Hitler and his God

Convergences

We are now arriving at a point in our story where some major lines of its development must be recalled in order to show their convergence. At its very beginning the discrepancy was demonstrated between the insignificant “man of nowhere”, Adolf Hitler, and the top position he attained among the German speaking peoples, an achievement resembling the fantastic transformations in fairy tales and myths, but in this case a fact of history. This discrepancy in Hitler’s life between a nobody at one time and a man who put the world afire at another is what Ron Rosenbaum and other students of the Hitler phenomenon call “the gap”. One of its aspects is “the abyss between the small-time film-noir grifter, the mountebank criminal the Munich Post reporters knew, and the magnitude of the horror Hitler created when he came to power in Berlin”. 918 How this came to be is still an enigma even to the most prominent historians.

The first important episode in the rise of Adolf Hitler is what we have called the “turnabout” and others the “transformation” or “turning point”. This mysterious change in the person of Hitler can be situated in the summer months of 1919, between the day Captain Karl Mayr said nonchalantly: “Oh, that’s Hitler of the List Regiment”, and the day he requested the corporal most respectfully to explain the Jewish problem to another army propagandist. There something must have happened that led to the introduction of the Austrian corporal to the small and secret political offshoot of the Thule organization, the DAP, and to the astonishing fact that Hitler entered politics fully prepared to use the irrelevant political circle as the springboard for a mass movement based on a revolutionary new world view. He entered the DAP with a prepared mind, the intention to hijack it, and the awareness that his entrance on the political scene was “a decision that would be for good, with no turning back”.

How came that Hitler, who was not an anti-Semite in May 1919, at least not an outspoken one, became a militant Jew-baiter in the following months, as is evident from reactions to his pep talks as an army propagandist and from the Gemlich letter, written on 16 September? How had Hitler constructed the pillars of his world view: that the Aryan Germans were the world’s master race, that he was the missioned one to lead them into a new and glorious age, and that the Jews were the enemy in this apocalyptic undertaking? All authorities are agreed on the fact that Hitler’s convictions remained unchanged from the very beginning and that he had “an unusual consistency of purpose” (J.P. Stern). Normally the acquisition of a new personal paradigm, or mental make-up, does not come about all at once, yet in Hitler’s case it seems to have been quite sudden.

Hitler saw himself as the missioned one, the carrier of a new revolutionary world view of which he had to be the only and therefore absolute executor, being the only one who knew the secret mission in full – this in contradiction with one of the historian’s myths about his life that, at first, he was only the “drummer” drawing the crowds for a new historical act. As was shown in one of the first stages of our story, it is true that sometimes he designated himself as such, but only as a ploy or not to look ridiculous in circumstances which did not yet allow a full disclosure of his intentions. But he was the man who had been initiated in the secret of things to come, he was the chosen hero of the mission, and next to him there was no place for any other. This he showed as soon as there was a chance, and that chance came in July 1921 when he made the bold move of submitting his resignation from the DAP, thereby confronting the other leaders with the dilemma either to fade away into insignificance or to surrender to him “the sole responsibility” of the Party.

The man who discovered the real Hitler was Dietrich Eckart. We find his presence at every important point in Hitler’s career until Eckart’s death in the last days of 1923. Eckart literally made Hitler, an expression which cannot be too strong if we consider the exceptional honours rendered by the Führer to his “fatherly friend”. Eckart was indeed Hitler’s “godfather”, i.e. his discoverer, initiator and protector, as such persons are known in freemasonry and other secret organizations. His influence must have been at least this important, for otherwise it is unthinkable that Hitler would have used his name as the organ-point with which Mein Kampf ends.

Eckart, albeit a staunch individualist, was also an exemplary person of his time. He was after all a poet, playwright and prolific publicist with an active social life. He was a militant nationalist, acquainted with dozens of important people not only in Munich but also in Berlin and elsewhere. He was, moreover, a vocal anti-Semite, familiar with the literature on this subject and contributing to it in his turn. And he was closely related with the Thule Society, which meant with the powerful Germanenorden and the Pan-Germans.

