Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (6 page)

Alfred Zeisler was aware of what he considered a ‘strange relationship' between Hitler and Hoffmann, and was ‘under the impression' that Hoffmann supplied Hitler with pornographic pictures.
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When Heinrich Hoffmann's wife, Therese, died, the Hoffmann home became the scene of frequent parties, and at one such gathering Henny began to talk about her relationship with Hitler, whereupon Hoffmann flew into a rage and fell out with Hitler for a while. The relationship between Hitler and Henny was over.
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Hitler hardly seemed the type to be a playboy, and yet because he was rarely without a pretty young woman – sometimes two – to keep him company when it suited him, a playboy is exactly what he was, even if an unconventional playboy. Yet he was hardly a Lothario or a Casanova; he was not renowned as a lover. But despite being not far off middle age, he had no problem finding young women, and he soon had another one. He took an unusually personal interest in his niece Geli Raubal, daughter of his half-sister Angela. Allegations of a sexual relationship between them were made by Otto Strasser, a political enemy of Hitler, which cast doubt on the allegations for
some historians. It has never been established whether or not there was anything sexual between Hitler and Geli, but his attention towards her was anything other than normal. Hitler's father had married his cousin, and it might well have been in Hitler's nature to have believed that if it was acceptable for his father and, more importantly, mother to commit something close to incest, then it was acceptable for him to do so too.

Hitler's sexuality has never been conclusively defined. August Kubizek believed Hitler was repulsed by all sexual activity, especially homosexuality and masturbation.
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But Kubizek was judging only by his observations and couldn't have possibly known what Hitler did in private. Hitler was a voyeur and enjoyed the free pornography that Heinrich Hoffmann supplied. He liked to give the impression that women and sex meant little to him. Karl von Wiegand reported that he ‘has a profound contempt for the weakness in men for sex and the fools that it makes them'.
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Hitler was terrified of sexually transmitted diseases, and was horrified but fascinated by prostitution,
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which he saw as an almost exclusively Jewish crime.
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He preferred women who were submissive – women who were his inferiors. He had no respect for women and often said that if a man went astray it was the woman's fault. He regarded women as being responsible for any man's downfall, yet he believed in an idealistic form of love and marriage, but only if it was possible to find a loyal woman.
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He kept an unusually tight rein on Geli, never allowing her to associate with friends unless he or someone he trusted was near her at all times, and making sure she was accompanied on shopping excursions, to the movies and to the opera.

It might be that Hitler took his role as ‘uncle' far too seriously and thought of her almost as a daughter whom he had to protect. He didn't make her presence in his life a secret and often had her at his side in public, but whatever his true feelings for her, she gave her affections to Emil Maurice, a founding member of the SS and Hitler's chauffeur. Hitler dismissed him, but later rehired and even promoted him.

Maria Reiter must have been aware of Geli, if only because Hitler was proud to present her in public as his niece, but may have been ignorant of the intense nature of the uncle–niece union. When rumours began spreading about his affair with Maria, he feared he would be hurt politically, and in the summer of 1928 he told her it was over. She tried to kill herself by hanging, but her brother-in-law cut her down and saved her life.

In October 1929, Hitler met a pretty young woman who wanted to be an actress or a model, or just be swept off her feet by a knight in shining armour. Eva Braun, born 6 February 1912 in Munich, came from a respectable Bavarian Catholic family. Eva had an older sister, Ilse, and a younger sister, Margarete, who was always called Gretl.

Eva had the gift of getting her own way because ‘she was just too charming. She wrapped everyone round her little finger,' recalled Eva's cousin Gertraud Weisker. ‘It was easy for her to get through school without putting in much effort or doing particularly well.'
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Her dream, like many little girls, was to be carried off by a heroic white knight – in reality, she just wanted someone to take care of her.

She was educated at a
Lyceum
, which in Germany was comparable with the British grammar school or a prep school in the United States. As a teenager she wanted to be chic, to impress, and be the centre of attention. Her one goal in life was to be famous; she would achieve that, eventually becoming the most famous woman in Germany, but not in her lifetime. Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary in the Berlin bunker where he spent his final months, said that Eva believed ‘she would go down in history as the heroic loved one, the
Führer
's wife.'
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She spent a year at a business school in a convent where all the girls were imbued with Catholic finishing touches. She preferred acting to godliness, and thought it might be her road to fame. She had average grades and a talent for athletics. After graduating, she worked for several months as a receptionist at a medical office, then, at age seventeen, took a job as assistant and photographer's model for Heinrich Hoffmann.

