Hitler's Mentor: Dietrich Eckart, His Life, Times, & Milieu

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13: Hitler's Origins and Early Life

"As the man grows estranged from his wife, he becomes more intimate with alcohol. When at length he comes home ... drunk and brutal, ... God have mercy. I have seen this in hundreds of instances."

-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Hitler's 56 year life may be neatly divided into 29 years of obscurity (1889-1918) and 27 years of infamy (1919-1945.) This chapter will deal with the years between 1889 and 1903.

Adolf Hitler was born about 6:18 P.M. on Holy Saturday, April 20th, 1889 at the Gasthaus zum Pommer, a hotel in the tiny Austrian border village of Branau am Inn. The building still stands, occupied as a library and private school. Like other towns in Austria's Waldviertel ("Wooded Quarter,") Branau consisted of a small business district, then a collection of white-washed cottages with tile or thatch roofs, surrounded by farms and forests.


Adolf Hitler as a baby, 1889

The Waldviertel has been called "Austria's Appalachia." Branau's country folks had a reputation of being suspicious of outsiders. The village was also widely known as a hotbed for mediums. Hitler had the same wet-nurse as the psychic brothers Rudolf and Wilhelm Schneider. People came from all over Europe to have their fortunes read by "The Weavers of Branau." During his adult life Hitler himself exhibited the classic mediumistic traits: clairvoyance, ability as a mimic, "duality," charisma, habitual daydreaming, and sleepwalking.

An unmarried maidservant named Maria Anna Schicklgruber gave birth to Adolf's father, Alois Schicklgruber in Strones on June 7, 1837. When she died ten years later, Johann Nepomuk Hitler (or Huttler), a farmer from Spital took Alois into his household. In 1876, at the age of 39, Alois Schicklgruber (meaning "hedge-digger") legally changed his surname to Hitler (meaning "small land-holder.") His son Adolf later hailed this as one of his father's better decisions, acknowledging that the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" would never have caught on with his followers. According to Werner Maser, the purpose of this belated adoption was not only to legitimize Alois, but to guarantee an inheritance from Johann Nepomuk Hitler, who may have been his natural father. This transaction occurred three years after the death of Johann Nepomuk's wife, Eva Maria, who would certainly have objected to a legacy being diverted from her three daughters to Alois.

Maria Anna Schicklgruber lived with miller's assistant Johann Georg Hitler (or Hiedler), brother of Johann Nepomuk Hitler. Some believe Johann Georg to be Alois's real father. However, after Maria's death the ten year old boy left his home to live with "step-uncle" Johann Nepomuk Hitler's family. After the war Nazi lawyer Hans Frank declared that Maria Anna Schicklgruber got pregnant while working in the household of "a Graz Jew" named Frankenberger or Frankenreither. However, genealogical researchers disproved this account by ascertaining that no Jewish families lived in Graz during the 1830's. Another baseless rumor had it that one of the Rothschilds impregnated Maria Anna while she worked in their Vienna mansion c. 1836. Johann Nepomuk Hitler seems to be the most likely candidate as Alois Hitler's natural father. In any case, Frank confirmed that Adolf Hitler always feared that he might be one quarter Jewish. He knew that an entire clan of Jews named Hitler lived somewhere in Galicia. Author Stephen F. Sage catalogued several of them who died in the holocaust.

In 1850 Johann Nepomuk Hitler apprenticed 13 year old Alois to a local cobbler. A few years later the young man went to Vienna to improve his leather-working skills. While there, Alois applied to the Imperial Finance Ministry for a job, passed the examination, and obtained employment as a clerk. By dint of driving ambition, hard work, and an assertive manner, Alois Hitler eventually overcame his peasant origins and worked his way up to the post of senior customs official.

Alois's love life deviated sharply from the pattern of middle class respectability. Since turning eighteen in 1855 he had sex with a succession of waitresses, chambermaids, and prostitutes. At thirty-six he married forty-six year old Anna Glassl for her money, but soon resumed his philandering. Anna, the daughter of Alois's former boss, flied for divorce in 1880, after seven years of marriage. When she died three years later, 46 year old Alois married his twenty-two year old girlfriend Franziska "Fanni" Maltselberger, by whom he already had an illegitimate son, Alois Jr. (b. January 13, 1882.) Fanni contracted tuberculosis shortly after giving birth to daughter Angela (b. July 28, 1883.) Alois's twenty-three year old niece Klara Polzl (b. August 12, 1860 in Spital) helped with housekeeping and babysitting tasks during her illness. Forty-seven year old Alois took a fancy to Klara, probably seducing her before his young wife's death in August, 1884. When he married Klara on January 7, 1885, she was four months pregnant. Because of their close degree of consanguinity the couple had to obtain a dispensation from the church. Alois was Klara's mother's younger half-brother. Over the next eleven years Klara had six children -- Gustav (b. 1885), Ida (b. 1886), Otto (b. 1887), Adolf (b. 1889), Edmund (b. 1894), and Paula (b. 1896) -- of whom only Adolf and Paula survived childhood.


Alois Hitler (1837-1903)


Klara Pozl Hitler (1860-1907)

Craving variety, Alois hauled his family from pillar to post during the 1890's. The Hitlers moved from Branau to Passau (Germany) in 1892, from Passau to Hafeld (Austria) in 1895. from Hafeld to Lambach in 1897, from Lambach to Leonding (a suburb of Linz) in 1899. The Austrian Customs Bureau transferred him from Branau to Passau, but the other moves were more or less whimsical. Robert Payne believed that the 1897 relocation occurred so that Adolf could attend Lambach Abbey School, instead of Fischlam's one-room schoolhouse.


Adolf Hitler, center, at Leonding

Alois lived away from home for long periods, caring more about work, beekeeping, and wine-bibbing than his young family. Klara once confided to a friend:

"What I hoped and dreamed of as a young girl has not been fulfilled in my marriage. It cannot be otherwise ... but does such a thing ever happen?" [1]

During most of 1894 Alois worked in Linz, while Klara and the children resided in Passau. The next year he retired after forty years of civil service and bought a nine acre farm near Hafeld with spacious farmhouse, barn, beehives, garden patches, and small orchard. Hired men helped out with chores. Alois spent more time with bees and drinking buddies than his children. But Klara, Adolf, and Paula preferred neglect to the punishment he sometimes meted out.

" ... he often beat the dog until it ... wet on the floor. He beat the children, and on occasion ... would beat Klara." [2]

Adolf Hitler grew up as an alert, "staring" boy who could not easily be forced to do anything against his will. [bv]Paula Hitler remembered that Alois often punched her stubborn brother, once knocking him unconscious. Adolf never forgot his last thrashing as a thirteen year old boy in 1902, which consisted of 32 strokes with a cane.[/b] During these assaults Klara sometimes stood by, wringing her hands. At other times, Paula recalled that she and her mother would pull on Alois's coattails in an effort to cut the battering short.

The only adult who exercised control over Adolf was his father. Playmates recalled that the elder Hitler used to whistle for his son to come home. The usually insolent boy instantly stopped in his tracks and bolted home when he heard Alois's shrill "dog whistle."

Alois Hitler drank heavily and abused his wife and children while under the influence. His many changes of residence appear to have been what Alcoholics Anonymous has termed "geographic solutions": futile attempts to improve conditions by moving to new places. Alois was jovial in bars, but rough at home. Tavern-mates' testimony that he never appeared drunk only confirmed above-average capacity -- another sign of alcoholism.

Adolf Hitler, who generally abstained from liquor, once told Hans Frank:

"I know what a devil alcohol is! It really was -- via my father -- the worst enemy of my youth." [3]

Dr. Walter C. Langer noticed Hitler's veiled references to his father in Mein Kampf.

"It ends badly if the man goes his own way ... and the woman, for the children's sake, opposes him. Then there is fighting and quarreling, and as the man grows estranged from his wife, he becomes more intimate with alcohol. He is drunk every Saturday ... When at length he comes home on Sunday ... night, drunk and brutal, ... God have mercy ... I have seen this in hundreds of instances." [4]

The historical record contains conflicting accounts of Alois Hitler. Junior members of the Austrian civil service found him "rigid and pedantic." Some neighbors saw him as a stern and violent household tyrant. However, boon companions at the Gasthaus Stiefler esteemed Alois as a witty and down to earth individual. He regularly drank three pints of beer at a sitting, but it never seemed to affect him. A man of regular habits, he invariably stood up after finishing his third stein and walked home to eat supper. Sometimes he returned for a half liter of white wine after dinner. Alois occasionally stopped by for a single glass of wine before lunch. The regulars at the Gasthaus, tipplers themselves, did not consider him a drunkard by any means.

Senior customs official Alois Hitler commanded respect with his peremptory and self-confidant manner. He dispensed level-headed advice to a cousin whose son contemplated a career in the customs office.

"Don't let him think the Finanzwach is... a game because he will quickly be disillusioned. First, he has to show absolute obedience to his superiors at all levels. Second, there is a good deal to learn in this occupation, all the more so if he has had little previous education. Topers, debtors, card players, and others who lead immoral lives cannot last. Finally, one has to go out on duty in all weathers, day or night." [5]

But it seems that Alois was a "toper" himself. His egocentrtclty, brutality, dysfunctional relationships, promiscuity, heavy smoking, religious indifference, overweening ambition, and restlessness all fit the profile of a middle-stage alcoholic. Klara Hitler was a typical co-dependant wife, entirely subject to the self-gratifying caprices of her husband. Intoxicants expand one's carnal ego at the soul's expense. As a middle-aged man Alois tried to fill his "inner void" by getting high. His son Adolf grew up as a "dry drunk." He inherited Alois's spiritual emptiness and drive for ego-expansion, but remained abstemious because his father's drunken misbehavior repelled him. Adolf was addicted to another ego-aggrandizing "drug": power lust.

Incestuous marriages tend to produce children with genetic aberrations. The Polzls, who intermarried for generations, had hunchbanks and imbeciles in the family. Klara Polzl was the daughter of Alois Hitler's half sister, Johanna Hitler Polzl, and granddaughter of Alois's probable father, Johann Nepomuk Hitler. Adolf, Ida, and Paula Hitler were all abnormal. Dr. Walter Langer referred to Paula as a "high grade moron." Dr. Edouard Bloch asserted that Ida may not have died in 1888 at the age of two, as alleged, but lived in Klara Hitler's household. However, the child he saw may have been the handicapped daughter of Theresia Polzl Schmidt, Klara's older sister. Scientific studies have proven that older men generate offspring with higher incidences of mental illnesses than younger fathers. Research has also demonstrated that the children of heavy-drinking males often manifest physical and neurological disorders. Therefore, it should surprise no one that Alois Hitler, a 51 year old alcoholic, involved in a sexual relationship with his niece, engendered an emotionally unstable son.

The elder Hitler's anti-religious views rubbed-off on Adolf. Alois's obituary described him as "frugal... well-informed ... fond of singing ... an authority on beekeeping ... a champion of law and order ... a progressive-minded man through and through." [6] Witnesses recalled that he ridiculed the local Catholic newspaper and only attended mass on Emperor Franz Josef's birthday.

Adolf Hitler contracted Austrian xenophobia from his father. As an Imperial customs official Alois worked as a border province's gatekeeper. With the propensity of alcoholics to blame others for unendurable conditions, he apparently voiced ill-humored complaints about illegal Jewish aliens from Russia, Croatian smugglers, and Serbian anarchists in his son's presence -- perhaps even prophesying that such elements would eventually destroy Austria. In 1931 Adolf told newspaper editor Richard Breiting:

Even as a child I heard my father say that Vienna was ruled by a clique, a mongrel crew which had collected in the capital." [7]

Alois and his barroom comrades, though pro-Habsburg, sympathized with the anti-Slav, anti-Semitic opinions of Georg Ritter von Schoenerer. In Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler alluded to his father's negativity.

"The other things the little fellow hears at home do not tend to further his respect for his surroundings. Not a single institution is left unattacked; starting with the teacher, up to the head of the State, be it religion, or morality as such, be it the State or society, no matter which, everything is pulled down in the nastiest manner into the filth of a depraved mentality."[8]

It is ironic that the writer of Mein Kampf would object to misanthropy and scatology, for in that same book he heaped scorn upon Jews, Slavs, and the French. Moreover, his numerous references to syphilis, germs, cancer, dung, and poison certainly reflect "the filth of a depraved mentality."

Klara Polzl Hitler has been described as a gentle, religious woman who seldom raised her voice. Surviving photographs show an attractive, somewhat melancholy, country girl with neatly combed hair and large, expressive eyes. Adolf inherited her arresting gray-blue eyes. She doted on precocious "Adi," but found it necessary to admonish him often, sometimes threatening to tell Alois of his transgressions. When Adolf misbehaved, she would point to the old man's pipe rack. Young Hitler detested his father, while simultaneously adopting him as a role model. Neglected and mistreated by her disagreeable "uncle-husband," Klara bestowed all her love on Adolf. Dr. Edouard Bloch said he had never seen a closer attachment between mother and son.

Young Hitler excelled in all subjects at Lambach Abbey School, and sang in the choir. At this institution he first saw the swastika. Father Theodor Hagen, Lambach's abbot, ordered workmen to engrave the oriental Hagenkreuz on doorways, windows, gates, and other structures on abbey grounds. This symbol, which formed a logo of his initials, also appeared on his family coat of arms. Father Hagen intended these decorations as a play on his name.

A photo of Hitler's 3rd grade class at Leonding School taken in 1897 shows him as a self-possessed honor student in the center, posing with arms folded. A few years later, Linz Realschule's class portrait shows him as a moon-faced dullard slouched in the background. What wrought this transformation? Part of the answer was that richer city boys from Linz looked down on "rubes" from Leonding. Also, the death of his younger brother Edmund deeply affected Hitler in February, 1900. Only ten at the time, he went to the burial alone during a snowstorm, while Klara lay sick in bed and Alois remained out of town on business.

"It was Hitler's first encounter with death, and the villagers remembered ... that (he) had been seen, at the time following Edmund's death, sitting on the cemetery wall night after night, gazing up at the stars." [9]

Adolf Hitler, left, at Lambach Abbey School, c. 1898

The Hitlers lived across from St. Michael's Church Cemetery. Adolf could see Edmund's headstone from his bedroom window.

Although the death certificate listed "complications arising from measles" as the cause of death, Edmund probably died of encephalitis -- which Adolf caught that same winter. Dr. Hans Berger-Prinz later theorized that Hitler's behavioral disorders and Parkinson's Disease at the end of his life might have stemmed from this childhood bout with encephalitis. Some of the symptoms manifested by post-encephalitic sociopaths correspond to Hitler's behavioral characteristics:

"The post encephalitic moral imbecile is often possessed of cleverness and brilliance ... (He can be) an exceedingly plausible and ready liar ... devoid of all moral and altruistic feelings ... knows neither shame nor gratitude ... (displays) viciousness and maliciousness with a gloating over the misfortunes of others... a coldly egotistical, vengeful, base, vile impertinence... truly explosive outbursts ... criminal actions... wanton destructiveness murder. .. arson ... mythomania ... cruelty as well as fraud malicious denunciations... grandiloquent and ecstatic states ... inclination to lie ... to confabulate past adventures ... to simulate and deceive." [10]

Between 1895 and 1904 Hitler attended five different schools. This constant change created emotional and intellectual disorientation. Perpetually the new kid in class, Hitler felt the need to prove himself continually.

In turn-of-the-century Austria high school boys either attended the Gymnasium to study "Humanities" or Realschule for technical instruction. Cynics quipped that Real Schools taught nothing human and Gymnasiums nothing real. Alois Hitler insisted that his son attend Realschule to prepare for a civil service career.

Dr. Edouard Humer of Linz Realschule found the "gaunt, pale-faced boy ... argumentative, self-opinionated, willful, arrogant, and bad-tempered. He had obvious difficulty fitting in at school... (and) demanded of his fellow pupils their unqualified subservience, fancying himself in the role of leader." [11]


Adolf Hitler, top right, at Linzer Realschule, c. 1903. Ludwig Wittgenstein is 3rd from left on the lower row.

By his own admission Hitler was a "young scamp." When a neighbor lady's chickens trespassed onto the family farm, Adolf grabbed his father's gun and blasted away at them. He brought knives and hatchets to school, played hooky, smoked cigarettes, scrawled lewd messages on blackboards, released cockroaches in class, blew kisses to nuns, and made impudent comments to teachers. Hitler brought in literature from a pro-divorce society to rankle Catholic clergymen, and once helped classmates lock a science teacher in his lab. One day they threw grass, leaves, and nutshells all over a classroom and told the principal this mess was part of their botany lesson. When school let out, he ran the streets playing soldiers or cowboys and Indians with other boys. Adults considered him unruly. Hitler's own recollections of his schoolboy pranks bear out this assessment.

"One of (Father) Schwarz's female relatives ran a shop in the Steinstrasse. We used to go in and ask for the most impossible things like ladies' underwear. When she said she hadn't got them we'd go out shouting: 'what a miserable hole -- never has anything!'" [12]

Father Franz DeSales Schwarz tried to teach Adolf Hitler religion for three years at Linzer Realschule --- 1902 through 1904. The future Nazi dictator baited him mercilessly. In addition to the usual schoolboy shenanigans, Hitler defied Father Schwarz by declaring his disbelief in the Immaculate Conception, admitting that he never prayed, and flashing black, white, and red pencils indicating his allegiance to Imperial Germany rather than Habsburg Austria. Schwarz punished the young heretic often, and may have been responsible for his transfer to Steyr High School in 1905. Hitler never forgot him. In the mid-1930's he commissioned a genealogist from the SS Ahenerbe to trace the Schwarz family tree to determine if his old adversary had any Jewish blood. Genealogical research proved that Father Schwarz descended from a long line of northern Austrian tradesmen and peasants.

Coincidentally, Ludwig Wittgenstein (4/26/1889-4/29/1951) attended Linzer Realschule with Hitler during the 1903-1904 term. The two boys -- born six days apart -- were not in the same class. Though nascent genius Wittgenstein didn't excel at Linz due to emotional stress, he earned passing grades in honors courses. Hitler wallowed in the "slow" section. Yet they sat less than six feet from each other in one class photograph. Linzer Realschule had an enrollment of 329 students, of whom 15 were Jewish. As a baptized Catholic, Wittgenstein would not have been counted among the Jews, even though he was three-quarters Jewish -- a fact that members of his family tried to conceal.

Hitler would surely have known of Wittgenstein, the richest, smartest, and best-looking boy in class, who hailed from exotic Vienna, where his parents were notable patrons of the arts. His father, Karl Wittgenstein, operated an iron, steel, and rubber cartel with the Rothschilds, which cornered the Austrian markets for those commodities. But tragedy had recently struck the Wittgensteins. Two of Ludwig's older brothers, Hans and Rudolf, committed suicide -- both due to shame about being homosexual. (A third brother, Kurt, shot himself in November, 1918 when the regiment under his command deserted.) The family's strategy in sending their high-strung youngest son to the Realschule was to "toughen him up." His neurotic brothers had been pampered and privately tutored with tragic results. Therefore, Karl Wittgenstein felt that Ludwig needed to be mainstreamed. Nonetheless, like his deceased elder brothers, he became a practicing homosexual by the age of eighteen, and battled depression most of his life.

