24. Mein Kampf, p. 40.
25. Cf. Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab. Lanz considered Hitler his disciple; he named, among other disciples who had early seen the importance of his doctrines, Lord Kitchener and Lenin! This fact sheds considerable light on Lanz himself and the pathological structure of his thought. His principal work, published in 1905, bore the illuminating title: Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-ûfflingen und dem GötterElektron. Eine Einführung in die älteste und neueste Weltanschauung und eine Rechtfertigung des Fürstentumes und des Adels (“Theo-zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods. An Introduction into the Oldest and Newest Philosophy and a Justification of Royalty and Nobility”). The blue-blond “Arioheroicans” were in his view “masterpieces of the gods,” equipped with electric organs and even transmitters. By eugenic concentration and breeding for purity the Arioheroic race was to be redeveloped and once again provided with the divine electromagnetic-radiological organs and powers it had lost. The age’s anxiety feelings, elitist leanings toward secret societies, fashionable idolization of Science by dabblers in the sciences, all tied together by a considerable dose of intellectual and personal fraud, combined to shape this doctrine.
Daim surely overestimates Lanz’s influence on Hitler; it seems certain that this influence did not extend beyond the limits described in the text. The situation is obviously different in regard to several other Nazi leaders, such as Darre and above all Heinrich Himmler. Directly or indirectly, in both the breeding catalogues of the SS Race and Settlement Bureau and in the practice of exterminating “unfit” lives, or Jews, Slavs, and gypsies, the weird and murderous notions of Lanz von Liebenfels in a way persisted.
26. Mein Kampf, pp. 56 if.
27. Greiner, p. 110. Cf. Bullock, Hitler, p. 39; but see also Shirer, Rise and Fall, p. 26.
28. Mein Kampf, p. 325. The assurance, urged as “a certainty,” that Hitler had no relations with women in Linz or Vienna, comes from Kubizek and of course applies only to the time Kubizek spent with Hitler (Kubizek, p. 276).
29. Mein Kampf, pp. 55, 69.
30. Ibid., p. 122.
31. Maser, Frühgeschichte, p. 92, has a different opinion; he maintains that Kubizek was in the right as against Hitler, but adduces no evidence to justify his view. For the cited phrases from Hitler see Mein Kampf, pp. 39 f., where Hitler also admits that his knowledge of union organization at the time he began work at the building site was still “practically nonexistent.” There is no reason to doubt this assertion. Hitler’s anti-Semitism at this time was not yet thoroughgoing or consistent. As late as 1936 Hanisch, his companion from the home for men, insisted that Hitler in Vienna had not been an anti-Semite. Hanisch presented an extensive list of Jews with whom Hitler had allegedly maintained cordial relations. Cf. Smith, p. 149.
32. Cf. Jahrbuch der KK Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie, 1909, pp. A 108, A 118, cited in Smith, p. 127. Werner Maser (Frühgeschichte, p. 77) has challenged Konrad Heiden and the historians deriving from him. Making downright assertions on a flimsy foundation, Maser argues that financial reasons would “with certainty” not have forced Hitler to seek shelter in a doss-house. But in calculating Hitler’s financial situation Maser has assumed that Hitler’s inheritance from his father was available to him as a permanent annuity. In reality it amounted to about 700 crowns and, depending on how quickly Hitler spent it, was bound to be used up sooner or later. Maser is so bent on showing that Hitler had financial security that he even suggests the possibility (and in a later passage terms it a probability) that Hitler lived in the doss-house “because he wanted to study the conditions there.”
33. Heiden, Hitler I, p. 43. Some interesting details on the home for men are to be found in Jenks, pp. 26 ff. According to Jenks, the home was restricted to persons with an income of under 1,500 crowns per year. It had 544 beds and was the fourth project of this type built by a foundation committed to alleviating the housing shortage. From 1860 to 1900 the population of Vienna had risen by 259 per cent; after Berlin (281 per cent) this was the steepest increase in Europe. Paris, for example, showed a population increase of only 60 per cent during the same period. The statistics obtained by Jenks show that in the eight predominantly proletarian districts of Vienna there was an average of 4.0 to 5.2 persons per room.
34. Mein Kampf, p. 34.
35. Thomas Mann, “Sufferings and Greatness of Richard Wagner,” in; Essays of Three Decades.
36. Rauschning, Gespräche, pp. 215 f. Also Albert Speer in a note to the author dated September 15, 1969.
37. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke 12, pp. 775 f.
38. Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, p. 24.
39. Mein Kampf, p. 41; also Kubizek, p. 220.
40. Mein Kampf, pp. 42 ff.
41. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts, I, p. 352.
42. Bullock, p. 36; for this whole context cf. also Hans-Günter Zmarzlik, “Social Darwinism as a Historical Problem,” in: Hajo Holborn, ed., Republic to Reich.
43. Tischgespräche, pp. 179, 226, 245, 361, 447; many other similar phrases may be found in the table talk and in the wartime speeches.
44. Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner, p. 309.
45. Mein Kampf, p. 128.
46. Thomas Mann; Gesammelte Werke 9, p. 176.
47. Mein Kampf, pp. 123 f.
48. For the complex of motives governing his departure from Vienna cf. Mein Kampf, p. 123.
49. The description of this affair of the call-up follows the conclusions of Jetzinger, pp. 253 if. He also deserves the credit for having uncovered the circumstances.
50. Mein Kampf, p. 158.
51. Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, p. 461.
52. Around the turn of the century Georges Sorel popularized this remark of Proudhon’s. The quotation reads in fulclass="underline" “War is the orgasm of universal life which fructifies and moves chaos, the prelude for all creations, and which like Christ the Saviour triumphs beyond death through death itself.” Quoted in Freund, Abendglanz Europas, p. 9. “Sacred Hymns” was the title Gabriele d’Annunzio gave to the collection of his poems pleading for Italy’s entry into the war (Gli inni sacri della guerra giusta).
53. Mein Kampf, p. 163.
54. Mein Kampf, p. 164.
55. Hitler’s letter to lustizassessor Hepp in February, 1915; photocopy in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. The previous remark is quoted from Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann der Feldherr werden wollte, p. 29. The cited letter indicates that it deserves credence even in this somewhat deprecatory phrasing; it is the more credible because it trenchantly characterizes Hitler’s general manner of expressing his ideas, right down to the table talk of later years. Cf. also Wiedemann, p. 24, and Mein Kampf, pp. 166 f.