IN THE FALL of 1931, at the suggestion of Hitler’s secretary, Rudolf Hess, who knew me as a journalist, I became a member of Hitler’s circle. At that time there was one thing about him that struck me as utterly amazing. He spoke of his coming to power as if there could be not the slightest question about it—although to many persons at this time such a thing seemed impossible, and to me it certainly seemed doubtful. For Hitler, eventual assumption of power was a simple matter of fact. For example, he had for many years been drafting monumental city plans for Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, and other cities. These were worked out down to the smallest detail and were, later, either begun or actually carried out by him. The building of the autobahnen and the elimination of unemployment had been settled policies for more than a decade. The projects he talked about were works of peace and progress, not of war and conquest. In the days when he was still going about from town to town, from whistle-stop to whistle-stop, like an itinerant preacher, he already saw himself taking over the government and carrying out his plans.
Undoubtedly he managed to communicate much of this faith in himself and his mission to the millions who heard him speak at his meetings. At a time of economic collapse and national hopelessness the masses found these new ideas particularly inspiring. As a newspaperman I was present at a great many of those public meetings. As I recall today what elements in Hitler’s thinking had the greatest effect upon his audiences, it seems to me that the following ideas received the greatest applause.
Hitler told the people that national recovery would be achieved only by social measures, and that socialist aims could be attained only upon a nationalistic basis. The national concept he preached was the creation of the classless state by establishing a Volksgemeinschaft, a racial community of the people, by eliminating the evils of the party system, and by solving the Jewish problem. The governing principle of this national folk community was to be: “The common good comes before the good of the individual.” In foreign policy its aim was revision of the Versailles Treaty.
The socialistic concept developed by Hitler started from the question: By what principle can social justice and harmony of economic interests best be achieved, given the natural differences among men? Hitler’s answer was: The socialist efficiency principle, by establishing equality of conditions in economic competition, will produce the most just and at the same time the most successful solution. Consequently he demanded equal opportunities for all, abolition of all privileges of birth and class, breaking the educational monopoly of the propertied class, elimination of unearned income, the “smashing of bondage to interest,” and the dethronement of gold since gold is a “nonproductive economic factor.” In his economic thinking, work, which creates more work, replaced gold; instead of capitalistic interest he urged economic productivity by the people. Hitler also presented the solution of the Jewish question on a humanitarian basis. There was no talk at all of extermination of the Jewish race. Although he demanded the curbing of their “excessive” influence upon the government and the economy, the Jews were still to be allowed to lead their own lives. I need only mention the Reich Chamber of Culture’s department for Jewish cultural affairs, which legally guaranteed to them many cultural opportunities. I may also recall the directives to the Reich Minister of Economics which were issued in 1934 and made public by Propaganda Minister Goebbels. These directives forbade any interference with the economic activities of the Jews so long as they observed the laws of the state.
Many Germans who voted for Hitler in those days did not approve of all his ideas or all the points in his program. Many rejected anti-Semitism; many others considered his economic projects unsound; but they agreed with his other national and social policies and, in view of the situation in Germany, gave his program as a whole their approval. The great majority of them favored the national community and the socialist “folk state” that Hitler proposed. Hitler declared at the time that this socialist folk state was concerned with the inward development of German “folkdom,” by which he meant the racial essence of the German people; it was not interested in imperialistic expansionism. He proclaimed National Socialism’s desire for peace and made it clear that the revision of the Versailles Treaty was to be achieved by negotiation.
On January 30, 1933 Hitler’s appointment as chancellor by President von Hindenburg brought him to one of the crossroads on his path of destiny. Once before fate had given him an unmistakable sign—on November 9, 1923 when his attempt to take power in Munich by force was bloodily smashed. He learned his lesson and straightway made the decision to use legal methods henceforth. After a nine-year struggle those methods led him to his goal. In 1933 Hitler began a new phase; for the first time he came into contact with the world in a responsible position. Once National Socialism came to power the German people had every interest in living at peace with the world, in order to use and develop the positive, peacetime elements of the new ideology Hitler had expounded to them.
At that time I was firmly convinced that a National Socialist Germany would be able to live peacefully with the rest of the world. And so it might have, if Hitler had practiced moderation from the start; if he had checked radicalism at home and if his propaganda for foreign consumption had been objective and had shown some understanding of the interests of other nations. The needlessly provocative demonstrations in Nuremberg and elsewhere, the initiation and toleration of anti-Semitic excesses, and the tone and content of Goebbel’s “world propaganda” as shown in his demagogic demonstrations at the Sportpalast, could not possibly win friends abroad for National Socialist Germany. Such behavior inevitably prejudiced other nations against even the good side of National Socialism. Tactless insults decisively influenced world opinion against Germany in the early years following 1933.
From the moment Hitler moved into the Chancellery in Wilhelmstrasse and stepped for the first time upon the international stage, he was faced with an inner decision. I do not know whether he was aware of this. Perhaps at the bottom of his soul he had already made it and was willing to follow it through, come what might. Today, after events have taken their fateful course, we know for certain that during those first years Hitler should have switched to another track if National Socialist Germany was to live at peace with the world. At the time I thought his failure to do so was a concession to the revolutionary enthusiasm of his followers. Today I am aware that the rhythm of his own demonic nature drove him to excesses. When he did rise up in wrath against radical elements—as in the case of Röhm—it was because those elements did not bow to his will and thus represented a danger to him.
