Office of Strategic Services Pierre J. Huss: The Foe we face, 1942
In January of 1935 Adolf Hitler was sitting out
the winter in his alpine chalet on the
0bersalzberg, above Berchtesgaden, somewhat
tensely awaiting the outcome of the plebiscite
.....He let Goebbels and others loudly beat the
drum while he sat up there in the snow and
went walking with the huge white Hungarian
shepherd dog always at his side.
At such times the German Fuehrer strictly
forbade his guards to follow; he relied entirely
on the dog at his side, the heavy waking stick
of knotted wood, and the rapid-fire luger
automatic in his pocket. He wore a gray golf
suit with heavy woolen socks stuck into snow
boots and an old felt hat drawn over his right
eye, and on days when the wind whistled sharply
or snow whipped through the air, a gray
mackintosh with a muffler around his neck. He'd
crunch the snow with a slow step and proceed by
a short cut over the hill back of his chalet toward
a somewhat forsaken Bavarian-style cafe.
..... I had arranged through Karl Boemer and Alfred
Rosenberg for an interview with Hitler on the day
of the Saar pelbiscite [sic] returns, on the
assumption that it would be an opportune moment
sure to find him in the best of moods, provided
everything went in his favor. I arrived there to
find him in high glee, with Goering on hand in a
huge white sweater to help celebrate the victory
of the Saar with its overwhelming majority in
favor of the immediate return to Germany. Hitler
was in his golf suit, studying the latest returns,
and his eyes were alight with joy. Without
wasting time on ceremonies, he got his hat
and stick and insisted that I accompany him
on his usual walk before lunch. The big Hungarian
dog plowed ahead of us through the snow, cavorting
and barking with delight. But he seldom rushed
further than ten yards away, turning back to see
that his lord and master was following in good
order. Later I was told that this dog could be
relied upon to rip to pieces any stranger
approaching Hitler unannounced.
We reached the crest of the hill at the edge of
the pine woods and looked back. I was breathing
hard, for this was not my customary daily routine.
Hitler grinned slyly and said it was good exercise,
this walking through thedeep [sic] snow, the only
kind of exercise, he said, he had time or inclination
to take. He pointed with his stick to his chalet
below and to the sweeping hills around it.
"A good rifle shot, aiming through telescopic
sights, could easily pick me off from here while
I am sitting on the porch or in that back room
there," Hitler said in a matter-of-fact way. "I am
buying up all these hills and making it forbidden
property so that Himmler can quit worrying. I
have also had the road you came up on commandeered,
closing it to public traffic so that in effect this
whole section of the mountain will be closed off
to any but authorized persons."
His walking stick pointed far across the valley to
the distant city of Salzberg we could just make
out under the clouds over in Austria. "Himmler and
the army people got together sometime ago and
figured out that a few well directed cannon shots
from over there some dark night could blow us out
of bed," the Nazi Fuehrer said with something of a
forced laugh. He resumed the walk and added: "I
cannot just walk over the border and take a piece
out of Austria, and I will not move this house away
or abandon it just to get out from under the range of
Austria and cannons. I am a fatalist and all those
things take care of themselves."
I thought to myself that Hitler was taking chances
walking by himself in these lonely mountains, even
if he did buy them by the mile in order to keep
strangers at a distance. A legion of people would gladly
have knocked him off. With this in mind, I pointed to
two wood choppers making their way some hundreds
of yards ahead of us toward the lonely Bavarian cafe
and boldly said they could easily overpower him
before he'd have a chance to defend himself or call
for help. I wanted to hear
[Page 2]
what he'd say.
He nodded and whistled for the dog and held him
by the collar,while he told me to press a hard
snowball together and throw it high and afar. I
did this, and the snowball went sailing off into
the air.
Hitler whipped an automatic out of his pocket
and with deliberate aim fired at my snowball. A
split second after his shot rang out the snowball
burst apart in midair, obviously torn by the passing
bullet. I suppose I looked a bit skeptical, for Hitler
asked me to throw a second snowball. He shot
leisurely, and, it seemed to me, almost without
aiming. The snowball broke violently to pieces in
midair.
