latest changes & additions at abelard.org link to document abstracts latest news headlines at abelard's news and comment zone      link to short briefings documents quotations at abelard.org, with source document where relevant interesting site links at abelard's news and comment zone about abelard and abelard.org
click for abelard's child education zone France zone at abelard.org - another France economics and money zone at abelard.org - government swindles and how to transfer money on the net   technology zone at abelard.org: how to survive and thrive on the web Energy - beyond fossil fuels Architectural wonders and joys at abelard.org Francis Galton - On the efficacy of prayer and other investigations

Introdution - socialism & sociology

site map

The psychology and development of
Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber

back to abelard's front page

'Y'

Psychological profiles:
Adolf/Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber - his psychology and development
Did Hitler know about the holocaust? A psychological assessment
Henry Ford, mechanical man
The psychology of Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin
The psychology of Georges Simenon and Jules Maigret, with reviews,

    psycho-logic

    sociology - the structure of analysing belief systems

    psycho-babble

Index
Introduction
Places and schooling
Map
Background
Anti-Semitism
Politician
Catholicism and fascism
Table of personnel
The NAZI (NSDAP) party
The 25 Points of Hitler's Nazi Party
Adolph through his own words
Quotations from some of Hitler’s contemporaries
References and endnotes

Bibliography

Introduction

Many books on Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber are unreliable. They reprint statements known to be untrue and they interpret facts to support dubious theories. I have read well over 50 books on the rise of Hitler, but have not tended to take notes. I think I have come to know him rather well. The main references I am using are merely recent books, which I have found interesting or convenient.

My intent is to let Hitler tell you who he is himself through his own words. This is supplemented by what I regard as the cogent experiences of his youth that shaped his perceptions. I am posting this document at my site to give information that is not normally emphasised or that is elided in pursuit of the grinding of various axes.

It is rare to find any author who can report Hitler without a panicky effort to tell the reader what a dreadful monster beyond any human comprehension is the subject or, alternatively, attempt to justify the fellow in pursuit of some new moronreich. Not withstanding this, I must declare that, following Churchill, I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.[1]

My objective is to focus on just who Hitler was, rather than upon the consequences of his acts in the context of his times. It is useful always to keep in mind that Hitler, despite the chaos that he perpetrated, failed monumentally in his prime intentions. Communism penetrated deep into Europe, including into Germany. Germany itself lay in ruins with up to 20 million Germans dead. Even Hitler’s bizarre obsession with ‘Jews’ precipitated the formation of a Jewish state for the first time in two millennia. Adolph’s sorry tale ends with him as a mental wreck, committing suicide in a deep hole in the ground where he had been hiding from those inferior Slavs.back to index

Background

Hitler’s father, Alois, was the ‘illegitimate’ son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber—she refused to name the father. This has led to much speculation, but the reality is that we have no certainty as to the father. Thus, Hitler was unable to produce the certificate of origin he required of every German citizen on hazard of death. The various rumours suggest as father of Alois: a Jew called Frankenberger, Johann Nepomuk Hüttler[1a], or one Trummelschlager who acted as godfather. Illegitimacy was widespread in the Waldviertel, now estimated at about 40%. The most persistent rumour is that his father was a Jew, possibly an itinerant trader, at Graz. What little ‘evidence’ there is, supports that rumour.

In 1877, at the age of 39, Alois Schicklgruber changed his name, effectively illegally, to Alois Hitler. It remains speculative whether ‘heil Schicklgruber’ would have resounded as far as ‘heil Hitler’. The name change was accepted by his employers. Alois was a fellow of unusual energy and, by becoming a customs officer, rose to the highest possible rank in the civil service available for his educational background.

In 1885, when Alois was 47, he was married for the third time to the already pregnant 25-year-old Klara Pölzl. A Vatican dispensation was first obtained, as she was officially his niece. It is unlikely that the dispensation would have been allowed if Klara had not been up the spout. Klara had become pregnant while Alois’s second wife Franziska Matzelberger was dying. He had pulled a similar trick with Franziska with regard to his first wife Anna Glassl. It is probable than at one time he was cavorting with all three concurrently. Adolph was born in 1889 as the third child of Alois and Klara, the first two children having died in infancy.

It is likely that Alois was violent to the mother and child, especially after his regular sessions down the local tavern, to the extent that Alois once feared that he had killed the boy. His mother, on the other hand, appears to have spoilt Adolph rotten and been incapable of disciplining him. What today would be regarded as a typical dysfunctional family.

Hitler is known to have delighted in shooting rats from his pre-teens[2]. He is recorded as thrashing a dog in order to impress a girl friend in 1926[3]. He revelled in the nickname ‘wolf’. He was renowned for his rages and his dogmatism.

If the father of Alois was Johann Nepomuk Hüttler, Alois had married his niece, for Klara was the grand-daughter of Hüttler. This would have given Adolph his grandfather on his father’s side and his great-grandfather on his mother’s side as one and the same person, i.e. Johann Nepomuk Hüttler.

Later Adolph in turn shacked up with his own niece, Geli Raubal. If they had produced a child, it is possible their progeny would have ended up with the same grandfather and great-grandfather in Alois Schicklgruber-Hitler and the same grandfather, great-grandfather and great great-grandfather in Johann Nepomuk Hüttler.

It is feasible that Adolph ended up murdering Geli[4], although it is usually reported as a suicide.

There is a considerable pseudo-Freudian literature attempting to link Hitler’s behaviour to a variety of unsupported sexual oddities. I regard it as scatological rather than useful. Hitler seems to have been comfortable with two categories of female relationships: motherly figures and girly young things. The Hanfstaengl family were one of several upper middle-class families who took Adolph under their wing. When Hitler ‘tried it on’ with the wife, she told her rather wet husband not to worry, “believe me, he is an absolute neuter, not a man”[5]. His relationships with the younger females were rather similar to his relationships with dogs: play with them ’til he got bored. In other words, Hitler never really grew up.back to index

New translation, the Magna Carta


advertising disclaimer

Places and schooling

map of Austria, showing locations connected with Hitler

Hitler was descended from a peasant society in the Waldviertel (‘forest quarter’) in the west of  lower Austria (lower Austria is the north-eastern area of Austria). The Waldviertel villages associated with Hitler’s family —Döllersheim, Strones, Spital and Wörnharts—are marked on the map.

Döllersheim, the birthplace of Hitler’s father and his grandmother’s burial place, was turned into an army training area and obliterated on Hitler’s orders. Strones was also obliterated by the 30 kilometre-wide training zone, which still exists (2000). It is thought that Hitler took this action in order to cover up his past, about which he was very paranoid.

As with isolated peasant societies around the world, the area was heavily inbred, with its share of genetic problems[6]. Hitler’s mother had a hunchbacked sister and a first cousin was likewise affected. Adolph’s sister Paula has been described as mentally defective, but that may be a little harsh[7].