There was little change in Hitler’s manner and habits upon first becoming chancellor. The Presidential Palace was being rebuilt at this time, for which reason Hindenburg was occupying the chancellor’s house. Hitler accordingly moved temporarily into an apartment on the fourth floor of the Chancellery office building. It is worth noting that during his first months Hitler appeared in his office punctually at ten o’clock in the morning. Later on, when he took to going to bed between three and five o’clock in the morning, this ceased to be the case. I shall speak of these personal habits of his in the second part of this book.
In 1933 Hitler’s energies were taken up by his struggle with the other parties and by his efforts to solidify his power. The Enabling Act, giving the cabinet legislative powers, and the abolition of other parties ended this stage. The Reichstag fire which he made an occasion for political arrests and for the use of force, came as a surprise to Hitler—contrary to the belief in many quarters. But he regarded it as a gift from destiny and instantly exploited the situation, as he was so adept at doing. He first received word of the Reichstag fire late in the evening. Accompanied by Goebbels, he went to the Berlin offices of the Völkischer Beobachter and had the presses stopped. The leading article was thrown out and he himself dictated a new editorial demanding speedy and vigorous measures.
Once Hitler had established himself in an unassailable position of power, he set about with great zeal keeping his promises in the economic and social spheres. The people were deeply interested in these recovery measures, all the more so since after Hitler’s radical settlement with his domestic opponents he initiated a policy of wooing the good will of the people. He repeatedly expressed his distaste for acts of revenge on the part of the SA; in an order issued to Röhm he forbade excesses. To former members of opposition parties he opened the doors of the National Socialist Party and the new government, so long as they declared themselves in favor of the “folk community.” He allowed almost all of the leaders of these parties to remain at liberty.
Until the late summer of 1933 Hitler had the authority of the aged President above him, and Hindenburg exerted a moderating effect. I believe that old Field Marshal von Hindenburg was the only person in Hitler’s career who ever had an effective influence over him. Hindenburg had had something definite in mind when he had obliged Hitler, before appointing him, to retain von Neurath as Minister of Foreign Affairs. When Hindenburg closed his eyes forever on August 2, 1934 he left von Neurath as a kind of political testament. The actual written testament which was published by Herr von Papen after Hindenburg’s death has since been repeatedly called a forgery. I personally believe that there is no truth to this rumor. In the circles around Hitler no one ever breathed a word to this effect. I recall that immediately after Hindenburg’s death there was talk of certain precautions that ought to be taken in order to secure any posthumous papers of the President’s. But Hindenburg had already entrusted his sealed testament to Herr von Papen. Given von Papen’s whole attitude toward Hindenburg, it is inconceivable that he would have forged the testament or lent a hand to Hitler in publishing a forgery.
Hitler himself described Hindenburg’s relationship with him as at first cool and tentative, later distinctly cordial. During the early months Hindenburg made use of almost every conference between them to bring forward wishes of his own or complaints of other persons who felt they had been treated unjustly by the Party and had petitioned him to intervene. Unless he could show Hindenburg that the complaints were without foundation, Hitler always went along with the president’s desires. But in the course of their association Hindenburg’s attitude changed so much that he came round to vehemently defending “his Chancellor” against hostile members of the Conservative Party, Hugenberg and Oldenburg-Januschau. Hitler venerated the aged Field Marshal of the First World War. He repeatedly declared that he was very fond of the “old gentleman” who always addressed him as “my dear Chancellor.”
Two political events of great importance took place during the eighteen months in which Hindenburg and Hitler guided the destinies of the Reich together. These two events, of great significance in view of later developments, created worldwide tension. They were Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, and the case of Röhm.
From remarks Hitler made at the time it is clear that Hindenburg approved of Germany’s withdrawal from the League. He agreed that the Reich should be free to make her own decisions—it was in this light that Hitler represented the step. When German delegates to the League and German journalists who had been stationed in Geneva expressed their doubts at the wisdom of Germany’s stepping out of the League, Hitler abused them violently and charged that they had been corrupted by the atmosphere of Geneva. Undoubtedly Hitler was already thinking of rearming Germany, but this by no means implies that he was planning war.
Given Hitler’s soldierly attitude, only the German army could be considered as the vehicle of rearmament. Here was where Hitler differed sharply with Röhm, and this was the reason for the bloody suppression of Röhm’s SA. Röhm felt that he and his storm troopers were being passed over, were being cheated of the fruits of the revolution. But Hitler at that time viewed an attack upon the army as endangering Germany’s entire military future. What Röhm was actually planning, I have never been able to find out precisely. Hitler claimed he had proof that Röhm and his immediate subordinates intended to carry out a putsch against the army, and that along with Gregor Strasser and Streicher they were conducting negotiations with foreign powers to muster forces against Hitler. From my observation of the whole course of the purge in Wiessee am Tegernsee and Munich I do not believe Hitler’s charges were true, at least not to the degree he asserted. Rather I am today of the opinion that on June 30, 1934 the monstrous side of Hitler’s nature for the first time broke loose and showed itself for what it was. On behalf of the nation’s future and in order, as Hitler himself expressed it, “to make the army inviolate” and not to compromise its secret plans, Hitler demanded bloody sacrifices. At the time the people were gratified; they considered Hitler’s vigorous intervention a repudiation of violence and lawlessness, and thus the definitive end of revolution.