Homosexually-inclined Hitler could not have failed to notice Wittgenstein who had wavy dark blonde hair, penetrating blue eyes, and chiseled features. Less desirable traits accompanied his physical attractiveness. He looked down on fellow students as "dreck," and would not permit any of them to address him with the informal "du."

Wittgenstein had perfect musical pitch and played clarinet with virtuosity. He could also whistle long passages from Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner. The second best whistler in Linzer Realschule happened to be Adolf Hitler. At this time Wittgenstein idolized the erratic Otto Weininger, an anti-feminist philosopher later revered by Dietrich Eckart and Hitler. The two boys also shared an interest in architecture and Wagnerian opera. Suicide fascinated Hitler, making it likely that he would have been intrigued by the fact that his classmate's two brothers had killed themselves.

Kimberly Cornish, author of the Jew of Linz, called attention to Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf where Hitler discussed an untrustworthy Jewish boy at Linzer Realschule who sometimes "ratted" on classmates. In another passage Hitler referred to "stammering Jews." Wittgenstein spoke with a stutter. Hitler may have regarded the haughty, but glamorous, "half-Jew" from Vienna with simultaneous feelings of attraction, hatred, envy, and fear. Dr. Edouard Bloch heard that Linzer Realschule expelled Hitler for "a sexual indiscretion." Could this have involved Ludwig Wittgenstein? Probably not. There is no evidence one way or the other.

Wittgenstein's lifelong dedication to honesty resulted in sardonic candor and a tendency to "confess" the truth even if it hurt himself and others. Bertrand Russell described him as "pure," Leonard Woolf thought him "cruel."

Wittgenstein earnestly studied Leo Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief while serving as an artillery officer in the Austrian army. Under the influence of that book he made a conscious effort to imitate Christ. After the war he gave away most of his inherited fortune, and taught poor children in rural elementary schools for six years. While a teacher in Trattenbach he donated money to the local parish priest who distributed it anonymously among poor families. Wittgenstein also paid for school supplies and class trips out of his own pocket. Though villagers considered him highly eccentric, they hailed him as a miracle worker when he fixed a broken down steam engine at the local wool factory. Yet most believed that Wittgenstein more closely resembled the "difficult" Jesus who spoke condescendingly to the Samaritan woman, asked "who are my mother and brothers?" (Mark 3:33-34,) and drove moneychangers out of the Temple. At the beginning of his biography on Wittgenstein, William Warren Bartley used Matthew 12:36-37 as an epigraph: " ... every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Wittgenstein always disapproved of what he termed "gassing" -- or communicating arbitrary and unverified opinions to others. Language should be used to advance the truth, not distort it. "Gassing" was something his former schoolmate Hitler did incessantly in both speeches and late night monologues inflicted upon his minions. Hitler's blather consisted mainly of what Wittgenstein termed "pseudo-propositions," deficient in truth value.

Although speculation about Hitler's contact with Wittgenstein at Linzer Realschule tantalizes us, and may have a basis in reality, a quotation from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) will be appropriate here. "Whereof one cannot speak, therof one must be silent ... What can be said at all (must) be said clearly and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

Hitler read most of Karl May's dime novels about America's Wild West. May, an ex-convict from Saxony, made a fortune cranking out stories featuring "Old Shatterhand," a leather-skinned cowpoke of German extraction. May, who became a pacifist toward the end of his life, respected Native Americans and portrayed most of them sympathetically in his books. Nonetheless, in self-defense Old Shatterhand shot scores of hostile Indians off their horses with his trusty Winchester rifle.

Hitler attended Karl May's funeral in Vienna on April 3, 1912. During World War II he re-read many of his western stories for relaxation.

"He read them ... while conducting his war with Russian and sometimes referred to the Russians as 'redskins.' As late as February, 1942 he claimed that he was grateful for these stories, which opened his eyes to the nature of the world." [13]

In 1943 the Fuhrer had 300,000 copies of May's Winnetau printed and distributed to troops fighting on the Eastern front.

Hitler had temper tantrums as a boy. Sometimes feelings of extreme wrath caused him to faint. At the age of thirteen strong-willed Adolf began to defy his grouchy father. Alois expected his son to enter the civil service one day, but the boy wanted to develop his artistic ability. Alois Jr. had bitterly disappointed his father by getting arrested for theft, then running away from home. Sixty-four year old Alois Sr. wasn't going to let Adolf turn into another ne' er-do-well. In Mein Kampf Hitler described their disagreement.

"His decision was extremely simple ... 'Artist, no, never as long as I live!' But since his son ... had apparently inherited his father's stubbornness, the same answer came back at him ... My father did not depart from his 'Never!' and I intensified my 'Oh, yes!' The consequences, indeed, were none too pleasant. The old man grew embittered, and ... so did I. My father forbade me to nourish the slightest hope of ever being allowed to study art. I went a step further and declared that if that was the case I would stop studying altogether." [14]

Adolf recalled his 65 year old father dragging him to an Austrian customs office as a thirteen year old boy. The clerks at their desks reminded young Hitler of "monkeys in cages."

Autodidact Hitler once grandly declared to August Kubizek: "You, of course, need teachers. For me they are not necessary!" [15] The only subjects Adolf paid attention to at Linz Realschule were German literature, history, geography, singing, drawing, and gymnastics. He regarded all teachers except Dr. Ludwig Poetsche as "pedantic nobodies." Poetsche fascinated Hitler with his Pan-German lectures and lantern shows, which explained how Austria's Slav majority was slowly but surely dislodging the German elite from power. By 1900 only eight million Germans lived in the Dual Monarchy, as opposed to forty-seven million non-Germans. With democracy in the air, German supremacy could not last.

At the turn of the 20th Century many depicted Austria as "the Balkans of Greater Germany." Prince Klemens Metternich remarked that the Balkans began in Vienna's southeast district. The Dual Monarchy teemed with Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Magyars, Hungarians, Croatians, and Jews. Mutually-exclusive "Pan" movements vied for power. Serbian separatists continually plotted revolution. Rival nationalistic groups warred among themselves. All cherished the same chauvinistic ambitions as Pan-Germans.

Every Pan movement deemed itself divinely appointed to rule not only its homeland, but surrounding "buffer zones" as well. Any nationalistic state would have to be militaristic, imperialistic, and exclusionary. Hitler's Pan-German beliefs made him intolerant of all other ethnic groups. His contempt for Austria, predisposed him to sedition. Well aware of similar disloyalty on the part of Pan-Slavs and Zionist Jews, he concluded that any future Pan German state had to be repressive and anti-democratic. From the lectures of Dr. Ludwig Poetsche Hitler learned that Europe resembled one big Austria, over which Germans must gain the upper hand.

In later years Hitler's hatred of Austrian decadence knew no bounds. Dr. Walter Langer theorized that he identified Austria with his unsatisfactory father and Germany with his beloved mother. In Mein Kampf he called his native land "an impossible state," [16] "on the brink of ruin," [17] ... "the Habsburg Cadaver," ... and "an old mosaic (with) cement crumbling." [18] The comic opera Austrian Army had a general staff of "band conductors" who failed to control undisciplined, multi-lingual, and badly-equipped troops. Despite its woeful lack of military preparedness, Austria constantly irritated Russia by stirring up trouble in the Balkans and Ottoman Empire. Hitler criticized Wilhelmine Germany for maintaining an alliance with such "an antique, impotent state." [19] The Kaiser and his ministers should have lured England away from its pact with Russia and France. It would have been better to choose Russia as a treaty partner than to have stood by "the putrid Austrian corpse," since "Slavdom would rather have shattered the monarchy ... than permit aid to Germany." [20] According to his dogmatic view Slavs opposed German rule, but lacked "state-creating ability" themselves. Hitler always maintained that the Baltic German aristocracy held Russia together, not the native Slavic population.

Alois Hitler dropped dead of a pulmonary hemorrhage in a tavern at 10 A.M. on January 23, 1903. He had gone out that morning to buy apples from a local farmer. Feeling ill, he staggered into the Gasthaus Stiefler, ordered a glass of wine, and collapsed. Bystanders carried him to a couch in the next room, where he died.

With the curmudgeonly old man gone, Adolf could pursue his whims unhampered.

_______________

Endnotes

1 August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, trans. E.V. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1955, p. 61.

2 R.G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1977, p. 134.

3 Hans Frank, Facing the Gallows, Munich, 1993, p. 332.

4 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1943, p. 28.

5 Robert Payne, The Life & Death of Adolf Hitler, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1973, p. 10.

6 Ibid., p. 29.

7 Edouard Calic, ed. Richard Breiting, Secret Conversations with Hitler, trans. Richard Barry, John Day & Co., New York, p. 1971, p. 66.

8 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 43.

9 J. Sydney Jones, Hitler in Vienna 1907-1913, Stein & Day, New York, 1983, p. 226.

10 Ron Rosenbaum (Introduction p. xxxii) op. cit Acta Psychiatrica, "Zur Kriminalitat der Encephalitiker," 1930.

11 Waite, p. 188.

12 H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944, Farrar, Strauss & Young, New York, 1953, p. 156.

13 Minna C. Klein & H. Anthony Klein, Hitler's Hang-Ups, Dutton, New York, 1976, p. 20.

14 Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 9-10.

15 Kubizek, p. 228.

16 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 121.

17 Ibid., p. 148.

18 Ibid., p. 124.

19 Ibid., p. 657.

20 Ibid., p. 147.

[admin]

14: From The Waldviertel to Vienna

"I really wanted to be an architect. Vienna's Jews knew how to put a stop to that."

-- Adolf Hitler

After Alois Hitler's death the Austrian Customs Service provided a generous pension to his dependents. In June, 1905 Klara Hitler moved from Leonding to Linz. Adolf Hitler's grades and behavior were both unsatisfactory at Linzer Realschule. Dr. Edouard Bloch heard from a local teacher that he nearly got expelled from the Realschule for a "sexual indiscretion" in his 12th year. At any rate, sixteen year old Hitler transferred to Steyr Regional Boys High School, fifty miles from Linz, in the summer of 1905. He and four other students boarded with Herr and Frau Chichini. His formal education ended that December. Hitler's grades had been mediocre:

Moral Conduct 3 (Satisfactory)
Diligence 4 (Erratic)
Religion 4 (Adequate)
Geography & History 4 (Adequate)
Mathematics 5 (Inadequate)
Chemistry 4 (Adequate)
Physics 3 (Satisfactory)
Geometry 4 (Adequate)
Freehand Drawing 2 (Praiseworthy)
Gymnastics 1 (Excellent)
Stenography 5 (Inadequate)
Handwriting 5 (Unpleasing)

While at Steyr Hitler and the other boys sensed tension in the Chichinis' marriage, and delighted in sowing discord between them. Herr Chichini, an impoverished Tyrolean nobleman twice his wife's age, held a patronage job with the town of Steyr. He did little work at the office, and none around the house. Attractive Petronella Chichini had to cook, wash, and clean-up after four boarders, as well as her slothful husband. To provoke an argument the boys would confide some small complaint to Herr Chichini at table -- the food was cold, too bland, or served late. He always rose to the bait and passed these criticisms on to his wife. She would immediately bite her lip and start banging pots, pans, and utensils around. After dinner, Hitler and his housemates snickered while the Chichinis shouted at each other in their suite. Petronella often shoved Comte Chichini out the door after such these arguments. Hitler and his compatriots laughed uproariously whenever they saw "the Count" sleeping in the hallway as they skipped off to school.

Many women found Hitler attractive. Frau Chichini liked him for being neat, superficially polite, and "smoldering." He brought out her maternal instincts by soliciting advice about various matters. After the school's graduation ceremony, Hitler and a few classmates celebrated by getting drunk at a country inn. Somehow he made it back to Chichinis' dormitory. The next day hung-over Adolf realized that his diploma was missing. What should he do? His mother would be disappointed if no "sheepskin" could be shown. He told Petronella his story. She told him to go back and request a duplicate. He immediately ran over to the school. No sooner did Hitler walk through the door than the secretary grabbed his arm and escorted him directly to the principal's office. "Is this what you're looking for?" the principal asked coyly, extending a soiled piece of paper on the end of a stick. Hitler turned several shades of red. "A farmer brought this in yesterday." On his way back from the tavern intoxicated Hitler had evidently defecated in a field, wiped himself with the certificate, and thrown it away. Yet he had no memory of it. The idea of having such a complete black-out stunned him. He solemnly resolved never to get drunk again, and stuck to that pledge for the rest of his life.


1905 sketch of 16-year old Adolf Hitler by Sturmlechner, a classmate at Steyr Regional Boys' High School

Nearly every summer from childhood through adolescence Hitler and his family vacationed for a few weeks in Spital at the house of his mother's older sister Theresia Schmidt. Hitler's cousin Johann Schmidt recalled that Adolf always came with "lots of books (and) was constantly busy reading ... " [1] Spital may have been the scene of Hitler's encounter with an amorous milkmaid circa 1904. Reinhold Hanisch related that "when she made advances ... he ran away, knocking over a churn of milk in his haste." [2] Hitler continued to visit older sister Angela Raubal in Spital after his mother's death -- at least once during his Vienna years, and twice while on leave during World War I.

The era of the "Linz Dandy" began when Hitler returned home. To affect a university student's look Adolf bought a new suit, derby, and ivory-tipped walking stick. He attended the opera regularly, and became a passionate fan of Richard Wagner. His sister Paula remembered that her brother saw Gotterdamerung at least seven times in 1905, and Lohengrin ten times.

In 1906 Klara Hitler moved across the river from Linz to Urfahr. She bought Adolf a grand piano and paid for lessons from October, 1906 to January, 1907. Her moody teen-aged son frittered away day-time hours with various types of wool-gathering: aimless reading, sketching, daydreaming, writing poetry, and planning Linz's complete reconstruction. Architecture and urban planning would absorb Hitler for the rest of his life. This desire to build utopian "garden cities" for the German master race also preoccupied other Ariosophic thinkers, such as Theodore Fritsch, Guido von List, Willibald Hentschel, and Bernhard Forster.

Young Hitler had a compulsive need for ego-expansion, and wanted to achieve it as an artist. Klara worried that her son had not yet learned a trade.

In the fall of 1905 Hitler met August Kubizek at Linz Opera House. Kubizek, the son of an upholsterer, could play several instruments, and dreamed of studying music at Vienna's Conservatory of Music. Needing a sounding-board for his high-flown ideas, Hitler latched onto this easygoing young musician, whom he called "Gustl." As Kubizek put it: "he had to speak, and needed someone to listen to him." [3] Effusive Hitler lectured his friend on music, art, literature, and architecture. They attended opera performances, went to museums, hiked around Linz together, and discussed their aspirations.

On one of their strolls during spring of 1906 Hitler beheld a pretty blonde girl named Stefanie walking with her mother on Linz's Landstrasse. He fell in love at first sight, and worshipped her from afar for the next several months. Hitler haunted the promenade on Sundays, hoping to see Stefanie. His face reddened when she once stopped to flirt with a young officer, yet he soon spoke again of how he and his beloved would one day preside over Linz's leading artistic salon. Though Hitler never exchanged a word with Stefanie, he wrote an anonymous love letter declaring his admiration for her and intention to propose marriage once his studies were completed. This "platonic affair" blended perfectly into Hitler's adolescent fantasy world.

Adolf Hitler made his first visit to Vienna in May, 1906 to visit his godparents, "swimming pool attendant" Johann Prinz and his wife Johanna. What young Hitler saw of the "Phaecian City" captivated him. He soon convinced his mother to bankroll nebulous plans to study at the Vienna Academy of Art. In September, 1907 he took a train from Linz to Vienna by himself and secured lodgings at 29 Stumpergasse from a Czech woman named Maria Zakreys.

The Vienna Academy only accepted 28 of 113 candidates in October, 1907. Hitler was not one of them. Though a good draftsman, his street scenes focusing on architecture did not impress the judges. Heroic buildings overwhelmed stunted trees and insignificant human figures. Despite the Academy's rejection, Hitler remained in Vienna with the intention of reapplying in 1908.

Almost immediately, he lapsed back into his dream world, wasting time on impractical projects such as his imagined rebuilding of the Ringstrasse. He composed an Icelandic opera scored for primitive instruments, worked on a recipe for a non-alcoholic "people's drink" similar to Coca Cola, painted street scenes, read books on archeology, and auditioned for a singing part with the Vienna chorus. According to one account, Hitler made the choir as a tenor, but had to drop out because he could not afford a tuxedo.

His instability over the next three years was partly due to the sorrow he experienced as a result of Klara Hitler's death from cancer. On October 22, 1907 Dr. Edouard Bloch sadly informed Klara that the painful iodoform treatments he administered had not arrested the growth of malignant tumors on her breast. She had less than three months to live. Klara initially withheld this bad news from her son. As soon as Adolf received word of his mother's impending death in late November, 1907, he returned to Linz.

Dr. Bloch described Adolf as a "sallow, frail boy who lived within himself." [4] The youth's devotion to his mother impressed him.

"He would watch her every movement so that he might anticipate her slightest need. His eyes, which usually gazed mournfully in the distance would light up whenever she was relieved of pain." [5]

Hitler buried his mother on December, 23, 1907. Dr. Bloch observed grief-stricken Adolf at the funeral.

"In all my forty-odd years of practice I had never seen a young man so broken by grief and bowed down by suffering as young Adolf Hitler was that day." [6]

Following his mother's death Hitler inherited between 500 and 1,000 crowns. He also began receiving an orphan's pension of 25 crowns per month. An additional sum would be paid to him when he turned 24 in 1913. In the summer of 1908 he visited his half-sister Angela Raubal. Legal guardian Josef Mayroder and brother-in-law Leo Raubal offended him by suggesting that he apprentice himself to a local baker. He left in a huff and broke off relations with his family for the next eight years.

On February 24, 1908 August Kubizek moved in with him to study music at The Vienna Conservatory. Shortly thereafter, Kubizek invited Hitler to a dinner and concert at the house of Dr. and Mrs. Rudolf Jahoda on Heiligenstadter Strasse. Dr. Jahoda, the scion of a prominent Jewish family, held several patents for chemical products, including luminous paint for alarm clock hands and road signs. Looking back on that evening Kubizek realized that he may have unwittingly abused the Jahodas' hospitality by bringing Adolf Hitler into their home, but added that his friend behaved properly -- hardly speaking at all. Rudolf Jahoda and his Italian Catholic wife Pina were both accomplished musicians. They often invited students from the Conservatory to dinner parties and played quartets and other chamber music pieces with them. At the Jahodas' luxurious home Kubizek experienced "truly sophisticated conviviality possible only in Vienna." [7] Hitler admired Dr. Jahoda's library and enjoyed the music, but felt uncomfortable about his own cultural backwardness and shabby clothes. Kubizek stated that his friend never made any negative remarks about the Jahodas.

