Hitler

Reserve Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment had been actively involved in the Räterepublik. This speaks in favour of the recognition within his battalion of his deep antagonism to ‘red’ rule. At any rate, his new role now prevented Hitler being discharged, along with the rest of the Munich garrison, by the end of May 1919. More importantly, it brought him for the first time into the orbit of counter-revolutionary politics within the Reichswehr. This, rather than any psychological trauma in Pasewalk at the news of the defeat, any dramatic decision to rescue Germany from the ‘November criminals’, was, within the following months, to open up his path into the maelstrom of extreme right-wing politics in Munich.
    III
    On 11 May 1919, under the command of Generalmajor von Möhl, the Bayerische Reichswehr Gruppenkommando Nr.4 (‘Gruko’ for short) was created from the Bavarian units that had been involved in the crushing of the Räterepublik. With the Bavarian government ‘exiled’ in Bamberg until the end of August, Munich – its centre crammed with barricades, barbed wire, and army control-points – was throughout the spring and summer a city effectively under military rule. Recognizing twin tasks of extensive surveillance of the political scene and combating by means of propaganda and indoctrination ‘dangerous’ attitudes prevalent in the transitional army, Gruko took over in May 1919 the ‘Information Department’ (Nachrichtenabteilung, Abt. Ib/P) whichhad been immediately established in Munich at the suppression of the Räterepublik. The ‘education’ of the troops in a ‘correct’ anti-Bolshevik, nationalist fashion was rapidly regarded as a priority, and ‘speaker courses’ were devised in order to train ‘suitable personalities from the troops’ who would remain for some considerable time in the army and function as propaganda agents with qualities of persuasion capable of negating subversive ideas. The organization of a series of ‘anti-Bolshevik courses’, beginning in early June, was placed in the hands of Captain Karl Mayr, who, a short while earlier, on 30 May, had taken over the command of the Information Department. Mayr, one of the ‘midwives’ of Hitler’s political ‘career’, could certainly have claimed prime responsibility for its initial launch.
    In 1919, Mayr’s influence in the Munich Reichswehr extended beyond his rank as captain, and he was endowed with considerable funds to build up a team of agents or informants, organize the series of ‘educational’ courses to train selected officers and men in ‘correct’ political and ideological thinking, and finance ‘patriotic’ parties, publications, and organizations. Mayr first met Hitler in May 1919, after the crushing of the ‘Red Army’. Hitler’s involvement in his battalion’s investigations into subversive actions during the Räterepublik may have drawn him to Mayr’s attention. And we saw that Hitler had already been engaged in propaganda work in his barracks earlier in the spring – though on behalf of the socialist government. He had the right credentials and ideal potential for Mayr’s purposes. When he first met Hitler, Mayr wrote much later, ‘he was like a tired stray dog looking for a master’, and ‘ready to throw in his lot with anyone who would show him kindness … He was totally unconcerned about the German people and their destinies.’
    The name ‘Hittler Adolf’ appears on one of the early lists of names of informants (
V-Leute
or
V-Männer
) drawn up by the Information Department Ib/P at the end of May or beginning of June 1919. Within days he had been assigned to the first of the anti-Bolshevik ‘instruction courses’, to take place in Munich University between 5 and 12 June 1919. For the first time, Hitler was to receive here some form of directed political ‘education’. This, as he acknowledged, was important to him; as was the fact that he realized for the first time that he could make an impact on those around him. Here he heard lectures from prominent figures in Munich, hand-picked by Mayr, partly through personal acquaintance, on ‘German History since the Reformation’, ‘The PoliticalHistory of the War’, ‘Socialism in Theory and Practice’, ‘Our Economic Situation and the Peace Conditions’, and ‘The Connection between Domestic and Foreign Policy’. Among the speakers, too, was Gottfried Feder, who had made a name for himself among the Pan-Germans