Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Cited in Alexander Bein, ‘Der moderne Antisemitismus and seine Bedeutung für die Judenfrage’,
VfZ,
6 (1958), 340–60, here 359. See also Alexander Bein, ‘“Der jüdische Parasit”. Bemerkungen zur Semantik der Judenfrage’,
VfZ,
13 (1965), 121–49.
    97 .
JK,
176–7.
    98 . Phelps, ‘Hitler als Parteiredner’, 286; and see, e.g.,
JK,
201.
    99 . See Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 393–5, for the structure of his speech on ntisemitism on 13 August 1920, and for audience reactions.
    100 . Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 395. As Phelps notes (391), the full text (400–420;
JΚ,
184–204) – unusually among early Hitler speeches – survives perhaps precisely because of its significance as a programmatic statement.
    101 . Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 215;
JK,
231 n.7. Hitler recognized, in a letter of 3 July 1920, the difficulty of winning support from the industrial working class
(JK,
155–6).
    102 .
MK,
722 (trans.,
ΜK
Watt, 620).
    103 .
JK,
337 (speech of 6 March 1921); Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 394, 398.
    104 . The view that Hitler’s genocidal hatred of the Jews derived from his fear of Bolshevik terror, shored up by horror stories of barbarity during and after the Russian civil war, was famously advanced by Ernst Nolte in interpretations.which were one of the triggers to the ‘Historikerstreit’ (‘Historians’ Dispute’) of the late 1980s. See Ernst Nolte, ‘Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus’, and ‘Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will’, in
‘Historikerstreit’. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung,
13–47, together with Nolte’s book
Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945.
    105 .
JK,
88–90.
    106 .
JK,
126–7 (27 April 1920), 140 (beginning of June 1920), 163 (21 July 1920).
    107 .
JK,
231.
    108 . Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 398.
    109 . Nolte,
Bürgerkrieg,
115, 564 n.24, pointed, for instance, to the publication in the
VB
of stories that during the Russian civil war the Cheka forced confessions out of prisoners by exposing their faces to hunger-crazed rats.
    110 . The swelling of KPD membership in Germany in autumn 1920 through theinflux of former adherents of the USPD’s radical wing provided a further spur (Tyrell,
Trommler,
49–50), but the focus on ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ was by then already well established. The onslaught on Jewish finance capital did not thereby abate. It became incorporated somewhat uneasily in the notion of international finance capital and the international element in Soviet Russia working together against Germany’s national interests. (See
JK,
337.)
    111 . Phelps, ‘Hitlers “grundlegende” Rede’, 398 and n.33. See
MK,
337, for Hitler’s acceptance of their authenticity, 111. Mayr, 195–6.
    112 . Phelps, ‘Hitler’, 11;
JK,
106–11.
    113 . Dirk Stegmann, ‘Zwischen Repression und Manipulation: Konservative Machteliten und Arbeiter- und Angestelltenbewegung 1910–1918. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der DAP/NSDAP’,
Archiv für Sozialgeschichte,
12 (1972), 351–432, here 413. Mayr had already met Kapp personally on two occasions, once with Eckart and once alone, as the contact man of Generals Lüttwitz and von Oldershausen. Mayr was, according to Ernst Röhm, ‘the most decisive promoter of the Kapp enterprise in Bavaria’ (Röhm,
Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters,
100–101).
    114 . Stegmann, 413–14. As Tyrell correctly remarked
(Trommler,
296), this proves efforts to manipulate Hitler, not that Hitler was the tool of such external forces.
    115 . Röhm, 100–101, 107.
    116 . Tyrell,
Trommler,
27–8, 61, 197 n.104; Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 16, 18.
    117 . On Eckart, see Margarete Plewnia,
Auf dem Weg zu Hitler. Der völkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart,
Bremen, 1970; and Tyrell,
Trommler,
190–91 n.49, 194 n.70. Tyrell is persuasive in his refutation of the view that Eckart’s posthumous (1924) publication,
Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin. Zwiegespräch zwischen Adolf Hitler und mir,
Munich, 1924, was based on discussion with Hitler, as first claimed by Ernst Nolte, ‘Eine frühe Quelle zu Hitlers Antisemitismus’,
Historische Zeitschrift,
192 (1961), 584–606, and Ernst Nolte,
Three Faces of Fascism,
Mentor edn, New York, 1969, 417–21. Eckart’s financial support for Hitler is dealt with by Franz-Willing,
Hitlerbewegung, 1
80ff. and