Hitler and his God

The Unwritten Order

“The grand design [of the annihilation of the Jews] was in Hitler’s head”, writes Dawidowicz. “He did not spell it out in concrete strategy. Nothing was written down. (On 29 April 1937 he advised NSDAP leaders: ‘Everything that can be discussed orally should never be put in writing, never!’) He even elevated his tactics of secrecy into a strategic principle: as few people as possible to know as little as possible as late as possible.” 627

“On the basis of the structure of the system of authority [in Hitler Germany], one can with certainty accept that an operation so extensive and demanding such great resources in personnel and materiel, as did the murder of millions of people in all parts of Europe, was only possible with the consent of the man at the top, where all threads came together”, writes Peter Longerich in his book Der ungeschriebene Befehl (the unwritten order) about the direct responsibility of Hitler. He asserts that this responsibility can be proven by examining Hitler’s many utterances and talks to generals, groups of people belonging to the regime, and personal conversations. It was Hitler’s aim, says Longerich, never to give direct instructions, but to create “a certain climate” in which the executive organs of the regime would know that any radicalization of the politics against the Jews was authorized by the highest representative of the regime. On top of this, “Hitler gave confidentially direct oral orders with which he started particular operations of the systematic mass murder of the Jews.” 628

This is carefully worded by Longerich and supported by many persons involved in the historical process. Albert Speer said: “Nothing of any magnitude could conceivably happen, not only without [Hitler’s] knowledge, but without his orders”, and he repeated Rudolf Hess’ words: “Hitler reserved all his important decisions for himself.” 629 Kershaw quotes Heinrich Himmler as saying: “I do nothing that the Führer doesn’t know about.” 630 Christa Schroeder, one of Hitler’s secretaries, exclaimed during an interview after the war: “Of course Hitler knew! Not only knew, it was all his ideas, his orders!” And she described how shocked Himmler had looked after he had apparently received the order from Hitler. 631 “When he did not give specific orders or instructions”, writes Robert Gellately, “his ideas, hate-filled speeches and wishes inspired police, justice and SS-cadres all along the line”. 632

What was the cause of Hitler’s obsession with the Jews, who “inhabited Hitler’s mind”? “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Nobody’s even began”, said Alan Bullock in desperation after many years of study. 633 Werner Maser confesses: “The cause of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, despite the knowledge of so many details, is not completely explainable”, 634 which is a historians’ understatement. And Joachim Fest puts is as follows: “We can probably no longer plumb the cause of this ever-growing hatred [of the Jews], which lasted literally to the last hour of Hitler’s life.” “He admired the Jews”, says Fest. “Their racial exclusiveness and purity seemed to him no less admirable than their sense of being a chosen people, their implacability and intelligence. Basically, he regarded them as something akin to negative supermen. Even Germanic nations of relatively pure racial strains were, he declared in his table talk, inferior to the Jews: if 5000 Jews were transferred to Sweden, within a short time they would occupy all the leading positions.” 635

The mystery of the cause of Hitler’s hatred of the Jews must have been closely connected with “his vision of the apocalyptic conflict between the Aryans and the Jews”, which we have briefly examined when leafing through Mein Kampf. “It was his own Manichean version of the conflict between good and evil, between God and the Devil, Christ and the Antichrist.” If there is a solution of this mystery, it should be looked for in the occurrences at the time of Hitler’s “turnabout” when, in 1919, and under the influence of Captain Mayr and Dietrich Eckart, he suddenly turned out to be an expert in anti-Semitism, and a personality interesting enough to be pushed into a position from where he could give shape to his mission and his message, and go out to conquer Germany. This would explain how the end lay in the beginning: why, regarding the Jews, he still was when dictating his testament what he had become during that summer in Munich.

“The ideology, the blueprint of his leadership, was at the same time accessible to everybody and yet secret.” Trevor-Roper had a similar impression when he wrote about “those walls which the Führer has erected around his convictions, and behind which he allows nobody to see. Can it be that there is really nothing there – only the gigantic obstinacy of a deluded spirit, sacrificing all to its self-worshipping Ego?” 636 (Would this then be the solution to the riddle: that the greatest and most tragic event in human history was caused by a “self-worshipping Ego”?) John Lukacs finds Hitler “a very secretive man, perhaps not less secretive than Stalin”, and he quotes him as having said: “You will never be able to discover my thoughts and intentions.” 637 “The higher one was, the less one knew”, confided Speer to Gitta Sereny. 638 Speer’s words might be illustrated with passages from Goebbels diaries, showing that even the proud propaganda-tsar of the Reich was informed about some important events only post factum.

“Hitler has never revealed the secret of his mission”, writes Joachim Köhler in Hitlers Wagner, p. 21. “The core of his message was not decoded” (p. 22) … The struggle against the Jews was indeed Hitler’s totally personal and therefore not further explainable or discussable basic conviction (p. 98) … He knew that he could not be attacked as a politician because he kept his objectives hidden in a mystic darkness … Hitler showed himself indefinable and has remained so till today (p. 193) … What were the contents of Hitler’s inner truth, nobody knew … Hitler was not a politician who had to work out a programme and to justify his actions to the people, but the saviour of an esoteric cult, who had set himself the task of liberating the world from the Jews … In actual fact, the Germans did not have to know anything, they only must have faith (pp. 334-35) … He clearly held a secret in which he believed with ‘granite’ infallibility (p. 336) … ‘When we eradicate this plague [i.e. the Jews]’, Hitler had prophesied during the march on Moscow, ‘we shall accomplish something for humanity of which our men at the front cannot have an idea as yet’. This also meant that those men killed and died without knowing why. And the people around him cheered without knowing why. They became excited when Hitler told them what was at stake and believed in his infallibility because he demanded this belief from them. As his successes seemed to justify his actions, his intentions justified all the means. (p. 337) … Hitler never gave away, not even with a single word, that he was planning the biggest auto-da-fé in the history of mankind (p. 410).”