historians and the hitler phenomenon

HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON By WILLIAM CAM

Thuty-five years after Adolf Hider shot hunself in the Berlin bunker interest in the Third Reich shows little sign of flagging. Monographs on Nazi Germany already in print number several thousands and more are in the making in the bowels of the archives. Nor is curiosity about Hitler and his movement confined to professional historians. The film industry profited greatly from the ‘Hitler wave’ in the mid- 1970s; Joachim Fest’s 1977 film Hider, eine Kamere and more recently Hans. Jiirgen Syberberg’s pretentious seven-hour film Hider. Ein Film aus Deutschland were seen by large audiences in the Federal Republic and elsewhere; and a dis- tinguished British actor, Sir Alec Guinness, undertook the unenviable task of playing Hitler in a film version of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s classic account The Last Days of Hider (London 1947). Helmut Qualtinger’s readings from Mein Kampf have captivated German audiences; auctions of bric-2- brac belonging to prominent Nazis have raised considerable sums all over the world; and in West Germany records of Nazi songs and speeches have achieved quite substantial sales.

Why are the Nazi ghosts still walking? Because in the first place Europe was utterly transformed by the Second World War, for which Nazi Germany is rightly held primarily responsible. The emergence of the USA and USSR as Super Powers, the division of Europe along the line of the river Elbe, and the collapse of the great colonial empires in the Far East were direct results of that conflagration even if it only accelerated an inevitable historical process adumbrated already in the aftermath of the First World War. The second reason why Hitler will not go away is the Holocaust. The civllised world w d not easily forget the cold-blooded murder of six-and-a-half million Jews; the four-part television film Holocaust (unfairly criticised for not being a documentary) aroused widespread interest and controversy when screened recently in the USA, Britain and West Germany. And as Hitler was the main instigator of the murders-despite recent attempts to place the blame on Himmler-interest in the man and in his deeds will continue for a long time to come.

Confronted with the phenomenon of the ‘great man’-and by virtue of his impact on the world and the enormity of his crimes against humanity Hitler must rank as one of the most signlficant figures of modern times (i.e. ‘great’ in the non-ethical sense)-many historians have attempted to encompass the National Socialist phenomenon within the framework of traditional biography. In fact, Hitler has had more biographers than any other major figure in modern history, some of them, it must be said, adding virtually nothing to our understanding of either the man or the period.

Among the serious biographers Alan Bullock still holds first place. Though first published in 1952 (and revised in 1962), Hider. A Study in Tyranny has stood the test of time extraordinarily well. At a time when Hitler was widely regarded as a demon-like figure, an ‘Unperson’, on whom the Germans could lay the blame for the failure of Germany’s second bid for mastery in Europe, Bullock’s volume related the man more effectively to his times and analysed his

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career more comprehensively and dispassionately than subsequent biographers. Joachim Fest’s well-written biography, Hitler (London 1974)-not the first by a German but probably the best-is widely regarded as at least a good runner-up to Bullock despite the unbalanced coverage: Fest concentrates unduly on Hitler’s early years, is heavily dependent on secondary sources and treats economic and social factors in an inexcusably cavalier fashion. Some way behind comes John Toland’s recent AdolfHitler (New York 1976), a massive compilation based on some 250 personal interviews with survivors of the regime. While Fest does at least grapple with the broader issue of Hitler’s role in history (he settles uneasily for ‘negative greatness’), Toland offers no conceptual framework whatsoever, stating candidly that ‘. . . any conclusions to be found in it were reached only during the writing; perhaps the most meaningful being that Hitler was far more complex and contradictory than I had imagined’. Though packed with interesting tit-bits of information, Toland’s study explores areas primarily of interest to the interviewees and neglects not only the socio-economic but the historical background to the period as well. Even so, Toland is more readable than Werner Maser’s A d o 4 Hitler. Legende, Mythos, Wirklichheit (MunichIEsslingen 1971). Maser has a well-deserved reputation as an indefatigable researcher who has unearthed much material about Hider’s medical history and genealogy, and has succeeded in dispelling several myths and correcting many factual errors about the man. The book is not arranged chronologically but like a layer-cake; family ante- cedents, health, artistic ambitions, intellectual interests, etc. are each examined in self-contained chapters. Like Toland and Fest, Maser, too, places Hitler firmly in the centre of the universe, packs his book with information but offers no insight into the politico-historical significance of the National Socialist phenomenon. Another indefatigable researcher is David Irving who, although he has not attempted a full-length biography, has produced a most readable Fuhrer-centred account of the war years. In Hider‘s War (London 1977), as in all the biographies (save Bullock), there is no serious attempt to relate the man convincingly to his background, and in Irving’s case the English version is marred by a few pages in which the author argues, wrongheadedly, that Hitler knew nothing of the exter- mination of the Jews until 1943.