In October 1929, at his studio in Munich, Hoffmann introduced her to Hitler. He was twenty-three years her senior. Hoffmann, thinking only of his business, played matchmaker, ‘pushing them together, serving Eva Braun up on a silver platter until Hitler took the bait,' said Hitler's caretaker Herbert Döhring.
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She frequented Hitler's regular inn, where he delivered monologues which she rarely understood, but she allowed herself to be captivated by him; he decided just how close he would allow her to get. ‘He had power over her. He exploited that power,' said Gertraud Weisker. Eva allowed herself to be exploited because she was beginning to see him as the white knight she had longed for, which must have enforced his own self-view that he was the white knight of Wagner's operas. The worlds of Hitler's fantasy and Braun's fantasy were colliding.

At times Hitler would declare that he was too old for Eva, and yet he always took a fancy to women young enough to be his daughters. But women, young or old, were the last thing on his mind. He had a career to build. To that end, he needed the help of someone who could be his agent, his publicist, his image maker, his confidant, his right arm, and above all, someone who idolised him to the point of making Hitler into what he most wanted to be: the undisputed, divinely appointed and anointed
Führer
. There was only one man in all Germany who would be born in Hitler's lifetime and possess all the necessary credentials and talent, and the fanatical dedication, to create an Adolf Hitler. His name was Paul Joseph Goebbels.

T
he first time Hitler met Göring was on 12 July 1925, at a rally in Weimar. Hearing Hitler speak, Goebbels wrote in his diary, ‘What a voice. What gestures, what passion. My heart stands still.' He managed to shake Hitler's hand; it was just a fleeting moment but it was a moment of revelation for Goebbels: ‘Now I know that he, who leads, is born to be the
Führer
. I am ready to sacrifice everything for this man.'
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Like any obsessed fan who buys the autobiography of their latest idol, Goebbels bought
Mein Kampf
, which had just been published. When he finished it, he asked himself, ‘Who is this man? Half plebeian, half God! Really Christ, or only John?'
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Paul Joseph Goebbels – born 29 October 1897 in the small town of Rheydt, some 15 miles west of Düsseldorf, to devout Catholic parents – had artistic aspirations of his own. He was, unlike Hitler, academically gifted, and studied history, literature, philosophy and art at universities in Freiburg, Würzburg, Munich and Heidelberg. Suffering from an infantile paralysis of the right foot – probably talipes, commonly known as clubfoot – he had spent his childhood largely in isolation from his peers, despite an attempt correct his foot by surgery in 1907: ‘Childhood from then on [was] pretty joyless. I could no longer join in the games of others. Became a solitary, lone wolf.'
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He enriched his life by reading avidly, and he interested himself in arts and music, so much so that his parents scrimped and saved to buy him a piano. He also began writing poems and plays, and in 1918 Goebbels wrote a verse drama,
Judas Iscariot
, in which Judas is portrayed as a hero.

During his years at university and after, Goebbels steeped
himself in German culture. His doctoral dissertation in 1921 was on a nineteenth-century writer, Wilhelm von Schütz, and in later years Goebbels would insist on being addressed as ‘Dr Goebbels'. He developed an intense nationalism as a young man, and came to believe in the idea of
Volksgemeinschaft
, or ‘people's community', uniting different social classes in a common national purpose.

His anti-Semitic views were enhanced through the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose writings about the superior Aryan race, specifically over the Jewish race, had also impressed Hitler. Goebbels believed he saw evidence of this in the arts, in the economy and in international relations. Having set his sights on becoming a writer, he completed three plays and an
autobiographical
novel,
Michael Voorman's Youth
, and succeeded in getting articles published in local newspapers.

His views of religion, art and philosophy were compounded by periods of depression, loneliness and poverty. All over Germany there were strikes, riots and social disorder in the wake of the war. Goebbels had no interest in any political party but developed an anti-capitalist position.