Hitler was born at Braunau am Inn, in 1889. Hitler’s father, Alois, was often on the move as he was promoted, and Adolph naturally moved with his family.

In 1892 till early 1894, the family was at Passau in Bavaria, whence they moved to Linz in 1895, and then to Hafeld/Fischlham near Lambach. There, Adolph attended school at the Lambach Benedictine foundation between 1896 and 1898. In 1898, he moved to the primary school at Leonding, a suburb of Linz. Between 1900 and 1905, he was at the secondary school at Leonding. He managed to complete only three years, having repeated two of the years twice. He was then expelled, whence he went to school in Steyr before dropping out at 16 years old.

Hitler did badly in school, as is shown by his school records. Details to be found in Jetzinger. As is common with bright but ill-disciplined children, Hitler did well before secondary school but gradually, with his casual habits, found keeping up beyond his ability. It is clear from early written work that he left school semi-literate.

Jetzinger, an ex-Jesuit, made a business of collecting any documentation he could lay his hands on relating to Hitler’s early days. His associated writing is dedicated to rubbishing Hitler and is thus not very reliable; but the documentary sources are important. They show Hitler as a draft-dodger[8] in Austria, as a dole scrounger and fiddler. Jetzinger also suggested that Hitler was much better off than he claimed in Mein Kampf, but Jetzinger’s case on this point is now regarded as tainted.

On dropping out, Adolph set out to make his mark in Vienna. Hitler was a gauche young fellow from the sticks, abroad in the great melting pot of Vienna. He was full of dreams but greatly lacking in education, experience or any useful skills, serious money or contacts. His life gradually headed downhill to destitution. Hitler’s descent was eventually halted by entering the German army as a volunteer in 1914[9].

For something of the flavour of the time and place, Hitler’s Vienna by B. Hamann is a possibility. back to index

Anti-semitism

There is no evidence that Alois was an anti-Semite, nor is there any good evidence that Hitler showed any particular inclination in that direction until he became politically active. His claims to the contrary in Mein Kampf are probably false.

In my own view Hitler’s anti-Semitism stemmed from two main sources:

1

His observations of the use of anti-Semitism as an effective political tool[10] by local politicians such as Karl Lueger and Georg Ritter von Schönerer. Often, Hitler uses the word ‘jew’ as a general insult or expression of opposition, commonly identifying ‘jews’ with both ‘capitalism’ and ‘Marxism’ in the same sentence and elsewhere with three ‘vices’: democracy, pacifism and internationalism[11]. As Lueger used to put it, “I say who is a jew”[12]. Irving has even attempted to argue that Hitler was unaware of the ‘final solution’, this seems to be pressing imagination much too far. However that may be, it is clear that Hitler ran a very anarchic administration in which he set the parameters which all aspirants for approval and advancement strove to achieve. Functionaries attempted to meet the mind of Hitler, and that mind was constantly expressed in the most destructive and aggressive of terms toward ‘jews’. For my supplement on Hitler’s involvement in the holocaust see Did Hitler know about the holocaust? A psychological assessment.

2

His overwhelming hero worship of the rabidly anti-Semitic Wagner[13], in combination with the encouragement and flattery he took from attention paid to him by the Wagner family and other upper bourgeois families.

I do not believe his own later rationalisations in Mein Kampf, as they do not mesh with other evidence. I think that the effect of the fashionable anti-Semitism in early 20th century Vienna on the insecure young striver, as he struggled to gain acceptance among the upper echelons of society, turned Adolph’s head and gave him a means of rationalising his boiling resentments and forwarding his ambitions to ‘be someone’.

It is necessary to remember that Hitler swam in a sea of casual anti-Semitism in Vienna and among the ‘polite’ society in which he developed. As Germany steadily lost the First World War, so the population searched for rationalisations for their failure. Anti-Semitism was a handy, ‘fashionable’ and a widespread cultural affectation in Germany. Without civil strife and cultural anti-Semitism, Nazism was very marginal; only with both did it gain power. Hitler’s anti-Semitism only coalesced over a long period, the focus being given by the rabid writings of Ford .

Humans tend to do what works. German audiences responded to Hitler’s hysteria. Thus, the hysteria was reinforced by practical political ‘success’. Hitler could never have risen to power without fertile ground for his messages of rationalised ‘hatred’ and romanticised hubris.

The attacks upon ‘Jews’ enabled the vast appropriation of assets to pursue war aims and to reward cronies at various levels. These attacks also provided a ready source of slave labour. Much of the assets were laundered through the Swiss banking system[14].

Hitler’s anti-Semitism became muddled with ‘racism’. This he muddled further with simplistic ideas of survival of the fittest and Hobbesian ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. Where, like Saint-Simon, Marx saw a struggle between classes, Hitler saw a struggle between races.[14a] Both these viewpoints are essentially foolish and simplistic. Evolution works through the individual, not through groups. Survival operates essentially through individuals, not alone by ‘struggle’ but by the fortune of better adaptation. Das Kapital and Mein Kampf (My Struggle) were written after the Origin of Species, but in neither case do the authors adequately grasp the message of Darwin. Darwin’s message is too complex to enter into here in detail. See also Why Aristotelian logic does not work on this site. Dawkins’ Selfish Gene gives a useful popularisation, but even that is not sufficiently cautious.back to index

Politician

“The key to the world market has the shape of the sword.”
Hitler, between 1925-1933.[15]

Hitler’s career, at the latest from when writing Mein Kampf in 1925, was directed towards starting a war of expansionist conquest aimed at ‘German’ dominance. War was not an accident but deliberate and consistent policy. In Hitler’s world, ‘Jews’ were not ‘Germans’; he is reported to have said to a foreign visitor as late as 1932 that he had nothing against ‘decent’ ‘Jews’[16] (compare with [10]). His intention was a centralised ‘classless’ socialist state [17] fashioned as an instrument of aggression.

Hitler was a highly intelligent autodidact who rose from poverty. He shows all the weakness of the abused child, as well as the weaknesses of one raised among the petit bourgeois without adequate education. He became a mass-murderer in time, and exhibits a similar history and profile to the mass-murderers who have been studied in recent years: a binge of destruction followed by self-destruction.

Hitler was essentially an opportunist in the pursuit of power[18]. He had very little coherent political ‘philosophy’. His focus was upon power. In my view he is best seen as atavist, a throw-back to an earlier society: the ‘great conqueror’ and would-be builder of empire, not a modern pragmatic politician. In a sense, he was born out of his time. He was a brilliant stage performer who, in a later part of the century, might have ended as a pop singer or a successful salesman or businessman. Hitler is, as with us all, a child of his times. He is also an example of the professional politician—not primarily an ideas man, but an opportunist who will ‘read the polls’ and say whatever it takes to gain and stay in power.

Hitler is clearly a more complex and intelligent individual than the ‘run of the mill’ mass-murderer. However, he remains often a rather dull and sleazy character, like many a modern dictator or criminal gang leader; but he was a consummate politician and a very perceptive leader and manipulator. He is as often under estimated by those who fall over themselves to rubbish him as he is over estimated by neo-nazis.

