Political testament of Adolf Hitler

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Political Testament (page 1)

As “ My political testament ”, Adolf Hitler called a document that he wrote on April 29, 1945, the day before his suicide , alongside a private will . It became known as Adolf Hitler's political testament in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals .

In it he blamed an alleged world Jewry for the Second World War in order to justify the extermination of European Jews that he carried out. He declared his intended suicide to be a self-sacrifice, which demanded fight to the death of the Wehrmacht soldiers . He set up a successor government and obliged them to continue the war by all means. He demanded from her and the Germans to realize the goals of National Socialism in the long term, above all to comply with the Nuremberg Laws and to continue to offer “merciless resistance” to the “world poisoner of all peoples”. He was describing that the Germans should completely annihilate the Jews after his death.

A book title of the same name refers to the Bormann dictates from February 4 to 26 and April 2, 1945. Hitler did not refer to them as a “ political testament ”.

Historical context

On April 16, 1945, the Battle of Berlin began as the last phase of the war that Germany had long since lost. Despite clear understanding of the defeat, the Nazi regime was not ready to surrender. Its leaders Hitler, Wilhelm Keitel , Alfred Jodl and others continued to issue criminal and largely impracticable orders and dismiss subordinates who refused to do so. By the end of May 2, 1945, the battle claimed another 200,000 war dead, including tens of thousands of civilians. On April 16, Hitler tried to mobilize perseverance with his last appeal to the Wehrmacht soldiers with targeted fear propaganda: He claimed that the " Jewish-Bolshevik mortal enemy" would exterminate the Germans, murder their old people and children, and lower women to "barrack whores" and let the men march into Siberia . That is why the population is now hoping from the soldiers that "through your steadfastness, your fanaticism, your weapons and under your leadership the Bolshevik onslaught will be smothered in a bloodbath". After the death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , they would turn war around at the last moment.

On April 22nd, at a briefing in the Führerbunker , Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin and shoot himself if the city was not cleared again. On the night of April 24th the Reich Chancellery above the Führerbunker was badly hit by bombs. The next day, after his meeting with Hitler , Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:

“If the Führer met an honorable death in Berlin and Europe became Bolshevik - in five years at the latest the Führer would be a legendary personality and National Socialism would be a myth, because he would be sanctified by the last great mission and everything human that is criticized about him today , then wiped off with one blow. "

On April 25, Hitler learned that the Soviet troops had closed the ring around Berlin and that Soviet and American soldiers had met at Torgau . Until then, the representatives of the Nazi regime present had hoped for the anti-Hitler coalition to disintegrate , as their conversations recorded by Martin Bormann and Goebbels show. By April 28, they hoped for relief troops such as the Wenck Army , which was newly established in April 1945 , which would push back the Red Army , fight some of the city free and keep an escape route open for Hitler.

On April 28, Hitler heard about Heinrich Himmler's secret talks with the Western Allies on the Swedish broadcaster Stockholm Radio and about his offer to forego the further murder of the Hungarian Jews in exchange for a partial surrender . In addition, he became aware of an illegal armistice between Waffen SS General Karl Wolff and the US troops in Italy and a refusal to order by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner . He then had Hermann Fegelein , the SS contact man for Himmler and also Eva Braun's brother-in-law , arrested in his private apartment in Berlin. An SS court martial sentenced Fegelein to death for desertion and as an accomplice and participant in Himmler's contact with the enemy without a trial. Hitler signed the death sentence, which was then carried out in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's last murder assignment is interpreted as personal revenge on Himmler, whom he could no longer take, and as fear of being deposed or murdered by SS members in his vicinity.

During the course of the day, Hitler was informed that the relief troops he had hoped for had been locked in and cut off from one another. Around midnight on April 28th, he married Eva Braun, who wanted to go to her death with him. At around 2:00 a.m. on April 29th, he wrote a private and a political will. In the morning the Red Army attacked the center of Berlin. Outposts informed Hitler by telephone about their further advance. By noon the Soviet tanks were only a few hundred meters from the Reich Chancellery. At around 10:00 p.m., Hitler was informed of the shooting of his ally Benito Mussolini (and his lover Clara Petacci ), who had been intercepted by partisans trying to escape to Switzerland . This finally confirmed his decision to commit suicide.

In the course of April 30, Hitler said goodbye to his subordinates, allowed them to attempt escape, distributed poisonous capsules and tested their effects on his German shepherd Blondi . He asked Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the OKW , a few more questions over the radio about the whereabouts of the last fighting German armies and gave orders to burn the corpses and belongings of himself and Eva Braun. Between 3:30 and 3:50 p.m. he and Eva Braun committed suicide.

According to his adjutant Nicolaus von Below , Hitler had been determined to commit suicide since April 27. According to Sebastian Haffner , his decision matured from April 22nd to 29th. Factors for this were the collapse of the front on the Oder on April 22nd, the encirclement of Berlin by Soviet troops on April 25th, the news of Himmler's behavior on April 28th and, from April 29th, the acute danger of being captured by Soviet soldiers. According to his private will, Hitler wanted to "escape the shame of deposition or surrender" by suicide.

content

First part

At the beginning Hitler claimed that since 1914 he had always been “moved by love and loyalty to my people”. It gave him the strength to "make the most difficult decisions, such as have never been made to any mortal." In doing so, he consumed time, strength and health. Then he denied any guilt for the Second World War: "It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939." Instead, he assigned the war guilt to the fictitious "World Jewry":