To legalize his actions Hitler had himself proclaimed the “Supreme Judge of the Nation.” I can still see him as he entered the house in Wiessee where he arrested Röhm on the morning of June 30. He paced up and down before the storm troop leader with huge strides, fiery as some higher being, the very personification of justice. A few days later Hindenburg called him to Neudeck for a report on the Röhm affair and expressed his appreciation of the swift suppression of these “rebels against the army,” as the old president termed them. In later years—and this throws a sidelight on Hitler’s own psychological attitude toward political situations—Hitler repeatedly remarked that he was firmly convinced France had not occupied the Rhineland in the months after Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations only because the French government was well informed and was counting on the Röhm putsch to “extinguish the Hitler regime anyhow.”
After Hindenburg’s death the Saar plebiscite became the prime issue for Hitler. The peaceful and, for Germany, happy outcome of the plebiscite calmed the political atmosphere again. Then came the concluding of the ten-year non-aggression treaty with Poland, dramatic evidence of Hitler’s love of peace. During this whole period his energies were absorbed by the problems of re-employment, of reviving industry, of improving labor conditions and the general welfare. Hitherto he had had little experience with economic problems. But as he plunged deeper into them in practice and achieved tangible results, his self-assurance visibly increased. The title Der Führer, The Leader, now seemed to him to designate properly the uniqueness of his mission. At first he adopted as official title Führer and Chancellor. The first symptoms of his development were already beginning to manifest themselves; it is significant that at his own instigation the title of Chancellor was gradually dropped from official use and he was presented to the public solely as Der Führer. At this time the principle of absolute obedience of Party members was introduced, and all members were required to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally.
The years 1935 and 1936 were of the utmost importance for the development of Hitler from a domestic reformer and socialist leader to the international desperado and gambler with the destinies of the nations that he later became. During those years he brought his regime through its early insecure stages, successfully carried off the withdrawal from the League of Nations, solidified his absolutist rule, and began looking for new worlds to conquer. With those successes his adventurer’s temperament broke through his inner defenses and began operating in the sensitive field of international relationships. During those years he started large-scale rearmament. He also began his intimate collaboration with the “Plenipotentiary of the Reich for Disarmament Questions,” Ribbentrop—an association that was later to produce the direst consequences.
Whether Hitler already had well-defined political plans that went beyond mere rearmament is not definitely known. At any rate, if he had any such plans he carefully concealed them even from his closest associates. I learned about the remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 as a great surprise on the morning after it had begun. All that day Hitler waited tensely to see what the reaction of Paris and London would be. He waited twenty-four, forty-eight hours. When there was no intervention, he breathed a sigh of relief. He himself later declared that this step had been proof of his courage. He had played for the highest stakes, and had won. The political future looked rosy.
A change began to be apparent in Hitler’s personal manner. He became markedly less ready to receive political visitors unless he had expressly sent for them. At the same time he contrived to erect barriers between himself and his associates. Before he took power they had had the opportunity to air their differences with his political opinions. Now he strictly insisted on the respect due him as head of state and deliberately brought about a state of affairs in which the very persons who saw him most frequently and therefore had opportunities to influence him were unable to talk about political matters. Hitler could no longer tolerate objections to his ideas, or in fact anything which cast doubt on his infallibility. He shied away from any attempts to affect his sovereign will. He wanted to talk, but not to listen; to be the hammer but not the anvil.
From this time on, Hitler also began paying less attention to the Party. His personal participation in Party affairs was limited to his appearance at the big public rallies in Munich, Nuremberg, and so on, and to the speeches he regularly delivered in November and February to his “Old Guard.” Chided for this by the Party leadership, he maintained that he was too busy with the affairs of state to give them any more time. That argument seemed reasonable enough—but there was more to it than he admitted. In all his political and military actions henceforth he never took the Party into his confidence, let alone gave the Party leaders an opportunity to state their opinions. Decisions on Party matters were handed down by him through Hess and later through Bormann. Beginning with the withdrawal from the League of Nations, and right down to the bitter end of the war, the entire Party leadership—except for individuals who happened to occupy high posts in the government—learned about all the great and fateful events through the radio and press, like every ordinary German.
The so-called conferences which Hitler held with the leadership of the Party two or three times a year were without exception postscript affairs. At such meetings Hitler either boasted of his triumphs or—especially in the last years—after severe military defeats he inspired his followers with fresh courage by presenting the situation optimistically and hinting of sensational successes to come. Except for a few words of formal greeting or expressions of thanks, none of the other Party leaders ever held the floor. Hitler regularly spoke for several hours. In the course of such speeches he would take occasion to reprimand Party leaders about whose public conduct or private lives he had heard complaints. Overcome with admiration for his victories, filled with new hopes after his defeats, the participants in the conferences would then return to their various posts. Hitler influenced them, but they were unable to exert any influence at all upon him.
