Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Eisenbahner’).
In his letter to the NSDAP Hauptarchiv six years later, on 17 October 1941 (Fol. 10), Lotter refers to between twenty and thirty being present.
    29 . Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 10, where he gives the number of forty-two as attendance at the meeting on 12 September. Tyrell,
Trommler,
195 n.77, refers to thirty-nine
    30 .signatures with four names of committee members added at the end. The manuscript of the attendance list (BDC, DAP/NSDAP File) actually contains thirty-eight signatures – one of those attending had taken up two spaces for his name and address – followed by three added names (including Harrer’s) written in the same hand, presumably of well-known members attending but not signing themselves in.
    31 .
MK
, 388–9, 659–64, 669.
    32 .
MK
, 390–93;
JK
, 91. Hitler still spoke at this time in uniform. Part of his initial impact was unquestionably owing to the way he could portray himself as the spokesman for the ordinary soldier back from the war who could express, in their own earthy language, the sense of betrayal among his former comrades. One who heard him for the first time in the ‘Deutsches Reich’, Ulrich Graf, later became his chief bodyguard and leader of the Saalschutz, the protection squad which in 1921 turned into the SA. Graf was still bitterly angry at the events of the previous year – defeat, revolution, and especially the Soviet ‘Councils Republic’ in Munich. He was drawn to Hitler, according to his later (admittedly glorified) account, because he saw in him from the way he spoke and acted ‘a soldier and comrade to be trusted’ (IfZ, ΖS F14, Ulrich Graf, ‘Wie ich den Führer kennen lernte’, 2).
    33 .
MK
, 400–406.
    34 .
MK
, 406 (trans.,
MK
Watt, 336).
    35 . Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 7–8.
    36 .
MK
, 658–61.
    37 . As pointed out by Tyrell,
Trommler,
10–11.
    38 . Tyrell,
Trommler,
29–30, criticizing Franz-Willing,
Hitlerbewegung,
68, 73, together with Maser,
Frühgeschichte,
170; and Fest,
Hitler,
175.
    39 . BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 7 (printed in Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
105).
    40 . Tyrell,
Trommler,
30–31; Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 12; Maser,
Frühgeschichte,
169.
    41 .
MK
, 390–91.
    42 . Reginald H. Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920’,
VfZ,
11 (1963), 274–330, here 276.
    43 . Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 10; see also Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13.
    44 .
JK,
101.
    45 .
MK
, 405; BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 7 (printed in Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
105); Phelps,’Hitler’, 13 (where reference is made to the fact that Dingfelder had given the speech five times before for the Heimatdienst).
    46 . Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 12–13.
    47 . Tyrell,
Trommler,
76–83. There were also overlaps with the twelve-point
völkisch
programme that had been published in the
Münchener Beobachter
on 31 May 1919, which itself had possibly been intended as an initial statement of the DSP’s aims (Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 9–10 and n.34).
    48 . Printed in Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
108–12.
    49 .See Tyrell,
Trommler,
84–5.
    50 . See Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13.
    51 .
JK,
447, 29 July 1921.
    52 . BHStA, Abt. V, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, typescript copy of Drexler’s letter to Hitler (not sent), ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 1, 7 (trans., Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13).
    53 . The police report, printed in Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 292–6, speaks of over 2,000 persons present. Dingfelder later told the NSD AΡ-Hauptarchiv that 400 of them were ‘Reds’ (Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 14).
    54 . Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 293–4.
    55 . Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 294–6.
    56 .
MK
, 405 (trans., MK Watt, 336).
    57 . Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 15.
    58 .
VB,
Nr 17, 28 February 1920, 3, ‘Aus der Bewegung’ (trans., Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 14).
    59 . The new name appears to have come into use at the beginning of March, though, remarkably, there was no account of the change of name in the party’s own archive. It may have been in the hope of forging closer links with the national socialist parties in Austria and Czechoslovakia (Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 13 and n.37). Police reports first added ‘national socialist’ to the party’s name following a meeting (not addressed by Hitler) on 6 April 1920 (Phelps, ‘Hitler als