Hitler’s administration has been credited with applying ‘Keynesian’-type solutions[19] to the chaos existing in Germany prior to his being raised to Chancellor[19a]; and this is probably a reasonable assessment. Hitler started his government during a low ebb in German economic fortunes. World-wide problems were aggravated in part by the foolish behaviour of the Allies after the First World War. Hitler probably gave confidence to the masses; but some believe recovery was already under way and that statistics were widely falsified (nothing new there!). However, Hitler had a major weapon that was not available in the United States (the other economy in greatest difficulties at the time): coercion. A useful analysis is available in Hitler’s economy.

The development of his political opportunism was learnt from observing local Austrian politicians such as Schönerer and Lueger. Details may be traced in Hamann and in The Man Who Invented The Third Reich[20].

Hitler's political method was described by Fest as threats of revolution on the one hand and promises of cooperation on the other [21].back to index

Catholicism and Fascism[22]

“The catholic church has spilt more blood than any other religion.”
Hitler, as reported by Reinhold Hanisch, circa 1910.[23]

“The enemies of National Socialism include not only the ‘jewish Marxists’ and the catholics but also certain elements of an incorrigible, stupid and reactionary bourgeoisie.”
Speech by Hitler, 1 April 1933.[24]

Hitler and his prime revolutionary conspirators had their attitudes formed by catholic teaching. Authoritarianism is at the very core of the Church of Rome, so it is hardly surprising that such an attitude permeated the perspective of catholic politicians. The mixture of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism generated an explosive mix in Hitler’s Germany. The Church has long been intolerant of any deviation from the party line and millions have paid for dissent with their lives. That intolerance and ‘certainty’ is inculcated from childhood and the child is encouraged to utter obedience. The demand for unquestioning obedience leaves the young adult adrift without useful independence of mind. There is little ability to ‘think for oneself’, leaving a yearning for authority and a fear of freedom or responsibility. It becomes a small step to find willing hands to follow any pogrom or crusade.

Jews are the historic scapegoats of the Catholic Church. Catholicism is a Jewish schism. As is widespread with schisms, bitterness is common. WW1 and WW2 were much about rivalries between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, another long-term religious schism. Both forms of christianism make scapegoats of Jews.

There are also echoes of the feudal quarrels that have been common down the centuries, particularly in the case of the first World War. Trade rivalries also played a part, as modern industrial Europe developed on the back of imperialistic ambition.

In 1918, the powerful industrialist Henry Ford, rich on the development of motor car mass-production, bought a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. In it he published a series of scurrilous attacks on ‘jews’. These were published in 1920, in book form, as The International Jew, which was published around the world in many languages. He blamed ‘the international jew’ for financing the war. In 1927, Ford formally retracted his attacks and sold the paper. Ford’s articles are effectively repeated in Mein Kampf, published in 1925–6. Ford was also involved in financing Hitler.[25]

Mein Kampf was considerably written/edited by a Catholic priest
Hitler was raised as a catholic. He dreamt of being an abbot when he was young.

Hitler was forever studying the hierarchy of the Jesuit organisation.[26]

Himmler, head of the SS, was catholic. The SS was set up on the Jesuit model.
Goebbels was catholic.
Hoss, the camp commandant of Auschwitz, was catholic.
Frank,‘the butcher of Poland’, was catholic.

Mussolini was catholic. Franco was catholic. Salazar was catholic. The worst dictatorships and greatest social inequalities in South America are under catholic administrations.

The Catholic Church is implicated in both the first and second World Wars. The part played by cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius 12th, is well analysed in Hitler’s Pope[27]. Pacelli systematically undermined the powerful catholic Centre Party[28] negotiating them out of political action in accord with Hitler’s wishes. The Centre Party, which had been important in resisting Bismarck, was thus neutralised. The foolishness was forwarded in particular by Papen, Centre Party deputy and Weimar Chancellor; and by Kaas, who was a priest, Centre Party leader, and a Centre Party representative in the Weimar government.

A series of Weimar government leaders (Chancellors), who steadily centralised power, paved the way for Hitler’s eventual power grab.

Many of the top ‘philosophy’ and theology posts at Oxford and Cambridge have been held by catholics. Most of the British establishment come via Oxford and Cambridge, hence much of that which is ‘inconvenient’ is often not emphasised in academic writing. The Catholic Church has garnered considerable experience through the rewriting history for much of the last 2000 years. See also Heresies, authority, quarrels and words on this site.

The first ‘state’ to recognise Hitler’s third Reich was the Vatican.

marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page 

Hitler became a vegetarian and a teetotaller; he also did not smoke. He loved animals and doted on young children. Such a pattern is common among the NSDAP hierarchy. Himmler was a violent opponent of hunting.[29] Many were proud ‘family men’. The more one comprehends the criminal NSDAP state, the more one is struck by what Arendt termed ‘the banality of evil’.back to index

Table of personnel

NAME

RELIGION

POSITION

ACTIVITY

ENDED

Adolph Hitler
(or should that be Schicklgruber, or
Frankenberger, or
Trummelschlager?)

1889 – 1945

Catholic
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Ambition as a child to be an abbot

Head of State

Looked to Jesuits as organisational model for NSDAP
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page 1908 – listed as sexual pervert by police. [29a]
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page 1924 – said by governor 
of Landsberg to “be not attracted to the female sex” [29b]

Suicide

Heinrich Himmler
1900 – 1945

Catholic

Head of SS

SS was set up on model of Jesuits

Suicide

Joseph Goebbels
1897 – 1945

Catholic
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Commended for religious fervour by teacher[30]

Head of propaganda  

Suicide with wife after killing their 6 children

Hermann Göring
1893 – 1946

 

Deputy

 

Suicide

Hans Frank
1900 – 1946

Catholic

‘Butcher of Poland’ 

 

Nuremberg:
Judicial murder

Rudolph Hoss
1900 – 1947

Catholic.
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page His father vowed Rudolph would be
a priest[31]

Auschwitz concentration camp commandant  

Polish court:
Judicial murder

Franz Jetzinger

  

Austrian politician
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Collector of Hitler documentation.

Denigrator of Schicklgruber
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Interviewed by Gestapo, trying to get their hands on documentation about Hitler's early life, at the invasion of Austria. Jetzinger ‘found’ the documents at the end of the war.

 

Sources for Mein Kampf

Henry Ford
1863 – 1947

Catholic[31a]

American motor manufacturer

In 1918 bought The Dearborn Independent paper, and in it published a series of scurrilous attacks on the ‘International Jew,’ a mythical figure he blamed for financing war.
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Much of his ramblings are repeated in Mein Kampf

 

Bernard Staempfle
(a.k.a. Stempfle)
? – 1934

Jesuit priest

 

Important contributor to writing Mein Kampf

Found murdered during purge known as ‘the Night of the Long Knives’, 30 June 1934 [20a]

Haushofer
1869 – 1946

 

Geopolitics ‘professor’

Advocate of lebensraum
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Tutor to Hess
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Regular visitor to Landsberg
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Wanted league with Japan.

