s march ; scarcely had midnight struck 
when the whole plan was feverishly frustrated. 

Instead of going home for a short while, soon to return 
as General LudendorfF supposed, von Kahr, von Lossow 
and Seisser betook themselves in haste to the barracks, 
and to the Munich Broadcasting Station. 

At the very moment when placards were going up 
all over the city, “ Power is in the hands of the new 
National Government; LudendorfF, Kahr, Lossow and 
Seisser are with us,” the last three named were already 
urgently denying their participation in the Hitler coup 
d'etat. They called Germany and the world to witness 
that their consent to the revolt had been obtained at the 
pistol’s point. 

Hitler had left the three men under LudendorfF’s eye, 
aware that, despite the enthusiasm of the foregoing 
proceedings, they were not as yet fully to be trusted. 

Instantly he divined the worst. . . . 

“ We’d revealed our hand too soon,” pursued Herr 
Berchtold, “ we hadn’t known that they’d been planning 
some such move themselves, but the time was not quite 
ripe. They’d even been counting on our support ! At 
this moment we were unaware that they’d got on to the 
Radio Station to repudiate our Putsch and everything to 
do with it ! They published that they’d been constrained 
at the pistol’s point to take part in all that had happened 
an hour or two since. 

“ Hitler was justified in his profoundest misgivings. 

“ The Storm Troops bivouacked that night in the 
garden of the Bilrgerbrau. They were joined by detach- 



“UND IHR HABT DOGH GESIEGT 55 159 


merits of the Bund Oberland and of the ‘ Freikorps 
Rossbach,’ so that the whole place looked like a camp. 

“ On the morning of November 9th I received orders 
to occupy Police Headquarters. The Reichskriegsflagge 
was already in possession of the Munich Army Head¬ 
quarters. When my men and I arrived we found the 
police fully armed and prepared to resist us, so avoiding 
immediate conflict I went on to the Rathaus. I was 
aware that a Session was in progress. I flung open the 
doors and, cocking my revolver, informed the assembled 
Councillors, Social Democrats and Communists to a man, 
that they must consider themselves under arrest. Alarmed 
and startled, they sprang to their feet. We shepherded 
them from the chamber, and the building, and down the 
wide flight of steps without. 

“ Here the rest of my men took charge. Each member, 
accompanied by two troopers, was assisted into a truck. 
Meanwhile enormous crowds had gathered on the Marien- 
platz who greeted the appearance of the Councillors 
with jeers and insults. As a matter of fact it was we 
Storm Troopers who had to defend them from the 
onslaught of the people. Otherwise actual fatalities 
might have occurred. It was quite a job getting them 
safely loaded into the lorries. So we went on to the 
Btirgerbrau and shut the whole lot up in the room to 
the rear from which Ludendorff had released von Kahr 
and his companions overnight. 

“In spite of the way the Commissary, von Lossow 
and Seisser had double-crossed him, Hitler was by no 
means eager for the thing to end in a fight. 

“ He decided to gather his adherents from the more 
outlying districts, and march upon the centre of the city. 
He could not believe it, in the face of the temper of the 
aeople, that the Government would resort to armed 
'esistance. 

“ Shortly after eleven o’clock the column got under 
vay. Two standard-bearers led, behind whom, walking 
oosely abreast, came Hitler, Ludendorff, Goering and 


160 GERMANY’S HITLER 

one or two others. Twelve ranks of Shock Troops 
followed with myself in command ; then came the S.A. 
(Sturm Abteilung, i.e. the ordinary Hitler troops), the 
United Troops and hundreds of civilians, workmen, 
students, all with brassards showing the hooked cross, by 
way of a great mass demonstration. The appeal was to 
be to the streets, to the people, to Munich. No arms 
to be used. Everything was to be put to the test of 
popular feeling. 

“ By this time all the bridges and public buildings 
were held by the regular amy, mobilised in the night, 
as a result of von Kahr’s sudden defection. Nevertheless, 
all seemed to be going well. Patriotic songs welled from 
a thousand throats. At the Ludwig Bridge leading over 
the Isar to the centre part of the city we met with what 
might have been our first check. 

“ A police cordon had been drawn across the bridge 
head. The police themselves were armed, and helmeted. 
We were within a stone’s throw of them when they 
raised their rifles. Ulrich Graf, Hitler’s bodyguard, 
shouted, * Don’t fire ; LudendorfF is with us,’ whereupon 
they lowered them again, and I sprang forward at the 
head of some ten of my fellows and promptly disarmed 
them. They were despatched forthwith to the Btirgerbrau. 
I myself convoyed them. Having safely bestowed them 
in custody I made the utmost speed to rejoin the column, 
which forged ahead meanwhile through the Marienplatz 
to the Feldherrnhalle end of the Odeonsplatz. Taking 
the shortest cut I sprinted down the Maximilianstrasse to 
the Max-Joseph Platz, and arrived on the spot just as the 
head of the column debouched between the Feldherrnhalle 
and the Residenz. 

“ Suddenly everything seemed to be holding up- 

“ They’d begun singing * Oh Deutschland hoch in 
Ehren,’ and the crowd was lustily joining in, when there 
came the hideous racket of a machine-gun ! Next 
second all was horror, agony and confusion. The column 
broke, the crowd dissolved in wildest panic. 


“UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT ” 161 


“ What in the world, I asked, had happened ? 

“ It seems that as soon as the head of the column 
reached the Square the police barred the way. An 
armoured car was stationed behind them. All along 
by the Feldherrnhalle machine-guns were in position. 
As before, someone rushed forward shouting : 4 Don’t 
fire, Ludendorff and Hitler are with us ! 5 only to be 
answered by a murderous volley from the steps of the 
Feldherrnhalle. The standard-bearer went down, seri¬ 
ously wounded ; Hitler’s immediate neighbour being 
shot dead dragged him to the ground in falling, severely 
wrenching the Leader’s shoulder. Everywhere people 
were going down, writhing on the ground in agony, dead 
and dying, while the guns still rattled death and murder 
into their stampeding midst. It was madness and 
slaughter. 

44 Goering and Graf fell, badly wounded, fourteen 
dead were trampled under people’s feet throwing the 
living down ; blood flowed everywhere over the grey 
pavement. The whole thing was a ghastly debacle. 
Shrieks and cries rent the air, and ever that insane firing 
went on until one of the strangest things happened of 
the many strange things on that day. Ludendorff, still 
uninjured, detached himself somehow from the rout and 
went forward towards the Odeonsplatz and planked 
himself bang before the guns of the police ! Nothing 
happened to him. He never got a scratch. But presently 
the firing stopped : no one who saw that will ever 
forget it or understand how it came about he wasn’t 
riddled ! 

44 Dazed and shocked, one by one the wounded dragged 
themselves up and contrived to get away. Somebody 
retrieved the flag from the hand of its fallen bearer. 
Hitler’s chauffeur found him somehow, and with scream¬ 
ing brakes wrenched the car to a standstill beside the 
fallen Leader. Hitler dragged himself to his knees— 
and then on to his feet—one arm hung helpless—and was 
making to get into the car when he blundered over 



162 GERMANY’S HITLER 

something in the way. It was the body of a boy, bleeding 
and senseless. 

“ Hitler caught it up as best he might with the arm still 
sound, and dragged it to the car, and was shoving it up 
and in just as the chauffeur flung open the door to receive 
them, when one of the police sprang forward with his 
weapon levelled. Hitler thrust the boy behind him, to 
cover him with his own body. Just in the nick of time he 
gained the auto which leapt forward in top gear frantically 
pursued by a great green and yellow armoured car. 
Away they went, pursued and pursuer, through the 
affrighted streets. For one hair-raising moment Hitler’s 
car shot up a side turning in the effort to escape, and the 
other went blindly careering by : this just gave the 
Ftihrer a chance to bestow the wounded boy in hospital 
before he could make for the outskirts of the city and the 
open. It was, of course, hopeless for him to try and 
reach the frontier. Late in the evening he had to leave 
the car and fly afoot. 

“ I was in the Odeonsplatz and saw it all. When the 
crowd broke I made off as hard as I could go, back to the 
Blirgerbrau where lots of the fellows soon came trooping 
in. When most of them seemed to have turned up we 
released the Councillors from the room, where they had 
been shut up all this time, and, loading them again into 
trucks, drove them right out of the city and away into the 
woods towards Rosenheim. When we’d gone some 
considerable distance I called a halt. We all got out, 
and leaving half my fellows behind I led the other half 
and our prisoners deep into the wood. 

“ The Councillors thought for a certainty that their 
last hour had struck. But I had a far less ruthless purpose. 
I merely wanted to change an entire suit of clothes with 
a couple of them. Each one contributed this, that or 
the other garment, and got the corresponding one of mine 
in return. In a few moments I had transformed myself 
from a Shock trooper into a very passable likeness of the 
ordinary man in the street. Thereupon we returned to 



“ UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT 55 163 


the cars, and began our journey back to Munich. I 
dumped the City Councillors at the first convenient 
village and left them to shift for themselves. 

“ But, dressed as I now was, I could make my way 
about without attracting attention. I ventured first to 
seek out the hospital to which Goering had been taken. 
I even saw him. He was in such pain it was all he could 
do to keep his wits about him, but he managed to give 
me some details about the end of the affair. Warrants 
were out for the lot of us, Hitler, Ludendorff, Goering 
and all of us, especially we of the Shock Troops, as the 
prime delinquents. 

“ As a matter of fact they caught me that same night. 
But I managed to slip through their hands, and made off 
again in the direction of Rosenheim. In Traunstein they 
all but had me a second time, but I doubled back and 
returned to Munich where I lay low for a time. There I 
heard the end of the story. 55 

The Berlin papers arrived boiling over with anger. 
Hitler and Ludendorff and the Crown Prince Rupprecht 
all came in for the reproaches and the accusations of the 
central Government. Von Lossow at the end of that 
fateful day had telegraphed to General von Seeckt that the 
Putsch was liquidated. <c No more troops needed. 55 

Two days later, at Uffing on the Staffelsee, in the house 
of a friend, whither he had taken refuge, an officer of the 
Green Police laid his hand on Hitler’s shoulder. 


Goering fled to the Tyrol, lying still desperately ill at 
an Innsbruck clinic, later he went to Italy. Esser, 
Rossbach and others had escaped to Salzburg, the 
Volkischer Beobachter was suppressed ; the Shock Troops 
and the S.A. generally were disbanded and forbidden ; 
Hitler, Hess, Kriebel and his principal associates were 
imprisoned in Landsberg ; nothing whatever remained 
of the National Socialist Party. Everything had gone 
down before the treacherous guns on the Odeonsplatz. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


164 

“ As for me,” concludes Herr Berchtold, “ I remained 
on, more or less in hiding, in Munich until the following 
February (1924), when 1 managed to get away into 
Austria. I kept in touch with Hitler as best I could, and 
when I heard his sentence would gladly have given myself 
up for a chance of sharing it with him. But by his own 
wish I stuck where I was, in Austria, until such time as 
I might return without danger. I stayed until 1926 
when Hindenburg’s general amnesty for political offenders 
allowed so many of us, Goering included, to return to 
Germany. 

“ The outlook, however, was pretty miserable. Our 
great Movement, everything, was suppressed, ‘ verboten.’ 
The only thing that remained was fidelity in many a 
breast to Hitler and his Idea. When the hour struck, 
months and months afterwards, for the resurrection of this 
idea, we were all ready . . .” 

Anton Drexler concludes the tale : 

“ They incarcerated Hitler,” he said, “ to await trial 
in the fortress at Landsberg, and I made a point of going 
to see him there at the earliest opportunity. I found 
him sitting like a frozen thing at the barred window of 
his cell. 1 He seemed done, almost broken up over the 
deaths of those sixteen of our men on the Odeonsplatz. 
Everything seemed all to have been in vain, all our work 
and planning and striving, and stinting and scraping and 
saving, all our hope and high endeavour ! I discovered 
he’d started a hunger strike right from the first. Every 
time I went it was still going on. He’d got thinner and 
thinner, and weaker and whiter, every time. Over a 
fortnight he carried on this hunger strike until it was hard 
to recognise him. The Medical Officer told me it 
couldn’t last much longer if fatal results weren’t to ensue. 
If no one could persuade him to take a drop or a mouthful 
anyhow he’d soon be past saving. You can imagine what 
that meant to us ! I determined to do my utmost to 

1 An inscription stands over the entrance to it to-day, recording Hitler's 
incarceration here. 



“UND IHR HABT DOCH GESIEGT 15 165 


make him call it off. I went back into his cell one day 
determined to succeed if I had to stop there all night. 
Lord ! how I begged and prayed of him, and talked at 
him and reasoned with him ! I said he’d no right to give 
up all for lost, however bad things seemed. The Party’d 
look to him to start it all up again some day. But I 
couldn’t make any impression. He was utterly in despair. 
So I nearly fell into despair myself, but at last I said how 
we’d all rather die than try to go on without him. I 
meant it, too ! Without Hitler and his Movement 
Germany was doomed. That seemed to rouse him, so 
I kept on. I said if all did seem to have gone for nothing 
so far that was no reason why we hadn’t yet to do all we 
could to save the country in her bitter need and humilia¬ 
tion. I talked for a solid two hours. . . . Anyway, I 
won him round somehow. 

“ Finally he broke his fast and reconsidered things. 
He picked up when he got some solid food inside him 
again, and his old spirit reasserted itself. In fact three 
months afterwards he was brought back to Munich to 
stand his trial with LudendorfF and von Lossow and Seisser 
and the rest. Hitler was as full of force and resolution 
as ever he’d been in his life. And he made one of the 
grandest speeches in Court we’d ever heard from him 
yet.” 

Hitler was arrested at the country house of one of his 
friends. He allowed himself to be taken without resis¬ 
tance, and was at once sent on remand, awaiting trial, 
to the Prison-Fortress at Landsberg. 

The trial began on February 26th, 1924, and lasted for 
twenty-four days. It was held in the old Munich Infantry 
School in the Blutenburgstrasse. There is no need, per¬ 
haps, to tell the story at length again. It has often been 
told before. Hitler made a remarkable speech, lasting 
four and a half hours, in which he set out the aims and 
principles of his Movement, and in which he endeavoured 
to take entire responsibility for the events of November 8th 
and 9th last upon his own shoulders. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


166 

The Court was, admittedly, much impressed. The 
trial was an affair into which none of the judges felt like 
putting much heart. Public sympathy was largely with 
the accused. Hitler and his nine companions were the 
heroes of the day ! The State prosecutor had a thankless 
office. Herr von Kahr was universally execrated as the 
Judas of the whole affair. But for the sake of saving the 
Government’s face Adolf Hitler, Dr. Pohner (Chief of 
Police), Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel, Commander of the Putsch 
troops, and Dr. Weber, Commander of the “ Oberland,” 
were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in a fortress. 
Five other “ conspirators ” received sentences of a year 
and three months, and three were immediately set at 
large. General Ludendorff was acquitted. 



CHAPTER X 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG: OBERWACHTMEISTER 

HEMMRICH’S STORY 


S OME fifty miles west of Munich lies the small Bavarian 
town of Landsberg-am-Lech. Its inhabitants number 
only a few thousand. It remains unspoilt to this day, one 
of the most beautiful survivals of the Middle Ages in 
Germany. The houses have preserved their old-world 
character. Modern times have failed to make any 
impression upon Landsberg : the little old town might 
have fallen asleep five hundred years ago, and never 
since waked up. 

It nestles in the little valley of the Lech, an alpine 
stream, hemmed in on either hand by steep densely 
wooded heights. A mediaeval wall still studded with its 
watch towers, big and small, wanders over one of the 
heights, surrounding the town. My way, however, led 
me across the stream. I came to the outskirts of Landsberg 
down by the river and as I crossed its old wooden bridge 
I paused to watch the babbling, foaming waters below, 
and then caught sight of a great conglomeration of 
grey-white buildings to be glimpsed through the trees 
on the heights before me. 

This is the <c Gefangenenanstalt und Festungshaftan- 
stalt Landsberg.” 1 

The whole is an imposing place consisting of a number 
of separate buildings, all enclosed within the usual 
prison wall. There may be gardens behind those walls, 
and even orchards ; the situation may be park-like in its 
peace and verdant beauty ; luxuriant creepers may even 


1 Ordinary prison and fortress for the detention of political prisoners. 


167 



i68 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


do their best to hide the prison walls—but the windows 
are all barred. Those within can scarcely take much 
pleasure in the prospect without, however fair it may be, 
for they are deprived of the greatest boon in the world, 
their liberty ! 

I came to the great nail-studded, iron-shod entrance 
gates, and pulled the bell. Whereupon a rattling of 
keys was to be heard, and steps on the pavement within. 
The door groaned on its hinges and opened. A warder 
in dark blue uniform with chain and keys at his belt, bade 
me enter. He had been advised of my coming, and 
showed me in without delay. 

We crossed a courtyard and entered the Administration 
Block where I was ushered in to the Governor’s office. 
This gentleman informed me that at the instance of the 
Bavarian Ministry of Justice I was to be given every 
facility to visit the Institution, and to see everything I 
wanted. I requested that I might have as my guide 
Chief Warder Franz Hemmrich. This officer had held a 
position here in Landsberg since 1920, and was, indeed, in 
charge of that portion of the fortress in which Adolf 
Hitler and his friends were confined after the events of that 
fateful November 9th, 1923. 

For a thumb-nail sketch of Herr Hemmrich—he is a 
man perhaps at the end of the thirties. The face and 
especially the eyes are full of alert activity and energy. 
One gets the impression of an officer who has put in a 
good many years of responsible and exacting service. He 
wears a blue uniform with epaulettes, and an official cap. 

“ Before I start the story of Adolf Hitler’s detention 
here,” he tells me, as we prepare to make the tour of 
Landsberg, “ you ought to know something of the place 
itself. It is, as you can see, fairly modern. It was built 
in 1909, and originally intended for none but ordinary 
convicts. It was planned to accommodate five hundred. 
Only since 1920 have we had political prisoners here— 
quite a different class. They don’t, of course, rank with 
criminals at all. We had no special accommodation to 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


169 

allot to them, so a wing was set apart for the purpose and 
called the ‘ Festung.’ In 1920 Count Arco-Valley 
was sent here. He had been condemned to death for 
shooting the Bavarian Minister President Kurt Eisner, 
but his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for 
life. For a long time he was the only man we had in the 
* Festung. 5 Now and again we got a student in over 
some duelling affair, but only for a very short stretch. 

“ During the time Hitler was under detention here 
—between his arrest and his trial,—the whole place 
was thoroughly remodelled in view of eventualities. 
The large generally unused rooms were converted into a 
series of cells, and quarters were arranged for the military 
warders. Preparations were made, and precautions 
taken, for the reception of a large number of political 
prisoners. 

“Then, on November nth, 1923, I remember, there 
was a regular storm raging. The wind howled and 
shrieked round the place and tore at the barred windows. 
Rain dashed against the panes as if it would break them. 
At that time I had a room within the prison. It was 
night, and I’d gone to bed. All was still save for the 
muffled tread of an officer going the rounds, or for the 
ticking when he clocked in. 

“ All of a sudden a bell rang through the corridor, 
and a moment or two later came a knocking on my 
door. £ The Governor wants you. You’re to come 
at once, 5 cried a voice without. I jumped into my 
clothes with all the speed I could, and hurried to the 
office. Herr Oberregierungsrat Leybold was chief 
at the time. 

“ ‘ See here,’ he said, and his face was as serious as 
his voice, ‘ Hitler’s coming here to-night. He has 
been arrested at last, and he’ll certainly be sent along 
to us. We’ll have to be prepared for anything. His 
followers may make an attempt at rescue-’ 

“ While we were speaking the telephone rang, and 
word came through that a strong detachment of the local 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


170 

Reichswehr had been detailed to take over guard in th< 
prison. I received the order to get ready a cell for Hitlei 
in the fortress division. Now the only cell in the place 
which had an anteroom big enough for the military guard 
was already occupied by Count Arco-Valley. So I had 
to wake him up and transfer him elsewhere. I was still 
busy fixing things to rights for a new occupant when the 
bell went which notified me from the gate that the 
prisoners had arrived. 

£c I hastened down to receive them and soon met a 
strange enough group of men coming through the halls 
with their shadows flickering and dancing in the darkness 
before them. First I recognised the Governor accom¬ 
panied by the Superintendents of police, one of whom 
led a dog on the leash. Between these came Hitler, very 
upright, the Iron Cross on his breast. Over his shoulder 
was slung the grey trench-coat he had been wearing in 
the Odeonsplatz. His left arm hung in a sling. Bare 
headed, white and worn in the face, he marched thus 
to the place we had prepared. 

“ The police and the Governor left him, on reaching 
the cell, and I stayed to give him a hand with his undress¬ 
ing. He was just about all in. He refused bite or soup, 
but lay down on the cot. Whereupon I too went away 
after securely locking him in. 

cc The whole plac^ was soon re-echoing to military 
tread. The Reichswehr had arrived. Helmets and 
rifles glittered everywhere. A detail was assigned as 
guard outside Hitler’s cell, and the one next to it was 
allotted to their officer. Outside in the yard machine- 
guns had been mounted, and a supply of ammunition 
was brought up, and telephonic communication had 
been made with the barracks. You see, we had a case 
of High Treason to deal with. 

“ But nothing happened. A grey dawn came at long 
length. Both within and without the 4 Festung ’ it 
looked like an armed camp. Everywhere rifles were 
stacked while the soldiers busied themselves boiling 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


171 

coffee. Presently, however, for the most part the soldiers 
were transferred to an upper floor within the building : 
only a small guard remained without. 

“ A few days went by and Hitler had to be taken in 
to the infirmary. He was in a bad way, generally, and 
the injury to his collar-bone made no improvement. 
But he was allowed to receive visitors, and these came 
nearly every day—for the most part they were the 
members of his Party, and fellow-workers. They came 
to him for directions and advice at this low ebb of the 
tide ! One of the greatest pleasures these visits afforded 
him was when a friend brought along his dog. The 
meeting on both sides was touching to behold. 

“ The days dragged by. The 6 Festung * witnessed an 
ever-increasing influx of Hitler’s friends and comrades, 
one after another of whom were arrested and sent hither. 
Among others came Anton Drexler and Dietrich Eckart. 
The latter was discharged after about ten days on account 
of his health. He died later from heart failure, his death 
being expedited through his arrest and imprisonment. 

