Review: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris

Title: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris
Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999
ISBN: 0-393-32035-9

Ian Kershaw's Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris by all accounts is set to become the standard work on Hitler for the 21st century. That's certainly possible, but how would I know? The facts and figures he cites certainly seem extraordinarily complete, but I certainly don't have the background to question his opinions on which sources should and should not be trusted, which have or have not been discredited, and which have pieces missing. This volume chronicles Hitler's birth to his rise to power. I haven't even read the sequel, yet.

This volume at least is astonishing in that it makes so evident how easy it is for one to "know" about Hitler and his extermination of the Jews during World War II, while knowing nothing about German politics, previous wars, Hitler's rise to power — in essence knowing nothing substantial about Hitler at all in anything but name.

This is not to say that Kershaw claims in any way to reveal the "real" Hitler, the true, undiscovered individual that eluded even those close to him. Rather Kershaw documents a series of events, as accurately as possible, providing just as much emphasis on Hitler's environment as on Hitler himself. What comes out of this is a whole new story — no new core revelations or dramatic historical alterations, perhaps, but a brilliant display of how one person could discover in himself a gift of rhetoric in a particular political climate. In Hitler's messianic view, he and the German people found each other.

This mythos emanated no less from the people's reception than from the constant underhanded political manipulation by Hitler, and it is again astonishing how one man could in whatever environment control such a manipulation, while in many cases having so little control on grassroots circumstances.

Too much commentary here would certainly do injustice to this first volume of such a thorough work. The seemingly never-ending yet never boring work succeeds best at its constant pace of filling in the structure of that history. Here are a few salient items that I found particularly interesting.