As a matter of fact Hitler regarded the Party only as a means to an end, the end being those supreme nationalistic goals he sought to realize. He used the Party when he needed it, neglected it when he did not need it, thrust it aside when it became a nuisance to him. In the early days he often spoke of setting up a Party Senate to advise him; but this whole question was dropped. It may be that even in these early years Hitler’s vision had already thrust beyond the narrow confines of the Party; probably he was already looking toward distant goals. Whatever these were, he kept them secret from the Party and the German people. The people hailed the peaceful victory by which Germany was again free to build her defenses as she saw fit; they were convinced that Hitler meant the anti-imperialistic doctrines he proclaimed. They were pleased by the conclusion of the Anglo-German Naval Treaty and spontaneously applauded the French contingents at the Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936.
In July 1936, while Hitler was attending the Bayreuth Festival, representatives of General Franco flew in from Spanish Morocco bearing a letter from Franco asking for armed aid. Hitler telephoned Göring and forthwith promised volunteer troops. The request provided him with an opportunity to try out his new weapons. And in 1937 he began to show in military parades the arms he had hitherto concealed. Relationships with Fascist Italy, which had been tense since the July 1934 uprising in Austria and Mussolini’s threat to send troops across the Brenner Pass, took a turn for the better in 1937.
The year passed quietly. Germany worked. In 1933 Hitler had said, “Give me four years.” Since then he had provided millions with work and bread, had raised the living standard throughout Germany. Why should the people distrust him? The people were, of course, aware that Hitler was vigorously rearming Germany. They saw that the preponderant reason for reemployment was armament contracts. But they also believed that the growing domestic strength of the Reich brought with it external dangers; they took it for granted that this rearmament was for defense. Moreover, their physical well-being was dependent upon the new developments. Only a small group of specialists were troubled by German’s economic and financial policies.
Hitler’s theory of an autarchic national economy was based on the idea that employment creates more employment. A revived economy creates new markets for itself because its demand increases and the employed workers consume more, which tendency in turn stimulates more production, further employment, and further consumption until maximum production had been attained. For this system of pump-priming to work properly, the plants which have been constructed must be productive, thereby assuring repayment of the state subsidies which financed them. Hitler did create employment; he did get the economy started again; it began running at full speed and all the branches of industry were caught up in the rhythm of the humming motors. But the armaments plants swallowed many billions which in spite of prosperity and high taxes did not return to the state treasury. To a certain extent armaments, too, can be economically productive in a larger sense, insofar as they guarantee the country security and the opportunity to develop peacefully. But if armaments are too large in proportion to other production, and if in peacetime the government debt rises so high as a result of military expenditures that a normal reflux from the economy to the state is no longer possible even over long periods, there is good cause for anxiety. In the years before the war it was difficult to judge whether such fears were really justified or whether the rapidly expanding internal economy of Germany could legitimately sustain the increase in debt. Today we know that Hitler purchased economic prosperity with billions in government debt—a debt so staggering that the overloaded credit structure would have made enormous difficulties for him in future years of peace.
Was it this situation, then, that later forced him into war? Nowadays many persons, judging by the logic of the course of later events, would answer that question in the affirmative. I cannot go so far. Economic thinking was basically foreign to Hitler. He was a political figure, not an economist. At the time his primary task seemed to him to “shake off the fetters of the Versailles Treaty.” For this purpose he wanted to build up an army which would command respect; the full force of his will was exerted toward this single aim. The aim seemed to him worth all financial sacrifices, and he was too contemptuous of the problems of money to fear the economic consequences.
It is my firm conviction that he was not at that time planning an imperialistic war against any foreign nation. He was driven ahead by the forces within himself, not by any fixed plans. His essays in foreign policy were undertaken without program, in obedience to the virtually pathological rhythm of his aggressive nature. Each thrust was started at haphazard, success accelerating the rhythm and fury of those thrusts. At the end, when he attacked Poland, he staked everything on a single card.
At the beginning of 1938 Hitler suddenly made sensational changes in the leadership of the Army and the conduct of foreign policy. The whole business was cloaked in secrecy. As I saw it, what happened was this. Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg, whom Hitler thought highly of, had remarried. Hitler was a witness at the wedding. For reasons of a private nature Blomberg was shortly afterwards confronted with the alternatives of obtaining a divorce or resigning.4 Blomberg refused a divorce, and his resignation became inevitable. Hitler, feeling that he had been placed in a highly embarrassing position vis-à-vis the Army, hit on the idea of settling the Blomberg case discreetly by including Blomberg’s resignation in a large-scale shake-up. Numerous district commanders and generals in leading positions were to be replaced by younger officers. The Reichswehr Ministry was eliminated and replaced by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the High Command of the Armed Forces, headed by Keitel. Keitel’s chief qualification was that he could get along with Hitler.
To the surprise of his close associates, Hitler suddenly declared that he was going to include in the shake-up a shift in foreign ministers, in order to cover up the Blomberg case as completely as possible. Casually he dropped the remark that in this way he could kill two birds with one stone. Foreign Minister von Neurath’s rival, Ribbentrop, had long been one of Hitler’s close associates and had worked with him on all rearmament questions. It was Ribbentrop who had arranged the naval pact with England. He was now recalled from his post as ambassador to London and appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Neurath was made president of the “Privy Cabinet Council.” Later on I learned to my amazement that this Privy Cabinet Council did not exist and never was set up. It consisted only of a sign on the door of a room in the New Chancellery; I doubt if Neurath ever set foot in that room.
