Hitler and his God

Blue Eyes

Hitler’s hypnotic effect on certain individuals “must be accepted as a fact”, writes Konrad Heiden. 873 “It was a magnetic fluid he was using”, asserts one of Kempowski’s eyewitnesses. “The people were fascinated. It was a kind of hypnosis … no independent judgment was possible anymore … Nowadays there’s nobody who still believes this.” 874 It is indeed noteworthy that there is a fundamental difference between the testimonies of the direct witnesses and the reflections of the people in later years who know about Hitler only from hearsay or from reading about him. Guido Knopp, aware of this difference, reminds us: “Numerous are the contemporary witnesses who report that Hitler effectively must have had a hypnotic power at his command to impose his will on others, also in the private sphere.” 875

Laurence Rees gives the example of one Fridolin von Spaun, remembering an encounter with Hitler at a Party dinner. “Suddenly I noticed Hitler’s eyes resting on me. So I looked up. And that was one of the most curious moments in my life. He didn’t look at me suspiciously, but I felt that he was searching me somehow … It was hard for me to sustain this look for so long. But I thought: ‘I mustn’t avert my eyes, or he may think I’ve something to hide’. And then something happened which only psychologists can judge. The gaze, which at first rested completely on me, suddenly went straight through me into the unknown distance. It was so unusual. And the long gaze which he had given me convinced me completely that he was a man with honourable intentions. Most people nowadays would not believe this. They’d say I am getting old and childish, but that’s untrue. He was a wonderful phenomenon.”

“Hitler had a similar effect on many others”, writes Rees, and he mentions the experience of a 14-year-old girl who was allowed to shake Hitler’s hand. “He came. Everything got quiet. And we were so excited, I felt my heart up here in my throat. And when he came to me I nearly forgot to give him my hand; I just looked at him and I saw good eyes. And in my heart I promised him: ‘I always will be faithful to you because you are a good man’. That was in a dream-like time. And later I kept my promise.” 876

“It was the eyes that dominated the otherwise common face”, writes William Shirer. “They were hypnotic. Piercing. Penetrating. As far as I could tell they were light blue, but the colour was not the thing you noticed. What hit you at once was their power. They stared at you. They stared through you. They seemed to immobilize the person on whom they were directed, frightening some and fascinating others, especially women, but dominating them in any case … All through the days at Nuremberg I would observe hardened Party leaders, who had spent years in the company of Hitler, freeze as he paused to talk to one or the other of them, hypnotized by his penetrating glare. I thought at first that only Germans reacted in this manner. But one day at a reception for foreign diplomats I noticed one envoy after another apparently succumbing to the famous eyes.” 877

A colonel who accompanied General von Kluge to meet Hitler before the war remembers how Hitler shook the hand of everybody present: “It was impressive. He had very big, deep blue, very dark blue eyes, the kind of eyes Frederick the Great too must have had. With his dark blue eyes he looked at the people, and they were so to speak hypnotized, like a frog by a snake …” 878 Deep blue? Dark blue? The colour of Hitler’s eyes according to the impressions of witnesses covers a scale from “watery grey” and “cold fish eyes” over “dull grey” (François-Poncet) to the colonel’s “deep blue”, “bright blue” and Goebbels’ “marvellous blue – like stars”.

Even in the last days of Hitler’s existence and that of his Reich, “the fascination of the eyes, which had bewitched so many seemingly sober men – which had exhausted Speer, and baffled Rauschning, and seduced Stumpfegger, and convinced an industrialist that [Hitler] had direct telepathic communication with the Almighty – had not deserted them. It was useless for his enemies to complain that they were really repellent. ‘They are neither deep nor blue’, protested Rauschning; ‘his look is staring or dead, and lacks the brilliance and sparkle of genuine animation’; nevertheless, in spite of his explanations and evasions, Rauschning had to admit, what Speer freely confesses and thousands of less critical Germans (and not only Germans) too eloquently witness, that Hitler had the eyes of a hypnotist which seduced the wits and affections of all who yielded to their power. Even his doctors, and the most critical of them, admit the fascination of those dull, blue-grey eyes which compensated for all the coarseness in his other features …” (H.R. Trevor-Roper 879)