“ On the morning of February 22nd, then, a number 
of lorries drove up to the prison gate to convoy Hitler 
and his companions for trial in Munich. 


“ About five o’clock in the afternoon on April 1st 
Hitler returned to Landsberg. A car drove up to the 
entrance. Out of the car stepped three men, Hitler 
himself, Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel and Dr. Weber. Hitler 
looked more wretched than ever as he once more crossed 
the threshold of his well-known cell. In the meantime 
it had been refurnished, and now looked a good deal 
more inviting than it had done previously on the night of 
November nth. His cell was No. 7. His neighbour in 
No. 8 was Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel, and in No. 9, Dr. 
Weber. 

“ The cell remains to-day just as it was then. You’d 
like to have a look inside-” 



GERMANY'S HITLER 


172 

Chief Warder Hemmrich unlocks the door and swings 
it open. The furnishing consists of no more than a simple 
bed, a table, two chairs, a cupboard and a bedside table. 
A glimpse can be caught of the garden down below out 
of two high barred windows in the whitewashed 
wall. 

“ Next day,” he pursues, “ the three prisoners were 
conducted to the office to have their particulars taken. 
When they returned to their cells they found a fourth 
unfortunate in their company. This was an ex-Reichs- 
wehr soldier, who for some crime or other had a short 
stretch to serve at Landsberg. He was earning some 
remission of sentence by making the mattresses for the 
new cells in the c Festung. 5 Hitler felt sorry for the poor 
chap, who seemed always hungry and never had any 
money, and made a point of sharing food with him 
properly destined for himself. 

“ A little book of rules hung in every cell. The 
prisoners were expected to study it meticulously. It 
mapped out their day for them. Later I’ll explain how 
they were supposed to get through the time. Hitler and 
his friends put in a lot of reading. Sometimes they’d 
take a turn in the garden. April 20th that year—Hitler’s 
thirty-fifth birthday—fell just about Easter so that for 
the first time in its history a really festive sort of spirit held 
sway here. An incredible number of letters, telegrams 
and parcels arrived for our most important prisoner that 
morning. Visitors thronged the gate. His cell was 
turned into a veritable florist’s shop. His presents were 
heaped upon the table and the chairs. The whole thing 
was a remarkable demonstration, and I haven’t the 
slightest doubt but that it gave Hitler the greatest joy tc 
realise how his followers were sticking to him through 
thick and thin. 

“ There was somebody else who appreciated all those 
packages of Hitler’s—the Reichswehr man ! Hitler 
turned over all the eatables to him which his friends had 
fondly imagined would be acceptable to himself. The 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG 173 

soldier performed prodigies of valour in accounting 
for the lot, 

“ By the beginning of May a large influx of National 
Socialists came to Landsberg, and during June the 
number rose to thirty-two. The 6 Festung 5 was crowded 
out, despite the fact that some of the cells now contained 
as many as four or even five prisoners altogether. We 
were obliged to take over quarters for the politicals in the 
ordinary part of the Prison which communicated with 
the * Festung 5 through a corridor. Every new arrival 
was greeted, naturally, with somewhat of an ovation. 
Among other new-comers was Rudolf Hess, 1 later 
Hitler’s private secretary. 

“ You’d like to know a bit about our Bell Scale of the 
* Festung 5 ? Well, the two night warders went off duty, 
after clocking in, at six. Then all cell doors were opened 
and free communication for the day was established 
throughout the wing. At seven the convicts brought the 
Politicals their breakfast. This usually consisted of 
coffee and bread, or porridge, or some cereal. After that 
the prisoners went to the washroom. At eight the outer 
doors were opened on to the court and garden, when 
everybody rushed for the vaulting-horse, or the parallel 
bars—some gymnastic apparatus had been set up there 
—to get a bit of strenuous exercise. Some of them had 


1 Rudolf Hess was bom in 1894 at Alexandria in Egypt, and is the son 
of a German family living abroad. At the age of fourteen he was sent to 
Germany to a technical school, and at a later date he entered upon a 
business career. At the outbreak of war, he enlisted in one of the corps of 
volunteers, and served on the western front. In 1916 he was wounded 
before Verdun. He was afterwards sent to Roumania, and in 1917 became 
a leader of shock-troops in the Carpathians. Here he was wounded again 
on two separate occasions. From August 1918 to the end of the war, he 
served as an airman on the western front. 

On the occasion of the deliverance of Munich from the Communist 
regime, he saw service with one of the corps of volunteers, and was wounded 
once again. 

As one of the first adherents of Hitler, he joined in the struggle of the 
S.A., and was severely wounded at the battle in the Hofbrauhaus. He 
marched with Hitler on November 9th, 1923, and with him was sent to 
the fortress of Landsberg. Here he became Hitler’s confidential secretary, 
and later his “ personal representative,” in which capacity he has continued 
up to the present day. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


174 

a bout of boxing or did a bit of wrestling. All sorts o 
sports were provided for. Hitler would have gone in fo] 
some of them but for his injured arm. As it was he hac 
to content himself with the job of referee. 

“ After about an hour of this the prisoners had a turr 
in the garden. The garden is, as you see, somewhat long 
and narrow, hemmed in by the prison buildings on the 
one side and on the other by a twenty-foot wall. The 
other sides are contained by high wooden fences. Here, 
you see, is a notice board, ‘ Bounds.’ If anyone over¬ 
stepped these limits he was looked upon as attempting 
to escape. My window overlooked the garden and it 
was my job to keep an eye on our promenaders. You 
see that long gravel path that runs by the wall ? That 
was Hitler’s favourite walk, up and down, up and down. 
For the most part Hess was his companion. The rest 
of them called it ‘ Hitler’s Path.’ Sometimes those who 
had formerly belonged to the Storm Troops would start 
singing party songs as they tramped along. At first we 
took no notice, or at least we raised no objection to this, 
but when the convicts on their side took to yelling in 
unison and disturbed the peace of the whole neighbour¬ 
hood, we put a stop to it. 

“ At ten o’clock it was indoors again, with the gate 
locked behind. At eleven letters were given out. They 
had all been opened, in the office of course, and censored. 
If they contained anything which, in the Governor’s 
judgment, it was unsuitable to communicate they could 
be withheld. Prisoners had to fetch their own parcels 
from the parcel room, and all had to be opened and 
unpacked in my presence. Very often I’d have a look 
into any of the eatables to see if they were serving to 
smuggle anything through. It was an interesting job, 
this parcels inspection, and gave quite an insight into the 
characters of the recipients. Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel, 
whom I got to know as a man of somewhat peremptory 
temper, had a way of wrenching off the wrappings of his 
parcels, quite characteristic of himself. He always did it 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


175 

ike that. He’d whip off the stoutest string in one jerk, 
few Dr. Weber was exactly the opposite. He’d undo 
ivery blessed knot with the utmost care and patience, no 
natter how long it took. Whenever a parcel turned up 
or Dr. Weber I knew what I was in for. I asked him 
>nce how he came to take such pains over a little thing 
ike that. He looked up at me, adjusted his glasses and 
eplied : ‘ When I was a boy I was passionate and 
mpulsive to a degree. My father used to give me a 
rightful tangle of string to undo, whenever I showed this 
>ropensity, and so forced me to learn patience.’ 

“ Now Hitler, again, he did differently. It depended 
whether the parcel came from a known or an unknown 
ource. In the one case it might have contained sausage, 
tnd in the other, an infernal machine ! I was always a 
>it uneasy about those stranger parcels. Hitler’d look 
em over very carefully himself before he cut the string. 
Vith the other sort he just took the line of least resistance, 
f there were a lot of knots he’d cut the string without 
nore ado ; if there were few he’d undo ’em. 

“ Shortly before twelve o’clock they would spread the 
loth for dinner in the common room. This cloth didn’t 
>roperly come under orders, but the convicts instituted it 
md we made no demur. They brought the meal in 
me large vessel and served it to the prisoners. As a rule 
he meal consisted of but one dish. 1 Everyone waited for 
fitler, each standing erect behind his own chair. When 
he Leader appeared there was a cry of 4 ’tenshun ! ’ and 
ie strode to the top of the table, and remained standing 
mtil every man in turn came forward with his table- 
reeting. Then all sat down and fell to. There was 
eldom any talk of politics. As a rule Hitler himself 
hatted with his right and left-hand neighbours about 
iich things as the theatre, or art, or even technical 
latters. He was quite an adept in mechanics, especially 
lotor mechanics. He was always getting plans and 

1 Ein “ Eintopf-Gericht ” foreshadowing, perhaps, the famous self- 
mying ordinance of the Winter Relief Work in aid of the poor and needy. 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


176 

specifications from motor works, new designs for the 
chassis, and sketched out a few himself. (It is wel 
known, of course, that he invented two jolly useful motoi 
gadgets, and patented them. One was for a rearwarc 
reflector which would allow the car to travel backward* 
with facility ; and the other was an adjustable lamp a 
the driving seat for reading route maps, etc. He mad* 
use of both these contrivances later when touring th* 
country at night on his political campaigns.) At the enc 
of the meal Hitler would give the signal 5 Mahlzeit, 1 
answered by the rest, and then they would all sit about £ 
bit smoking and chatting while the table was cleared 
Perhaps somebody would make him a little present o: 
some fruit—always gratefully accepted by Hitler. Aftei 
perhaps a quarter of an hour he would lay the plat* 
aside and betake himself again to his room. 

“ Now came the time for me to make the round of the 
Politicals’ cells to take their orders for any small com¬ 
modities they might require, always on the understanding 
that they’d pay for them themselves. At about a quartei 
to four one or another of the company would brew t tz 
or coffee on the oven in the common room and take th* 
cups round to his companions. At a quarter to five 1 
unlocked the courtyard gate again and all would flocl 
into the open for the second airing of the day—wher 
Hitler and Hess invariably betook themselves to thei] 
particular beat. 

“At six they returned indoors for supper—a herring 
or a little sausage and salad, eaten in the cells. Eact 
man was allowed to buy half a litre of beer or wine ; z 
good many availed themselves of the privilege. 

“ After this, at half-past six, came a second hour o: 
sport or exercise in the open air once more, then th* 
prisoners reassembled in the common room until nine 
when every one was expected to retreat to his owr 
quarters. It was Lights Out at ten. Whereupon the 
night officers coming on duty were greeted by many z 
resounding snore. 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


177 


“ Before I can tell you much as to Hitler’s own occupa¬ 
tions at Landsberg I ought to put in a word or two about 
his own particular friends, and how they carried on here 
—Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel, for instance. Although like 
Hitler and the rest, he wore, for the most part, native 
Bavarian costume, one could always detect the military 
man. But for all that he was a cheerful soul, and could 
appreciate a good bit of fun. Dr. Weber was half¬ 
sportsman, half-savant. He had served with distinction 
in the War, and since then, had seen fighting as a volun¬ 
teer in Upper Silesia. He was rather typically the man 
of culture and letters. He was particularly interested in 
astronomy. Once, I remember, when an eclipse of the 
moon was on, he begged me to open the courtyard door. 
Hitler and Kriebel were with him : he gave them a 
wonderful account of the northern hemisphere. It was 
quite a privilege for me, too, to listen to him. He was a 
good sports instructor as well, and held regular courses in 
the gymnasium. On one occasion he arranged a sort of 
gymkhana, to which the whole staff was invited. Hess 
carried off most of the prizes. 

“ Hess at that time was still a student. He was always 
immersed in his books. He had an energetic and pur¬ 
poseful character under an exterior as modest as it was 
unassuming. Then there was Emil Maurice, a watch¬ 
maker by trade, who helped Hitler in the beginning 
with his writing. Afterwards Hess took this on. In cell 
No. 2 lived Schneider, the amateur boxer. He put it up 
to the authorities to provide him with a punching ball, 
and got a sack of sand. A few of the other Politicals, 
mostly students, turned themselves into a band ; one or 
two possessed a violin or a lute. The rest fashioned 
weird instruments for themselves out of tins nailed on to 
broom handles and made them do duty for bass and 
’cello. 

“ A real original was a budding legal light called 
Fobke. Although he seriously did his best, somehow, 
to keep up his studies here, he was always getting bright 


M 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


178 

ideas which interrupted their course. He founded a 
paper called Der Landsberge Ehrenbiirger which circulated 
privately among the company and had a good deal oi 
success. It was typed and hectographed, and consisted 
of two sections, one serious and the other comic. Hitler 
nearly always wrote the leading article for this production, 
and often contributed caricatures. The first part 
contained stories about the prisoners themselves and 
about us warders. The whole thing remained secret 
for a while, until someone wrote home about it, and the 
game was up. Because all letters were opened you know. 
But our literary aspirants got wind of the circumstance, 
and when I raided the editorial office, Cell No. 11, 
nothing was to be seen of the paper. Every copy had 
been burnt. 

“ Besides the fellows I have named there were a 
couple of dozen more all thrown together here, so 
altogether I had a rather hectic time of it. 

“Then came Hitler’s name day, 1 June 17th. The 
night officers had scarcely gone off duty when I heard 
strains of music coming from above. I went up to 
investigate and found the band had planted itself outside 
Hitler’s door, and was serenading him, if a serenade can 
be said to be played at six o’clock in the morning. And, 
upon my word, it wasn’t at all bad I 

“ Hitler got a good many presents which he stored 
away, this time, in a sort of ditty box proper to cell No. 11. 

This grub box, or tuck chest, was confided to the care of 
the senior inmate of the cells, who divided the contents 
out equally every day. In the evening they held a sort of 
do 2 in the common room, when the band again dis¬ 
tinguished itself. Hitler opened the proceedings with 
a speech. It was my job to patrol the room to take note 
that nothing transpired of a revolutionary character. 
But to-day I can own up that both I and some of the 

1 Not birthday but baptism day, when the name is bestowed. An 
observance confined to the Catholic parts of Germany. 

2 Kameradschaftsabend. 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


i 79 

other warders rather exceeded instructions on this 
occasion. We gathered round the door, all ears, alert 
for what he was saying about things that concerned our 
own interests. We were immensely struck by his speaking. 
He wound up with an exhortation, ‘ Nun erst recht ! 
Sieg Heil! . And they broke into a song, 4 Hakenkreuz 
und Stahlhelm ’ (Hooked Cross and Steel Helmet). 

fi Hat man uns auch verraten, 

Trieb mit uns Schindluderei, 

Wir wussten, was wir taten, 

Bleiben dem Vaterlande treu. 

Hitler’s Geist im Herzen 
Kann nicht untergeh’n, 

Kann nicht untergeh’n, 

Sturmabteilung Hitler, 

Wird einst aufersteh’n.’ 

After which they wound up with a few more musical 
selections, lighter songs, and amusing perorations. 

“ On the anniversary of the Versailles Treaty Hitler 
gave his followers a longer address, but, here again, we 
warders were on hand and got the benefit of listening to it 
from the neighbourhood of the door. And even outside, 
the sentries had left their posts to gather motionless under 
the windows and stare up at them, and try to catch the 
speech. 

“ Notwithstanding all their efforts to keep their end 
up, bit by bit the monotony of this existence began to wear 
down our Politicals. They were obliged to think up 
something fresh to do, so they hit upon volunteering for 
garden work. They got the necessary permission and all 
set to with a will, except Hitler and Hess, who by this 
time had regularly settled down to the writing of a book— 
I’ll return to that later. There were some horticultural 
experts among our body of gardeners, so they made no 
botch of their new-found work. They began by relaying 
the central path through the garden. They were supplied 
with overalls, sun hats and the necessary implements and 
wheelbarrows. Lieut.-Colonel Kriebel, looking like a 



i8o 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


Brazilian coffee planter in his broad straw, acted as 
foreman of the works. As soon as a barrow was loaded 
with gravel, off they went with it at the gallop to the outer 
postern. I overlooked the whole business from my 
office window, and when this detail appeared I would 
come down, unlock the gate and accompany the column 
to the pit where the stuff was shot. This to and fro business 
went on all day : our procedure became mechanical even 
for the man on duty at the postern. The moment my head 
disappeared at the window, Rriebel took up his position 
in front and the whole outfit moved off. 

“ We officers at Landsberg had never really looked 
upon Hitler and his friends as ordinary c prisoners ’ 
(political or otherwise), i.e men sentenced to punitive 
detention. On the contrary we had esteemed them as 
upright men from the outset, and now when we had come 
to know them we realised how well-founded was this 
respect and even admiration. So that one day a queer 
thing happened. The guard at the gate opened to 
Kriebel and his crowd without noticing that I, for once, 
was not with them. The barrow went through, and with 
it six men regained their liberty ! There was nothing to 
prevent their getting clear away. But after a time as I 
shot a glance at the gardeners from my window, I noticed 
Kriebel was not to be seen. Worse than that—five others 
also were obviously missing ! 

cc I rushed to the outer gate, to the utmost consternation 
of the warder there who instantly grasped what was 
afoot. Good God ! six men had escaped. ... I rang up 
the Administration Block, got on to the Governor. . . . 
Warders were immediately summoned from all parts 
of the prison buildings . . . word flew round the place 
like lightning ... a posse was despatched in pursuit 
of the fugitives in the direction of the town—and then 
I had a brain wave ! 

“ I sprinted along to the gravel pit only to encounter 
the whole six of the supposed runaways mildly returning 
with their empty barrow. I could have hugged ’em ! 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


181 


They could have made a pretty good getaway among our 
hills by this time if that had really been their game. 
But, as I say, we 5 d always looked upon Hitler and his 
friends as honourable men, and this goes to prove it. 
It proves how right we were, too. 

44 Then another time they put up a rare bit of fun. 
You know how the peasants here carry on when anyone 
in the village doesn’t quite meet with the approval of the 
rest ? A dozen of them get together in the evening, 
disguise themselves so that they can’t easily be recognised, 
arm themselves with pitchforks and threshing flails and 
things of that sort, and betake themselves to the dwelling 
of the culprit. There they kick up such a din he is obliged 
at last to come out and confront them. Then the spokes¬ 
man ups and gives it to him straight, and lets him know 
what his neighbours think of him, and tells him jolly well 
to look out for the future if he doesn’t want his roof 
burnt over his head. Sometimes, even, the churl will 
forestall what’s coming to him, ask for it, and get it over. 1 

44 Well, our Politicals arranged to play this game on 
Hitler. They smeared their faces with oven rust, and 
black, and what not, enveloped themselves in the bed- 
sheets, and armed themselves with pokers and brooms. 
Outside Hitler’s door they began their row and one of 
them banged on it with his fists. Hitler opened it, amazed 
and non-comprehending at first—and then waked to 
rich enjoyment of the joke. 

44 6 Adolf Hitler,’ demanded the one, 4 where are you ? ’ 

44 4 Why, here ! ’ replied he, laughing. 

44 6 All right, then ! We’ve come to have it out with 
you,’ and turning to his supporters, 4 are you all here, 
boys ? ’ cried the accuser. 

44 With an immense flourishing of weapons they yelled 
that they were, in chorus. 

44 4 Very well,’ pursued their leader, 4 let’s put him 
through it.’ Whereupon he proceeded to a laughable 
parody of the charges against Hitler at the recent trial, 

1 This custom is called the “ Haberfeld-Treiben.” 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


182 

and to the most comical and pointed witticisms at the 
expense of men like Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser who had 
played such a sorry part in the events leading up to that 
crisis. The whole thing, of course, was richly interlarded 
with nicknames and broad Bavarian provincialisms. It 
ended up with an appeal to the 4 Haberer,’ 4 Are you 
agreed ? 5 

44 They were, they asserverated, one and all. 

44 Whereupon sentence must be passed on Hitler. 

44 He was to be instantly expelled from Landsberg, and 
condemned to tour Germany in his motor-car and drive 
the Reds to the devil. 

44 The assembled Haberer loudly applauded with 
fresh brandishings and flourishings, and at length with¬ 
drew, highly satisfied with the performance, while Hitler 
laughing still, but shaking his head, went back to his 
interrupted work. 

44 It was a good thing both for themselves and for Hitler 
that the Politicals managed somehow or other to get some 
fun out of life here, otherwise, it would have gone badly 
for them. There’s danger in the monotony of prison. 
I’ve seen quite enough of it in my time, I can tell you. 
Queer things happen. 

44 But if we’re going to talk about Hitler himself 
more particularly all I can say is that he exercised an 
influence all his own on everyone, big and little, in the 
place. He was always an early riser, long before he came 
here, and was ready dressed by the time our 4 Festung ’ 
day began. He took a good deal of care of his teeth and 
mouth. That came of his having been gassed in the war. 

44 After breakfast—which he took in common with the 
rest, when most times he’d talk a bit about art or music 
—anything but politics—he’d retreat into his room (which 
had been put to rights meantime by men from the convict 
side), and plunge himself four hours in study. He gathered 
quite a library about him of the books sent him by friends 
and followers and admirers outside. They were political 
books, and scientific books, and what they call belles 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


183 

lettres. He had a lot about his two prime favourites and 
heroes—and their pictures—Wagner and Frederick the 
Great. 

“ Then came the courtyard and the garden, when he 
could walk about a little and look on at the gymnastics. 
Very often he’d have a book in his hand, and just sit about 
reading. He formed his own particular circle, and was 
the life and soul of it himself. Very often the morning 
was all taken up by visitors, especially on his first coming 
here. I’ll come back to them later on. They all took their 
midday meal together, our Politicals, and then Hitler 
would spend the afternoon trying to cope with his 
enormous correspondence, or going back to his books. 
In the evening he’d be in the garden again or doing the 
referee for them at games. But by special permission 
Hitler was allowed a light at night up to twelve o’clock, 
two hours beyond the time accorded to everybody else. 
He never failed to avail himself of the privilege. 

“ Hitler’s fine personality, in which no trace of personal 
vanity was to be detected, made an impression on all 
around him. He had a remarkable love of order and 
neatness. He possessed an unquenchable spring of energy 
within, which, despite his accustomed urbanity, flashed 
in his eyes whenever a decision had to be made. It 
stands to reason that when a number of men are penned 
up together in narrow quarters, against any choice of 
their own, men, moreover, convinced of the rightness of 
their actions, the exactions of prison regulations should 
give rise to endless exacerbations of temper, and necessary 
clashes with authority. That this was not the case here 
when we had the National Socialists in Landsberg was due 
wholly to Hitler’s over-ruling influence, and to his sense 
of soldierly discipline. 