“Centuries will pass, but from the ruins of our cities and art monuments the hatred of the ultimately responsible people will be renewed again and again, to whom we owe all of this: international Judaism and its helpers! […]
But I have also left no doubt that if the peoples of Europe are again viewed only as blocks of shares in these international money and finance conspirators, then those people who are actually responsible for this murderous struggle will also be held responsible is: Judaism! I have not left anyone in the dark about the fact that this time not only will millions of children of Europeans of the Aryan peoples starve to death, not only millions of adult men will perish and not only hundreds of thousands of women and children will be burned and bombed to death in the cities without the actually guilty one having to atone for his guilt, even if by more humane means. "

Jewish Children Liberated from Buchenwald Concentration Camp : People Who Hitler Wanted to Destroy After His Death (June 1945)

He was referring to his Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939, in which he threatened the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” for the first time as German Chancellor , “if international financial Jewry in and outside Europe were to succeed in re-entering the peoples to overthrow a world war ”. At the time, this speech was circulated in all Nazi media, published as a book, and in November 1940 it was also included in the propaganda film The Eternal Jew , which was supposed to ideologically prepare for the Holocaust. Hitler had come back to this threat in public during the course of the war, for example in radio speeches.

In the following passages, Hitler called the six years of world war he had started himself the “most glorious and bravest manifestation of a people's will to live” and then declared his intention to commit suicide: He could not part with Berlin, but could no longer “face the enemy onslaught” from the Führerbunker “ withstand". The "own resistance" is "gradually devalued by both blinded and characterless subjects". That is why he wants to “share his fate with that which millions of others have also taken upon themselves”. In addition, he did not want to "fall into the hands of enemies who need a new show arranged by Jews to amuse their agitated masses", but rather choose the time of his death "of his own free will" when the enemy has reached him. Then he claimed:

"I am dying with a joyful heart in the face of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, our women at home, the achievements of our farmers and workers and the commitment of our youth that bears my name, which is unique in history."

His “heartfelt thanks” to those named was followed by the appeal that all of them should “under no circumstances give up the fight”, because:

"From the sacrifice of our soldiers and from my own bond with them to the point of death, one way or another the seeds will sprout again in German history for the brilliant rebirth of the National Socialist movement and thus for the realization of a true national community ."

He particularly asked the high command of the army, air force and navy to

"To use the utmost means to strengthen the spirit of resistance of our soldiers in the National Socialist sense, with the special reference to the fact that I myself, as the founder and creator of this movement, preferred death to cowardly dismissal or even surrender."

This “most faithful fulfillment of duty to the death” should in future “be part of the German officer's concept of honor”.

Second part

Hitler receives Karl Dönitz in the Führerbunker (1945)

In the second part, Hitler removed Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler from their state and government offices and expelled them from the NSDAP . The reason he gave was that they had tried to secretly negotiate a separate peace with the Allies without his knowledge and consent. He also claimed that they had tried to "seize power in the state". This caused "incalculable damage to the country and the people, quite apart from the disloyalty to my person."

He then appointed the following persons for the executive government following his death :

In the following passages, Hitler also asked the people who remained in the Führerbunker not to die with him, but to continue fighting elsewhere. You should place the “honor of the nation” as the eternal greatest good above all self-interest and fear and remain aware that the “task of building a National Socialist state is the work of the centuries to come”. Most recently he demanded of all Germans, National Socialists and soldiers of the Wehrmacht to obey the successor government he appointed "faithfully ... to the death", and concluded:

"Above all, I oblige the leadership of the nation and the followers to embarrassingly observe the racial laws and to relentlessly resist the world poisoner of all peoples, international Judaism."

- Adolf Hitler

Besides Hitler himself, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs signed the document as witnesses. The date of the signatures is given as April 29, 1945 at 4:00 am; an addition by Joseph Goebbels bears the time stamp of 5:30 a.m.

Addition by Goebbels

In his written addition, Goebbels declared that for the first time he had to refuse his Führer the order: "In the delirium of treason that surrounds the Führer in these most critical days of the war, there must be at least some who stand by him unconditionally and until death" . This "sacrifice" should "inspire" others through "clear and understandable examples":

“For this reason I express my immovable resolution with my wife and on behalf of my children, who are too young to be able to express themselves but who, if they were of the necessary age, would unreservedly agree to this decision not to leave the capital of the Reich, even if it falls, and rather to end a life at the side of the Führer that is of no value to me personally if I cannot use it in the service of the Führer and by his side . "

consequences

Headline of the U.S. Army newspaper on May 2, 1945

Successor government

Hitler had appointed Martin Bormann as executor of the will. After Hitler's suicide, he read out his private and political wills on April 30, 1945 at around 5:00 p.m. for the people remaining in the Führerbunker. In the evening he sent the following radio message to Karl Dönitz in Plön:

“In place of the previous Reichsmarschall Goering, the Führer appoints you, Grand Admiral Dönitz, as his successor. Written authorization on the way. From now on, you should have all the measures that arise from the current situation. Bormann "

He concealed Hitler's death, his demand for unconditional continued fighting and the other people he appointed. At around 7:40 a.m. on the morning of May 1, 1945, he sent a second radio message to Dönitz, which reached it around 11 a.m.:

"Grand Adm. Dönitz - Testament in force. I will come to you as soon as possible. Until then, in my opinion, postpone publication - Bormann "

Shortly afterwards Goebbels sent Dönitz one last radio message from the Führerbunker, in which he announced Hitler's death and time of death, but not his suicide. He named his post, Bormanns and Seyss-Inquarts intended by Hitler, stated to whom Hitler had sent his will and added: “Reichsleiter Bormann is trying to come to you today to clarify the situation. The form and timing of the announcement to the public and troops is up to you. Confirm receipt. signed: Goebbels - Bormann. "

Bormann left the Führerbunker on May 1st as ordered. At the Lehrter train station he was stopped by Soviet soldiers and killed himself by taking a poison capsule. On May 1, Goebbels tried in vain against Hitler's testamentary order to negotiate a partial surrender with the Soviets. In the evening he and his wife first poisoned their six children and then killed themselves around 8:30 p.m. The wills witnesses Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs also killed themselves on the afternoon of May 1, 1945.

