Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

business. The full version of this interpretation is brought out in Wolfgang Ruge,
Das Ende von Weimar. Monopolkapital und Hitler,
Berlin (East), 1983, where Hitler is referred to (334, 336) as the ‘compliant creature’
(willfährige Kreatur)
of the ‘backers’
(Hintermänner)
from big business. Given such a premiss built into official state ideology, no biography of Hitler was possible in the GDR. Two historians who had produced the only general history of the Nazi Party to be published during the existence of the GDR (Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker,
Geschichte der NSDAP,
Cologne, 1981; originally
Hakenkreuz und Totenkopf. Die Partei des Verbrechens,
Berlin (East), 1981) have subsequently brought out a personalized study of the German Dictator which had been impossible in their former State, expressly emphasizing (589) ‘that the fascist Leader was no marionette’ (Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker,
Adolf Hitler. Eine politische Biographie,
Leipzig, 1995).
    14 . John Toland,
Adolf Hitler,
London, 1976, a work of 1,035 Pages, begins with the comment (p.xiv): ‘My book has no thesis.’ Helmut Heiber,
Adolf Hitler. Eine Biographie,
Berlin, 1960, is far briefer but still a ‘cradle-to-grave’ description of Hitler’s life which appears to lack a specific interpretative framework.
    15 . Joshua Rubenstein,
Hitler,
London, 1984, 87; Wulf Schwarzwäller,
The Unknown Hitler,
Bethesda, Maryland, 1989, 9. Guido Knopp’s description
(Hitler, Eine Bilanz,
13) of Hitler as ‘a sick swine’
(kranker Schweinehund)
might be seen to point in the same direction, though was actually framed within a multi-faceted attempt to grapple with the problem of understanding Hitler.
    16 . The descriptions are those, in turn, of Norman Rich,
Hitler’s War Aims,
2 vols., London, 1973–4, i.II, and Hans Mommsen,
Beamtentum im Dritten Reich,
Stuttgart, 1966, 98 n.26. The clash of these interpretations has been surveyed in Manfred Funke,
Starker oder schwacher Diktator? Hitlers Herrshaft und die Deutschen: Ein Essay,
Düsseldorf, 1989. See also Wolfgang Wippermann (ed.),
Kontroversen um Hitler,
Frankfurt am Main, 1986, and Kershaw,
Nazi Dictatorship,
ch. 4.
    17 . Eberhard Jäckel has never deviated, in numerous publications, from the position that Hitler’s rule was a ‘monocracy’, and ‘sole rule’ (
Alleinherrschaft).
See, for example, his
Hitler in History,
Hanover/London, 1984, 28–30;
Hitler’s Herrschaft,
(1986) 2nd edn, Stuttgart, 1988, 59–65; and – strongly implied –
Das deutsche Jahrhundert. Eine historische Bilanz,
Stuttgart, 1996, 164. An emphatic argument against interpretations which diluted Hitler’s ‘monocracy’ was advanced by Klaus Hildebrand, ‘Monokratie oder Polykratie? Hitlers Herrschaft und das Dritte Reich’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (eds.),
Der ‘Führerstaat’: Mythos und Realität. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches,
Stuttgart, 1981, 73–97.
    18 . Lines of interpretation which arise, most notably, from the numerous studies of Hans Mommsen and, to a lesser extent, of Martin Broszat. See especially Hans Mommsen, ‘Hitlers Stellung im nationalsozialistischen Herrshaftssystem’, in Hirschfeld and Kettenacker, 43–72, and his brief text
Adolf Hitler als ‘Führer’ der Nation,
Deutsches Institut für Fernstudien, Tübingen, 1984; also Martin Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers,
Munich, 1969, and ‘Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus’,
VfZ,
18 (1970), 392–409.
    19 . See Ernst Nolte’s essays, ‘Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus?’ and ‘Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will’, in ‘
Historikerstreit’. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung,
Munich, 1987, 13–35, 39–47, and his
Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus,
Berlin, 1987, esp. 501–2, 504, 506, 517.
    20 . Rainer Zitelmann,
Adolf Hitler. Eine politische Biographie,
Göttingen/Zurich, 1989, 9; and for the full unfolding of Hitler’s statements over many years, on which the generalization rested, Rainer Zitelmann,
Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs,
Hamburg/Leamington Spa/New York, 1987. See also the critical review by Reinhard Bollmus, ‘Ein rationaler Diktator? Zu einer neuen Hitler-Biographie’,
Die Zeit,
22 September 1989, 45–6.
    21 . The thesis that Hitler’s conscious intention was Germany’s modernization was