The way to ascent

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The road to recovery was a secret brochure by Adolf Hitler that was written in the summer of 1927 and addressed to industrial circles. Along with Mein Kampf and the Second Book, it is the third larger text by Hitler that has survived. It was part of the NSDAP's efforts to get financial support from big industry.

Emergence

Through the mediation of Elsa Bruckmann there was a conversation between Hitler and the eighty-year-old industrialist Emil Kirdorf on July 4, 1927. Kirdorf was so enthusiastic about Hitler's statements that he asked him to summarize his lecture in a brochure. Kirdorf distributed this brochure, as he said in an interview with the “Preussische Zeitung” in 1937, on his behalf in “circles of industry and economy”. The brochure has 22 pages and was printed by Hugo Bruckmann.

content

In the preamble, Hitler described the keeping of the German race and the protection of the German hereditary property as his top priority. In the brochure he advertised his habitat program , as he had already set out in Mein Kampf . He wrote:

"Every people needs the necessary space in the world to develop its own self."

He described pacifism as a crime against humanity. Furthermore, he promoted the overcoming of the class antagonism through a "German attitude", he wrote in highlighted script:

"The new movement categorically rejects any division of class and class and instead proclaims a comprehensive German attitude."

In addition, Hitler stated that the movement's aim was to integrate the workers into the national community with the help of socialism , whereby socially justified claims must be met. He also professed private property .

As a result of the brochure there was a meeting of 14 business leaders, not named, with Hitler in the house of Kirdorf. According to Kirdorf's testimony, the participants were “deeply moved by his gripping presentations”. In his memoirs, Wolfgang Stresemann reports that the industrialist Kurt Sorge was among those present, who told him that Hitler “carried his industrial leadership so enthusiastically that one of them dared to compare it with - Christ !”.

discovery

The writing was discovered by the American historian Henry Ashby Turner in the library of Gutehoffnungshütte and published in September 1968. The exact number of copies printed and the recipients are unknown. Kirdorf also printed them in his unpublished memoirs, which are in the Bochum mining archive.

See also

literature

  • Henry Ashby Turner : Fascism and Capitalism in Germany . 2nd, unchanged, edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, ISBN 3-525-01310-8 ( digital-sammlungen.de - also contains the fully printed brochure).
  • Bärbel Dusik (Ed.): Hitler. Speeches, writings, orders. February 1925 to January 1933. Volume II: From the Weimar Party Congress to the Reichstag election 1926–1928 Part 2 August 1927 – May 1928 . Saur Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-21937-7 , pp. 501 ff .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Ashby Turner: Fascism and Capitalism in Germany . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, ISBN 3-525-01310-8 , p.  51 .
  2. ^ Henry Ashby Turner: Fascism and Capitalism in Germany 1972, p.  55 f. .
  3. ^ Henry Ashby Turner: Fascism and Capitalism in Germany 1972, p.  70 .
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Stresemann : How could it happen ?, Hitler's rise in the memory of a contemporary witness . 2nd Edition. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-550-07981-8 , pp. 52 f .