Hitler and his God

A Sudden Burst of Energy

After the collapse of the Republic of Councils and still more under the rightist regime of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria became “a haven for right-wing extremists from all over Germany, including many under order of arrest elsewhere in the country”. 150 There were “the Bund Oberland (Oberland League), the officers’ association Eiserne Hand (Iron Hand), the Escherich Organization, the Deutschvölkische Schutz- and Trutzbund (Defense and Defiance League of the German Race), the Verband Altreichsflagge (Flag of the Old Reich Association), the Bayreuth, Würzburg and Wolf Free Corps, and a variety of other organizations” – including the Thule Society and the (NS)DAP.

The ranks of the rightists in Bavaria were swelled by the defeated participants in the Kapp Putsch (March 1920) who had to flee Berlin, among them the figurehead of the putsch Wolfgang Kapp himself, the national German hero Erich von Ludendorff, and some very dangerous elements of the Ehrhardt Brigade, including its commander Captain Ehrhardt and his right-hand man Lieutenant Klintzsch, respectively founder and leading member of the murderous Organization Consul. There were “vigilante killers, adventurous and nationalist revolutionaries of various ideological shades … They were able to exploit the traditional Old Bavarian separatism, for the [Catholic] Bavarians had a long history of intense dislike for Prussian Protestant Berlin”, 151 lasting to this day. It was on such a scene, still more garbled by the disoriented and dispirited social conditions in post-war Germany, that Dietrich Eckart met Corporal Hitler.

Anton Drexler, with Karl Harrer founder of the DAP, “knew the völkisch-nationalistic and aggressively anti-Semitic [Eckart] … since early summer 1919”. Eckart himself remembered later: “At the beginning of 1919 I received the visit of Anton Drexler shortly after he had founded the National Socialist German Workers’ Party” – it was, in fact, still only the German Workers’ Party – “and who acquainted me with the ideas. I found them at once interesting and decided to make myself useful for the young movement to the measure of my possibilities. A few weeks or months later I met with Hitler for the first time.” 152

Taking into account that Wilhelm Gutberlet had to report to Eckart about Hitler’s doings at the DAP meeting on 12 September, when illness prevented Eckart from speaking, it stands to reason that the first Eckart-Hitler encounter took place before that date, probably several weeks before. We recall that Captain Mayr became interested in Corporal Hitler from the List Regiment in the last days of May or the first of June, before the start of the oratory course for army propagandists. Mayr knew Eckart, from whom he bought copies of In Plain German for distribution among the military. We may presume that Mayr introduced Hitler to Eckart in June or at the latest in July, and that both agreed that this Austrian Corporal with the Iron Cross and the gift of the gab might be an asset for the Thule Society’s floundering DAP.

Hitler was not an anti-Semite (at least not outspoken) in May, under the Republic of Councils, when he wore the red armband; the course he attended at Munich University was not openly and still less expressly anti-Semitic, for it was an initiative of the social-democratic government. As towards the end of July Hitler was told at Lechfeld to tone down his anti-Semitic diatribes, and as on 10 September Captain Mayr considered him an authority on the Jewish question, sufficiently so to illumine an army propaganda colleague on the subject, the simple conclusion is that Hitler’s mind was turned during the months of June and July in 1919, and that the person under whose influence this happened was his “mentor” Dietrich Eckart.

With Eckart, Hitler came into his own. The loner who had been living in hostels, dugouts and barracks was suddenly accepted into the warmth and cosiness of a civilian home by a well-known man who was a poet, dramatist, journalist and the publisher and editor of a magazine. Hitler’s interests concurred with the main themes of In Plain German: Germany’s greatness and revenge, and the battle against the ideals of the Enlightenment which, according to the völkisch-German view, were turning the world into a nightmare of crass materialism. Moreover, Eckart knew so much; he had read all the books and was able to knit ideas together. And he was an outgoing man, a jovial character who felt at home in Munich and particularly in Schwabing, the bohemian part of the city frequented by half of the then living writers and artists. “The two formed a team in which Hitler was the avid and quickly learning disciple”, 153 writes Mosse. Reuth agrees, saying that Eckart imparted to Hitler the coherence of the ideas he had acquired until then, and that Hitler’s theory of a worldwide conspiracy took shape “under Eckart’s influence”. 154

