‘Germany…was thriving and happy. On its face was the bloom of a woman in love. And the Germans were in love—in love with Hitler.’ After leaving the German Reich in 1933 to run the Paris offices of the Daily Express, British newspaper correspondent Sefton Delmer returned in 1936. He found people transformed. Three years had been enough to put them under the Führer’s spell. ‘They were adoring his firm ruthless rule. They were in raptures at being told what to think, whom to hate, when to cheer.’
Delmer knew all about the appeal of Hitler’s drive, having felt its effects himself, almost physically, during the election campaigns. He could see why people were grateful to Hitler for pulling them out of humiliation and putting them back into work, restoring their confidence and hope. He saw the glow of satisfaction on the workers’ faces as they cycled to the factories in their blue denim jackets, their enamelled coffee cans slung over their shoulders. Gone were the days when they hung around on the streets. The class struggle and internecine hatred seemed to have vanished. ‘[T]hey all, children and grown-ups alike, were enjoying the little jobs, the titles and the offices Hitler had given them, the bit of authority over others.’
The Germans’ unbounded admiration for Hitler didn’t surprise Delmer; after all, they regarded him as personally responsible for every new political success. It was Hitler alone—not the Gauleiter or the generals—who was the vanquisher of chaos, economic miracle maker, rearmament engine, people’s conciliator and avenger of stolen pride. The Führer had become a myth.
His lowly origins made him a man of the people. His service in the Great War meant that he had experience of life in the trenches and understood the trauma of what was seen as unearned defeat. His rise to power came at a time of a profound identity crisis for the Germans, and he lived through that crisis with them. He shared their experiences and sufferings. He knew, and knew how to galvanise, their feelings, yearnings and prejudices—how to transform depression into exhilaration. As a man of the people, he spoke their language. He was the faith healer they had been waiting for.
All this catapulted him out of the herd and into the firmament. In the glow of his success, Hitler became a Messiah. Religious symbolism and language—awakening, resurrection, amen—characterised his public appearances. The words he addressed to the 140,000 faithful at the Nuremberg Rally in 1936 were close to mystical: ‘It is the miracle of our age that you have found me… among so many millions! And that I have found you is Germany’s great good fortune!’
Each of his appearances was as carefully choreographed as the liturgy. Each encounter between the Führer and his people was a piece of highly orchestrated drama, familiar and moving to the initiated, though sometimes disconcerting, repellent or ridiculous to outsiders. During the 1933 election campaign, Stéphane Roussel got herself a seat in the Sportpalast to hear Hitler’s speech. Rather than sit in the press stand, she decided to mingle with the crowd. As the Führer’s car approached, a rumbling could be heard in the distance, like a gathering storm. ‘Suddenly, the storm broke. All the doors burst open and the waiting crowd poured in.’ Everyone stood up, disciplined and excited at once. Hitler appeared at the back of the hall, surrounded by his aides, and began to advance, stately as a priest. His outstretched arm made it look as if he were dividing the crowd—not that anyone showed any sign of getting in his way.
Since Hitler has arrived, the atmosphere has changed. We are no longer in the Sportpalast where Berlin’s big bicycle races are held. We are in some ‘elsewhere’. And slowly, a mysterious bond is formed between the audience and this man who stands alone, motionless, as if unaware of the waves of applause that roll towards him and break at the foot of the stage, without reaching him.
Silence in the arena, as his voice swelled. He spoke of victory over the past, of the present and the future, work and happiness—and every member of the audience seemed to feel as if he were addressing them personally. Roussel noticed the way he transformed their vague but urgent feelings into something more tangible. People’s longings and resentments were laid out before them, on public view. Their most secret thoughts were no longer anything to be ashamed of; they belonged to everyone in the hall. ‘[T]hey’re yours, he seems to say, and yours and yours.’ Roussel glanced at the woman next to her and saw sweat pouring down her face. Oblivious to her surroundings, she was rocking her body in time to the Führer’s words. The common man’s dream had come true: everyone felt understood.
When it was over, the audience looked drained. Dark rings under their eyes showed how intently they had listened. Roussel hurried to escape. Not for a second had she felt tempted to succumb. When she mentioned this to a German colleague, he gave her a faint, condescending smile: ‘It wasn’t you he was talking to.’ The myth of Hitler, and of Germany, was intended for others. Stéphane Roussel, a Frenchwoman of Jewish origin, was not one of them.
• • •
By the spring of 1934, the Führer cult had taken root across the country. The people’s infatuation was genuine and remarkably durable. Their leader was untouchable, a fixed star. The failures of everyday politics were blamed on others—on the party or on Hitler’s vassals, the ‘little Hitlers’. Minor inconveniences and major atrocities were dismissed with the same simple phrase: ‘If the Führer only knew!’ He was exempt from all criticism.
Johann Radein’s earliest memories of his childhood were bound up with memories of Hitler. He remembered standing in the dining area of his family’s flat, gazing up at the picture of the Führer that hung next to the dresser and feeling trust and affection. When he was four, his mother took him with her to the local women’s league leader, who thanked her in the name of the Führer for her achievements as a mother of four. That Christmas, a troop of Brownshirts called at the house with a washing basket full of presents—with the Führer’s compliments. On Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, Johann’s mother reciprocated by hanging a homemade flag from the roof.