Hitler replaced the pistol in his pocket and
tapped me on the arm. "Sehen Sie, I am not
entirely defenseless" he smiled. "It is generally
conceded in the S.S. and the army that I am a
better pistol shot than most of their best ones.
I also make it a point to know more about guns
and weapons and bullets of all kinds than those
who come to me to explain the intricacies of a
new rifle note or a cannon's mechanism. I have
read and studied many technical books on those
subjects, including one or two by your American
experts. I believe I can say with justification
that I am one of the few all-around ballistic
experts in the world today."
I checked up in German army circles on that
claim and found it generally substantiated. He has
a standing order out for every book on that subject
and frequently reads deep into the night to absorb a
new experiment with shells or bullets. He can draw
a blueprint on the involved mechanism of German
foreign large-and-small caliber guns and do it
from memory. That is one of those things about
Hitler one shouldn't forget in sizing him up as the
man we now are about to beat.
He is a fanatic, every inch of him, going into a
passion or fury when the occasion demands. I
touched him off on that walk in the snow with
a hint that some of his twenty-five-point program
would set the world afire if carried out to the
letter. He stopped dead in his tracks and like a
flash he changed from the Bavarian alpine rambler
to Adolf Hitler, dictator of flaring temperament
and rabble-rousing fanatic. He stamped the snow
with his boot and waved his walking stick in
fervid agitation.
Pierre J.Huss, pp.l,2,3,4,5.
March 1938: I had been sent to Vienna by Connolly
and Faris to cover the story and to get our local
correspondent there out of jail. He was a Jew, and
it took some days and a lot of string pulling with
key men around Hitler to get him out and across
the border to Italy. But it provided me with an
opportunity also to keep a finger on Hitler's
activity, from talks with several of those always
around him I pieced together his first night in
Vienna.
He took over the royal suite, a high ceilinged
affair of three main rooms done up in much red
drapery and furniture of white and gold. The
bathroom was modernized,but not much else.
The Imperial Hotel definitely had been coasting
along on its reputation and made no attempt to rival
the up-to-date Bristol and Grand across the way.
But Hitler had his reason for coming to the Imperial,
and that night he gathered a small circle of intimates
around him and talked to them until the small hours
of Vienna and his days there. He had Schaub,the
personal adjutant, pull the glossy boots off his
feet and occasionally bring him a glass of warm
milk. Then he reclined in loose comfort on the
sofa and delved into reminiscences, waxing excited
enough to sit up straight and rumple his hair when
telling of some of the hard times he had seen in that city.
P.J.Huss: The Foe we face p.8.9.
He told them: "In the old days the Viennese used
to have a sentimental way of saying: "And when I die
I want to go to heaven and have a little hole among
the stars to see my Vienna, my fair Vienna." I didn't
feel very much that way. The Hapsburgs and the
spendthrifts may have looked at Vienna as a
playground and paradise, but to me it was a city
going to decay in its own grandeur. Only the Jews
made money, and only those with Jewish friends or
those willing to do the work for the Jews made a
decent living. I and a lot of others like me, practically
straved [sic] and some went begging.
"I used to walk past the Imperial Hotel of
nights when there was nothing else to do and I
hadn't even enough money to buy a book. I'd watch
the automobiles and the coaches drive up to the
entrance and be received with a deep bow by the
white-mustached porter out in front, who never
talked to me if I came near him. I could see the
glittering lights and chandeliers in the lobby but
I knew it was impossible for me to set foot inside.
One night, after a bad blizzard which piled up several
feet of snow, I had a chance to make some money for
food by shoveling snow. Ironically enough, the five
or six of us in my group were sent to clean the street
and sidewalk in front of the Imperial Hotel.
