Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard Breitman, professor of history at American University, is the author of Architect of Genocide, a biography of Himmler. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Official Secrets

Hill & Wang

Chapter One

FORESHADOWINGS

ADOLF HITLER MIXED CANDOR and dissimulation in nearlyequal parts. His writings and speeches, as well as records of his privatemonologues and other sources, gave important indications of his thinking,but he was also a very secretive man. He sometimes issued instructionsas to what not to record, and he boasted of his refusal to confidein others, of his willingness to lie. In modern times, only Joseph Stalincould compete with Hitler on the standard of deceit.

    Hitler organized a secret effort to overthrow the Bavarian state governmentin November 1923, designed as the first step toward a generalrevolution in Germany. After botching the coup d'etat in Munich, thethirty-four-year-old Hitler was convicted of treason and served a briefprison sentence. During his stay in Landsberg prison, he began workon a long and rambling memoir and political tract, which he calledMein Kampf (My Struggle). The book appeared in two volumes, thefirst in July 1925, the second in December 1926. The sections about Hitler'syouth in Linz and Vienna traced his early rise to political and racialconsciousness, as well as his view of history and politics. But they distortedand concealed as much as they revealed. Hitler may well havepicked up racist and anti-Semitic sentiments in his youth, but (thoughsome writers disagree) he actually drifted until he found his politicalorientation and his calling in a chaotic postwar Munich in 1919.

    The general, ideological sections of Mein Kampf, however, heldbroader political significance--so much so that the book posed a problemlater for Hitler the politician and head of government. In 1938,Hitler supposedly told his onetime lawyer Hans Frank that, if he hadknown in 1924 that he was going to become chancellor, he wouldnever have written his book. This comment applied particularly towhat Hitler had stated about Germany's foreign-policy options andgoals, which revealed his conviction that the German race needed muchmore land to survive and to thrive. He had shown not only his proclivityfor war but also his hostility to France and the Soviet Union.After Mein Kampf, he wrote a second book specifically on foreign policy,but by 1929 he had come far enough politically to recognize thewisdom of not publishing it. The work remained secret for decades;the historian Gerhard Weinberg discovered it and published the textonly in 1961.

    Hitler's worldview--a blend of intense and expansionist nationalism,racism, antiliberalism, anti-Marxism, and, not least, anti-Semitism--pervaded both volumes of Mein Kampf as well as the unpublishedsecond book. Anti-Semitism cropped up even in strange contexts. Inchapters 10, 13, 14, and 15 of the second volume of Mein Kampf, Hitlerrepeatedly "explained" how the Jews were behind all foreign oppositionto Germany and all internal problems afflicting the German peopleand obstructing the advance of Nazism. Disputes between RomanCatholics and Protestants within the Nazi Party were leading it fromits true mission and thereby, consciously or not, serving Jewish interests.Russian Bolshevism was nothing other than the attempt by Jews toseize world domination. In other words, Hitler automatically associatedany problem, any difficulty, any opponent with Jewish efforts or Jewishinterests. He believed there was no need for specific evidence, whichmight be lacking because of Jewish secrecy and cunning. This conspiratorialview of history and politics had practical implications: only aconspirator could succeed in a conspiratorial world. Moreover, it suggestedthat, if he came to power and held to his views, Hitler wouldseek to neutralize what he perceived as the Jewish threat to Germany.

    Scholars have described Hitler's early writings as everything from a"blueprint for power" to "the generalizations of a powerful, but uninstructedintellect: dogmas which echo the conversation of any Austriancafe or German beer-house." Virtually every expert has acceptedthe sincerity of Hitler's early worldview; in dispute is whether the earlyHitler fixed a clear course for the future and subsequently held fast toit.

    Most individuals learn, adapt, and evolve over time; some politiciansswitch parties and programs. Many a statesman has been known toreverse previous foreign-policy pronouncements and respond primarilyto circumstances and opportunities. Some have used heated rhetoric tomake names for themselves or mobilize support. But there was a veryhigh correlation between what Hitler wrote in the 1920s aboutLebensraum (living space) and German foreign policy and the future pathof the Third Reich. Did Hitler tenaciously hold to his original visionin other respects, or did the policies and programs of the Third Reichoccur because of the actions of others or the pressure of circumstances?There is unfortunately no definitive way to trace the range and consistencyof Hitler's thinking and state of mind from 1925 until his suicideon April 30, 1945. His writings, speeches, and decisions supplycrucial evidence but also contain mendacious elements, gaps, and camouflage.

    If key Nazi officials took Mein Kampf--or the ideology expressed init--as a guide for their actions, then it becomes even harder for ahistorian to discount the continuity and impact of Hitler's early ideology.If sophisticated non-Nazi observers at the time looked to MeinKampf to help them understand the impulses and direction of the Naziregime, the case is stronger still. This chapter offers a small sample ofboth types of assessments of Mein Kampf.

    One of the most assiduous readers of Mein Kampf was a young Bavarianpolitical organizer named Heinrich Himmler. Mortified by Germany'sdefeat in World War I, which he blamed on the Marxist left,and fascinated by the principles and methods of breeding in agriculture,which he had studied at Munich's Technische Hochschule, Himmlerwas particularly susceptible to Hitler's line of racial thought. In fact, hemay have taken it more literally than Hitler himself. Later, as ReichFuhrer SS, he would try to make his own organization into a racial andpolitical elite. Himmler first met the Fuhrer in 1926, when he wasserving as deputy Gauleiter (regional party leader) under Gregor Strasserin Lower Bavaria. Within a year Himmler was also deputy leader ofthe small unit of Nazi guards known as the SS, outnumbered by thelarger Nazi paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung, or SA.

    A meticulous record keeper, Himmler kept a partial, dated list of hisreading, along with brief comments about each book. He finished thefirst volume of Mein Kampf on June 19, 1927, writing: "It containstremendously many truths. The first chapters about his own youthcontain many weaknesses." Not captivated by Hitler's personal story,Himmler nonetheless found the book a great inspiration.

    Himmler's copy of volume 2 of Mein Kampf, which he read in December1927, has now emerged from obscurity. From markings onthis volume, it is possible to examine his early reactions to Hitler'sideology in greater detail. In general, he looked for practical ways toapply the "truths" of his Fuhrer. Next to the passage about the importanceof instilling self-confidence...