We now know the atmosphere in which these secret organizations functioned and played a determining role in opposition to the leftist half of the German population. Even in the political field their actions were everywhere a matter of secrecy and covert plotting, always of power politics and sometimes of murder. This, however, was only the surface of a world rife with religious expectation and steeped in occultism. (The Germanenorden saw itself as the answer to the clandestine bodies and schemes fomented by the world conspiration of “the Elders of Zion”.) If the German aspiration is clearly discernible in Dietrich Eckart, so is the “occult” way in which he tutored his pupil Adolf Hitler. “Occult” here means not only “hidden”; it refers literally to the practice of the occult sciences.

The testimonies of Hitler’s occult powers are written in history, however much academic historians try to overlook them. In his Hitler and Stalin – Parallel Lives, Alan Bullock writes: “In the copy of Napoleon’s Thoughts found in his library, Stalin had marked the passage: ‘It was precisely that evening in Lodi that I came to believe in myself as an unusual person and became consumed with the ambition to do great things that until then had been but a fantasy!’ Neither Stalin, however, nor Hitler ever pinpointed a similar moment of revelation.” 919 This, as we saw a few pages ago, is patently untrue as far as Hitler is concerned. August Kubizek has recorded such a moment after he and his friend Adi had seen a performance of Wagner’s Rienzi for the first time. Not less important as a confirmation of that moment is Hitler’s narrating it to Winifred Wagner – “That was when it began!” – as deemed worth mentioning by Brigitte Hamann (2002), Anna Maria Sigmund (2000) and Ralph Reuth (2003). Indeed, many historians of the younger generation are much more disposed than their immediate predecessors to take the whole historical evidence into consideration, including the facts which are not directly transparent to the reigning consensus mentality.

There is another occasion of an experience similar to the Rienzi revelation and also exactly pinpointable, namely when Hitler as a patient at the military hospital in Pasewalk was told by the local pastor that the German Emperor had abdicated and that Germany had lost the war. Hitler has written no less than three pages about this occurrence in Mein Kampf. “As for myself, I broke down completely when the old gentleman [i.e. the pastor] tried to resume his story by informing us that we must now end this long war, because the war was lost, he said, and we were at the mercy of the victor … It was impossible for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the pillow and the blankets. I had not cried since the day that I stood beside my mother’s grave … The following days were terrible to bear, and the nights still worse … During those nights my hatred increased, hatred for the organizers of this dastardly crime.” Hitler means the German members of the government who, under the direction of “the Jews”, had accepted to sign the armistice. “During the following days my own fate became clear to me … There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard and fast ‘either-or’. For my part I then decided that I would take up political work.” 920

The Pasewalk experience² was as important for Hitler as the revelation of his destiny on the Freinberg some thirteen years earlier, and in a way its corroboration (“my own fate became clear to me”). Hitler’s narration indicates that in Pasewalk he went through a profound existential crisis. “Hitler was abruptly delivered from his misery, as he lay in despair on his cot, by a ‘supernatural vision’”, writes John Toland. 921 According to Ron Rosenbaum he experienced “some kind of transformative vision or hallucination. It was a life-changing moment of metamorphosis … Hitler conceived the mission and the myth that would bring him to power fifteen years later.” Rosenbaum also mentions that Hitler “heard ‘voices’, or [had] a providential vision from on high”, and that “Hitler himself claimed he received a visionary impetus to redeem Germany from Jews and Bolsheviks.” 922

In Walter Langer’s report for the Office of Strategic Studies we find: “It was while he was in the hospital [at Pasewalk], suffering from hysterical blindness and mutism, that [Hitler] had the vision that he would liberate the Germans from their bondage and make Germany great. It was this vision that set him on his present political career and that had such a determining influence on the course of the world events. More than anything else it was this vision that convinced him that he was chosen by Providence and that he had a great mission to perform. This is probably the most outstanding characteristic of Hitler’s mature personality, and it is this that guides him ‘with the precision of a sleepwalker’.” Langer quotes moreover the following words of Hitler from an interview which appeared in the Pariser Tageszeitung on 23 January 1940: “When I was confined to bed [at Pasewalk], the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great. I knew immediately that it would be realized.” 923 All this in spite of Hitler being a lonely nonentity in those days.