It was fashionable just after the war to dismiss Hider’s ideological prejudices as a smokescreen hiding the brutal opportunism of a man who ruthlessly exploited men and ideas alike in pursuit of power-political goals. This view rested on the testimony of Hermann Rauschning and Konrad Heiden. The former, an ex-Nazi and one-time Gauleiter of Danzig, published in 1939 his reminiscences of what Hitler had allegedly told private meetings of party officials between 1932 and 1934 about his ultimate objectives.2 Heiden, a contemporary who observed Hitler in action in Munich, wrote the first serious biography of the man in 1936.3 Oddly enough, although Rauschning and Heiden both made it clear that Hitler was an ideological fanatic as well as an unscrupulous opportunist, Bullock and other historians heeded only the second half of the message. A man who preached fanatical anti-Communism all his life and suddenly abandoned it and concluded a pact with Russia in 1939 certainly fitted the opportunist category like a glove- provided one overlooked the fact that two years later he was waging a savage racial war against ‘bolshevism’.

262 HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON

Hugh Trevor-Roper expressed the first doubts about the ‘cynical opportunist’ thesis.* When one compares Hitler’s ideas, as outlined in Mein Kampf and the Zweztes B w h (written in 1928 but only discovered in 1961), with Rauschning’s account, the Zschgespriiche of 1741-4 and the so-called Testament of February 1945, based on Martin Bormann’s notes, it cannot be denied that a remarkable consistency is apparent throughout. From this Trevor-Roper inferred that, far from being an opportunist, Hitler was an ‘Ideologe’ who had pursued one goal with fanatical determination from 1723 to 1745: the conquest of ‘Lebensraum’ in the east to form the core of a huge German-dominated empire. Since then Hitler’s intellectual stock-in-trade has been carefully analysed by Eberhard Jackel who, like Trevor-Roper, argues that the pernicious mixture of crude Social Darwinism, anti-Semitism and ‘Lebenstraumpolitik‘ fermenting in Hitler’s head ought to be classed as a ‘Weltanschauung’ which exerted major influence on his actions.6 Of course, as Rauschning and Heiden realised long ago, the truth is that a commitment to certain beliefs is not incompatible with tactical skill in manipu- lating situations. The real problem for the historian is how to determine with any degree of certitude the precise relationship between Hitler’s flexible tactics and his fanatically held but loosely formulated beliefs.

Whilst convinced that eastward expansion was an idiefixe with Hitler, Trevor- Roper saw no design behind the Fuhrer’s dealings with the western powers, only a healthy desire to prevent them interfering with his mission to destroy ‘Jewish- bolshevist’ Russia. Gunter Moltmann first questioned this assumption in 1961 when he suggested that Hitler’s ambitions extended far beyond Europe.’ A few years later the theme was taken up and developed by Andreas Hillgruber in a major study of Hitler’s wartime strategy.* His argument was that the establishment of German hegemony from the Atlantic coastline to the Ural mountains represented only the first stage in the expansion of the Third Reich. This would be followed by the acquisition of colonial possessions in Africa and of strategic points to signify that Germany was equal in status to Britain and the ’USA. Then, long after Hitler’s day, a third stage would be reached when a German-dominated Europe struggled for mastery of the world with America. This thesis has been elaborated by Klaus Hildebrand in a study of the Nazi party and the colonial question and by Johann Thiess in a study which attempts to relate Hitler’s architectural plans to world political ambitions.9

It cannot be said that the ‘world mastery’ school has proved its case beyond all reasonable doubt at this stage. Certainly Mezn Kampf contains scattered references to Germany’s demand for ‘world power’, and in Rauschning, a reliable source on the whole, the references are much more explicit. Thiess, too, proves that Hitler spoke much more often about ‘Weltherrschaft’ to private gatherings in 1937 than used to be believed, and that he regarded the huge granite monuments Speer was building as the only architecture in keeping with Germany’s future power and might. Yet whether this adds up to more than a wish to make Germany a great power again is very much open to question. Admittedly, Hitler’s insistence on the building of battleships in 1939 is more puzzling. When Hitler came round reluctantly to the view that British opposition to his continental schemes might lead to war-in preparation for whch naval expansion had to be greatly accelerated

HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON 263

(the so-called ‘2 Plan’)-he demanded that the highest priority be given in the new plan to the building of six battleships despite Raeder’s objection that only by building U-boats could Britain be brought to her knees. Was Hitler already preparing for a struggle in the second half of the 1940s for mastery of the oceans of the world? Or was this, as a recent writer argues, one more example of Hitler’s vaulting ambitions which neither he nor naval command (also anxious to make Germany a major naval power) thought could be realised for decades to come (if ever)?l0 For the present it seems prudent to reserve judgement on the proposition that Hitler had clear-cut world ambitions as opposed to a vague wish to make Germany a world power one day.

