Adolf Hitler has long managed to hide himself as a private person from his biographers. But with the work of the German historian Volker Ullrich, the enigma of Hitler seems to be approaching its denouement. “Many biographers have fallen into the trap that Hitler set in the 1920s.”
Who was Adolf Hitler? Did he have a private life in addition to politics, and what did that look like? It is a question that historians have preferred to avoid, partly due to a lack of sources. "Take away the politics and Hitler is nothing, he was an empty shell," wrote British historian Ian Kershaw in his monumental two-volume Hitler biography (1998/2000). Everything about Hitler was politics. He had no private life and was incapable of really loving anyone.”
But even after Kershaw's important work, the question of the private Hitler continued to gnaw. Volker Ullrich makes an attempt in his biography to further unravel the mystery of Hiter. According to Ullrich, Kershaw's image of the dictator was mainly how Hitler himself wanted his supporters to see him. Ullrich makes short work of that. In the recently published first volume of his Hitler biography, Ullrich uses new sources to paint an impressive picture of the dictator's private life, which has always been curiously linked to politics.
The bookstores are full of books about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich and titles are still being added. How do you explain all this interest in Hitler? “You would think that the longer the Second World War has been, the less interest it becomes. But the opposite is true. Interest in the Third Reich was already growing in the days of the Federal Republic, not only among academics but also among the general public. You could already see that in the book market, but also in TV series and documentaries.”
“Adolf Hitler is still the personification of the horrors that took place in the twentieth century. The war, the concentration camps, all that misery is linked to his name. And it will remain that way for the time being. Its name is also connected with a real civilization break in history. There is still a lot of indignation and incomprehension about the period of the Third Reich (1933-1945), and that brings interest. The intriguing and still unresolved question of how such a thing is possible in a society that called itself 'civilized', I believe, explains the continued interest in the person of Hitler and the Third Reich."
There are quite a few biographies about Hitler already written. Why did you think another one was needed? “The really good biographies about Hitler can be counted on one hand. One of these was written in 1937-38 by the Jewish journalist Konrad Heiden, so before the war. Then came the first scientific biography of the British Alan Bullock in the 1950s. In the 1970s the work of the German publicist Joachim Fest was published and finally the two-volume biography of the British historian Ian Kershaw from 1998 and 2000. These are the only biographies that are still worth reading.”
“For this biography, I wanted not only to compile the latest insights published since Kershaw's extensive biography, but also to go back into the archives to see if there wasn't something new to discover about Hitler after all. That this was indeed possible was the biggest surprise for me. After all, it is always said that there is nothing new to discover about Hitler in the archives, but that was indeed the case."
So it turned out that there was material that Kershaw and Fest didn't look at? "Indeed. In his Hitler biography, Kershaw was mainly interested in the 'zeitgeist' of the 1920s and 1930s. According to him, it was mainly the zeitgeist and not so much Hitler's personality that made his seizure of power possible. Kershaw was not so interested in Hitler's personality, how he was as a person. He went so far as to say that Hitler had no private life at all outside of politics, that he was an "empty shell." I just tried to put that personality back in the center. But you run into a central problem. Hitler had all his personal documents and correspondence burned in the last days of the Second World War. So how do you get information about what Hitler was like as a private person?”
“I have found correspondence in archives from people who were close to Hitler and tell what he was like as a private person. One of the most important records, which Ian Kershaw had no access to for his biography, was the estate of Rudolf Hess, who was Hitler's private secretary from 1924. In the 1930s he wrote many letters to his parents, who lived in Egypt, about his dealings with Hitler. I found that correspondence in the archive in Bern. That's an important resource Kershaw didn't have. But I also looked extensively at Albert Speer's legacy, which Kershaw had access to but did not do much with.”
Why is it so important to understand Hitler as a person? “Without Hitler, the NSDAP would have remained a small insignificant Völkische party, of which there were so many after the First World War. Without Hitler there would have been no Holocaust. He was the central figure in the whole of National Socialism. So to have a good understanding of the Third Reich you also have to understand the person Hitler, how he built up his position of power, as well as the zeitgeist. My biography is therefore not a book against Kershaw, it is an addition to it.”
