Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (71 page)

It was not only the faithful whom Hitler managed to put under his spell. “There won’t be anyone like him for quite some time,” Rudolf Hess wrote in 1924 while imprisoned in Landsberg, “a man who can sweep away both the most left-wing lathe operator and the right-wing government official in a single mass event.”
³⁸
Hess’s view was no exaggeration. Numerous contemporaries who rejected Hitler and his party struggled to resist the lure of Hitler’s overwhelming rhetoric—indeed, some succumbed to it. In his memoirs, the historian Golo Mann described the impression a Hitler speech made on him as a 19-year-old student in the autumn of 1928. “I had to steel myself against the energy and persuasive force of the speaker,” Mann wrote. “A Jewish friend of mine, whom I had brought along, was unable to resist. ‘He’s right,’ he whispered in my ear. How many times had I heard this phrase ‘He’s right’ uttered by listeners from whom I would have least expected it?”
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Hitler’s talent for persuasive oration gave him a hypnotic sway over crowds. Part of his secret was his unusually powerful and variable voice. “Those who only know Hitler from the events of later years, after he had mutated into an immoderately thundering dictator and demagogue at the microphone, have no idea what a flexible and mellifluous instrument his natural, non-amplified voice was in the early years of his political career,” noted Hanfstaengl.
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It was Hitler’s voice, at a speech in Weimar in March 1925, that won over Baldur von Schirach, later the Nazis’ Reich youth leader, at the age of 18. “It was a voice unlike any other I had heard from a public speaker,” Schirach recalled. “It was deep and rough, resonant as a cello. His accent, which we thought was Austrian but was actually Lower Bavarian, was alien to central Germany and compelled you to listen.”
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But Hitler was not only a gifted orator. He was also an extraordinarily talented actor. “Once, in a moment when he let his guard down, he called himself the greatest actor in Europe,” Krosigk recalled.
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That statement was one of the excessive flights of fancy to which the dictator became increasingly prone in his later years. Nonetheless, Hitler had an undeniable ability to don different masks to suit various occasions and to inhabit changing roles. “He could be a charming conversation partner who kissed women’s hands, a friendly uncle who gave children chocolate, or a man of the people who could shake the callused hands of farmers and artisans,” remarked Albert Krebs, the Gauleiter of Hamburg.
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When invited to the Bechstein and Bruckmann salons or to afternoon tea at the Schirachs’ in Weimar, he would play the upstanding, suit-and-tie-wearing bourgeois to fit in with such social settings. At NSDAP party conferences, he dressed in a brown shirt and cast himself as a prototypical street fighter who made no secret of his contempt for polite society.

Hitler adapted his speeches to people’s expectations. In front of the Reichstag, he talked like a wise statesman. When he spoke to a circle of industrialists he was a man of moderation. To women he was the good-humoured father who loved children, while in front of large crowds he was a fiery volcano. To his fellow party members he was the truest and bravest soldier who sacrificed himself and was therefore allowed to demand sacrifices of others.
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André François-Poncet, who witnessed Hitler’s various appearances at the Nuremberg rally in 1935, was impressed by the Führer’s ability to intuit the mood of each given audience. “He found the words and tone he needed for all of them,” the French ambassador remarked. “He ran the gamut from biting to melodramatic to intimate and lordly.”
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The man who succeeded François-Poncet in 1938, Robert Coulondre, was also surprised by the man he met at the Berghof retreat when he presented his letter of credence in November. “I was expecting a thundering Jove in his castle and what I got was a simple, gentle, possibly shy man in his country home,” Coulondre reported. “I had heard the rough, screaming, threatening and demanding voice of the Führer on the radio. Now I became acquainted with a Hitler who had a warm, calm, friendly and understanding voice. Which one is the true Hitler? Or are they both true?”
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As flexible as Hitler may have been in choosing from his repertoire of roles in response to various situations and demands, he was all the more stubborn as Reich chancellor in adhering to the ideological fixations that had become a coherent world view from the early 1920s. First and foremost in this outlook were his fanatic anti-Semitism, which saw the removal of Jews from German society as an absolute necessity, and his aggressive expansionism, which went far beyond mere revision of the Treaty of Versailles to include the central imperative of conquering “living space” in eastern Europe.

