Clemens von Lengsfeld - Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The book made its author well-known as it revealed his plans in detail, but it was rarely entirely read. 56The book contained Hitler’s guiding principles such as his demand for lebensraum in the East, which he promised himself through the conquering of Eastern European states and Soviet Russia. In his writings he also revealed his in the meantime unashamed anti-Semitism, whereby he no longer demanded just the expulsion of the Jews from Germany but also their extermination. Thus he maintained that the defeat in the First World War would never happened if the German government had not failed to “wipe out the Jews without mercy by holding 12,000 or 15,000 of them under poison gas” . 57Later he would romanticise his time as a “Drummer” as “his period of struggle” and declare Munich, where he had been involved in the putsch against the government, to be the “capital of the movement” .

Even during his trial he had explained his world view with the following words: “ I left Vienna as an absolute anti-Semite, as the bitter enemy of the entire Marxist world view, as completely German in my outlook.” 58 At this point in time his – then by the way still acceptable in polite society – anti-Semitism was precisely what it was for most of his contemporaries: not a racist but a political conviction, a mixture of an anti-stance and an unreflecting demonstration of wild combat readiness. His aim was a chimera of neo-Germanic wider area thinking, anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism.

When the failed artist arrived in the German Kaiserreich in 1913, he hated much and variously: his homeland Austria, the multi-ethnic state, the Jews, Social democracy, the trade unions and the parliament, the masses and people in general. He probably hated himself too at times. And back then those around him must have noticed that there was something particular about the way he hated. Hitler did not harbour a hot-headed hate but a cold hate. He also revealed a lack of feeling, which made clear that he could neither put himself in the place of others nor himself so that an observational distance to himself was impossible. Today this is the very thing that is regarded as making someone human: knowing oneself and understanding others, even in their otherness and difference. The ability to empathise with others was completely lacking in Adolf Hitler. His “inner coldness” was coupled with a particular ability, the designation of which derives from the ancient Greek word for picture – “ eidos” . Eidetic people 59– as stated by the political psychologist Manfred Koch-Hillebrecht in his analysis of Hitler – can store away their surroundings to the last detail internally and preserve them forever. As with certain high-functioning kinds of autism, a so-called filter is missing, which protects the brain from being overwhelmed by impressions. Everything the eidetic person perceives, he has “made his own” . This applies to all sensory perceptions: visual and acoustic, but also olfactory stimuli.

Hitler’s photographic memory also repeatedly stunned those around him. He was able to remember everything: figures, faces, complete details of weapons systems such as calibres and ranges, even the fleet calendar. 60He would again and again quote entire pages of books off by heart or whistle overtures from Wagner operas from memory. This particular faculty was said to be coupled with a fundamental disinterest in what others thought of him. But even the “threatening stare” typical of him, a striking insensitivity to pain, his ability to shed tears at will, his messianic zeal for his mission and his selective perception of reality, which was restricted only to himself and his preconceived, clichéd world view, is attributed by Koch-Hillebrecht to Hitler’s eidetic nature. What, at first glance looked like a defect, proved to be the possibility for the later politician of exerting his will ruthlessly regardless of any limitations of empathy, existing values and customary morals.

This thesis, to attribute certain properties by retrospective analysis to Hitler’s photographic memory, has been criticised as speculative. Associated with this criticism came the warning not to attribute the dictator, supposedly suffering from a personality disorder, with all responsibility for the wrongs. This is because this would then exonerate not only the masses hailing him but also the elite working for him from their guilt. Now as before one should bear in mind Hannah Arendt’s words from the “ Banality of Evil” : in 1963 with regard to Eichmann she had adjudged that psychological normality and the ability to commit mass murder, as they were found hand in hand amongst the national socialist perpetrators, did not exclude each other. That, with regard to the monstrous crimes “words fail and thinking founders” 61may well explain why there are continuously fresh attempts “just to get to grips with the phenomenon” – to use Sebastian Haffner’s words 62.

in prison at the fortress of Landsberg, February-November 1924: Hitler in the recreation room at the fortress with Emil Maurice, Hermann Kriebel, Rudolf Heß and Christian Weber. Such a cosy get-together was never to be the lot of prisoners under the control of the National Socialists.

When Hitler left the prison after less than one year in December 1924, he was determined to take the “path of legality” as this now seemed to him the only one that promised success. “Instead of achieving power by force of arms, we will get our foot in the door of the Reichstag to the annoyance of those in the centre and the Marxists. Even if it takes longer to outvote them than to shoot them, ultimately, their own constitution will guarantee us success.” 63 In view of this apparent reformation, the new Bavarian government was only too glad to fall for Hitler’s tale of the “tamed beast” . 64On 26 February the NSDAP could be re-established and its “Führer” once again loudly promote himself and his cause.

Weimar Republic

A colourful figure, even if a tragic one in equal measure, is the already mentioned Franz von Papen, Reich Chancellor from June until December 1932, and one of the most important puppet masters in the final phase of the Weimar Republic.

He was the source of the later to become famous sentence about Hitler’s role in the Hitler cabinet, which was formed afresh after the Reichstag elections on 30 January 1933: “In two months we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he squeaks.” 65 He was to be mistaken as, in the end, he and his right-wing conservative alliance comrades would be outmanoeuvred by every trick in the book. One cannot understand this explosive rise of Hitler’s if one does not look at the last years of the Weimar Republic. The Republic, considered from the start with mistrust, yes, even with contempt, had been shaken in 1923 by hyperinflation and in 1929 by the world economic crisis. With the New York stock exchange crash in October 1929 the whole house of cards that was American bonds collapsed. They had been building on quicksand. Difficult economic circumstances led to political unrest. There were repeated bloody clashes between demonstrators and the forces of law and order. Businesses went bankrupt, mass dismissals increased the army of the unemployed. The road to catastrophe had been taken. The reparation payments from the Treaty of Versailles initially envisaged a total of 112 billion gold marks with the Young plan. This roused indignation as generations of grandchildren and great-grandchildren would then have to go on paying this right up to 1988! The government under its Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning were faced with the entirely unsolvable task of consolidating the currency, which was currently running away under hyperinflation and, at the same time, balancing the budget deficit. Everything had completely gone off the rails. On 27 March 1930 Brüning entered office with the plan to implement his government’s will in a quasi semi-authoritarian way by means of emergency presidential ordinances. This meant that the Reichstag was no longer able to exert its own control function over him. Its fate was already on the cards – German democracy lay in its death throes. The novel “ Herrliche Zeiten “ [= Wonderful Times] envisaged someone whose party was able to secure for itself a considerable proportion of the votes with each fresh election. It was Joseph Goebbels. Just two years previously he had been sentenced to six weeks in prison 66because he had beaten up a pastor. As a member of parliament for the NSDAP he enjoyed immunity from 1928.