What personality traits of Hitler explain his success as a politician? “There are several things that are important. First, of course, he was a fantastic orator. We often see him giving a speech half in ecstasy and completely sweaty. But you rarely see how he builds up his speeches thoughtfully and slowly. Only when he noticed that the spark jumped did he increase the energy further. He played his audience very consciously.”
“But perhaps more importantly, and that is something that remains underexposed in most Hitler literature, was his acting talent. He could seem like a completely different person in any situation. The Hitler who incited the people in beer halls in Munich was a completely different Hitler than the one who spoke to a small group of wealthy industrialists in the Ruhr area. And he did that without any effort. At a meeting with industrialists, he was initially received with a distant, icy silence, we read in Hess. But within two hours he had everyone in his pocket.”
“Hitler had an exceptional talent for self-control, but when it suited him, he could intimidate people with a huge fit of rage. That acting talent explains why he was able to mislead so many people of what his true intentions were. Hitler, for example, liked to portray himself as an artist who, reluctantly, ended up in politics. But in reality he was a very sophisticated and tactical politician.”
Do you think that many of the biographers before you, who argued that he had no private life outside of politics, might also have fallen for Hitler's acting skills? “I have the impression that historians who deal with Hitler are strongly influenced by the image that Hitler liked to portray of himself. For example, Kershaw wrote, "If you take out all that is political from Hitler, nothing remains of him." Indeed, I think he fell into the trap that Hitler himself set 70 years ago. That was exactly how Hitler wanted everyone to see him. As someone who sacrificed his entire private life to lead Germany. Hitler himself often said, "I can't get married, because I'm already married to Germany." Fest also assumed that Hitler had no private life. He fell into the same trap.”
Hitler did have a private life. And he was certainly able to love and enter into human relationships. He had a fairly serious relationship with Eva Braun for a long time, although they did not get married until Hitler already knew that he would commit suicide. He often visited the Wagner family and also the Goebbels family. He did not do this for political reasons, but also because he needed human warmth. They affectionately called him "Wolf." A kind of surrogate family, because he never had a real family himself.”
You write that Hitler's worldview, including his anti-Semitism, was already completely fixed in the early 1920s. How did Hitler get this fanatical anti-Semitism? “That's always one of the hardest questions about Hitler. He himself writes in Mein Kampf that he became an anti-Semite while living in Vienna (1898-1913). That's a legend. He read anti-Semitic literature in Vienna, but his paranoid, fanatical hatred of the Jews was not yet there. That turn came only after the First World War in Munich, and the special political circumstances there. After the assassination of the left-wing Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner, anarchists and peasants established the Council Republic:a radical left-wing form of government. A number of Jews played an important role in this. Hitler felt that these Jews had betrayed Germany.”
“However, that republic was soon crushed by right-wing Freikorpsen. Thereafter, for a short time, there was an anti-Semitic pogram-like mood in Munich. It was in this situation that Hitler's political career started. It was the perfect breeding ground for Hitler's dormant anti-Semitism. After this turbulent time in Munich, he could no longer be shaken from his anti-Semitic views. 'The Jews must be removed from Germany', that was his rock-solid premise from which he could not be moved until the last days in 1945."
All things considered, do you think Hitler was a deranged psychopath or a rational politician? “That remains difficult. I have tried to normalize Hitler somewhat with my biography. But his paranoid Jew-hatred is, of course, far from normal. The same goes for his megalomania and his 'all or nothing' thinking. In 1932 he wanted to become Reich Chancellor and was not satisfied with another position in the cabinet. He risked everything for the chancellorship, bringing his party into serious disrepute. A big mistake, because politically the NSDAP was played out after 1932. Due to a coincidence of circumstances, he still became Reich Chancellor in 1933, but he did not owe it to himself.”
“On the other hand, Hitler is not so special in many ways. He was a child of his time. Like many Germans at the time, he hated modern art and embraced classical, romantic landscape paintings. And the fact that he ate vegetarian, did not smoke or drink was not that special either. His tantrums were mostly staged. As a politician he was very calculated and rational. Of course it's easy to dismiss him as a psychopath. I think he was more normal than we would like.”