“ If the rest bore their detention as well as he did, it 
was because they learnt from him that the Cause for 
which they stood was well worth what they had to go 
through in pursuit of it. The uniform politeness with 
which he treated everyone here, from the Governor to 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


184 

the man who cleaned his cell, excited universal apprecia¬ 
tion. He knew, too, what sort of a job we warders had, 
and understood it. For instance, when one or another 
of the prisoners would put in for some favour or privilege 
which I didn’t see my way to grant, I’d ask Hitler to my 
room and put the thing to him. I had my duty to 
perform, however personally distasteful it might be now 
and again, and would he please call his friends’ attention 
to the fact ? This, that or the other matter was forbidden : 
I simply had no option but to see that the rules were kept. 
Hitler merely returned, * Quite so, Herr Wachtmeister ; 
I’ll see to it.’ And that was the end of the matter. His 
word simply went with our Politicals, even under the 
cloud of the present circumstances. 

“ He was entirely unassuming, and had few personal 
requirements. He took a real pleasure in all those things 
people contrived to do to show him their loyalty and 
sympathy. He gave away the contents of parcels sent to 
him, and always contrived, if possible, to have something 
on hand for the children of anyone who came to see him. 
He bore himself in just that comradely way to his followers 
which takes no account of difference in position or up¬ 
bringing, and found full opportunity during their common 
imprisonment to draw closer the ties which knit them to 
him. He was always at their command to be of help or 
service. As a rule he was singularly cheerful, and did his 
best to make their evenings in the common room go 
with a swing. He even got Hess to make out a list of 
their birthdays, so that whenever one of these came 
round, the individual in question would be specially 
invited to coffee with him in his room, and they’d sit and 
talk, and Hitler’d dish up some little present or other. 

“ Stormy weather, of course, made a difference to 
everybody’s spirits. When it poured and howled outside, 
it generally fell pretty dull and quiet within. Then it was 
Hitler grew a trifle thoughtful and anxious. So he did, 
too, when bad news came. It knocked him pretty hard 
to realise how things had gone to bits in the Party since 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 185 

his imprisonment—years of labour and endeavour, and 
struggle, and hopes all gone for nothing ! There were 
rows and splits in the groups of National Socialists, who 
still hung together somehow ; the leaderless Movement 
seemed destined to peter right out. At first he tried, even 
from here, to keep things going, and to direct the Party 
as before, but when he found that his instructions were so 
apt to get themselves misunderstood or misapplied, and 
often, indeed, failed to reach their destination in the 
form they had left his hand, he gave up the vain attempt, 
and withdrew himself altogether from politics. He 
devoted all his energies to the book. 

c< It was now that he began to write Mein Kampf, 
All day long and late into the night one could hear 
the typewriter going in his room, and his voice dictating 
to Hess. As he finished one section of the book after 
another he would read it aloud to the others in their 
evening assemblies. This formed an enormous interest 
in their lives. They already knew that Hitler could 
speak : now they were to appraise his writing. 55 

• • • • • 

It may be permitted to digress for a moment, in order 
to enter a note or two on Mein Kampf, 

This book should have for all students of human psycho- 
logy a quite peculiar interest considering the personality 
of the man who wrote it, and the circumstances to which 
it owed its inception and under which it was written. 
Mein Kampf is a human document, if it is neither precisely 
history nor precisely literature. It has been cruelly 
criticised. Quite the most bitter things that could have 
been said about it have come from the side of literary 
rather than of political criticism. To that extent they 
are negligible and beside any real point. Hitler’s mind 
teemed in Landsberg, as it has teemed since, with a 
multitude of urgent ideas. It must have been of immense 
mental service to him to set them down, with the aid of 
the enthusiastic and devoted Hess, and reduce them to 
the order and the cogency of ink ! 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


186 

This book, it should be remembered, was addressed 
to the adherents of the original German Workmen’s 
Party, and in no way appealed to opponents at home 
or to foreigners abroad. 

Since the beginning of 1933 when President von 
Hindenburg, as a last resort, and faced otherwise with 
political and economic chaos, appointed Adolf Hitler 
to the German Chancellorship, the Landsberg writings 
of the erstwhile prisoner have been the most widely read 
work throughout Germany. Had it not been for Hitler’s 
spectacular political success, Mein Kampf might have had 
no more and no less of a public at home than any other 
literary effort of the sort. Had it not been for Hitler’s 
appointment to the German Chancellorship in the January 
of 1933 it is quite unlikely that the book would have 
attracted widespread attention in England. 

In this country an idea seems to have gained ground 
that every German is obliged at the pistol’s point to buy 
a copy of Mein Kampf. Under such circumstances, of 
course, it was bound to be a redoubtable best seller ! 
As a matter of fact, it owes its ubiquity to no such means. 
The Chancellor, however, derives a large proportion of 
his personal income from its sale. He has no other 
private resources. His official salary is wholly diverted 
for the relief of poverty and unemployment. 

The interest of Mein Kampf is not identical in England 
with the interest it has for those to whom it is addressed, 
and whose lives now are very definitely set to run upon 
the lines laid down in it. The interest of the book for the 
English reader is something different. Whether he reads 
the work (it consists of two hefty volumes, running into 
nearly eight hundred pages of close print), in German or 
in English, the first astonishing thing about it is its amazing 
vigour and originality. 

From this book, written as it was in 1924-25, might 
be inferred or foreseen, the decisive drive and force of 
National Socialism once it attained to power. The book 
was written so many years ago, but everything in its 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


187 

pages—with few acknowledged exceptions—holds fast as 
granite to-day now that it has won. The book was 
written when few perhaps, except its author himself, 
would really have dared to promise that such victories as 
those recorded in the German plebiscites held since 1933, 
would ever really happen. The victory of National 
Socialism could have been won without the book. 

The writer himself sets infinitely less store by the 
pen than by the spoken word. He relied upon it to that 
end far less than he relied upon his voice. But for those 
in England, cold to the personal magnetism of the 
energising German Chancellor, the book is the only key 
to the riddle of his dominance and power. 

To read Mein Kampf merely to extract from it the 
story of Adolf Hitler and the rise of his Movement, is 
to waive entirely its main content and import. Mein 
Kampf concerns itself least of all with autobiography. 
It is an immense piece of work, of political, historical, 
philosophical, psychological, ethnographical, destructive 
and reconstructive significance for every aspect of the 
problem of an entire nation’s rehabilitation. 

The great bulk of all this is beyond the purview of the 
everyday English reader. Whole tracts of it here and 
there, of course, bearing upon this, that or the other 
particular subject—the ethics of twentieth-century art 
for instance, or the sterilisation of the unfit—are of special 
interest to any thinking educated man or woman of 
whatever country ; but for the most part Mein Kampf is 
only for the German national and the highly initiate. 
Again, merely to extract the narrative of the National 
Socialist Party would be a piece of superfluous journalism 
were it not to bring out something of the mentality of 
one of the most remarkable men of our time. 

Adolf Hitler appealed, in fostering his Movement, not 
to the self-interest of his possible followers but to their 
self-sacrifice. Those who believed in the Party must be 
willing to give their all for it—for Germany—their time, 
strength, money, their blood and life itself. He was 



188 GERMANY’S HITLER 

asking for nothing more than he was fully prepared to 
give himself. 

The National Socialist must be convinced, enthusiastic, 
energetic : he must be ready and eager to do his utmost 
without any necessai*y wage or return. He must be 
fanatic for the unity which means strength. 

Hitler to this day is, himself, celibate : devoted to 
one sole aim and end in life. He is ascetic, disciplined ; 
a vegetarian and a teetotaller. His personal existence 
is simple. He owns but one unpretentious private house 
in Berchtesgaden. He sees no point at all in spending 
public money on official banquets and receptions and 
on the social amenities of his great position. Something 
of this passionate self-immolation to a selfless idea 
emanates from the pages of his book. To appreciate the 
power of this man to electrify audiences, to vitalise 
inertia or despair, to direct enthusiasm, to mould the 
inchoate, to unify the dispersed and antagonistic, to 
trample down obstruction, and ruthlessly to crush all that 
might jeopardise his herculean enterprise, one must read 
Mein Kampf. It is all there. The drive, the force, the 
originality, the fearlessness, the will to frightfulness. 

Every development of National Socialist power which 
has been witnessed by a world agape since March, 1933 , 
is the logical outcome of plans laid down long before the 
book was written but which enshrines their inception 
and their logic. 


To revert to Herr Wachtmeister’s story : 

66 Hitler didn’t always write that book in comfort,” 
he assured me. “ A cell in the 4 Festung ’ here was 
hardly a study ! When the rain came down extra 
heavily it poured in at the badly fitting window and 
slopped about on the floor. I’ve seen Hitler’s room 
like a regular lake for water. He came to me about 
it once and together we collected rags and pails and 
returned to mop it up. He shouted with laughter to 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


189 

discover the prison cat perched on top of a stool in the 
middle of the mess and puddle and licking at it after her 
own finnicky fashion. 

“ As I’ve already told, Hitler had lots of visitors. 
They came from all over Germany, even from the 
remotest corners of the country, travelling by motor 
or by train, many of them trudging it on foot. Every 
age, every profession, every condition was represented 
among them. The broad-shouldered, hardy peasant 
came to Landsberg together with the well-clad city man ; 
University professors, workmen, clericals, nobles and 
small craftsmen, everyday citizens, artists, journalists, the 
most diverse and varied and all-embracing crowd of 
visitors you can imagine, and all wanted to see and speak 
with Hitler. Once even a pair of young Hitler followers 
came all the way on foot, arriving in rags, from remotest 
East Prussia. 

“ Prisoners, however, were only allowed one hour 
a day for visitors, and the minutes of that hour were 
strictly allotted. Twenty to thirty minutes might be 
spent on ‘ next of kin 5 and intimately family matters ; 
c friends 5 merely got fifteen or twenty minutes, and 
c acquaintances ’ generally had to be content with five 
or ten. Every visitor had to report himself to the authori¬ 
ties and submit to interrogation as to whether he was 
bringing in anything forbidden, weapons or news, or 
traitorous printed matter. With bureaucratic thorough¬ 
ness his own particulars were meticulously noted. Every 
visit, naturally, had to be 6 taken ’ by an officer who was 
present the whole time. I used to 6 take 5 Hitler’s visits, 
in a room set apart for the purpose. 

“ Many women, too, came to see Hitler at Landsberg. 
He treated them with uniform courtesy, but I was never 
able to remark that any single one excited his interest 
to a particular degree. 

“ In the course of so many but so brief interviews 
Hitler developed an extraordinary terseness and fluidity 
of expression. It often went severely against the grain 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


190 

to me to bring these to a close. The moment, however, 
I made a sign that time was up. Hitler broke off, and 
withdrew. I often regretted the necessity ; duty here 
came sharply in conflict with personal inclination. It was 
really a wonderful experience to listen to Hitler in 
t&te-a-tete conversation. I don’t know anyone whose 
personality was so overwhelming. As a rule when I had 
to c take ’ one of these visits, I made a point of having a 
paper on hand, in which, for appearance’s sake, I could 
appear to immerse myself. Very often, though, I just 
used it to screen the intense interest I myself was feeling 
in the conversation. Hitler’s way of putting things was 
not mere talking : he made you feel the point come right 
home : you yourself experienced every word. He put fresh 
heart into people. Many came to him in the last stages 
of discouragement and doubt about the prospects of 
National Socialism, but they went away filled with con¬ 
fidence and vigour. Once he’d got over his own black 
hour, here at Landsberg, Hilter seemed filled with the 
fresh energy and purpose that comes from invincible 
confidence. He was only abiding his hour to begin the 
fight all over again—seen perhaps, now, from a slightly 
different angle,—and he managed to infuse the same 
spirit into every discomfited Faintheart who sought his 
support and advice. 

“ The summer wore on to its close. Autumn was at 
hand. And in autumn Hitler and his friends were to be 
set at liberty. 1 By October 1st he would have done six 
months. Early in September the following Report upon 
him was submitted to the legal authorities in Munich, 
with a view to his early release. 

“ * The political offender Adolf Hitler was consigned 
to the Fortress of Landsberg on April 1st, 1924. Up to 
the present date he has served five and a half months. By 
the 1st of October he will have expiated his offence by 
ten and a half months’ detention. 

1 Hitler had been sentenced to five years* imprisonment. But the 
Court exercised its prerogative and enjoined that six months only should 
be served. 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 191 

“ ‘ Hitler has shown himself to be a well-conducted 
man, not only in his own person, but also with reference 
to his fellow-prisoners, among whom he has preserved 
good discipline. He is amenable, unassuming and 
agreeable. He has never made complaints. He has 
conducted himself in a uniformly quiet and reasonable 
manner, and has put up with the deprivations and 
restrictions of imprisonment very well. He evinces no 
personal vanity and has been satisfied with the care and 
attention received here. He neither smokes nor drinks. 
He has exercised a helpful authority over his fellow- 
prisoners. As a man unused at any time to personal 
indulgence he has borne the conditions of life in prison 
better than married men. He received the visits of 
women friends and followers without particular 
enthusiasm, and seldom expanded about political matters 
to this type of visitor. He has been uniformly agreeable, 
and of no trouble at all, to the warders and officials here. 
At the beginning he received a great number of visits, but 
latterly has discouraged them and withdrawn himself 
from political discussion. He now writes but few letters. 
These for the most part are merely acknowledgments. 
He is entirely taken up with the writing of his book. ... 
He hopes it may run into a good many editions and so 
enable him to defray expenses incurred at the time of 
the trial. 

“ c Hitler will, doubtless, return to political life. He 
proposes to re-found and reanimate his Movement. But 
for the future he proposes not to run counter to authority, 
but to make use of all possible permissible means, short 
of a second bid for power, to attain his ends. 

“ ‘ During the last few months he has become much 
more mature and calmer. He entertains no revengeful 
purposes and is no longer filled with recriminating 
reflections. He has no intention to incite strife against 
the Government ; he is fully persuaded that a country 
without internal order and firm government cannot 
carry on. 



192 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


“ ‘ Adolf Hitler is undoubtedly a man of many- 
sided intelligence, particularly political intelligence, with 
an unusual power of will, and direct methods of thought. 

“ ‘ Taking the above facts into consideration I venture 
to submit that Hitler should receive the benefit of an early 
release. ... It seems to be very generally anticipated 
that Hitler will be set at liberty on the first of October 
next.’ ” 

In consequence of this Report, signed by Ober- 
regierungsrat Leybold, our prisoner, as a matter of fact, 
was to have been released on October ist. But objections, 
possibly inspired by personal dislike, were raised to the 
leniency, and Hitler had yet another month to drag 
out here. 

The first anniversary came round of the disaster on 
the Odeonsplatz before the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, 
November gth. The day was one of very special import 
and gravity for our Politicals. They gathered in the 
evening in the common room and Hitler spoke, with 
deep emotion of the events of a year ago. He charged 
himself with entire responsibility for the whole affair 
but showed how it was the outcome of the then con¬ 
comitance of historical and current circumstance. His 
hearers were profoundly impressed with the Leader’s 
sincerity and deep morality. 

The whole of November went by, when the Governor 
again submitted considerations to the Court at Munich. 
It was strongly felt that Hitler’s unimpeachable con¬ 
duct throughout all this time should receive some 
recognition. 

“ ‘ Hitler has not lost his composure. He makes 
no complaints/ wrote the Governor, ‘ he has a strong 
character, and puts constraint upon himself to keep 
ill-humour and irritability under. He obeys orders, 
whether they suit him or not. He resorts to no small 
subterfuges.’ 

“ There was a good deal more yet to be said, and 
the Governor said it. ‘ He is, undoubtedly, the 



HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


*93 

political idealist ... he has now done thirteen 
months . . .’ 

u Nevertheless Christmas drew near with Hitler still 
in prison. A few of the others were released, leaving 
those behind very wistful indeed. Hitler bore these 
repeated disappointments about his own return to 
freedom with equanimity and philosophy. The remainder 
prepared to celebrate the season at Landsberg as best 
they could. They put up Christmas decorations, and 
found for the Christmas tree a place of honour in the 
common room. It still awaited dressing. . . . 

“ Then, like a bolt from the blue, about ten o’clock 
on the morning of December 20th, came the news, 
‘ Hitler’s to be released ! ’ Word flew round the cells ; 
enormous jubilation broke out. He was most loyally 
and cordially congratulated. But underneath the very 
real genuine exultation lay a great sadness. These men 
had followed him—sixteen of them to death—and the 
rest to prison : now he was to leave them. They were 
to lose their Leader- 

“ But this sort of thing was not allowed to get the 
upper hand. Time pressed. Hitler had hardly got 
his things together before the car arrived to take him 
away. He took cordial farewell of his companions, 
and then turning to me shook me by the hand and 
thanked me for what I had done for him (though I 
am at a loss to know exactly what this might have 
amounted to). A moment after, he had gone. 

“ Perhaps it wouldn’t be out of place to add a word 
or two as to the effect his long stay here had had upon 
me personally. As I told you, when he first came here 
I hadn’t the glimmer of an idea as to what was meant by 
National Socialism. But throughout his whole ten 
months Hitler never talked to us officers directly on the 
subject. Yet I don’t think I should be far out if I was 
to say that before we saw the last of him every one here, 
from Governor to the furnace man, had become a 
convinced believer in his ideas. 


N 



194 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


“ How did this come about you’d like to know: 
Well, chiefly through two things. First, we’d had the 
opportunity of hearing him speak so often to his fellow- 
prisoners on these subjects, and to his numerous visitors, 
that we had, one and all, come by a fair comprehension 
of his aim and meaning. Secondly, and perhaps this 
is even more to the point, we’d seen him living out his 
theory in his own life, before our eyes. We warders 
are so used to churlish and resentful behaviour from 
prisoners generally, that we take that sort of thing all 
in with the day’s work. So that it was a real change 
and unusual pleasure for us to have Hitler’s Politicals 
in the ‘ Festung.’ Every one of them behaved like a 
gentleman. Hitler set the tone, that’s why. He nevei 
made any distinction of persons. He’d offer a peasant 
who came to see him his own chair to sit on, as readily 
as he’d offer it to a general. He was as courteous to the 
least of us officers here as to the Governor himself. 
That’s one of the things we found so tremendously 
unusual about him : one of the things we liked so much. 

Then, again, I—who’d been in close personal contact 
with him all that time—can affirm without the least 
hesitation that he was an exceptionally truthful man. 
He never lied or prevaricated in any way. He’d even 
avoid the least dubiousness in what he said. He made 
our work for us lighter and pleasanter than any prisoner 
had ever done before. We understood each other, he 
and I, notwithstanding the fact that it was always my 
job to insist strictly on the rules. 

“ In a word, when Hitler left here, we all held him 
in the utmost esteem. It was only in 1932 and 1933 we 
realised how much we had to thank God for in having 
sent us such a man. We had in then a couple of dozen 
Communists and we warders had all our work cut out 
to deal with them. 

“ They were a slippery lot, always grousing about 
one thing and another. The Press too didn’t help us in 
any way to carry out what were, after all, merely our 


HITLER IN LANDSBERG 


T 95 

official and routine duties : we were held up to execration 
as enemies of the Proletariat. So I can tell you, looking 
back upon it, we appreciated that time when Hitler 
and his friends were in our charge. 

“ The Governor himself turned to me as Hitler drove 
away, and remarked : ‘ Well, if it’s anyway possible to 
uplift this country again and set her on her feet, that’s 
the man to do it ! ’ ” 



CHAPTER XI 


SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 

W ITH Hitler’s release begins the second phase 
of the history of the National Socialist Party. It 
is a story of ever increasing interest, but now the interest 
becomes far more political than personal ; the former 
elements of hazard and even of romance sink into the 
background. Hitler is no longer an unknown man, 
struggling under conditions of dire poverty, to force a 
hearing for a party merely one of many 1 other equally 
clamorous competitors. He remains individually poor, 
to be sure, but at least funds enough can now be found 
to enable him to get about at top speed, everywhere, 
and to further the work of the Movement at all points. 

This second phase lasts from 1925 to the date of the 
triumph of the Party, and its Leader’s accession to 
power as Chancellor of Germany in January, 1933. 

The third phase begins the history of Germany as 
a National Socialist State. For the purpose of the 
present book—which is a study more of the Man than of 
the Movement, and aims rather, to show biographically 
how and why it was he came by his ideas and principles 
(which, as Chancellor, he is translating into action), 
than to trace the post-war political history of the Reich— 
I propose to confine myself to a necessarily brief review 
of the progress of the Party after its second founding. 

Herr Hermann Esser, 2 was good enough to give me 

1 There were thirty-six political parties in Germany prior to the 
dominance of National Socialism. 

2 Holder of many important positions. Herr Esser was born in 1900. 
He was still at school when the Great War broke out, but in 1917 he 
joined the 9th Bavarian Field Artillery. He belonged, at the Front, 

196 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 197 

the benefit of his personal and first-hand knowledge of this 
period. Hermann Esser’s story is as authentic and as 
indisputable as any yet recorded. He is, to-day, one of 
the oldest and staunchest of Adolf Hitler’s original 
friends and fellow-workers. Hitler indeed was Number 7 
in the Party : Hermann Esser preceded him—he was 
Number 2. 

“When the authorities in 1923 threw Hitler and his 
immediate associates into prison,” said Herr Esser, 
“ when they took all possible steps to extinguish the Party, 
they forgot one thing. They overlooked the fact that 
Ideas are only to be met and combated by other ideas, 
not by brute force. The authorities in 1923 were at the 
end of all their ideas. Now the Idea in National Socialism 
was a living thing. It had set thousands of hearts afire 
and this fire was no more to be quenched. 

“ Shortly before the elections of May 4th, 1924, a 
handful of members of the outlawed Party founded an 
organisation called the Deutschvolkische Freiheits-partei 
(German People’s Freedom Party), in the hope that it 
might attract to itself and reabsorb the scattered masses 
of the National Socialists. This group had the prestige 
of Ludendorff to commend it. But I wished at all costs to 
remain true to Adolf Hitler, so I opposed this and 
organised the Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft instead, 
not with any idea of refounding his movement, but in 
order to have something ready for the Fiihrer to begin 
his own work with again, as soon as ever he should leave 
Landsberg. (Freiheits-partei won thirty-two seats in the 
Reichstag that May, but lost eighteen of them at the 
following election in December. This was in direct 
consequence of splits and strains within the group itself.) 

to the same Division as Hitler. After the War he took to journalism, and 
soon came under the influence of Feder and Drexler and so joined their 
movement. After the ill-fated Putsch he fled to Austria, but later became 
chief of propaganda for the newly founded Party until this work was taken 
over by Dr. Goebbels. Herr Esser has been tried twenty-one times (and 
sentenced fourteen times) for breaches of the peace in connection with 
political campaign work. He was President of the Bavarian Landtag till 
it was dissolved and he is still one of the Vice-Presidents of the Reichstag. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


198 

As you know, Hitler in Landsberg had entirely given up 
any attempt to direct or hold together the members of 
his former Party—hence my effort.” 