Later on it became apparent that Hitler had, within three and a half years, thrown overboard Hindenburg’s political testament.
Among his associates Hitler himself always maintained that this drastic shake-up in the Army and the Foreign Ministry was only for the purpose of throwing dust in everyone’s eyes and concealing the real reason for Blomberg’s resignation. Today there can no longer be any doubt that the Blomberg case was one of those famous opportunities that Hitler promptly seized in order to achieve his secret ends. He probably felt the time approaching when he would have to guide foreign policy toward the “supreme mission of the nation.” Blomberg’s withdrawal was for him a sign from destiny. He took advantage of it to create the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, shaping it into the impersonal military instrument he needed to carry out his orders in blind obedience. At the same time he declared himself Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and called to his side a man who, as Foreign Minister, would carry out his Master’s foreign policy without a qualm.
At the end of February 1938 Hitler felt strong enough to force a change in conditions in Austria. Since 1934 Austrian National Socialists had been in jail or living as exiles in the Reich. Austria was Hitler’s native land and he felt deep obligations toward it. He wanted at last—after having been compelled to hold his hand for so long—to make Schuschnigg “talk German,” as he put it. I do not know for certain whether at the time he invited Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden he already had in mind sending troops into Austria. His express purpose in making the invitation was, at any rate, to impress Schuschnigg with Germany’s military strength and persuade him to switch his political course to coincide with that of the Reich. To my mind, if Hitler had intended from the first to march, such a visit would have been superfluous. The order for the troops to march was issued only—according to Hitler’s story—after Schuschnigg failed to keep his promises. My first knowledge of Hitler’s serious intention to enter Austria came when I was sitting in a car and learned for the first time where our automobile column was heading for.
In the course of the years I have seen Hitler the recipient of a great deal of popular enthusiasm. But the demonstrations when he entered Linz and Vienna were, I believe, the most genuine I have ever witnessed. If before his entry into Austria Hitler had not had a conviction of his supreme destiny to act the savior of the nation, he would have had to acquire such a conviction after experiencing such a wild welcome.
In the first twenty-four hours after his invasion of Austria Hitler was not yet thinking of Anschluss. Fearing intervention by the other Powers, he wanted Austrian President Miklas to appoint a National Socialist government. At noon the following day, in the Weinzinger Hotel in Linz, Hitler read the reports I handed to him on the reaction of the foreign press. All the newspapers abroad represented Anschluss with Austria as already a fait accompli, and the way they fumed about it made him take a fancy to the idea. He asked himself why he should not carry out an annexation which was already being charged to him. After several hours of vacillation he finally decided in favor of Anschluss, called in his administrative specialists, and ordered them to work out the legal details for incorporation of Austria into the Reich. This almost incredible but historical incident is not the only one of its kind in Hitler’s career. More than once Hitler would read an inaccurate assertion and be prompted to do something which until then he had not intended to do. Since I so often handed him the news summaries, I had ample opportunity to observe the psychological development of such cases. Newspaper allegations about his intentions often gave him ideas. Strange as that may seem, it is the fact.
When Hitler spoke over the radio and announced to the German people “the greatest accomplishment of my life, the return of my homeland to the Reich,” he was altogether intoxicated with success. That feeling remained with him all during the next several years and was one of the significant motivations of his future actions.
Immediately after the Anschluss, in April 1938, Hitler held elections throughout the Reich. These were the last elections. Approval or disapproval of the “return of German Austria to the Reich” was linked with acceptance or rejection of the regime. Thus Hitler again skillfully exploited the situation to take German nationalism and German feelings of patriotism and link them with his own person. The people’s emotional approval of the solution of an historic question that had been unsettled for centuries should not have given him the right to claim the consent of the people for his later political gambles, for his violent methods and their terrible consequences. The popular joy over Anschluss seemed to him a mandate to go ahead with his plans. A year later, he proceeded against foreign nations. That was the betrayal of the good faith of the German people; even if we assume that he himself sincerely believed such actions were national necessities, he stands guilty of betrayal.
The events surrounding the Sudeten crisis in the late summer and fall of 1938 can now be viewed as a determined effort by the other Powers to check the impetus of Hitler’s forward march by negotiation and to guide the unleashed forces of his will into peaceful channels.
In Breslau in July 1938 Hitler attended a great German sports festival. The indescribable scenes which took place when men and women from the Sudetenland marched past the reviewing stand and literally cried out to Hitler to bring them liberation made a tremendous impression upon him. Under the sway of that impression he felt that he was carrying out the will of the people when he made his demands on Prague, underlining them with the threat of armed intervention.
Before Mussolini intervened at the critical moment, before Chamberlain and Daladier came to Munich, von Neurath, Göring, and others tried to exert a moderating influence upon Hitler. Ribbentrop alone supported Hitler’s position. Ribbentrop, although already Foreign Minister, had stayed in London during the march into Austria. It was plain that he wanted to use the Sudeten crisis to buy favor in the eyes of the Führer. The German people unmistakably sided with those who were trying to preserve peace and smooth things over. The people were moved by Chamberlain’s three flights to Berchtesgaden, Godesberg, and Munich. In Munich Daladier was given spontaneous ovations.