Suicide with wife (who was of Jewish extraction), while under investigation for war crimes

Moeller van den Bruck
1876 – 1925

 

Writer

Advocate of Third Reich
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page 1923 – Published The Third Reich[20]

Suicide
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Said to be related to disgust at the result of his writing. More likely due to syphilis

Gottfried Feder
1883 – 1941

 

Economist

Involved in interesting Hitler in Drexler’s[32] party that became NSDAP
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page A Hitler devotee
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Regarded by Hitler as his economic guru and with some rather inchoate economic theory regarding interest ‘slavery’

 

Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels
(‘Real’ name Adolph Lanz)

Former catholic (Cistercian) monk

Editor of Ostara magazine, widely thought to be a source for Adolph
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page A guru of Aryan-German superiority

Violently anti- Semitic.
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page From a Jewish background on his mother’s side
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page He also became anti -Rome

 

Georg Ritter von Schönerer
1842 – 1921

 

Austrian politician

Called himself ‘führer’ and had the greeting ‘heil’ Kershaw [32a]
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Anti-democratic nationalist anti-Semite
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Hitler criticised his anti-Catholicism

 

Karl Lueger
1844 – 1910

Catholic

Austrian politician
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page Vienna mayor 1897 [32b]

Anti-Semite, much admired by Adolph

 

Close female friends

Geli Raubel
1908 – 1931

 

Adolph’s niece.

Lived together with Hitler for 4 to 6 years

Possible suicide
marker on the psychology of Adolph Hitler Schicklegruber page May well have been murdered by Adolph

Eva Braun
1912 – 1945

 

Adolph’s girlfriend, then wife for less than a day

 

Suicide with Adolph

Unity Valkyrie Mitford
1914 – 1948

 

British upper classes, sister of Nancy Mitford

 

Shot herself on the day Germany and England went to war, using a pistol of unknown origin, possibly given to her previously as a present by Hitler. Considerable brain-damage resulted.

back to index

The NAZI (NSDAP) party

Full title:
National Socialist German Workers’ Party
or
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP),
widely called the Nazi Party.

Source of Nazi Party’s name:
Drexler’s [32] German Workers’ Party

The name was changed, adding right-wing National and left-wing socialist, just to make sure as the Party founders tried to appeal to various factions of discontent.

A Party slogan:
National Socialism is the opposite of what exists today.
Fest, p.63

“It makes no difference whether they laugh at us or revile us, whether they represent us as clowns or criminals; the main thing is that they mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and again. Hitler, 1920 Kershaw, p.147back to index

The 25 Points of Hitler's Nazi Party[33]

What we now call a party manifesto.[34]

1 We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.
2 We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles[35] and St. Germain[36] shall be abrogated.
3 We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.
4 Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.
5 Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.
6 The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.

We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favour of the party without regard to character and fitness.

7 We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
8 Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.
9 All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.
10 The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.

Therefore we demand:

11 That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12 Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13 We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14 We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15 We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16 We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalisation of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small trades people, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17 We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation[37] of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18 We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.
19 We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.
20 In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
21 The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centres, by prohibiting juvenile labour, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
22 We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.
23

We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:

(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.

(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.

(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.

Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.

24

We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

 
25

In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.

The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.

The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives. back to index

Adolph through his own words

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”
Sir Winston Churchill,  1930 

My intention is to produce here the actual expressions of Hitler without added rhetoric. I am quite content to rely upon the reality that any half-sane reader is more than able to judge the undesirability of the appalling destruction generated by the criminal NSDAP regime.
It is surprising to me that, as far as I am aware, there is no useful collection of quotations from Hitler.

“Neither threats nor warnings will prevent me from going my way. I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker. My destination is the peace rooted in the equal rights of the nations.”[Munich, 14 March 1936]
Domarus, [38]

“If twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas, just as hundreds of thousands of our best German workers from every social stratum and from every trade and calling had to face it in the field, then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain.”
Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.373-374 [39]

Many of the quotations which follow are from Fest.
Fest is very interesting as he produces journalistic sketches of the leading cast of the NSDAP. He writes with much rhetoric as he denigrates Hitler.
(Sources given by Fest are shown in brackets following source in Fest.)

“The idea of struggle is as old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle. In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.”
Fest, p.27 (Speech at Kulmbach on 5 February 1928, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny)
I include this quote as a typical exemplar of the mundane nature of Adolph’s education and thinking. There is a surfeit of such among his words.
He also had strange ideas confusing ‘blood’ of a ‘nation’ with genetics. Such confusions are still common among the ignorant.
Elsewhere, he said “I think I am one of the most musical people in the world”. 
7 September 1932; Ward Price, G; I know these dictators; London, 1938; p.20 (quoted in Domaras)

“The chief function (of propaganda) is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind ... The success of any advertisement, whether of a business or a political nature, depends upon the consistency and perseverance with which it is employed.”
Fest, p.39 (Kubizek)

“I am ready to swear six false oaths every day.”
Fest, p.52  (Rauschning)

“My time in prison was my university at the expense of the state.”
Fest, p.53  (Frank. See also Kershaw, p.240)

“If I had any inkling in 1924 that I should become Reich chancellor I would never have written Mein Kampf.”
Fest, p.54  (Frank)

Marxism ... denies individual worth ... and replaces [it] by numerical mass.”
Fest, p.55  (Mein Kampf)

“The media fabricates more than two thirds of public opinion from which the foam of the parliamentary Aphrodite rises.”
 Fest, p.56  (Fest gives no source)

“I lead the movement alone, and no one shall set me conditions so long as I personally bear the responsibility.”
Fest, p.59  (Quoted by Heiden)

“When I resume active work it will be necessary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve power by an armed coup we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own constitution! Any lawful process is slow. But sooner or later we shall have a majority – and after that Germany.” [While in Landsberg prison.]
Fest, p.60 (Lüdecke)

“The masses are like an animal that obeys instincts.”[40]
Fest, p.64  (Mein Kampf)

“The masses of our people, whose sheepish docility corresponds to their want of intelligence.”
Mein Kampf, p.335

“These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human frailties and must lead to success,  with almost mathematical certainty.”
[An attitude typical of the psychopath] [41]]
Mein Kampf, p.34

“Only the fanaticised masses can be guided.” 
Fest, p.65  (Fest gives no source)

“Once in power I will never let power be taken from me.”  
Fest, p.68  (Fest gives no source)

“The NASDAP Party must not serve the masses, but rather dominate them.”
Mein Kampf, p.260

“What luck for the rulers that men do not think.”
Fest, p.70  (Fest gives no source)

“This is the miracle of our age, that you have found me, that you have found me among so many millions! And that I have found you, that is Germany’s good fortune!”
Fest, p.70  (Fest gives no source)

“Human solidarity is imposed upon men by force and can be maintained only by the same means.”
Fest, p.71  (Picker, entry for 11 April, 1942)

“No country was ever ruined by its debts.”
Fest, p.76  (Picker, entry for 4 May, 1942)

To his lawyer: “Let us test the power of the law against my bayonet.”
Fest, p.79  (Fest gives no source)

“There can therefore be but one slogan: Victory! If we win, the billions we have spent will weigh nothing in the scales.”
Fest, p.82  (Picker, entry for 12 April, 1942)

“Morality is stupidity or decadence.”