In July, 1908 Kubizek went home to work for his father. Hitler no longer lived at Frau Zakreys' lodging house when he returned to Vienna in November. He had probably become disgusted with Kubizek's accomplishments at the Conservatory and his own failure to gain entrance to the Academy of Art. Hitler blamed Jews for his disappointed hopes. Twenty-three years later he complained to Richard Breiting about Leipzig Academy of Art Director Max Seliger, who "was always telling stories to show that only Jews were capable of being gifted artists, businessmen or politicians," [8] and Ilse Dernburg's novels, in which "only Jews were ... successful business leaders." [9]

In subsequent years Hitler tended to be secretive about his Vienna period. When an Austrian Nazi proposed that marble plaques be placed at his addresses between 1908 and 1913, Hitler exploded with rage. "This act of piety was not only unrewarded, (but) ... prohibited." [10]

In November, 1908 Hitler moved to a room at 22 Felberstrasse without leaving a forwarding address. From there he relocated to 56 Sechshausestrasse on August 22, 1909, but only stayed one month due to lack of funds. His whereabouts between September, 1909 and January, 1910 are unknown. Destitute by Christmas, he appealed to his Aunt Johanna ("Hanni") Pozl, a hunchbacked charwoman from Spital, who gave him 50 crowns. Josef Greiner claimed that Hitler sometimes slept in Prater Park during the fall of 1909 -- on grass in dry weather, and under the stone arch when it rained. He more likely stayed at The Refuge for the Roofless in Meidling and one of Vienna's six public "warming rooms." Besides Emperor Franz Josef and Archduchess Valerie, the chief supporters of these heated stations for the poor were Jewish philanthropists Mortiz Singer, Baron Mortiz Konigswater and the Epstein family.

Because of his phobias for foreigners and disease Hitler avoided the jammed dosshouses where criminals, derelicts, and illegal aliens of both sexes slept on floors for 40 hellers a night. Unwashed Czechs, Ruthenians, Magyars, Slovenes, and Galician Jews repelled him, yet the city teemed with them. Vienna's population had jumped from 650,000 to 1,675,000 between 1860 and 1900. The number of Jews increased from 6,200 to 118,500. Only Berlin had grown faster during that time frame. In 1910 nearly half of Vienna's residents were born elsewhere. Housing shortages resulted in severe overcrowding. Journalist Karl Klager visited a tenement in 1901 which packed 276 people into 31 two-bedroom apartments.

The burgeoning Ostjuden population made Adolf Hitler not merely uncomfortable, but manic. He lived in the Leopoldstadt district, known as "Matzohville," because of its high percentage of Jewish residents.

Researchers suspect the Gestapo of destroying most records pertaining to Hitler's Vienna period. Though hostel companion Reinhold Hanisch considered him too weak and lazy for manual labor, Hitler claimed to have worked as a porter, snow-shoveller, postcard painter, and hod-carrier. One construction job allegedly ended because fellow workers threatened to toss him off a scaffold for condemning trade unions. There is no independent corroboration of this story. Most scholars dismiss it as a "Hitlerian myth" designed to assure the masses of his proletarian background.

Around January, 1910 Reinhold Hanisch offered to act as a salesman for Hitler's art works. This arrangement succeeded initially. In addition to postcards and paintings, Hitler drew advertising posters for hair tonic, soap, shoe polish, and Teddy Antiperspirant. With their first sale on February 9, 1910, the duo moved into Mannerheim Model Home for Men, where Hitler would remain until 1913.

The Mannerheim Hostel on Meldemannstrasse had been constructed just five years earlier. Inmates paid three dollars a day for lodging, ten cents per meal, and 6 cents for bath towels. It had central coal heat and could accommodate 544 men. The facility's green-tiled dining hall served up to 352 at a time. Each man got an iron bed with linen and blanket, a clothes rail, and four square meters of space. Like college dormitories, the hostel had bathrooms with showers on every floor. Men were not allowed in rooms from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., however they could read in the spacious first floor day room, which included a small library of books, newspapers, and magazines. House rules forbade immoral conduct, noise, gambling, smoking outside designated areas, spitting, and drinking alcoholic beverages on premises. Sick individuals were required to stay in the hospital wing. Men had to wear robes or towels when going to and from showers. They were not permitted to stroll around nude.

Like Stalin 31 years later, Hanisch soon regretted entering into a pact with Hitler. The partners had a falling out in August, 1910. The artist wanted his painting of Das Rathaus (City Hall) sold for at least 100 crowns. Hanisch could find no buyers. After days of schlepping around town with it, he unloaded Hitler's masterpiece for 12 crowns to Wenzel Reiner, owner of a frame shop on Porzellangasse. Hanisch gave the dumbstruck painter 6 crowns in accordance with their fifty-fifty commission split. Hitler refused to believe he had only gotten twelve crowns for that painting and accused him of pocketing the difference. On August 10, 1910 he sued Hanisch. The judge ruled in Hitler's favor, indicating that Hanisch apparently sold the painting to Reiner for more than 12 kronen.

Reinhold Hanisch resurfaced as a problem for Hitler in the early 1930's. In exchange for cash he fed source material to unfriendly early biographers Konrad Heiden and Rudolf Olden. Police arrested him twice in attempts to sell fake Hitler watercolors. Fifty-three year old Hanisch mysteriously died of "heart failure" while imprisoned in 1937. The New Republic published his three-part article "I Was Hitler's Buddy," two years after his death.

In Autumn of 1910 Hitler might have worked briefly as a decorative painter in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. This rumor gave rise to the "Mad Paperhanger" misnomer of later years. The few crowns he earned were barely enough to support himself. At this time a few Mannerheim residents urged Superintendent Johann Hanya to evict Hitler for ragged clothing and cantankerous views. Completely broke by December, he again requested funds from Aunt Johanna Polzl ("Hannitante,") who came through by giving him 2,000 kronen, more than half her life savings.

With this grant Hitler fell back into his routine of drawing, opera-attendance, and sweet-eating. He grew a beard. Old hands warned new arrivals at the Men's Hostel not to sit in Herr Hitler's chair by the reading room window. He observed an iron routine of painting or reading in sulky silence. However, chance remarks against Pan-German solidarity could evoke diatribes. A wit at the hostel dubbed him "Oom Paul Krueger" after the bearded Boer leader, who vociferously preached apartheid and Anglophobia.

Imbued with Habsburg Austria's snobbish class-consciousness, the customs official's son considered himself socially superior to other hostel mates, ten percent of whom were Jewish, the remainder consisting primarily of laborers from Austrian provinces, and "down-and-outers" of every description. He mocked their low level of culture. A trade union parade on the Ring one day reminded him of a "gigantic dragon." Yet he spoke of one day taming that behemoth after the manner of Mayor Karl Lueger. Those who knew him wondered how. August Kubizek and Reinhold Hanisch both saw that he lacked the common touch. Kubizek observed that

"contact with people simply was disgusting to him.... He found the motley crew that was milling though the Prater unbearable. As much as he sympathized with the little people, he couldn't keep them far enough away from himself." [11]

Reinhold Hanisch wrote:

"He repeatedly said of the workers that they were an indolent mass that cared about nothing but eating, drinking and women." [12]

Nevertheless, Hitler thought Marxists had a correct appreciation of the proletariat's power. On Sunday, September 17, 1911 he witnessed a huge labor union protest against meat price increases. Thirty speakers addressed an obstreperous mob which shouted revolutionary slogans on cue. Hitler gazed entranced as masses of workers

" ... swelled to the proportions of a menacing army ... For nearly two hours I stood there watching with bated breath the gigantic human dragon slowly winding by." [13]

Whoever could tame this dreaded monster would one day rule Germany.

In 1911 a constable served Hitler with legal papers. Fearing arrest for failing to register for the draft, Hitler was relieved that the matter only involved an appeal from his half-sister Angela regarding the orphan's pension. Angela Raubal's husband Leo had died in August, 1910, leaving her with three young children to raise alone. She sought to compel Hitler to surrender his 25 kronen per month. He agreed to do so.

In the summer of 1912 Hitler made two sentimental journeys back to his native Waldviertel. He stayed at Branau and Hafeld to do some sightseeing and sketching. Another hiatus followed these excursions. He probably made an exploratory trip to Munich in the fall of 1912, after receiving an inheritance of 819 kronen, 98 hellers from his father's estate. With this windfall as a cushion, Hitler decided to move to Germany. On May 24, 1913, a sunny spring Sunday, he traveled by train to Munich with a nineteen year old friend named Rudolf Hausler.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Timothy W. Ryback, "Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for God," Atlantic Monthly, May, 2003, on-line page 5 of 21.

2 Reinhold Hanisch, "I Was Hitler's Buddy," New Republic, April 19 1939, p. 297. Note: This three-part article was published two years after Hanisch's death.

3 August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, trans. E. V. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1955, p. 22.

4 Dr. Edouard Bloch, "My Patient Hitler," Colliers Magazine, March, 1941.

5 R. G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1977, p. 114.

6 John Toland, Adolf Hitler, Ballantine Books, New York, 1976, p. 35.

7 Kubizek, p. 285.

8 Edouard Calic, ed. Richard Breitling, Secret Conversations with Hitler, trans. Richard Barry, John Day & Co., New York, 1971, p. 28.

9 Ibid., p. 27.

10 William Jenks, Vienna and the Young Hitler, Columbia University Press, New York, 1960, p. 36.

11 Kubizek, p. 203.

12 Hanisch, p. 298.

13 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 178, op. cit. Mein Kampf, p. 41.

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15: Political Awakening

"Ignorance causes ruin in the world."

-- Buddha

Hitler's drawing of Old Vienna, c. 1911

Hitler developed a keen interest in politics during his five and a half year Vienna period. The youthful bohemian closely read newspapers and magazines as if he were already a politician. Sebastian Haffner observed that 20 year old Hitler had already embraced "politics as a substitute for life."

Young Hitler admired Vienna's mayor, Karl Lueger (1844-1910) for his populist appeal. From Lueger's example Hitler learned to pander to the common people, since they had the numbers. "Handsome Karl," the son of a school janitor and cabinetmaker's daughter, won scholarships to Realschule, then law school. As an attorney he won several precedent-setting cases which pitted indigent plaintiffs against wealthy landlords and employers. Lueger got elected Mayor of Vienna in 1902 by promising to lower rents and utility bills. In his campaign he rallied blue-collar workers and small tradesmen by attacking Slavs, Jews, and decadent noblemen. When a Jewish Reichsrat deputy accused him of stating that he did not care "whether the Jews were hanged or shot," [1] Lueger corrected him: "beheaded, I said!" [2] When badgering reporters once pointed out that his friend Dr. Ignaz Mandl was Jewish, Lueger shouted: "I determine who's a Jew!" [3] In fact, he felt ambivalence about Vienna's Jews, calling them "beasts of prey in human form" [4] one moment, then qualifying that slur by adding:

" ... they're not all that bad, and we couldn't ... do without them. My Viennese constantly feel like taking a rest, and the Jews ... always feel like working." [5]

Lueger actually performed well as Vienna's Burgomeister. While in office, he oversaw an ambitious "Beautification Plan," and succeeded in purchasing municipal gas works, electrical plants, and transit lines through bond issues. After acquiring these utilities he reduced charges for trolley fares, electricity, and fuel, thus guaranteeing his own re-election. Lueger built well-designed public housing, improved schools, and pushed through a free lunch program for poor students. Under his administration Vienna adopted Europe's first municipal recycling program, which converted garbage into fertilizer.

But Hitler hated another popular icon -- Jewish Social Democrat Viktor Adler. The son of a wealthy businessman, Adler embarked on his political career in 1889 by supporting Vienna's first trolley drivers' strike. Shortly afterward he founded the Arbeiter Zeitung newspaper. In 1905 he ran for a Reichsrat seat and won. His party's platform included a national pension program, rent controls, pacifism, and equality for the Slavic and Jewish minorities. He made famous anti-war speeches in 1909 and 1912 which helped defuse the Balkan crises of those years. Although Adler was sincere in his espousal of humanitarian reforms, he epitomized "ersatz Jewish liberalism" to Germanophiles. In Mein Kampf Hitler maintained that "the masses will always ... follow the man who in economic matters offers the most shameless promises. And in this the Jew is a master." [6] He suspected Adler of secretly conspiring with "Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits"? to overthrow native-born authority figures, and establish a "Jewish Republic." Exactly how pacifist Adler colluded with Gold International "war profiteers," Hitler never explained.

Alluding to Adler, Friedrich Austerlitz, Anton David and other Jewish socialists Hitler wrote:

"How come our German labor leaders belong almost exclusively to a nation one never sees working? ... What's the percentage of Jews among ... manual laborers, locksmiths, ... miners, sanitation coachmen, cobblers ... etc.?" [8]

Of course, former Mannerheim Hostel friend Reinhold Hanisch testified that he had

"never ... seen (Hitler) do any hard work, nor did I hear from him the story that he did a worker's job in the building industry ... " [9]

The clownish behavior of Austro-Hungary's Reichsrat intensified Hitler's low opinion of parliamentary government. Representatives spoke ten different languages in the chamber. They could agree on nothing. Many acted liked unruly schoolboys, shouting obscenities during speeches and throwing inkwells at one another. Fist fights broke out regularly. Assemblymen transacted no business of any consequence in this slapstick atmosphere. For national security reasons the Empire completely shut down its irresponsible legislature during World War I.

Hitler and August Kubizek visited the Reichsrat in 1908. They heard members whistling, pounding their desks, and cursing in German, Czech, Italian, and Polish. The proceedings reminded them of a Punch and Judy farce. Kubizek looked at his friend.

"... In the middle of this dreadful spectacle ... Adolf ... jumped up, his fingers clenched to fists, ... his face ... burning with excitement." [10]

In Mein Kampf Hitler described the disorderly mob scene as:

"a wildly gesticulating mass screaming all at once in every different key, presided over by a good-natured old uncle who was striving ... to revive the House's dignity by violently ringing his bell..." [11]

A different picture greeted the young spectator when he showed up a few weeks later.

"The hall was absolutely empty. Down below everybody was asleep. A few deputies were ... yawning at one another." [12]

The alternating pandemonium and torpor he witnessed in Austria's legislature reinforced his contempt for democratic government.

Hitler regarded Reichsrat Deputy Georg Ritter Schoenerer as a more profound thinker than Karl Lueger. Schoenerer's father amassed his fortune as a railroad contractor for the Rothschilds. In the 1870's this young man of privilege started out as a corruption-fighting friend of the poor. He lobbied for the building of schools, fire departments, and libraries. Somewhere along the way modern "swindle enterprises" disillusioned Schoenerer. He became convinced that investment banking and the stock market were Jewish-controlled scams. Within a few years this former idealist sunk into the ruts of four related "isms:" anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, Pan-Germanism, and alcoholism. He desired "Anschluss" (reunification) with Germany, not just an alliance. Schoeneret's paeans to Germany alternated with vicious attacks on non-Germans. He sponsored measures against street peddling and Russian immigration -- both aimed at Eastern Jews. With the slogan "through purity to unity!" [13] he sought to dispossess the Dual Monarchy's non-German subjects.

On March 9, 1888 Schoenerer undid his political career. The Neues Wiener Tagblatt newspaper had announced the death of German Emperor Wilhelm I. Schoenerer and his companions at the Skoda Tavern solemnly drank toasts and sung dirges. When a later edition retracted this story, admitting that Wilhelm had not yet exhaled his last breath, Schoenerer dried his tears and went ballistic. In a fury he recruited twenty-seven other boozers to accompany him to the Tagblatt's office for a showdown. They broke into the building and smashed furniture. Wild-eyed Schoenerer screamed at the mostly Christian employees:

"This is the day of vengeance! No mercy for you Jewish devils! By spreading lying reports you've tried to make capital out of the death of his Germanic Majesty!" [14]

With that, he and his party advanced upon them with brass knuckles and canes. Had not some burly printers from the press room come to their aid, Tagblatt staff members would have been beaten to a pulp and thrown out of windows. Karl Lueger excused Schoenerer on the grounds that he had perpetrated "a stupidity, not a crime," [15] but the judges saw otherwise, finding him guilty of assault and vandalism. On May 5, 1888 the court abolished his noble title, expelled him from parliament, and sentenced him to four months in prison. It took Schoenerer five years to recapture his Reichsrat seat. Between 1893 and 1901 he drummed up support for the pro-German New Lutheran Movement, while continuing to censure Jews and foreigners. After his political career ended in 1901, Schoenerer retired to the family estate in Rosenau and became Austria's leading Pan-German pundit. Between 1907 and 1913 Hitler read many of his articles, but faulted him for being anti-Catholic. How could one build a mass party in Austria without Catholic support? Though he respected Schoenerer's ideological purity, he considered Lueger a much savvier politician.

The most sensational newspaper story between October, 1907 and July, 1908 was Germany's Eulenburg Scandal, which involved former Ambassador to Austria Prince Philippe Eulenburg, a close friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II. On October 17, 1907 Jewish journalist Maxmilien Harden broke the story that Eulenberg had engaged in homosexual relationships with a variety of partners, including General Kuno von Moltke. This "Jewish smear campaign" discredited not only the German monarchy, but the Pan-German movement as well. Hitler denounced Harden and the "Jewish yellow press" for dragging Deutschland into the dirt. He positively loathed his chief source, gay rights pioneer Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who posed as a "moralist" and champion of progressive values.

Hirschfeld's statements that homosexuals frequented the opera and men's hostels hit close to home. Privately, Hitler must have worried about the possibility of being "outed" himself. Even then he indulged in daydreams of being a "tribune of the German Volk." What if Jewish news hounds targeted him someday?

Lothar Machtan, Samuel lngra, and others allege that Hitler had homosexual affairs in Vienna. They mention August Kubizek, Reinhold Hanisch, Rudolf Hausler, and Jewish business associate Josef Neumann as possible partners. Kubizek, Hanisch, and Hausler later married. No documentary evidence can be adduced. Machtan reads much into Kubizek's account (published twelve years after Hitler's death.) For example, he interprets the story about Adolf and Gustl being forced to take refuge in a barn during a rainstorm as indicative of a homosexual encounter. Kubizek's statement about Hitler disappearing for days without explanation suggests to Machtan an escapade with a rich homosexual. Passages supporting Hitler's heterosexuality -- his infatuation with Stefanie and the burning of a homosexual's business card -- are dismissed as cover-ups ... These innuendoes, while interesting, don't rise to the level of proofs, as Machtan admits. He marshals more persuasive substantiation of Hitler's homosexuality between the years of 1915 and 1927, which will be discussed in Chapter 18.

Vienna was a seething cauldron of social ferment in the early 1900's. Its population had risen from 827,000 to 2,040,000 between 1890 and 1910, more than four times the growth rate of St. Petersburg and Paris. Like the American cities of New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, Vienna expanded primarily because of immigration. Slavs seeking employment poured in from outlying territories. Russian persecutions brought a stream of "Ostjuden" into the city. Border guard Alois Hitler viewed these new arrivals as interlopers or crooks. Adolf Hitler shared his father's xenophobic prejudices. By 1910 Vienna had 175,318 Jewish residents, who made up 8.6% of the population. The Brigittenau District where Hitler resided was 17% Jewish. Dr. Leo Goldhammer diced the statistics further. 27% of Vienna's Realschule students were Jewish. One out of six Jews married gentile women, though this seemed partly due to a ratio of 1,000 Jewish men to 965 Jewish females. Jews only committed 6.38% of Vienna's crimes, however they accounted for 28% of fiscal misdemeanors such as fraud, bankruptcy, forgery, and vending without a license.


