Hitler

been worried in 1935 that a polyp in his throat (eventually removed in the May of that year) was cancerous. It turned out to be harmless. During 1936, a year of almost continual tension, the stomach cramps were frequently severe, and Hitler also developed eczema on both legs, which had to be covered in bandages. At Christmas 1936, he asked Dr Theodor Morell, a physician who had successfully treated his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, to try to cure him. Morell gave him vitamins and a new patent remedy for intestinal problems. Goebbels mentioned in June, and again in August 1937, that Hitler was unwell. But by September, Morell’s treatment had apparently made a difference. At any rate, Hitler was impressed. He felt fit again, his weight was back to normal, and his eczema had vanished. His belief in Morell would last down to the bunker in 1945. From late 1937 onwards, his increasing hypochondria made him ever more reliant on Morell’s pills, drugs, and injections. And the fear of cancer (which had caused his mother’s death) never left him. At the end of October, he told a meeting of propaganda leaders that both his parents had died young, and that he probably did not have long to live. ‘It was necessary, therefore, to solve the problems that had to be solved (living space) as soon as possible, so that this could still take place in his lifetime. Later generations would no longer be able to accomplish it. Only his person was in the position to bring it about.’
    Hitler was seldom out of the public eye in 1937. No opportunity was missed to drive home to the German public an apparently endless array of scarcely credible ‘achievements’ at home and the glories of his major ‘triumphs’ in foreign policy. Flushed with success and certain of the adulation of the masses, he wanted to be seen. The bonds between the Führer and the people – the cement of the regime, and dependent upon recurring success and achievement – were thereby reinforced. And for Hitler the ecstasy of his mass audiences provided each time a newinjection of the drug to feed his egomania. As always, the effect of his speeches depended heavily upon the atmosphere in which they were held. The content was repetitive and monotonous. The themes were the familiar ones. Past achievements were lauded, grandiose future plans proclaimed, the horrors and menace of Bolshevism emphasized. But there was no conflict between propaganda and ideology. Hitler believed what he was saying.
    His lengthy concluding speech at the Reich Party Rally in Nuremberg in early September was an onslaught on ‘Jewish Bolshevism’. In passages at times reminiscent of
Mein Kampf
, and in his fiercest public attack on the Jews for many months, he portrayed them as the force behind Bolshevism and its ‘general attack on the present-day social order’, and spoke of ‘the claim of an uncivilized Jewish-Bolshevik international guild of criminals to rule Germany, as an old cultural land of Europe, from Moscow’. This is what the party faithful wanted to hear. But it was far more than window-dressing. Even in private, dictating the speeches to his secretary, when it came to passages on Bolshevism Hitler, red-faced and eyes blazing, would work himself to a frenzy, bellowing at full volume his thunderous denunciations.
    VI
    Away from the continual propaganda activity revolving around speeches and public appearances, Hitler was largely preoccupied in 1937 with keeping a watchful eye on the changing situation in world affairs and with his gigantic building plans. The continuing conflict with both the Catholic and Protestant Churches, radical though his own instincts were, amounted to a recurrent irritation, especially in the first months of the year, rather than a priority concern (as it was with Goebbels, Rosenberg, and many of the party rank-and-file). With regard to the ‘Jewish Question’– to go from the many private discussions with Goebbels which the Propaganda Minister reported in his diary notes – Hitler, unchanged though his views were, showed little active interest and seldom spoke directly on the subject. But however uninvolved he was, the radicalization of the regime continued unabated, forced on in a variety of ways by party activists, ministerial bureaucracy, economic opportunists, and, not least, by an ideologically driven police.
    In February 1937 Hitler made it plain to his inner circle that he did not want a ‘Church struggle’ at this juncture. The time