“Everlasting peace will come to the world when the last man has slain the last but one.”
Frank

“I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory.”
Speech, 1939

“Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The strongest man is right.”
Record of the address to the commanders of the Wehrmacht on 22 August 1939, the so-called second speech
Nuremberg trial proceedings, XXVI, 1014–PS

“I am Europe’s greatest actor.”
Fest, p.84  (Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Es Jessica in Designata.)

On watching the silent crowds during a military parade in Berlin during the Student crisis, 1938:
“I can’t wage war with this nation yet.”
Fest, p.86  (Remark recorded by Walter Heel, in Cordite, Rich, Night as den Alkane. Die Williamsport in Fried en fund Craig. Earliness, Begetting fund Indrawn 1928 – 1945, Stuttgart, 1950)

“Cities will become heaps of ruins; noble monuments will disappear forever. This time our sacred soil will not be spared. But I am not afraid of this.”[Pre war]
Fest, p.87  (Rauschning )

“The Führer is the supreme judge of the nation….there is no position in the area of constitutional law in the third Reich independent of this elemental will of the Führer.”
J. Noakes and G Pridham (editors),  volume 2: State, Economy and Society 1933 – 1939, a documentary reader 

 “National socialism derives from each of two camps the pure idea that characterises it:
National resolution from bourgeois tradition;
vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.” [January, 1934]

Schoenbaum,  p.57

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
Toland (Speech of May 1, 1927), 1976, p. 306 Adolf Hitler : The Definitive Biography

"Money is filth."
In the thick of the fight, 1930-1945 by Paul Reyaud (translated)

back to index

Quotations from some of Hitler’s contemporaries

Papen
On being questioned about the wisdom of appointing Hitler chancellor:
“We have hired him.
Fest, p.70  (Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Es Jessica in Designata.)

Gregor Strasser apparently had similar illusions. [26]

Goebbels
“Power has to be conquered with power.”
Fest, p.69

Göring
“I have no conscience, Adolph Hitler is my conscience.”

“Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.” (attributed)

“Guns will make us powerful, butter will only make us fat. ”[1936]
Attribution disputed. Also attributed to Hess[42].
Göring was enormously fat by the end of the war.

“Not a single bomb will fall on Germany. If an enemy plane reaches Germany, my name is not Hermann Goring, you can call me Meier.
[On 9 August, 1939:  Hermann Göring boasting about the strength of the German Luftwaffe.]
Göring was probably named Hermann after his ‘jewish’ godfather, who was also his mother’s lover.[43]back to index

references

The Fest series of personal sketches of actors in the third Reich, written in 1963, is highly instructive background. To an extent, I regard this document on Hitler as a supplement to Fest. Perhaps the Fest sketches were written too closely after the events.

Ian  Kershaw, Hitler: 1889 – 1936 Hubris
Recent, sober and generally reliable. Recommended for any general reader seeking a solid readable introduction. A second volume is probably planned. As the events move into history, such more sober treatments increase.
Hitler 1936 – 1945: Nemesis

http://kevin.davnet.org/essays/hitler.html
This is an interesting summary under the heading, “Was Hitler a Christian?”. The article attempts to show that he was not. It is a strange question to ask, in my view, but I do not think it is answered in the document. In fact, I regard the question as unanswerable. However, the document remains very useful.
A tightly reasoned document taking an opposing view can be found at
http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm

A couple of small related items at abelard.org on the remains of Hitler's personal library,
and a reference to his personal tax problems.back to index


return to abelard.org main site news and comment at abelard.org documents on alternative energies documents on alternative energies Japan zone sum will set you free art gallery the web pilot - mastering the Internet short briefings documents on energy and society Link to abelard.org's RSS newsfeed

endnotes

1 Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 7 July 1927, in answer to complaints of bias in his editing of the British Gazette during the General Strike.
1a Hüttler, Hiedler and Hitler were alternative spellings at a time before spellings were standardised.
2 Reported in Hayman, p.15
3 Kershaw, p.284
4 For a rather speculative but interesting analysis of this relationship, see R Hayman
5 Kershaw, p.187
6 In Britain before the invention of the bicycle, it was reckoned that the average couple lived about 3 miles apart. With the widespread use of the bicycle, that figure rose to 6 miles. There are still pockets in the British countryside where the effects of inbreeding are still apparent, e.g. valleys in north Wales. Much of the increase in stature this century has been attributed to outbreeding.
7 Hitler’s mother Klara, had 6 children, 3 died in infancy and another at 6 years of age.
8 It may be argued that his reasons were related to strongly negative feelings concerning Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Austria. It is clear that he welcomed military service on behalf of Germany in World War 1, in which he served with enthusiasm and bravery.
9 As an Austrian he was not eligible but this was missed in the chaos of the time.
10 “The art of all popular leaders, consisted at all times in concentrating the attention of the masses on a single enemy.” [Speech by Hitler, 25 February 1925.]
 Kershaw,  p.266, quoted from Hitler. Red en, Scarfskin, Anordnungen 
Despite the outrageous vituperation expressed in Mein Kampf, at a speech in Munich, 24 February 1928, Hitler said
“The Jew would have to be shown that we are the bosses here; if he behaves well, he can stay, if not out with him.”
Kershaw, p.290
11 Kershaw, p.89, quoted from Hitler. Red en, Scarfskin, Anordnungen 
12 Kershaw, p.34
13 Richard Wagner, composer
14 A readable and informative piece of ‘faction’ on this subject is The Swiss Account by ex-international banker and economist, Paul Erdman.
14a

Hitler’s ‘ideas’ on race were drawn from his reading of pseudo-scientists such as Fritz Lenz. For an outline and references see:
Tucker, especially pp. 110 - 132

