Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl, features the short story “Genesis and Catastrophe:
a true story”.
It portrays the story of a woman, Klara, that gives birth to a son that seems frail and
weak, even more so than the other three children, Otto, Gustav and Ida, before him - and these
children died.
The father, Alois, doubts whether the child will survive, the doctor and midwife begging
the father to be more compassionate towards his wife and new son.
The son’s name is revealed to be Adolf Hitler.
No political movement has been influenced by one person in the way that national-socialism
has, Hans-Ulrich Thamer wrote.
He added that, while taking notice of this, the “person Hitler” could not explain
all that happened due to, and surrounding, national-socialism.
Without Hitler’s biography, however, the Third Reich cannot be understood.
In this video, we will look at Hitler’s life until 1923, up until the notorious Bierkeller
Putsch, which failed and resulted in his prison sentence.
Who was Hitler, before the world came to know him?
-intro-
Born on the 20th of April 1889 Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian town Braunau am Inn.
His household was not poor, moving often, though his father Alois used physical violence
to discipline young Adolf.
Adolf went to school in Linz and Steyr and was an average student, retreating in his
fantasy worlds that Karl May and Richard Wagner shaped and inspired.
His biggest ambition?
To become an artist, in 1907 at the age of eighteen he travelled to Vienna, where he
would live for six years.
He applied to the Academy of arts twice and was rejected, twice.
His mother passed away in 1907, his father passing away earlier during his childhood.
Vienna & World War I
After his mother passed away Hitler lived from his fathers’ inheritance and the income
from his paintings.
It was a meagre existence, and within two years he was broke and was forced to sleep
in shelters for the homeless.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler described his Vienna years, marked by poverty and worries.
During this time he read the obscure magazine Ostara, written and published by the Roman-Catholic
monk Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, who was convinced the Aryan race was threatened by the Jews.
The socialist mass demonstration on the streets of Vienna must have impressed Hitler.
An interesting detail is that in 1913 Hitler, Trotsky, Stalin, Tito and Freud all lived
in Vienna.
Hitler avoided Austrian conscription right before the outbreak of the Great War and travelled
to Munich.
However, August 1914, right after the eruption of said war, Hitler applied voluntarily to
the Bavarian army, achieving the rank of corporal.
He would describe his feelings when the war broke out in Mein Kampf: he thanked God on
his knees for he was alive during this time.
During his political career, Hitler often recalled his “fronterlebnis”, or experiences
at the front.
War had given his life a sense of purpose for the first time.
He received the Iron Cross second class due to bravery within three months, recalling
how this was the happiest moment of his life.
Without any truly noteworthy events, Hitler survived the war.
Four years after its outbreak, in August 1918, he was awarded the Iron Cross first class.
Injured by a mustard gas attack, he resided in a field-hospital when he received news
that the war had ended.
The defeat evoked the same feeling millions of others felt: humiliation and disillusionment.
Germany was subject to revolution and the Treaty of Versailles imposed a humiliating
peace.
Until these years Hitler’s life could be considered as a complete disappointment and
failure: a failure as a son, as a student, and as an artist.
The war gave him a solution to all his problems and a release for all his bottled up feelings.
The Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP)
Hitler decided to become a politician in 1919 when the defeat and subsequent revolution
became a near-traumatic experience.
Hitler’s experience during World War I at the front played a crucial role.
Never again, would Germany suffer a defeat as it had in 1918.
The 1918 November revolution was seen by Hitler and many others, unjustly, as the cause of
the defeat and shame of the Versailles treaty.
Hitler held Marxists and Jews collectively responsible for the defeat - Germany had been
betrayed from the inside - the so-called stab-in-the-back myth, which would be propagated by many members
of right-wing groups.
These domestic enemies had to be confronted… and exterminated.
After the war ended Hitler stayed in the army’s service until the 31st of March 1920.
He was tasked with spreading anti-propaganda against leftist influences in the young Weimar
Republic, though some sources state he supported the revolutionaries during the short-lived
Bavarian Soviet Republic.