Now the seeds germinated which were stored in Hitler’s subconscious mind. “Eckart was very influential in the development of the anti-Semitic dynamic within the ranks of the Workers’ Party”, writes Mosse. “He reinforced Hitler’s abhorrence of Jews as a mysterious, strange and conspiring people, supplementing Hitler’s ideas in some areas, while creating a more fanatical foundation for their development in others. While Hitler had already shared some of Eckart’s beliefs, most of them were as yet only vague, unformulated convictions. Eckart plumbed deeper and connected the removal of the Jewish menace with the resuscitation of the Volk. He was to make Hitler view the problem as he himself viewed it: it transcended all others in importance, and its solution would bring to an end the Volk’s period of trial. Or, as he stated it: ‘The Jewish question is the chief problem of humanity, in which, indeed, every one of its other problems is contained. Nothing on earth could remain darkened if one could throw light on the secret of the Jews’.” 155

What happened between Eckart and Hitler during their frequent meetings remains unknown. It is nonetheless undeniable that Hitler generated a sudden burst of energy which would make him within a short time the undisputed leader of a dynamic party out of what had been a tame affair when he was introduced to it. This is the more astonishing because Adolf Hitler was an outsider and apparently a rather laughable or pitiable figure, still wearing his grey army uniform (until the end of March 1920), with uncouth manners, a submissive air when not aroused into eloquence, a deep-throated voice, a waxen, hungry face, and a moustache he would soon reduce to “a ridiculous little smudge”. From the moment he took him under his aegis, Eckart, “who played the key role in crystallizing Hitler’s political ideas”, 156 stood always beside or behind him and steered his career as a true mentor or “godfather” would do.

When Hitler became a member of Drexler and Harrer’s DAP, he was given the innocuous post of Werbeobmann, i.e. in charge of propaganda. Little did the leadership realize that they had taken a wolf into their pen, and that it was Hitler’s intention from the start to change the small political club into a dynamic political party. He set to work at once, increased the number of invitations to the meetings (the average attendance had been from thirty to forty), had defiant red posters printed to show that the DAP was taking up the gauntlet against the leftists, and hired ever greater venues for the meetings till they were held in the centrally located Hofbräuhaus and he could fill Circus Krone to capacity.

Hitler’s drive inevitably created friction within the DAP, especially between him and Karl Harrer. Harrer had always seen his creation as a quiet, civil club more or less after the example of a masonic lodge. He could in no way agree with Hitler’s approach and even belittled the oratorical gifts of the Werbeobmann. But the other DAP members realized that they did not mean much without Hitler, and Harrer, the “national chairman”, had to give way. “The problem ‘loge’ or active party was decided already on 5 January 1920. On that day Karl Harrer left the German Workers’ Party.” (Gilbhard 157) It did not take Hitler more than four months to push him out of the nest.

The twenty-five points of the party programme, formulated by Hitler and Drexler, were presented to the public on 24 February 1920. The Lexikon Nationalsozialismus mentions the four main points as follows: “1. the unification of all Germans into a Greater Germany; 2. the abolition of the Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain; 3. the right of Germany to the necessary territories and colonies; 4. the expulsion of all Jews from Germany.” 158 Before long the name of the German Workers’ Party (DAP) was changed into “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (NSDAP) – quite a mouthful, but no problem in a language in which words like Bauchspeicheldrüsenentzündung (inflammation of the pancreas) are common. Hitler, from his Schwabing headquarters in “Café Heck”, “Osteria Bavaria”, “Bratwürstglockl” and “Schelling Salon”, planned, organized, created symbols, standards and labels, wrote articles, decided authoritatively on propositions and choices made by others, and sought for means to collect funds. Most of this he did on the advice of Captain Mayr and Dietrich Eckart, or after consulting them.