After Austria's 1910 census, the Little German finds himself overshadowed by Czechs and Jews. (Cartoon by Kikeriki)

Historian James Webb commented that Adolf Hitler's ideology took shape in the "sub-Bohemia of skid row" [16] between 1907 and 1913. The privation and rejection Hitler experienced in prewar Vienna bred feelings of resentment, isolation, and anxiety, which manifested as Judeophobia. This angst led to withdrawal, the creation of a tangible enemy, and projection of his own "shadow" (fallen nature) upon the scapegoat. Close study of anti-Semitic tracts nurtured these paranoid delusions, which crystallized by 1908.

During one of his prowls through Leopoldstadt Hitler beheld a sight which appalled him.

" ... As I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought. For, to be sure, they had not looked like this in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form. Is this a German?" [17]

In his first newspaper article (Munchener Beobachter, August 13, 1919) Hitler stated that he first recognized the Jewish peril at age eighteen, thus changing from a "weakly cosmopolitan to a fanatical anti-Semite." [18] Thus, the incident mentioned above might have occurred in 1907 or early 1908.

Historians have variously dated the onset of Hitler's obsessive anti-Semitism as 1903 (due to exposure to Jewish boys at Linzer Realschule,) 1907 (when he arrived in Vienna and soon beheld the "apparition" of an Orthodox Jew in caftan,) 1910 (an impoverished period during which he intensively studied anti-Semitic literature,) 1913 (the year of his relocation to Munich,) and 1919 when he experienced both Germany's defeat and the Spartacist Revolt. It seems that his irrational hatred of Jews began prior to 1907 and progressively intensified over the years. He suppressed anti-Semitic outbursts during the election campaigns of 1930-1932, but the toned-down rhetoric of that period was merely a ploy to lure moderate voters.

As a boy Hitler had been exposed to the bigotries of his alcoholic father. In adolescence he read Linz's rabidly anti-Semitic Linzer Fliegende Blatter. Viennese tabloids further aggravated his anti-Semitism. Heinrich Class's Pan German weekly Alldeutsche Tageblatt attacked Jews, Slavs, and the Catholic Church. Whenever a rural curate seduced a peasant girl, banner headlines trumpeted juicy details to eager readers. Using the pseudonym Daniel Fryman, Class published "If I Were the Kaiser" in 1912, which advocated German expansion into neighboring states, press censorship, abridgement of voting rights, statutes prohibiting socialism, and anti-Semitic measures, including immigration quotas, job discrimination, and higher taxes on Jews. Alldeutsche Tageblatt ran a series on Reichsrat Deputy Karl Iro's campaign against "the gypsy scourge" in June, 1908. Since these "congenital criminals" usually went by first names rather than surnames, and shunned all forms of official registration -- such as birth, marriage, and death records -- Iro wanted the Austrian government to tattoo every gypsy on the right forearm. Hitler later applied this barbaric policy to Jews as well as gypsies.

Karl Vogelsang's Das Vaterland and Ernst Vergami's Deutsche Volksblatt held Jews accountable for all ills besetting Austria. Favorite targets were Jewish bankers who foreclosed on farms, grain dealers who ruined Austrian farmers by flooding the market with low-priced American wheat, and clothing merchants who milked the public by constantly inventing new fashions.

[Hitler also read anti-Jewish literature written by Paul De Lagarde, Theodor Fritsch, Eugen Durhring, Guido von List, and Adolf Josef Lanz. Timothy Ryback found Hitler's heavily-underlined copy of Paul De Lagarde's German Essays in the Library of Congress. One boldly bracketed passage cites the need for "a singular man with the ability and energy" to unify the Reich, and exile "Polish and Austrian Jews to Palestine." [19] Hitler especially savored the seeming erudition of Fritsch's Handbook on the Jewish Question, which went through twenty-five editions between 1887 and 1894. The author quoted anti-Semitic invective from recognized scholars such as Seneca, Erasmus, and Luther. Dietrich Eckart later imitated Fritsch's intellectual pretensions in his pamphlet "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin." By reading Eugen Duhring Hitler acquired the erroneous idea that Jews were really a race, not a religion. Duhring mischaracterized them as being "not simply evil, but irremediably evil." [20] His view of Jewish incorrigibility provided Hitler with a "philosophical basis" for his "Final Solution." In Mein Kampf (1925), he wrote that the German Volk

" ... had to combat poison gas with poison gas. It is our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a question of to be or not to be." [21]

In spite of his growing Judeophobia Hitler continued to associate with Jews between 1907 and 1913, and did not seem to embrace eliminationist anti-Semitism. Reinhold Hanisch went so far as to claim that his bearded friend looked Jewish, and "preferred being around Jews," [22] who comprised one-tenth of the Meidling Men's Hostel in Brigiettenau.

" ... I often joked with him that he must be of Jewish blood, since such a beard rarely grows on a Christian chin; also he has big feet, as a desert wanderer must have." [23]

Jewish doctor Edouard Bloch not only treated Klara Hitler, but also served as Adolf's personal physician from 1904 to 1907. Hitler still had enough respect for Dr. Bloch in 1938 to grant him police protection, and a passport to the United States. August Kubizek testified that Hitler enjoyed Felix Mendelsohn's musical works, and "had the greatest admiration for (Gustav) Mahler" both as a conductor and composer. He occasionally visited museums with art shop owner Josef Neumann, who gave him an overcoat in 1910. A one-eyed Jewish locksmith from Galicia named Simon Robinsohn (born 1864) socialized with Hitler in the men's shelter, and once lent him money.

Hitler sold paintings through Jewish art dealers Siegfried Loeffner, Jacob Altenberg, Josef Neumann, and Samuel Landsberger. Jewish glazier Samuel Morgenstern (born in Budapest, 1875) bought several paintings from Hitler and referred him to lawyer Josef Feingold, who also became a regular customer. On August 10, 1939 Morgenstern wrote Hitler a plaintive letter, citing their former association and pleading for mercy.

"Excellency!

I humbly ask your indulgence for daring to write to you, Mr. Reich-Chancellor, and submitting a request. For thirty-five years I had my own business as a glazier and frame manufacturer in Vienna, at 9 Liechtensteinerstrasse, and in the years before the war, Mr. Chancellor, was frequently in my store and had the opportunity to judge me to be a correct and honest man. I have no police record and for eight years served as a noncommissioned officer in the Austrian army and was on the Romanian front. On November 10 my store was closed ... and my commercial license revoked ... which made me totally indigent, ... since I have not received ... compensation for my store, which was worth 7,000 Reichsmarks. I am sixty-four and my wife is sixty years old ... It is my most humble request to Your Excellency to please direct the Department of Property to give me 4,000 in foreign currency so I have the necessary disembarkation money and my wife and I can live modestly until we have found work. Please have my application checked and ... approve it.

Faithfully Yours,
Samuel Morgenstern, Glazier
Vienna, 9.4 Liechtensteinerstrasse" [24]

By this time Morgenstern and his wife were enmeshed in a Kafkaesque nightmare. His letter never reached Hitler. He died four years later while confined to a work camp in Poland's Litzmannstadt ghetto. The SS gassed his wife Emma a year later at Auschwitz.

Hitler often engaged in political debates with other residents of the Men's Hostel. He doubted the good faith of his Jewish opponents there.

"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand or. .. changed the subject ... Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again ... If you really struck one of these fellows (a) telling ... blow ... your amazement was great the next day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection ... " [25]

If Josef Greiner can be believed, a fellow hostel inmate named Grill, the son of a Polish rabbi, tried to talk Hitler out of his growing anti-Semitism in 1911.

During the war Hitler fought beside Jewish soldiers such as Corporal Karl Lippert and Lt. Hugo Guttmann. He later rented rooms from Frau Erlanger in Munich, and took elocution lessons from Jewish magician Eric Jan Hanussen. From 1919 to 1926 Hitler's older half-sister Angela Raubal worked as a cook for Vienna's Mensa Academica Judaica. During the anti-Semitic riots of 1919 and 1920 "Angela defended Jewish students from attack and on several occasions beat ... Aryan students off the ... dining hall steps with a club." [26]

As late as 1944 Hitler exclaimed to Josef Goebbels: "I won't give Vienna a pfennig!" [27] His master plan mandated that Linz would be transformed into Austria's new capital. August Kubizek wrote that Hitler

"hated the typical Viennese from the bottom of his heart. He couldn't even stand their mellifluous ... melodious way of way of speaking. Above all, however, he hated the Viennese manner of always yielding and their dull indifference, ... of forever blundering along and living from one day to the next without a care in the world. Personally he was entirely the opposite in that respect." [28]

According to Hitler's stereotypical thinking, the Viennese were morally corrupt slackers. He condemned the city's prostitution industry, high rate of alcoholism, and general decadence. Vienna served as a major station of the white slave trade's "underground railroad," which transported penniless gentile and Jewish girls from Odessa, Galicia, and Serbia to Hamburg, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, and Buenos Aires. The "Phaecian City" harbored "apologists for libertinism" such as Richard Krafft-Ebbing, author of Psychopathia Sexual is (1886,) and Sigmund Freud, whose Civilization and its Discontents associated most of man's problems to sexual repression. Vienna had a reputation for being the German-speaking world's capital of pornography. The word "masochism" derives from the sado-masochistic novels of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Journalist Felix Salten, author of the children's classic Bambi, also wrote Josenne Mutzenbacher: A Viennese Whore's Life.

The Catholic Church waged campaigns against pornography and brothels. Hitler dismissed their hypocritical moralizing, preferring to view Vienna's debauchery from an "Ariosophical" perspective.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 287.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 290.

4 Ibid., p. 288, op. cit. 2/13/1890 newspaper account.

5 Ibid., op. cit., Sigmund Mayer, Die Weiner Juden, Vienna, 1917, p. 475.

6 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, MA, 1943, p. 322.

7 Ibid., p. 326.

8 Hamann, p. 181, op. cit. Adolf Hitler, "Some Questions for the German Worker," Auf Gut Deutsch, May 22, 1920.

9 Ibid., p. 155, op. cit. Reinhold Hanisch, "I Was Hitler's Buddy," New Republic, 4/19/1939.

10 August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, trans. E. V. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1955, p. 290.

11 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 77.

12 Ibid.

13 William Jenks, Vienna and the Young Hitler, Columbia University Press, 1960, p. 95.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 James Webb, The Occult Establishment, Open Court Publishing Co., LaSalle, IL, 1976, p. 299.

17 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 56.

18 Eberhard Jackel, Hitler's Weltanschaung, trans. Herbert Arnhold, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1972, p. 53.

19 Timothy W. Ryback, "Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, his Books, and his Search for God," Atlantic Monthly, May, 2003, p. 4 of 21 on-line.

20 Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, Scholars Press, Chico, CA, 1981, p. 171.

21 Hamann, p. 347, Hitler, Mein Kampf, (German Language edition,) p. 44.

22 Reinhold Hanisch, "I Was Hitler's Buddy," New Republic, 4/19/1939.

23 Hamann, pp. 357-358, op. cit. Vienna Administration of Property, Aryanization files, GEW. #2,755, box 216.

24 Hanisch, 4/12/1939 installment of "I Was Hitler's Buddy."

25 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 62.

26 Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1972, pp. 120-121.

27 Hamann, p. 5, op. cit. The Goebbels Diaries.

28 Kubizek, pp. 43 and 203 passim.

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Part 1 of 3

16: Ariosophy

"Hitler's character is incomprehensible to me."

-- Richard Breiting

Adolf Hitler employed Christian rhetoric for tactical reasons, however his own theological views were "Ariosophical," an eclectic brew of Theosophy, Christianity, and paganism. He and Eckart both believed that the Protestant-Catholic rift undermined German nationalism. Hitler spoke of fatuous Protestants and Catholics thumping each other with "Bible and sprinkler." (Cf. Hitler's Secret Conversations, Oct. 14, 1941, p. 83.) The "Positive Christianity" of 1930's Nazism urged patriotic Lutherans and Roman Catholics to overlook doctrinal differences for the sake of German solidarity. In 1919 Eckart thought that shared anti-Semitism would serve as a basis for rapprochement among the confessions. He agreed with the position of Ernst Graf zu Reventlow (Fanni's brother), who wrote in Reichswart Magazine that "the Protestant and Catholic hit each other over the head to the Jews' musical accompaniment." [1]

The product of a mixed marriage, Eckart approved of Luther's independent thinking, German patriotism, and anti-Semitism on the one hand, but deplored his divisiveness, which led to religious wars against Catholic Germans.

"By attacking Catholicism he inadvertently did the Jews' bidding. 'There would never have been a schism, never the war which for thirty years would shed torrents of Aryan blood, as the Jews wanted.'" [2]

Incredibly, prominent Nazis such as Walter Buch, Hans Schemm, and Ernst Reventlow found National Socialism compatible with their Christian faith. Though Eckart and Hitler modified Jesus into an Aryan hero and sometimes paid lip service to volkisch Christianity, their "religious" beliefs were closer to those of Rudolf von Sebottendorf and Guido von List than evangelical Christians like Buch and Reventlow. Neither Hitler nor Eckart attended church or paid much attention to Christian theology. In his table talk of later years Hitler regularly threatened to "settle accounts" with Christendom. To Otto Wagener he fulminated:

"The Christian churches ... denied Christ and betrayed him! For they have transformed the holy idea of Christian socialism into its opposite!. .. Their lives and deeds are a constant blow against these teachings and a defamation of God!" [3]

Since resurgent Aryandom could never usher in a new millennium without ruthless intolerance, Hitler disparaged Christian "pity ethics."

"After all these centuries of whining about the protection of the poor and lowly, it is about time we decided to protect the strong against the inferior." [4]

Artur Dinter (author of Sin Against Blood), Count Ernst Reventlow, and other spiritually-oriented Nazis wanted to create a new "Inter-Confessional German Religion." Even neo-pagans such as Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg sympathized with this movement. Realizing that a Nazi religion would offend pious Catholics and Protestants, Hitler put an end to it in 1937. He still felt it necessary to mollify the churches four years after his ascension to power.

Hitler got most of his metaphysics at second hand. He never read Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, though his friend Dietrich Eckart occasionally discussed it with him in 1920 and 1921. During his Vienna years Hitler studied the Ariosophical distortions of Guido von List and Adolf Josef Lanz, who couldn't resist indulging in fantasies that Germany would breed the coming Aryan master race.

According to H. L. Mencken, Madame Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, "swore like a second mate, and smoked incessantly." [5] A gifted psychic, she claimed to be in touch with two Indian mahatmas, Master Morya and Master Koot Hoomi. These adepts communicated spiritual knowledge to her, much of it from the Bhagawad Gita. Madame Blavatsky and Col. Henry Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in New York City on September 13, 1875. For its logo they adopted the swastika or "sun wheel," an ancient Sanskrit rune denoting vitality, creativity, fertility, and regeneration. Acting as a channel for her "Superiors," Blavatsky wrote Isis Unveiled in 1877 and The Secret Doctrine in 1888, which gave a fantastic account of the Seven Root Races. The Self-Born, a race of spirits perished when their realm sank into the ocean. The Hyperboreans who inhabited the North Pole suffered a similar fate. The Lemurians, who lived on a prehistoric continent in the Pacific Ocean had denser bodies with sex organs. They eventually fell afoul the Superiors by breeding with lower races. As Christopher Hale recounts:

"Lemuria, too, sank beneath the waves. 850,000 years ago, the Fourth Race appeared on an island continent in the Atlantic Ocean ... the fabled lost continent of Atlantis ... Over time (Atlantean giants) became immoral and misused their great size and skills. The Atlantic began to rise, submerging their kingdom. And so Atlantis joined the other lost continents on the now rather crowded ocean floor. .. ." [6]

One legendary account held that Thevetat, a low caste sorcerer, hastened Atlantis's demise through black magic. A few refugees from Atlantis made their way to the Gobi desert, where their descendants eventually generated a new elite.

So how did the "lesser races" come into being? According to Blavatsky, God delegated the task of creation to demiurges -- semi-divine beings of varying degrees of intelligence and morality. The more highly-evolved demiurges molded supermen such as the Hyperboreans and Atlanteans, while demonic spirits created "nefilim" and "untouchables." A Divine Plan called for the evolution of all races, however certain beings lacked capacity for improvement. In The Secret Doctrine Helena Blavatsky wrote:

"The Semites ... are ... degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong the Jews and Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Chandals of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, Scinde, and Iran, and were truly born from their father Abraham (no Brahmin.) [7]

This sheds light on an otherwise incomprehensible recurring theme within Nazi literature, as, for example, "The Earth-Centered Jew Lacks a Soul," by one of the chief architects of Nazi dogma, Alfred Rosenberg, who held that whereas other people believe in a Hereafter and in immortality, the Jew affirms the world and will not allow it to perish. The Gnostic secret is that the spirit is trapped in matter, and to free it, the world must be rejected. Thus, in his total lack of world-denial, the Jew is snuffing out the inner light, and preventing the millennium:

Where the idea of the immortal dwells, the longing for the journey or the withdrawal from temporality must always emerge again; hence, a denial of the world will always reappear. And this is the meaning of the non-Jewish peoples: they are the custodians of world-negation, of the idea of the Hereafter, even if they maintain it in the poorest way. Hence, one or another of them can quietly go under, but what really matters lives on in their descendants. If, however, the Jewish people were to perish, no nation would be left which would hold world-affirmation in high esteem -- the end of all time would be here.

... the Jew, the only consistent and consequently the only viable yea-sayer to the world, must be found wherever other men bear in themselves ... a compulsion to overcome the world.... On the other hand, if the Jew were continually to stifle us, we would never be able to fulfill our mission, which is the salvation of the world, but would, to be frank, succumb to insanity, for pure world-affirmation, the unrestrained will for a vain existence, leads to no other goal. It would literally lead to a void, to the destruction not only of the illusory earthly world but also of the truly existent, the spiritual. Considered in himself the Jew represents nothing else but this blind will for destruction, the insanity of mankind. It is known that Jewish people are especially prone to mental disease. "Dominated by delusions," said Schopenhauer about the Jew.

... To strip the world of its soul, that and nothing else is what Judaism wants. This, however, would be tantamount to the world's destruction.

This remarkable statement, seemingly the rantings of a lunatic, expresses the Gnostic theme that the spirit of man, essentially divine, is imprisoned in an evil world. The way out of this world is through rejection of it. But the Jew alone stands in the way. Behind all the talk about "the earth-centered Jew" who "lacks a soul"; about the demonic Jew who will despoil the Aryan maiden; about the cabalistic work of the devil in Jewish finance; about the sinister revolutionary Jewish plot to take over the world and cause the decline of civilization, there is the shadow of ancient Gnosticism.

-- Gods & Beasts: The Nazis and the Occult, by Dusty Sklar

Her disciple William Quan Judge thought all variations among humans were due to "essential character," not environmental factors such as education, wealth, or social conditioning.