At the age of thirty, on the sixteenth of September 1919, he started to write down his
thoughts on the Jewish people for the first time.
Hitler distinguished between anti-semitism as a feeling, that could be “solved” by
temporary solutions such as programs, and antisemitism as a construct of the mind, propagating
institutionalized governmental manners to eradicate Jews.
He used the ambiguous term “Entfernung”, obviously preferring this last form of anti-semitism.
The army tasked Hitler with investigating and reporting about small leftist parties
and groups, which is how Hitler ended up at the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei from Anton Drexler
in 1919.
This small party was on the right-wing of the political spectrum.
Thirty-year-old Hitler became the five-hundred-fifty-fifth member of this small party, though in reality
there were no more than two hundred members and he became the seventh member of the party’s
central committee.
Thanks to his oratorical talent he quickly became the most important propagandist of
the party, which he dubbed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterspartei, the NSDAP.
Among its most important members were officer Ernst Röhm, the Baltendeutsche ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg and the economist Gottfried Feder.
Hitler got into contact with Dietrich Eckhart during this time, a publicist of antisemitic
works.
Former members of the Thule-Gesellschaft, a German occultist and völkisch group, such
as Karl Harrer, joined the party.
During a speech at the Hofbräuhaus on the 24th of February 1920 Hitler, for the first
time, successfully addressed a large crowd.
Though hecklers were present, as there were during the speeches before this, former soldiers
acted as bouncers and threw the hecklers out.
This would form the basis of the Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s personal fighter squad.
His aggressive political style started to gain success.
At the end of 1920, there were 2000 members and the Völkischer Beobachter became the
official party magazine.
A year later, Hitler became the Führer, the leader of the party.
The party distinguished itself among the national opposition parties by preaching the völkisch
variant of German Nationalism - this meant that racial and biological elements were part
of their conceptualization of the nation.
The party program of February 1920 was a mixture of themes that had been put forward by other
far-right parties such as Anti-capitalist and anti-socialist points, extreme nationalism,
anti-parliamentarianism, the longing for strong leadership, a centralized government and firmly
against the demands of Versailles.
While antisemitism was not the main priority, it was very present.
Jews, according to Hitler, ought to lose their civil rights and must be fired from public
offices.
Leading up to the Putsch (1923)
Until the putsch of November 1923 Hitler mainly saw himself as the so-called “trommler”,
the drummer.
He was tasked with spreading propaganda, riling and mobilizing crowds to support the leaders
that wanted to overthrow the Weimar Republic.
Hitler admired the war-hero Erich Ludendorff - Ludendorff became a symbol of the German
far right after the Great War.
He was a war hero, being the second in command only after Paul von Hindenburg, and became
notorious for supporting right-wing and occultist organisations after the war.
Hitler maneuvred himself in different layers of society, from the paramilitary leader and
former soldier Ernst Röhm to higher circles, such as the piano manufacturer Bechstein.
Over in Italy, in 1922, Mussolini successfully orchestrated his march on Rome and succeeded
in overthrowing the Italian government.
Mussolini, his blackshirts, and their successful fascist coup were an inspiration to Hitler,
who now became involved with men conspiring to commit a coup against the Weimar Republic.
When the French and Belgian troops decided to invade Germany’s Ruhr area, the core
of its industrial output, the sentiment among the right became even more angry and aggressive.
It was just what Hitler needed.
The coup would be conducted with the help of the Bavarian army and contra-revolutionary
groups, as the political climate in Bavaria leaned to the far-right.
Tense relations between Bavaria and Berlin gradually became worse during the occupation
of the Ruhr area and the decision to halt the passive resistance.
The crisis reached a boiling point in October 1923 when Generalkommissar Gustav von Kahr
refused to ban the Völkischer Beobachter, the party magazine of the NSDAP, after Chancellor
Gustav Stresemann and army commander Von Seeckt were verbally attacked in it.
The Bavarian army openly refused to follow the orders of the Weimar army and the chancellor.
It was the pretext for a coup.
Hitler received from his informants the news that Von Kahr and other Bavarian government
members would speak on 8 November 1923 in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich.