After Bormann's first radio message, which had concealed Hitler's death, Dönitz thanked Hitler by telegram and promised to do everything possible for his dismay. He wanted to bring the war to an end "as the German people's unique heroic struggle demands." He set up a successor cabinet at his own discretion. Since the Nuremberg Trial in 1946, Doenitz had claimed that he had assumed that Hitler wanted to capitulate and that he only learned the opposite from his will afterwards. Historians consider this to be a legend, however, because Dönitz knew and followed Hitler's will to continue the struggle without knowing the wording of the will as long as he was not convinced of Hitler's death.

In a radio address on the evening of May 1st, Dönitz announced the death of the Germans Hitler and his appointment as president. Since Hitler had tied the office of "Führer" to his person for life and had separated the offices of Reich President and Reich Chancellor, which were combined in it, in a will, Dönitz had to reckon with disloyalty in the still fighting sections of the Wehrmacht. In addition, Hitler did not refer to Article 51 ( state of emergency ) of the Weimar Constitution and did not personally hand over the office of State President. Despite Hitler's testamentary exclusion from the party, Hermann Göring continued to claim a leadership role. For this reason, Doenitz emphasized in his radio address that the soldier's oath of loyalty to Hitler was now valid for him. He also claimed that Goering himself had asked for his release. He also intended to have Goebbels and Bormann arrested from May 2nd if they had reached Plön.

According to the National Socialist legal conception, Dönitz regarded Hitler's political will formally as a valid, unquestionable “ Führer decree ”. In fact, however, he disregarded Hitler's last will by arbitrarily filling the new cabinet, seeking partial surrender, and limiting his term of office to the point at which the German people could express their will to appoint a head of state . In doing so, he implicitly referred to Article 41, Paragraph 1 of the Weimar Constitution, which demanded the election of the head of state “from the entire German people”. The Allies pragmatically recognized Dönitz as Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht and thus negotiating partner for the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht until May 8, 1945 , but then denied his authority as Reich President because he could only base it on copies of radio messages. Thereupon, a report prepared by National Socialist lawyers on May 16, 1945, with reference to Hitler's last will, certified Dönitz “impeccable legitimacy as head of state”. Logically, Dönitz, who was arrested on May 23, protested in writing on July 7, 1945 against his removal from office and insisted that his government continue to exist under international law. In the first Nuremberg trial, the International Military Tribunal treated Dönitz as Hitler's successor in law until May 8, 1945, in accordance with his de facto exercise of power, and thus made him responsible for the crime of a war of aggression . For most Germans Hitler testamentary succession plan, however, was of no importance, since most of the territory of the Reich already by the troops of the Allies occupied was.

Path of the Originals

Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge had to issue three copies of the political will. Hitler had appointed his adjutant Nicolaus von Below as well as the representative of the German intelligence agency Heinz Lorenz and the SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander as couriers . They were supposed to deliver one copy personally to Karl Dönitz in Plön, one to Ferdinand Schörner in Prague and one to the NSDAP party headquarters in Munich.

Below, Lorenz, the recipient Schörner and a confidante Zanders, to whom he had given the copy entrusted to him, were - according to the Institute for Contemporary History in 2003 - captured by the Allies until spring 1946; at least two of the three copies were seized. According to more recent information, all three specimens were discovered and confiscated by the Allies shortly after the end of the war.

Herman Rothman, who fled Germany to Great Britain as a persecuted Jew in 1939 and fought against the Nazi regime as a British soldier, found the originals of both Hitler's wills sewn into Lorenz's jacket while interrogating German prisoners of war . He was commissioned to translate them into English in the highest degree of secrecy. He later questioned the police guard Hermann Karnau as an eyewitness to the events in the Führerbunker about the circumstances of Hitler's death. Rothman described his discovery and Karnau's statements in a book in 2009. Three pages of one of the originals are on display in the Imperial War Museum in London , including the first with the deposition and the last with the signatures of the witnesses. The specimen transported by Zander is in the US National Archives in Washington, DC

reception

Rhetorical self-stylization

Hitler practices speaking poses (studio photos, 1927)

Hitler's "political testament" contains expressions and phrases that appeared in many of his speeches and were thus typical of his rhetoric:

  • a historically first, superhuman burden that has been placed on him,
  • the heroic self-sacrifice in the service of the nation,
  • one's own (voluntary) death as participation in the fate of the (involuntary) death of fallen warriors,
  • the death of the Führer as an incentive to last resistance,
  • as the seed of rebirth and future, then final completion of one's own vision,
  • as an unlimited obligation to realize them, especially to destroy the eternal enemy (the Jews).