"Many savages have good actual brain capacity, but are still savage. This is because the Ego in that body is still ... undeveloped." [8]

Judge concluded that a soul could not realize its destiny in one incarnation. Souls reincarnated several times -- not necessarily always to earth -- as a part of their maturation process. Holy Hierarchies wrote primitive races off as hopeless, and would not deign to assist them spiritually.

"Savagery remains because there are still egos whose experience is so limited that they are still savage; they will come up into higher races when ready .... so we find the red Indian, the Hottentot, the Easter Islanders, and others as examples of races deserted by high egos ... " [9]

19th Century Theosophical writings were not politically correct by today's standards. since they advocated "paternalism," or the rendering of guardian care to "child-like races." However, Blavatsky, Olcott, and Judge all embraced Buddha's commandment, "you shall not harm any sentient being." One might adopt a condescending attitude toward New Guinea cannibals, but it was not permissible to murder them.

Blavatsky never identified Germans as Aryans.

The difference between the Aryan Hindu and the Aryan European faiths is very small ...
But one and all, with the exception of the latest Aryans, now become Europeans and Christians ...
The Western Aryans had, every nation and tribe, like their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race ...
Thus two peoples, the Hindus and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world ...
The several branches of the Aryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindu and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance...
The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, "I am the Almighty God," yet adds, "I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee" (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) -- not unto Aryan Europeans....
No skeleton ever yet found is older than between 50, or 60,000 years, and man's size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race -- born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions -- had become European...

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

She taught Universal Brotherhood, not Teutonic chauvinism. Although Theosophy held that the higher root races were evolving toward divinity, it did not assert that one advanced race should enslave primordial peoples. Lower races were to be loved and helped -- not abused, or exterminated.

Human crossing may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that other law may assert itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as between two animal species of various kinds, in those rare cases when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes. Darwin notes such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with sterility, en masse, some time after the arrival among them of the European colonists. The great naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of diet, food, conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the mystery. For the occultist it is a very evident one. "Crossing", as it is called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women -- i.e, the representatives of a race, whose progenitors were a "soulless" and mindless monster and a real human, though still as mindless a man -- brought on sterility. This, not alone as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the abnormal race...

It is a most suggestive fact -- to those concrete thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma -- that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking place all over the globe, among those races, whose "time is up" -- among just those stocks, be it remarked, which esoteric philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is invariably due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, drunkenness, etc., etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as offering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. "Nothing", says even the materialist Lefevre, "can save those that have run their course .. It would be necessary to extend their destined cycle ... The peoples that have been spared ... Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion." (“Philosophy,” p. 508.)

True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed of the operation of CYCLIC LAW difficult to account for on materialist lines? Whence the “destined cycle” and the order here testified to? Why does this (Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their “appointed hour”? The answer that it is due to a “mental disproportion” between the colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not explain the sudden “checks to fertility” which so frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to recognize with Occultists that the true solution has to be sought for in a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lefevre remarks, “the time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great human types” (before the Sixth Root-Race dawns), the white (Aryan, Fifth Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro — with their crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians, Polynesians, etc., etc. — all are dying out. Those who realize that every Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc., will understand the “why.” The tide-wave of incarnating EGOS has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott opposed India's caste system.

The position was as follows: Up to the time of Buddha, the Brahmins of India had jealously reserved occult knowledge as the appanage of their own caste. Exceptions were occasionally made in favor of Tshatryas, but the rule was exclusive in a very high degree. This rule Buddha broke down, admitting all castes equally to the path of adeptship. The change may have been perfectly right in principle, but it paved the way for a great deal of trouble, and as the Brahmins conceived for the degradation of occult knowledge itself, that is to say, its transfer to unworthy hands, — not unworthy merely because of caste inferiority, but because of the moral inferiority which they conceived to be introduced into the occult fraternity, together with brothers of low birth. The Brahmin contention would not by any means be that because a man should be a Brahmin it followed that he was necessarily virtuous and trustworthy; but the argument would be: It is supremely necessary to keep out all but the virtuous and trustworthy from the secrete and powers of initiation. To that end it is necessary not only to set up all the ordeals, probations, and tests we can think of, but also to take no candidates except from the class which, on the whole, by reason of its hereditary advantages, is likely to be the best nursery of fit candidates.

Later experience is held on all hands now to have gone far towards vindicating the Brahmin apprehension...

-- Esoteric Buddhism, by A.P. Sinnett, President of the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society three chief objectives were:

"(1) To form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood without distinction of race, creed, sex, (or) caste.

(2) To study ancient and modern religions, philosophy, and science,

(3) To investigate unexplained laws of nature and latent psychic powers." [10]

The Theosophical Society pledged to

"aid in the institution of a brotherhood of humanity, wherein all good and pure men of every race shall receive each other as the equal effects of the Uncreated, Universal, Infinite, and Everlasting Cause." [11]

Ariosophists such as Guido von List and Adolf Josef Lanz perverted Theosophical tenets by claiming that Germans belonged to the superior Aryan race and had a divine right to rule sub-men such as Slavs, Negroes, Semites, etc. Lanz's Ostara magazine preached that Germany's master race must never intermarry with "fallen anthropoids." To do so would be to arrest Spiritual Evolution, and repeat the error of prehistoric Lemurians, whose civilization died out as a result of miscegenation.

[T]he astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded (the chhayas of) Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms or models produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D. [215] “Produced from the residue of the substance matter; from dead bodies of men and (other extinct) animals of the wheel before,” or the previous Third Round — as Stanza 24 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals” that preceded the astral man at the beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal….

Ay, but that “primeval man” was man only in external form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes….

Perchance in these specimens, Haeckelians might recognize, not the Homo primigenius, but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi-human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters — those “failures” mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Haeckel’s Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and cynocephalus are the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid blood in his veins.….

These “Men” of the Third Race — the ancestors of the Atlanteans — were just such ape-like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race “men” who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as we find it now in the pithecoid family. [150]...

A naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no question of selection between human races,” say the anti-Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny the argument — one which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the hybrids resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality….

But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids. In these red-haired and hair-covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom” did not incarnate, as we see. Thus by a long series of transformations due to unnatural cross-breeding (unnatural “sexual selection”), originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a species which developed into mammalian apes ages later....

For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the “mighty men” . . . . men of renown, among whom is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “god saw that the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the giants who produced monstra quaedam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes….

The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean giants, “blurred copies” of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man (Huxley), now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative Anthropologist of European Science…

[T]he bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters — the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “Mindless” — this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid…

On the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the lowest intelligence — say idiots born dumb — might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape….

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

-- Julia Pastrana, by Wikipedia

The Ariosophists

German philologist Friedrich Schlegel first used the word "Aryan" in his book, The Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1808.) Aryan means "finest people" and derives from the same Sanskrit root as "aristocracy." Beginning in the 1890's Guido von List and other Ariosophists exalted Aryan-German Ubermenschen, while condemning southern and eastern Undermenschen as a menace to "Superhumanity."

In 1884 Madame Blavatsky authorized her friends Maria Gebhard and Dr. Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden to found the Theosophical Society's first German branch at Eberfeld. Dr. Franz Hartmann, who had lived with Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in India for three years, soon wrested control from them. By that time Blavatsky had mixed feelings about him.

"The magnetism of that man is sickening; his lying beastly ... his intrigues unaccountable, (except) on the ground that he is either a maniac or possessed by a dugpa spirit." [12]

Her indignation arose from Hartmann's support of Henry Olcott's efforts to curb Blavatsky's perceived extravagance after the Coloumb Scandal. Despite Madame's reservations, he set the tone for German occultism from 1886 to 1912.

The Coulomb [Coloumb] Affair was a conflict between Emma and Alexis Coulomb, on one side, and Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, on the other.

Blavatsky met Emma and Alex in 1871 in Cairo. They founded the short-lived Société Spirite. In August 1879, Emma and Alex contacted Blavatsky because they had financial problems. They were stranded in Sri Lanka, and Blavatsky helped them to get to Mumbai and tried to find a job for them. As she couldn't find a job for them, she provided them with a position in the Theosophical Society, where they were doing various chores, such as cooking and gardening. In February 1884, Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott travelled to Europe. After their departure, a conflict between the Coulombs and the Theosophical Society escalated. The Coulombs tried to blackmail and threaten Blavatsky, whereupon Blavatsky dismissed them. When the theosophists inspected Blavatsky's room after the Coulombs had to leave, they found secret doors in her room. Alexis claimed that he constructed these secret doors for Blavatsky. Theosophists have said that Alexis' constructions were obviously newly built, and the secret doors could not be opened or closed silently or without strong effort.

After the Coulombs were dismissed, they went to their Christian missionary friends of the Free Church of Scotland, and gave them letters that were allegedly written by Blavatsky to Emma. These letters suggested that Blavatsky was a fraud. The chaplain George Patterson published extracts from these letters in the Madras Christian College Magazine. The incident became well known all over India and also in America and Europe. Blavatsky then immediately published a reply in several newspapers. Blavatsky and Olcott then travelled back to India in the end of 1884. Soon afterwards the Hodgson Report was published, which also severely damaged Blavatsky's reputation. The report also contained the allegations of the Coulombs.

Richard Hodgson, a member of the SPR and a research worker of paranormal phenomena, was sent to India. Hodgson's task was to examine if the mode of appearance attributed to the Mahatma Letters represented genuine psychical phenomena. In December 1884 Hodgson arrived in Adyar. He eventually concluded that the evidence supported Emma Coulomb, and that various inconsistencies, misrepresentations, and provable falsehoods in sworn statements by certain Theosophical Society members destroyed their credibility. He included in his research examination of the physical spaces where phenomena had been reported, including architectural features that had been concealed or removed from their original placements. Hodgson wrote a 200-page report, in which Blavatsky was described "as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history."

-- Hodgson Report, by Wikipedia

In 1986 and 1997, Vernon Harrison of the SPR published a study on the Hodgson Report. The Blavatsky–Coulomb letters were destroyed by Elliott Coues, an enemy of Blavatsky, so that they cannot be studied today anymore.

-- Coulomb Affair, by Wikipedia

Hartmann was born in Donauworth, Germany in 1838. After serving two years in the Bavarian Artillery as a medic, he traveled to Paris c. 1864. A year later he got hired as a ship's doctor, even though he had no medical degree. Hartmann sailed to America some time in 1865. He became a U.S. citizen and spent the next eighteen years there. The 29 year old Bavarian studied medicine in St. Louis, Missouri circa 1867. From there he moved to New Orleans and worked as a fortune-teller. At some point in the 1870's he married, then abandoned, a woman in Texas. Claiming once again to be a physician, he established a medical practice in the mining town of Georgetown, Colorado -- then talked himself into the job of coroner. While out west Hartmann visited Indian villages, where he witnessed ceremonies involving spirit possession. He also attended numerous seances with a Denver medium who eventually went insane. In response to sensational articles about Madame Blavatsky in The Theosophist magazine, Hartmann grabbed his suitcase on September 21, 1883 and headed for San Francisco. He passed up the opportunity to marry a dark-eyed beauty there, booking passage to Madras, India where he met Helena P. Blavatsky and Colonel Henry S. Olcott on December 5, 1883.

While at the Theosophists' compound in Adyar, India, Hartmann received ten "precipitated" letters from Blavatsky's Mahatmas between December, 1883 and July, 1884. On Christmas Day, 1883, Master Morya urged him to

" ... take part in the work of the Theosophical Society. Make known without reservations the principles of philosophy which speak loudest in your own heart. Help others, so that you may be helped ..." [13]

On February 5, 1884 Hartmann solicited Madame Blavatsky's advice about a certain matter. She instructed him to ask Master Morya the same question mentally. He did so. A few moments later H.P.B. told him that in the astral light she saw Master Morya writing. Then a woman in the household interrupted them, asking for scissors. Although resenting this intrusion, Hartmann nonetheless went downstairs to his room to retrieve a pair of scissors. He found in his drawer an envelope addressed to him with a seal bearing the initials of Master Morya in Tibetan letters.

"Never offer yourself as a chela (disciple,) but wait until (discipleship) descends by itself upon you. Above all, try to find yourself, and the path of knowledge will open before you ... " [14]

After Madame Blavatsky left for Europe in late February, 1884, Hartmann continued to receive epistles from the Masters -- on March 22nd, April 1st, and April 28th. These lessons from beyond made a deep impression on him. Henceforth, the keystone of his philosophy became a Quaker-like reverence for the Inward Teacher. In Magic, White & Black, he wrote:

"The beginning of all knowledge is the knowledge of self; the knowledge of the soul, and not the vagaries of the brain ... Do not believe that there is anything higher in the universe than your own divine self and know that you are exactly what you permit yourself to become... The knowledge of God and the knowledge of man are ultimately identical, and he who knows himself knows God ... " [15]

A person must learn to trust his or her Divine inner self, for it is

"a guiding signal from an interior compass deep within -- beacon giving direction, which points to a path or lifestyle that gives better probability of Becoming ... [16]

Hartmann witnessed the Coulomb Scandal at first hand. While Helena Blavatsky traveled in Europe during the spring of 1884, disgruntled housekeeper Emma Cutting Coloumb decided to betray her mistress for money. With the collusion of her husband Alex, she forged interpolations onto some of Blavatsky's letters which related how to fool the gullible with bogus spiritual phenomena. Coulomb first offered these incriminating letters to the Theosophical Society for 10,000 rupees, then sold them to the anti-Theosophical Christian Messenger Magazine in Bombay.

Franz Hartmann described Emma Coulomb as "a small elderly person with hawk nose and small, stinging eyes." [17] He and board members St. George Lane Fox and Dadomar Mavalankar fired the Coulombs on May 13, 1884. They declined to pay them hush money. Hartmann, William Q. Judge, and St. George Lane Fox destroyed a trick cabinet in Madame Blavatsky's shrine room and had the unauthorized carpentry work performed by Alex Coulomb removed. H.P.B. had used the cabinet with false panel as a curio -- and "mailbox" for precipitated letters -- but claimed never to have used it to dupe seance attenders. On March 31, 1885 Hartmann accompanied Madame Blavatsky on her voyage from Madras to Naples. She never again returned to India.

Although H.P.B. had misgivings about Franz Hartmann, she wrote on his behalf a letter of introduction to the Theosophical Society in Vienna. There he became the "man who came to dinner," imposing upon paper manufacturer Frederick Eckstein's hospitality for a year. During that time Hartmann frequently entertained friends at his wealthy host's expense. Over the next ten years he shuttled between Vienna, Salzburg, Eberfeld, Munich, Locarno, Ascona, and Berlin, establishing relationships with fellow Theosophists such as Karl Kellner, Guido von List, Theodore Reuss, Alfred Schuler, and novelist Gustav Meyerinck [Meyrink]. With the assistance of Karl Kellner, he charged high fees for "ligno sulphite inhalation therapy," a supposed "Paracelsian" cure for tuberculosis.

Hartmann wrote extensively. In addition to editing J.B. Kerny's books on Freemasonry, he wrote The Life and Doctrines of Paracelsus (1887,) An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians (1887,) Secret Symbols of Rosicrucians (1888,) Magic, White and Black (1888,) The Principles of Astrological Geomancy (1889,) The Talking Image of Urur (I 890,) The Life and Doctrines of Jakob Boehme (1891,) Occult Science in Medicine (1893,) Among the Gnomes (1895,) and the Life of Jehoshua (Jesus,) 1901. The Nazis later banned most of these books for advocating "oriental passivity."

To Helena P. Blavatsky's dismay, Hartmann replaced Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden as President of the German Theosophical Society, and promoted some of his own pet theories in place of Theosophical precepts. In partnership with Theodore Reuss and Joshua Klein, Hartmann purchased the Grand Lodge of Mizraim and Memphis's charter from English Freemason John Yarker in 1903. With this document they formed a "hermetic brotherhood of the light," called The Order of the Templars of the Orient (O.T.O.) in Berlin, the first "Masonic" lodge to admit women as members. Orthodox Freemasons immediately proscribed this errant offshoot, which eventually morphed into an independent occult society. English black magician Aleister Crowley later became a member of the O.T.O.

Franz Hartmann joined the List Society in 1905. Five years later he praised Guido von List's book, Picture Writing of the Ario-Germans for discovering the lost link between Germanic and Indian cultures.

Guido von List

Guido von List (1848-1919), from the "holy city" of Vienna, concocted a racist version of Theosophy. He declared that Teutons, not Jews, were God's chosen people. List rejected Theosophy's ideal of universal brotherhood and contorted Helen P. Blavatsky's account of prehistoric root races into an apology for Nordic supremacy. His List Society borrowed the swastika, seal of the Theosophical Society, as a symbol of Aryan resurgence. The Nazi party subsequently adopted this logo, as well as the Society's oath:

"I swear to God Almighty, to the invisible Araharl and to my (Fuhrer) as the visible Araharl according to the Armanian Reich laws of fellowship and my duty to my Aryo-Germanic people, unconditional German loyalty, to cover and protect him with my shield, my own life and limb, goods, and blood." [18]

List received bad press in the 1890's amid charges of black magic and sexual perversion, yet he still managed to attract luminaries such as Austrian General Blasius von Schemua, Theosophist Franz Hartmann, and Vienna mayors Karl Lueger and Josef Neumayer to his cause. An academic outsider, List yearned for a professional respectability as an expert on runes, the Norse Eddas, and German folklore. Years of disappointment enkindled the spurned dilettante's resentment of official opinion. Feeling superior to "pettifogging specialists," he held scientists, physicians, and professors in contempt because they preferred narrow-minded orthodoxy to his revelations. In 1902 List claimed to have temporarily lost his vision during a mystical epiphany -- similar to St. Paul's on the road to Damascus. Lords of the Germanic Race vouchsafed prophecies to him about the Coming Third Reich.

After that transfusion of enlightenment, List championed a militant form of pantheism in his book, The Religion of the Ario-Germans, Esoteric and Exoteric. He believed "the closer to nature, the closer to truth." Solitary treks into the woods facilitated his communion with spirits. He once wrote: "if you want to lift the veil of mystery you must fly into the loneliness of nature." [19] An immanent Teutonic god manifested in Nature, but only pure-blooded Germans were equipped with souls capable of apprehending this ever-flowing "God-Knowledge." List himself claimed to communicate with "the old ones" (Germanic masters) via the Akashic Record. He and his disciples wished to restore the Armanen's authority. These "Old Ones" were a race of handsome, long-headed giants with "electric organs" and superpowers who died out eons ago since their corrupt descendants intermarried with racial inferiors. In order to establish psychic communication with the Armanen, List learned "Kala," their lost language.

In 1911 List formed the High Armanenorden consisting of a few initiates (including Philipp Stauff.) He brought this select group on a tour of holy sites: castles at Kahlenberg, Klosterneuberg, and Leopoldberg, and the catacombs of Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral, where he first encountered his spiritual guide "Wotan." In February, 1913 List, Stauff, and others participated in a series of seances during which they attempted to communicate with Germany's ancient priest-kings.

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Part 2 of 3

Johannes's Baltzli's Prana Magazine published several articles by List, Franz Hartmann, Charles Leadbeater, and other Theosophists.