Goebbels did not have access to public radio, and he rarely went to the cinema.
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He believed that Russia represented the future, and he came to believe in the mystical folk communities he read about in Dostoyevsky, his favourite author; he also liked Goethe, Tolstoy and Gogol. Outside of Russian writers, he most admired Shakespeare, and knew several of the Bard's plays. He found little within German culture to inspire him apart from Gerhard Hauptmann and Thomas Mann.

He began seeing a young schoolteacher in Rheydt, Else Janke, who was considerably kind and patient to him, but to his horror, he discovered in 1923 that her mother was Jewish, tainting his feelings for her. And yet, he was unable to break up with her. His love for someone with Jewish blood tormented him endlessly.

Else gave him a notebook, which he began to use as a diary
and to reminiscence about his childhood and youth. He made his first entry on 17 October 1923, beginning the habit of a lifetime, revealing that he was totally enamoured of Else despite her Jewish ancestry: ‘You Beloved, you Goodness! You pick me up and always give me new courage, when I doubt myself. I cannot express what gratitude I owe you.'
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His feelings for her collided with his
anti-Semitism
, causing within him a tremendous conflict between his emotional and philosophical senses.

Biographers, such as Toby Thacker, have observed that his diaries were written in a literary and somewhat grandiose style, and that he wrote of himself as if he were a romantic hero at the centre of some titanic struggle. This image he had of himself is remarkably similar to that which Hitler also had, and although they had not yet met, they were destined to be soul mates when they eventually did. They shared a vision of nationalism, of anti-Semitism, and of themselves as artists – rather than politicians – engaged in some kind of romantic epic battle. They also reflected often on how they had had to overcome all kinds of adversity and economic deprivation, which in Goebbels's case had some justification, whereas with Hitler it was all a part of his image-building process.

Still believing his future was as a literary giant, he wrote a play in a fortnight,
Prometheus
. He then quickly wrote another,
The
Wanderer
, in which Christ returns to the earth to visit suffering mankind. Although he saw few films, he must have seen the 1916 film
Civilisation
in which that very thing happens; if cinema was not yet an inspiration for him, it was something to plagiarise.

On 12 December 1923, he sent
Prometheus
to the City Theatre in Düsseldorf and
The Wanderer
to a theatre in Cologne. Just a few days into 1924 he received rejection letters from the theatres in Cologne and Düsseldorf, and quickly sent the manuscripts on to theatres in Frankfurt and Duisburg. He went to work on a new novel,
Michael Voorman: The Destiny of a Man in Pages from His Diary
– not a sequel to his earlier novel, which was never published, but a reworking of it in which the central character was a combination of both himself and his one and only schoolboy friend,
Richard Flisges, who had fought in the war and returned wounded. In the book Voorman is a wounded war veteran who leaves student life to work as a miner, and finds a sense of belonging and faith among the common folk before dying a hero in a mining accident. Goebbels had consciously modelled Voorman on Christ,
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and was writing along the same lines as Wagner, even before knowing of Hitler and of his obsession with Wagnerian heroes destined to save others before meeting their own
Götterdämmerung
.

In February 1924 the name of Adolf Hitler reached him. Goebbels avidly read the newspaper reports of Hitler's trial for his part in the failed putsch of 1923 and his defiant speech in court. He wrote that in reading Hitler's speeches ‘I am allowing myself to be inspired by him and carried to the stars.'
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Goebbels began considering the National Socialist movement and what it believed on the matters of Christianity, the future of Germany, Communism and the Jewish question. In a sense, Goebbels seemed to have found his saviour outside of Catholicism. He had left his religious traditions behind, but had not lost faith in God altogether. He needed to find it again, and he had done so in Hitler.

‘Socialism and God,' wrote Goebbels. ‘Back to dedication and God!'
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He marvelled at ‘the Christ-like nature of this man'.
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With Goebbels as a future disciple, and perhaps the most faithful and loyal of all the disciples, it is no wonder or surprise that Hitler would promote himself from being the forerunner of Germany's saviour to becoming the actual saviour – to go from being John the Baptist to becoming Jesus Christ.