Hitler regarded Munich as the centre from which he would overthrow the Weimar Republic.
Hitler ordered Hermann Göring to command 600 SA officers that would surround the beer
hall that day.
An army of an unknown number of SA people, under the command of Ernst Röhm, would entrench
themselves in a beer hall in the neighbourhood and occupy crucial buildings on Hitler's telephone
command.
Heinrich Himmler was also present at the putsch as an SA member; he was a flag bearer under
Görings SA troop.
Hitler also counted on the deployment of students from a school for army officers.
He expected them to assist the SA in the occupation of crucial buildings.
The coup was set up in a hasty and improvised manner.
The March on Rome was their inspiration, but Germany was not Italy.
The Weimar government was not popular, but in November 1923 it had the general support
of the population for its calls for "passive resistance" against the French occupation
of the Ruhr area.
Even in Munich, the majority of the population did not support the NSDAP or, at most, decided
to not take sides.
The whole plan was partly based on the sympathy for the right-wing cause within the German
army, the Reichswehr.
The army, however, obeyed General Hans von Seeckt, who immediately after he got wind
of the coup, ordered Munich to be locked down.
The Putsch
Hitler took his chance on the evening of the 8th of November in the Bürgerbräukeller
in Munich.
The November revolution, five years ago, was commemorated over there.
The majority of the political right-wing of Bavaria was present and Gustav von Kahr held
a speech against communism when suddenly Hitler entered the building with his Sturmabteilung,
his group of fighter-thugs, proclaiming that the government in Berlin and Munich was removed.
Among others, Erich Ludendorff, Rudolf Hess and Ernst Röhm were with Hitler, with Ludendorff’s
personal prestige being used to give the coup credibility.
The attending Bavarian leaders, such as Otto von Lossow and head of police Hans Ritter
von Seisser pretended to support Hitler, but they informed the government in Berlin as
soon as they could.
As a matter of fact, when there was an uproar elsewhere in the city among SA members, Hitler
personally went there in order to calm people down.
While he was gone, Von Kahr, Von Lossow and Von Seisser managed to convince Ludendorff
to let them go, swearing an oath that they would not inform the government.
Von Kahr would later claim that his oath was not valid, because it was given under threat.
Friedrich Ebert, Germany’s Chancellor, immediately declared a state of emergency and gave General
Hans von Seeckt military control of Bavaria.
The next day the Nazis and paramilitary organisations, including Erich Ludendorff himself, held a
parade - it is uncertain why they decided to hold a parade, knowing full well the army
was on its way.
Perhaps it was an attempt to sway the population.
At any rate, the police stopped the parade and shot at the conspirators, killing and
injuring several Nazis.
Sixteen nazis and four police officers were killed.
Röhm was seized, Göring escaped to Austria, and Hitler fled, he was arrested three days
later.
On the 23rd of November, Von Seeckt banned the NSDAP, ending the short-lived crisis in
1923.
Fin
The main conspirators were tried for high treason, though the trial was surprisingly
easy on Hitler.
This may not come as a surprise when you realize that most judges were anti-communist and rather
conservative.
As a matter of fact, political murderers of the right-wing received 3 and a half years
on average, while leftists received seventeen years on average.
Hitler treated his trial as if it was a propaganda circus.
All the conspirators received mild sentences and Ludendorff was acquitted (much to his
own anger).
Hitler was eventually sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served thirteen months.
While imprisoned, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess, perhaps the most controversial
book of the former century.
The next years would see Hitler’s party diminish in seats, and the Weimar Republic
flourish under newly attained economic success.
But that’s a topic for another video, I hope you found this one interesting.
The film “Hitler, the rise of evil” is, in my opinion, a film that portrays Hitler’s
early years in an approachable and understandable way.
If you would like to learn more about his early years, that film is a great start.
Thank you for watching this video.
What is an event or a person surrounding German history that you would like to know more about,
and perhaps see a video of?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
If you enjoyed the video, consider subscribing to this channel.
See you next time!