Interest in Hitler’s mind has become a major industry in recent years now that the psychohistorians are with us. Of course, no one who has written about Hitler has failed to make some comment on the mental state of this odd individual, though usually this does not extend much beyond a little elementary psychology. The only exception among traditional biographers is Toland who incorporated the findings of Binion in his work. What psychohistory has to offer (in theory) is an alluring blend of historical insight and psychoanalytical experience, although (in practice) many works classed as psychohistory turn out on inspection to be written either by psychiatrists without historical training or by historians primed with psychoanalytical jargon.

An example of the first genre is Walter Langer’s The Mind of Ado& Hitler (London 1973), a work which originated during the Second World War. Colonel William Donovan, head of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA), asked the psychiatrist Langer to compile a report on Hitler’s mental condition for the express purpose of determining, now that the tide of war was turning against Germany, whether he was likely to commit suicide. Langer and his colleagues studied the often sen- sational accounts of Hitler’s private life and interrogated exiled Germans who claimed an intimate knowledge of Hitler. The report did, in fact, predict the suicide of Hitler although of what use this was to the allied war effort remains obscure. When long after the war the report was eventually declassified and published in an amended form, it met with a fairly hostile reception from the historical fraternity.

Langer did not help his case by remarking in the preface that had the report been available earlier it might have prevented the Munich surrender just as a similar study of Fidel Casuo might have prevented the Cuban dtbbcle. More fundamentally, doubts were raised by Langer’s methodology. Having decided that Hitler was a ‘neurotic psychopath’, Langer and his associates evaluated the data ‘in terms of probability’. ‘Those fragments that could most easily be fitted into this general clinical category were tentatively regarded as possessing a higher degree of probability . . . than those which seemed alien to the clinical picture’, a methodology which, while perfectly proper in psychiatry, is unacceptable to historians. 11 Finally, Langer attached undue weight to the testimony of suspect witnesses such as Otto Strasser and ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl whose dubious recollections of Hitler’s sexual life happened to fit the clinical diagnosis. l 2

Robert Waite and Rudolf Binion, on the other hand, have genuinely attempted to combine psychiatric insights with historical method. Waite, who wrote a

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complimentary afterword to Langer’s book, made his own contribution to the debate in Ado/fHit/er. The psychopathic god (New York 1977). Like Langer and the French psychiatrist Jacques Brosse, Waite (who, incidentally, repudiates the label of psychohistorian, believing-sensibly enough- that psychohistory should be seen as an aid to historical understanding and not a substitute for it) attaches major importance to the oedipal situation in explaining Hitler’s psychological hang-ups. The essentials of the argument are that, so far as we can judge from the scanty evidence about his early childhood (a serious limitation in this kind of exercise), Hitler had a mother fmation which, allied with the absence of one testicle (if we can rely on the report of the autopsy on Hider’s charred remains), produced a deeply insecure individual who projected his aggressive drives and sense of sexual inadequacy onto convenient scapegoats in the shape of the Jews. To this Waite added the further speculation that in adult life Hitler believed (erroneously) that he might have had a Jewish grandparent (despite extensive Gestapo inquiries into his genealogical uee), a belief which made his anti-Semitism still more virulent.

Of the two books Rudolf Binion’s Hider among the Germans (New York 1976) represents to date the most original contribution to psychohistorical literature. The author, who sets out to explain the origins of Hitler’s violent anti-Semitism and his belief in eastward expansion (‘Lebensraum’) , finds the key in Hitler’s hospitalization when temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack towards the end of the First World War. Binion postulates a psychic continuum linking up three events in Hider’s life: the death of his mother in December 1907; the gas attack in 1918; and the decision in 1941 to murder European Jewry by gassing. The argument is that Hitler unconsciously resented the Jewish doctor Bloch who treated his mother (unsuccessfully) during her last illness. While recovering in Pasewalk hospital eleven years later the bitter news of Germany’s surrender threw him into an hysterical fit in the course of which-so he claimed later-he received a call from on high to save Germany from ‘Jewish traitors’ who had stabbed her in the back. The murder of theJews thirteen years later was simply the logical extension of Hider’s desire for revenge on a people who, he realised as he lay in hospital, had ‘murdered’ his mother when Dr. Bloch treated her with iodoform, an evil-smelling substance not unlike the mustard gas he had experienced in the trenches.