Although Hitler apparently did not tell the whole truth about what Haffner calls “his experience of awakening” in Pasewalk, he never made a secret of it, no more than he made a secret of his experience on the Freinberg in Linz. Both experiences are similar and in a way complementary. What seems to have been added in the Pasewalk vision was the identification of the Jews as the enemy of his world-transforming task. All three main pillars of his world view were now revealed to him: the redemption of Germany, his leading role in it, and the opposition of the Jews in all their disguises. It is an intentional distortion of Hitler’s to state that it was at Pasewalk that he decided “to take up political work”, for this happened in the summer of next year in Munich. By writing thus, he may have wanted to camouflage the facts that the decision had not been his, or not entirely his, or that it was taken in circumstances which he did not want to be known.

The Pasewalk and Freinberg experiences, just like most decisive moments in Hitler’s life, remain rather hot to handle for people whose mind-frame leaves no room for “supernatural” or extra-material phenomena. In Kershaw’s monumental Hitler biography, for instance, we read: “Hitler referred to his Pasewalk experience on a number of occasions in the early 1920s. There were even embellishments to the story which was to appear in Mein Kampf. He told a variety of associates that as he lay blinded in Pasewalk he received a type of vision, message, or inspiration to liberate the German people and make Germany great again. This highly unlikely, purported quasi-religious experience was part of the mystification of his own person which Hitler encouraged as a key component of the Führer myth that was already embryonically present among many of his followers in the two years leading to the putsch attempt.” 924 Statements of this sort explain nothing. A professional and much respected historian like Alan Bullock deserves our appreciation for changing the basis of his understanding of Hitler, for admitting that he does not know of any definitive explanation of the man, and for even candidly confiding to Ron Rosenbaum: “I think the mystics have something to say in the question.” 925

It is unreasonable to qualify as irrelevant or fanciful what Hitler himself said repeatedly about some of his fundamental experiences, the more so as his attestations, whether direct or indirect, provide illuminating pointers to the facts. And it is unreasonable to wave away countless testimonies by reliable and intelligent witnesses of the way they perceived Hitler, on the grounds that a certain kind of consensus holds such experiences to be unreliable, unfounded or even untrue without having anything better to propose.

The occurrences in Linz and Pasewalk were mediumistic experiences. The reality of these occurrences is proven by the subsequent historical events – which shows that they were anything but illusory or hallucinatory. This was what Hitler fundamentally believed, what was behind his amazing actions, and the full scope of which he kept secret in his heart. Captain Mayr may have had some knowledge or suspicion of it. Dietrich Eckart must have shared in the secret when he took Hitler under his wing and, together with Mayr, launched him on his career with so much care, dedication and conviction. There is truth in Eckart’s often reported saying, historical or apocryphal, that he had composed the tune to which Hitler was dancing. It explains why Hitler could enter the political scene with a full-fledged programme; why he took a decision from which he could not back out (he could not evade his revealed destiny); why he could not stand anybody above him or next to him; and why he never deviated from the path once taken.

A medium is a person with the capacity to open himself to the intervention of an immaterial being. When the being becomes active through the medium, the latter can be said to be possessed by it. We have seen several instances of the manner in which the insignificant Hitler suddenly became the inspired, irresistible orator. There was also the lowly Hitler who became the almighty Führer of the Germans, with the aspiration to rule the world. Such an idea may seem crazy, but it was certainly there and terribly effectual. And there was the bohemian, work-shy Hitler who was capable of quasi superhuman bursts of energy when spurred on by his inspiration. As there was the Hitler who could “mesmerize” and possess people, or who waited for “the voice” to speak before taking his major decisions.