“When the man looked at you, it went straight through you”, said a teacher to Kempowski. “He looked every single person in the eye”, said another teacher. 880 Hans Frühwirt had been chosen by his co-workers to participate in a parade before the Führer and was “mighty proud of it”. “When we marched past Hitler and turned our heads towards him, something strange happened: I had the impression that Hitler looked me personally straight into the eyes. When I think of it, I still feel the shivers running down my spine. That moment moved me to the core. And all my comrades told me afterwards that they had had exactly the same experience.” 881 Was Hitler himself aware of this? In one of his monologues he complained: “What is most strenuous is having to stand there for hours during a march-past. It already happened a couple of times that I felt dizzy. One has no idea how painful it is having to stand there for so long without bending the knees. I need protection from the sun. Last time I already made the greeting with the outstretched arm more tolerable.” And then he added: “But I am used – for all those men turn their heads towards me – to look every one in the eyes.” 882

One such occasion, paid little attention in the literature although it happened at one of the crucial points in Hitler’s career, requires a short historical introduction. The SA was the National Socialist Party’s army, but it became also more and more the Party’s burden, especially when its ranks swelled to nearly half a million after the crash of 1929 with the subsequent unemployment (three million unemployed in 1931, to culminate at six to seven million). What most of the SA expected from the NSDAP was jobs and bread, the basic socialist demands, in contradiction to Hitler’s “socialism” which meant something like the self-sacrifice and integration of the whole nation into one regimented body. The National Socialist Party therefore remained ideologically divided between its political and military wing.

Moreover, several of the NSDAP leaders had started as convinced “classical” socialists, interpreting the second adjective in the Party’s name as a programme and a promise. Goebbels was one of them, as was his first NSDAP boss, Gregor Strasser, and still more Gregor’s brother Otto. When Hitler increasingly sought support from the captains of German industry, needing their money, the socialist element in the Party accused him of becoming bourgeois and betraying the Party programme; they even went so far as to demand his resignation. This inner tension would be resolved only in 1934 by the murderously surgical Night of the Long Knives.

One occasion on which the conflict came into the open was the Stennes Revolt in 1930-31. Hugo Stennes was the regional SA chief in Berlin, where Goebbels was the gauleiter. In the German capital the National Socialist discord was still aggravated by the disdain of the “cultured” North Germans for the “boorish”, beer-drinking and sausage-eating Bavarians, including the clique around Hitler in Munich. When Hitler held on to his gradual, legal way of coming to power, and the SA in North Germany demanded the instant socialist revolution, a rebellion erupted. The SA attacked the Party headquarters and the offices of the Party organ, Goebbels’ Der Angriff, and Hitler was requested to step down as Party leader. Hitler won the direct confrontation thanks to his decisiveness and the support of the SS who, faithful to their oath, stood as one man behind him. (The rise of the SS in the Third Reich dates from this crisis.) Stennes and the rebellious SA commanders were replaced by loyal Hitlerites. The day would come that Stennes too had to run for his life. (He ran as far as China, where he became the commander of Chiang Kai-shek’s bodyguard.)

Then, on 16 April 1931 Hitler held a roll call of the SA in the Berlin Sports Palace. Present there was the still unknown Albert Speer. “Silently we stood, hour after hour. Then Hitler arrived with a small retinue. From a great distance I heard the groups of those who had lined up being reported to him. But instead of going to the speaker’s platform, as we all expected him to do, Hitler entered the ranks of the uniformed men. A breathless silence ensued. Then he began pacing off the columns. In that vast bowl, only those few footsteps could be heard. It went on for hours. At last he came to my row. His eyes were fixed rigidly upon the squadron; he seemed to want to take a vow from each man by his look. When he came to me, I had the feeling that a pair of staring eyes had taken possession of me for an immeasurable period of time. One element that impressed me was the fact that Hitler had the courage to walk without protection through the ranks of these SA men who had rebelled against him only days before. In vain I try to explain to myself today how Hitler could exert this psychological power for hours on end.” 883

The following two stanzas are from a volume of poems written by anonymous members of the Austrian Hitler Youth. “Even when a thousand people stand before you, / each one feels your gaze for himself / and thinks this must be the great moment for him, / and you will look deep into his soul … For nobody has left you empty-handed / even if the ray from your eyes touched him only once; / we know that in each case you make us feel: / ‘I am with you – and you belong to me’.” 884