HISTORICAL NOTES

As stated in the Foreword, the vast majority of persons in Wolf were real people whose lives, careers, and sentiments are accurately depicted. Only Anna, Marta, Mila, Oksana, and Max, along with Friedrich Richard, are fictional.

We used Friedrich to narrate the sixteen-year account of a time, a people, a movement, and particularly its deranged leader, who was responsible for the most beastly conflagration in the history of the world.

Friedrich, without a memory or prejudices, is a clear window through which we observed people and events. We presented these with as much objective accuracy as our scholarship permitted. The result produced a very different portrayal of Adolf Hitler—who, as the reader now knows, really did use the name “Wolf”—than that presented by well-regarded historians. Sir Ian Kershaw, perhaps the most esteemed of the present historians, offers this evaluation:

Hitler’s disturbed sexuality, his recoiling from physical contact, his fear of women, his inability to forge genuine friendship and emptiness in human relations, presumably had their roots in childhood experiences of a troubled family life. (Emphasis added)¹

Not a word of the above is correct—except that Hitler had a troubled childhood.

Adolf Hitler, in fact, forged life-long friendships with numerous people. He was exceedingly loyal to “old fighters”—Alte Kämpfer—who were with him prior to the 1923 putsch. Even when they transgressed against him personally, notwithstanding that Hitler was a lethal killer, he forgave them when others would not have.

As an example, Emil Maurice frequently crossed Hitler. Maurice poached on Geli Raubal. When Hitler fired Maurice, Maurice sued him. And yet . . . Hitler always forgave Maurice. When Himmler and Heydrich threatened to kill Maurice, Hitler not only saved him but found official positions for Maurice. When Maurice applied for permission to marry and it was discovered that his great-grandfather was Jewish, Himmler wanted to drum Maurice and his two brothers out of the SS because of his Jewish “blood.” Again, Hitler intervened. Here is the secret memo from Himmler:

The Reichsführer SS, Münich, 31 August 1935 Official Minutes

1. SS-Standartenführer Emil Maurice is without doubt, according to his family tree, not of Aryan descent.

2. On the occasion of SS-Standartenführer Maurice’s marriage when he had to submit the family tree, I reported to the Führer my position to the effect that Maurice must be removed from the ranks of the SS.

3. The Führer has decided that in this one and only exceptional case Maurice as well as his brothers could remain in the SS, because Maurice had been his very first companion, and because his brothers and the entire family Maurice had served the Movement with rare bravery and loyalty in the first and most difficult months and years.

4. I decree that Maurice must not be entered in the SS Clan Book, and that none of the descendants of the Maurice family may be admitted into the SS.

5. The Chief of the Race and Settlement Head Office receives a copy of this Minute with the request of most strictly confidential treatment; only the Chief of the Clan Office is to be informed.

6. For myself and for all successors as Reichsführer SS I state that only Adolf Hitler himself had and has the right also for the SS to decree an exception with regard to blood. No Reichsführer SS has or will have for all future time the right to allow exceptions from the requirements of the SS regarding blood.

7. I oblige all my successors to maintain most strictly the position laid down in point 6.

A confession by the authors is appropriate: Himmler’s attempt to remove Emil Maurice and his brothers took place in 1935, not in 1934 as depicted in Wolf. We changed the timing to bring these events within the time limits of the volume.

Hitler’s loyalty exceeded protecting Maurice. Hitler personally paid for Emil’s and Hedwig’s wedding, which was held in Munich at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten—the Four Seasons—when work at Hitler’s flat made it impractical to have the wedding there. See the illuminating work of Anna Maria Sigmund, Des Führers bester Freund, München, 2003.

There were numerous similar relationships between Hitler and others, including friends, colleagues, and staff. These examples, documented in interviews and books written by contemporaries, refute the likewise incorrect assessment by Professor Volker Ullrich in Hitler Ascent 1889-1939:

. . . Apparently, despite all his charm, Hitler was unable to approach women confidently in any way that went beyond the mere exchange of pleasantries. His lack of experience may have played a role in this, but it may also have been an inability or unwillingness to empathise with the wishes and needs of the women he fancied. Thus Hitler launched sudden advances and then turned his back equally abruptly, if his clumsy forays did not meet with approval. He seemed to have lacked an internal emotional compass. (Emphasis added)²

As with the earlier quotation drawn from Sir Ian Kershaw, these statements are absolutely incorrect and without the slightest basis in fact.

Far from inexperienced, Hitler kept a stable of women. Far from an inability to empathize with women, he both manipulated while simultaneously respecting them. Except for one, his niece Geli Raubal, he kept them secreted and away from the knowledge of the German people. He treated each of them well. When he terminated a relationship, he often kept in touch, giving assistance to a former lover and even to their subsequent husbands. Numerous interviews of those who knew Hitler well, including his housekeeper Anni Winter, Herman Esser, Wilma Schaub, Gretl Braun (Eva’s sister), and even Hitler’s mistress Maria “Mimi” Reiter, establish this ability to develop and maintain emotional relationships.

By the same token, Wolf’s portrayal of Hitler as a mental patient in Pasewalk and his treatment by the psychiatrist, Dr. Edmund Foster, is very different from Hitler’s own account in Mein Kampf. Historians Kershaw and Ullrich accept Hitler’s version as factual: that he was blinded by a gas attack.

As presented in Wolf, Dr. Kroner was, in fact, an eyewitness to Hitler’s admission to Pasewalk. According to Dr. Kroner’s statement to the US Government in 1943, upon admission to the hospital in October 1918, Hitler was diagnosed as a “psychopath” whose blindness was an “hysterical symptom” of his mental condition. Dr. Kroner’s exact words describing Hitler were: “A psychopath with hysterical symptoms,” (emphasis added).

Dr. Kroner reported that Hitler was treated for his condition by the psychiatrist, Professor Edmund Forster. Forster headed the Berlin University Nerve Clinic and was the Consultant Neurologist to the Military Hospital at Pasewalk. By every measure, Dr. Forster was certainly not an ophthalmologist. And yet, not one of the previous historians noted above mention Dr. Kroner by name or detail Hitler’s medical treatment in their works.

*

We offer these abbreviated notes to highlight how the storyline in Wolf deviates from accepted accounts. For expanded Historical Notes and references, please visit www.NotesOnWolf.com.

Herbert J. Stern and Alan A. Winter

 

1 Hitler: 1889-1939 Hubris, W.W. Norton, 1998 p. 46.

2 Volker Ullrich, Hitler Ascent 1889-1939 (Knopf, 2016), 274.