15 Kershaw, p 309, quoted from Hitler. Red en, Scarfskin, Anordnungen  
16 Schoenbaum, p.29
17 Any who doubt the socialist credentials of Hitler’s designs may refer to
Schoenbaum, for instance, chapter 2: ‘The Third Reich and its Social Ideology’;
and to
Overy, chapter 3: ‘Goering and the German economy’.
18 It is wrong to think of the NSDAP state as a mere centralised expression of Hitler’s will. It was in reality a series of fiefs, battling for power and influence, in accord with Hitler’s concepts of survival of the fittest. Germany was anarchic, with King Hitler presiding as a sort of capricious  red queen (Alice through the looking glass). The state was a toy for a spoilt child.
19 See the very useful review of ‘Keynesianism’ at http://www.digiweb.com/igeldard/LA/economic/keynes.txt [currently unavailable]
(About 19 pages of A4)
19a German equivalent of British prime minister
20 S. Lauryssens, The Man Who Invented The Third Reich.
Interesting but highly unreliable in details.
20a Die Nacht der langen Messer. Hitler, using SS forces, instigated a 'blood purge' of the SA leadership, with dozens of SA leaders summarily executed. After this, the SA no longer played a major political role in Nazi affairs. 
21 Fest, p.67
22 It is also of interest that Joseph Stalin was born on 21 December (9 December, old style), 1879, as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus, then an imperial Russian colony. Stalin had a drunken father who savagely beat his son. He studied at the Tiflis Theological Seminary. His doting mother, a devout washerwoman, had dreamed of her son becoming a priest.
23 Hamann, p. 250.
24 Schoenbaum,  p.65.
25 The financing of the rise of Hitler is chronicled in Who Financed Hitler by J. Pool and S. Pool. This source also lists the support of Rothermere from 1930 onward, owner of the Daily Mail newspaper, and the support of many other industrialists.
25a
Hitler was not 'wildly popular'.
6th November, 1932
Hitler received a fraction over 33% of the vote. This was the last free election in National Socialist Germany.
This result was about 4% lower than the 31st July, 1932 election.

5th March, 1933
Hitler held another election after taking power, in an attempt to consolidate his power.
"Despite achieving a better result than in the November 1932 election, the Nazis did not do as well as Hitler had hoped. In spite of massive violence and intimidation, the Nazis won only 43.9% of the vote, rather than the majority that he had expected."

By 1934, Hitler had so cowed the population that he was able to achieve 90%, or 80% of the eligible vote

19th August, 1934, New York Times
"A feature of the election was that former Marxists cast a far heavier vote for Chancellor Hitler than the so-called bourgeoisie. In Berlin especially, judging by their vote, former Communists still are Leader Hitler's most loyal followers. In one voting district in Wedding, where a few years ago Communists fought from behind barricades against the police, the "yes" votes amounted to 949; the "no" votes and invalid ballots totaled 237."

"In all Bavaria Chancellor Hitler received the largest vote in his favor in the concentration camp at Dachau where 1,554 persons voted "Yes" and only eight "No" and there were only ten spoiled ballots."

"Nevertheless 10 per cent of the voters have admittedly braved possible consequences by answering "No"..." [Quoted from nytimes.com]
26 From an interview with Otto Strasser, an important early NSDAP member, quoted from Lauryssens, p. 158. Strasser’s brother Gregor was also a leading party member. Their brother Paul was a monk.
27 Hitler’s Pope by J Cornwell. A very well organised summary of the dealings between the third Reich and the Vatican. Should you imagine that the Roman Church may have learnt from its errors, be aware that there are moves afoot in the current Vatican power structure to declare Pacelli (Pius 12th) a ‘saint’. Other documents on this site on the Church of Rome and on ‘heresy’ give further background upon Pius 12th. He was a political meddler of extreme naivete, dubious intellect and poor judgement.
28 Centre Party (German: Zentrumspartei) in Germany, a political party active in the Second Reich from the time of Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s until 1933. It was the first party of imperial Germany to cut across class and state lines, but because it represented the Roman Catholics, who were concentrated in southern Germany, it could never win a parliamentary majority.

Throughout the 1870s, the Centre Party was estranged from Bismarck in the Kulturkampf, a struggle between the Chancellor and the Roman Catholic Church. From 1877, however, the Centre Party began supporting Bismarck in return for peace with the Church. The Centre Party returned to opposition when it was denied control of religious education.

Five Centre Party politicians—Konstantin Fehrenbach, Joseph Wirth, Wilhelm Marx, Heinrich Brüning, and Franz von Papen—served as Chancellor.

Although the Centre Party remained relatively moderate in its stance during the polarization of German politics in the early 1930s, the party's deputies voted for the Enabling Act of March 1933, which allowed Chancellor Adolph Hitler to assume dictatorial powers in Germany. In July 1933, the Centre Party was dissolved under pressure from the Vatican, in exchange for worthless guarantees over schools from the Nazi-dominated government. 
29 Fest,  p.185
29a Lauryssens, p.8
29b Lauryssens, p.135
30 Irving, Goebbels, p. 5
31 Fest, p.420
31a

Two readers have kindly pointed out to me that Ford was claimed to be an episcopalian. I have yet to establish full details of Ford’s religious background. I am, so far, convinced that he is from a background of considerable Roman Catholic influence, admixed with Episcopalianism. The question is considerably more complex than a surface analysis would suggest, and I will continue to work on the details when I have the time.

Episcopalianism was described, in 1865 in Wright, Hist.Caricat. xxi (1875) 360, “the Puritans … looked upon Episcopalianism as differing in little from popery”. Episcopalianism is known as Anglicanism or High-Anglicanism in the United Kingdom. Its adherents regularly claim that they are the same as Catholics and that they are under the Pope. However, Rome does not accept this position and regards episcopalians as heretics.

32 A founder of the tiny party that Hitler joined.
32a Kershaw  p.33-34
32b Kershaw, p. 34-35 
33 Hitler commenting on the 25-point programme: 
“The New Testament is also full of contradictions, but that hasn’t prevented the spread of Christianity.”
As reported by Hanfstaengl, Kershaw, p.277
34 The 25-Point programme was established in 1920 and declared ‘unalterable’. It was interpreted at will by Hitler to serve his own whims or opportunity. Point 17 changed in 1928, see [37].
35 Treaty of Versailles: peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on  28  June, 1919.  It took force on 10 January, 1920.

When the German government asked U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to arrange a general armistice in October 1918, it declared that it accepted the Fourteen Points  he had formulated as the basis for a just peace. However, the Allies demanded ‘compensation by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea and from the air.’ Further, the nine points covering new territorial consignments were complicated by the secret treaties that England, France and Italy had made with Greece, Romania and each other during the last years of the war.

The treaty was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919, which was dominated by the national leaders known as the ‘Big Four’: David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. The first three in particular made the important decisions. None of the defeated nations had any say in shaping the treaty, and even the associated Allied powers played only a minor role. The German delegation was presented with a fait accompli; it was shocked at the severity of the terms and protested the contradictions between the assurances made when the armistice was negotiated and the actual treaty. Accepting the ‘war guilt’ clause and the reparation terms were especially odious to them.

The population and territory of Germany was reduced by about 10 percent by the treaty. On the west, Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and the Saarland was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations until 1935. In the north, three small areas were given to Belgium; and, after a plebiscite in Schleswig, northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark. In the east, Poland was resurrected, given most of formerly German West Prussia and Poznańska (Posen), given a ‘corridor’ to the Baltic Sea (which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), and given part of Upper Silesia after a plebiscite. Danzig (Gdansk) was declared a free city. All Germany's overseas colonies in China, in the Pacific and in Africa were taken over by Britain, France, Japan and other Allied nations.