Johann felt deep love for the Führer. Despite his Catholic upbringing, his faith in the Führer held an important place in his life. When Hitler’s speeches were broadcast on the radio, it seemed to him like a time of communion and prayer, as if Hitler spoke to him directly.
The Führer’s emotive language appeals directly to the feelings and emotions that my faith in him arouses in me. His highly impassioned voice seems in harmony with my thoughts. Sometimes the tone is quiet and solemn, at others loud and rousing; shouts strained to the point of hoarseness are followed by passages in an almost tearful undertone, low and lamenting, yet full of energy.
In the cold, dark winter months, when Hitler’s speeches were full of talk of providence, Johann drew comfort from the familiar Christian term. In his childish faith, he thought he was hearing the word of God from the Führer’s mouth.
The media did their bit to sustain this larger-than-life image; Hitler’s charisma was the product of continual orchestration. The Nuremberg Rally film, the weekly newsreel, the living-room oil portrait—all these kept him far removed from the banalities of everyday life, portraying him as a leader without human flaws, who didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, ate no meat, and had neither a woman nor a family. Here was a man who would sacrifice himself for his people. This sentiment was echoed in the heaps of love letters and letters of admiration that arrived in the Reich Chancellery and party headquarters every day, part hero-worship, part cosy familiarity.
Hitler understood his role as the movement’s central force. He knew, too, that he needed the majority of the population behind him, and so he carefully honed his image—manner, style, bearing, language—avoiding any hint of weakness or sordid intrigue. He played his role so perfectly that he himself was taken in. He began to see himself as the man he wanted to be seen as, believing in his own infallibility and divine election. Reality grew steadily more remote.
Gerhard Starcke had supported Hitler since a rally in the Sportpalast in 1930. He’d stood on a box of grit at the side of the road and watched the January 1933 torchlight parade pass through the Brandenburg Gate, hugged complete strangers and kissed women he didn’t even know. Soon afterwards he became editor of the factory cell newspaper. He saw it as his task to contribute to the work of peace promoted by Adolf Hitler. One day, along with a group of other journalists, he met the chancellor himself in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. There he was in front of him, suddenly. ‘His blue eyes went straight through you. It felt as if the man could look into the bottom of your heart and see every flaw.’ The magnetic effect of Hitler’s eyes became a myth in its own right. His gaze was described variously as intense, twinkling, piercing, penetrating, deep, hypnotic and terrifying. If Starcke had ever had doubts about Hitler’s vision for Germany, they were forgotten at this moment.
• • •
Ordinary Germans seldom had the opportunity to glimpse the real Hitler. Martin Sieg was a boy like millions of others. His childhood in the East Prussian town of Rastenburg was unspectacular. When, years later, he sat down to write his autobiography, he felt as if he’d spent the first decade of his life on another planet. ‘Those years were something like a rich overture, the calm before the storm. But the storm broke soon enough, and a very different kind of reality set in.’
Sieg’s parents never discussed the political situation, so in 1937 he was put into a Hitler Youth uniform without being asked—but without protesting, either. He was proud of his uniform, because it gave him access to a higher social sphere. He liked marching with his friends, and he loved the spirit of freedom breathed by the scouting games and excursions. The Hitler Youth also gave him the chance to realise his dream of gliding.
Towards the end of 1940, his hometown gained special standing when one of the Führer’s headquarters, the ‘Wolf’s Lair’, was built deep in the woods near Rastenburg. The high security, the atmosphere of secrecy and most of all the proximity of the Führer put the boys in a permanent state of quivering excitement. Life near the Führer’s bunker felt like a perilous adventure. Word got around whenever Mussolini, Göring, Rommel or other revered war heroes came to visit.
The day Martin Sieg met the Führer in Rastenburg, he was expecting no less than a demigod. Hitler’s supernatural aura had made him a figure of legend. Sieg knew his voice from listening to his radio broadcasts in the living room with his grandmother, letting the words gush over him like a waterfall. That day, news had leaked that Hitler was going to inspect a new kind of tank at a nearby military training area. All excited, the Hitler Youth boys positioned themselves at the roadside. Martin saw a gleaming black Mercedes in the convoy, advancing at a crawl. The crowd went wild and poured onto the road, pushing Martin onto the mudguard of the Mercedes.
I saw Hitler right in front of me, separated only by the glass of the window. The cameras clicked without let-up and I sat there like a rabbit before a snake, staring at the ‘Übermensch’ in a state of some shock. Suddenly the almost mask-like earnestness melted from Hitler’s face, he smiled slightly, cranked down the window and gave me his hand.
Then Martin saw nothing but black uniforms—SS men who beat a path through the crowd with fists and boots and shoved him aside. He heard voices shouting themselves hoarse, but he couldn’t cheer anymore. His joy was gone. A feeling of emptiness and disappointment came over him, and he didn’t turn to look for the Mercedes, or for his friends. He wanted to be alone.
I felt somehow stiff inside; the flood of feelings had frozen in mid-flow. In a way I was disappointed in myself because no new emotions were released in me. I tried to make sense of what was going on around me, but failed. I left the scene almost numb.
Recalling this episode later, Martin Sieg felt uneasy. The invisible bond had snapped. He had got too close to Hitler.