A voice does not exist in an isolated state, it is always the voice of someone, of some entity. Hitler said that he had received his mission from Providence, that it was Providence which guided his steps, and that only could happen to him what Providence wanted or allowed to happen. His confidence in his guidance was absolute; as we have seen, once the voice had spoken his decision was inalterable, even in the face of apparent impossibility. He took pride in being a Vabanque Spieler, a gambler, a runner of risks, knowing that his guidance would not desert him – which it did not up to a certain point. His career was the illustrious confirmation of the correctness of his inspiration, taken by many for authentic genius, “the greatest genius in history” (Goebbels). On the one hand there was the pedestrian Hitler who believed in the world ice theory and the Aryanhood of Christ, on the other there was the inspired man who dreamed great dreams, confronted one crisis after another and solved or conquered it, rising from anonymity in the barracks to be the adored German Messiah for whom nothing was impossible, “however often and how close he came to failing” (Bullock).

The word one encounters time and again when the power emanating from Hitler is discussed, is “charisma”, usually with a reference to Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber defined charisma as “the quality of a personality held to be out of the ordinary (and originally thought to have magical sources, both in the case of prophets and men who are wise in healing or in law, the leaders of the hunt or heroes in war), on account of which the person is evaluated as being gifted with supernatural or superhuman or at least specifically out of the ordinary powers not accessible to everybody, and hence as a ‘leader’”. 926 However, in most cases when the word “charisma” is used, even with reference to this definition, its spirit as formulated by Weber is not. “Charisma”, generally, is no more than a handy label used by academic authors to designate the upper limit of their conception of a person with an emanation of power, an upper limit beyond which they are not willing to go. If for Weber terms like “magical sources”, “supernatural” and “superhuman” had some meaning, they mean nothing for the present-day users of his charisma concept. Weber had an openness which most established historians do not have today. “Charisma” has to say it all without saying anything.

When looking for the roots of Nazism we have come to the conclusion that the Western world view is defective. Its components are the remnants of a fundamentalist Judeo-Christian doctrine, illogically mixed with the tenet of materialism that “all is matter because there cannot be anything else than matter”. The scientific view rules in one compartment of the modern mind, which does not find any inconvenience in coexisting, in another compartment, with a dogmatic creed and often with the most bizarre superstitions – just like in Adolf Hitler’s mind. Is there, then, a frame of mind, or a world view, or a coherent system of encompassing experience according to which the complexity of Hitler’s personality would be explainable?

“Hitler is a sort of a mystic. He says he is guided by an inner voice. He goes into silence in his villa and waits for the voice. Whatever the voice says he will carry out. He is possessed by some supernormal Power and it is from this Power that the voice, as he calls it, comes. Have you noticed how people who at one time were inimical to him come into contact with him and leave as his admirers? It is the sign of that Power. It is from this Power that he has constantly received suggestions, and the constant repetition of the suggestions has taken hold of the German people.” 927 These words were spoken by the Indian philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo in the course of a conversation on the last day of 1938. Sri Aurobindo was educated at St Paul’s School in London and at Cambridge University; he was an accomplished classical scholar who remembered his Greek and Latin perfectly even in South India and at an advanced age; he had been one of the leading revolutionary politicians in his country and was at one time considered “the most dangerous man in India”; he was a master of the English language who wrote more than thirty substantial volumes of philosophy, psychology and spirituality. He was thoroughly familiar with the Western as well as with the Eastern tradition and history, and proposed a global synthesis in which all levels of reality would be integrated.

The Swedish Academy was examining Sri Aurobindo’s candidature for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, the year he expired. His nomination was seconded by Gabriela Mistral and Pearl S Buck. The former wrote about him: “Six languages have given the Master of Pondicherry a gift for co-ordination, a clarity free from gaudiness, and a charm that borders on the magical … These are indeed ‘glad tidings’ that come to us: to know that there is a place in the world where culture has reached its tone of dignity by uniting in one man a supernatural life with a consummate literary style, thus making use of his beautifully austere and classical prose to serve as a handmaid of the spirit.” As we shall see, Sri Aurobindo’s involvement with Hitler and the Second World War is abundantly documented in his own writings and in the written reports of conversations with him.