When at length he was released, he began his work all 
over afresh. He could only do this in consequence of an 
assurance he had given, after the trial, to pursue the 
object of his Party along legalised lines. Many of his 
firmest friends and adherents were still in Austria, Italy 
and Sweden—whence they had fled in 1923—and could 
not yet safely return. The Italian dispersion especially 
was to prove immensely significant for the Hitler Move¬ 
ment since it brought such personal supporters of the 
Leader in close touch with Signor Mussolini—a man for 
whom Hitler had already conceived immense respect. 

“ Hitler appointed February 27th, 1925,” continued 
Herr Esser, “ for this business of refounding the Party. 
For the first time since that memorable November 9th 
Hitler appeared in the Biirgerbraukeller, and spoke to 
his adherents. He restated the aims of the Movement— 
the liberation of the German people—and made an 
impassioned appeal for unity and loyalty. Amid great 
acclamation he declared he would begin over again, 
however often the powers that were might overthrow 
him, and he would begin again and again, were he only 
to begin with one man ! ” 

Hermann Esser, who had made all the preparations for 
this meeting, allied himself afresh, unconditionally with 
Hitler ; as also did Wilhelm Frick (to-day Reichsminister 
of the Interior) and many old members of the Party. 
“ There had been strains and rifts and strife among us in 
his absence : that he could heal them all at one stroke, 
and weld the warring and embittered elements together 
again, merely shows what a leader he is. 

“ Now began a hard time again for everybody— 
perhaps the hardest of all yet ! We lacked everything. 
We had no Party office, no typewriter, practically no 
money. We were ridiculed, frustrated, boycotted, 
threatened. 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 199 

“ That first address of Hitler’s in the Biirgerbrau was 
to be his last for a long time. A couple of days later the 
‘ foreigner, Hitler,’ was strictly forbidden by the Bavarian 
authorities to make any more public speeches. Similar 
action soon followed by the governments of nearly all 
the other German States.” 

And then, on April 26th, 1925, General von Hindenburg 
was for the first time elected President of the Republic. 
A general amnesty was granted for political offenders, of 
which Hitler’s staunchest aides took advantage to return 
to Germany. Among these was Captain Goering. This 
time also marked the beginning of the close association 
between Dr. Goebbels and the Leader. Hitler was much 
impressed by the capability and ardour of this man 
and despatched him to Berlin, then a hotbed of Com¬ 
munism. 1 He also appointed him to head the Central 
Office of the propaganda activities throughout the 
Reich. 

“ It was about this time,” my informant continued, 
“ that the breach between Hitler and Ludendorff irre- 
parably widened. The latter was making himself con- 
spicuous as an enemy of the Catholic Church and when 
Hitler finally broke with him in August, 1926, he found 
himself labelled a Papist by the Nationalists, while the 
Clerical Centrum Party upbraided him as arch enemy 
to Rome ! 2 

“ Little by little the newly risen Party began to gain 
ground although Hitler still continued to be forbidden 
to speak at meetings. In the summer of 1926, however, 
he was able to address his followers on the occasion of an 
anniversary celebrated in Brunswick. An audience of 
twelve thousand followers served to show what progress 
had been made up to date. 

1 The “ Red Terror ” in Berlin meant that any day, any time, husband 
or father might fail to return home, might be missing. Then he would 
be found somewhere, dead, without sign or explanation of any kind. 

2 The Centrum or Catholic Centre Party in Germany was obnoxious 
to the National Socialists not because it represented Catholicism, but 
because it meddled in politics. 



200 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


“ Through the pressure of public opinion in Bavaria 
this interdict was lifted from Hitler in the March of 1927, 
and once more his voice was welcomed with immense 
acclaim in Munich. The Party there made a great leap 
forwards, but it was immediately suppressed in Berlin by 
the half-Jewish, half-Polish Chief of Police Grzesinski, 
who was to earn such a sinister name for himself later 
through his enmity to the National Socialist Movement. 
It was this man who wished to c drive Hitler out of the 
country with a dog whip.’ Dr. Goebbels, however, 
stuck to his post, all this notwithstanding, and carried 
on with his work in the capital. 

In August, 1927, Hitler reviewed a march past of his 
adherents numbering thirty thousand men, and over one 
hundred thousand heard the speech he made on that 
occasion. They had assembled in Nuremberg from 
every corner of Germany for this purpose, and dispersed 
again filled with fresh ardour to promote the Movement 
and win for it ever more and more support. 

After the elections of May, 1928, twelve representatives 
of the Party appeared in the Reichstag. In August the 
ban on Hitler speaking in Berlin was removed and he 
gave a great address there in the Sportpalast. 

The following year, 1929, saw an enormous augmenta¬ 
tion in the members of the Party. In Berlin it had come 
to open fighting between the Communists, who erected 
barricades in the streets, and the police. At the end of 
the twelve months fully 175,000 people belonged to the 
National Socialists. 

Early in the year 1930 a young National Socialist fell, 
whose death has come to have a special significance for 
the Party and the Movement. The shooting of Horst 
Wessel is one of the landmarks in this story. 

This young man, the son of a clergyman, and who 
wrote a marching song for the Party, which has since 
gone by his name, was a law student. He embodied in 
himself the ideal of manly uprightness and modesty, 
high endeavour, dutifulness and simple living which 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 201 


Hitler desired to impress upon the whole of his following. 
He had drawn upon himself the enmity of the Com¬ 
munists by having converted a large number of them to his 
own political creed. One day young Wessel was at work 
in his room in a lodging house in Berlin when four 
Communists invaded it and shot him. So bitter indeed 
was their feeling against him that at the funeral his coffin 
had to be protected by the police. Even his grave called 
for protection, and young members of his own Troop still 
mount special guard, in honour, over it. 

The next landmark was the opening of the Brown 
House 1 in Munich on January 1st, 1931. Hitherto the 
direction of the Movement had been carried on from a 
retired house in the Schellingstrasse, but these premises 
had long been outgrown. They were by now wholly 
inadequate. Therefore the Party made a purchase in 
the summer of 1930 of the unoccupied Barlow-Palais in 
the Briennerstrasse. This mansion was adapted in record 
time to its new requirements and uses after plans of 
Hitler’s own, by National Socialist volunteer workmen. 
For the first time the Party beheld an outward sign of the 
power and strength to which it had attained in the creation 
of this fine Headquarters, which is now a part and 
parcel of the very self of Munich. The Brown House 
stands for everything dear to the heart and purpose of a 
National Socialist. 

Notwithstanding all this progress, opposition was still 
fierce and obstinate. In the spring of 1931 the wearing 
of the Brown Shirt was proscribed. The “ Brown Shirts ” 
marched, all the same. They got their clothes torn off 
their backs in the streets, so they marched bare to the 
waist. They were flung into prison. Thousands of 
new members took their places. Bolshevism waged open 

1 The Brown House, be it noted, is fine as a building rather than fine 
for splendour and furnishings. The government of the Party has already 
long outgrown its accommodation, and a'dozen other buildings in Munich 
have been leased for the purpose. Two enormous additions have been 
made to the original Brown House, to install departments of administration 
for which at present there is no room. 



202 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


war on the middle classes, and the Government merely 
looked on. During this period three hundred National 
Socialists were brutally murdered, one way or another, 
and over twenty-five thousand sustained serious wounds 
and injuries. 

A crisis was at hand. 

The financial condition of the country was almost as 
bad as it had been ten years ago. Since the elections of 
March, 1930, had resulted in triplicating the number of 
National Socialist deputies to the Reichstag, the President 
required Chancellor Bruning to dismiss the Reichstag and 
call for a fresh election. Bruning had always been a deter¬ 
mined opponent of National Socialism : his Cabinet was 
now dissolved. Although the standing of the Party had 
long been legalised (how could it be otherwise with so 
strong a representation in the Reichstag ?) shortly before 
this election it was forbidden for officials in Prussia to 
give it their adherence and support. 

These elections of September, 1930, were preceded by 
a propaganda campaign such as Germany had not yet 
witnessed. Hitler flooded the land with Speakers, and 
organised meetings to be held high and low, near and far, 
in the most negligible little village as well as in the most 
important places. At least thirty thousand meetings were 
held every day for more than two months. The result 
was the capture of one hundred and seven seats in the 
Reichstag, and the Party rose in order of Party precedence 
from the ninth to the second in Germany. 

“ The National Socialist March on Berlin has started,” 
announced the N.S. papers. Seven years after the so- 
called Putsch in Munich, Hitler had largely obtained his 
objective. Out of a voting population of 43,000,000 
(36,000,000 went to the polls), the Party, extinguished 
a few years before, had obtained 107 mandates from 
6,500,000 voters. 

This was progress. Bufc in the autumn of the same year 
the trial at Leipzig of three Reichswehr officers, who had 
shown interest in the National Socialist Party and were, 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 203 

therefore accused of aiding and participating in an 
‘ outlaw 5 Movement, enabled Hitler to state his legal 
aims more prominently perhaps than he had ever done 
before. It was intolerable that these officers should be 
sentenced for desiring to belong to the second largest yet 
most significant political party in the Reich ! 

The Reich was in a tragic state by the end of 1931. 
Sixteen million people were earning far less than the 
equivalent of an English pound a week. Emergency 
measure after emergency measure was passed without 
any appreciable effect, except that of growing despair, 
on the outlook for the nation. It was only the National 
Socialist Party who hammered away with their demand 
for power, and their confident assertion that they could 
weld and use it to every sort of public betterment. 

No year since the War witnessed a more significant 
series of political happenings than 1932. No fewer than 
twelve elections were held. Thanks to the unity of the 
Party, and to the indomitable energy of its Leader, 
National Socialism won its way ever more and more to 
the front. In the spring Pruning endeavoured to postpone 
the second Presidential election, and sought to come to 
an understanding about it with Hitler. The latter, 
however, was anxious for the election to go forward, 
although there was little hope, at the moment, of his 
own, personal, victory. Through action taken by the 
National Socialist Government of Brunswick, Hitler 
had recently been naturalised in Germany, and was 
therefore now eligible to stand as candidate himself for 
the Presidency of the Reich. 

This step brought a tragic chapter in the history of 
German party bureaucracy to a seemly end. It was 
unheard of that a man born on the very frontier of the 
country, who had served at the Front in the German 
Army all through the War, and who had devoted his 
whole life ever since to the cause of the German people, 
should be denied German citizenship any longer, and 
this in the face of the fact that all sorts of East European 



204 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


riff-raff streaming in over the eastern borders could 
obtain the same privilege, and even entry into all official 
classes, without further ado ! 

Prior to this Presidential election Hitler’s activities 
were such as political life in Germany or elsewhere has 
never before witnessed. To address three or four meetings 
a day was nothing to him. Most of these were held in the 
open air, when he might have an audience of anything 
from one hundred thousand to three hundred thousand 
men. Everything had to be arranged and brought off 
strictly to time if his terrific programme, daily, was to 
be carried out. 

While he was speaking in Dresden, for instance, his 
audience would be already gathering in Leipzig. He 
flew from place to place throughout the length and 
breadth of the land, week after week, day after day, and 
night after night, without rest or intermission, using 
aeroplane or auto as best might meet the case. He had 
to sleep where or how he could. He had his own ’plane 
and pilot, his car and chauffeur, his secretaries and 
organisers, but all turned in the last resort upon his own 
indomitable energy and tireless purpose. 1 

At the pre-election in March, 1932, General Hinden- 
burg carried off 18,600,000 votes, and Hitler, 11,300,000. 
This apparent defeat for the Ftihrer was in reality a great 
success. He had doubled the number of his electors 
since the elections of September, 1930. 

But now, however, there was to be a second election 
and all opposing Parties girded themselves up for the 
final trial of strength. They were fully alive to the 
dangers that threatened them from the ever waxing 
Party—dangers which have indeed showered on their 
heads and extinguished them since January, 1933 - 
Although it was Hitler’s design that Catholics and 
Protestants alike could adhere to his Party, that Catholics 
and Protestants alike could march in the ranks of his 


1 Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s Reich Press Chief, has given an almost be¬ 
wildering account of this hectic period in his book, Campaigning with Hitler. 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 205 

Storm Troops, there was a time when the former were 
denied the Sacraments and even Christian burial for 
so doing. 

Everything possible was done to crush National 
Socialism—not because it threatened the people (the 
people acclaimed it), but because it threatened class 
interest, privilege, corruption, and everything greedy, 
small minded and grasping in German public life, 
everything inclusively stigmatised as 44 bourgeois.” The 
National Socialists found themselves alone in opposition 
to the embattled array of all other political bodies. It 
would require more space to enumerate the fears each 
and several of these entertained in the event of National 
Socialist success. It would require, too, an intimate 
acquaintance with the chaotic state of German internal 
affairs to appraise the task before the one Party in the 
Reich, possessed of a single eye, a definite programme, 
and an unflinching perseverance. 

In spite of the fact that even as late as this the north, 
east and west of Germany were under the sway of the 
Reds, and that in the Catholic south the Bishops were 
all powerful, National Socialism forged doggedly ahead. 
This can only be ascribed to the perfection of its organi¬ 
sation. 

The Government monopolised the wireless. All those 
in power and highly placed felt they had now to fight 
for their very existence. In spite of everything that 
militated against him Hitler polled yet another two 
million votes at this election. It was not enough to 
return him for the Presidency, but it greatly enhanced 
his significance in political life. 

Chancellor Bruning had scarcely counted on this 
advancement of Hitler, and was dismayed by it. He 
resorted to strange measures. On April 13th, 1932, he 
ordered the demobilisation of the S.A. (Sturm 
Abteilung) and the dispersal of the Movement known 
as the Hitler Youth. The homes and property of these 
organisations were distrained upon. 



206 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


But all was in vain. At the elections for the Diet 
(every German State possessed a Landtag), which took 
place on April 24th, 1932, the N.S.D.A.P. proved every¬ 
where the strongest party. At Oldenburg it returned an 
absolute majority. The time was ripe for Briining to 
retire : Hindenburg let him go, and on June 1st 
appointed Herr von Papen to the Chancellorship. 

At first Hitler contented himself with marking time, 
and watching von Papen. His own actions depended 
upon those of the Chancellor. The latter removed the 
ban on the S.A. and ordered a new election. While the 
Communists thereupon gave themselves up to fighting 
in the streets, Hitler made another tour of the country 
by air, which was a veritable triumph. Shortly before 
the elections von Papen had the half-Jewish Chief of 
Berlin Police, Grzesinski, arrested, and also its Jewish 
Vice-President, Weiss. a Red ” ministers were relieved 
of their offices. 

These elections—some of the bloodiest in the whole 
political history of Germany—ended again in a victory for 
Adolf Hitler. His Party carried off two hundred and 
thirty seats in the Reichstag. 

Since National Socialism had now become the largest 
Party in the State, it was only right and proper that the 
government of the country should devolve into their 
hands. President von Hindenburg, however, long 
hesitated to entrust their Leader, Adolf Hitler, with 
absolute power. For two years the direction of affairs 
had been, under Briining, confided to a minority which 
had done its utmost to suppress the larger Party. But 
now the time was ripe and over-ripe for a change. 

On August 13th, 1932, Hitler found himself involved 
in weighty conversations between von Hindenburg and 
von Papen. He was offered the Vice-Chancellorship. 
But to this he returned an answer in the negative. Com¬ 
promise or half-measures never commended themselves 
to Hitler. The day of his refusal has been called Hitler’s 
Black Day, but it was far from being so in reality. He 



SECOND FOUNDING OF THE PARTY 207 

took longer views than his critics. He had no mind to use 
National Socialism to bolster up a tottering system. 

After the world had been relieved of the spectacle 
of the German Parliament opened by the Moscow agent, 
Klara Zetkin, 1 Captain Hermann Goering was elected 
its President. 

Once more, however, despite its big working majority, 
Parliament was dissolved, and again in November fresh 
elections were held. But by this time the public were 
thoroughly weary of elections, and the results were 
disappointing to all Parties. 2 

National Socialism itself lost thirty-four seats. There 
was, however, an overwhelming majority against the 
Chancellor, and no course seemed open to von Papen but 
to retire. He was followed in office by a comparatively 
unknown man, General von Schleicher. However active 
this man may have been in other capacities and behind 
the scenes, he was negligible as Chancellor, and soon 
found himself completely isolated. 

At long length—it would serve little purpose to labour 
this unsatisfactory and confused period for the reader— 
on January 29th, 1933, von Schleicher’s Cabinet was 
dissolved and Adolf Hitler achieved that for which he had 
striven with almost unremitting ardour, and all but 
unshakable faith from the day when he became the 
seventh member of an unheard-of little group of political 
aspirants in one of the poorest restaurants of Munich. 

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. 

1 The Reichstag was to be opened by its oldest member, only then 
was the President to be elected. 

2 Prior to the triumph of National Socialism, as has been already 
noted, there were dozens of recognised political parties in Germany, and 
the foregoing pages will have done something to suggest to the reader how 
violent their tactics were, and how thoroughly life in general was at the 
mercy of political faction, disunion and upheaval. 

Hitler’s great charge against all the Governments which had succeeded 
each other in Germany since the Revolution was first their shameless 
venality, and secondly their hopeless weakness. 



CHAPTER XII 


HITLER SETS HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH 

“ Nothing of importance in 
life is merely given to man. 

Everything must be 
struggled for. Thus the 
uplifting of a nation does 
not come lightly, by chance 
or fate, but must be the 
outcome of effort.”—Adolf 
Hitler. 

F OR fifteen years Hitler had directed his Movement ; 

during the whole length of this period had he, in 
thousands of meetings and assemblies, sought to inculcate 
the masses with his ideas. At length the German people 
had come to look to him for their resuscitation, for their 
salvation from the menace of Bolshevism, and they 
trusted that once in power he could, and would, make 
good his promises. 

When Hitler came to power he did, indeed, proceed 
at once to carry out the purposes and promises of a pro¬ 
gramme conceived so many years before. We have 
seen him working it out, point by point, boiling it down, 
pinning it down under twenty-five “ Headings ” in Anton 
Drexler’s little Wohnzimmer (living-room) while Frau 
Drexler gets the frugal supper. We have seen him 
submitting it point by point to the Munich public in the 
Hofbrausaal, when hundreds of dissentient beer mugs 
were hurled at his head. We have seen him pacing up 
and down his narrow room at Landsberg pouring out 
the whys and wherefores of it all to Rudolf Hess, who 
rattles as hard as he can go on the typewriter to get the 

208 



SETS HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH 209 

teeming content of this energetic brain into some sort of 
literary order. 

And now, after fifteen years of struggle, he saw himself 
at long length on the threshold of achievement. 

Together with Hitler two other National Socialists 
were included in the new Cabinet, Herr Wilhelm Frick 
as Minister of the Interior, and Captain Hermann 
Goering as Minister without Portfolio, and Commissary 
for Air. 

With the coming of this new Government, and the 
setting aside of the old duality as between Prussia and 
the rest of the Reich, was the basis laid for a universal 
German policy, and for the elimination of all elements 
inimical to German life. 

In his first address to the people the Chancellor called 
for a sense of national discipline. He asked for four years 
in which to make good the blunders of the post-War 
administrators, in which to re-erect the State, in which to 
cope with the problem of unemployment ; in which to 
redeem German peasantry from its misery and help¬ 
lessness. 

In the night of February 27th-28th, 1933, the Com¬ 
munists set fire to the Reichstag. A few days previously 
a raid on the catacombs of the Karl Liebknecht House in 
Berlin had brought to light a great quantity of material 
which proved beyond cavil that the forces of Bolshevism 
were girding themselves for a mass offensive in Germany. 
The Chancellor replied by draconian measures to ensure 
the safety of the State. 

On the evening before the great elections of March, 
on the “ Day of the Awakened Nation, 51 the Chancellor 
addressed the entire people by means of the radio. The 
result of his speech was to renew in every heart in Germany 
the will to succeed, the passion for freedom, the sense of 
nationality. Everywhere bells were pealed, bonfires were 
ignited on the hills, flags bedecked the streets in every 
town and village—as Horst Wessel, indeed, had predicted 
in his song ! 



210 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


The National Socialists brought off a complete and 
overwhelming victory on March 5th with a return of 
1 7,300,000 votes, and a win of two hundred and eighty- 
eight seats in the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler, who headed 
the voting list, entered the Parliament House, himself, 
for the first time. The Government could count on a 
majority of 52 per cent. These results at the poll inducted 
the “ National Socialist Revolution ”—perhaps the most 
bloodless Revolution known in history. The National 
Socialists, everywhere, “ took over.” 

In Munich the Minister President Held boasted that 
were Hitler to send a Reichs Commissary thither, he 
would have him arrested on the frontier. When, how¬ 
ever, on March 9th, the Reichs Commissary, in the 
person of General Ritter von Epp, duly appeared, the 
Minister President immediately climbed down and 
withdrew from the scene of action. 

Herr Esser, who took part in these proceedings, told 
me how minutely and exactly all had been arranged 
beforehand. Everything went by clockwork, according 
to plan, without the least confusion or miscarriage. 
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “ we had been prepared 
for a good deal more opposition, Held had been so full 
of threats and fulminations.” 

The opening of the Reichstag on March 21st was an 
act symbolising the unity of the entire German people. 
Not less historically significant was the hand-clasp 
exchanged between the aged and revered General Field 
Marshal von Hindenburg and the new young Chancellor, 
Adolf Hitler. The dignity of immemorial tradition 
extended a welcome to the younger generation straining 
towards a new and happier future. . . . 

At the first session of the new Reichstag an “ Enabling 
Bill ” was passed whereby Hitler was made absolute 
Dictator for a period of four years. The purpose of this 
was to free him from the shackles and delays of parlia¬ 
mentary procedure in bringing his programme into 
immediate action. We shall see in a subsequent chapter 



SETS HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH 211 


how, and to what first ends, he availed himself of this 
measure. 