This rhetoric, like Hitler's last appeal to the German Wehrmacht soldiers of April 16, 1945, is part of a deliberate “heroic staging” and “creation of legends”. Marcel Atze emphasizes "that a well-staged and externally portrayed death was of eminent importance for the hero's continued life":

“Immortality at all costs was Hitler's goal. [...] The death in the bunker, hidden from view, can be seen as the last conscious action of the Nazi mythmakers. It should be understood and passed on as the climax of Hitler's work of redemption, as a self-sacrifice. "

Hitler used the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ handed down in the New Testament to stylize his death in order to give his death as well as his life messianic features. His followers had also presented his death as the "crowning conclusion" of his life stylized as a god-man , in order to stabilize the cult of the Führer posthumously as well:

“The, with festival , 'strategy of grandiose downfall' should stage dying in such a way that Hitler could be glorified in the future. [...] His death was supposed to glorify defeat as an act of redemption, to transform it into a victory and ultimately to help the myth to survive indefinitely. The image of Hitler who fell fighting was the necessary condition for this. "

Marcel Atze refers to the Wehrmacht reports of May 1 and 2, 1945, which Hitler adopted in his political will formulated self-image and demands: “At the end of this his struggle and his steadfast, straight path in life stands his heroic death. His life was a single service for Germany ... Inspired by the will to save his people and Europe ... he sacrificed his life. This 'true to death' example is mandatory for all soldiers. "

Hitler biographer Alan Bullock emphasizes that Hitler chose his words carefully in order to pass off his suicide as a union with the soldiers who are dying for him and the fulfillment of duty until death. However, Hitler had often condemned the suicide of soldiers and NSDAP officials as cowardice and “escape from responsibility”, as was the case on April 21, 1945, after he learned of the suicide of the mayor of Leipzig. For Helmuth Weidling , the combat commander of the troops for the defense of Berlin, the lie of the alleged heroic death was therefore obvious. Immediately after the news of Hitler's suicide he released his soldiers from their oath of allegiance: "On April 30, 1945, the Fiihrer evacuated himself and thus abandoned us who had sworn allegiance to him."

Hitler's frequent rhetorical references and allusions to expressions, themes and episodes in the Bible have often been observed and analyzed. The religious self-transfiguration in the role of the Messiah served to establish the leadership cult that had been propagandistically generated since 1920. In doing so, Hitler tried to bind the Germans to himself and his political and ideological goals after his death.

The Austrian historian Werner Telesko explains this attempt from an " apocalyptic view of history , the core of which is the desire to anchor one's own history - in the sense of the claimed eternal value - in the 'memoria' of posterity, thus constantly as the necessary 'end' of To present history that can no longer tolerate any increase or expansion [...] This view necessarily includes self-styling beyond death, as evidenced in Hitler's wills, for example - embodiments of a limitless delusion that posterity only has to somehow remain in the consciousness . "

Even Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge remarked in her memoirs that with this rhetoric, Hitler had disappointed the expectations of his servants that the last word would be a confession of guilt or at least a truthful explanation of his story:

"Unresponsive, almost mechanically, the Fuehrer utters declarations, accusations and demands that I, the German people and the whole world know."

Statements on the extermination of the Jews

Hitler's “political testament” is classified in Holocaust research as a document of the Holocaust because of his statements about Jews. It is considered to be evidence of the consistency of Hitler's hatred of Jews from 1919 until his death in 1945. Ernst Nolte , for example, emphasized that Hitler's last sentence “could, in essence, appear in the first document of his political activity, the letter to Gemlich. A quarter of a century had passed, full of the most monstrous events, one of the most recent of which was called Auschwitz : Adolf Hitler had remained unchanged. "

Gerald Fleming saw in the will Hitler's last attempt to bind the Germans to an eternal hatred of Jews. Klaus Hildebrand emphasized:

“The extermination of the Jews was the central goal of his policy, which was already clear at the beginning of his career when on September 16, 1919 he demanded 'immovable removal of the Jews in general', and that was the last sentence of his will on April 29 1945, in which he called on his 'followers ... to merciless resistance against the world poisoner of all peoples, international Judaism'. "

David Bankier interprets Hitler's reference to his speech in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939 as part of a rhetorical strategy: Hitler and Goebbels had on the one hand openly announced the extermination of the Jews, but on the other hand deliberately concealed it by avoiding all details. In doing so, they would have tested how far the Germans would go along with it, allowed them to speculate about what was really happening and thus made them jointly liable as confidants. Hitler consciously announced the Holocaust as a consequence of the World War in the form of a prophecy in order to portray it as an objective, as it were determined event and thus to neutralize any moral responsibility for it. During the execution of the Holocaust, this rhetoric then served as a retrospective alibi: What happened was predicted without criminal intent.

The document was discussed in the dispute over Nazi research between intentionalists and functionalists . According to Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen , Hitler did not expressly order the Holocaust. According to Mommsen, he played “the role of the instigator and agitator, without binding himself to posterity by issuing unambiguous orders.” It is questionable “whether Hitler was accountable for the real consequences of his annihilation discourses, albeit in terms of information individual not lacking. ”In an earlier essay, Mommsen said that Hitler tried“ not to perceive or to suppress ”the real consequences of the extermination of the Jews.