The doctor of Hitler's mother, whose name was Eduard Bloch, was Jewish (12).
While in Vienna, Hitler was sustained in large part through sales of his paintings. "His closest partner... in his little art-production business, Josef Neumann, was also a Jew — and one with whom Hitler was, it seems on friendly terms" (55).
After World War I, inflation was rampant in Germany. "Where there had been 4.20 Marks to the dollar on the eve of the First World War, there were 17,972 Marks in January 1923, 4,620,455 Marks in August, 98,860,000 Marks in September, 25,260,280,000 in October, and a barely credible 4,200,000 million Marks by 15 November. By mid-September, a kilo of butter was costing 168 million Marks" (201).
The putsch of 1923 was stopped by a "furious gun-battle lasting almost half a minute...", bullets from the police killed "fourteen putschists", and four policemen were killed. "Had the bullet which killed Scheubner-Richter been a foot to the right, history would have taken a different course" by killing Hitler (211).
After the failed putsch, and after Hitler was released from Landsberg, "Hitler inquired in March 1925 how he could relinquish his Austrian citizenship" so he could not later be deported to Austria, as the Bavarian government had tried to do (238).
In May 1924, after Hitler had already been working on the first volume of Mein Kampf, he was calling the work, "Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice" (241).
A Braille version of Mein Kampf was published in 1936, and "from that year, a copy of the people's edition of both volumes bound together was given to each happy couple on their wedding day" (242).
The 'idea' he stood for was not a matter of short-term objectives. It was a 'mission', a 'vision' of long-term future goals, and of his own part in the accomplishment of them. Certainly, these goals — national salvation through 'removal' of the Jews and acquisition of 'living-space' in the east — did not amount to short-term practical policy guidelines. But, incorporated into the notion of the 'heroic' leader, they did amount to a dynamic 'world-view'. This 'world-view' gave Hitler his unremitting drive. He spoke repeatedly of his 'mission'. He saw the hand of 'Providence' in his work. He regarded his fight against the Jew as 'the work of the Lord'. He saw his life's work as a crusade... He was no mere propogandist or 'unprincipled opportunist'. He was indeed both a masterly propogandist and and ideologue. There was no contradiction between the two (252).
Hitler spoke out against what he called "the 'bastardization' of culture, morals, and blood," claiming it was "undermining the value of the individual... 'The German people has its specific value and cannot be set on an equal level to 70 million negroes... Negro music is dominant, but if we put a Beethoven symphony alongside a shimmy, victory is clear...'" (305).
On 14 September 1930, the NSDAP advanced from 12 seats and 2.6% of the vote in the 1928 Reichstag election to 107 seats and 18.3%, "making it the second largest party in the Reichstag" (333).
Thomas Mann in his "German Address" (Deutsche Ansprache) in Berlin on 17 October, gave what Kershaw calls "a simplistic assessment of the NSDAP's breakthrough", calling the NSDAP "politics in the grotesque style with salvation-army attractions (Allüren), mass fits, showground-stall bell-ringing, hallelujah, and dervish-like repetition of monotonous slogans till everyone is foaming at the mouth" (336).
On 1 September, 1930, Hitler solved problems in the SA and SS by announcing that he himself was taking over their supreme leadership (347).
On 13 August 1932, Reich President Hindenburg rejected Hitler as Reich Chancellor, even though the NSDAP had won its victories at the polls (374).
In the fall of 1932, most people apparently thought there was at lesat some things in the NSDAP they agreed with. "The loathing and deep fear of Communism that ran through some four-fifths of society was one important common denominator. Faced with a stark choice between National Socialism and Communism — which was how Hitler was increasingly able to portray it after his takeover of power most middle-class and well-to-do Germans, and even a considerable leaven of the working class, preferred the Nazis. The Communists were revolutionaries, they would take away private property, impose a class dictatorship, and rule in the interests of Moscow. The National Socialists were vulgar and distasteful, but they stood for German interests, they would uphold German values, and they would not take away private property. Crudely put, this reflected a wide-spread tread of thought, not least in the middle class (409).
The rapidity of the transformation that swept over Germany between Hitler's takeover of power on 30 January 1933 and its crucial consolidation and extension at the beginning of August 1934, after Reich President Hindenburg's death and following close on the major crisis of the 'Röhm afffair', was astounding for contemporaries and is scarcely less astonishing in retrospect... Within a month, civil liberties — as protected under the Weimar Constitution — had been extinguished. Within two months, with most active political opponents either imprisoned or fleeing the country, the Reichtag surrendered its powers, giving Hitler control of the legislature. Within four months the once powerful trade unions were dissolved. In less than six months, all opposition parties had been suppressed or gone into voluntary liquidation, leaving the NSDAP as the only remaining party. In January 1934, the sovereignty of the Lander — already in reality smashed the previous March — was formally abolished. Then, in the summer, the growing thread from within Hitler's own movement was ruthlessly eliminated in the 'Night of the Long Knives' on 30 June 1934 (435).
Hitler had ideas of German society "in which old class privileges had disappeared, exploiting the benefits of modern technology and a higher standard of living. But he thought essentially in terms of race, not class, of conquest, not economic modernization. Everything was consistently predicated on war to establish dominion" (449).
The first concentration camp, housing those seized during large-scale arrests of Communists and Socialists, was set up in Dachau on 22 March 1933, about twelve miles from Munich, in a former powder-mill (464).
On 23 March 1933, "with 441 votes to the ninety-four votes of the Social Democrats, the Reichstag, as a democratic body, voted itself out of existence" (468).
On 5 July 1933, "the Zentrum, the last remaining political party outside the NSDAP, dissolved itself. Little over a week later, the 'Law against the New Construction of Parties' left the NSDAP as the only legal political party in Germany" (478).
Philosopher Martin Heidegger and constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt supported Hitler's regime (481).
Concerning forced sterilization of those with hereditary illness, even applied to chronic alcoholism, Hitler felt that, "All measures were justified which served the upholding of nationhood (Volkstum)" (487).
30 June 1934 became known as the "Night of the Long Knives" in which many of the main opponents of Hitler (and some whose identities were mistaken) were murdered (520).
Kershaw, referencing Willikens, explains how a person's chances of success in Hitler's regime depended on that person demonstrating how effectively he/she was "working towards the Führer" by doing what was assumed Hitler would want. Hitler did not to become involved in immediate disputes. "Hitler was, therefore, at one and the same time the absolutely indispensable fulcrum of the entire regime, and yet largely detached from any formal machinery of government. The result, inevitably, was a high level of governmental and administrative disorder" (523).
When Hitler informed ambassadors on 16 March 1935 of his expansion of the army and the introduction of general military service, American journalist William Shirer, who witnessed the event in Berlin, wrote, "Today's creation of a conscript army in open defiance of Versailles will greatly enhance his domestic position, for there are few Germans, regardless of how much they hate the Nazis, who will not support it wholeheartedly. The great majority will like the way he has thumbed his nose at Versailles, which they all resented" (551-552).