There can be little doubt about the close relationship between List's Ariosophy and Theosophy. Franz Hartmann, himself a prominent Theosophist, explained how List's teachings, especially on racial doctrine bore remarkable resemblance to those of Blavatsky. The kinship between List's Ariosophy and Theosophy is also especially noticeable in Prana, a German occult monthly for applied spiritualism. It was published by the Theosophical publishing house at Leipzig and edited by Johannes Baltzli, a Theosophist who was secretary of the Guido von List Society and biographer of List. Contributors to Prana included the Theosophists Franz Hartmann and C.W. Leadbeater, and Guido von List himself. The journal's name represented the power of the sun, considered the visible symbol of God. Prana emphasized the importance of vegetarianism. It argued that the eating of meat impeded the ability to understand nature and hence the cosmic life-force. Alcohol was thought to have the same negative qualities. It is interesting to note that Hitler became both a dedicated vegetarian and teetotaler by the 1920s.

Whether Hitler had a direct, personal relationship to the Guido von List Society during his years in Vienna from 1907-1913 has not been definitively established. The List Society was certainly prominent in the occult circles that stressed volkisch nationalism and antisemitism. And Hitler did emphasize in Mein Kampf that in Vienna he established "a world picture and a philosophy which became the granite foundation" of all his actions. That "granite foundation" was centered in his racial ideology. Nevertheless, it is more probable that Hitler did come into direct contact with another major proponent of Ariosophy in Vienna, Lanz von Liebenfels. Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954) moved from Catholic monasticism to an involvement in occultism, racism, and German nationalism. He came to characterize his occupation as "racial researcher, philosopher of religion and sexual mystic," all of which were consonant with various forms of occultism. He founded a quasi-religious Order of the New Templars whose primary purpose was to foster Ariosophical doctrines. He established his first New Templars castle in the Burg Werfenstein on the Danube in 1907 and proudly flew a swastika flag over it.

-- Nazi Ideology, by C.M. Vasey

Hartmann would eventually take on as a kind of disciple and amanuensis a young Theosophist, Hugo Vollrath (born 1877). In 1899, Hartmann picked up this university student as a personal secretary and the two would go on speaking tours together, trumping up business for the Theosophical Society. Vollrath, an intense young man whose peculiar appearance dovetailed nicely with that of his mentor (nicknamed "Dirty Franz" because of his slovenly deportment), eventually became involved with the Leipzig branch of the Society, and soon found himself embroiled in one scandal after another. It quickly became evident to the other members that Vollrath saw Theosophy as a potential cash cow. He began a series of publishing ventures, introducing Theosophy and, later, astrology to the German-speaking public. The Theosophists complained about Vollrath's apparent lack of sincerity to the General Secretary of the German Section of the Society, who at that time was Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Steiner, a friend of Dr. Hartmann, had become involved with both Theosophy and the OTO only to eventually leave them both to found his own group, the Anthroposophical Society (which also exists to this day). In 1908, Steiner was forced to expel Vollrath from the German Section but the damage had already been done. The Theosophists had created a monster, and Vollrath would go on to become a Theosophical publisher to be reckoned with, providing a forum for the men who were laying the foundations of a New World Order.

An associate of Vollrath will be Johannes Baltzli, a Theosophist and the secretary of yet another mystical organization, the List Society. [15] Baltzli would contribute articles to Vollrath's new Theosophical magazine, Prana, and soon the bizarre ideas of racist and rune magician Guido von List would fill the pages of this otherwise-bland outlet previously devoted to the writings of Blavatsky, her successor Annie Besant, and wandering "Bishop" Leadbetter. [16] And, as if to emphasize how inextricable German occultism was with German racism, it is through his astrological journal, Astrologische Rundschau, that Vollrath has additional impact on our story, for in 1920 he turned it over to the editorial ministrations of no less a historic personage than the Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff: mystic, Freemason, initiate of the Eastern mysteries, and now astrologer.

-- Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement With the Occult, by Peter Levenda

Many of List's essays endorsed health food fads, herbal cures, and Baron Karl von Reichenbach's Theory of Odic Force.

As von Reichenbach was investigating the manner in which the human nervous system could be affected by various substances, he conceived the existence of a new force allied to electricity, magnetism, and heat, a force which he thought was radiated by most substances, and to the influence of which different persons are variously sensitive.[4] He named this vitalist concept Odic force. Proponents say that Odic force permeates all plants, animals, and humans.[5]

-- Odic Force, by Wikipedia

We say and maintain that SOUND, for one thing, is a tremendous Occult power; that it is a stupendous force, of which the electricity generated by a million of Niagaras could never counteract the smallest potentiality when directed with occult knowledge. Sound may be produced of such a nature that the pyramid of Cheops would be raised in the air, or that a dying man, nay, one at his last breath, would be revived and filled with new energy and vigour.

For Sound generates, or rather attracts together, the elements that produce an ozone, the fabrication of which is beyond chemistry, but within the limits of Alchemy. It may even resurrect a man or an animal whose astral “vital body” has not been irreparably separated from the physical body by the severance of the magnetic or odic chord. As one saved thrice from death by that power, the writer ought to be credited with knowing personally something about it.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

His fetish for the natural extended to politics. Real nationhood could only be based on blood ties, or "soul relationship." The ideal state must be a Volksgemeinshaft (folk-union or spiritual brotherhood) consisting of genetically-related people who would function as an extended family because of blood-compatibility, "soul-connection," and implicitly shared values. True patriotism had biological as well as spiritual roots. It was simply a higher form of family loyalty, and fraternal affection among Aryan receivers of "God-Knowledge."

Now the evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms; but the evolution of the internal or real MAN is purely spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad through many and various forms of matter — endowed at best with instinct and consciousness on quite a different plane — as in the case of external evolution, but a journey of the “pilgrim-soul” through various states of not only matter but Self-consciousness and self-perception, or of perception from apperception. (See “Gods, Monads and Atoms.”)

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

All modern states fell below List's ideal. Britain and the United States were plutocracies run by philistines. Russia's tsarist autocracy barely held millions of Slavs in check. Austria had regressed into a lifeless bunch of incompatible ethnic groups bound together by a weak monarchy. Socialism could never work in such a racially-mixed setting. Hence, List sought to establish an "organic" German Volksgemeinshaft, where patronage would be replaced by meritocracy, blind commercialism by civic-mindedness, and legalism by a spirit of higher justice. He inveighed against Jews as "aliens," and recommended that they be required to wear insignias (such as the Star of David) in public. List wanted to create "Greater Germany," ("Ario-Germania",) a power inclusive of all German-speaking provinces, similar to the Third Reich.

"It would be based on the recognition of the superiority of Aryan peoples and the need for lower races to serve the higher race. Only Ario-Germans could hold leadership positions in the state, schools, professions, industry, ... banks, newspapers, theater and the arts. Racial laws would maintain the purity of the Ario-Germanic race by prohibiting racial intermarriage and reserving citizenship for Ario-Germans ... Leaders were (chosen) by their ability to use ... occult powers to know the secrets of ancient wisdom-religion."  [20]

The Prophets are there, to show the walk in life, before, during, and after the days of Moses, of the chosen but “stiff-necked” people. That they have had at one time the Wisdom-Religion and use of the universal language and its symbols at their disposal and in their possession, is proved by the same esotericism existing to this day in India with regard to the “Holy of Holies.” This, as said, was and still is the passage through the “golden” cow in the same stooping position as the one shown in the gallery of the pyramid, which identified man with Jehovah in Hebrew esotericism. The whole difference lies in the Spirit of Interpretation. With the Hindus as with the ancient Egyptians that spirit was and is entirely metaphysical and psychological; with the Hebrews it was realistic and physiological. It pointed to the first sexual separation of the human race (Eve giving birth to Cain-Jehovah, as shown in the “Source of Measures”); to the consummation of terrestrial physiological union and conception (as in the allegory of Cain shedding Abel’s blood — Habel, the feminine principle) and — childbearing; a process shown to have begun in the Third Race, or with Adam’s THIRD son, Seth, with whose son Henoch, men began to call themselves Jehovah or Jah-hovah, the male Jod and Havah or Eve — to wit, male and female beings. [18] Thus the difference lies in the religious and ethical feeling, but the two symbols are identical. There is no doubt that, with the fully initiated Judaean Tanaim, the inner sense of the symbolism was as holy in its abstraction as with the ancient Aryan Dwijas. The worship of the “god in the ark” dates only from David; and for a thousand years Israel knew of no phallic Jehovah. And now the old Kabala, edited and re-edited, has become tainted with it.

With the ancient Aryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime, and poetical, however much the external appearance of their symbol may now militate against the claim. The ceremony of passing through the Holy of Holies (now symbolized by the cow), in the beginning through the temple Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg) — in itself a symbol of Universal, abstract nature — meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the re-birth of the individual and his regeneration: the stooping man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass through the matrix of mother nature, or the physical creature ready to re-become the original spiritual Being, pre-natal MAN. With the Semite, that stooping man meant the fall of Spirit into matter, and that fall and degradation were apotheosized by him with the result of dragging Deity down to the level of man. For the Aryan, the symbol represented the divorce of Spirit from matter, its merging into and return to its primal Source; for the Semite, the wedlock of spiritual man with material female nature, the physiological being taking pre-eminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Aryan views of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite interpretations emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe, thus marking its national features and the idiosyncratic defects that characterize many of the Jews to this day — gross realism, selfishness, and sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father Jacob, with their tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a covenant that his “seed shall be as the dust of the earth”; and that deity could have no better image henceforth than that of the symbol of generation, and, as representation, a number and numbers.

Carlyle has wise words for both these nations. With the Hindu Aryan — the most metaphysical and spiritual people on earth — religion has ever been, in his words, “an everlasting lode-star, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night around him.” The religion of the Hindu detaches him from this earth; therefore, even now, the cow-symbol is one of the grandest and most philosophical among all others in its inner meaning. To the “MASTERS” and “Lords” of European potencies — the Israelites — certain words of Carlyle apply still more admirably; for them “religion is a wise prudential feeling grounded on mere calculation” — and it was so from its beginnings. Having burdened themselves with it, Christian nations feel bound to defend and poetise it, at the expense of all other religions.

But it was not so with the ancient nations. For them the passage entrance and the sarcophagus in the King’s chamber meant regeneration — not generation. It was the most solemn symbol, a Holy of Holies, indeed, wherein were created immortal Hierophants and “Sons of God” — never mortal men and Sons of lust and flesh — as now in the hidden sense of the Semite Kabalist. The reason for the difference in the views of the two races is easy to account for. The Aryan Hindu belongs to the oldest races now on earth; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. One is nearly one million years old; the other is a small sub-race some 8,000 years old and no more. [19]

But Phallic worship has developed only with the gradual loss of the keys to the inner meaning of religious symbols; and there was a day when the Israelites had beliefs as pure as the Aryans have. But now Judaism, built solely on Phallic worship, has become one of the latest creeds in Asia, and theologically a religion of hate and malice toward everyone and everything outside themselves. Philo Judaeus shows what was the genuine Hebrew faith. The sacred Writings, he says, prescribe what we ought to do . . . commanding us to hate the heathen and their laws and institutions. They did hate Baal or Bacchus worship publicly, but left its worst features to be followed secretly; and it is with the Talmudic Jews that the grand symbols of nature were the most profaned. With them, as now shown by the discovery of the key to the correct Bible reading — Geometry, the fifth divine Science (“fifth” — because it is the fifth key in the series of the Seven Keys to the Universal esoteric language and symbology) was desecrated, and by them applied to conceal the most terrestrial and grossly sexual mysteries, wherein both Deity and religion were degraded.

We are told that it is just the same with our Brahma-prajapati, with Osiris and all other creative gods. Quite so, when their rites are judged exoterically and externally; the reverse when their inner meaning is unveiled, as we see. The Hindu Lingham is identical with “Jacob’s Pillar” — most undeniably. But the difference, as said, seems to consist in that the esoteric significance of the Lingham was too truly sacred and metaphysical to be revealed to the profane and the vulgar; hence its superficial appearance was left to the speculations of the mob. Nor would the Aryan Hierophant and Brahmin, in their proud exclusiveness and the satisfaction of their knowledge, go to the trouble of concealing its primeval nakedness under cunningly devised fables; whereas the Rabbi, having interpreted the symbol to suit his own tendencies, had to veil the crude significance; and this served a double purpose — that of keeping his secret to himself and of exalting himself in his supposed monotheism over the heathen, whom his Law commanded him to hate. [20] A commandment now gladly accepted by the Christian too, in spite of another and later commandment — “love each other.” Both India and Egypt had and have their sacred lotuses, symbolic of the same “Holy of Holies” — the Lotus growing in the water, a double feminine symbol — the bearer of its own seed and root of all. Viraj and Horus are both male symbols, emanating from androgyne Nature, one from Brahma and his female counterpart Vach, the other, from Osiris and Isis — never from the One infinite God. In the Judaeo-Christian systems it is different. Whereas the lotus, containing Brahma, the Universe, is shown growing out of Vishnu’s navel, the Central point in the Waters of Infinite Space, and whereas Horus springs from the lotus of the Celestial Nile— all these abstract pantheistic ideas are dwarfed and made terrestrially concrete in the Bible: one is almost inclined to say that in the esoteric they are grosser and still more anthropomorphic, than in their exoteric rendering. Take as an example the same symbol, even in its Christian application; the lilies in the hand of the Archangel Gabriel (Luke i. 28). In Hinduism — the “Holy of Holies” is a universal abstraction, whose dramatis personae are Infinite Spirit and Nature; in Christian Judaism, it is a personal God, outside of that Nature, and the human Womb — Eve, Sarah, etc., etc.; hence, an anthropomorphic phallic god, and his image — man.

Thus it is maintained, that with regard to the contents of the Bible, one of two hypotheses has to be admitted. Either behind the symbolic substitute — Jehovah — there was the unknown, incognizable Diety, the Kabalistic Ain-Soph; or, the Jews have been from the beginning, no better than the dead-letter Lingham- [21] worshippers of the India of to-day. We say it was the former; and that, therefore, the secret or esoteric worship of the Jews was the same Pantheism that the Vedantin philosophers are reproached with to-day; Jehovah was a substitute for purposes of an exoteric national faith, and had no importance or reality in the eyes of the erudite priests and philosophers — the Sadducees, the most refined as the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the LAW. For how could those who invented the stupendous scheme now known as the Bible, or their successors who knew, as all Kabalists do, that it was so invented for a popular blind — how could they, we ask, feel reverence for such a phallic symbol and a NUMBER, as Jehovah is shown most undeniably to be in the Kabalistic works? How could anyone worthy of the name of a philosopher, and knowing the real secret meaning of their “pillar of Jacob,” their Bethel, oil-anointed phalli, and their “Brazen Serpent,” worship such a gross symbol, and minister unto it, seeing in it their “Covenant” — the Lord Himself! Let the reader turn to Gemara Sanhedrin and judge. As various writers have shown, and as brutally stated in Hargrave Jennings’ Phallicism (p. 67) “We know from the Jewish records that the Ark contained a table of stone. . . . that stone was phallic, and yet identical with the sacred name Jehovah . . . which written in unpointed Hebrew with four letters, is J-E-V-E or JHVH (the H being merely an aspirate and the same as E). This process leaves us the two letters I and V (in another form U); then if we place the I in the U we have the ‘Holy of Holies’; we also have the Lingha and Yoni and Argha of the Hindus, the Isvara and ‘supreme Lord’; and here we have the whole secret of its mystic and arc-celestial import, confirmed in itself by being identical with the Linyoni (?) of the Ark of the Covenant.”

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

List Society lodge brothers contemplating marriage had to have genealogical charts done on prospective partners. The Armanen told List to set up Gaue (dioceses) throughout the Reich and appoint Gauleiters (district leaders) who would elect an Araharl, "strong man from above" who would represent "the visible embodiment of divine Aryan law." This "Man Above Time" would transform the crooked modern world into a golden age. The idea of a messiah who will turn the Age of Doom into a utopia comes not only from Hebrew tradition, but Indo-Aryan folklore. Kalki, the conquering avatar.

" ... tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu ... will come ... in the form of a sword-bearing rider on a white horse to end the dark age and initiate ... Satya Yuga" [21]

Schlegel, Lassen, Schliemann, and Blavatsky all subscribed to the notion of Messianic Aryanism. In 1919 List prophesied that an Araharl would establish a racist government in Germany by 1932. Shortly thereafter, a holy war against "the mongrelized brood" would commence.

"All military preparations must be made in the most complete detail in order to fight this inevitable war which will come because it must come." [22]

Although secretive Hitler never admitted any affiliation with the List Society, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests a link. His personal library contained a first edition of List's Laws of the Aryan-Germans, and Karl von Reichenbach's Theory of Odic Force. He told Elsa Falk-Schmidt that he considered List a great thinker. She informed Wilfred Daim that Hitler could quote long passages from List's writings. Dr. Babette Steininger gave Hitler a bound edition of Rabindranath Tagore's Essay on Nationalism in 1921 with a hand-written note: "To Adolf Hitler, my dear brother in Armanen, April 20, 1921." When he emigrated to Germany in May, 1913, Hitler carried a letter of introduction from a Viennese Ariosophist to Munich List Society president Friedrich Wannieck. Philipp Stauff was a Berlin journalist who presided over that city's List Society chapter from 1910 until his suicide in 1923. According to soldiers in his army unit -- coincidentally named the List Regiment -- Hitler read several of Stauff's articles during the war.

Guido von List did not live to see his disciple Hitler become Araharl of "Ario-Germania" in 1933. He died of a lung inflammation on May 17, 1919 while visiting Philipp Stauff and other followers in Berlin. The List Society did not die with its founder. Though suppressed by Hitler, it reincarnated in 1969 under the name Armanenschaft. [url]Today it downplays racism, while promoting New Age spiritualism, deep green ecology[/url], and homeopathy.

"Uncle Cuckoo": Adolf Josef Lanz

Adolf Josef Lanz (1872-1954), who grew up in a respectable Viennese mercantile family, may be characterized as a maverick popularizer of List's ideas. He entered the Cistercian Order as novice in 1893, but left seven years later due to "carnal desires." Shortly after his departure Lanz claimed to have a conversion experience after seeing a tombstone which depicted a knight slaying a monkey. This image alerted him to the necessity of defending the "Aryan" race. "If our ancestors had not courageously taken up this fight, the earth would be populated by gorillas or orangutans today." [23]

They of Plato’s day, the initiated writers, at any rate, meant by a millenium, not a thousand but 100,000 years; Hindus, more independent than any, never concealed their chronology. Thus, when saying 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time — i.e, from the first appearance of the Aryan race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking [472] and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis, the Aryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yug, and was the Mahabharatean war so famous in Indian History.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

In 1902 Lanz affected the noble-sounding name Adolf Georg Lanz von Liebenfals [Liebenfels], founded The Order of the New Temple, and bought a crumbling castle in Wefernstein. With contributions from members of the order he not only renovated Wefernstein, but acquired three more castles by 1928.

After reading works by Madame Blavatsky and Guido von List, Lanz wrote TheoZoology (1904), a hateful book which hailed Nordics as "godmen," but disparaged the darker races as "demonic slop-work." He exhorted Germans to follow sound eugenic practices in order to generate a new Aryan master race equipped with "pan-psychic" powers.