Another important step towards the general weaving 
together of all the aspects of government was the appoint¬ 
ment everywhere of new Reich statthal ter, i.e. of Provincial 
Premiers. These, Hitler suggested, should be nominated 
by the President. The Chancellor himself is Reichstatt- 
halter for Prussia in order personally to bind that country 
and the whole Reich together. The duties of these 
Provincial Premiers, as they may be called, are numerous 
and important. 

In April came the law which would recapture for 
those of German birth and extraction the majority 
of representation in the learned professions and in official 
life. This law, bearing heavily as it did upon the Je\&, 
makes exception in their case for all those who had fought 
for Germany in the War, and for those whose fathers and 
sons had so fallen. 

Then came ordinances to regulate school matters. 
In no direction more than in this is the new spirit and 
bent of National Socialism to be discerned. The High 
Schools were overcrowded. Their overflow to the 
Universities had to be facilitated. At the same time 
Hitler resolved to check the superfluity of girls seeking 
facilities for the higher education. 

An entire book could be written of Hitler’s theory 
of education ; on his estimate of the place and function 
of woman in the State ; and on the great youth movement 
resultant from both, known in Germany as Hitler Jugend. 
He says the most important thing for girls is the right 
training of the body, next that of character, and third 
that of the intellect. A striking proof of the self-sacrificing 
enthusiasm and unanimity with which such data are 
accepted by the female intelligentzia in Germany to-day 
has, for instance, been afforded by the willingness of the 
University women of Heidelberg largely to forgo, at 
Hitler’s behest, and in favour of men, the learned 
professional careers to which they had looked forward. 



212 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


To those who imagine that Hitler has set back the 
clock five hundred years for German womanhood there 
is this to be answered : If German girls do not retire 
from competitive life with men, there will be neither 
work nor food for either in another few decades. A 
country with a dense and growing population and no 
colonies, must narrowly restrict its labour market, in the 
learned professions as well as in the trades. Again, there 
is no parallel to be drawn between the type of woman and 
the numbers of women frequenting the Universities in 
England and America to those in Germany. The German 
Universities—and their name is legion—were swarming 
with women. Some went thither for the purposes of 
serious study. For those who do not go thither for the 
purposes of serious study, it is obvious enough that the 
quicker they are driven home again the better. 

In May the German Labour Front took the place 
of the old system of Trade Unions. It would require 
many pages to give an adequate idea of this reorganisation 
in Germany of the relationships between employer and 
employe. The idea underlying it was typical of the 
“ Socialism ” in Hitler’s programme. ’ 

By the time summer had come round, most of the 
previously existing separate (and highly antagonistic) 
political parties in the State had ceased to exist. The 
Social Democrats were suppressed, and for the most 
part the rest extinguished themselves. A law was passed 
forbidding the formation of fresh parties. The public 
were relieved at last to be free of the veritable pest of 
so many parties and groups, and the Gordian knot of 
German disunity was cut at one blow. 

Then came the organisation of the air, both for pur¬ 
poses of ordinary communication and for defence. 
This Ministry was confided to General Goering. 

The lot of the ordinary man in the street, the every¬ 
day person, claimed its share of the Chancellor’s attention. 
A law was passed, which, among other things, aimed at 
making life easier for the weak and unfit, for those 



SETS HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH 213 

impoverished by the War, for War widows and 
orphans. 

Hitler looks to early and healthy marriage, State aid 
for struggling young families, to assist in stamping out 
many of those social abominations which St. Paul says 
should not even be named among Christians, but which 
have been more hideously rife in the world since the 
Great War than at any previous period. 

Severe measures were enacted to put down immorality, 
and further, a law was framed with the object of pre¬ 
venting unfit children coming into the world. 

Hitler’s much discussed Law for the Prevention of 
Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, passed on July 14th, 
1933, is based upon the German policy of 1 “ regenera¬ 
tion,” which aims at promoting the propagation of 
valuable, innately healthy children, while preventing an 
offspring of hereditarily diseased persons in so far as those 
descendants are likely to be of inferior quality. Con¬ 
sidering the fact that the average ratio of children of 
healthy families to diseased families is from 1 to 2 to 5 
to 7, the necessity of such a policy seems clear. 

The following statements, taken from the ^entralblatt 
fur Reichsversicherung und Reichsversorgung (Central Gazette 
for Federal Insurance and Pensions) , show to what extent 
the German people is affected by hereditarily diseased 
persons, in the sense of the law, their number being 
estimated at 400,000 (one-half of them innately feeble¬ 
minded). On the average, each diseased person costs 
the community which sends him to an institution, RM. 
1,482 per annum. Since insane persons live in institutions 
7J years on the average, they require an expenditure 
of RM. 11,600. It is a conservative calculation that 
the German communities have to spend more than 
170 millions of marks a year on their insane alone. 

“ This does not include the expenditures for diseased 
children a part of whom are attending auxiliary schools. 

1 These particulars are taken from an article published by the Deutscher 
Akademischer Austauschdienst, in News in Brief, Vol. 2, No. i, page 5. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


214 

Every pupil of an auxiliary school is costing the Govern¬ 
ment RM . 573 per annum , compared to a maximum of 230 
for a healthy pupil. For the whole of the Reich the expendi¬ 
tures for auxiliary schools amount to about 40 millions of 
RM. per annum. Direct expenditures on hereditarily 
diseased persons in the Reich, states and communities, 
amount to at least 350 million RM. a year in all. We 
have to add to that sum all of the expenditures made by 
charitable organisations and institutions, by churches 
and by private persons ; also the costs of execution 
which amount to about 100 million RM. a year. Some 
institutions, where insane criminals are kept, show 
quotas of RM. 20 a day for every inmate. The significance 
of such figures will seem the more evident if we realise 
that many healthy, industrious families cannot afford 
a quarter of that sum as a daily expenditure for their 
entire household.” 

One can gather from all this how far-seeing the law is 
which provides for the sterilisation of the hereditarily 
defective when so far as medical science can predict, 
only further severe bodily or mental abnormality is to 
be anticipated. The absence of the birth of those unfitted 
for life relieves those upon whom their subsistence would 
depend from indescribable suffering and unremitting 
sacrifice. 

In spite of all that has been written and said to the 
contrary the action of the Chancellor in unifying the 
Protestant sects of Germany has had no anti-Christian 
significance. “ The rock bed foundation of the German 
Evangelical Church,” says the Instrument which achieves 
this purpose, 4 4 is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as witnessed 
for us in the Sacred Scriptures, and as enlightened 
afresh by the Confession of the Reformation.” 

The Chancellor sought by a Concordat with Rome 
to define the relationships and rights of the Catholic 
Church and the State respectively, so as to secure smooth 
working in both spheres. 

The Party Day in Nuremberg, 1933, witnessed such 



SETS HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH 215 

a demonstration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler as had never 
yet been seen. For the first time the Party Day had 
become a State function and had developed into an 
assembly of the nation. 

Hitler can never lay stress enough on the importance 
of the agricultural classes, of the plough-driving peasant. 
Upon them, and upon him, is built the superstructure 
of the State. Agriculture is the source of the country’s 
strength. 

All the great cities would soon be nothing but arid 
deserts of bricks and mortar where they not to receive, 
year after year, an influx of fresh healthy life from the 
country. On the other hand, this migration to the 
towns, if carried too far, is a curse in itself against which 
the National Socialist theory of the State sedulously 
sets its face. Hitler envisages for the future not a 
gathering of the population into endless great cities, 
but their re-establishment, right down to the roots, 
in their native soil. National Socialism has already 
achieved a great deal, and with much success, in this 
direction. 

The law touching hereditary farmland seeks to relieve 
the small farmer of many of the uncertainties and troubles 
which have hitherto weighed him down. His land is to 
be inalienable and no longer the easy prey of the financial 
speculator. 

On Saturday, October 14th, 1933, Hitler withdrew 
his country from the League of Nations. There should 
have been no occasion in this for the universal amaze¬ 
ment it has caused. Adolf Hitler had announced his 
intention of taking this step some months before. Not 
before Germany has parity of rights does it concern her 
at all to waste time over disarmament conferences which 
forever come to nothing. 

On the same day President von Hindenburg dissolved 
the Reichstag, since, in consequence of the dissolution 
of all parties except the National Socialists, this now 
had become a mere Rump. 



2 l6 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


The new electors fully confirmed all former National 
Socialist gains, and went far beyond. The result of these, 
held in November, was a victory for Adolf Hitler which 
even his most ardent adherents had hardly dared hope. 
From a voting population of 43 millions, 40 \ millions 
supported the National Socialist regime. Six hundred 
and sixty-one Members returned to the Reichstag. It 
meant that 95 per cent of the German people had firmly 
taken their stand behind Hitler. 

This result was their thanks to him for all that he had 
hitherto done for them. 

There would be little purpose in giving a description 
of all the measures since undertaken by Hitler for the 
reconstruction of Germany, these being generally known. 
It would moreover require at least a volume for the 
purpose, even if the most important only were taken into 
consideration. 

The foregoing brief resume has concerned itself with 
little but the political aspect of things. In the following 
chapter some attempt will be made to show what all 
this meant translated into everyday terms, brought to 
bear on the everyday life of the German citizen. 



CHAPTER XIII 


HITLER, THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 

I N the autumn of his first year as Chancellor Adolf 
Hitler issued what was at once an order and an 
announcement, “ This winter no one must starve or 
freeze in Germany.” 

Lots of people scarcely took the words for sober earnest, 
they saw no possibility of them being made good. Indeed 
how should this state of things be realised ; the burdens 
and deprivations of the late War still weighed heavily 
on all the world ; never had it been possible hitherto 
that people should neither starve nor freeze to death 
in winter ! 

One might safely say that such an ideal never would 
have been practicable, had not a man directed affairs 
in Germany who knew how to bring into the sphere of 
practical politics that simple Christian charity one to 
another which the churches have been preaching through¬ 
out the ages. 

Hitler’s motto had long been “ Love your neighbour 
more than yourself. Be ready, always, for the least of 
your own, to sacrifice your belongings and your life.” 
It is known, of course, that Hitler accepts no income 
from his Chancellorship, but directs that this money 
should go towards the relief of unemployment. It may 
not equally well be known that during the winter 1933-34, 
when the sales of his book had reached the peak, the 
whole of this increment was also ear-marked for the poor. 

The Germans have a special gift for organisation. 
Hence it seemed eminently practical to organise the 
4 4 Winter Relief Work ” (Winterhilfswerk) by means 


217 



2 l8 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


of the Party machine. It was extraordinary to see how 
everybody took advantage of this to bring his own 
personal sacrifice and exertions into line with the 
Ftihrer’s design and behest. No fewer than one and a 
half million people of position and influence threw 
themselves whole-heartedly into this great effort, to 
say nothing of the rank and file who also did their utmost 
and of those who willingly gave their mite. 

The scope of this, the biggest philanthropic effort ever 
made at one time by one people, was so all-embracing 
that, enlisting as it did the co-operation of great and 
small alike, it would require three times as much space 
at our command merely to outline it. Some idea of it, 
however, we must endeavour to convey for several 
reasons, first, to show—if it really should need showing- 
how and why it is that Hitler holds the trust and love of 
the German people as a whole ; and, second, to claim 
for him that he lost no time at all after coming to power, 
in proceeding to make good the promises of his Party 
programme. 

(Since the bulk of this book is, after all, to be limited, 
it may be that but little space will remain for even the 
slightest sketch of what more—in a dozen directions— 
Adolf Hitler has already done under this second heading. 
Every one of the social enterprises he has undertaken for 
the amelioration of living conditions and lack-of-outlook 
in Germany would require a chapter in itself.) 

In no smallest village in Germany, nay, in no poorest 
cot is something not done, something not spared, to aid 
this nation-wide work. During the first five years of the 
National Socialist regime approximately 2,310,000,000 
marks were devoted to it in this way. Not, by any means, 
that the Winterhilfsarbeit (Winter-aid-work) could 
merely be appraised in terms of money. Nor could it be 
measured in terms of material comfort. Its value for 
the union and solidarity of the reawakened German 
spirit was above all these. 

Given, then, this fount of money, let us very briefly 



THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 219 

enumerate the numerous channels into which its flow 
was directed. 

Adolf Hitler called upon everyone who had a job of 
any sort, big or small, to set aside weekly or monthly 
some small saving for the poor. It was a request, not an 
order, for Hitler knew well enough that very many 
people were in no position to spare a single pfennig. 
All who possibly can, come forward with their “ bit ” 
for the “ Battle with Hunger and Cold.” The directors 
of the whole enterprise set it an excellent example, and 
the rank and file willingly prove their Socialism in 
response. 

Every Sunday during the winter hundreds and 
thousands of collectors are to be seen selling tags in the 
street to the same end. 

Through this source alone enormous sums are gathered 
in, and very often other results come from these tag days. 
Case after case occurs of their leading to employment 
for the unemployed. For instance, in the Harz Moun¬ 
tains in Thuringia there are little towns whose inhabitants 
live by glass blowing. In 1933 unemployment was rife 
among them. So the directors of the Winter-Aid thought 
it a good thing to have tags made of glass, and gave 
this welcome order throughout the district. It resulted 
in months of work for three thousand poor glass workers 
in Thuringia. 

The whole “ brain wave 55 was so much appreciated 
by the public that when these glass tags appeared upon 
the streets there was a rush for them. In three days 
over twenty-five million were sold out ! Could any 
better proof be adduced than this of how truly National 
Socialism concerns itself with the needs of even the 
smallest of the German workers ? 

Dr. Goebbels, one of the most genial and versatile 
of the men round Hitler, did not fail to bring his bright 
wits to bear upon the problems of the Winter-Aid. He 
it was who conceived the idea of the “ Eintopfgericht 5 5 
—the One-Pot-Dinner. Every German, especially every- 



220 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


one blessed with a decent share of this world’s goods, is 
invited throughout the winter on the first Sunday of 
every month to restrict his main meal to extremely modest 
(financial) limits, to not more than about 6d., but to 
give over to a collector who would call for it next day the 
money which would otherwise have been laid out to 
furnish the table in the ordinary way. It is as if an 
Englishman saved what he would have spent on his 
44 cut from-the-joint and two vegs.” (to say nothing of 
sweets and coffee), and gave it away and contented 
himself with—what shall we say ?—one good old plate of 
hash or soup instead, and nothing but that soup. 

All the restaurants and hotels are advised to offer on 
their menus for that first Sunday nothing but this one- 
dish-dinner, but to charge for it according to usual table 
d'hote or a la carte meals. The difference, of course, is 
to be handed over for the Winter-Aid. The success of 
this original idea is enormous. Like one man the whole 
people takes it up. 

On every such Sunday over five million marks come to 
hand this way. Again, in this instance the good of it is not 
confined to mere material things. The poor see the 
Better-off willingly depriving themselves to help them, 
and the impression it makes is of the best for the con¬ 
ception of 44 national-socialism.” Dr. Goebbels hit on 
the happy slogan : 44 Don’t spend : deny yourself.” This 
goes even further. When a rich man gets up from a well- 
spread table, and gives something to the poor, it is good, 
but it is not a sacrifice. The sacrifice comes in when a 
man contents himself with a poor meal instead of a better 
one, for the sake of giving something away to the man 
who never feeds well. 

Then again—here is a splendid notion ! Very often 
during the winter there is to be heard a cheerful bugling 
in the streets, and there is to be seen a truckload of soldiers 
slowly tooling by, blowing for all they were worth. What 
is this ? Why—rummage collecting for the needy. 
Whenever a hand waves, or a door opens, or someone 



THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 221 


beckons from window or corner, the truck hastens up, 
a couple of men leap down and run to obey the summons. 

Most people have something they can do without for 
the Winter-Aid. Here it is an old sofa—quickly handled 
and bestowed,—here a sewing maching—swung up atop, 
—here chairs needing mending, here a bundle of clothes, 
here oddments for repairs of all sorts, here crockery, here 
spare pots or pans—up and down the streets goes the truck, 
fanfaronading everywhere, and loading up cheerfully 
and dexterously like a furniture van ! 

Workrooms were opened for necessitous girls and 
women, where these second-hand things can be made 
Over, in return for groceries and shoes. 

The happiest Christmas Germany had celebrated for 
many a long year was the first Christmas of Hitler’s 
Chancellorship. It was the first Christmas after these 
so-called heathen Nazis had come to power. Up to this 
time Christmas in Germany had largely been a purely 
family affair. The tens of thousands of those who had no 
family, no relatives, no home, perhaps, merely looked on 
from afar. 

Such a thing as this had to be put a stop to in the 
National Socialist State. On every Christmas Eve since 
1933 the Party sets up, at its own expense, great Christmas 
trees before many of the church doors, and in many 
of the open spaces in the cities. These are all aglitter 
with frost, and burning candles. Tables are spread 
beneath them. And bands play the immemorial hymns 
and carols of the season. Speeches are made calling 
upon those who are keeping up the feast at home, to 
remember their poorest brethren without, and to show 
them the good comradeship and brotherliness which is 
the very essence of National Socialism. This exhortation 
is closing everywhere with the carol “ Stille Nacht, 
Heilige Nacht.” 

Then comes the crush—the rush—the stampede to 
the tables where hundreds of good folk force their way 
to lay their gifts and offerings and contributions and 



222 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


goodies for the poor. Mountains of these things pile up 
until there isn’t an inch of room left to bestow a single 
gift more. Even the ground under the table and all 
round is cluttered with presents. When the donors have 
really done, and are ready to go back home again, these 
things are distributed to the lonely and the hungry and 
the friendless who gladly come forward to receive them. 
In ways like this National Socialism sought to prove itself 
not merely a political creed but a practical befriending 
of the people. 

The Winter-Aid is signally supported by peasants, 
tradespeople and all sorts of industries, whose carts and 
waggons are daily to be seen in long rows at the doors 
of the offices of the Organisation, unloading goods and 
comestibles for the poor. No end of vouchers are issued 
by means of which the poor can obtain the necessaries 
of existence without having to expend money. So far as 
statistics can give any idea of what this amounts to— 
and statistics take no account of the Christmas presents 
—the following figures tell their own tale : 

During the first five years of National Socialism the 
Winter Relief Work expended : 


Coals, about 
Potatoes . 
Vegetables 
Flour 
Bread 

Tinned Goods 

Shoes 

Cloth 

Garments . 
Wood 
Vouchers . 


11,465,000 tons 
64,000,000 cwt. 
1,000,000 cwt. 
5,000,000 cwt. 
900,000 cwt. 
850,000 cwt. 
9,410,000 pairs 
14,586,000 metres 
2,666,000 
9,700,000 cwt. 
163,065,000 marks 


The foodstuffs are not always distributed uncooked, 
but prepared in common kitchens, so that for the equiva¬ 
lent of an English twopence a hungry man can come by 
a real good meal. In Munich 1 alone daily portions are 

1 Population c . 750,000, 







THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 223 

served from fifteen great communal kitchens to no less 
than three thousand poor people. Over eight millions 
of casual labourers, widows, orphans and unemployed 
are supported through these efforts of the people as a 
whole. 

It is a tough struggle to do it. But it was the wish of 
the Ftihrer that this great work should be put in hand, 
that no one in Germany should starve or freeze, and 
everyone rejoices to help in its fulfilment. While every¬ 
where else in Europe the melancholy spectacle is only 
too often to be witnessed of hunger marchers parading 
the streets, of the workless and the despairing losing all 
patience and breaking out into strife and bitter class 
hatred, in Germany at least Adolf Hitler has united 
everyone in an unparalleled gesture of fraternal charity. 




MOTHER AND CHILD 

The winter 1933-34 passed. But the gigantic 
machinery of its Aid work remained, and Hitler, who 
could know no rest until he had given every possible 
demonstration of what National Socialism meant trans¬ 
lated into terms of every-day life—Hitler looked round 
for the next immediate use to which it could be put. 

He was already grappling with the problem of unem¬ 
ployment, and now he turned from the consideration 
of the father of the family, to that of the mother. This 
matter of maternity and infant welfare had long been 
comprised in the Party programme under the heading : 
“It is the duty of the State to ensure the health of the 
people through due care bestowed upon mothers and 
children.” 

So work was immediately set on foot to relieve the 
terrible burdens weighing so heavily upon the poorer 
families of the land, and especially upon the toiling 
housewives. The War and its long subsequent list of 
privations and bitter hardships had told on this most 



224 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


helpless and defenceless portion of the community as 
heavily as on every other. This new movement in aid 
of womankind was at once a recognition of the bravery 
and suffering of the women of the terrible years gone 
by, and a beacon of hope for the nameless regiment of 
brave and struggling women of the present time. 

First of all the “ Mother-and-Child ” Movement 
undertakes to unearth hidden and secret misery (in 
order to relieve it), to explore special areas of distress, 
and to do away with red tape and mistaken economies. 
The whole thing is to turn upon the personal and indi¬ 
vidual touch. First the mother of the family is to be 
supported and helped and then every one of those 
dependent upon her. The Mother-and-Child work 
sets itself very few limits. 

Needless to say, here again the scope of the enterprise 
is so wide only the briefest description of it can be given. 

The greatest necessity—that of nourishment—calls 
for the first attention. Better food is to be provided, and 
sufficient milk for the children. Then comes the question 
of clothing and adequate laundry facilities. Women 
with big families swarming round them all day are to 
receive daily outside help. 

The work of the “ Arbeitsplatzhilfe ”—roughly trans¬ 
lated “ The Job Finding Agency”—concerns itself 
largely with placing out the elder children of these 
numerous broods in suitable posts as soon as they are fit 
to earn, and help themselves. The hitherto earning 
mothers of these families are to be enabled at once to 
leave factory or business and return home where their 
duty and their most important work obviously lies. The 
man it is who must be enabled to go out and work and 
keep the home. 

Through the “ Wohnungshilfe ” (Dwelling-house Aid), 
a mighty attempt has been made to sweep away the 
slums and miserable areas in great cities. Either such 
dwellings as already exist have been improved and 
repaired, or entirely pulled down and rebuilt. Property 



THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 225 

owners who allow their houses to fall into bad condition, 
are called to account for it. The unsocial attitude of 
those who decline to let where there are children is 
sharply corrected. 