More ingenious still-and less persuasive-is Binion’s explanation of Hider’s ‘Lebensraum’-futation. The starting-point is the death of Klara Polzl’s three children from diphtheria in the winter of 188819, a traumatic experience for any mother and one which, we can safely assume, would generate excessive anxiety about the next born, Adolf, uansmitted to the infant through excessive feeding. Thirty years later Hider’s pre-oedipal dependence on his mother for food was translated into a political programme for the conquest of ‘Lebensraum’ (feeding space) in the east. The maternal trauma, relived by his mother as she nursed Adolf, coincided after the war with the attempt of the German people to relive the trauma of defeat by repeating the experience as soon as possible. Finally, between 1918 and 1924 Hider’s anti-Semitism and his ‘Lebensraumpolitik’ became inextricably intertwined through the ‘discovery’ that ‘bolshevism’ was an


instrument for Jewish world domination-here we are on safer ground, for it can be shown that Rosenberg supplied Hitler with this concept. Binion’s theory has been surprisingly well received by several historians and accepted-as indicated above-by the latest biographer.

A final contribution to the psychohistory debate worthy of note is Helm Stierlin’s Ado& Hider. Familienperspehtiven (Frankfurt 197 5 ) . An expert on family psychiatry, Stierlin sees Hitler as a disturbed adolescent to whom his mother ‘delegated’ certain tasks: he was expected to remain dependent on her, showing affection to her to relieve her of the great guilt she felt for the death of her children; he was to make a name for himself and thus rescue her memory from provincial obscurity; and, finally, he was to avenge her on her husband, who had oppressed her over the years. The tensions created in young Adolf by the demands of the ‘delegacy’ (i.e. to prove affection for her he had to remain at home, but to realise other objectives he had to leave her), turned him into an irascible and deeply insecure individual always seeking to project his guilt onto anyone who opposed him in the slightest degree. What saved him from emotional shipwreck was his fortuitous entry into politics after the war, enabling him to realise the unspoken ambitions of his deceased mother. On the whole the ‘disturbed adolescent’ theory, in some form or other, seems more plausible than the alternative offered by Binion. l 3

All psychological explanations of the Hitler phenomenon raise problems for historians. For one thing, even when psychohistorians use sources as carefully as Binion, the conjectural element in their conclusions will always remain uncom- fortably high, especially when the diagnosis of the ’patient’ is, at best, second- hand. Secondly, it is frankly impossible to determine with any degree of exactitude how the psychic tensions in any individual-even when correctly diagnosed-are translated into political action. Why did Adolf Hitler and not some other individual with an equally disturbed background become leader of the Nazis and eventually ruler of Germany? Finally, the tendency of psychohistorians to con- centrate on the psychopathology of the ‘great man’ (whether it be Luther, Bismarck or Hitler) deflects attention from the collective phenomena which are of prime importance in explaining the rise of National Socialism.

In fairness it should be said that Waite, Binion and Stierlin do attempt to relate Hider’s psychological eccentricities to the collective psychology of the Gcrman people. This is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. Long before the war Wilhelm Reich pointed the way ahead with his well-known thesis that the lower middle class family was the real mainstay of German fascism, partly for historical reasons, but mainly because of repressed sexuality in the home, a situation which made young men vulnerable to the mumbo-jumbo of the Nazi creed.

Much promising research has been carried out over the years by social psy- chologists working broadly along these lines. In the context of this essay the important conclusion that emerges is that many of the prominent features of Hider’s personality-aggressiveness, hatred of opposition and total commitment to paranoid ideas-were in no way unique but, on the contrary, were reproduced ad mwream in the behavioural patterns of rank-and-file Nazis. The importance


of these empirical studies is that they help to turn lofty generalisations about ‘collective pathology’ into concrete terms which carry more conviction with historians. I5

Before the psychohistorians gave a blood transfusion to the cult of personality it had been sustained for many years by the theory of totalitarianism. When the Cold War was at its height western historians subscribed to the fashionable belief that Soviet Communism was not only as great a threat as German fascism in its day, but that it was fundamentally the same phenomenon. The one-party state, manipulation of the mass media of communications by the state machine, ruthless repression of political dissent and central control of the economy were thought to be common features transcending ideological differences and diameui- cally opposed social and economic systems. Furthermore, as Russia under Stalin was controlled by a paranoid, bloodthirsty and all-powerful dictator whose will was law, it was supposed this must have been the case with Hitler and Nazi Germany.

