Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (34 page)

How was “living space” to be conquered? In Chapter 4 of
Mein
Kampf
’s first volume, which criticised pre-1914 German foreign policy, Hitler wrote: “If one wants territory in Europe, it can more or less only happen to the detriment of Russia. The new Reich would have to march in the footsteps of the Teutonic Knights and conquer with the German sword the soil that the German plough would till in order to provide our people with their daily bread.”
¹⁰⁰
Hitler’s turn of phrase left no doubt that he believed any eastward expansion would require military action. Hitler was even more explicit in Chapter 14 of
Mein
Kampf
’s second volume, entitled “Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy,” in which he proclaimed the German people’s right “to an appropriate territory on this earth” as one of his central foreign-policy goals. “We will stop the eternal movement of the Germanic tribes to the south and west of Europe,” Hitler wrote, “and train our sights on land to the east. We will finally wind down the colonial and trade policies of the pre-war period and go over to a land policy for the future.”
¹⁰¹

Hitler envisioned such a war for living space as a relatively risk-free endeavour. He saw the Soviet Union as being in the hands of “Jewish Bolsheviks,” which in his logic meant that Russia’s racial foundation had been decisively weakened. “The gigantic empire to the east is ripe for collapse,” Hitler wrote. “And the end of Jewish domination in Russia will spell the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by destiny to bear witness to a catastrophe that will provide the most powerful confirmation of the accuracy of ethnic-popular racial theory.”
¹⁰²
This passage sets out and combines Hitler’s two most important goals: the destruction of “Jewish Bolshevism” and the conquest of “living space in the east.” Despite all the tactical flexibility and political manoeuvrability he was to show later in his career, Hitler always insisted on these two goals with dogmatic rigidity.

“It will always remain one of the great mysteries of the Third Reich,” wrote Victor Klemperer in
LTI
, his 1946 analysis of Nazi language, “how this book could have been disseminated throughout the public sphere, and how nonetheless Hitler achieved his twelve-year rule. The bible of National Socialism was in circulation years before his rise to power.”
¹⁰³
Indeed, in
Mein Kampf
, Hitler had spelled out with exemplary clarity everything he intended to do if he was ever given power. Did the people who voted for him and who cheered him on not read it? Historians have long assumed they did not.
¹⁰⁴
Many of them cite the anecdote which Otto Strasser told in his 1940 book
Hitler and I
. When at the party conference in Nuremberg in 1927 Strasser had admitted to a circle of party functionaries that he had not read all of
Mein Kampf
, but merely memorised some of the more striking sentences, he claimed that others, including his brother Gregor and Joseph Goebbels, acknowledged not having read it either.
¹⁰⁵
If that was the case among Hitler’s most immediate subordinates, must it not also be true for his millions of followers—not to mention the many people who were not involved in the NSDAP?

Historian Othmar Plöckinger, however, has dismissed the idea of
Mein Kampf
being an “unread bestseller” as a myth that in the early years after the Second World War helped Germans to justify and excuse their behaviour.
¹⁰⁶
When it appeared in 1925, the first volume of
Mein Kampf
attracted a broad, mostly negative reaction in the mainstream press. In the Berlin magazine
Das
Tagebuch
, liberal-left pundit Stefan Grossmann published an extensive review in which he questioned “the sanity of the author of these memoirs.” The liberal
Frankfurter Zeitung
newspaper opined that Hitler was “over and done with” after publishing his confession. On the other hand, the
Augsburger Neueste Nachrichten
called Hitler a “highly gifted man,” writing: “[He is] a true fighter for the convictions he has won in a life of struggle. Anyone who wants to get more closely acquainted with Hitler’s unique personality and to understand his actions should get hold of this book. Whether he sees it positively or critically, it is useful reading.”
¹⁰⁷
After the Nazis’ electoral successes in 1929 and 1930, many people apparently followed this advice. Not only did
Mein
Kampf
’s sales figures explode, but daily newspapers began mentioning the book more and more frequently. And by no means were the majority of the opinions as critical as the one published by Hellmut von Gerlach in the June 1932 issue of
Die
Weltbühne
. “Whoever has read Hitler’s autobiography
Mein Kampf
,” Gerlach wrote, “will ask himself in horror how a sadistic master of confusion could become the preferred leader of a good third of the German people.”
¹⁰⁸

By the early 1930s at the latest,
Mein Kampf
had established itself as the party bible. Of course, not everyone who received the book after 1936 as a wedding gift studied it in detail, but it must be assumed that convinced National Socialists read at least major parts of it. The fact that the book was borrowed relatively frequently from libraries in the first years of the Third Reich also speaks for a genuine popular interest in it.
¹⁰⁹

—

In late August 1924, Hitler was still convinced that he would be released once the first six months of his sentence were up on 1 October.
¹¹⁰
By mid-September, he was comparing prices for a car he intended to buy when he got out of prison. “The difficulty for me is that in case of my release on 1 October, I cannot expect any major revenue from my work before mid-December so that I see myself compelled to ask for some sort of advance or a loan,” the automotive enthusiast Hitler wrote to Jakob Werlin, the head of the Munich office of Benz & Cie (later Daimler-Benz), who had visited him in Landsberg.
¹¹¹

If the prison authorities had got their way, Hitler would indeed have been released at the first possible opportunity. Otto Leybold was a great fan of his famous inmate. “I can’t find any fault with him,” the prison director told Franz Hemmrich. “He’s an idealist…When I hear him, I could almost become a National Socialist myself.”
¹¹²
In a report he wrote on 15 September, Leybold praised Hitler as a “man of order and discipline.” He was “content, humble and eager to please,” someone who “did not make any demands” and was “at pains to accept the restrictions accompanying his incarceration.” Hitler had always behaved “politely and never in insulting form” towards prison employees. In Leybold’s opinion, Hitler had become “more mature and calmer” during his detention so that there was no reason to expect him to pose any further danger.
¹¹³

