Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer, and later governor of Poland, remarked at the Nuremberg trials that Hitler’s “entire historical life,” the “substance of his whole personality” were revealed in the course of the November putsch. The most striking qualities are the jumble of contradictory states of mind and the whipping up of his own emotions, which are so in character with the hysterical daydreaming and egotistic fantasies of the adolescent city planner, composer, and inventor—as are the sudden collapse, the desperate gambler’s grandiose gesture of abdication, the headlong plunge into apathy. In September he had told his entourage: “Do you know Roman history? I am Marius and Kahr is Sulla; I am the leader of the people, but he represents the ruling class. This time, however, Marius will win.” But with the first signs of difficulty he had dropped everything. He was not the man of action but its herald. He could set himself great tasks, that was clear, but his nerves were not equal to his lust for action. He had predicted a “battle of the Titans” and then disgracefully taken to his heels, “not wanting to have anything more to do with this mendacious world,” as he explained in court. He had once more played for highest stakes—and lost.
Yet he saved himself through rhetoric. His version of the incident revealed how little he understood reality and how well he understood how to present reality, color it, mold it to his propagandist purposes. The elements of the gambler and the knight-errant were always present, as well as his propensity for the hopeless situation, the lost cause. In every critical juncture during 1923 Hitler had shown a pathological tendency not to leave himself any tactical options. He seemed always to be seeking out a wall to have at his back. He was always doubling his stakes, which were already too high for him. One might well consider this a suicidal mentality. Then again, he would always pour scorn on other politicians who tried to follow a prudent course, calling them “political Tom Thumbs.” He had nothing but contempt for those who “never expose themselves to extreme strain.” Bismarck’s description of politics as the art of the possible Hitler considered “a cheap excuse.” We can see a consistency, too, in the fact that from 1905 on he repeatedly threatened to take his own life. But he kept postponing the act until the very last moment, until the alternatives of world power or downfall ceased to exist, and nothing remained but a sofa in the shelter under the Berlin chancellery. Certainly much of his behavior continued to seem overwrought and verged on grandiose farce. But are we only projecting from later experience when we see the high-strung actor of that early phase already surrounded by an aura of catastrophe?
On that ambiguous noon of November 9, 1923, when the procession of demonstrators neared the Odeonsplatz, a passer-by had asked whether the man at the head of the marching column was “really that fellow from the street corner.” Now “that fellow” had entered history.
III. THE LONG WAIT
The Vision
They had better realize that we see events in terms of a historical vision.
The laurel wreath Hitler hung on his wall in the Landsberg fortress-prison was more than a token that his spirit was unbroken. The forced isolation from political activity was of benefit to him politically and personally. For one thing, it permitted him to escape the aftermath of the disaster of November 9. He could follow the wrangles of his embittered and scattered adherents from the sidelines, while remaining the untarnished martyr of the nationalist cause. It also gave him time for introspection after years of almost mindless unrest and excitement. He recovered his faith in himself and in his mission. And, as his turbulent emotions died down, he felt himself strengthened in his role as leader of the völkisch right wing. He had at first claimed this role hesitantly, but in the course of the trial he became more confident, and finally he boldly came forth as the divinely appointed one and only Führer. Filled with this consciousness, Hitler managed to impress this image of himself upon his fellow prisoners. From this time on, the sense of mission never left him. It froze his features in that mask which no smile, no altruistic gesture, no moment of spontaneity ever softened. Even before the November putsch Dietrich Eckart had complained of Hitler’s delusions of grandeur, his “messiah complex.” Now Hitler hardened more and more into the monument that corresponded to his notions of what a great man and a Führer would be like.
Thus his imprisonment in no way hampered the process of self-stylization. In a subsequent trial some forty more participants in the putsch were convicted and sent to Landsberg. They included members of the “Hitler shock troop,” Berchtold, Haug, Maurice, Amann, Hess, Heines, Schreck, and the student Walter Hewel. Hitler now had what amounted to an entourage. The prison authorities were highly accommodating to the special requirements of their prisoner. When he took his meals in the large common room, at a special table with his followers, he was allowed to sit at the head of the table under a swastika banner. Fellow prisoners were assigned the task of cleaning and tidying his room. He himself was not required to participate in the work program or the prison athletics. It was taken for granted that his followers, on arrival at the prison, were to “report to the Führer without delay.” Every morning at ten o’clock, moreover, they came in for the daily “conference with the Chief.” Hitler devoted much of his time to his extensive correspondence. One adulatory letter he received came from a recent Ph.D. in philology named Joseph Goebbels, who commented on Hitler’s closing address at the triaclass="underline" “What you stated there is the catechism of a new political creed coming to birth in the midst of a collapsing, secularized world…. To you a god has given the tongue with which to express our sufferings.[5] You formulated our agony in words that promise salvation.” He also received a letter from Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Hitler often took walks in the fortress garden. He was still having his old trouble arriving at a consistent style, for he combined his airs of a Caesar with Lederhosen, a Bavarian peasant jacket, and often a hat. When he spoke at the so-called comradeship evenings, we are told, “all the officials of the fortress gathered silently in the stairwell outside and listened.” As if wound up by his defeat, he continued to elaborate his legends and visions and to work out practical plans for the state, whose dictator he still expected to be. Supposedly the idea for the building of the autobahns and the creation of the Volkswagen dated from this period. Although visiting hours were officially restricted to six hours weekly, Hitler received visitors for up to six hours a day—adherents, petitioners, and friendly politicians, all of whom made the pilgrimage to Landsberg. The visitors included many women, for which reason the prison had been jokingly referred to as the “first Brown House.”1 On Hitler’s thirty-fifth birthday, with the trial not far behind him, the flowers and packages for the famous prisoner filled several rooms.