Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Betriebszellenorganisation (Nazi Factory Cell Organization)
NSDAP
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)
NSDStB
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist German Students’ Federation)
NSFB
Nationalsozialistiche Freiheitsbewegung (National Socialist Freedom Movement)
NSFP
Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (National Socialist Freedom Party)
NS-Hago
Nationalsozialistische Handwerks-, Handels-und Gewerbeorganisation (Nazi Craft, Commerce, and Trade Organization)
OB
Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria)
Pd Mü.
Polizeidirektion München (Munich Police Administration)
PRO
Public Record Office
RGBl
Reichsgesetzblatt
RGO
Revolutionäre Gewerkscharts-Opposition (Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition; Communist trades union organization)
RP
Regierungspräsident (Government President, head of state regional administration)
RSA
Hitler. Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen: Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933
, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols., in 12 parts, Munich/London/New York/Paris, 1992–8
S
Schwaben (Swabia)
SA
Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop)
SD
Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)
Sopade
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (exiled SPD executive based in Prague (1933–8), then Paris (1938–40), and from 1940 onwards in London)
SS
Schutzstaffel (lit. Protection Squad)
SPD
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)
StA
Staatsarchiv (State Archive)
StdF
Stellvertreter des Führers (Führer’s Deputy)
TBJG
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragmente, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1924–1941
, 4 Bde., ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich etc., 1987
Tb Reuth
Joseph Goebbels. Tagebücher
1924–1945, 5 Bde., ed. Ralf Georg Reuth, Munich/Zurich, 1992.
UF
Unterfranken (Lower Franconia)
VB
Völkischer Beobachter
VfZ
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
VVM
Vaterländische Vereine Münchens (Patriotic Associations of Munich)
VVVB
Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände Bayerns (United Patriotic Associations of Bavaria)

NOTES

REFLECTING ON HITLER
    1 . The title of the masterly analysis by Eric Hobsbawm,
Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991,
London, 1994.
    2 . An attempt to speculate counter-factually on how different world history would have been had Hitler been killed when the car in which he was travelling was struck by a large lorry in 1930 is offered by Henry A. Turner,
Geißel des Jahrhunderts. Hitler und seine Hinterlassenschaft,
Berlin, 1989. The accident is described in Otto Wagener,
Hitler aus nächster Nähe. Aufzeichnungen eines Vertrauten 1929–1932,
ed. Henry A. Turner, 2nd edn, Kiel, 1987, 155–6.
    3 . Karl Marx,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
Moscow, 1954, 10.
    4 . A number of general analyses of the history of the Third Reich in recent years have made impressive advances in synthesizing and interpreting a vast outpouring of detailed research. These include: Hans-Ulrich Thamer,
Verführung und Gewalt. Deutschland 1933–1945,
Berlin, 1986; Norbert Frei,
National Socialist Rule in Germany: the Führer State 1933–1945,
Oxford/Cambridge Mass., 1993 (an extended version in English of the original German edition,
Der Führerstaat. Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft 1933 bis 1945,
Munich, 1987); Jost Dülffer,
Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945. Führerglaube und Vernichtungskrieg,
Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne, 1992 (Engl.:
Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation,
London, 1996); Karlheinz Weißmann,
Der Weg in den Abgrund 1933–1945,
Berlin, 1995; Klaus P. Fischer,
Nazi Germany: a New History,
London, 1995; and, a particularly valuable interpretative synthesis, Ludolf Herbst,
Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945,
Frankfurt am Main, 1996.
    5 . See the comment, still thought-provoking, of Wolfgang Sauer, ‘National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?’,
American Historical Review,
73 (1967–8), 404–24; here 408: ‘In Nazism, the historian faces a phenomenon that leaves him no way but rejection, whatever his individual position. There is literally no voice worth considering that disagrees on this matter… Does not such fundamental rejection imply a fundamental lack of understanding?’
    6 .This was the essential criticism of the incisive review of Joachim C. Fest,
Hitler. Eine Biographie,
Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Vienna, 1973, by Hermann Graml, ‘Probleme einer Hitler-Biographie. Kritische Bemerkungen zu Joachim C. Fest’,
VfZ,
22 (1974), 76–92. Graml regards (78, 84) the problems posed by