The Mother-and-Child Aid looks to it that poor 
families should have at least what furniture is barely 
necessary, especially beds. A special activity has been 
set on foot all through Germany whose slogan is “To 
each child his own bed.” And these beds are collected 
from charitable donors in the same way as similar col¬ 
lections are made from house to house in the winter by 
the truckloads of trumpet-blowing soldiers. 

Another branch of this work is to provide at least four 
weeks’ country holiday or convalescence for mothers who 
stand in special need of rest and recuperation. The 
children are meantime to be cared for in kindergarten. 
For that short space, at least, the mother is to be wholly 
free. The home during the interval, is to be kept going 
by means of the “ Frauenarbeitsdienst ”—the organisa¬ 
tion which provides women’s work of this kind for just 
these purposes, so that the husband and father can go on 
having his meals as usual, without universal domestic 
upset, just because the main prop and stay of it all— 
the wife and mother—has had to go away. 

During the first five years of the Hitler regime nearly 
three hundred thousand women were enabled to take a 
country holiday. Within the same time over three 
million children were also sent to the country. 

Then there are schools for mothers ; many of these 
are run by doctors who make it their business to impart 
all sorts of essential information about food and health 
in general to these poor women. They can always resort 
to medical advice without fear or hesitation, since nothing 
is more important to a nation than its mothers, its 
children and its health. 

All these measures, these undertakings, these departures 
and . these immediate practicalities spring from the text 
laid down in Mein Kampj\ the text is ruthlessly worked 



226 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


out in the life story of the Fiihrer himself, tc Social work 
must be tackled from below, not from above.” 


UNEMPLOYMENT 

“ We hold it to be the 
prime duty of the State to 
see that the citizen can 
secure means of livelihood.” 

Here, once more, we have one of the most important 
statements of Party undertakings. Hitler has held it of 
primary importance to combat unemployment by every 
permissible means devisable by ingenuity and ardent 
purpose. 

This nation-wide struggle postulated immense govern¬ 
mental preparations. It could not be tackled piecemeal 
and by temporary measures. The whole reconstruction 
was to be built up after Hitler’s own scheme and recom¬ 
mendations, schemes which embraced every sphere of 
industry, of private and public life. Not a struggle 
merely, but indeed a mighty campaign against unemploy¬ 
ment was launched in Germany. Within few years 
the victory was obtained over decades-long misery and 
ever-recurring industrial crises. Every man in the 
country had to bear his part in this gigantic enterprise. 
The victory meant nothing less than a stable recovery of 
industry. A strong State is the guarantor of steady 
business. Every possible means had been co-ordinated 
to this end. 

The State provided the sinews of war for this struggle, 
but the German people themselves have also subscribed 
many millions of marks for the promotion of national 
industry. In 1933 the Government set aside 4.3 milliards, 1 
in 1934 about 5 milliards to finance schemes of work for 
the b unemployed. 

Vast plans were put in hand for the making of canals, 

1 4,300,000,000 R.M. 


THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 227 

for the building of power plants. Nearly all the greater 
rivers of Germany were harnessed to some productive 
purpose. By the expenditure of one hundred million 
marks, one million workmen could be kept employed for 
an entire month. The work on the Weser, and on the 
Dortmund-Ems Canal kept twenty thousand men in 
work for years. Another gigantic canal, begun in 1933, 
provided work for 1,510,000 days. In the same district 
between Hanover and Magdeburg one hundred and 
ten square miles are being brought into cultivation 
which have hitherto been mere waste or swamp. 

In order to secure more land for husbandry in 
Schleswig-Holstein, two great dams are being con¬ 
structed across the Eider River. Thousands are thereby 
supporting themselves, and a plain of 225 square miles 
will be reclaimed. The enterprise can well be compared 
with that of Signor Mussolini on the Pontine Marshes. 

The German Government offered to meet 40 per cent 
of the cost to everyone who built a house or who proposed 
to carry out reparations and improvements. The result 
of this step is scarcely to be believed. The building 
trade, hitherto at a very low ebb, looked up and went 
ahead surprisingly. And consequently so have all the 
allied industries. Factories are at work day and night. 
Since the spring of 1934 not a single skilled man in the 
building trade was out of work. This flourishing state 
of affairs repercussed on the machine industry and gave 
work to again another ten thousand men. 

Hitler, himself an ardent motor mechanic, has found 
the way for a vast revival in the motor-car industry by 
entirely abolishing the tax. The number of cars on the 
road doubled in 1933, and is growing continually. 

The most important attack on unemployment, how¬ 
ever, was delivered when the building of immense new 
arterial roads was planned on the direct initiative of the 
Fuhrer. This constitutes the biggest thing ever done yet 
in this direction. From four to five thousand miles of 
auto-roads arc projected to be built in six directions 



228 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


right across the country. Two will run from north to 
south, one from Kiel via Hamburg, Bremen, the Schwarz- 
wald to Basle, the other from East Prussia via Berlin 
and Munich to Vienna. Three of these great roads 
will run from east to west, one from Frankfurt-Oder, 
and the other from Breslau to the Rhineland, and one 
from Saarbriicken via Salzburg to Vienna. This last 
one is to be called the Nibelungen Road. The sixth of the 
whole series will run from Hamburg to Breslau. All 
these roads are being built on the most modern lines. 

They are practically all on one grade and in no way 
interrupted by crossings. Other roads are carried over 
by bridges. The entire plan requires many years to 
carry out. The Government has earmarked over two 
milliards of marks a year towards it. Whole armies 
of men find employment on it. The project is a proud 
one, for it not only resembles the great engineering feats 
of the Romans, but promises to change the face of the 
entire country for coming generations. 

* • • • • 


WORK CAMPS 

The idea of the Work Camp (which was originally 
envisaged on volunteer lines, students alone being 
obliged to attend) also proposed fruitful means of 
combating unemployment. Over one thousand camps, 
mostly situated in the country, keep going over two 
hundred thousand young people at the age of eighteen. 
Most of them put in no more than half a year of work- 
service, and are then free to take employment elsewhere. 
They go forth, furnished with certificates, to places 
awaiting them. Plans have been constructed whereby 
such an army of workers can be employed for twenty 
years. The produce so raised will value two milliards 
of marks a year, and many thousands of new peasant 
homesteads will be created. 

Naturally the work done in these camps is of a sup- 



THE WORKLESS AND THE NEEDY 229 

plementary order and is not allowed to compete in the 
open market with work turned out under ordinary 
conditions outside. Nor is such work undertaken which 
could as well be performed by private enterprise. It is 
the aim and object of these camps to promote facilities 
for other people, i.e. by the reclamation or improvement 
of waste land upon which settlements can be founded. 
The making of new roads, of course, opened up new 
ground for such a purpose. The settlement building 
itself is never undertaken by camp workers. The latter 
confine themselves to forestry, projects of land reclamation 
from the sea, canals, irrigation and particularly all 
undertakings which have for their aim the prevention 
of catastrophic happenings, forest fires, burst dykes, 
floods and so forth. 

All this has proved of great practical utility. The 
young people in the Work Camps are well trained in 
the use of their various tools and implements, spades, 
pikes, shovels, etc., and can be quickly mustered and 
detailed for a job. Once on the occasion of a huge land¬ 
slide on the Saale, 1 a serious disaster was only averted 
by the immediate mobilisation of young navvies from the 
nearest Work Camp, who immediately set to work to 
set things to rights. Many a village has been saved from 
extinction by fire by the exertions of such organised 
workers, and immense consequent misery avoided. 

The campers themselves are willing and devoted 
enough. Each man knows that his work benefits the 
community at large, and that he is therefore carrying out 
the fundamental principles of National Socialism. Hitler’s 
worthy pronouncement, “ There is only one nobility, 
the nobility of work,” sustains these labourers through 
the heat and the toil of the longest day. 

Life in a Labour Camp is not in the least modelled 
on the military plan. The workers rise at five in summer, 
and at six in winter. Half an hour’s exercise or sport 
precedes tubbing and breakfast. Then comes parade 

1 A river in Central Germany. 



GERMANY'S HITLER 


230 

and the hoisting of the camp flag for the day. This 
resembles the Swastika Flag only instead of the hooked 
cross in the white circle it displays a spade and a couple 
of ears of wheat. The whole is symbolic and recalls 
Frederick the Great’s fine saying : “ He who toils to 
make two ears of wheat grow where there was only one 
before, does more for his country than a general who wins 
a redoubtable victory.” 

After this parade the workers betake themselves to 
their various employments ; the volunteers down tools 
at the end of a seven-hours’ spell. Then comes a wash, 
and the midday meal eaten, naturally, in common. The 
food is good and everyone can have as much as he 
requires. An hour and a half’s “ knock-off” ensues. 
The afternoon is taken up by a couple of hours of sport, 
and an hour’s instruction in civics. The evening is 
passed in singing songs, and in reading aloud, etc. etc. 
Two or three evenings a week each man can call his 
own up to ten o’clock. Tattoo is at ten : everyone must 
then be in quarters. 

The Work Camp brings all classes together. The 
student is set just the same jobs as any one else. The 
hope is that thirty years hence there will be no more 
intellectuals or officials in Germany who have not passed 
through the school of manual work side by side with the 
everyday workman. 



CHAPTER XIV 


WHAT THE “ SOCIALISM ” REALLY MEANS 

I T is scarcely necessary to enlarge, here, upon the 
“ Nationalism 55 in Adolf Hitler’s political creed. 
Enough has already been written about it. It has 
occupied so much space in the contemporary Press and 
been discussed in so many books it has come to be 
regarded with a certain degree of Chauvinism. I pro¬ 
pose, therefore, to confine myself, in the conclusion of 
this work, to a few observations under the second heading 
of our double-barrelled title. It is so completely true 
that he who studies contemporary Germany with a view 
to forecasting the future of the country, must study it 
from inside and not from the outsider’s point of view . 1 
From outside one mainly perceives the nationalism. 
From the inside the drive and force of the socialism is 
most apparent. 

German Socialism—Adolf Hitler’s Socialism—is a 
totally different thing from what is generally understood 
by this term, from the Socialism derived from Marxian 
and Communistic theory. The first essential difference 
between the two consists in this, that the former is strictly 
national in aim, scope and limit ; the latter is inter¬ 
national, without boundaries of race or land. The second 
vital distinction is that the first has been set up by the 
wish of the people concerned, the second is imposed 

1 Germany’s political development has been along lines totally different 
from those in England, and has led to a type of political public opinion 
very different from that of the average Englishman. The latter make a 
great mistake to judge of affairs in another country as if they had happened 
in their own. This is the universal mistake of the onlooker and critic : 
perhaps it accounts for two-thirds of the international misunderstanding 
in Europe to-day. 


231 



232 


GERMANY’S HITLER 


upon nations by the will of those who organise and 
propagate it. A third contrast can be drawn inasmuch 
as German Socialism tends to draw all sections of the 
nation closely together, international socialism initiates 
class war. German Socialism is directed by the country’s 
nationals ; international Socialism is an instrument of 
the Jews . 1 In the former it is the personality of the 
Leader which tells ; in the latter we have nothing but 
the inertia of the mass which is exploited by its organisers. 

By the above signs is German Socialism to be 
recognised and distinguished. When it has completely 
assimilated Germany to itself, it will extend and become 
the groundwork for the future development of other 
countries. Marxism and Communism are finished in 
Germany. They have played their part and their role is 
over. Long enough have they made their influence felt 
in every sphere of German life, intellectual, political and 
economic, to the suppression of the truer socialism. 
Socialism is not a thing to be apprehended through 
dreary theory only, but to be tested and proved in action. 
We have written enough, elsewhere, very fully to show 
that the present German Government is inspired in its 
legislation by the spirit of active philanthropy which 
it calls Socialism. This legislation incorporates the very 
essence of German Socialism. 

As Dr. Goebbels writes : “ Socialism, as we under¬ 
stand it, does not reduce men to a dead level, but ranges 
them in order according to their individual capacity and 
leading. If I were to try and put our aims and objects 
in this direction in a nutshell, I should say that it is our 
endeavour to build up in Germany a people who all 
possess the same rights in life. We want everyone, high 
and low, to belong to such a people. We desire that the 
highest among them shall feel themselves more closely 
united with the last and lowest of their own kith and kin 
than with the highest of any other nation. We aim at this 
—that the highest of our people would rather be the 

1 Vide the period of the Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Councils in Munich. 



WHAT THE “SOCIALISM” MEANS 233 

lowest of his own nation, than the highest of any other 
nation* Such an aspiration can only be the outcome of 
an absolutely unified national will.” 


It would lead us too far afield to instance the many 
measures in which Hitler has exemplified his conception 
of true Socialism. We must confine ourselves to a mere 
sketch of the most important and obvious incorporations 
of the ideas through which he has restored to the German 
worker his honour and self-respect. 

THE GERMAN LABOUR FRONT 

The law of April 10th, 1933, which arranged May 1st 
as a great Labour Day Holiday initiated the above- 
named reorganisation of labour in Germany. The first 
celebration of the new holiday was unanimous and 
universal : the Germans had never had anything like it 
before. Thousands of people gathered together at the 
same time, all over the country to listen to the Leader’s 
speech, and then to make high holiday. All trades and 
callings and professions for the first time were assembled 
in common, symbolising the unity which was henceforth 
to unite both types of labour—that of the head, and that 
of the hand, symbolising the necessary equal value to 
the community of both. German Socialism recognises 
no discriminating difference between the brain worker 
and the hand worker. 

Quick on the heels of May 1st and its celebrations, 
came action. The German Labour Front emerged. 
On May 2nd the premises of all Marxian Labour Unions 
were taken over and the contents sequestrated. 

Abroad, similar Marxist Unions described this action 
of Hitler’s as a theft of the German workman’s hardly 
earned pay, saved up for years and years in the Unions’ 
funds. Such a charge could not be substantiated, since 
these moneys were not taken from the workmen, to 
whom they rightly belonged, but from the greedy grasp 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


234 

of union officials to whom they did not belong, but who 
administered them wastefully, or appropriated them in 
disproportionate salaries. 

With the workman himself went his money also, into 
the Labour Front. Here it could only be put to the best 
and most legitimate uses on his behalf. 

The great object of the Labour Front is to secure 
German industry from the incessant recurrence of 
strikes and all their disintegrating consequences. German 
Socialism utterly opposes itself to strife between employers 
and men. Here again it shows quite a different face 
from that of Marxian Socialism which seeks to foment 
such discord, whereby, moreover, it maintains its own 
sovereignty. 

In Germany to-day a strike is impossible for the reason 
that no employer dare pay less than the standardised 
daily wage, or the State would immediately take up the 
workers’ grievance. On the other hand, were the 
workers to demand more than their due they themselves 
would bring about the collapse of the concern for which 
they worked. The standard of wages is arrived at by 
experts representing the men and concerned to secure 
their best interests. 

Together with wages, the question of hours has also 
been considered. In Marxist-Socialist Germany after 
the War, very hard times set in for German working 
men. Their leaders had every opportunity to show what 
the theory could accomplish ; they had a majority in the 
Reichstag, a member of the Party was President of 
the Reich. Nevertheless, they were all either too lazy 
or too indifferent to carry out their programme. 

So long as the masses went hungry they were easy to 
inflame, and to excite agamst capitalism and the wealthy. 
While six and a half million unemployed hung about the 
streets while their wives and children were starving, 
selfish employers exploited this wretched state of things 
just because they were paying the dole, forsooth ! If a 
man grumbled he lost his job ; hundreds were only 



WHAT THE “SOCIALISM 55 MEANS 235 

waiting to pounce upon it in his stead. If he sought the 
assistance of the Secretary of his Union he drew another 
blank. What cared the employer for the Unions ? 
Should a strike ensue all he had to do was to close shop 
or factory as the case might be, and say, “ All right. 
We’ll see who can stick it out the longest, you or I. 55 

Days or even weeks might go by, but the result was 
always the same. The men came back with hangdog 
mien, glad of the work again at any cost ! This is where 
the German working man had lost in his own eyes. It 
was from this sort of victimisation and wretchedness that 
Hitler designed to rescue him, and give him back his 
self-respect. Hitherto he had been the prey of vicious 
circumstances, the slave of an unscrupulous class. 

All was altered in a twinkling when Adolf Hitler came 
to power. A cry of gratitude and relief went up from all 
ranks of German working men. The Brown Shirts were 
everywhere welcomed as they made their way into shop 
and factory and yard to enquire after the needs and cir¬ 
cumstances of every employe in the place. Union 
secretaries were haled to account no less than unsocialistic- 
minded employers. The German Labour Front was out 
to accomplish what it promised. 

With the exception of peasants and officials, who have 
their own organisations, the German Labour Front 
comprises workmen of all kinds, employes, employers 
and people working on their own account. Hitler is its 
patron, Dr. Ley is its Leader. The standards of wages 
are carefully regulated and observed by reliable workers 
themselves. The Reich is divided up, under this scheme, 
into Regions, these, in turn, into Districts, these into 
Circuits or Local Groups, and these latter again into 
Trade Communes, Cells and Blocks. 


STRENGTH THROUGH JOY 

Perforce of its iron will, its absolute refusal to com¬ 
promise and its terrific onset, National Socialism wrenched 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


236 

itself suddenly into power. Long years before this 
happened its better ideas had attracted people away 
from those of the old system then in vogue, and so it is 
readily to be understood how, in March, 1933, the 
aforesaid old system simply collapsed. 

The first and greatest duty before National Socialism 
was to win the German people back to a sense of nation¬ 
ality, and in impressing its own principles upon them. 
A State that is to endure for centuries ahead must be 
built upon the very foundations of organic life, upon 
blood and soil, nationality and home. 

In order to replace one kind of State with another, 
and better one, it is not enough merely to do away with 
the former : the people themselves must be re-educated. 
In place of a system full of class enmity and distinctions 
and pride of place, there is now a commonwealth. 
The new State, organically designed, is founded upon 
the principle “ The common good before that of the 
individual.” 

Under National Socialism the culture of an entire 
people must not be identified with any particular caste, 
class, or level : it must characterise and belong to the 
mass. Nor must aesthetic enjoyments be only for the few ; 
they must be common to all. Just as the creation of a 
united working people has been confided to the German 
Labour Front, so is it the business of another organisation, 
that of “ Strength through Joy,” to make every member 
of the nation free of its cultural and artistic treasures and 
resources. The two endeavours are inter-related. By 
means of the latter every German working man can look 
to his free evening as a real opportunity for refreshment 
and “ uplift ” ; money which had formerly gone merely 
in organising strikes, can now be spent far more profitably 
and agreeably. 

It is not the object of “ Strength through Joy” to 
educate the people politically. Few want to attend 
classes in civics after a hard day’s work. Its aim is rather 
to bring the people together on a broad basis of enlighten- 



WHAT THE “SOCIALISM” MEANS 237 

ment, an effort in which they, too, of course, must 
concur. 

The Director of “ Strength through Joy ” is also Dr. 
Ley. His work is comprised under many headings. It is 
one of his principal endeavours to open up to worker and 
unemployed alike all the best sources of entertainment, 
opera, theatre and concert hall. For the fact that a 
workman in any German city can obtain admission to 
the finest operas for practically a nominal sum is Hitler 
himself directly to be thanked. Hitler often starved, in 
the old days, in order to buy the meanest standing room 
in the house, to hear Wagner. Now that he is Chancellor, 
no working man in Germany need be put to such shifts 
to gratify his artistic longings. 

The “ Kulturamt ” has opened to the people all sorts of 
intellectual resorts hitherto sacred to the upper ten. It 
is a mistake to suppose that only such appreciate the best. 
In Germany Wagner takes precedence, even with the 
poorest people, over nigger minstrelsy and jazz. 

Even the working man’s week-ends are provided for. 
Previously he went for a bit of a walk in the park perhaps, 
on Sunday, or took a tram out of the suburbs to get a 
breath of air. If he were a single man he might spend 
the most part of his leisure in a beer hall, listening to the 
band. Although this sort of thing can still be observed 
everywhere, nowadays the workman looks to the sort of 
week-end right away which previously could only be 
enjoyed by the better to do. For a couple of marks, 
to-day, he can go thirty miles out of the city, follow a 
personally conducted tour around some beauty spots, and 
enjoy a good meal into the bargain. When his holiday 
comes round, it is provided for, lavishly as far as good 
things are concerned, at equally small cost. 

Workmen from Munich can now envisage holidays 
by the North Sea with all sorts of trips and bathing fun 
thrown in. Those from Berlin can go to the Alps, do a 
bit of mountaineering and try what hotel life is like. 
These are dreams come true which for whole generations 



238 GERMANY’S HITLER 

past must have ever remained unrealisable. All thanks 
to Adolf Hitler. 

The section of this activity which deals with “ Volk- 
stum und Heimat,” seeks to revive, for urban populations, 
the knowledge of and delight in old peasant and tra¬ 
ditional customs, songs, dances, costumes. This sort oi 
thing reawakens love of the country and their origins in 
people long divorced from the land. It bridges the gull 
between the peasant and the townsman. 

Kraft durch Freude (“ Strength through Joy ”) looks 
also to sport to give the working man zest and change in 
exercise. It is Hitler’s keenest desire to see the worker, 
particularly the youthful worker (Hitler’s Germany is all 
being built for the future—the past must now look after 

itself, “ let the dead bury the dead ”-) made “ crisis 

resisting.” The young workman goes in for tennis and 
golf and every other vigorous game that’s going. 

Through the instrumentality of innumerable exhibitions 
it is sought to rouse the worker’s pride in his own achieve¬ 
ments, in his niche in society, in the part he plays in the 
whole. His craft is displayed before him in its entire 
interest, or beauty, or significance. Prizes and com¬ 
petitions abound. Each man becomes conscious of the 
part he takes in the whole, and discovers fresh pride in 
his trade and in himself. 

Cheap classes are held for those who desire to advance 
in their particular calling, or to study more particularly 
the trade to which they belong, and for the acquisition 
of foreign languages. The best teachers are retained and 
the instruction is given in the buildings of the local 
University. 

People are assisted to acquire their own dwelling- 
houses. Loans for this purpose can be repaid by instal¬ 
ments over a series of years. In this way it is hoped tc 
promote a cheerful small villadom beyond the limits o\ 
the greater cities. 

The department for propaganda aims at bringing all 
these activities and facilities before the people, to cn- 


WHAT THE “SOCIALISM” MEANS 239 

courage them to make the utmost use of them. Only 
so will they be bringing about the National Socialist 
State envisaged by Adolf Hitler. There are still more 
departments in this one Movement alone, but space 
forbids their description. 


