Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (27 page)
Read Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity Online
Authors: Michael Munn
Among other actors who were blacklisted was Willy Birgel, but only until 1947. Wolfgang Preiss was another. ‘I didn’t work in pictures after the war for a few years because all of us who worked in films in the Third Reich were banned. I did some theatre.’ From 1949 he worked as a voice actor, dubbing many English-language films into German; he returned to the screen in 1954, playing the role of Von Stauffenberg, the officer who tried to kill Hitler, in the film
Der 20. Juli
. ‘It was made by Alfred Weidenmann who had been also banned, until in 1954 he made in Germany
Canaris
Master
Spy
, which was anti-Nazi; and so he was allowed to work, and he gave me a part [in
Der 20. Juli
] which really began my career.’
525
Preiss enjoyed a long and successful career in international films, but is best remembered by English-speaking audiences for his roles in Second World War films such as
The Longest Day, The Train, Is Paris Burning? and A Bridge Too Far
.
The actors who faced just a ban were luckier than Heinrich George. He had been a star of silent films, such as Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
in 1927, and enjoyed continuing success with the advent of sound. Before the Nazi takeover he had been active in the Communist Party, but like many others he agreed to toe the Nazi Party line in order to work, and appeared in several blatant propaganda films including
Jud Süß
and
Kolberg
. He and his wife Berta Drews were imprisoned by the Soviet Army in June 1945, first in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, then in the Speziallager Nr. 7 Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. It had been used primarily by the Nazis for political prisoners from 1936 to May 1945, when the Russians took it over for their own purposes. Over 4,200 prisoners of the Soviet Union were forced to live in densely crowded conditions. Sanitation was horrific and nutrition wholly insufficient. Prisoners suffered from the cold in unheated conditions and were not supplied with blankets. Many internees fell ill or died. According to official Soviet information, 886 people died between July 1945 and October 1946, but it is estimated
elsewhere
that more than 3,000 people died. Their bodies were buried in bomb craters and in rubbish heaps near the camp.
Basis for internment was a 1945 Soviet order according to which spies, subversive elements, terrorists, NSDAP activists, members of the police and secret service, administration officials and other ‘hostile elements’ in Germany were arrested. It is believed that most of those who were arrested were marginally involved in the Nazi system, and some not at all. Unsubstantiated denunciations led to many arrests, as in the case of Heinrich George,
526
who died in the camp on 25 September 1946. The Soviets said he died from complications following an appendix operation, but there is
speculation that he starved to death.
527
In 1994, after the collapse of Communism and the removal of Soviet occupation troops from Germany, thousands of bodies were found in a forest near Sachsenhausen in unmarked graves, and one of them was identified as Heinrich George by comparing his DNA with his son’s. His remains were buried in the
Städtischer Friedhof Berlin-Zehlendorf
.
Winifred Wagner was brought to trial, and at her court hearing, her first statement was that she never slept with Hitler. Witnesses for and against her appeared, and ultimately the Chamber concluded that she had not benefited from the party, while stressing her
friendship
with the top party officials. She was sentenced to 450 days of special labour – picking bilberries in Warmensteinach – while 60 per cent of her assets were confiscated.
528
The Bayreuth Festival was revived without her; her two sons took it over, and most of the musicians and singers remained to continue performing Wagner. Winifred remained a devotee of Hitler, explaining, ‘We old Nazis invented a new code name after the war because we couldn’t talk about him in public. When we wanted to do that we called him “USA”. That stands for “
Unser
Seliger Adolf”
(Our blessed Adolf).’
529
She never lost her admiration – perhaps even love – for Hitler, and said in 1975, ‘If Hitler came in through the door today I’d be as happy as ever to see him and have him here. And everything that is dark about him, I know it exists, but it doesn’t for me.’
530
She never regretted her relationship with Hitler or being a Nazi. In her own way she kept alive the legend that still shone bright in the memories of hardcore Nazis, his muse to the last.
The glory that was Hitler’s Nazi Germany was a curse on
humanity
. It was fleeting, lasting just twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, barely a blink of an eye compared to the thousand years Hitler predicted the Third Reich would endure. Yet Hitler’s immortality is assured, but not the way he had hoped. Evil has its own cult of celebrity, and there can be few in history, or in the millennia to come, who can compare to Hitler; as a consequence of his obsession with his own celebrity, more than sixty million died.
He was not an evil genius – he never had a brilliant idea of his own in his life. He mostly gambled and won at moments in his life when he had no plan, merely an idea that he was being led by providence. In the end, he was defeated not only by overwhelming military might and brains, but by a life-long identity crisis – or, more correctly, a
multiple
identity crisis: artist, writer, architect, a new Wagner, a new Messiah, Emperor of a new Roman Empire, the bringer of the end of the gods. He was one step away from becoming God Himself; had Germany won the war, mankind would have been forcibly converted to his new vegetarian religion.