Still, when Hitler wanted to win someone over, he could turn on the charm. Albert Krebs described a typical scene in which Hitler greeted Count Ernst von Reventlow, a prominent member of a radical anti-Semitic and anti-Communist party, the DVFP, who had come over to the NSDAP in 1927. As Krebs recounted it, Hitler came rushing down the steps of the Nazi headquarters in Munich, gave Reventlow a two-handed handshake and greeted him as “My dear Count” with a slight quaver in his voice. “Everyone in attendance knew that Hitler’s real feelings about the count were anything but affectionate and benevolent,” a bemused Krebs remarked.
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Hitler was even able to fake affection for people whom he despised in reality. In 1931, he won over the second wife of deposed German emperor Wilhelm II to such an extent that she spoke of how charming he had been and how his mien and eyes had been “without a trace of falsehood.”
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Likewise in 1933, Hitler addressed Prince August Wilhelm, who helped win over members of the aristocracy to the Nazis, with a subservient “Your Imperial Majesty.”
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As soon as he had assumed power, Hitler quickly abandoned August Wilhelm—as well as any support he may have hinted at for a restoration of the monarchy. Indeed, he repeatedly expressed to Goebbels his utter contempt for the Hohenzollern family.
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If necessary Hitler could even cry at will. He did so at the melodramatic ceremony in August 1930 when the Berlin SA pledged its loyalty and on the morning of 30 January 1933 when he apologised to Theodor Duesterberg.
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Friends and foes alike saw him as a master of deception, which makes it so difficult to comprehend the essence of the man.
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“He had a form for expressing everything—agitation, moral outrage, sympathy, emotion, fidelity, condolence and respect,” wrote Ernst von Weizsäcker, state secretary at the German Foreign Ministry from 1938 to 1942, in his post-war memoirs.
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“Those who had not observed in other contexts what Hitler really thought about human rights and other higher principles could easily be taken in by his act.”
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Even Speer wrote that in retrospect he was “entirely unsure when and where Hitler was truly himself, independent of play-acted roles, tactical considerations and gleefully told lies.”
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Among Hitler’s skills was his ability to mimic people’s gestures and speech. He enjoyed entertaining his entourage by imitating Max Amann, who had lost his left arm and who spoke quickly and repetitively in Bavarian dialect. “You could just picture Amann shrugging his armless shoulder and frantically waving his right hand,” Christa Schroeder reported. Hitler’s caricature of Mathilde von Kemnitz, Erich Ludendorff’s second wife, was also a big hit. “Hitler peeled away the pious, philosophic, rationalist, erotic and other layers of this high-born woman until all that was left was an evil, pungent onion,” recalled Krebs.
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After Hitler visited Goebbels and his family in December 1936, the propaganda minister noted: “The Führer was very funny, ridiculing the pastors and princes. It was very refreshing. He imitated them one after another like a professional actor.”
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Nor was Hitler above parodying foreign leaders. After a visit by Mussolini to Berlin in September 1937, Speer recalled Hitler mocking Il Duce’s characteristic posturing: “His chin thrust forward, his legs spread and his right hand jammed on his hip, Hitler bellowed Italian or Italian-sounding words like
giovinezza
,
patria
,
victoria
,
macaroni
,
belleza
,
bel canto
and
basta
. Everyone around him made sure to laugh, and it was indeed very funny.”
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Hitler could imitate sounds as well as voices and typically enlivened his recollections of serving in the First World War with sound effects. “In order to depict the barrage of fire at the Battle of the Somme more vividly, he used a large repertoire of the firing, descent and impact noises made by French, English and German howitzers and mortars,” wrote Hanfstaengl, “the general impression of which he would vividly augment by imitating the hammering tack-tack of the machine guns.”
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In addition to his rhetorical and thespian skills, Hitler possessed a third great gift: a stupendous memory.
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Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler’s former regimental commander who became the Führer’s personal assistant in 1934, was astonished at the number of wartime details Hitler could recall that he himself had forgotten.
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Legendary and much feared by military leaders was Hitler’s head for numbers—whether they were the calibre, construction and range of firearms or the size, speed and armour of a warship.
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He knew the navy calendar, which he kept by his bedside, by heart.
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Indeed, from all indications he had a nearly photographic memory.
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He would not only recognise people, but recall when and where they had met, leading Christa Schroeder to wonder how so many facts could fit inside one human brain.
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The speed with which Hitler read was also an indication of his astonishing memory. “He could scan not just one but three or four lines at a time,” reported Otto Wagener. “Sometimes it looked as though he had only glanced at a paragraph or a whole article, and yet afterwards he knew what it contained.”
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Hitler could recite whole passages of Clausewitz or Schopenhauer, sometimes passing them off as thoughts of his own.
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He could also hum or whistle all the motifs in complex pieces of music like the prelude to Wagner’s
Meistersänger
.
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Hitler had never completed his basic education, let alone graduated from university, and he tried to catch up by reading the books he had missed out on in his youth. A typical autodidact, he delighted in showing off what he knew to the university-educated members of his entourage. The young Rudolf Hess was just one of the people who admired how much Hitler had taught himself. “No matter whether he speaks about the construction of streets, the future of the automobile as a means of mass transport, like in America, or the armaments on warships, you notice how deeply he’s studied things,” Hess gushed.
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“Where did he get all of that?” Wagener asked himself after being impressed by Hitler’s knowledge of geography and history.
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“He reads and knows a lot,” noted Goebbels. “A universal mind.”
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Of course, Hitler’s knowledge was just as unsystematic and incomplete as it was varied. He simply ignored whatever did not mesh with his world view. “He had no concept of knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” Karl Alexander von Müller wrote. “Everything he knew was thoroughly connected with some purpose, and at the heart of every purpose were Hitler himself and his political power.”
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The school drop-out never overcame his need to display his self-taught and carefully memorised selective knowledge. He was forever in search of others’ recognition and approval, and getting it made him “happy as a young boy,” as Hess observed in Landsberg in 1924 after praising some early passages of
Mein Kampf
. When in April 1927 the
Bochumer Zeitung
called Hitler “Germany’s best rhetorician,” his private secretary found him to be “all smiles.” It was, Hitler said, “the first time this had been acknowledged by a newspaper not associated with us.”
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Hitler may have projected exaggerated self-confidence in his public role as charismatic leader, but his feelings of inadequacy from early failures also ran deep. As a result he was very prickly when confronted with people who obviously knew more about a topic than he did.
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His antipathy towards intellectuals, professors and teachers was particularly pronounced. “The vast majority of people who consider themselves educated,” he fumed to Wagener in the early 1930s, “are a superficial demimonde, pretentious and arrogant bunglers, who don’t even realise how laughably amateurish they are.”
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Once, over lunch at the Reich Chancellery, he even proclaimed that in the future there would only be
one
book of any real significance, and that he himself would write it “after he retired.”
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Conversely, Hitler was visibly flattered when, in July 1932, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bonn announced a lecture entitled “Political Psychology as Practical Psychology in
Mein Kampf.”
Hitler spoke of his “great joy” that for the first time a university professor had used his book as the basis for a lecture.
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