Hitler celebrated his triumph as liberator of the Sudeten Germans. For the time being he was content. An hour before his departure for London, Chamberlain paid a surprise visit to Hitler’s private apartment on the second floor of the house on Prinzregentenstrasse and asked for Hitler’s signature to a declaration that England and Germany would keep the peace. Hitler signed, but with great reluctance. A few minutes later, after Chamberlain had left, he made remarks bitterly accusing the British Prime Minister of having come only “in order to trick and cheat” him.
Since Ribbentrop’s return from London Hitler had displayed intense distrust of England—in marked contrast to his former attitude. It is true that I recall conversations in which Hitler commented sarcastically upon Ribbentrop’s exaggerated hatred for England. But Ribbentrop’s one-sided appraisals soon began to have their effect. As Hitler became aware of England’s stiffening attitude toward him, he fell more and more under the sway of Ribbentrop’s Anglophobia. All along Hitler had stood for a purely constructive, peaceful policy drawn along racial lines. But instead of using the resources at his command for developing that policy, instead of appreciating the gift of peace given him by the Prime Minister of the British Empire, Hitler succumbed to the intoxication of success. He gave way to the wild impulse to play power-politics; this impulse had grown stronger within him than the politico-moral forces of his ego.
Early in November 1938 there took place in the Reich an event which aroused powerful emotions and which the overwhelming majority of the German people considered disgusting and shameful. This was the burning of synagogues and the smashing of Jewish shops on the night of November 9-10, in retaliation for the assassination of Embassy Counselor vom Rath in Paris. These demonstrations were supposed to have been spontaneous; as I learned the following day, they were staged. The inspiration for them was attributed to Goebbels. In reality they had been instigated by Hitler himself—they were his spontaneous reaction to the murder. Hitler ordered Goebbels to carry out the action, and Goebbels passed the instructions on to the SA, who were by no means delighted with this assignment from the top level. The ugly order, which aroused grave doubts in the Party itself, was transmitted to Goebbels on the night of November 9 in Hitler’s apartment in Munich. As I learned from an absolutely reliable source, it was accompanied by an outburst of rage on the part of Hitler when the leaders who were to be entrusted with the execution of the orders showed signs of disinclination. Here, as in so many other cases, the people did not consider Hitler personally to blame. In reality Hitler was the sole instigator of that orgy of destruction; it was he who urged the savage violence with which it was carried out—though many others acquired a share in the guilt in the course of the action.
This incident is typical of Hitler’s double face. Up to this time he had posed as a man intent only on the good of the nation; now he suddenly revealed the destructive instincts which he had hitherto managed to hide. This man who in so many speeches appealed to Providence for aid in the achievement of the highest national aims was acting as the apt pupil of the Fiend. There is no other way to put the matter. Hitler personally was the sponsor of anti-Semitism. At any and all occasions he alluded to the national necessity for an anti-Semitic program, or harangued those among his associates who drew back from the idea. Though his experts in press matters advised him otherwise, he banned hundreds of newspapers including, finally, the famous Frankfurter Zeitung—but although I frequently pleaded with him to suppress the Stürmer, which I called a disgrace to German culture, this newspaper continued to be published on his personal orders—although he himself hardly ever read it.
In the late fall and winter of 1938-39 Hitler devoted himself to the building of the West Wall, which was his original creation and which he himself planned down to the smallest detail. Whether at this time, after the international settlement of the Sudeten question and the guarantee of the territorial inviolability of Czechoslovakia, he already had in mind further action against Prague, I was not informed at the time. But in Hitler’s public and private statements certain ideas came to the fore which were a far cry from his earlier more modest national and racial goals. He began talking in terms of strategy and geopolitics. The image of Czechoslovakia pointed like a spear into the heart of Germany, and the idea of a “power making for European order” cropped up in his thinking and his arguments. Hitler was moving away from his former anti-imperialist point of view, but he was still held fast by the inner forces of his ambivalent nature.
The destruction of Czechoslovakia was the fatal step that plunged Hitler on to the road to war. By forcing President Hacha’s acquiescence, Hitler managed to give the military occupation the appearance of legality, so that intervention by the guaranteeing Powers could be averted. But it is clear to-day that in his heart Hitler had already made the decision; the drive to power within himself had won the upper hand. Hitler had overcome all his inhibitions; he had crossed the Rubicon. When he entered the Hradschin, the castle at Prague where German emperors had once ruled, he was overwhelmed by those impulses that were driving him ever more tempestuously from goal to goal—until the point was reached when he could no longer call a halt before total ruin.5
The tempo of events during those years, one thing following another in such rapid succession, caused grave concern among the members of Hitler’s following. They were expecting a far more moderate and tranquil development. After every action, after Austria, after the Sudetenland, after Prague, and after Memel, Hitler swore to high heaven that from now on there would be five years of tranquility. Each time he conveyed the impression that he really meant it, that the pace was getting to be too much for him. But each time, before many weeks or months had passed, his political neurasthenia came to the fore again and he served up new surprises. He committed the rash and fateful step of denouncing the Anglo-German Naval Treaty and the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact in public Reichstag speeches.