In contrast, historians who value Hitler's anti-Semitism as the decisive cause of his actions and who emphasize Hitler's central role in the decision to plan and carry out the Holocaust also refer to his political testament. For Shlomo Aronson, Hitler's last statements about Jews refute explanatory models that classify the Holocaust only as a means for further imperial-racist goals of the National Socialists and the first step towards their realization. Ian Kershaw emphasized that Hitler's statement that he carried out the extermination of the Jews as announced in 1939 was "a key point, an indirect reference to the Final Solution ". Saul Friedländer referred to execution orders from Hitler and reports of SS mass murders of Soviet Jews requested and received by him :

“If Hitler [...] suppressed the knowledge of the extermination of the Jews or evaded him for psychological reasons, then one wonders why he himself in his last political declaration, his will of April 29, 1945, written on the eve of his death boasted about this extermination of the Jews and presented them as the greatest service that National Socialism had rendered humanity. "

Despite its chaotic circumstances, the document summarizes only "the dogmas of his faith that are most important to Hitler". That is why he made the Jewish victims responsible for their extermination, only appointed Dönitz as Reich President, not as "Führer", and addressed the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, but not his party comrades . He did not mention the Reich because of its destruction, the NSDAP because of the many "traitors" in the final passage. Because of the defeat in the war and his intention to commit suicide, he no longer spoke of “ Providence ”. It is only surprising that he did not mention “ Bolshevism ” here either. In the end he probably only concentrated on shifting his responsibility for the war defeat and the Holocaust on to the Jews in order to initiate a "rebirth" of National Socialism after his death.

The reference to allegedly “more humane” means of extermination is a cynical description of the gassing of Jews in the extermination camps . The Israeli historian Robert S. Wistrich saw the beginning of Holocaust denial in Hitler's justification of the extermination of the Jews as an alleged reaction to the World War and a “more humane” fight against war opponents , and thus also assumed Hitler's knowledge of the Holocaust.

Christian Goeschel puts Hitler's political testament in the context of an unprecedented wave of suicides by numerous high and thousands of medium-sized Nazi functionaries, which also evaded their responsibility, at the end of the war. It is the best example of her four most important motives for suicide: the destructive, violent core of Nazi ideology, the rejection of Allied jurisdiction, the attempt to decide how to die for oneself, and the attempt to convey the image of history to posterity through a particularly dramatic departure determine. Hitler's will documented his fanatical anti-Semitism and his shifting guilt for the last time in an extremely stylized form, in that he made “Judaism” responsible for war and suffering and at the same time expressed joy at the self-inflicted destruction.

Hermann Lübbe sees Hitler's political testament as an unsurpassable example of Nazi ideology. This has derived an absolute duty to genocide from the dogma of racial struggle as a law of world history . This value judgment dominated all individual, pragmatic and purposeful considerations. The "self-creation of a good conscience through orientation towards the ideologically determined higher purposes" was not the only, but a necessary condition for the National Socialist genocide policy. Therefore, after the failure of all of his political goals (Greater Germany, annihilation of the Soviet Union and “final victory”), Hitler held on to the “awareness of the higher rights of one's own cause” all the more. This is the only way to understand the “ghostly” final sentence of the political will because of its unreality.

Mark Weitzman , anti-Semitism researcher and representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , sees in the final statements of the will an order-like mandate to "take revenge for the historical disgrace described here as a Jewish victory." This order has become historically effective in global right-wing extremism . Its ideological constant, radical anti-Semitism, may have been stronger than ever since globalization and precisely because of the defeat of National Socialism and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Statements about the successor government

While historians attach considerable significance to Hitler's testamentary statements about Jews, they doubt whether he attached “more than just declamatory importance” to his follow-up orders in the second part. Because the successor government he had appointed could hardly meet in the war situation at the time: Bormann and Hanke, who was trapped in Breslau, had little chance of reaching Dönitz in Schleswig-Holstein, and Goebbels had made it clear to Hitler that he intended to commit suicide. Hitler's instruction to continue fighting unconditionally was neither compatible with his knowledge of the location and advance of the Allies nor with his transfer of command to Dönitz and thus no longer enforceable.

Following his own view of things, Dönitz is traditionally referred to in German right-wing extremism as the “only legal successor to Hitler”, whose government, unlike the Wehrmacht, never capitulated. This portrays the Federal Republic of Germany as an illegal, externally imposed state against whose institutions one has the right to resist . Doenitz himself promoted this attitude in 1972 by exchanging letters with the right-wing extremist Manfred Roeder , who referred to him and at times claimed to be his and Hitler's legitimate successor.

In 1989, Dirk Nolte asserted the constitutional significance of Hitler's political will: "According to the legal understanding at the time," Hitler's appointment of Dönitz was legal, since the Reichstag, which was elected by the people , had legally transferred all-encompassing state power to Hitler and other leading National Socialists such as Heinrich Himmler recognized Dönitz. Thomas Moritz and Reinhard Neubauer complained that Nolte's argument a Nazi legal positivism continued sit, and recalled that even the Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 , the Weimar Constitution breached had: their Article 76 required for legitimate constitutional amendments a two-thirds majority of the legally elected and present members of the Reichstag. The National Socialists only achieved this majority through massive, unlawful terrorism against such members. Furthermore, the Enabling Act suspended the constitutional principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law . Hence, Hitler's reign was henceforth illegal even by the standards of the Weimar Constitution and could not establish any legal continuity.

Literary processing

Blasted Führer Bunker (1947)

German authors have resolutely opposed the will to perpetuate the Führer cult and the rebirth of National Socialism as expressed in the political testament since 1945. The means to achieve this was, for example, literary realism , "depicting the hero's death for what it was: a wretched perishing in hiding."