"That was the night the Hapsburgs were
entertaining-old Josef was still alive but he
didn't appear. I saw Karl and Zita step out of
their imperial coach and grandly walk into this
hotel over the red carpet. We poor devils shoveled
the snow away on all sides and took our hats off
every time the aristocrats arrived. They didn't
even look at us although I still smell the perfume
that came to our noses. We were about as important
to them, or for that matter to Vienna, as the snow
that kept coming down all night, and this hotel did
not even have the decency to send out a cup of hot
coffee to us. We were kept there most of the night,
and each time the wind blew hard it covered the
red carpet with snow. Then I'd take a broom and
brush it off, glancing at the same time
[Page 4]
into the brilliantly lit interior, which
fascinated me. I heard the music and it made me
wish to cry. It made me pretty angry, too, and feel
the injustice of life. I resolved that night that
someday I would come back to the Imperial Hotel
and walk over the red carpet into that glittering
interior where the Hapsburgs danced. I didn't know
how or when, but I have waited for this day and tonight
I am here.
"I shall have this hotel listed as our party
hotel and I shall come here each time I am in
Vienna, I shall have it renovated and modernized,
but the name shall remain the same. And a red
carpet shall be on the sidewalk every time I come
so that I can walk over it into the hotel the same
as those aristocrats did back in those days when
I shoveled snow. I have never forgotten the
resolution I made. Providence fulfilled
my wish."
That is Hitler to the core. He can never forget
or forgive, and everything he does has its motive.
The conquest of Vienna and the Imperial Hotel in a
way were to him the wiping of the slate, a settlement
of scores.
He likes to gloat over his triumphs,and particularly
to go back to places where he was spurned in the old
days. There is there is a hotel in almost every large
city in of Germany where he will stop and strut around
because at one time or another he was boycotted and
refused quarters in every hotel in that city except
perhaps the one he now favors. Or he might have been
given shelter and food by the individual who now
owns the leading hotel in the city. All because that
man did Hitler a favor in the days he became a
power in the land.
In Weimar, for example, there is the White
Elephant Hotel, rebuilt by the party in lavish
style with the reserved Fuehrer suite. In Nuremberg,
is the Deutscher Hof, an expensively rebuilt edifice.
In Godesberg on the Rhine, a little distance above
the fabled rock of Lorelei, there is the
Dreesen, where he held his famous conference
with Neville Chamberlain a few days before
the signing of the fatal Munich Pact .....
The owner of the Dreesen snapped his fingers
at the anti-Hitlers, and offered him sanctuary
free of cost in the Dreesen Hotel in Godesberg.
That settled it, and whenever Hitler thereafter
toured the Rhineland,he spent days and days in
the Dreesen with the man who had done
him a favor in the face of public disapproval.
Hitler, after assuming power, did with the
Dreesen what he did with
hotels he fancied all over Germany. He took it
under his official wing
and partly remodeled it at the expense of the
Nazi party for purposes
of his own. He installed the usual Fuehrer suite
of three rooms. That included a reception room of
larger proportions, a sort of combination
private office anti sitting room, and a comfortable
bedroom. I had a chance to go through his suite in
the Dreesen a few hours before he arrived for his
conference with Chamberlain and thus had a good
opportunity to size up the arrangements.
In the Berlin chancellery and at Fuehrer
headquarters he makes it a point during the war
to sleep on a camp bed, but in the hotels and
castles he picks on he has a comfortable, wide
bed. In the Dreesen it is
low and stands next to a window of bulletproof
glass overlooking the
Rhine. A blood-red silken bedspread enlivens the
pink-colored room. There
is an enameled white telephone on the night table.
I was told that the
hook on the side, closest to the pillow is for a
special pistol holster,
which reminded me of the proverb that uneasy
lies the head that wears a
crown. I also remembered at that moment that
he had demonstrated himself
some years before to me as quick on the draw
and a crack pistol shot.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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Hitler Source Book
The Foe We Face
by Pierre J. Huss
(Part 1 of 4)