The more relaxed international atmosphere in the 1960s quickly eroded the appeal of totalitarianism. Ernst Noete’s Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Munich 1963) reflected the new mood with its plea that German fascism be examined in its historical context and not equated with other systems bearing superficial resemblances to it. The really decisive impetus to a new approach to the study of Nazi Germany came, however, from the controversy surrounding Fritz Fischer’s Gnff nach der Weftmacht (Dusseldod 196 1). Fischer’s book analysing German war aims during the First World War raised in an acute form the whole question of continuity in German history. For if the goals of Imperial Germany were basically those of Nazi Germany, as Fischer argued, then the arguments of the older generation of historians, represented by scholars such as Hans Herzfeld and Gerhard Ritter, that the thirteen years of Nazi tyranny were an aberration, a ‘Betriebsunfall’ , could not be sustained any longer. Furthermore, by treating social and economic tensions as a major cause of the 1914 war Fischer launched a devastating broadside at the dominant Rankean tradition of historical writing which equated foreign policy with diplomatic history and relegated social and economic history to a subordinate role in the scheme of things. When serious research on Nazi Germany began in the 1960s with the return of archival material to the Federal Republic, Fischer’s influence on a whole generation of young historians was evident at once in the strong bias towards structural history and towards an interpretation of German foreign policy which placed Hitler in a historical continuum reaching back to Bismarck and taking in William I1 on the way.

Hans Mommsen’s study of the civil service in the Third Reich and Martin Broszat’s general analysis of the Nazi state showed convincingly that Nazi Germany might be compared with a feudal empire where great vassals struggled with each other to control the person of a Fuhrer, who rarely interfered in domestic affairs. Overlapping and competing authorities at all levels of the state apparatus, each striving to become independent, added to the confusion and semi-anarchy, in what was essentially a polycratic not a monolithic state. l 7 Reinhard Bollmus confirmed this picture in a study of Rosenberg’s Aussenpolitisches Amt,


pointing out that Hitler deliberately encouraged ‘ Amterdarwinismus’ , i. e. he stayed aloof from power struggles until it was clear who was winning and then came down firmly on the side of the victor, who was presumed to have won because of a superior survival mechanism.l*

Bollmus, however, still believed that in the field of foreign affairs, Hitler was firmly in control. So did Hans Adolf Jacobsen in a major study of the structure of German foreign policy between 1933 and 1938. l9 Nevertheless, Jacobsen contributed to ‘revisionism‘ in as much as he exploded the myth of monolithic unity in foreign policy. Many organisations, principally Rosenberg’s Aussen- politisches Amt, Bohle’s Auslandsorganisation and Ribbenaop’s Dienststelle, were, he showed, competing with the Foreign Office and with each other to exert influence over foreign policy even though the practical results were extremely limited. Similarly Wilhelm Schieder in an important study of the Spanish Civil War, while conceding Hitler’s importance in the decision-making process, maintains that his foreign policy ‘besteht . . . im Ganzen aus einer oft wider- spriichlichen Mischung von dogmatischer Starrheit im Grundsatzlichen und ausserster Flexibilitat im Konkreten.’ 2o Whether it is possible to explain dis- crepancies in Hitler’s policy as tactical variations on a strategic theme Schieder, rightly, doubts; at present we lack evidence to prove that Hitler did indeed see short-term objectives, such as the occupation of Austria and the desmction of Czechoslovakia, in the light of distant ‘final solutions’. Martin Broszat, on the other hand, takes a much more radical and less defensible line. He rejects as totally unacceptable any explanation of Nazi policy in terms of a few ideas fermenting in the head of one man. ‘Lebensraum’ in his opinion was not a clearly defined objective pursued with relentless zeal but simply an ‘ideological metaphor’, a functional mechanism helping a restless political movement overcome the antagonistic forces threatening to tear German society asunder by mobilising support for an expansionist policy with apocalyptic overtones. 21

The Hitler image emerging from ‘revisionist’ writing contrasts sharply with the traditional picture of the all-powerful dictator. In a polycratic society where competing authorities waged relentless warfare on each other, Hitler is for Broszat ‘eine unerlbsliche Integrationsfigur und Drehscheibe des Geschehens, aber nicht Agens im Sinne gesellschaftlich unmotivierter, rein personlicher Willkiir. ’ ** Mommsen goes even further describing Hitler as ‘ein Mann der Improvisation, des Experimentierens und der Augenblickeingebung’ , essentially a weak dictator often uncertain of the next step, unwilling to make decisions if they could be postponed and amenable to the influence of members of his immediate en- tourage. *3