Bruno Brehm , who had previously worshiped Hitler, highlighted the contradiction between Hitler's alleged heroic death and his suicide in 1961:

“So ended the man who brought nameless calamity to the world. He did not choose the soldier's death, which he demanded of millions of Germans, but the suicide of the irresponsible. "

He referred to Hitler's statement, handed down by Carl Hilpert , that the German people were “not worthy of me”, and linked the hope that this statement and Hitler's suicide would open the eyes of the Germans. This form of distancing himself from Hitler's political will was widespread among former Hitler admirers.

Another literary form of destroying the Führer cult was a naturalistic , detailed, exaggerated description of Hitler's corpse cremation. Authors such as Josef Einwanger and Marcel Beyer countered legends that Hitler's body was never found and that he secretly survived somewhere. Many authors portray Hitler as a fictional character who lives on as his own caricature : for example Herbert Rosendorfer , Deutsche Suite (1972), Günter Kunert , Hitler Lives (1987), Christoph D. Brumme , Hitler (1996) or Bernhard Setzwein , Buch der Seven Righteous (1999). Others use the means of conjectural history (what would have happened if Hitler had lived on) to analyze and warn, by describing a world after a completed “final solution to the Jewish question” and a realized general plan for the East : so Otto Basil , If the Führer knew (1966); Helmut Heißenbüttel , If Adolf Hitler Hadn't Won the War (1979); in response, Ralph Giordano : If Hitler Had Won the War (1992).

The playwright Heiner Müller processed the rhetoric of the “political testament” in his work Germania 3 Ghosts on the Dead Man (1995) as a grotesque parody .

swell

  • Max Domarus: Hitler. Speeches and proclamations 1932–1945. Commented on by a German contemporary. Volume II: Downfall. 2nd half volume: 1941-1945 (= volume 4). R. Löwit, Wiesbaden 1973, pp. 2235-2249.
  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Hrsg.): The Second World War in pictures and documents. Volume 3: Victory Without Peace 1944–1945. Desch, Munich [u. a.] 1962, p. 372 f.
  • Percy Ernst Schramm (ed.): War diary of the high command of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht command staff). 1940-1945. Volume 8: January 1, 1944 - May 22, 1945. Compiled and explained by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Andreas Hillgruber , Walther Hubatsch , Percy Ernst Schramm and Donald S. Detwiler. Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching 1982, ISBN 3-88199-073-9 , pp. 1666–1669.
  • Michael Angelo Musmanno: Ten days to die. Doubleday, Garden City 1950. (Interviews with almost 100 contemporary witnesses on the circumstances of Hitler's death; review )