To disseminate his racist views Lanz founded The Order of the New Temple, which published Ostara Magazine, named for the Teutonic goddess of spring. Ancient folklore depicts Ostara (root word of Easter) as a beautiful young woman with long golden tresses and shining blue eyes, clad in white robe. She holds a basket full of different colored eggs, while a young rabbit nibbles on the hem of her garment. As the patroness of rebirth she could make green shoots grow from the ground with a wave of her hand. Lanz saw Ostara as a symbol for the Aryan race's regeneration.

Ostara Magazine, which imitated the format of illustrated popular magazines, sold for thirty-five pfennigs. In 1910 it had a circulation of close to 100,000. Lanz directed his racist message to alienated young men in cities. The magazine so entranced Hitler that he made a pilgrimage to Ostara's Rodaun office in the spring of 1909 to buy back issues for his collection. In the course of their meeting Hitler informed Lanz that he purchased Ostara from a small tobacco shop near his apartment. In 1909 The Vienna Bureau of Tobacco listed a kiosk at 18 Felberstrasse, two doors away from Hitler's apartment at 22 Felberstrasse. Lanz gave the ragged-looking youth free copies, plus money for trolley fare back home. Wilfred Daim obtained this information when he interviewed Lanz on May 11, 1952. In World War II's aftermath Lanz certainly had nothing to gain by admitting a connection with the disgraced Nazi leader. Daim checked police records and confirmed that Hitler lived at 22 Felbestrasse from November 18, 1908 until August 20, 1909. During their conversation Lanz also told Daim that he exerted " ... great influence on a journalist imprisoned with Hitler in ... Landsberg jail." [24] So great a devotee was Eckart that he allegedly "plagiarized" some of Lanz's ideas.

Ostara Magazine published a checklist by which readers could rate themselves. Blue eyes, blonde hair, light skin, straight nose, and tall physique made one a first class Aryan. Dark hair, brown eyes, and swarthy complexion indicated "mixed breed." The Thule Society used a variant of his system to vet applicants for membership.

Along with articles on Theo-Zoology, Ape Men from Sodom, and Electric Gods, Lanz included comic book drawings of gorillas embracing voluptuous blonde women. White heroes (Asings, Heldinge, and Arioheroiker) were pitted against half-breeds (Afflinge, Wanige, Schrattlinge, and Tschandale.) Lanz's semi-pornographic articles dwelled on female promiscuity, castration, interracial marriage, prostitution, and syphilis. In the pages of Ostara Lanz emphasized that Untermenschen always gravitated toward urbanism, materialism, capitalism, and democracy.

Lanz amended the Golden Rule to "love your neighbor only if he is a member of your own race." In this respect he claimed to be imitating Jewish example. As Lanz aficionado Dietrich Eckart explained:

" ... If one wants to understand the Old Testament one must read it in the Greek version ... There is an entirely different tone, an entirely different color, with no presentiment of Christianity! The rabbis who helped (Luther) with the ... translation introduced changes and forgeries ... Luther translated 'Love thy racial kinsman as thyself.' ... But then the rabbi came in and said the word means 'neighbor.'" [25]

In his pamphlet "Race and Welfare, A Call for Boycotting Random Charity," Lanz recommended "gently annihilating" families with hereditary diseases in order to save millions spent on institutions for the insane and physically handicapped. In 1939 Hitler implemented this idea by issuing his infamous Euthanasia Decree.

Lanz derived his racist worldview from the Bhagavad Gita.

"Out of the corruption of women proceeds the confusion of castes; out of the confusion of castes, the loss of memory; out of loss of memory ... lack of understanding; and out of this, all evils." [26]

By overthrow of houses perisheth
Their sweet continuous household piety,
And -- rites neglected, piety extinct --
Enters impiety upon that home;
Its women grow unwomaned, whence there spring
Mad passions, and the mingling-up of castes,
Sending a Hell-ward road that family,
And whoso wrought its doom by wicked wrath.
Nay, and the souls of honoured ancestors
Fall from their place of peace, being bereft
Of funeral-cakes and the wan death-water.

-- The Song Celestial: Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold

According to him satyrs from Gomorrah should be sterilized and exiled to "ape jungles."

Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the degraded and dwarfed examples — “blurred copies,” as Mr. Huxley has it — of ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub-races of the Fourth Root-race during the period of what is called the “Fall into generation.” The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but an accident, a cross-breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As has been shown in the present volume (anthropogenesis), it is the speechless animal that first started sexual connection, having been the first to separate into males and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow the bestial example — as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species by the animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the woman. The Ape is, indeed, as remarked in Isis Unveiled (Vol. II. 278) “a transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family — a hybrid branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter” — or man. The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most important to remember that the Egos of the apes are entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had already reached the “human stage” before this Round. Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The animal “Eves” were their foremothers, and the human “Adams” their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam’s first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a charming woman, with long wavy hair, i.e. — a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, SamaelLilith, or man-animal united, a being called Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly “speechless men,” and will become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth Root-race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown — man, change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as after every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning point in the latter. In the Sixth Root-Race the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous mammals; and new forms — though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and the close of the Manvantara approaches — will develop from the “cast off” types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of the mire of physical, life. There were none before man, and they will be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the monads of the unprogressed men of our race and lodge them in the newly evolved human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated baboon.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

"Lanz was tormented by the recurrent bugbear of blonde noblewomen in the arms of dark, hairy seducers. His race theory was permeated by sexual envy complexes and deep-seated anti-female emotions; woman, he maintained, had brought sin into the world, and her susceptibility to the lecherous wiles of bestial submen was the chief cause for the infection of Nordic blood." [27]

Dear ladies, tell me honestly, whose wives would you be today if noble men, if god-like Siegfrieds, had not torn you away from the Sodomite monsters, if they had not put you in warm nests, if they had not defended you -- sword in hand -- throughout thousands and thousands of years against Slavs, Mongols, Moors and Turks? Choose between us and those sons of Sodom, have yourselves sexually serviced on the mound of corpses of your husbands who fell in battle -- as so many of your mothers' mothers did! Take them to your husbands' houses, so they can make harem slaves of you, so you can become the mother of a brood of lascivious, bloodthirsty beasts, who know no motherly or wifely love! What woman is today she has become thanks to the sword and power of man. Man wrestled woman from the apes of Sodom, and for this reason she is his property!

The man must assume leadership in the up-breeding of humanity, the woman must follow him. The man is the head and object of woman; Christ, the future God-Man, is the head and object of man (Eph. V.23; Col. III. 18). Woman still today loves pleasure-apes and makes the effort to breed humanity downward. The so-called "modern woman" of free love finds herself depressed by melancholy and vague longings. She longs for the burning "tender Sodomite pieces of wood," for all those completely wild lascivious beasts. The chalices of Sodom are going into decline, "all have become pieces of wood in their houses," the wells of Sodom are vanquished, for a new, strong human species is growing which seeks something else in a woman other than a diversion for his sexual parts. The modern woman, however, is, fleeing the Germanic man and would rather make children with Slavs and Mediterraneans (E. Key Liebe u. Ehe, p. 468)

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

[T]he progeny of the giants who produced monstra quaedam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

In place of Darwin's theory of Evolution, Lanz endorsed the pseudo-Theosophical view that over many generations unspiritual men gradually regressed from materialists to savages, then simians.

III. Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva. . . . (All this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.)...

[T]he progeny of the giants who produced monstra quaedam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes....

The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types; such as are now found only in the African and the lower savage tribes....

On the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the lowest intelligence — say idiots born dumb — might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

Aggressive lower caste males practiced reverse discrimination, and thus posed a constant threat to Aryans. In a January, 1909 issue of Ostara, Lanz wrote:

"Just as every Aryan feels overwhelming repulsion at the sight of a Mongol's distorted mug or a Negro's grotesque visage ... so the eyes of any member of an inferior race flare up in age-old vicious hatred at the sight of a paleface ... " [28]

[T]he difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more projecting, his arm longer than those of the average European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape.”…

Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists have recognised that the lower race of man, comprising the Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern Africans, should be placed apart. The fact that in this species, or rather sub-species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the Homo Afer on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

Thus, Lanz advocated using violence to "defend" the white race.

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Part 3 of 3

Lanz's stress on chastity impressed Hitler. Modern day Grail Knights could only break the cycle of spiritual retrogression if they developed the willpower to control their passions. Two incidents related by August Kubizek illustrate Hitler's zeal to preserve the "Flame of Life." Trying to save on rent, the two students answered a newspaper ad in 1908. A perfumed middle-aged woman clad in a silk bathrobe and fur-trimmed slippers greeted the young men and invited them inside. While she interviewed the prospective tenants,

"a sudden movement loosened the cord of her dressing gown ... the brief moment had been enough to show us that underneath the silk dressing gown she was wearing nothing but a diminutive pair of knickers. Adolf went red as a turkey cock, stood up, and took me by the arm saying: 'come on, Gustl!'" [29]

The embarrassed Ostara devotee pulled his companion out this iniquitous den, exclaiming: "Potiphar's wife!" [30]

In 1908 Vienna had approximately 15,000 registered prostitutes. One night Hitler gave Kubizek a tour of Spettelbergasse's red light district. They peered into picture windows and saw girls sitting on chairs

" ... in their scanty and slovenly attire ... making up their faces or combing their hair." [31]

As they strolled back to their apartment, Hitler launched into a diatribe against prostitution.

Simon Wiesenthal speculated that Hitler became violently anti-Semitic as a result of getting syphilis from a Jewish prostitute in Vienna -- a false rumor. Hitler's medical records confirm that he never contracted venereal disease.

Trench mates at the front called Hitler "the woman-hater," for his loathing of prostitutes and disapproval of "senseless letters from thoughtless females" which dampened fighting spirit. The Third Reich took a proprietary attitude toward women under the assumption that unsupervised females were easy prey for ruthless "sub-men." Under the influence of Lanz's misogyny Hitler told Reinhard Hanisch that "every woman can be had ... (and) ... It was a woman's fault if a man went astray." [32]

In his article "Happy Marriage," Lanz advised men to be harsh in "a physical as well as psychological sense ... Women must always be treated as what they are, grown up children." [33] In another article, "The Danger of Women's Rights and the Necessity for a Masculine Morality of Masters," he wrote:

"Every world historical mistake has been caused by liberated women ... Anyone who preaches women's rights and wants to view women as the equal of men commits a crime against nature." [34]

Lanz thought cross-breeding caused spiritual degeneration, and that promiscuous women were mainly responsible for it. Aryan warriors must put the kybosh on loose Nordic females such as Fanni zu Revendow. To restore utopian conditions pure-blooded Aryans had to be mated scientifically in accordance with the latest animal husbandry techniques. After a few generations of planned racial selection a new super race would flourish. Then Atlantean-Aryans could again take to their flying cars, swan boats, and dragon ships -- enjoying "a wholly magical relation to nature."

Such baloney led Lanz's nieces and nephews to call him "Uncle Cuckoo," but Hitler took it all seriously. TheoZoology contaminated his mind during the crucial stage when he questioned traditional values in an effort to form an adult worldview. Hitler accepted Lanz's superstitious veneration of "Aryan blood," and his abhorrence for non-Aryan peoples, but never acknowledged any debt to him. To credit the magus of a disreputable secret order for key ideas in the SS program would have reflected badly on the Fuhrer. In 1938 the Nazis shut down Ostara, and all other occult publications, by general decree.

Richard Wagner

Composer Richard Wagner believed that true artists functioned as prophets. He campaigned for

"... art's return to its high vocation of ... expressing divine truth, and ... announced his program to redeem the world from materialism (through) symbolically conceived music." [35]

Wagner induced "visions from beyond" in Hitler. The histrionic excesses of Wagnerian opera fed his megalomania. August Kubizek attended Wagner's Rienzi with Hitler one evening in Linz, circa November, 1907. This opera was based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel about Cola di Rienzi, the commoner who strove to reunite 14th Century Italy. After the performance Hitler and Kubizek walked silently through dark streets until coming to Frein Mountain on the city's edge.

"Adolf continued to climb, as though attracted by an irresistible force. When we got to the top the fog had disappeared. Above our heads, the stars shone brilliantly ... Adolf now turned to me and gripped both my hands and held them tight ... The words did not come forth with their usual ease, but in choppy bursts; he was hoarse ... He spoke of a mandate which the people would one day give him to lead them out of servitude and raise them up to freedom ... " [36]

Richard Wagner's operas first inspired Hitler in 1906 while he still lived with his mother and sister. Years later he said:

"For me Wagner is something godly and his music is my religion ... When I hear Wagner it seems to me that I hear rhythms of a bygone world. I imagine myself that one day science will discover in the waves set in motion by the Rheingold secret mutual relations with the order of the world." [37]

Like his friend Dietrich Eckart, Hitler revered Wagner as a high priest. He may have become a vegetarian due to the composer's influence. Hitler honored Wagner's "Judaism in Music" and "What Is German?" as the acme of trenchant criticism. These works, which betrays all of Wagner's meanness and egotism -- but none of his genius -- deeply affected Hitler. Many of the bigotries set forth in "Was Ist Deutsch?" and "Das Judentum in der Musik" stemmed from the writings of Christian Lassen, a disciple of Friedrich Schlegel who contrasted handsome, idealistic Aryans with "demonic Shylocks."

While living in Dresden as a young man, Wagner enthusiastically supported the Revolution of 1848. He absorbed much of his youthful radicalism from Ludwig Borne, an agnostic Jewish philosopher (and early friend of Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx), who advocated civil rights for all Germans. Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin also influenced Wagner. The composer later admitted to basing Siegfried's character on this fearless revolutionary. Unfortunately, Bakunin also had criminal tendencies which Wagner admired -- including violent antipathy toward Jews.

By the time Bismarck became chancellor in 1862 Wagner's cosmopolitanism turned into Pan-German nationalism, his universalism into racism. According to the half-educated Master of Bayreuth, Jews were avaricious and uncreative, therefore Jesus could not have been one. From. the comfort of his rose-hued study, the perfumed and paunchy Wagner declared that war invigorated humanity, while peace brought stagnation. During the Franco-Prussian War he wanted General von Moltke to destroy Paris. His wife Cosima wrote that Wagner felt that the city's immolation "would be a symbol of the liberation of the world from the oppression of all that is bad." [38]

Wagner's concept of Wahn (Folk Ruler) derived from the Indo-Aryan notion of an avatar, and anticipated Hitler's Fuhrer Principle (divinely appointed leader.) The German Volkgeist (Folk Spirit) required a Wahn/ Fuhrer to solve the "Jewish Problem" by waging a "war of liberation ... against this enemy of mankind." [39]

More compelling than Wagner's inelegant prose were operas such as Lohengrin and Parsifal -- both of them racist allegories. Chaste and idealistic warriors fight against ignoble fiends to protect German blood from defilement. Man can only be lifted to a higher stage of spirituality when Aryans expunge barbarism.

Hitler shared Wagner's fixation with the Grail motif Grail romances, with their tales of knightly adventure, contain instructions for attaining enlightenment and clairvoyant powers. The seeker/knight serves an apprenticeship, undergoes initiation by a master, then sets off to combat dark forces so that virtue will reign. Somewhere along the line he meets a fair damsel, representing fleshly pleasure, whom he primly renounces after reciting a few courtly verses. Following a series of trials, the hero reaches a castle housing the Holy Grail. After a dragon-slaying before fortress walls, he advances to a chapel entrance guarded by heavenly hosts. After chanting magic words to gain admittance, the protagonist enters an inner sanctum. There he beholds the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. This vision transforms his soul and invests him with supernatural powers.

Wagner used Grail symbolism to convey both pagan and Christian themes. The Grail image represented not only the cup that held Jesus's blood at the Last Supper, but also the Norse deities' mixing bowl ("witches' cauldron"), and the Aryan Adept (vessel of pure blood,) who possessed Gnosis (secret knowledge.) Wagner equated Aryan blood with "inner worth." Initiated Grail knights were able to open up the spiritual centers of disciples. As masters they poured out divine substance (Gnosis) into the "cups" (souls) of apprentices, thus making them god-men also.

Richard Wagner claimed to hate the "Jewish Spirit," rather than individual Jews. In his professional life, he found Jews indispensable, engaging Angelo Neumann as his theatrical agent, and Hermann Levi as opera conductor. Two of his favorite musicians were Carl Tausig and Joseph Rubinstein.

For Wagner "the Jew" symbolized "worldly lures that keep mankind in shackles." [40] Therefore, he advocated what Saul Friedlaender identified as "Redemptive Anti-Semitism." By rejecting the materialistic "Jewish Spirit" seekers freed themselves from blight and became reborn as numinous beings. Wagner's disciple Dietrich Eckart adopted this same view.

Applied Balderdash

In Mein Kampf Hitler stated that his studies in Vienna helped him build a "granite foundation for future action." Actually, the myths, xenophobic porn, and pseudo-science he perused only fueled his mania. Hugh Trevor- Roper aptly describes Hitler's intellectual world as

" ... imposing indeed in its granite harshness and yet infinitely squalid in its miscellaneous cumber -- like some huge barbarian monolith. The expression of great strength and savage genius, surrounded by a festering heap of refuse -- old tins and dead vermin, ashes, and eggshells and ordure -- the intellectual detritus of centuries." [41]

The Age of Scientism, which began in the late 18th Century and continued into the 20th, brought forth theorists such as Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, August Comte, Frances Galton, and Ernst Haeckl.

Hitler's readings of Ernst Haeckl persuaded him that life consisted solely of a naked struggle for existence. Haeckl contemptuously referred to God as "the gaseous vertebrate." His "Biogenetic Law," held that failure to progress meant automatic degeneracy. Racially superior strains had a duty to subjugate inferiors. Biologist Haeckl, a member of Heinrich Class's Pan German League, did not hesitate to apply his rat-race hypothesis to politics.

"The theory of selection teaches us that organic progress is an inevitable consequence of the struggle for existence. Thousands of good and beautiful and admirable species of animals and plants have perished during (the last) 48 million years because they had to make room for other ... stronger species, and the victors in this struggle for life were not always the nobler or morally more perfect forms. Precisely the same applies to the history of nations." [42]

In other words, only the strong succeed, and nice guys finish last. Haeckl proposed a ruthless attack on "social problems." He advocated capital punishment for repeat offenders, and mass mercy-killings as a solution to the health care crisis. His recommendations were not lost on Hitler, who signed his Euthanasia Decree in September, 1939.

Hitler combined Haeckl's 'survival of the fittest' dogma and Wilhelm Bolsche's "biologism," with Adolf Josef Lanz's TheoZoology. Many passages on "race science" in Mein Kampf borrow images of bacilli, fission-fungi, viruses, and parasites from Bolsche's unsavory magnum opus, Bacillus to Apeman (1899). Hitler found his biological analogies illuminating. Germs had no upside. They were stealthy, harmful, disgusting, and grimly efficient in their destructive work. While discussing Jews with party finance chief Otto Wagener in 1930, Hitler used Bolschean phraseology:

" ... Parasites ... do not ... take their nourishment straight from nature ... instead they strive to make use of the work of others in order to live as effortlessly as possible. Take the mistletoe or orchids ... They drive their suckers down beneath the bark to divert to themselves (a) tree's vital fluids ... Such a parasite genus among mankind is Jewry. They always congregate where the saps flows ... " [43]

The obscure Bolsche's biological anti-Semitism strongly influenced Hitler.