Like a high-tension condenser that slowly recharges after each discharge until it has built up again to the point where a sudden flash leaps the gap—that was Hitler in the crucial year of 1939. He was like a winning roulette player who cannot quit the tables because he thinks he has hit on the system which will break the bank. When the negotiations with Poland had come to an impasse and England had declared her intention of guaranteeing Poland’s security, reason should have stopped Hitler. Everyone expected him to make some sort of compromise. In Germany hardly anyone thought it possible that Hitler, who enjoyed the confidence of the people because he had so often proved his political adroitness, would fail to control this situation. No one believed that he would push things to the point of war with England—especially since collaboration with England had been one of the major points in his program from the start of his political career. Everyone attributed to his clever statesmanship the gains that he had won by boldness and good luck. Even now, when we are beginning to understand Hitler’s character, it remains incredible that he should have been so struck by political blindness as to incur the probability of war with England and France. Any ordinary German at the time could have told him that a clash with the British Empire would inevitably bring about a second world war which would spell the end of Germany. It is one of the great riddles of history—and one which reveals the abnormal split in Hitler’s mind—that, faced with a decision in which his own fate, the fate of his racial nation, Europe and the whole world were involved, a man of his stature could not summon up the logic to recognize what was what. But Hitler called no one in when he risked the life of the German nation; alone and autocratically be took the decisive step and confronted the German people with accomplished facts.
I do not know much about the details of the diplomatic negotiations in Berlin and Warsaw before the outbreak of the war. I was able to follow the course of events only from the sidelines. In May, Hitler spent a week inspecting the underground defenses of the West Wall. In July, after his visit to Memel, he went to Bayreuth for the festival. Here I arranged a meeting between him and the British newspaper owner Lord Kemsley.
Kemsley had come to Germany at my invitation to discuss arrangements for a large-scale exchange of articles between German and British newspapers. According to this agreement, I would have articles from England reprinted in the entire German press, while Kemsley undertook a similar obligation for the newspapers in his chain. My idea in launching such a project was to lessen the existing tension. I thought it would bring about a better understanding between the two nations, and Kemsley had been sympathetic to this idea. He and his wife came to Germany, where we quickly settled details. I had, however, not yet informed Hitler of this project. Shortly before his interview with Lord Kemsley I told him about it. The conversation with Kemsley took place in my presence in the Wagner House where Hitler generally stayed when he was in Bayreuth. In the course of their talk, which lasted for about an hour, Kemsley took occasion to speak of his concern for the maintenance of peace in Europe. I was struck by Hitler’s marked reserve throughout the talk. When Kemsley offered objections to something the Führer had said, he replied with monotonous insistence that everything depended upon England. At the time I thought his behavior a tactic aimed at influencing negotiations with the British. But since I had expected the interview to be a vigorous step toward the preservation of peace, I was disappointed by Hitler’s attitude. I believe Lord Kemsley’s feelings were the same. The events of a few short weeks later provided me with the explanation for Hitler’s extraordinary reserve. I am now certain that Hitler was being deliberately non-cooperative. In accordance with my agreement with Lord Kemsley, I wrote the first article for his newspaper. Hitler asked to see it before it went out and made numerous changes in the interests of a “firmer line.” I sent the article to Lord Kemsley and waited for his contribution to the German press. The outbreak of the war put an end to our collaborations.
At the time I did not know Hitler’s intentions toward Poland. If Poland refused to yield to his demands and cease her aggression toward those of German race living within her borders, Hitler planned to strike. England, however, was not to be brought into the fight. On August 28 a decisive conversation between Hitler and British Ambassador Henderson was to take place.
That afternoon as I watched Henderson’s car drive through the great bronze portal into the New Chancellery, I had a clear conception of the gravity of the hour. I was of the firm opinion that an attack upon Poland would be the spark in the powder barrel which would ignite the world conflagration; I saw the terrors of a second, still more terrible world war descending upon humanity before the wounds of the first were entirely healed. And I saw in my mind’s eye the massive round table along the short wall of the huge room in the New Chancellery where Hitler and England’s ambassador sat facing one another. Hitler could look out into the garden where Bismarck, his “model,” had so often walked, lost in thoughts about the future of the Reich. If Hitler is ever to receive an inspiration from on high, I thought at the time, let it come to him at this moment for the sake of our nation and all humanity.
After about an hour and a quarter Henderson’s car left the Chancellery. I went inside in order to listen around and find out what had occurred. People were saying that the upshot of the talk had been unsatisfactory. Obviously England had reiterated that she would fulfill her obligations toward Poland.
The general impression was that von Ribbentrop encouraged Hitler to believe that England was not now in a position to wage war, that she was only bluffing in order to frighten Hitler out of his plans to attack Poland. In the course of the discussion Hitler threw in the possibility of compromising by creating a corridor to Danzig through the Polish corridor. This proposal, however, was not submitted to the British ambassador in writing. England did not reply since, as Henderson later explained, there had been no written offer. Hitler was now in a dilemma. He obviously could not make up his mind to reverse his course. And so, in spite of continuing negotiations, on September 1 he gave the troops the order to march.
Fortune had smiled upon him. This time he again took a chance and leaped. Forty-eight hours later he had England’s declaration of war. The dice had been cast—against him. From now on destiny took its inexorable course over mountain and plain and into the abyss.
