Notes on Hitler

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Notes on Hitler is the title of abook by Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999)published in 1978 .

content

The book deals with the life and work of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). It is divided into seven sections:

  • Life contains a short biography and contrasts the eventful political career with Hitler's poor private life - without education, profession, love and friendship, marriage, fatherhood.
  • Achievements makes it clear on the basis of political and military achievements, which, however, were not always aimed at sustainability, why many Hitler followed into their downfall.
  • Successes illuminates Hitler's domestic and foreign political success period between 1930 and 1941, whereby it is clearly shown that successes almost always only occurred where resistance was low: "He always only toppled what was falling, he only killed what was already dying" - with " the scent of the vulture ”.
  • The "crude, unrealistic and inherently contradicting program" of National Socialism with its ethnic and anti-Semitic elements deals with errors .
  • Fehler addresses the misjudgments of Hitler's political, military and geostrategic nature resulting from the rigid views, which underpin his contradicting goals - "the rule of Germany over Europe and the extermination of the Jews".
  • Crime deals with the mass murders of the sick, Sinti and Roma, Poles, Russians and Jews, initiated by Hitler especially from 1941, and the difference to classic war crimes.
  • Treason makes it clear that the German people were only a means of power for Hitler's purpose of annihilation and that he was supposed to drive them to extinction from the second half of 1944 with the help of various measures (final battle instead of breaking off the war, Ardennes offensive and an order for the total destruction of the basis of life).

Hitler's program

Hitler had two different goals, both of which he laid out in the 1920s. a) Anti-Semitism, by which he meant the physical extermination of the Jews in his sphere of influence and b) the creation of a Greater Germany (unification of Germany and Austria), which would then overthrow France and Russia.

anti-Semitism

Hitler always understood anti-Semitism as the physical extermination of Jews, never just as expulsion. With this type of anti-Semitism ("eliminatory anti-Semitism") he was pretty much alone on the floor. There had always been resentment against Jews in many countries: pogroms in Eastern Europe (e.g. in Tsarist Russia), religious anti-Semitism ("the Jews killed Jesus") and social anti-Semitism (Jews as money changers or talented doctors and scientists ( Albert Einstein ) evoke envy and greed). Haffner writes: “What Hitler aroused even among the anti-Semites of all countries with his specific kind of murderous madness and hatred of Jews was initially, as long as he [Hitler] only let off steam, to shake his head; and later, when he [Hitler] took action, there was much horror. ”(p. 108) Horror of what Hitler actually carried out from 1942 to 1944: the physical extermination of the Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe in extermination camps (Auschwitz , Treblinka, Maidanek (Lublin), Chelmno (Kulmhof), Sobibor, Belzec). Haffner locates Hitler's understanding of anti-Semitism more in the category of a mass murderer (p. 142) and the mentally ill (“paranoid madness”, p. 111). Haffner sees Hitler on a par with the murderer Fritz Haarmann (1879–1925), only that Hitler murdered in a factory manner and not “by hand” (Haarmann killed 20 people, Hitler millions).

Empire

Haffner states that Hitler was definitely a rationally thinking person (he was perhaps a neurotic, but certainly not a psychotic who only talked a word salad). One should not make the mistake of rejecting everything that Hitler said and thought outright, just because Hitler said and thought it (p. 91; see also Reductio ad Hitlerum ). This applies to Hitler's endeavors to create a (German-dominated) world empire that could later have a good chance of success for world domination with the USA and (then) Japan.

Now it speaks for Hitler's productivity when he came very close to the self-imposed goal of German world domination in the autumn of 1938 and summer of 1940. In the autumn of 1938, Hitler managed to get the agreement of England and France in the Munich Agreement to dominate Eastern Europe, i.e. essentially the states that had become independent from Austria since the end of the First World War (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Romania ). But Hitler did not greet the Munich Agreement as the success it would have been under normal circumstances ("normal" in the sense that the Chancellor's name was not Hitler, but Bismarck). Hitler viewed the Munich Agreement as a defeat because he wanted to go to war as early as 1938 - but did not get it - Hitler frankly admitted it in the Bormann dictates of February 1945. And even in the summer of 1940, after the victory over France, when Hitler then ruled all of continental Europe, from his point of view still not everything he could achieve had been achieved. Hitler saw the victory over France only as preparation for the actual war against Russia, which he had always planned and desired, and which he then began on June 22, 1941. He became aware that Hitler had passed the zenith of his success curve with the attack on Russia when Russia stopped the German offensive in front of Moscow in early December 1941 and started the counteroffensive. The war diary of the Wehrmacht command staff noted on December 6, 1941: "When the catastrophe of the winter of 1941/42 broke out, the Führer ... realized that from this culmination point ... no more victory could be achieved."

various

The book, which only has around 200 pages, is a generally understandable essay about Hitler, not a biography of Hitler. Despite its general understanding, the work does not simplify and does not neglect any important aspects of Hitler's life and work.

The book was published in English under the title The Meaning of Hitler , translated by Ewald Oser, and in Dutch under the title Kanttekeningen bij Hitler , translated by Max de Metz (1978) and Ruud van der Helm (2002), with an afterword by Frits Boterman . The French edition, Un certain Adolf Hitler , appeared in 1979.

Sebastian Haffner was awarded the Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf and the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Literature for this book .

expenditure

First edition

Current issues

Audio book edition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see e.g. B. the psychopathography of Adolf Hitler
  2. ↑ Niels Birbaumer (psychologist) regards Hitler in the mirror (2014) No. 24, p. 118 as a paranoid neurotic
  3. ↑ Haffner is of the opinion that "... there is something to it, that our world, which has shrunk through technology and is endangered by weapons of mass destruction, demands unity, and that then the idea of ​​world domination - world unity, world government, world domination, all of these are close together - came back on the agenda in the twentieth century. ”(p. 106) Haffner now doubts in retrospect that Germany was or is ever a serious candidate for world domination. It may be that "two generations of Germans, the generation of the First and Second World War, found the goal of German world domination (or domination) to be reasonable and achievable, they were enthusiastic about it and not infrequently they also died for it." P. 120) However, as Haffner writes, it is no longer worth fighting for “living space” in the 20th century. "Since the industrial revolution, the prosperity and power of a state no longer depend on the size of land holdings, but on the state of technology." (P. 104)
  4. ↑ The same efficiency, by the way, with which Hitler eliminated mass unemployment (6 million) in Germany in the years 1933–1938 through “effective economic policy” and was revered by the Germans for it (“Führer faith”). (However, Hitler was even more revered for removing the Versailles Treaty , which was humiliating for Germany , and for making Germany a state with equal rights in the world of states (rearmament) - also remarkable achievements, or rather: remarkable if the Chancellor's name was not Hitler, but e.g. Bismarck ). In 1933–1938, Hitler brought about an “economic miracle” with the help of his “financial magician” Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970, Reichsbank President , Minister of Economics), which was inevitably inflationary (cheap loans from the Reichsbank). Hitler, who set up a coercive regime with the secret state police , concentration camps and the unified union “ German Labor Front ” (employers and workers forcibly united), had the power to bring about this “economic miracle” in the midst of a world economic depression that had lasted since Black Thursday in October 1929. “Hitler did not need to consider employers' associations or trade unions. He could lock every entrepreneur who raised unauthorized foreign transactions [state-controlled foreign exchange trading ] or the prices of his goods in a concentration camp as well as every worker who demanded wage increases or even threatened to strike for them. ”(P. 36) Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970 ), Hitler's predecessor in the Reich Chancellery, did not have this power and had to fail with his deflationary policy (cuts and savings in the budget, debt servicing), which the people disliked .