Much, indeed, has been written about the new Ger¬ 
many. In England and America so much attention has 
been directed to its political aspect, that these others have 
been neglected. Of that attention, moreover, by far the 
greater part is highly inimical, highly critical. Few 
outside Germany yet realise why Hitler is prepared 
to go to all lengths to save this new Germany from being 
torpedoed either from within or without. He saves it 
in his own way and from those he considers its enemies, 
whether his action is understood abroad or not. 

Let those disbelieve it who will, Adolf Hitler has done 
more for Germany since he came to power than any other 
statesman at any other time, and the wrecking of his 
work would not only spell the final ruin of Germany, but 
the ruin of Europe at large. 



CHAPTER XV 


HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 

I N order to round out the picture of Hitler which it 
has been the attempt of these pages to depict, a few 
words remain to be said about his private life since 1919. 

As has been already narrated, Hitler left barracks 
in the August of that year, and rented a modest lodging 
with humble people in the Thierschstrasse, Number 41. 

It is interesting to have a look into this poor room 
where Hitler lived for ten years. A Herr Erlanger was, 
at that time, the landlord of the house. He observes 
to-day : “I hadn’t much to do with him myself as he 
wasn’t directly a tenant of mine. His room was a sub-let. 
And since I am a Jew, I concerned myself as little as 
possible with the activities of my lodger and the National 
Socialists. I often encountered him on the stairway 
and at the door—he was generally scribbling something 
in a notebook. 

“ Often he had his dog with him, a lovely wolfhound. 
He never made me feel he regarded me differently from 
other people. He lodged here in my house from the 
autumn of 1919 to 1929. First he took a little back room, 
and then an equally small one in the front to serve as a 
sort of office and study. The back room in which he 
slept is only eight by fifteen feet. It is the coldest room 
in the house ; there’s a passage below it leading to the 
courtyard. Some lodgers who’ve rented it since got ill. 
Now we only use it as a lumber room ; nobody will have 
it any more. 

“ The only ‘ comfort ’ Hitler treated himself to when 
he was here, was a hand basin with cold water laid on. 

240 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 241 

The room to the front was a bit bigger, but the small 
high-set window left much to be desired. It was very 
scantily furnished. 55 

We have caught a glimpse of the rooms that were his 
home all these strenuous years in the Thierschstrasse, 
and now we must have a look at his unpretentious house 
on the Obersalzberg. 

The Obersalzberg is one of the slopes of the Bavarian 
Alps, above the Konigsee, but below the grand, bare 
snow-flecked summits of the highest mountains near 
Watzmann. It is a shaggedly pine-wooded region 
interspersed with wide stretches and spaces of open grass 
or meadowland threaded by white filaments of winding 
road. The whole is dotted over with the characteristic 
Bauernhofe (peasant farms) of the country, looking much 
like the chalets of Switzerland with their flower-decked 
balconies, their green-shuttered windows above the white 
stonework of the ground floor. 

A steep road leads up from Berchtesgaden to the 
Obersalzberg. Here Hitler and a few chosen intimates 
found refuge from the stress and strain of life during the 
time that preceded the disruption of the Party in Novem¬ 
ber, 1923. They forgathered in one of these Obersalzberg 
farm houses, called the Platterhof, and there took counsel 
together, and enjoyed brief, but precious, snatches of 
rest and recreation. 

One gets to Berchtesgaden from Munich by train 
in about three hours. But by motor one can do the 
journey a little more quickly. Berchtesgaden is a little 
town near the Konigsee. It does not lie directly on the 
lake because the mountains there come down so steeply 
to the water’s edge no room remains for the town. The 
lower flanks of these mountains are covered with hanging 
pine forests, but the summits are bare rock, snow-clad 
and glacier-seamed in winter. The Obersalzberg is a 
single mountain in the neighbourhood of the Konigsee 
(King’s Lake). There are houses built upon it. 

Lower down the slope of the Salzberg lay a little 


Q 



242 GERMANY’S HITLER 

house, also built in the Bavarian mountain style, called 
the Berghof. 

Here the Bavarian Mountains meet the Salzburg 
Alps ; the former frontier between Germany and Austria 
ran athwart these rocky summits. The view from hence 
is magnificent. Deep down below lies the green valley 
in which Berchtesgaden nestles. Snow-clad peaks soar 
into the blue heavens all around ; among them Konig 
Watzmann and his seven rocky offspring. 

Hitler's house, Berghof, here, is in no sense a minis¬ 
terial residence like Chequers in England. It is nothing 
more than a simple country house. 

It consists of two storeys, the lower built of white 
stone, the upper of brown-stained wood. A wooden 
balcony with flower-boxes all along the railing runs 
round the house outside the bedroom windows. The 
windows have green shutters with white bands ; the 
grey shingled roof is secured against the storms of winter 
by rows of heavy stones laid upon it. A little belfry, 
thatched, like a bird shelter, adorns one end of the roof 
tree. The plateau surrounding the house is laid out for a 
car park and a garden. There are flower borders, a 
large green lawn with a wide rectangular path surround¬ 
ing it, a rock garden, a telescope, garden furniture— 
gay chairs, tables, coloured sun umbrellas—and a 
flagstaff with the long red flag and its hooked cross in the 
central circle of white, hanging from it. 

All within is as simple and as well-kept as without. 
The peasant note is stressed. To describe one of the 
rooms : the furniture, consisting of little but the table 
and a few chairs, is of local make, of painted wood. A 
wooden dado in grey-green panels with a single little 
bunch of country flowers painted on each, reaches half¬ 
way up the cream-washed walls. The window has a 
valance, and simple curtains of figured cretonne hang 
straight at the sides. A wooden bench coloured like the 
dado amply furnished with variously and gaily covered 
pillow-shaped cushions runs round the room and forms 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 243 

a window-seat. There are one or two well-hung en¬ 
gravings to be noted, a cupboard with large painted 
panels, topped with jugs in peasant ware, and the bright 
notes of here and there a tasteful plate set on the beading 
of the dado. Such is the Reichskanzler’s sitting or 
dining-room in the Berghof. His square bare table has 
gaily turned and painted legs, and stretchers for foot 
rests between. All is eminently homelike and simple. 
A great green tiled oven, surrounded by a bench, takes 
the place of the English open hearth. Huge rag rugs lie 
here and there about the floor. 

The Berghof was built shortly before the War by a 
Hamburg merchant. Hitler discovered it long before 
he bought it. His thoughts turned to this spot and this 
house after the strains and stresses of Landsberg. 

He rented it, and asked his sister to come and keep 
house there, so that he himself could come and go as 
circumstances might permit. Later on he purchased it 
outright, and was thankful to withdraw to its peace and 
privacy during the stressful time of the struggle of the 
Party. 

Later ensued a period during which but the rarest 
moments of respite could be snatched at the Berghof. 
During the last phases of his struggle for power in 1932 
Adolf Hitler rarely was able to resort thither, alone or 
with chosen companions, for a few hours’ relaxation or 
intensive counsel. 

After a simple but sufficient repast in which fresh 
milk, black bread, and some sort of cereal were the chief 
ingredients, the Fuhrer and his friends liked to sit round 
the table, or around the stove, and in this informal 
fashion talk over the prospects and the problems of 
the Kamfif. 

Since his accession to the Chancellorship of the Reich, 
Hitler’s little country place has had to be adapted 
somewhat to its owner’s wider needs. Without losing 
anything of its unpretentiousness, a motor road approach 
to it has been constructed, and additional accommodation 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


244 

has been added after the Fiihrer’s own plans. It remains, 
however, much as it was originally, and ever awaits the 
coming of its master, guarded by three friends of his 
of whom he has none more loyal and faithful, the sheep¬ 
dogs, Muck, Wolf and Blonda. 


By the year 1929 when Hitler’s Party had now become 
a nation-wide Movement, it was unsuitable that he 
should remain any longer in the Thierschstrasse, mainly 
for the reason that he was obliged to receive the visits 
of highly placed or important people either in his inade¬ 
quate little room there, or in the back premises in the 
Schellingstrasse used as Party headquarters. So he 
removed to an empty apartment in the Prinzregenten— 
Platz 16. “ This bachelor requires nine rooms for 

himself,” wrote one of his critics and opponents, quite 
failing to add that two families also shared them, one of 
these consisting of the very people with whom he had 
lodged in the Thierschstrasse. 

Hitler still lives in this house when in Munich. His 
pretensions have waxed no whit since he became 
Chancellor. 

He generally comes of a week-end to Munich or 
to Berchtesgaden. The rest of the time he spends in 
Berlin. He inhabits the old Reichskanzlei of Prince 
Bismarck. As a rule he takes his frugal meals at home, 
often in company with a few simple S.A. men who 
come to him from every quarter, some of whom he may 
not even know. His adjutant Bruckner sees to it, doubt¬ 
less, that it is not always the same visitors who have the 
privilege of dining with Adolf Hitler. 

Personal comfort, apart from personal cleanliness, 
never meant much to Hitler. He lives as simply to-day 
in the Wilhelmstrasse as he lived at Frau Popp’s and in 
the Thierschstrasse in those early beginnings. 

In this connection, it might be interesting to say a 
few words on the private life of the Fuhrer. 


HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 245 

As a matter of fact, on this subject there is but little 
to be said, for this private life takes up a few hours only 
of each day, and sometimes not so much as one single 
hour. 

Although Hitler generally retires to rest at a very late 
hour, very often not until 2 a.m. or even later, he is up 
again early in the morning. He is without doubt one 
of those people who can do with a minimum of sleep. 
It is a known fact that, starting from January 30th, 1933, 
when he became Chancellor of the German Reich, he 
worked without interruption for three days and three 
nights, and during this time showed himself on the balcony 
of the Chancellor’s palace at frequent intervals to the 
enthusiastic crowds who all day long filled the 
Wilhelmplatz. 

After breakfast, which in his case takes on a very 
simple form, consisting usually of milk, black bread and 
fruit. Hitler makes a practice of being informed on all 
world happenings. His Press Chief, Dr. Dietrich, who 
is closely attached to his person, lays a large quantity of 
home and foreign newspapers before the Fiihrer, and 
furnishes him with a precis of all important articles and 
news items. This review of the newspapers takes place 
twice or three times a day. In addition Dr. Dietrich 
reports to the Fiihrer all the numerous items of con¬ 
fidential information which day and night pour into the 
Chancellery of the Reich by telephone, telegraph and 
radio, or by courier. Dr. Dietrich is one of the few 
people who are permitted to present themselves at all 
times unannounced in the private room of the Fiihrer. 
It may be said in this connection that Hitler is one of the 
best-informed persons in the world. It makes not the 
slightest difference where he happens to be, he keeps 
himself without intermission informed on all the important 
happenings in the world. When he is travelling by plane, 
the Morse apparatus works without intermission, and in 
his official train, in addition to a wireless receiver, there 
is a radio-telegraphic apparatus. 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


246 

Hitler’s working day, similarly to that of other states¬ 
men, consists principally in the receiving of reports, in 
discussions with the heads of his Chancellery and of the 
different ministries, in the reception of visitors, and in 
working through documents and files. In addition to 
this he frequently finds time to devote himself to his 
favourite subject of architecture. There is little doubt 
that had Hitler not become Chancellor, he would have 
been an architect of no small repute. The vast plans 
which in less than a decade will have completely changed 
the face of so many towns in Germany, such as Berlin, 
Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich, originate in their 
main features with Hitler, and were worked out in part 
by his former architect, the late Professor Troost, and in 
part by his present adviser, Professor Speer. 

As already stated, it is seldom that Hitler takes his 
midday meal alone. Generally some members of his 
immediate staff sit at table with him, and he also very 
frequently invites a few of his oldest adherents whom he 
came to know during the war, or in the years immediately 
following it. Often too, to their great surprise, some of 
the youngsters and girls of the Hitler Youth, who come 
from all parts of Germany, and stand before the Chan¬ 
cellor’s house, find themselves invited in to lunch with 
him, and to tell him about themselves and their families, 
and the circumstances in which they live. Although the 
Ftihrer himself eats vegetables, salad and fruit only, it 
is not his wish that those who sit at table with him should 
follow him in this respect. 

Hitler generally invites a few well-known German 
artists and men of science to a short tea in the afternoon, 
this enabling him to discuss artistic and scientific matters 
with them. The interest which the Ftihrer takes in 
painting and sculpture may be said to be as great as 
that which he takes in music. Among the subjects which 
interest him most are history, of which he possesses an 
unusual knowledge, the natural sciences, and practical 
engineering. In technical matters the Ftihrer is also an 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 247 

expert. The well-known People’s Car, which is to be 
manufactured by the million in Germany, and which in 
spite of its exceptional qualities is, in the matter of 
cheapness, in advance of all other types up till now, 
was constructed by Professor Porsche under the constant 
supervision of the Fiihrer. Designs from Hitler’s own 
hand decided its form, and he himself carried out tests 
with the trial car, before the final form was decided upon. 

In the evening it is the custom of the Chancellor to 
work for several hours, often as late as midnight. Now 
and again he visits the opera, or more frequently he sees 
films in his own cinema in the Chancellor’s palace. He 
takes a particular interest in the films, and often has 
foreign films run off before him, so that he may compare 
them with the German films. Afterwards he discusses 
both the artistic and the technical side with German 
film artists. 

Before finally retiring to rest, it is Hitler’s custom to 
read for a certain time, and in preference to any others 
he reads works on history, and on the history of art, also 
on military subjects and biographies. 

A little noticed but indeed interesting and typical 
quality of the Fuhrer’s is his intense loyalty to all those 
with whom he has been acquainted for a long time, and 
who in former years were in any way amicably disposed 
towards him, or afforded him any help. It is a known 
fact that when in Munich he still stays with the same 
people with whom he stayed in 1919. Few persons, 
however, realise why when in Munich he frequently 
takes his meals in a small, inexpensive and comparatively 
unknown restaurant in the Schellingstrasse. It is for 
the reason that during the period 1926 to 1930, when the 
headquarters of the Party were accommodated in the 
back part of a house in this street, the then Leader of 
the Party, Hitler, used to take his meals in this inexpensive 
hostelry which adjoined them. Similarly, when travelling 
by car in Upper Bavaria, the Fiihrer makes a practice of 
visiting the same inns and the same acquaintances, 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


248 

which many years before he used to visit at the very 
beginning of his struggle. 

Not far from Munich, in the small village of Solln, 
there lives an old lady eighty years of age of the name of 
Hoffmann. She is known everywhere in Munich by the 
name of “ Hitlermutterl 55 (Hitler’s Mother). In her 
house there hangs a portrait of the Fiihrer dating from 
the year 1925, bearing the following dedication : 
“ Meinem lieben treuen Miitterchen in Verehrung Adolf 
Hitler ” (“ To my beloved and devoted adopted Mother 
in token of deep respect Adolf Hitler”). This dis¬ 
tinguished old lady has ever since the year 1920 been 
one of the most devoted adherents of Hitler. She visited 
him every month during his arrest in the fortress of 
Landsberg, and remained loyal to him for years on end. 
To-day she is still working in the National Socialist 
People’s Welfare Organisation. In spite of the heavy 
burden of the responsibilities of State, Hitler never misses 
journeying every year by car to the small village of Solln 
to pay a visit to “ his beloved and devoted adoptive 
Mother ” on her birthday. 

Intimate and heartfelt as are the relations of Hitler to 
his old acquaintances and friends, equally profound is 
the confidence which all sections of the population, each 
after their kind, feel towards the Fiihrer. On an average 
three thousand letters reach the Chancellor’s office every 
day, each of them addressed to Adolf Hitler personally ; 
in these people from all parts of the country make requests, 
and lay propositions before him. A special bureau deals 
with these letters alone, and it has been ascertained that 
the great majority of the requests received are in point 
of fact justified. In such cases help is always given, either 
by the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organisation, 
or by some other organisation of the Party, or by the 
Reich’s Chancellor himself. The Fiihrer frequently 
causes such letters to be laid before him, with a view to 
keeping in constant touch with the anxieties of the people, 
and in order to be able himself to lend a helping hand. 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 249 

During the weeks preceding Christmas the stream of 
letters grows to the dimensions of a flood. Tens of 
thousands of children write to “ Uncle Hitler,” to tell 
him about their Christmas wishes. With a few words, 
and in childish handwriting, the different toys and other 
matters are mentioned upon which the hearts of his small 
correspondents are set. They believe that “ Uncle 
Hitler ” must surely be on good terms with Santa Glaus, 
and in this they are right. The National Socialist People’s 
Welfare Organisation make it their business to see that 
the wishes of the children are fulfilled, and among the 
hundreds of thousands of Christmas packets which are 
distributed every year by this organisation, many 
thousands are destined for those children who, full of 
confidence, have written to “ Uncle Hitler.” 

In a village in the neighbourhood of the Obersalzberg 
there lives a boy who suffers from paralysis. He too 
once wrote to Adolf Hitler, and asked for a wireless set 
as a Christmas present. The letter found its way into 
the Ftihrer’s hands, and to the great surprise and joy 
of the poor youngster, the Ftihrer insisted on making 
him a personal present of the much-desired set. Hundreds 
of examples of the kind might be quoted. 

But it does not always so happen that Hitler is the 
giver. Often it is the other way about. Some time 
ago, for example, when as the result of a chill Hitler 
was suffering from a cough, and from hoarseness of the 
throat, he received written advice, and numberless 
letters and prescriptions from all classes of the com¬ 
munity. He was sent all kinds of medicinal teas, and a 
large quantity of jars of honey from all parts of Germany 
found their way to the Chancellor’s house. Every year 
on his birthday Hitler receives more presents than it has 
ever been the lot of a statesman to receive from his 
fellow-countrymen. Every year, on April 20th, entire 
post office vans drive up to the Chancellor’s residence, 
and whole rooms gradually fill with presents of every 
description. The great majority come from humble 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


250 

homes, and also from children, and many of the presents 
represent months of patient work. It is with the greatest 
happiness that the Fiihrer examines all the presents 
that are sent him, for he cannot but look upon them as 
evidence of the devotion which the millions in Germany 
feel towards him, who have placed their whole future in 
his hands. 

From the few examples cited above, it will be readily 
recognised that the relations between the Fiihrer and the 
German people, from a human standpoint also, are both 
close and intimate. And as Hitler, since taking over the 
Chancellorship, can hardly be said to have altered in 
any of his essential human qualities and principles, and 
in his manner of regarding himself, like Frederick the 
Great, as “ the first servant of the State, 35 and no more 
so do the German people look up to the Fiihrer not as a 
dictator, or a ruler, but as the leading working man of 
the nation. 

Undoubtedly the year 1938 was by far the most 
dramatic since Hitler’s accession to power. At the same 
time it possibly entailed the greatest consequences not 
only for Germany but for the whole of Europe. In March, 
1938, Austria ceased to be an independent State, and in 
October the same year Czechoslovakia lost those of her 
frontier regions which were almost exclusively inhabited 
by Germans. 

These two countries, Austria and Czechoslovakia, were 
created at Versailles, and, according to the calculations of 
the authoritative statesmen there, should have been of 
permanent duration, had conditions generally and the 
balance of power in Europe remained what they were in 
1918, but it was forgotten that history does not stand still. 
It would have been considered impossible, at that time, 
that the face of Germany would radically change within 
the century, and that she could again attain to any great 
degree of political or military importance. 

Not one of the statesmen gathered at Versailles had ever 
heard of Adolf Hitler. Had he done so he would cer- 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 251 

tainly have smiled ironically at the man’s insignificance, 
and at the fantastic plans he formulated in the Bierhalle 
of Munich. 

And yet it was this very Hitler beginning his struggle 
entirely without means, without power and without help, 
who in fourteen years had united behind him a people of 
sixty-eight millions ; who as the creator and leader of a 
new Germany, twenty years after Versailles, showed that 
the Treaty signed there was nothing practically but a 
scrap of paper. 

For treaties can only be lasting when at the beginning 
they take into consideration alterations in the situation, or 
when—in such a case—they are revised. If this is not 
done, they will simply be passed over and extinguished 
by historical development. 

The rise of the National Socialist movement in Munich 
in the year 1920 opened up the question of the Anschluss 
of Austria and of the Sudeten German territories, and 
therewith the creation of a Greater Germany. 

The first paragraph of the Programme of the National 
Socialist German Workers’ Party runs as follows : 

“ We demand the fusion of all Germans into a Greater 
Germany on the ground of the people’s right of self- 
determination.” As Adolf Hitler announced this pro¬ 
gramme on the 24th of February, 1920, in the Hof- 
brauhaus in Munich to an enthusiastic audience of 2000 
people, among his hearers were some from Austria and 
Sudetenland, delegates from the Nazi Parties of those 
districts populated by Germans. 

The development of the Austrian and Sudeten German 
Nazi Parties from 1919 to 1933 draws many a parallel 
with the rise of the Hitler Movement in Germany. When, 
however, Hitler became Reich’s Chancellor in January, 
1933, the struggle for union with the Reich carried on by 
those parties in Austria and Sudetenland entered upon its 
dramatic last phase. The Fuhrer’s first care, however, 
was to make Germany strong again, politically, and from 
a military and economic point of view, for the reason that 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


252 

he knew only a strong nation at home could guarantee to 
the Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia the realisa¬ 
tion of the right to self-determination. 

It would exceed the purpose of the present book to 
describe here the long embittered struggle waged by the 
people in Austria—who for the most part were National 
Socialists—against the Government and its forces. It cost 
innumerable lives. Thousands of National Socialists were 
imprisoned for years together : still more fled to Ger¬ 
many. Distress and misery waxed ever greater and 
greater. Schuschnigg’s Dictatorship had long looked for 
support from abroad, until at length Germany became 
sufficiently powerful, and the Berlin-Rome Axis was con¬ 
solidated. In March, 1938, Adolf Hitler was once more 
able to set foot on his native soil, after a long absence. The 
question he had so often pondered as a schoolboy in Linz : 
“ Why don’t we Austrian Germans live together with the 
others in Germany ? ” remained a question no longer, for 
he himself had answered it for ever. 

The first visit paid by the Ftihrer in his native land was 
to the graves of his parents in Leonding near Linz. On 
the evening of his first day in Austria he visited his old 
Master, Professor Potsch, the man who had grounded him 
so well in history, before he started to make history 
himself. 