Hitler had not expected England and France to enter the war on behalf of Poland. It was plain to see how stunned he was by the declarations of war. He thought the Western Powers were not yet sufficiently rearmed and believed the West Wall also constituted a political shield against them. This miscalculation on Hitler’s part was ultimately rooted in his complete lack of understanding of moral factors in international politics, his exclusive faith in force. But Ribbentrop undoubtedly also played a fateful part. It is true that Hitler could not be swayed once he had made a decision, but without Ribbentrop he would not have come to such perverse conclusions about England. Hitler had never been abroad, except for his brief visits to Fascist Italy. Although ordinarily unteachable, he depended upon his foreign minister for the facts of life about foreign countries and diplomatic relations. If Ribbentrop had advised against it, he would scarcely have undertaken the attack upon Poland, with all the consequences that inevitably flowed out of it, given the political situation of the time. That is my firm conviction. I still cannot decide whether Hitler appointed Ribbentrop foreign minster in February 1938 because he knew in advance that Ribbentrop would abet his reckless political and military enterprises, or whether Ribbentrop on his own so strongly influenced Hitler’s view of England that the Führer took such a frightful and incomprehensible risk. I recall a remark that Ribbentrop made to Hitler in the middle of the Polish campaign, just after he had persuaded the Führer to turn all foreign propaganda over to his ministry. He and Hitler were standing in front of the special train in which Hitler’s headquarters had been installed. What Ribbentrop said I never forgot: “My propaganda will so disgrace England in the eyes of the world that no dog will accept a piece of bread from her.” And in discussions of Germany’s military capabilities I frequently heard Ribbentrop make the dangerous statement: “We are much stronger than we ourselves believe.”
Hitler later repeatedly blamed Italy’s attitude for the fiasco of his own policies. He asserted that an Italian Crown Council had secretly decided not to enter the war on Germany’s side, and that during those crucial days this decision had been flashed to Chamberlain by the Italian ambassador in London, Signor Grandi. Believing that Germany would be standing alone, he argued, Chamberlain had then been willing to risk a declaration of war.
Before Hitler left Berlin to lead the Polish campaign personally, he gave strict instructions to the propaganda ministry and the press to maintain extreme restraint in dealing with England and France. Over the radio and in the press all attacks upon these nations were to be avoided, even in cases of justified self-defense. He was still hoping for a compromise before open hostilities with the West began.
At four o’clock one morning I learned that Russia was marching into Eastern Poland. I rushed to Hitler with this surprising news, which he received with feelings of relief. However, this act of Russia’s put an end to all thought of leaving a remnant of Poland independent, an idea that Hitler had at least entertained, in the hope of placating England and France. His observations in Galicia led—as he later admitted—to his deceiving himself about the strength of the Russian army.
His offer of peace to the Western Powers after the completion of the Polish campaign was honestly intended. Because I considered this offer a last chance to avert a global conflagration and spare the nations of the world untold suffering, I acted on my own initiative and passionately urged this solution upon the representatives of the foreign press in Berlin. Before Hitler made the announcement of his peace offer in the Reichstag, I called a special conference of foreign correspondents, appealed to the solidarity of journalists of all countries, and asked them to put their united influence to work for the salvation of world peace. I promised that I would do my part in Germany. I told the correspondents that it is given to few men in their lifetime to affect directly by their personal acts the course of world history. Those assembled here in Berlin had that rare opportunity. “If all of us at this moment,” I said, “work passionately for peace; if out of our deepest sense of responsibility we write in the cause of peace; if the newspapers and press agencies you represent print your call to peace, and if you can persuade them to advocate with the same fervor the peaceful interests of mankind, no government in the world will be able to oppose such a phalanx of public opinion.... I do not know whether you will succeed in persuading your newspapers to act in this way. I, at any rate, should not like to have to reproach myself in the future for not having pointed out to you this possibility at a moment so crucial for the peace of the world.”
The strength of the press response was insufficient to halt the impending catastrophe. From London and Paris Hitler received no reply to his offer. It was obviously too late. Only then did he decide to get set for the blow against the West.
In the course of the war there were frequent reports abroad about alleged peace feelers on the part of Hitler. Every few months some such rumor sprang up, always accompanied by a spate of accusations or more or less serious commentary. From my knowledge of what went on I can say that Hitler himself, aside from his public statements, never made the slightest effort to end the war by negotiation. On the contrary, whenever he heard of such rumors or read any of these hoaxes in the press, he gave orders that they be emphatically denied. He feared that such stories, even though they were false, would be interpreted by his enemies as weakness. There was only one single case, at the very end, in March 1945, when he gave his tacit consent to a genuine peace feeler. That was when Ribbentrop in Stockholm sent up a trial balloon through Dr. Hesse—an inappropriate attempt at an unsuitable moment to deal with an unsuitable person.
On the day the war began Hitler donned the gray uniform and declared that he would wear it until the end of the war. When he put off his civilian clothes, he also stripped himself of the political skill he had possessed up to then. Throughout the war until the day of his death he displayed not a single impulse toward political activity, no ambition to employ statesmanship in foreign affairs. All his fire, his hardness, his savagery, and his passion which had failed him in foreign politics he now poured into the role of soldier and Supreme Commander. The fact that he led the war not as a statesman, but as a commander obsessed with military ambitions, was the crowning misfortune that his demonic personality brought to the German nation.