That Hitler was evil is without question; where evil comes from is debatable. Could Hitler have been any different? He was born with deficient genes as a result of intra-family procreation, creating mental and physical instabilities in some of the children of Alois and Klara Hitler. Socially deficient as a child, he sought friendship by trying to lead but where no one would follow. Sexually repressed, he discovered erotic relief in his relationship with the masses which became an addiction, and also in sadism and masochism. His adulation of Wagner and the extreme emotional effect of Wagner’s music upon him ignited his delusions, at first that he was the one who prepared the way for Wagner’s white knight, then, that he was the Messianic Knight himself. And behind it all was one simple and overwhelming dream – to be celebrated. If he couldn’t be an artist, he would be a celebrity any way he could.
He became a politician only because it served his cravings. He had no interest in serving his country, only his celebrity. He had no idea how to govern Germany, and thought it could be done through culture; by applying the arts, especially music and cinema, to Fascism, he thought to shape a people and a Europe to his image. Then he could be considered the supreme artist, greater even than Wagner.
As he began to earn plaudits, he basked in his small
growing
fame, and in his deluded sense of his divine importance he raised himself, with help from others equally deluded like Joseph Goebbels, onto the highest pedestal – the evolution of the Nazi
cult of celebrity. But it was all a performance, and he played out his life as though the world was his stage, or his own silver screen; no wonder film historian Eric Rentschler commented, ‘Hitler’s regime can be seen as a sustained cinematic event.’
531
He learned how to perform as Adolf Hitler in what must be the most terrifying and most convincing performance of pure evil there has ever been.
Is evil anything other than a form of abnormality? Hitler was born into abnormality, carrying genes that may have contributed in some part to his mentality, but that can never excuse the deaths of more than sixty million people for which he was responsible and can never be forgiven. The awful irony is that Hitler’s immortality has been assured by those millions. But he didn’t get the ending he wanted. His
Götterdämmerung
was merely smouldering remains; a more ignominious ending is hard to imagine for the man who dreamed he would bring about the Twilight of the Gods. I wonder whether, when he sat with Eva Braun in that room in the
Führer
bunker, about to end their lives, he thought to himself, ‘This isn’t how it was supposed to end’, like an actor finding himself in a scene he never imagined, demanding, ‘Where’s the writer? This wasn’t in the script.’ Goebbels, if he could, would have deleted that scene and, to complete his final cut of Hitler’s life, would have had the ending reshot – a flaming pyre high above the new city of Linz and the downfall of the other gods, the whole set to stirring strains of Wagner, which is how it all started.
1
Interview with Zeissler, Shofar FTP Archive File online. (Zeisler’s name was misspelt in the interview and in the title of the article, which is available to view online.) The story is one that emerged in 1943 from an interview the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) conducted with Alfred Zeisler; he had left Germany in 1935 to escape Nazism and was making an anti-Nazi film in Hollywood about Joseph Goebbels called
Enemy of the People
.
2
Curd Jürgens interview with MM, Pinewood Studios, 1976. Curd Jürgens (1915–1982), billed as ‘Curt Jürgens’ in English-speaking countries, was acknowledged as one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th century; among his most famous English-language films are
The Enemy Below
(1957),
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
(1958),
The Longest Day
(1962) and
The Spy Who Loved Me
(1977). Although he was born in Bavaria in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, he abandoned Germany and became an Austrian citizen in 1945 because he had been sent to a concentration camp for ‘political unreliables’ in 1944 due to his anti-Nazi opinions (an
experience
he refused to speak about when interviewed).
3
Interview with Zeissler, Shofar FTP Archive File online.
4
Walter C. Langer (1889-1981) was a psychoanalyst who drew up a psychoanalytical profile on Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services in which he predicted Hitler’s suicide was the ‘most plausible outcome’ among several possibilities identified. Langer also identified the possibility of a military coup against Hitler. Langer’s report was published in book form, with new material including a foreword, introduction and afterword, published as
The Mind of Adolf Hitler
.
5
Langer, Walter C.,
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report
, Meridian-New American Library, 1985, p. 88.
6
Interview with Zeissler; Shofar FTP Archive File online.
7
Langer, W. C., pp. 175–176; see also
The Hitler Source-Book
– interview with A. Zeissler, Hollywood, California, 24 June, 1943, p. 921; also Interview with Zeissler; Shofar FTP Archive File online.
8
Langer, W. C., p. 176.
9
Interview with Zeissler; Shofar FTP Archive File online.