Revisionism has led to some reappraisal of the origins of the Holocaust. In this highly emotive area historians have been reluctant to question the view that from the outset of his political career Hitler was determined one day to destroy European Jewry. Alternative ‘solutions’-such as the 1940 proposal to deport West European Jews to Madagascar-have been discounted as a smokescreen put up by Hitler and his associates to mask their homicidal intentions. While no one would deny that Hider was a rabid anti-Semite, a man of violence who at the outbreak of the war ordered the euthanasia of the old and the sick in Germany and was personally


responsible for sending Einsatzgruppen into Poland to murder the ruling Elite, this does not exclude the distinct possibility that the murder of European Jewry was the product of a specific historical situation. As Adam, Broszat and Mommsen have argued, there is at least some evidence for the proposition that the deportation of the Jews to Eastern Poland, or possibly even east of the Urals after the defeat of Russia, would have been an acceptable ‘final solution’ for leading Nazis.24 What transformed the situation was Hitler’s decision to wage a racial war of annihilation in Russia which led to the indiscriminate murder of 500,000 Jews by the end of 1941; the heroic resistance of the Red Army and the Russian people which made deportation impossible; and local conditions in Poland where fanatical anti-Semites began to murder Jews to relieve the pressure on already overcrowded ghettos. That Hitler knew of and probably ordered that local massacres be extended to encompass the whole of European Jewry is as certain as anything can be. What the revisionists are saying, as Mommsen points out, is that the Holocaust ‘ist keineswegs allein auf Hitler zuriickzufiihren, sondern auf die komplexe Struktur des Entscheidungsprozesses im Dritten Reich, die zu einer fortschreitenden kumulativen Radikalisierung fiihrte. ’ 2 5

Revisionism has not gone unchallenged. It has been pointed out that the element of ‘authoritarian anarchy’ in the Nazi system was noted thirty years ago by writers such as Petwaidic, who was not on that account deflected from his conclusion that the will of the Fuhrer was the decisive factor in the Third Reich.26 Moreover, it has to be admitted that the overwhelming majority of scholars who have investigated Nazi foreign policy, notably Jost Dulffer, Andreas Hillgruber, Wolfgang Michalka, Jens Petersen and Gunter Wollstein, would not dissent from Klaus Hildebrand’s judicious comment:

es wird durch derlei im innenpolitischen Bereich vielleicht giiltige, aufs aussenpolitische Terrain kaum uberuagbare Interpretationsversuche Hitlers politische Zielsetzung zu stark funktionalisiert. Denn griindsatzlich ging es dem Diktator zu keiner Zeit seiner Herrschaft etwa um die Stabilisierung eines bestehenden Sozialgefiiges, sondern um dessen Uberwindung in nationaler und internationaler Dimension. 27

Some scholars, notably Norman kch, go considerably further, rejecting revisionism root and branch and asserting defiantly that ‘in all essential respects it was Hitler who determined German policy during the Nazi era.’2*

Traditional interpretations of the Hitler phenomenon have been challenged not from one but from two directions in recent years. Co-terminous with the growth of the revisionist school an important renaissance of Marxist studies has been taking place. The essentials of the official Communist position on the Third Reich were, of course, contained in the famous Comintern declaration of 1935 which described fascism as ‘die offene terroristische Diktatur der reaktionarsten am meisten chauvinistischen, am meisten imperialistischen Elemente des Finanzkapi- talismus.’29 Hitler was turned into little more than a helpless puppet, an in- substantial figure manipulated by a sinister coterie of bankers and industrialists who financed the Nazis from the earliest days and jobbed them into power at the


height of the economic crisis for the express purpose of destroying free institutions, enslaving the working class and preparing Germany for wars of aggression in the interests of monopoly capitalism.

The ‘Agententheorie’ carries the seal of official approval in the GDR where historians pay at least lip service to it-which has not, incidentally, prevented much serious work being done by them. j0 But in the West Marxist historians have become increasingly critical of what is essentially an unmarxist interpretation of the Third Reich. Going back to the half-forgotten works of fascist theorists in the 1930% especially August Thalheimer and Otto Bauer, and to the writings of Marx on Napoleonic France, these young Marxists have developed a more subtle and less mechanistic interpretation of the events of the 1930s. While they still insist on the structural identity of monopoly capitalism and fascism, they argue that the bourgeoisie surrendered political power to the Nazis in order to retain social power and control of the means of production, and that, following on from this, the Nazi regime could act independently of the industrial Elite, although the extent to which it did so is a matter of individual judgement. Examples which spring to mind are the Holocaust and the continuation of a hopeless military struggle, policies which were not in the best interests of capitalism and did strain the basic partnership between party and industry on which the Third Reich rested.

What effect has the Marxist reinterpretation had on the Hitler image with which this essay is primarily concerned? By drawing attention to the complexity and fluctuating nature of the relationship between the state apparatus and the industrial combines, the new Marxists have, in effect, opened the door to a more historically valid assessment of Hitler’s role in the events of the 1930s. Economic factors, important as they are in any Marxist interpretation, are not automatically given precedence over all other considerations. Thus, Tim Mason in a recent analysis of the origins of the Second World War rejects the proposition that a causal relationship can be established between the mounting economic crisis in Germany in 1938-9 and the Nazi decision to attack Poland.31 Wars have long-term causes and these Mason rightly locates in the rabid anti-Communist ideology of the Nazi leadership as well as in the economic imperialism of the great industrial combines.