The “war guilt clause” of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33,000,000,000 in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.

The Big Four, especially Clemenceau, wanted to make sure that Germany would never again pose a military threat to the rest of Europe, and the treaty contained a number of stipulations to guarantee this aim. The German army was restricted to 100,000 men, the general staff was eliminated, the manufacture of armoured cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, and poison gas was forbidden, and only a small number of specified factories could make weapons or munitions. All of Germany west of the Rhine and up to 30 miles (50 km) east of it was to be a demilitarised zone. The forced disarmament of Germany, it was hoped, would be accompanied by voluntary disarmament in other nations.

The treaty included the Covenant of the League of Nations, in which members guaranteed each other's independence and territorial integrity. Economic sanctions would be applied against any member who resorted to war. The league was to supervise mandated territories, the occupied Saar Basin, and Danzig and to formulate plans for reducing armaments. The treaty also established the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organisation.

The Treaty of Versailles was bitterly criticized by the Germans, who complained that it had been ‘dictated’ to them, that it violated the spirit of the Fourteen Points, and that it demanded intolerable sacrifices that would wreck their economy. In the years after it was ratified, the Treaty of Versailles was revised and altered, mostly in Germany's favour. Numerous concessions were made to Germany before the rise of Adolph Hitler, and by 1938 only the territorial settlement articles remained.

Many historians claim that the combination of a harsh treaty and subsequent lax enforcement of its provisions paved the way for the upsurge of German militarism in the 1930s. The huge German reparations and the war guilt clause fostered deep resentment of the settlement in Germany, and when Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland in 1936 (a violation of the treaty), the Allies did nothing to stop him, thus encouraging future German aggression.
36 Saint-Germain, Treaty of (1919):
treaty concluding World War I and signed by representatives of Austria on one side and the Allied Powers on the other. It was signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, on 10 September, 1919 and came into force on 16 July, 1920.

The treaty officially registered the break-up of the Hapsburg empire, recognizing the independence of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) and ceding eastern Galicia, Trento, southern Tirol, Trieste and Istria. Plebiscites eventually determined the disposition of southern Carinthia (which went to Austria) and the town of Sopron (which went to Hungary). The Covenant of the League of Nations was integrally included in the treaty, and the union of Austria with Germany was expressly forbidden without the consent of the Council of the League. The military clauses limited Austria's long-service volunteer army to 30,000 men and broke up the Austro-Hungarian navy, distributing it among the Allies. Although Austria was made liable for reparations, no money was ever actually paid.
37 Point 17 was altered in 1928. ‘Expropriation without compensation’ was to mean: the creation of legal means to take over land not administered in the public good; that is, held by ‘Jewish’ land speculation companies. Thus the party was to be based on the principle of private property [17].
Kershaw, p.301
38 Max Domarus, vol.2, p.790
 This is the standard work on the words of Hitler. It comes in 4 volumes at about £90 a volume.

The phrase is usually quoted out of context as I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker. This out-of-context quoting is typical of the constant editorialising of all matters surrounding Hitler, rather than letting the dissonance between his words and actions bring out the reality of his unprincipled craving for power.
39 Mein Kampf  (German: My Struggle), political manifesto written by Adolph Hitler. Hitler’s first proposed title was Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice! It was his only complete book and became the bible of National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany's Third Reich. 

Mein Kampf was published in two volumes in 18 July 1925 and 11 December 1926, with an abridged edition appearing in 1930. Despite electoral successes after 1930, sales had only reached 80,000 copies six or seven years later in 1932.  By 1939, it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had been translated into 11 languages. By 1945, 10 million copies had been sold in Germany, as well as many millions more abroad and translated into 16 languages. It made Hitler independently wealthy.

The first volume, entitled Die Abrechnung (The Settlement [of Accounts], or Revenge), was written in 1924 in the Bavarian fortress of Landsberg am Lech, where Hitler was imprisoned for armed insurrection, after the abortive Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. It treats the world of Hitler’s youth, the First World War, and the ‘betrayal’ of Germany’s collapse in 1918. It also expresses Hitler’s racist ideology, making the ‘Aryan’ the ‘genius’ race and the Jew the ‘parasite’; and declares the need for Germans to seek living space (Lebensraum) in the East at the expense of the Slavs and rival Marxists of Russia. It also calls for revenge against France.

The second volume, entitled Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung (The National Socialist Movement), written after Hitler’s release from prison in December 1924, outlines the political programme, including the terrorist methods that National Socialism must pursue, both in gaining power and in exercising it thereafter in the new Germany.

In style, Mein Kampf is turgid, repetitious, wandering, illogical and, in the first edition at least, filled with grammatical errors. It was skilfully demagogic, appealing to many dissatisfied elements in Germany—the ultra nationalistic, the anti-Semitic, the anti-democratic, the anti-Marxist, and the military.
40 Hitler is thought to have been influenced by the French psychologist Gustave Le Bon (b. 7 May, 1841, Nogent-le-Rotrou, France—d. 13 December, 1931, Marnes-la-Coquette), best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds.

After receiving a doctorate of medicine, Le Bon travelled in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, and wrote several books on anthropology and archaeology. His interests later shifted to natural science and social psychology. In Legs Lois psychologizes de revolution des peoples (1894; The Psychology of Peoples) he developed a view that history is the product of racial or national character; with emotion, not intelligence, the dominant force in social evolution. He attributed true progress to the work of an intellectual elite.

Le Bon believed that modern life was increasingly characterised by crowd assemblages. In La psychology des foul es (1895; The Crowd), his most popular work, he argued that the conscious personality of the individual in a crowd is submerged and that the collective crowd mind dominates; crowd behaviour is unanimous, emotional and intellectually weak.
41 A person who has no clear understanding of the reality of persons other than themselves.
42 Overy, p.2
43 Irving, Goring, p26 – 7
44 The SS or Schutzstaffel (German for ‘Protective Echelon’)  was the blacklisted elite of the Nazi Party, founded by Hitler in 1925 as a small personal bodyguard. With the Nazi movement's success, the SS grew, gathering police and military powers, becoming virtually a state within a state.
45 The SA or Sturmabteilung (German for ‘Assault Division’), known as Storm Troopers or Brownshirts (‘Sturmtruppen’ or ‘Braunhemden’), was a paramilitary organisation within the Nazi Party whose violent intimidation methods played a key role in Hitler's rise to power. After the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1934, the SA was reduced to being in charge of training all able-bodied men for Home Guard units.back to index

advertising disclaimer

Bibliography

Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt, Hannah

Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil

1994, 0140187650
$11.16 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
£7.19 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
Konecky Konecky & Konecky, Alan Bullock

Hitler, A Study in Tyranny

• 1999, 1568520360, $6.99 [amazon.com, this title is currently unavailable. Check back to see whether it has become available.]
• 1990, 0140135642, £8.79 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Alice in paperback