10
Langer, W. C., p. 176.
11
Pope, Ernest R.,
Munich Playground
, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941, pp. 5–9.
12
Maser, Werner,
Hitler: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit
, Bechtle, 1971; trans.
Hitler: Legend, Myth & Reality
, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 110; also Jenks, William Alexander,
Vienna and the Young Hitler
, Columbia University Press, 1960, p. 14; Zoller, Albert,
Hitler privat: Erlebnisbericht seiner Geheimsekretärin
, Droste-Verlag, 1949, p. 58.
13
Kershaw, Ian,
Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris
, Penguin, 1999, p. 21. Sir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of twentieth-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich, and is regarded by many as one of the world’s leading experts on Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his monumental biography of Hitler.
14
Kubizek, August,
Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugendfreund
, Stocker, 1953, p. 195. August Kubizek (1888–1956) and Hitler shared a small room in Vienna in 1908. As the only son of a self-employed upholsterer, August was expected to take over his father’s business, but Hitler persuaded Kubizek’s father to let his son go to the metropolis to attend the conservatory. Kubizek completed his studies in 1912 and was hired as conductor of the orchestra in Marburg on the Drau, but his musical career was cut short by the beginning of WWI, and after the war he accepted a position as an official in the municipal
council
of Eferding. In 1933 he wrote to Hitler to congratulate him on having become Chancellor, and six months later received a reply. In 1938 Hitler offered Kubizek the conductorship of an orchestra, which Kubizek politely refused. Hitler insisted on financing the education of Kubizek’s three sons at the Anton Bruckner Conservatory in Linz. In 1938, Kubizek was hired by the Nazi Party to write two short propaganda booklets called
Reminiscences
about his youth with Hitler. Kubizek had avoided politics all his life but became a Nazi in 1942 as a gesture of loyalty to his friend, and after the war was arrested and imprisoned for sixteen months. In 1951, he published
Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund
.
15
Jenks, W. A., pp. 89–95.
16
Kubizek, A., p. 198.
17
Ibid., p. 83.
18
Ibid., p. 195.
19
Monologe
, pp. 25–26, p. 234, January, 1942 (trans).
20
Oechsner, Frederick,
This is the Enemy
, Little, Brown & Co., 1942, pp. 86–87.
21
Kershaw, I., p. 43.
22
Kubizek, A., pp. 106–109; also Jetzinger, Franz,
Hitlers Jugend
,
Europa-Verlag
, 1956, pp. 166–168.
23
Adorno, Theodor,
In Search of Wagner
, Verso Books, 2009, pp. 34–36.
24
Brando, Marlon, with Lindsey, Robert,
Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me
, Century, 1994, p. 218.
25
Langer, Walter, C.,
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report
, Meridian-New American Library, 1985, p. 100.
26
Smith, Bradley,
Adolf Hitler, His Family, Childhood and Youth
, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1967, p. 103.
27
Larry Solomon website; Larry Solomon is a musicologist.
28
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,
1850
29
see Wagner, Richard, ‘Prose Works’,
Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music
), 1850.
30
Wagner, Richard,
Art and Politics
Vol. 4, University of Nebraska Press, 1995, pp. 149–170.
31
Rose, Paul Lawrence,
Wagner, Race and Revolution
, Yale University Press, 1992, p. 71. Paul Lawrence Rose is a professor of European history and Mitrani Professor of Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University,
specialising
in the study of anti-Semitism, German history, European intellectual history and Jewish history.
32
Rauschning, Hermann,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, Europa-Verlag, 1940, p. 230. It should be noted that some historians have cast doubt on Hermann Rauschning’s account of his discussions with Hitler between 1932 and 1934. Shortly after Rauschning’s death in 1982, Swiss researcher Wolfgang Hänel declared that
Gespräche mit Hitler
, which is the original German title, was a fraud. Professor Ian Kershaw also dismisses Rauschning’s account, but other historians have not been convinced by Hänel’s research. David Redles
attacked Hänel’s method, which consisted of ‘pointing out similarities in phrasing of quotations from other individuals in Rauschning’s other books and those attributed to Hitler in
Voice of Destruction
(Rauschning). If the two are even remotely similar, Hänel concludes that the latter must be concoctions. However the similarities, which are mostly slight, could be for a number of reasons … [they] need not stem from forgery.’ (David Redles,
Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation
, New York University Press, 2005, p. 195.) Eberhard Jaeckel also concluded that, although Rauschning’s book cannot be regarded as a true verbatim account, it remains a good guide to Hitler’s world view from someone who conversed with him. Rauschning came ‘to the bitter conclusion that the Nazi regime represented anything other than the longed-for German revolution.’ (Phelan, p. 66.) Rauschning wrote several books, some of which are sourced by Joachim C. Fest in his 1973 book
Hitler
.