Equally important was the rapidly deteriorating diplomatic and strategic situation.j* While it is by no means certain that the Nazi leadership was conscious of a ‘general crisis’ affecting the system, it is clear that Hitler-and probably other leading Nazis-realized in the summer of 1939 that the balance of military advantage would shift inexorably against Germany within the next two years. Further, with hopes of a British alliance dashed and the likelihood of American support for the western democracies in the event of war, Germany had (so it seemed) everything to gain by aggression in the near future.

The debate about the origins of the Second World War illustrates the considerable distance historians have travelled along the road since the days after the war when Hitler was generally depicted as a carpet-biting maniac, a demoniacal figure who imposed his will on the German people and led them down new paths against their better judgement. The growth of structural history has acted as a

270 HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON _ _ _ _ _ ~

corrective to the overpersonalised interpretations of the period evident in many biographies; for this kind of history

lenkt den Blick eher auf die Bedingungen, Spielraume und Moglichkeiten menschlichen Handelns in der Geschichte als auf individuelle Motive, Entscheidungen und Handlungen selber; sie beleuchtet eher Kollektiv- phanomene als Individualitaten; sie macht Wirklichkeitsbereiche und Phanomene zum Gegenstand der Forschung, die eher durch Beschreibung und Erklarung als durch hermeneutisch-individualisierendes Sinnverstehen zu erschliessen sind. 3 3

It is perhaps symptomatic of the growing awareness amongst historians of the limitations of traditional biography as a vehicle for encompassing the Hitler phenomenon that the present writer in a recent study of this period avoided a cradle- to-grave chronology and, by bringing together insights from disciplines such as social psychology, psychiatry and sociology, attempted to determine the limits within which Hitler was able to exert influence on the policies of Nazi Germany. 34

The use of multi-disciplinary and comparative methods to tease the truth out of the past in no way diminishes the stature of Hitler; like a Jack-in-the-box he springs up incessantly, a man of extraordinary political gifts occupying a central position on the stage of the Third Reich from which he cannot be dislodged without doing violence to historical truth. What a new approach offers the historian is, one hopes, a wider perspective, the possibility of anchoring Hitler more securely in the broad stream of German history from the foundation of the Empire in 1871 to the surrender on Luneburg Health in 1945 by seeing him not as the helpless puppet of wicked capitalists nor as the man of destiny without which German fascism would be unthinkable, but rather as the product of a specific historical situation, a man whose success was in no sense inevitable but heavily dependent on a coincidence of personal ambition with the mood of a large segment of the German people and the machinations of those who had their hands on the levers of power, yet at the same time recognising him to be an independent agent who, within certain h t s , exerted a very real and sometimes- but not always-decisive influence on the course of events. Such an interpretation of the Third Reich will not-nor should it-prevent historians from differing sharply in their assessment of the relative importance of personality and con- ditioning factors, but it is to be hoped that it may ensure that both factors are always kept in mind as an integral part of the truth about any historical situation.

NOTES

‘ J. Toland, AdolfHitier, New York 1976, p. xi. H. Rauschning. Hirlerspeaks, London 1939. K. Heiden, Ado/fNtler. Eine Biographie, Zurich 1936-7, 2 vols. H. Trevor-Roper, ‘Hitlea Kriegsziele’, VfZG, 8 (1960), 121-33.

HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON 271 .-

I The most reliable version is W. Jochmann (ed.), AdolfHitler: Monologe im Fiihrerhauptquartier 1941-1944, Hamburg 1980; cf. H. Picker, Hitlers Tirchgespriiche im Fiihrerhauptquartier 1941-2; F. Genoud (ed.), The Testament of A d o 4 Hitler. The Hitler-Bormann Documents February ApnY 1941, London 1960.

E. Jackel, Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwu7jfeiner Hetrschaft, Tiibingen 1969. ’ G. Moltmann, ‘Weltherrschaftsideen Hitlers’ in 0. Bruner and D. Gerhard (eds.), Eumpa und

Ubersee. Festschrift fur Egmont Zechlin, Hamburg 1961. A. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategze. Politik undKriegf%ung 1940-1941, Frankfurt a.M. 1963. K. Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich. NSDAP und ko/onia/e Frage 1919-1941. Munich

1969; J. Thiess, Architekt der Welthewschaft. Die ‘Endziele’ Hitlers, Diisseldorf 1961.

lo Bernd Stegemann suggests that battleships were essentially a gesture to demonstrate Germany’s ‘Ebenbiirtigkeit’ with other world powers: Das Deutsche Reich und der zweite Weltkneg, vol. 11: Die Emchtung der Hegemonie auf dem eumpaischen Kontinent, pp. 70-6.

l 2 0. Strasser, Hitlerandl, Boston 1940; P. Hanfstaengl, Hitler. The missing Years, London 1957. l 3 Cf. E. Erikson, ‘The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood’ in ChiLdhoodandSociety, New York 1950.