literature

Web links

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context

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zeno.org : The Nuremberg Trial, main negotiations, 125th day (May 9, 1946), afternoon session (interrogation of Karl Dönitz)
  2. ^ François Genoud (ed.): Hitler's political testament. The Bormann dictates of February and April 1945. With an essay by Hugh Trevor-Roper and an afterword by André François-Poncet . Albrecht Knaus, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-813-55111-2 .
  3. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy: perpetrators, victims, prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 , pp. 14 and 222, note 3 .
  4. ↑ Ian Kershaw: The End. Fight to the end. Nazi Germany 1944/45. 3rd edition, DVA, Munich 2011, p. 463 f.
  5. ↑ Andreas Hilger , Mike Schmeitzner, Clemens Vollnhals: Sovietization or Neutrality? , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-36906-9 , p. 460 .
  6. ↑ Saul Friedländer, Martin Pfeiffer: The Third Reich and the Jews. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-56681-2 , p. 1039 .
  7. ↑ Quoted from Mario Frank: Death in the Führerbunker: Hitler's Last Days. Siedler, 2005, ISBN 3-886-80815-7 , p. 311.
  8. ↑ Der Spiegel, January 10, 1966: ... why then still live! Hitler's briefing on April 23, 25 and 27, 1945 .
  9. ^ Olaf Groehler: 1945, the New Reich Chancellery: the end. The diary of Europe. Berlin 1995, p. 59 ff .; Manfred Görtemaker : History of the Federal Republic of Germany: From the foundation to the present. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44554-3 , p. 16 .
  10. ↑ James P. O'Donnell, Uwe Bahnsen : The catacomb: the end in the Reich Chancellery. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1975, p. 98; Ernst Auer: The soldier between oath and conscience. W. Braumüller, 1983, ISBN 3-700-30462-5 , p. 92; Hitler's journey to hell: The end in the bunker and the long journey of the corpse / Part II , Der Spiegel from April 10, 1995.
  11. ^ Wolfdieter Bihl: The death of Adolf Hitler. Vienna 2000, pp. 76-80 .
  12. ^ Nicolaus von Below: As Hitler's adjutant. Hase & Koehler, 1980, p. 434.
  13. ↑ Sebastian Haffner: Notes on Hitler. Jah Tholenaar, 1980, ISBN 3-886-21011-1 , p. 15 ff.
  14. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Thamer : The dead Hitler. The end of the dictator and the changes in a myth. In: Thomas Großbölting and Rüdiger Schmidt (eds.): The death of the dictator. Event and memory in the 20th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, p. 88 .
  15. ↑ a b c d e International Military Tribunal (Ed.): Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945– October 1, 1946: Proceedings , Volumes 1–42, new edition, AMS Press, 1947, ISBN 0-404-53650-6 , p. 549; Max Domarus (Ed.): Adolf Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945, Volume 4. Löwit, 1973, p. 2237.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Prejudice and Genocide. Ideological premises of genocide. Böhlau, Vienna 2010, p. 96 f.
  17. ↑ Heinz Schreckenberg: Redemption Anti-Semitism? Reflections on Hitler's genocide order in December 1941. In: Christoph Barnbrock, Werner Klän (Hrsg.): God's Word in Time: understand - proclaim - spread. Lit Verlag, Münster 2005, p. 50 f.
  18. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1936-1945. Stuttgart 2000, p. 1057 f.
  19. ^ A b Saul Friedländer, Martin Pfeiffer: The Third Reich and the Jews. Munich 2007, p. 1044 f.
  20. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1936-1945. Stuttgart 2000, p. 1058 f.
  21. ^ Joseph Goebbels: Diaries 1945. The last notes. Hamburg 1977, p. 539 f.
  22. ^ Werner Rahn: German Marines in Transition: From the Symbol of National Unity to the Instrument of International Security. Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, p. 534 .
  23. ↑ Max Domarus (Ed.): Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945, Volume 2, Edition 2. Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965, p. 2249.
  24. ↑ Helmuth Greiner, Percy Ernst Schramm, Hans Adolf Jacobsen (ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht command staff) 1940–1945. Volume 4, Issue 2. Bernard & Graefe, 1965, p. 1469.
  25. ↑ Der Spiegel, May 4, 1998: Genetic test: Bormann's skeleton clearly identified
  26. ^ David Clay Large: Berlin. Biography of a city. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48881-1 , p. 342 .
  27. ^ Klaus W. Tofahrn: The Third Reich and the Holocaust. Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 3-631-57702-8 , p. 224 .
  28. ^ Werner Rahn: German Marines in Transition: From the Symbol of National Unity to the Instrument of International Security. Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, p. 534 ; there also the quote.
  29. ↑ Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Walter Baum: Dönitz government: the last days of the Third Reich. Musterschmidt, 1964, p. 172.
  30. ^ Andreas Hillgruber: Problems of the Second World War. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967, p. 349.
  31. ↑ James P. O'Donnell, Uwe Bahnsen: The catacomb: the end in the Reich Chancellery. 1975, p. 230.
  32. ^ Marlis G. Steinert: The 23 days of the Dönitz government. Econ, 1967, p. 317.
  33. ↑ Elmar Krautkrämer : German history after the Second World War. Lax, 1962, p. 15.
  34. ↑ Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Walter Baum: Dönitz government: the last days of the Third Reich. Musterschmidt, 1964, p. 166 (Appendix 28: "Mondorf Declaration").
  35. ^ Marlis G. Steinert: The 23 days of the Dönitz government. 1967, p. 316 f.
  36. ^ Richard J. Evans : The Third Reich. Vol. III: War . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2009, p. 918.
  37. ↑ Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller: Until the last hour. Hitler's secretary tells her life. Claasen, 2nd edition, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-546-00311-X , p. 204.
  38. ↑ Christa A. Ossmann-Mausch: It all began in Berlin. A youth in times of war. ISBN 3-865-16493-5 , p. 356 .
  39. ^ Whitney R. Harris, Christoph Safferling, Ulrike Seeberger: Tyrants in front of the court: The proceedings against the main German war criminals after the Second World War in Nuremberg 1945-1946. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 445 .
  40. ↑ Herman Rothmann: Hitler's Will. History Press, 2009, ISBN 0-752-44834-X ; Bernd Peters (Express, April 29, 2011): Berlin Herman Rothman: I found Hitler's will .
  41. ↑ Michael Salewski, Stefan Lippert (ed.): German sources for the history of the Second World War. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-12470-7 , p. 34.
  42. ↑ Marcel Atze: "Our Hitler" , 2003, p. 97 f.
  43. ↑ Marcel Atze: "Our Hitler" , 2003, p. 99 .
  44. ↑ Marcel Atze: "Our Hitler" , 2003, p. 100 .
  45. ^ Alan Bullock: Hitler. Biography 1889-1945. Bechtermünz, 2000, ISBN 3-828-90378-9 , p. 797.
  46. ↑ Heinz Schreckenberg: Hitler, motives and methods of an improbable career: a biographical study. Peter Lang, Bern 2006, ISBN 3-631-54616-5 , p. 133.