On the same evening the present writer (who as a 
journalist accompanied the Fuhrer’s entry into Austria 
and that of the German troops) had occasion to note a 
characteristic example of Hitler’s method of rapid think¬ 
ing. His thought never tarries with the thing which has 
immediately been accomplished, but at once goes forward. 
On that particular evening, when all the inhabitants of 
Linz were out and about, laughing and weeping for joy, 
when thousands of them gathered before the Fuhrer’s 
hotel enthusiastically singing National Socialist songs, 
when everyone in the hotel and out of it was talking of 
nothing but this marvellous event, this Anschluss—Hitler 
himself asked for a big map of Linz, and began then and 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 253 

there to discuss rebuilding with architects and engineers, 
to rough out plans for the enlargement of the city. He 
talked already of a new bridge over the Danube, a work 
put in hand a few weeks later ; and he was much inter¬ 
ested in new projects for a large river harbour, the 
building of which was begun three months afterwards. 

On the same day first orders were already being placed 
with Austrian industry, and plans were initiated for the 
building of a Reich’s motor high road from Salzburg to 
Vienna. In order to ameliorate the terrible immediate 
distress in the cities and in the country the National 
Socialistic organisation for the betterment of the people 
(Volkswohlfahrt, N.S.V.) now took hold. In the first six 
months after the Anschluss the N.S.V. laid out more than 
seventy million marks for the benefit of the impoverished 
population of Austria. This one quotation alone shows 
how extensive was the help extended. The sum involved 
was almost as much as the first loan made to Austria by 
the United States after the War, in order to save a country 
in utter collapse from final extinction. But the money 
spent in Austria by the N.S.V. was no loan ; it was a gift. 
It was spent by the German people, and distributed in 
the form of foodstuffs, clothing, etc. 

Yet another reference to figures to show how Austria 
was assisted economically by the Anschluss—the number 
of the unemployed, which had stood at about 600,000 in 
March, already sank in six months to 100,000. At the 
same time the marriage rate quadrupled itself over the 
preceding year. 

In this way Hitler began the work which was designed, 
as he said, to transform his native land into a blossoming 
garden. 

With the Anschluss of Austria an accomplished fact, the 
question of the return of the Sudeten Germans to the 
Reich became acute. This problem had been a long¬ 
standing one. The Sudeten Germans had repeatedly 
been striving after unity with Germany ever since 1848. In 
the year 1918, after the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


254 

the Deputies for the Sudeten area declared (30th October, 
1918) the region to be an Austrian Province. But in the 
Austrian Constitution of October, 1918, Austria was 
declared to be a part of the German Reich ! Herewith 
the Anschluss of Austria and of Sudetenland with the 
German Reich was formally completed. 

But this Anschluss concluded in a democratic sense on 
the people’s own right to self-determination was not of 
long duration. The French Foreign Minister, Pichon, 
announced as early as in January, 1919, that all means of 
force would be put into relentless operation to prevent 
such a union of Germans. Under pressure from the Allied 
Powers the step had to be cancelled. Czechoslovakia was 
designed to form a military fortress of great strategical 
worth, which widely dominated Germany. And this 
artificially constructed State could only hold together if 
Austria remained dissociated with the Reich. 

But the statesmen at Versailles had not reckoned with 
the National Socialists, who increased the more rapidly 
also in Sudetenland the more the German population was 
oppressed by the Czechs. The misery of these people 
became worse and worse ; although the Czechs were 
numerically twice as strong as the Germans, 60 per cent of 
the latter formed the unemployed. Since the end of the 
Great War over 20,000 of them had committed suicide. 
These facts were doubtless responsible for it that by 1933 
the National Socialist Party had become the most power¬ 
ful party in Czechoslovakia. After it became more and 
more certain to those living abroad in the summer of 1933 
that ere long Adolf Hitler would assume the direction of 
affairs in Germany, the Czech Government felt that a 
settlement of the Sudeten question was drawing nearer. 
They hoped to resolve it in their own favour by repressing 
and exterminating the Germans in Czechoslovakia, before 
Nazi Germany should become strong enough to have a 
say in the matter. The Czech Government dissolved the 
National Socialist Party in October, 1933. 

At this moment Konrad Henlein, Director of the Ger- 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 255 

man Gymnastic Societies in Czechoslovakia, appeared on 
the political stage. In spite of persecution, and of 
measures taken against him by the State Authorities, in 
less than two years he succeeded in getting together two- 
thirds of the Germans living in Czechoslovakia into a 
Sudeten German party. Whereupon he became the 
leader of the strongest party in the country. But in spite 
of this he was not permitted to take part in the Govern¬ 
ment. 

Affairs were rapidly coming to a crisis. The measures 
taken by the Government against the Germans became 
more and more effective. The position of these people 
constantly became worse. Here is one example : In the 
Czech city of Zwickau, entirely inhabited by Germans, at 
the end of the year 1936 only 200 men were in work out of 
4,800. One thousand two hundred of the unemployed 
received no dole at all ; 80 per cent of the children were 
undernourished and tuberculous. The misery elsewhere 
was similar to this. 

When Austria returned to the Reich the crisis in 
Czechoslovakia came to a head. Meantime Konrad 
Henlein had succeeded in bringing all Sudeten Germans 
into his party. At the local elections in June, 1938, 95 per 
cent of the voting was in his favour. The anxiety of the 
Czech Government and of the military authorities 
increased at the same time. Shootings took place nearly 
every day. Germans were shot in the streets. 

The British Government recognised the danger of the 
situation and despatched Lord Runciman to look into it, 
and to act as intermediary. Lord Runciman soon saw 
that here no adjustment was possible any longer, that only 
a swift and complete liberation of the Germans from 
Czechoslovakia would avoid the danger of an inter¬ 
national conflict. The brutal treatment of the Sudeten 
Germans by the Czech Army, which had been mobilised 
for months, aggravated the situation. 

Then Adolf Hitler stepped in. 

In his speech to the Party Congress in Nuremberg on 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


256 

the ground of the people’s right to self-determination he 
required that the Sudeten Germans should be permitted 
to return to the Reich. Otherwise Germany would be 
obliged to secure this right for them by force. The British 
Prime Minister Chamberlain, who was particularly 
anxious to avoid armed conflict, thereupon immediately 
flew to Berchtesgaden, to have a talk with Adolf Hitler. 
The Czech Government showed itself unwilling to under¬ 
take negotiations. It armed the Communist groups, and 
forbade the Henlein Party. 

Severe fighting took place daily in which the Czechs 
used artillery and tanks. Every night there was a con¬ 
stant stream of thousands of Sudeten German refugees 
across the German border. 

Meantime talks were going on in London between the 
British Prime Minister and the French Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, the outcome of which was a suggestion 
to the Czech Government that the German regions 
should be severed from Czechoslovakia, thereby securing 
a lasting peace in Europe. 

The proposal was accepted after Mussolini had made it 
quite clear that he took his stand on the side of Germany. 

But the Czech Government made no move to realise 
the project. The Sudeten Germans, who were shot, 
many of them women and children, already numbered 
nearly two hundred. There was a second meeting 
between Hitler and Chamberlain, this time at Godesberg. 
The Ftihrer handed the Prime Minister a Memorandum 
for the Czech Government in which considering the 
impossible state of affairs he demanded the severance of 
the Sudeten areas by the 1st of October, 1938. 

The crisis was now coming to a head. All Europe was 
seized with the feverish anticipation of war. Germany, 
England and France had already partially mobilised. 
While Hitler was having a fortress wall built in the west, 
upon which more than five hundred thousand men were 
employed, in the east the German and Czech Armies were 
confronting each other. 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 257 

England and France prepared to march, and Hitler 
and Mussolini left no doubt about it that on their side 
Germany and Italy were ready to fight for the right of 
self-determination and the immediate return of the 
Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia to the Reich. 

Meantime open war had broken out between the Ger¬ 
man population and the Czech soldiery. Over 200,000 
Sudeten German refugees had abandoned their homes 
and belongings and fled to Germany. 

The world was confronted by the most critical moment 
since August, 1914. 

Then it was the wonderful thing happened. 

At the suggestion of the British Prime Minister, and at 
Mussolini’s intervention, the Fiihrer invited the leading 
statesmen of England, France and Italy to a final con¬ 
ference at Munich. While the whole world looked to 
Munich in a state of intense tension, the four statesmen 
sat and deliberated at length. 

Reason carried the day. 

The representatives of the four great European Powers 
came to agreement, after various points in the original 
Memorandum had been mitigated and amended. 

The new proposals were accepted by the Czech Govern¬ 
ment, the German troops began their entry into the 
Sudeten German territory on the 1st of October, 1938, 
and hereby was confirmed the return of three and a half 
millions of Germans to the Reich. 

Just as he had formerly visited Austria, the Fiihrer was 
present in Sudetenland on the first day of the liberation of 
the fortunate people of these regions. But the writer 
remarked a great difference in the behaviour of the 
Austrians and the Sudetenlanders. Whereas in Austria 
there was nothing but rejoicing and laughter, the 
thousands of people here who lined the roads and waited 
for hours for the coming of the Fiihrer were weeping. It 
was deeply moving to see how even the hard weather¬ 
beaten faces of the peasants were wet with tears. They 
had endured such untold misery and oppression, this 



GERMANY’S HITLER 


258 

1 

sudden change of affairs was too much for them. They 
could not grasp what had happened before their eyes. 
The Fuhrer’s road was thickly strewn with flowers. 

The Sudeten Germans received assistance as expedi¬ 
tiously as Hitler’s fellow-countrymen in Austria had done. 
The first thing was to provide the poor people with food 
and clothing. As the German troops marched in they 
already distributed over 200,000 loaves of bread. Their 
field kitchens were placed at the service of the entire 
population. Hundreds of the trucks of the N.S.V. 
entered the impoverished towns and villages at the same 
time as the soldiers. In Dresden alone tons of tinned stuff 
and other foods were assembled, together with clothing 
and footgear for 250,000 people. Similar concentrations 
of supplies were organised all along the frontier, in order 
that help might be immediately forthcoming. 

Then the Fuhrer provided work for the unemployed. 
Building was begun. 

The swift settlement of the Sudeten German question 
doubtless caused the disappearance of one of the most 
dangerous occasions of war in Central Europe. 

The settlement was a gain for Germany as well as for 
Czechoslovakia. It meant a gain, as a matter of fact, for 
all Europe. No further complications will now arise as to 
frontiers between Germany and Czechoslovakia, because 
now the frontier is drawn not on artificial and strategical, 
but on natural and ethnological lines. Like the other 
countries of Southern Europe Czechoslovakia will benefit 
by a close economical co-operation with Germany and 
will peacefully attain to a new prosperity which would 
never have come to her through war. 

• • • » • 


To-day the whole world demands 44 Whither Ger¬ 
many ? ” The answer is simple. One can only reply, 
44 Germany follows Hitler.” Who would predict the 
course the Fatherland will pursue should study the life 
of the Fuhrer, mark its consistency from the beginning 



HITLER, GERMANY AND THE WORLD 259 

up to the present, and only so venture on prophecy. It 
is impossible to foretell what line his policy will take if 
he is only considered from the angle of politics and 
diplomacy. Hitler must be estimated from the human 
side as well. 

Anyone who has so studied Hitler’s career, especially 
that period of it in Vienna which preceded his taking 
up politics will grant that he has not deviated from the 
views he formed as a young man either in respect of 
them or with regard to the conduct of life in general. 

And, as has been so often remarked, place and power 
have not altered the manner of man he was. 

Germany’s foreign policy is directed towards peace 
and good understanding. It is a great mistake when 
they confuse National Socialism with Imperialism. 
National Socialism has no designs upon other lands and 
other peoples. Germany’s future lies in its keeping, and, 
indeed, that of the whole world—in the keeping of the 
true Socialism of common life, not in that of class war. 

Socialism as an international aspiration has practically 
petered out. It reached its apogee towards the end of the 
War, and at the moment when it made its bid for power, 
its failure began. 

The future belongs to National Socialism since, like 
Christianity itself, it is founded on love, and reconciliation 
between high and low, rich and poor. Herein lies its 
special creative and effective power. Marxian Socialism, 
on the contrary, flourishes on class clash and hatred. 
It is anti-Christian and destructive. 

The world will come to the recognition of all this in 
time. It may be decades will be required before the 
truth of the contention is established beyond cavil. 
Later generations will consider the Period of Marxian 
Socialism as an interlude out of which purgatory the 
world emerged into the truer and beneficent conception 
of 


Adolf Hitler 



INDEX 


A 

Aisne, 76 
Aisne-Marne, 81 
Albert, 82 

Albrecht, Duke of Wiirttemberg, 64 
Altes Lilienbad, 109, no 
Amann, Max, 60 
Amy, 78 
Anizy-Lizy, 79 
Anschluss, 252, 253, 254 
Anti-Semitism, 40-43 
Arco-Valley, Toni Count von, 91, 
169, 170 

Army, Hitler “ deserter ” from the, 

62 

Army, Hitler entering the, 52, 60, 

62 . 

Art, Hitler’s conception of, 33-35 
Artist, Hitler as an, 39 
Aubers, 51, 68 
Auer, 90, 118, 157 
Austro-German National Assembly, 

24 

B 

Bachmann, 86, 87 
Bapaume, 71-72 
Bebel, Adolf, 102 
Becelaere, 64, 65, 76 
Beelitz, 74, 86 
Berchtesgaden, 241, 256 
Berchtold, Joseph, 147 
Berghof, 241, 242, 243 
Berlin in 1916, 74 
Biache, 75 

Bildungsoffizier, Hitler as, 98 
Bourgeois, 127 
Brown House, 201 
Bruges, 64, 82 

Briining, Dr. Heinrich, 202, 203, 
205, 206 
Brunswick, 199 
Bund Oberland, 136, 159 
Biirgerbraukeller, 128, 153 

261 


C 

Cambrai, 71 

Centre Party, Catholic, 199 
Chamberlain, British Prime Minis¬ 
ter, 256 

Champagne, 82 
Chery les Poully, 79 
Cirkus Krone, 114, 145 
Commines, 65, 76, 82 
Concordat, 214 


D 

Dachau, 94 
Dadizeele, 64, 76 
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, 88, 109 
Deutscher Kampfbund, 151 
Deutschtum, 22, 26 
Deutschvolkische F reiheitspartei, 

J97 

Dietrich, Dr. Otto, 204, 245 
Douai, 75 

Drexler, Anton, 101, 102 


E 

Ebert, President of the Reich, 87, 
150 

Eckart, Dietrich, 107, 140, 142, 171 
Eintopfgericht, 219 
Eisner, Kurt, 88-91, 104 
Epagny, 80 

Epp, Franz Ritter von, 94, 95, 210 
Erlanger, 240 

Esser, Hermann, 117, 119, 120, 121, 
196,198,210 


F 

Father, Hitler’s, 12, 18, 28 
Feder, Gottfried, 107-109 
Feldherrnhalle, 160, 161, 192 



262 


INDEX 


Fontaine, 78 
Fourdrain, 78 
Fournes, 71 

Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 21 
Freier Arbeiter-Ausschuss, 105 
Freikorps Rossbach, 159 
Fr^micourt, 71 
French, Field-Marshal, 66 
Frick, Wilhelm, 198, 209 
Fromelles, 66-68 


G 

German Workmen’s Party, 96, 100, 
105 

Gheluvelt, 65, 76 
Ghent, 64 
Giesing, 95 

Goebbels, Dr. Joseph, 197, 199, 200, 
219, 220, 232 

Goering, Flermann, 136, 149, 154, 
155, 1 59 » 161, 163-164, 199, 207, 
209,212 

Graf, Ulrich, 160, 161 
Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft, 

* 97 . 

Grzesinski, aoo, 206 


H 

Haberfeldtreiben, German Peasant’s 
custom, 181 

Habsburg Monarchy, 20, 22, 23 
Hantay, 75 
Harrer, 105, 106, 139 
Haubourdin, 71 
Held, Prime Minister, 210 
Hemmrich, Oberwachtmeister, 
168-171 

Henlein, Konrad, 254, 255 
Hermies, 73 

Hess, Rudolf, 163, 173, 174, 176, 

177.179.185 

Hindenburg, General Field-Marshal 
von,199, 206,210, 215 
Hochstadt, 76 
Hofbrauhaus, r 12 
Hoffmann, Prime Minister, 91, 92, 

94 

Hoffmann, Frau, 248 
Horst Wessel, 200 


I 

Individuality, 145 
Innsbruck, 163 


J 

Juvigny, 80 


K 

Kahr, Dr. Gustav von, 118, 151- 
150, 160 
Kiel, 80 

Knilling, von, 151 
Koburg, 131 
Konigsplatz, 130 
Kosmanowski (Eisner), 104 
Kraft durch Freude, 235 
Kriebel, Lieut.-Colonel, 151, 163, 
166,171,174,177,179,180 


L 

La Barque, 71 
La Bass6e, 75 
Labour Camp, 228 
Labourer, Hitler as, 35 
Labour Front, German, 233 
La F£re, 78 
Lambach, 16 
Landsberg, 121, 165, 167 
Landsberger Ehrenburger, 178 
Landtag, 90 

League of Nations, Hitler’s with¬ 
drawal from the, 215 
Lechfeld, 63 
Ledeghem, 64, 76 
Leipzig trial of Reichswehr officers, 
202 

Lenin, 92 

Leonding, 18, 27, 252 
Levin£, 91 

Leybold, Oberregierungsrat, 169, 
192 

Liebknecht, Karl, 91, 209 
Lille, 63 

Linz, 18, 24, 252 
Lizy, 76 
Longwy, 71 

Lossow, General von, 153, 156-159, 
163, 165 



INDEX 263 


Ludendorff, General von, 155, 157, 
158, 161, 163, 165, 166, 199 
Ludwig III, King of Bavaria, 105 
Ludwig Bridge, 160 
Luitpold Gymnasium, 94 


M 

Marsfeld, 136 
Mathaser-Brau, 95 
Maurice, Emil, 177 
Max von Baden, Prince, 87, 88 
Mein Kampf, 185-188 
Mein politisches Erwachen, 100 
Meldeganger, 64, 65 
Memorandum, regarding return of 
Sudeten Germans, 256 
Messines, 64-66 
Monchy-Bapaume, 82 
Montdidier, 78 
Mother and Child, 223 
Mother, Hitler’s, 28 
Miihlhausen, 76 
Munich, Bierhallen in, 55 
Munich Post, 157 
Munitions strike, 77 
Mussolini, Benito, 198, 256, 257 


N 

Naturalisation of Hitler, 203 
Neuve Chapelle, 67 
Nouvron, 80 
Noyen, 78 

Nuremberg, 136, 137, 200, 214, 255 


O 

Obersalzberg, 146, 241 
Odeonsplatz, 147, 162, 164 
Oise-Aisne, 78 
Oise-Mame, 81 
One-Dish-Dinner, 219 
Origin, Hitler’s, 11 
Ostend, 82 


P 

Papen, Franz von, 206, 207 
Parliamentarism, 44 
Party Day, first, 136 
Party flag, 143 
Pasewalk, 84 


Pichon, French Foreign Minister, 254 
Pohner, 155, 166 
Politischer Arbeiter-Zirkel, 105 
Polygon Wood, 65 
Popp, Frau, Hitler’s landlady, 50 
Porsche, constructor of people’s car, 
247 

Potsch, Professor, 252 
Presidential Election, 204 
Prinzregenten-Platz, 244 
Putsch, 148 


R 

Regimental Instructor, Hitler as, 
9 6 

Reichskanzlei, 244 
Reichskriegsflagge, 136, 159 
Reims, 82 

Road building programme, Hitler’s, 
227 

Roeux, 75 
Rosenheim, 163 
Rossbach, 164 
Roulers, 76 
Runciman, Lord, 255 
Rupprecht, Crown Prince of 
Bavaria, 64, 163 


S 

S.A., 149 

Saal-Schutz, 114, 115, 120, 141 
Sancourt, 73 

Scheidemann, Philipp, 87 
Schlageter, Albert Leo, 144, 148 
Schleicher, General von, 207 
Schmidt, Ernst, 72 
Schmitt, Gottfried, 83 
School-comrades, Hitler’s, 25 
Schuschnigg, 252 
Schweyer, Magdalena, 115 
Seeckt, General von, 152, 163 
Seisser, Chief of Police, 153, 157- 
159,165 

Social Democrats, 102 
Socialism, German, 231 
Socialists, 103 
Soissons, 82 
Soissons-Fismes, 80 
Somme, 70-72 
Spa, 87 
Spartakists, 92 
Speer, Albert, 246 
Sterneckerbrau, 97, 107 



INDEX 


264 


Sterneckerbrau, Leiberzimmer of 
the, 116 

Storm Troops, 120, 129 
Stosstrupp Hitler, 150 
Strength through Joy, 235 
Stresemann, Gustav, 151 


T 

Terhan, 64 

Terhand, 76 

Theresian Field, 88, 104 

Thierschstrasse, 97, 240, 244 

Tirpitz, Admiral von, 103 

Toller, Ernst, 91 

Tolz, 130 

Torbrau, 154 

Tourcoing, 67 

Trade Unions, 136 

Traunstein, 89, 163 

Trial of Hitler, 165 

Troost, Professor, 35, 246 


U 

Uffing, 163 
Unemployment, 226 


V 

Vaterlands-Partei, 104 
Versailles, 98, 99 
Vezaponin, 80 

Vienna : Academy of Art in, 30 ; 
Anti-Semitism in, 41 ; art in, 
30 ; Jewdom in, 40 ; Marxism 
in, 37 > Social Problem in, 36 


Volkischer Beobachter, 142, 163 
Vouel, 78 


W 

Waffenring, 136 

War : Hitler’s decorations in the, 
60 ; Hitler wounded in the, 72, 
84 

War propaganda, 70 
Watzmann, 241, 242 
Weber, Dr. Christian, 136, 166, 171, 
1 . 75,177 

Weiss, Bernhard, 206 
Werwick, 65, 82 
Wessel, Horst, 200 
Westarp, Countess von, 94 
Westenkirchner, Ignaz, 57 
White Army, 94 
Winter Relief Work, 217 
Work Camps, 228 
Wulverghem, 66 
Wytschaete, 64, 65 


X 

Xmas in Nazi Germany, 221 


Y 

Ypres, 64, 76, 82 


Z 

Zetkin, Klara, 207 
Zwickau, 255