W. Langer, The MindofAdolfHitLer, London 1973, p. 17.

W. Reich, TheMass Psychology ofFascism, FromelLondon 1970.

E.g. P. Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika. 181 early Nazir, Princeton 1975; K. Theweleit, Mannerphantasien, Frankfurt 1977-8, vol. I: Frauen, Fluten, Korper, Geschichte; vol. 11: Manner- korper-zur Psychoanalyse des weissen Tenors; P. Loewenberg, ‘The psychological .origins of the Nazi Youth rohort’, AHR, 76 (1971); H. V. Dicks, Licensed Mass Murder. A Socio-psycbolologicd Study ofsome SSkdlers, London 1972. l6 E.g. Ritter, Das deutsche Problem. Grundfiagen deutschen Staatslebens gestern und heute, Munich 1966.

H. Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich, Stuttgart 1967; M. Broszat, Der Staat HitLen. Grundlegung undEntwicklung seiner inneren Verfssung, Munich 1969.

R. Bollmus, Das A m t Rosenberg und seine Gegner. Zum Machthampf im nationalsozialischen Hetrschaftssystem. Stuttgart 1970. l9 H. A. Jacobsen, Nationalsozialictische Aussenpolitik 1933-1938, Frankfurt 1968. 2o W. Schieder, ’Spanischer Biirgerkrieg und Vierjahresplan. Zur Struktur nationalsozialistischer Aussenpolitik’ in W. Schieder and C. Dipper (eds.), Der spanische Biirgerkneg in der internationden Politik (1936-1939), Munich 1976, p. 165. 2 1 M. Broszat, ‘Soziale Motivation und Fuhrer-Binding des Nationalsozialismus’ , VfZG, 18 (1970). 22 &id,> 409. 23 W . Mommsen in a review of H. A. Jacobsen’s book in Mllitargeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 7 (1970). 183. 24 U. Adam,]udenpo/itik im Dritten Reich, Diisseldorf 1972; M. Broszat, ‘Hitler und die Genesis der ‘Endlosung’ ’, V’G 1977; H. Mornrnsen, ‘Nationalsozialismus oder Hitlerismus?’ in M. Bosch (ed.). Personlichkeit und Struktur in der Geschichte. Historische Bestandaufnahme und didaktische Implikationen, Diisseldorf 1977. 21 H. Mommsen, ‘Nationalsozialismus oder Hiderismus?’. p. 66. A. Hillgruber, ‘Tendenzen. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der gegenwWigen Hider-Forschung’. HZ, 226 (1978), 612; W. Petwaidic, Die autoritare Anarchie. Strerflichter des deutschen Zusammenbruchs, Hamburg 1946.

26 K. Hildebrand, ‘Weltmacht oder Untergang; Hitlers Deutschland 1941-1945’, in 0. Hauser (ed.), Weltpolitihlll939-1941, Gottingen 1975, p. 293. 27 N. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, vol. 1: Ideology, the Nazi State and the Course of Eupansion, New York 1973, p. 11.

2 7 2 HISTORIANS AND THE HITLER PHENOMENON

20 W. Pieck, G. Dimiuoff and P. Togliatti, Die Offensive des Faschismus und die Aufgaben der Kommunsten tm Kampffi ir die Volkrfront gegen Kneg und Faschismus. Referate guf dem VII Kongress derkommunistischen Internstionale 1193J), Berlin 1957, p. 87.

j0 E.g. D. Eichholtz. Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft, 1939-194Jj. Berlin 1969, vol. I; D. Eichholtz and W. Schurnan, Anatomie des Krieges. Neue Dokumente iiber die Rode des deutschen Monopolkaprtals bei der Vorbereitung und Durchfuhrung des zweiten W'eltkneges, Berlin 1969.

j1 T. Mason, 'Zur Funktion des Angriffskrieges 1939' in G. Ziebura (ed.). Grundfrgen derdeutschen Aussenpolitlkseit1871 I Darmstadt 1975. p. 410. 3 2 W. Carr. 'Riistung. Wimchaft und Politik am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges', in W. Michalka (ed .) , Nattonalsozia(irtirche Aussenpoirtik, Darrnstadt 197 8 , pp. 4 37 - S 4

j3 J . Kocka, 'Struktur und Penonlichkeit als rnerhodologisches Problem der Geschichtswissenscha' , in M. Bosch, op. at., p p . 162-3. j4 W. Carr, Hitler. A study in Personality andpolttics, London 1978