Hitler compared himself to the Biblical Jesus:

He identified not with Jesus Christ the Crucified but with Jesus the Furious who took a lash to the Jews who had defiled the temple in Jerusalem, as he saw the Jews now did to Berlin.

He succeeded in persuading his followers that he was a Christian, but added a new slant on the personality of Jesus:

His people spontaneously adopted a religious attitude towards him, and he accepted this Godlike role without hesitation or embarrassment. Whenever he was addressed with the salutation, ‘
Heil
Hitler, our Saviour', he bowed slightly at the compliment, and believed it.
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Over time he became more certain than ever that he really was the ‘chosen one', and conceived himself as a second Christ sent to institute in the world a new system of values based on brutality and violence. He was so in love with his own image and celebrity that he had himself surrounded with his own portraits.
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This led him to the conclusion that he had to become immortal to the German people, and so everything had to be huge as befitting a monument in his honour. Anything built during his reign, especially designed from his own drawings, had to be able to stand for at least a thousand years. His highways had to be known as ‘Hitler highways' and endure for longer periods of time than the Napoleonic roads. It became his obsession that he must stay alive in the minds of the German people for generations to come. To that end, he drew up extensive plans for his
own mausoleum, which would become the Mecca of Germany after his death, rising some 700 feet high. He declared, ‘My life shall not end in the mere form of death. It will, on the contrary, begin then.'
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To become the Germanic Messiah, Hitler needed a Joseph Goebbels, and Goebbels needed an Adolf Hitler to find his place in the world. He would become Hitler's own John the Baptist, and unlike Simon Peter or Judas Iscariot, Goebbels would remain faithful to the very last. He had become starstruck by Hitler: not by the personality, because he had not yet seen or heard Hitler, but by his words, and words were often enough for Goebbels, who had come to idolise Dostoyevsky almost as much as Hitler
idolised
Wagner. In time Goebbels would do whatever Hitler asked of him, even if it meant destroying the country to which they had both ostensibly dedicated themselves. But Hitler dedicated himself only to himself, and Goebbels dedicated himself only to Hitler. In a real sense, Hitler became Goebbels's religion. Hitler declared that Wagner was his God, and Goebbels declared that Hitler was ‘Christ-like'. Goebbels would become Hitler's top publicist, and without a fanatical disciple like Goebbels to promote, publicise and market the
Führer
, perhaps there might never have been a Hitler in his most complete form, and therefore no Second World War or Holocaust.

Inspired by Hitler and the National Socialist ideals, Goebbels believed that he could now perceive all that was wrong with German culture: ‘The Jewish spirit of decay is most terribly effective in German art and science, in theatre, music, literature, in schools, and in the press.' But he could not give up Else; ‘I love her more than ever … Else, I love you more than I had ever thought.'
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He was torn between his love for Else, who was of a race he despised, and his growing love for Hitler, and he tried to lose himself in reading and in revising
Michael Voorman: The Destiny of a Man in Pages from His Diary
, laboriously typing out several copies, four of which he sent to publishers.

With the
Reichstag
elections due in May 1924, Goebbels began attending meetings and getting into confrontations with Communists, having distanced himself from their philosophies. He had only a little experience of public speaking, giving lectures in schools, but he had his first chance to shine as an orator at small meetings of activists. He carefully wrote his speeches beforehand, highlighting the Jewish question.

Following the elections, Goebbels received rejections from all four publishers for his novel. He was short on money, but like Hitler, he had no intention of getting just any old job.

In mid-August he attended a meeting of the National Socialists in Weimar and for the first time experienced the excitement and grandeur of marching columns, flags, banners, swastikas and uniformed SA men singing. That weekend strengthened his resolve that ‘one should think of nothing else today, that Germany must again be free'.
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He decided his future lay in politics, and took every opportunity to speak at meetings, as well as writing articles for a publication called
Völkische Freiheit
(
Völkisch Freedom
). After speaking for an hour and a half at one meeting, he began to realise that he was able to command an audience.
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He landed the job of editing
Völkische Freiheit
, and Else volunteered to assist him with typing and secretarial duties. His reputation as a speaker grew, and by October he had built up an enthusiastic following of his own in nearby Elberfeld. He toured cities to deliver a series of speeches, and was soon considered the finest of all the National Socialist speakers with the exception of Hitler.
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