Alice in hardback

Carroll, Lewis

Alice through the looking glass

[1st ed. 1872]
• pbk: 1993, Everyman, 0460873598, $5.99 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
• pbk: 1998, OUP, 019283374X, £3.99 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
• hbk: 1993, William Morrow & Co, 0688120504 $23.73 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
• hbk: 1998, Macmillan, 0333722728, £17.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Winston Churchill - my early life Churchill, Sir Winston

My Early Life

1930; reprint 1996, 0684823454
$15.00 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
£8.47 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Hitler's pope Cornwell, J

Hitler’s Pope

• 1999, 0670886939, (hb), $20.97 [amazon.com, out of stock]
• 1999, 0670876208, (hb), £16.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  Dawkins, Richard

The Selfish Gene

1976; reprint 1999, 0192860925
$10.47 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
£8.99 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

 

Domarus, Max

Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932 – 1945 1945 : The Chronicle of a Dictatorship
4 volume hardback set

1962, Germany;
• reprint 2000, 0865163294, $449.00 [amazon.com, to special order]
• 1998, 1850432066, to special order £330.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932 – 1945
Vol I: The Years 1932-4

1962, Germany;
• reprint 2000, 0865163286, $123.00 [amazon.com, to special order]
• 1989, 1850431566, to special order
£90.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932 – 1945
Vol II: The Years 1935-38

1962, Germany;
• 1992, 0865162298, $165.00 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
• 1992,1850431639, to special order
£90.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932 – 1945
Vol III: The Years 1939-40

1962, Germany;
• 1997, 0865162301, $185.00 [amazon.com, usually ships within 24 hours]
• 1993, 1850431647, to special order
£95.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932 – 1945
Vol IV: The Years 1941-45

1962, Germany;
2004, 086516231X $185.00
[amazon.com, this title is currently unavailable. Check back to see whether this situation has changed.]
• 1994, 1850431655, to special order
£95.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Erdman,Paul

The Swiss Account

1991; reprint:
• 1993, 0812520165, $5.99 [amazon.com, out of print: limited availability]
• 1992, 0722133588, £4.79 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Feder, Gottfried Hitler's Official Programme and its Fundamental Ideas • 1934, Allen & Unwin (out of print)
  Fest, Joachim C
Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches, Profile einer totalitären Herrschaft
translated into English ,1970, as
The Face Of The Third Reich

1963

1979; reprint:
• 1999, 030680915X, $13.56 [amazon.com,usually ships within 24 hours]
• 1991, 0140166947, £10.39 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  Frank, Hans Im Angesicht des Galgens. Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eignener Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse • 1955, 2nd ed., Neuhaus
(out of print)
  Ford, Henry

The International Jew

1920;
• reprint 1998, 0849004187, $10.00 [amazon.com, currently unavail]
  Hamann, Brigitte

Hitler’s Vienna: a Dictator's Apprenticeship

1999, 0195125371, (hb)
$24.50 [amazon.com] {advert} /• £20.00[amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Hayman, R.

Hitler and Geli

• 1997, 1582340366, $12.71 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 1998, 0747535124, £6.39 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  Heiden, Konrad Adolf Hitler, A Biography, Vol. I • translation published 1936, New York and London
(out of print)
  Hitler, Adolph

Mein Kampf

Hurst And Blackett Ltd.: this translation of Mein Kampf was first published on 21 March, 1939.

reprint:
• 1999, 0395925037, $14.40 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 1999, 0395925037, to special order
£11.99 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte Hitler. Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen: Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933 5 vols in 12 parts • 1992 – 8, Munich, London & New York
(out of print)
  Irving, David

Goebbels

• 1997, 2 ed., 01872197132 (hb), $45.00 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 1995, 1872197116, to special order
£25 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

Goring: a biography • (out of print)
  Jetzinger, Franz Hitler’s Youth
• 1958, Greenwood Press, 083718617X;
(publisher out of stock)
  Kershaw, Ian

Hitler: 1889 – 1936 Hubris

• 2000, 0393320359, $14.93 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 2001, 0140133631, £11.89 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

    Hitler 1936 – 1945: Nemesis • 2001, 0393322521, $16.50 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 2001, 0140272399, £12.49 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Kubizek, August Young Hitler I Knew
[British title: Young Hitler. The Story of Our Friendship]
• 1954, London; 1955, Boston
(out of print)
  Lauryssens, Stan

The Man Who Invented The Third Reich

1999, 0750918667 (hb)
$26.25 [amazon.com] {advert}
£15.19 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Le Bon, Gustave Les Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples 1894
• (0405055099, publisher out of stock)

La psychologie des foules

1895;
• 1994 reprint, 0877971684, $11.16 [amazon.com] {advert}
• (large print) 1560007885, £15.65 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  Lüdecke, Kurt I Knew Hitler : The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Surge

1937, New York; 1938, London;
• 1982 reprint, 040416904X (hb),
$81.40 [amazon.com] {advert}

  Marx, Karl

Das Kapital : The Process of Capital Production [Capital]

• 0140445692; $12.76 [amazon.com] {advert}
• 1999, 0192838725, £7.19 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Noakes, J., and Pridham, G. (editors)

Nazism 1919 – 1945 - a Documentary Reader
Vol 1: The Rise to Power 1919-1934
Vol 2: State, Economy and Society 1933-1939

• (0859894614, out of print: U.S.)
• 1998, 085989598X, £7.19 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
• 1994, 0859894614, £10.99 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

  Overy, R. J.

Goering, the ‘Iron Man’

• (1984, 0710097832 out of print)
• reprint to be published 1 June, 2000,
842120484, £10.39 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
  Picker, Henry (ed.) Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier 1941 – 1942 [title translation: Hitler’s table talk] • 1951, Bonn
  Pool, J. and S.

Who Financed Hitler : The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power, 1919-1933

• 1997, 0671760831, $11.90 [amazon.com] {advert}
  Rauschning, Hermann Voice of Destruction
[British title: Hitler Speaks]
• 1939, New York and London
  Schoenbaum, David

Hitler’s Social Revolution : Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939

• 1997 reprint, 0393315541, $12.71 [amazon.com] {advert}
  Silverman, Dan P.

Hitler’s Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933 – 1936

• 1998, 0674740718 (hb), $45.00  [amazon.com] {advert}
  Tucker, William H.

The Science and Politics of Racial Research

1994;
• 1996, 0252065603, $17.95 [amazon.com] {advert}
£11.29 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

back to index

COLOUR KE'Y'

Blue links to parts of this document
Orange links to Bibliography and to other bibliographic information
Green gives links to sites external to  www.abelard.org
Yellowgives links to other documents within the abelard site
All links are underlined

Magenta highlights points of special note
Red attracts attention to important points
Light green shows statements made by Adolph Hitler


email abelard email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2000 (24 january)


all rights reserved

the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/hitler/hitler.php

9630 words
prints as 25 A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)


navigation bar (eight equal segments) on  'Adolf/Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber - his psychology and development' page