  47. ↑ Quoted from Hans-Ulrich Thamer: Der tote Hitler. The end of the dictator and the changes in a myth. In: Thomas Großbölting, Rüdiger Schmidt: The death of the dictator: Events and memories in the 20th century. Göttingen 2011, p. 81 .
  48. ↑ Georg Steins, Franz G. Untergaßmair: The book without which one understands nothing. The cultural power of the Bible. Lit Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-825-87969-0 , p. 153 .
  49. ↑ Werner Telesko: Redeemer myths in art and politics. Böhlau, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-205-77149-4 , p. 143 f.
  50. ↑ Gertraud Junge, Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller: Until the last hour. RM-Buch-und-Medien-Vertrieb, 2002, p. 202; quoted from Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Myth of the Führerbunker. Hitler's last refuge. Berlin Story, 2006, ISBN 3-929-82943-6 , p. 90 .
  51. ^ Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, Abraham Margaliot (eds.): Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union. University of Nebraska Press, 1999, ISBN 0-803-21050-7 , p. V (foreword) and p. 162.
  52. ^ Doris Bergen: The Holocaust: A Concise History. Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, p. 30 .
  53. ^ Letter from Adolf Hitler on the "Jewish problem" (September 16, 1919), documented by Ernst Deuerlein: The rise of the NSDAP in eyewitness reports. (1968) Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 5th edition 1989, ISBN 3-423-02701-0 , pp. 89-95 ( full text online ; PDF; 110 kB).
  54. ^ Ernst Nolte: Fascism in its epoch: Action française, Italian fascism, National Socialism. (1963) Piper, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-492-20365-5 , p. 444. Received by Johannes Zischka: The Nazi racial ideology: an instrument of power tactics or an ideal that determines action? Peter Lang, 1986, ISBN 3-820-48728-X , p. 40.
  55. ↑ Gerald Fleming: Hitler and the Final Solution. University of California Press, 1987, ISBN 0-520-06022-9 , p. 186 .
  56. ↑ Klaus Hildebrand: The Third Reich. Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 3-486-59200-9 , p. 98 .
  57. ^ David Bankier: The Use of Antisemitism in Nazi Wartime Propaganda. In: Michael Berenbaum, Abraham J. Peck (eds.): The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 48 .
  58. ↑ Controversy referred to: Stephen E. Atkins: Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Frederick Praeger, 2009, ISBN 0-313-34538-4 , pp. 43-52, reference to Hitler's will on p. 51 .
  59. ^ Hans Mommsen: Auschwitz, July 17, 1942. 20 days in the 20th century. The way to the European “final solution to the Jewish question”. Dtv, 2002, ISBN 3-423-30605-X , pp. 188 and 184.
  60. ↑ Hans Mommsen: The Realization of the Utopian: The “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the “Third Reich”. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1983, ISSN  0340-613X , pp. 381-420; similar in: David Bankier (Ed. on behalf of Yad Vashem ): Questions about the Holocaust. Interviews with prominent researchers and thinkers: Interviews with Christopher Browning, Jacques Derrida, Saul Friedländer, Hans Mommsen and others. Wallstein, 2006, ISBN 3-835-30095-4 , p. 270 .
  61. ^ Shlomo Aronson: Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews. Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-83877-0 , pp. 41 f.
  62. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1936-1945. Stuttgart 2000, p. 1056.
  63. ↑ Saul Friedländer: Reflecting on the Holocaust. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-54824-5 , p. 31 .
  64. ↑ Peter Glanninger: Racism and right-wing extremism: Racist argumentation patterns and their historical lines of development. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 3-631-57501-7 , p. 141 ; Sibylle Hübner-Funk, Arno Klönne: Loyalty and delusion: Hitler's guarantors of the future as bearers of the second German democracy. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 1998, ISBN 3-932-98111-1 , p. 255.
  65. ^ Robert S. Wistrich: Hitler and the Holocaust. Modern Library, 2001, ISBN 0-679-64222-6 , p. 116.
  66. ↑ Christian Goeschel: Methodical considerations on the history of suicide under National Socialism. In: Andreas Bähr, Hans Medick: Dying by one's own hand: suicide as a cultural practice. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-412-18405-5 , p. 186 .
  67. ^ Hermann Lübbe: Modernization and Consequences: Trends of Cultural and Political Evolution. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 1997, pp 188- 190 .
  68. ^ Mark Weitzman: Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial: Permanent Elements of Global Right-Wing Extremism. In: Thomas Greven, Thomas Grumke : Globalized right-wing extremism? The extremist right in the era of globalization. Springer, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14514-2 , p. 53 ; Using the Web as a Weapon: The Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism. (Hearing at the House of Representatives, 110th Congress, November 6, 2007).
  69. ^ Robert Bohn, Jürgen Elvert: End of the war in the north. Franz Steiner, 1995, ISBN 3-515-06728-0 , p. 66 .
  70. ↑ Hans-Gerd Jaschke, Birgit Rätsch, Yury Winterberg: After Hitler: radical right arm. Bertelsmann, 2001, ISBN 3-570-00566-6 , p. 145.
  71. ↑ Richard Stöss: The extreme right in the Federal Republic. Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-531-12124-3 , p. 163.
  72. ↑ Dirk Nolte: The problem of the legality of the succession of Hitler by the "Dönitz government". In: Juristische Schulung 1989, pp. 440–443.
  73. ^ Daniela Münkel , Peter Struck (Ed.): The Enabling Act 1933: a documentation on the 75th anniversary. Forward book, 2008, ISBN 3-866-02547-5 , p. 32 ff.
  74. ↑ Thomas Moritz, Reinhard Neubauer: The legitimacy of the “Dönitz government” or: How constitutional was the “Third Reich”? In: Kritische Justiz 1989, pp. 475–481 (PDF; 710 kB).
  75. ↑ Marcel Atze: "Our Hitler" , 2003, p. 110 .
  76. ↑ Bruno Brehm: Woe to the vanquished everyone. Styria, 3rd edition 1962, p. 384.
  77. ↑ "If the German people lose the war, they have proven themselves unworthy of me": Adolf Hitler on April 18, 1945 to Colonel General Carl Hilpert. Quoted from Hans Adolf Jacobsen (ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht command staff) 1940–1945. Volume 4, Issue 1, 1965, p. 68.
  78. ↑ Bruno Brehm: Woe to the vanquished everyone. Styria, 3rd Edition 1962, pp. 270-273; Marcel Atze: "Our Hitler" , 2003, p. 450 .
  79. ^ Josef Einwanger: Flip book. Bertelsmann, 1989, ISBN 3-570-00327-2 , p. 58.
  80. ↑ Marcel Beyer: Flying foxes: Roman. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-39126-7 , p. 218.
  81. ↑ Marcel Atze: “Our Hitler” , 2003, pp. 106–115 .
  82. ^ Norbert Otto Eke: Word / Games: Drama - Film - Literature. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-503-09810-0 , p. 117 .
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