Munich Deputy Police President Friedrich Tenner was of a different opinion. After his release, Tenner protested, Hitler—who was “more than ever the soul of the movement”—would “resume his ruthless battle with the government and not shy away from breaking the law.”
¹¹⁴
The head prosecutor of Munich’s First District Court, Ludwig Stenglein, also came out against granting Hitler early release. Considering their behaviour during the trial and their incarceration, Stenglein objected, there was no sign that the convicts had given up their “state-threatening” views or would abide by the law in future. On 29 September, after Munich’s Third Criminal Division had nonetheless granted Hitler’s appeal for early release, state prosecutors filed an appeal to the Bavarian Supreme Court.
¹¹⁵
That ruled out Hitler being set free on 1 October, which turned the mood bleak among his supporters in Landsberg.
¹¹⁶

Hitler, however, did not seem particularly concerned. What bothered him more were considerations within the Bavarian government about whether he should be deported to Austria. In October 1924, the government sent a representative to Vienna to negotiate “Austria potentially taking over Hitler.” But the border control in Passau had already received instructions to deny Hitler entry to the country. The Austrian government stuck to its view that by “emigrating” to Bavaria and serving in the Bavarian army Hitler had forfeited his Austrian citizenship.
¹¹⁷
On 16 October, after being erroneously informed that he had been stripped of his Austrian citizenship, Hitler declared that he did not perceive this as a loss because he had never “felt like an Austrian citizen but rather always like a German.”
¹¹⁸
In early April 1925 he officially applied to be released from Austrian citizenship. The government in Vienna granted his request by the end of the month.
¹¹⁹
Hitler was henceforth stateless: he would not become a German citizen until 1932.

The Bavarian Supreme Court rejected the Munich prosecutors’ appeal on 6 October 1924. The latter made one final attempt to get permission for Hitler’s early release revoked, but when Leybold once again put in a good word for his model prisoner, the court ruled that Hitler should be let go on 20 December.
¹²⁰
The results of national elections on 7 December may have influenced that decision. The National Socialist Liberation Movement only polled 3 per cent of the vote, less than half of what it had got in May.
¹²¹
Ethnic right-wing radicalism seemed to have passed its zenith, and many people no longer saw it posing much of a threat. In this context, a well-to-do Munich woman petitioned Bavarian President Heinrich Held “to make peace with that most German of Germans, Adolf Hitler.” With the vote having gone against his party, the woman argued, there was no need to keep him behind “dungeon walls.” She added: “If the German people had twenty Hitlers, we’d be in a lot better shape today.”
¹²²

When he left Landsberg, Hitler asserted in February 1942, everyone from the director to the guards wept. “We won them all over,” he bragged.
¹²³
Gregor Strasser and Anton Drexler had come with a car, intending to chauffeur Hitler immediately to a meeting with Ludendorff. “The competition for him has started even earlier than I expected,” wrote Hess. “[Hitler] had no intention of going with them. He was outraged, saying that for the meantime he wanted to rest and nothing else.”
¹²⁴
Hitler’s relationship with Ludendorff had cooled noticeably during his incarceration. The party leader had not forgotten how the general had let Kahr, Lossow and Seisser “escape” on 8 November.
¹²⁵
He also resented Ludendorff not only for getting himself elected to the Reichstag but for taking the lead in efforts to merge the DVFP and the NSDAP. “Ludendorff had another think coming,” when Hitler was released, Hess wrote on 11 December. “He doesn’t know the Tribune at all!”
¹²⁶

Instead of going to meet Ludendorff, Hitler had himself picked up by Adolf Müller, the owner of the printing press used by Eher Verlag, and his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. Hoffmann took a shot of Hitler posing before the Landsberg city gate, which ran in numerous newspapers with the caption “Hitler leaves Landsberg.”
¹²⁷
Arriving back in Munich, he found his apartment in Thierschstrasse full of flowers and laurel wreaths. “My dog almost knocked me back down the stairs from sheer joy,” Hitler recalled.
¹²⁸
Three days later, Hitler paid his respects at the Bruckmanns’ salon on Karolinenplatz. “How nice it is here,” he was said to have remarked on seeing the splendour of the place, before writing in the Bruckmanns’ guestbook: “Whoever is broken by sorrow deserves no joy.”
¹²⁹
He spent Christmas with the Hanfstaengls, who had swapped their apartment in Gentzstrasse for a villa in Pienzenauerstrasse near the Herzogpark. “Please, Hanfstaengl, play me the
Liebestod
,” Hitler requested when he arrived at the house. The sound of Wagner’s music, Hanfstaengl recalled, dissolved Hitler’s tension: “He seemed relaxed, almost giddy, as he greeted my wife…He apologised again for what had happened in Uffing, hummed a funny melody for our daughter Hertha and couldn’t stop praising our new home.”
¹³⁰

A newsletter circulating among the local groups of the VB at the end of December 1924 greeted Hitler with the words: “The man of strong action and unwavering political goals has come back to us.”
¹³¹
But during the first few weeks after Christmas, Hitler refrained from involving himself in politics. He visited the inmates who remained behind in Landsberg and devoted himself to readying
Mein Kampf
for publication. “He had to run around a lot because of those left behind in Landsberg and because of his book,” a former fellow inmate from Munich recalled.
¹³²
Hitler was carefully checking out the terrain to avoid any missteps when he returned to the arena of politics. “Hitler is maintaining his icy silence,” the
Bayerischer Anzeiger
newspaper reported on 21 January 1925, “as well as the aloofness his supporters find so unnerving.”
¹³³