Office of Strategic Services A pale, gaunt man with a pointed beard was making a
speech to half a dozen comrades.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 43)
That was Adolf Hitler's business. And now we know what
he had been during the Munich Soviet regime--a spy.
This occupation did not apparently inspire him with any
horror. " There will be no peace in the land until a body
is hanging from every lamp-post," he frequently remarked.
(Hitler-Heiden-p.52)
Anyone acquainted with the unhappy life of this lonely
man knows why hatred and persecution mania guided his
first political footsteps. In his heart he nursed a grudge
against the world, and he vented it on guilty and innocent
alike. His croaking voice, his jerky gait, his sawing gestures
expressed a hatred of which all who saw him were conscious.
He was lashed on by the craving to persecute: "I went, filled
with loathing"--with this sentiment did he part from his
fellow-laborers at the building-site in Vienna. "In these
nights there grew in me a hatred, hatred of the authors of
the revolution." That was the result of the winter in Treunstein.
(Hitler-Heiden-p.53)
After the war the position suddenly changed. Anti-Semitism
immediately became a mass movement, even before Hitler.
The Prussian Minister of War, General von [unreadable],
published statistics by which he tried to prove that the German
Jews had not made as many sacrifices in the World War as
the other sections of the population. In reply it was pointed
out that the German princely houses had not lost a single prince...
(Hitler-Heiden-p.59)
"As I always woke up before five in the morning, I had
formed the habit of amusing myself by strewing on the
floor a few pieces of stale bread or crusts for the mice
which had made their home in the little room, and of
watching the droll little animals scurrying about after
these tidbits. I had already suffered so much distress
in the course of my life that I could picture only too well
the hunger and consequently the delight of these little
creatures. I could not go off to sleep again, and I suddenly
recalled the previous evening and remembered the pamphlet.
So I began to read."
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 68)
Then some ingenious brain conceived the brilliant idea of
inserting an advertisement in an anti-Semitic weekly,
the Munchener Beobachter. A miracle happened: eighty
people arrived!
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 69)
Rohm developed something like a genuine affection for
the queer soldier, but in Hitler too Rohm's frank, brutal
energy seemed to inspire a blissful [unreadable] of security.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 71)
Then Hitler came forward; the audience became restless;
the speaker did not appeal to them. Hitler began to expound
his program, and the audience became more attentive. From
time to time there were exclamations of approval. When
Hitler left the platform, he was convinced that he had
achieved a great success.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 75)
On a summer afternoon of the year 1919, a few people
collected before the steps of the new [unreadable] in
Munich. A pale gaunt man with a pointed beard had
mounted the balustrade...
(Hitler-Heiden-p.76)
Eighteen months later the same man again stood on a
raised platform before the Munich public. He no longer
wore a beard. The people knew his name.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 76)
It must not be imagined that the first National Socialist
meetings were outwardly very different from any other
political meeting. Hitler spoke; a discussion was opened;
someone ventured a contradiction, and Hitler patiently
refuted the contradiction.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 81)
As to Hitler's voice there are different opinions. Some
think it fascinating, others revolting. Certain it is that
the extraordinary power of this organ, which even on a
stormy mountain-height loses little of its volume and
only at excited
(Hitler-Heiden-p.85)
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 85 cont.)
moments becomes a croak stirs and thrills people. The
tone and attitude of the orator at the beginning convey
a sense of intense earnestness and responsibility, and
this makes the frenzied bawling which follows all the
more impressive. At the climax of his speech he is so
carried away that whatever he is saying, be it purest
truth or crassest lie, is at that moment so entirely the
expression of his nature, his mood, and his conviction
of the profound necessity for all he does that even the
lie echoes like truth in the ears of his audience. The
oneness of man and word is the second secret of his
success.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 85)
Hitler had to get [unreadable] as best he could."You have
no idea," he said later to Gregor Strasser, "what a problem
it was in those days to find the money to buy my ticket
when I wanted to deliver a speech at Nuremberg."
No one knows how he lived. As a man, he appeared a
thorough bohemian. He was said to have no money,
but he spent it. And there were distressing inconsistencies.
Here is the verbal report of one of his business friends
on the year 1923: Believe me, Hitler is personally the
most modest man in the world and grateful for the
smallest favor. Once, when I gave him an old blue coat
of mine, he grasped my hand in his and the tears started
in his eyes. The poor fellow has certainly had a hard life
and evidently has not experienced much kindness." The
speaker added with conviction: "You might have stood
the Hitler of November 9, 1923 on his head in the
Felderrnhalle, and not a copper would have fallen
out of his pocket."
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 90)
In July 1921, discontented members of the party attacked
him in a broadsheet which asserts: "If any member asks
him how he lives and what was his former profession, he
always becomes angry and excited. Up to now no answer
has been supplied to these questions. So his conscience
cannot be clean, especially as his excessive intercourse
with ladies, to whom he often described himself as 'King
of Munich,' costs a great deal of money." The actual statements
contained in this broadsheet were derived from Anton Drexler."
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 90-91)
"I also have my midday meal with various party comrades
in turn. I am further assisted to a modest extent by a few
party comrades."
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 91)
Certainly all those who believed the Hitler of the first years
to be a poor devil in chronic want of money were laboring
under a delusion. His craving for abrupt alternations between
profound solitude and teeming society resulted, in view of
his limited means, in a modest lodging and [unreadable] tavern
carousals. He simply could not manage money, any more than
he could manage his time, husband his strength, employ his
staff economically, or arrange a speech or written composition
architectonically. Hitler is an unbridled being, sometimes as
insensitive to pain and toil, as though in a state of intoxication,
and therefore capable of wonderful feats of strength, but
incapable of prolonged self-discipline.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 91-92)
He received few invitations [unreadable] were almost closed
against him. Why any awkward, conspicuous for his
exaggerated bows and the greedy haste with which he
gobbled his food, he soon decided to be interesting at
close quarters. Dressed not shabbily but without any
[unreadable] of personal taste, his oiled hair parted almost
in the middle, his scrubby mustache introducing an [unreadable]
accent into an otherwise insipid face--the whole man gave the
impression of a poor copy of a type existing only in the imagination.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 93)
Hitler found a sort of home with Frau Carola Hofmann, a
simple soul, the widow of a headmaster, who lived in the
villa-suburb of Solln, near Munich. In 1920 she heard Hitler
speak for the first time and immediately took a fancy to him.
This women of sixty-one years of age became to the thirty-
year old bohemian the mother for whom he [unreadable]
yearned.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 93)
The first house with some pretensions to grandeur to which
Hitler was admitted on a friendly footing was not in Munich,
but in Berlin. It was that of Bechstein, the piano-manufacturer.
The Bechsteins were old friends of Dietrich Eckart, and the
latter introduced pupil to them. Frau Helene Bechstein took a
great liking to Adolf Hitler. "I wish he were my son," she said.
(Hitler-Heiden-p. 94)
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Hitler Source Book
Hitler
by Konrad Heiden
(Part 2 of 4)