33
Rose, P. L.,
Wagner, Race and Revolution
, Yale University Press, 1992.
34
Zalampas, Sherree Owens,
Adolf Hitler: A Psychological Interpretation of His Views on Architecture, Art, and Music
, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990, p. 48.
35
Wagner, Richard,
My Life
, trans. Andrew Gray, Da Capo Press, 1992, p. 171.
36
Gutman, Robert W.,
Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind and His Music
, Harvest Books, 1990, p. 406.
37
Wagner, Cosima,
Diaries
, 19 December 1881, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, Collins, 1980.
38
Wagner, Richard,
Sämtliche Briefe
, 13 December 1834, eds Strobel & Wolf, Breitkopf and Härtel, 1987, p. 177.
39
Wagner, Richard & Liszt, Franz
Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt
, 18 April 1851, ed. F. Hueffer, Greenwood Press 1969.
40
Wagner, G.,
Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family’s Legacy
, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1997, p. 66.
41
Kubizek, A., pp. 98–101.
42
Langer, Walter C.,
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report
, Meridian-New American Library, 1985, p. 109.
43
Ibid., p. 114.
44
Ibid., p. 112.
45
Ibid., p. 116.
46
Ibid., pp. 111, 112.
47
ibid, p. 112.
48
Fest, Joachim C.,
Hitler
, trans. Winston, Richard & Clara, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p. 29. Joachim Clemens Fest (1926–2006) was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Hitler, and a major documentary,
Hitler – A Career.
49
Langer, Walter C.,
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report
, Meridian-New American Library, 1985, p. 119.
50
Ibid, p. 119.
51
Ibid, p. 159.
52
Hamann, Brigitte,
Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship
, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 176.
53
Fest, J. C., p. 34.
54
Hitler, Adolf,
Mein Kampf
, trans. Ralph Manheim, Sentry, 1943, p. 16.
55
Ibid., p. 19.
56
Fest, J. C., p. 44.
57
Hitler, A.,
Mein Kampf
, p. 20.
58
Fest, J. C., p. 46.
59
Fest, J. C., p. 48.
60
Zalampas, Sherree Owens,
Adolf Hitler: A Psychological Interpretation of His Views on Architecture, Art, and Music
, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990, p. 110.
61
Kubizek, August,
Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugendfreund
, Stocker, 1953, p. 195.
62
Waite, R. G. L.,
The Psychopathic God
, Basic Books, 1977, p. 113.
63
Kubizek, A., p. 75.
64
Hanisch, R.,
New Republic
, 5 April 1939, pp. 239–242, plus 12 April 1939, pp. 270–272, plus 19 April 1939, pp. 297–300; also Fest, p. 71. (Reinhold Hanisch published articles on Hitler, with whom he had lived in 1910.)
65
Kubizek, August,
Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugendfreund
, Stocker, 1953, p. 56.
66
Fest, J. C., p. 73.
67
Interview with Zeissler; Shofar FTP Archive File online.
68
Langer, Walter, C.,
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report
, Meridian-New American Library, 1985, p. 77.
69
Zalampas, Sherree Owens,
Adolf Hitler: A Psychological Interpretation of His Views on Architecture, Art, and Music
, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990, p. 110.
70
Hitler, Adolf,
Mein Kampf
, trans. Ralph Manheim, Sentry, 1943, p. 42.
71
Hitler, A.,
Mein Kampf
, as quoted by Langer, W. C., p. 55.
72
Fest, J. C., p. 71.
73
Fest, J. C., p. 80.
74
Fest, J. C., p. 169.
75
Fest, J. C., p. 171.
76
Hitler, A.,
Mein Kampf
, p. 355.
77
Fest, J. C., p. 177.
78
Langer, W. C., p. 155.
79
Rauschning, Hermann,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, Europa Verlag, 1940;
Voice of Destruction
, (US) G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940;
Hitler Speaks
, (UK) Thornton Butterworth, 1939, pp. 66–67.
80
Wiegand, Karl von, ‘Hitler Foresees His End’,
Cosmopolitan
, May 1939, p. 48.
81
Voigt, Frederick Augustus,
Unto Caesar
, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938, p. 261.
82
Curd Jürgens, interview with the author, Pinewood Studios, 1976.
83
‘Interview with Zeissler’, Hollywood, California, 24 June 1943; Shofar FTP Archive: people/h/hitler.adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-sb-zeissler (note: Zeisler is misspelled).
84
Hanfstaengl, Ernest,
Hitler: The Missing Years
, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1957, pp. 68 & 87; see Zalampas, S. O., p. 42.