August Kubizek noticed Hitler reading plays by Ibsen in 1907. Using textual evidence Steven F. Sage found multiple correspondences between Hitler's career and Ibsen's drama about Julian the Apostate, Emperor and Galilean. Among the points of agreement were that Julian and Hitler both sponsored book burnings, made peace treaties with Eastern enemies (then reneged on them), persecuted religious minorities, built fortifications along the Rhine, and became romantically involved with female relatives.

Certain offenders have used literary works as furtive "scripts" for violent activity. John Wilkes Booth became obsessed by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (in which he played the role of Brutus.) Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. identified with Travis Bickel, the demented character in Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver. Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski morbidly identified with the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent. Sage argued that Hitler also showed symptoms of "mimetic syndrome." In support of this contention he cited passages from Mein Kampf and Hitler's table talk which echo Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, The Master Builder, and Emperor and Galilean. (Cf. Steven F. Sage, Ibsen and Hitler, Carroll & Graf, New York, 2006, pp. 308-309.)

In his readings of Pan German literature Hitler encountered reviews praising General Friedrich von Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War (1910.) Assuming war to be "a biological necessity," Bernhardi claimed that Germany had a Manifest Destiny to rule Europe. Germans must exercise their "higher right" and duty to make war, so that a postwar world could be fashioned along lines of principle rather than left to lapse into "democratic chaos." Agreeing with Von Clausewitz, he argued that to gain a strategic edge Germany had to strike first with surprise attacks- in those times and places most suitable for her. Thus, Bernhardi favored unprovoked aggressive war. Hitler accepted the soundness of Bernhardi's invasion-logic and later applied it on September 1, 1939 against Poland, and June 22, 1941 versus the Soviet Union.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, Cambridge University Press, New York. 2003, p. 109, op. cit. Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, Reichsrat, 2/5/1927.

2 Ibid., op. cit. Dietrich Eckart, Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, p. 31.

3 Otto Wagener, Hitler-Memoirs of a Confidante, ed. Henry Ashby Turner, trans. Ruth Hein, Yale University Press, New York, 1985, p. 140.

4 Ibid., pp. 35-36.

5 H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, Vintage Books, New York, 1982, p. 355.

6 Chrisropher Hale, Himmler's Crusade, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2003, p. 26.

7 Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, ed. Elizabeth Preston and Christmas Humphreys, Quest Books, Wheaton, Ill., 1966, p. 202.

8 William Quan Judge, Ocean of Theosophy, http://www.theosociety.org, Chapter 10, p. 2

9 Ibid., p. 3.

10 Sylvia Cranston, H.P.B., The Extraordinary Life & Influence of Helena Blavatsky, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993, pp. 146-147.

11 W. T.S. Thackera, "Overture and Opener of the Way," http://www.theosophy.org. p. 7, op. cit. H. P. Blavatsky, "A Few Questions to HIRAF."

12 James Webb, The Occult Establishment, Open Court Publishing Co., LaSalle, Ill, 1976, p. 302.

13 Franz Hartmann, Memorable Recollections from the Life of Franz Hartmann, http://www.blavatskyarchives.com. Installment 2, p. 5.

14 Ibid., p. 7.

15 Franz Hartmann, Magic, White & Black, Rose Publications, http://www.mysticmissal. org.

16 Ibid.

17 Hartmann, Memorable Recollections, p. 8.

18 R.G.L. Waite, Hitler, The Psychopathic God, Basic Books, New York, 1977, p. 114.

19 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, Schocken Books, New York, 1981, p. 73, op. cit. Johannes Baltzli, Guido von List, Vienna, 1917, pp. 26-27.

20 Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles, "Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Sources," Simon Wiesenthal Center, http://motlc.weisenthal.com, p. 8 of 16, op. de Joachim Besser, "Die Vorgeschichte de Nationalsozialismus im neuen Licht," pp. 770-772.

21 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler's Priestess, New York University Press, 1998, p. 119.

22 Ibid., p. 113, cf. Guido von List, Die Religion der Ario-Germanen in ihrer Esoterik und Exoterik, Guido von List-Verlag, Vienna, 1910.

23 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna, A Dictator's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 217.

24 Webb, p. 301.

25 Dietrich Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," trans. William L. Pierce, original edition published by Hoheneichen Verlag, Munich, 1925, Chapter VI, pp. 3-4.

26 Savitri Devi, A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnator, King of Egypt, Philosophical Publishing House, London, 1946, p. 35, op. cit. The Bhagavad Gita.

27 Waite, p. 111-112.

28 Hamann, p. 217, op. cit Adolf Josef Lanz, Ostara, January 30, 1909.

29 Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard & Clara Winston, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974, p. 36.

30 Kubizek, p. 146-147.

31 Ibid., p. 235-236.

32 Reinhard Hanisch, "I Was Hitler's Buddy, New Republic, April, 1939, p. 241.

33 Waite, p. 111-112.

34 Ibid.

35 Webb, p. 44.

36 Jean-Michel Angebert, The Occult and the Third Reich, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974, p. 236.

37 Waite, p. 118.

38 Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck, Viking Press, 1981, p. 286, op. cit. Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebucher, Munich, 1976, Vol. I, pp. 272 and 281.

39 Waite, p. 130.

40 Saul Friedlaender, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Harper Collins, New York, 1997, p. 80.

41 H.R. Trevor-Roper, Introduction, Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, Farrar, Strauss, & Young, New York, 1953, p. XXXV.

42 Webb, p. 84.

43 Wagener, p. 68.

[admin]

17: Soldier for the Reich

"Shattered by the War, in despair as a result of deprivation and hunger, greatly disillusioned by the seeming futility of all the sacrifices in blood and goods, our people ... were lured by many phantoms ... "

-- Hermann Hesse

Convinced of Austria's imminent decline at the hands of Slavs and Jews, Hitler migrated to Bavaria in May, 1913 with his friend Rudolf Hausler. They rented rooms from tailor Josef Popp and his wife at 34 Schleissheimerstrasse in Munich's Schwabing district. Hitler loved his newly adopted home.

" ... A German city! What a difference from Vienna! I grew sick to my stomach when I even thought back on that Babylon of races ... The dialect (in Munich) ... reminded me of my ... childhood ... There were a thousand and more things which were or became inwardly dear and precious to me ... If today I am more attached to this city than to any other spot of earth in this world, it is partly due to the fact that it is and remains inseparably bound up with the development (of) my own life." [1]

Hitler occasionally worked as a casual laborer with Hausler, but he still aspired to earn his living as an artist. Dr. Josef Schell, a soap and perfume manufacturer, bought several of his paintings, and referred him to tax assessor Ernst Hepp, another good customer. Hepp not only purchased drawings and watercolors, but also gave Hitler opera tickets, invited him to dinner, and up to his country retreat in Wolfrathausen. Munich University literature professor and "Cosmic" Karl Wolfskehl stated that Hitler also met homosexual mythologist Alfred Schuler, who used the swastika symbol for his "Aryan Mother Cult."

Hitler failed to register for the Austrian draft in 1909. Government authorities finally caught up with him in Munich. On January 19, 1914 police pounded on his door with a summons. Hitler wrote a melodramatic letter full of excuses to Linz's draft board. He did not appear for his physical in 1909 because that year

"was an endlessly bitter time for me. I was an inexperienced young man with no money and too proud to accept any assistance from anyone ... I had no friend other than Sorrow and Want, no companion other than unappeasable hunger; I have never known the beautiful word Youth; today I have the remembrance in the form of chilbains on my fingers, hands, and feet. .. I earn my living as an independent artist, only, however, because I am entirely without resources (my father was a state official) and in order to permit me to pursue my further education. I can spend only part of my time earning a living, since I am studying to be an architectural artist ... My monthly income is very uncertain and at the moment certainly very poor, because the art market in Munich is hibernating, and 3,000 artists live, or want to live, here ..." [2]

Austrian army officials granted an extension and allowed him to report to Salzburg rather than Linz. The doctor who examined Hitler in Salzburg declared him "too weak" for military service.




Hitler in the crowd celebrating Germany's declaration of war against Russia on Munich's Odeonplatz, August 2, 1914. Photograph and blow up by Heinrich Hoffman.

After the First World War broke out on August 1, 1914, Hitler immediately tried to enlist in the German Army. An amazing crowd photo taken by future friend Heinrich Hoffman on August 2nd showed an exultant Hitler smiling on Odeonsplatz near Feldernhalle, close to where the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch would take place. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote about that momentous day.

"Overpowered by rapturous enthusiasm, I fell upon my knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being allowed to live in these times." [3]

The German Army initially rejected him due to his Austrian citizenship and frail constitution. He then stationed himself in front of Wittelsbach Palace. When King Ludwig and General von Leonrod strode out one day, Hitler rushed up to them and begged to fight for the Vaterland. Leonrod agreed to authorize his enlistment.

After ten weeks of basic training Hitler and his fellow recruits traveled by rail to France. During this trip he saw the Rhine River for the first time. They arrived just in time for the bloody battle of Ypres. Hitler served as a dispatch runner, conveying orders from rear command posts to forward units.

During World War I the German Army sent dispatch riders in pairs, in case one were killed or wounded. Their leather packs containing orders were marked XXX (urgent,) XX (implement soon,) or X (carry out at your earliest convenience.) There were two classes of dispatch runners: those who just ran from point A to point B, leaving matters to fate; and men who read maps, rook cover every 100 feet, and kept a sharp lookout. Hitler fell into the latter category. This methodical approach worked for him. Over a four year period his decorations included a regimental citation for gallantry, an Iron Cross 2nd Class, an Iron Cross 1st Class, a Service Decoration 3rd Class, and wounded badges. Hitler's company commander, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann (b. 1880), awarded him the Iron Cross 1st Class. Fellow dispatch runner Hans Mend claimed that Hitler got his Iron Cross 2nd Class at Ypres in 1914 for dragging the seriously wounded Colonel Engelhardt to safety with the help of Private Bachman (later killed in action.) A Gestapo operative apparently rewrote the Iron Cross 1st Class citation, stating that Hitler singlehandedly captured twelve French soldiers, including an officer. Actually, according to Eugen Tannhauser, Hitler delivered a message under heavy bombardment and received compliments from Lt. Gutmann. He then badgered Gutmann until the latter finally agreed to put him in for the medal. Although Hitler spoke slightingly of Gutmann on several occasions, they had a cordial reunion in 1936. Three years later he granted his former commanding officer an exit visa from Germany and approved the continuation of his army pension payments. According to Werner Maser, Guttman first took his wife and two children to Belgium, then to the United States, where he changed his name to Henry G. Grant.

Hans Mend and others in the List Regiment considered Hitler an argumentative Bohemian who liked to draw, read, and discuss politics. Pan- German magazine articles by Philippe Stauff and Schopenhauer's World As Will & Idea were never far from his side. Hitler referred to himself as a "class-conscious proletarian," which meant "communist" to his mates. Fellow riders called Hitler ''Adi the Red" and "Crazy Adolf."

Runners generally delivered about three dispatches per week and spent the rest of their time hanging out in "the riders' dugout" with little to do. Private Ignaz Westenkircher testified to Hitler's incredible skill at spearing rats with a bayonet. He loathed rats because packs of them ate wounded soldiers alive. His service buddies remembered that he adamantly disapproved of fraternizing with British soldiers in no-man's land during a brief Christmas truce in 1914.

Hans Mend's account portrays Hitler as two-faced. He acted like "a self-important busybody" around officers, but grumbled behind their backs, bashing them as "robber knights ... who sleep on horse-hair, whereas we eat horsemeat ... [4]" At the same time Mend and others distrusted Hitler, suspecting that he sometimes carried tales to their superiors. Lance Corporal Hitler's army friends included Ernst Schmidt, Franz Wimmer, Karl Lippert (a lapsed Jew whom he subsequently employed at the Brown House,) Max Mund, Balthasar Brandmayer, Jacob Weiss, Josef Inkofer, Ignaz Westenkircher, and First Sergeant Max Amann (later a Nazi Party official.) Mend believed Hitler had a homosexual relationship with Ernst Schmidt.

"We noticed that (Hitler) never looked at a woman. We suspected him of homosexuality right away, because he was abnormal in any case ... In 1915 we were billeted in the Febre Brewery at Fournes. We slept in the hay. Hitler was bedded down with 'Schmidl,' his male whore. We heard rustling in the hay. Then someone switched on his flashlight and growled: 'take a look at those two Nancy boys." [5]

Although Mend wrote a best-selling book in 1934 which whitewashed his war-time experiences with Hitler, Nazi Party financial records show that bookkeeper Fritz Lauboeck mailed him bribes of 100 marks on June 28, 1923 and 300 marks on July 5, 1923. Hans got low on funds in 1936 and apparently made another blackmail threat -- an unwise decision, since Hitler then dominated Germany as absolute dictator. The Gestapo immediately framed Mend on child molestation charges and shipped him to a hard labor camp for two and a half years. Police jailed him again in September, 1940 for defaming the Fuhrer. He died under suspicious circumstances in Zwickau Penitentiary on February 14, 1942.

Though temperamental and somewhat lazy, Hitler fought courageously for Germany. Historians have noted that his low rank as a lance corporal seemed inconsistent with a distinguished record for valor. Hermann Rauschning alleged that Hitler was once nearly court-martialed for pederastic practices with an officer named Lammers. List Regiment commanders evidently did not promote him because of his Austrian nationality, eccentricity, and homosexuality. Though he ruled Germany as a despot between 1933 and 1945, Hitler's oddness disqualified him from being a squad leader during World War I.

Front line experience indelibly imprinted Hitler's character. He perceived all relationships in terms of war. The stark ruthlessness of combat became his way of life. The First World War's carnage appalled Churchill, DeGaulle, Truman, Eisenhower, and countless other veterans. Hitler came away from his ordeal with the conviction that nature was cruel and life cheap. Referring to his army days, he asserted:

"In a few days a youth becomes a man. If I weren't myself hardened by this experience, I would have been incapable of undertaking the Cyclopean task which the building of an empire means for a single man." [6]

The Germans killed 5,000 civilians in Belgium, including English nurse Edith Cavell. Hitler applauded violations of Belgian neutrality, the bombing of Liege by Zeppelin, and reprisals against non-combatants. On his march to the front through Belgium in 1914, he observed effects of German atrocities at first hand and approved. Invoking the argument of collective responsibility -- which had been outlawed by the Hague Convention -- Generals von Kluck, Bulow, and von Hausen ordered hundreds of civilians executed and thousands of homes burned in Wansage, Battice, Namur, Andenne, Tamines, Seilles, Visa, Liege, Dinant, Givet, Aerschot, and Louvain. Between August 20th & 21st, 1914, the Germans shot 211 people in Andenne and 50 in Seilles. They rounded up 384 men, women, and children in the town square ofTamines and machine-gunned them.

Hitler saw that war suspended bourgeois moral restraints and provided cover for mass murder. In his view, this was the only way to "settle accounts." Half-measures wouldn't do. His SS Einsatzgruppen subsequently followed this example in Poland and Russia. However, those units would not consist of randomly selected regular army troops, but police battalions with special training in liquidating civilians.

Hitler joined the Reichswehr to fight a "6 week war" for Germany's everlasting glory. 3,745 men in his regiment died in battle between October, 1914 and November, 1918. In the First Battle of Ypres 722 soldiers in his division were killed (out of 3,600) and another 1,200 wounded. He described the action in a letter to former landlord Josef Popp.

"The French keep firing into the ruins ... The air and the earth have been trembling under the screams and the roar of grenades and the bursting of shells ... " [7]

He agreed with Ernst Haeckl that strife was the father of all things.
 

"(When) I saw men falling around me in the thousands ... I learned that life is a struggle and has no other object but the preservation of the species." [8]

Liberalism had to go by the board.
 

"Victory (comes) to the strong and the weak must go to the wall. (Nature) teaches us that what may seem cruel to us is nevertheless often essential if a high way of life is to be attained. Nature knows nothing of the notion of humanitarianism, which signifies that the weak must at all costs be preserved, even at the expense of the strong." [9]

Hitler saw Haeckl's Social Darwinism proven on the battlefield. He wanted militarized Aryandom to "become the ruling element over. .. shopkeepers ... speculators, and busybodies." In a letter to his art patron Ernst Hepp, Hitler wrote that a victorious Germany should be "cleansed of aliens ... That would be worth more than all of the gain of new territory." [10]

In October, 1916 near Le Barque Hitler was wounded in the left leg and evacuated to Berlin. He recuperated at Beelitz Hospital for five months. What he saw of the home front disturbed him greatly. Draft-dodgers, shirkers, and black marketers abounded. The "Jewish yellow press" published "insipid, pacifistic tommyrot" to weaken morale and lay the groundwork for setting up a collaborationist government with Entente powers after Germany's defeat.


Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler as a German army soldier during World War I with Ernst Schmidt (Left), Max Amann (center), and Hitler's dog Fuchsl.

Hitler returned to the front in March, 1917 and participated in the battles of Flanders, Arras, Chemin des Dames, Nyons, Soissons, and Rheims. He visited his sister Angela and her family in Spital, Austria while on leave from September, 13, 1917 to October 17, 1917, and again a year later (September 10th to 27th, 1918.) According to Hans Mend, Hitler attempted to join the Communist Parry while still in uniform. When on furlough in late August, 1918, he approached Nuremberg communist officials seeking a senior position before even becoming a dues-paying member. The Reds rebuffed him. Mend referred to Hitler's bold sense of entitlement as "the burglar tactic... which entailed sticking his foot in the door and refusing to yield until he was on the inside." [11] Hitler would use the same modus operandi with Anton Drexler's German Workers Parry in 1920.

On October 13, 1918 the British fired a barrage of hissing gas shells into the List Regiment's position outside Wenoid. Hitler quickly buckled on his mask, but some lethal chlorine gas entered, causing temporary blindness and searing pain. Medics carried him from the field to a van full of other casualties, then transported him by train to Pasewalk Military Hospital in Pomerania. There, on November 10, 1918, a weeping hospital chaplain announced that Germany had agreed to surrender. Hitler nearly passed out from shock and disillusionment.

"Everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow. Since the day I had stood at my mother's grave I had not wept, ... But now I could not help it." [12]

Hitler could not see or talk for days. Dr. Edmund Robert Forster (1878- 1933) diagnosed his condition as hysterical blindness and mutism arising from shell shock, and supposedly treated him with hypnosis. Hitler's sight and powers of speech gradually returned. Some conjecture that dissociation arising from post-traumatic stress syndrome combined with mesmerism further aggravated his Judeophobic delusions. Steven Sage and others suspect that in Mein Kampf Hitler exaggerated the severity of his symptoms in an effort to liken his ordeal to St. Paul's conversion at Damascus and Guido von List's mystical trance of 1902.

Forster fled to Paris after Hitler's rise to power in January, 1933, but returned to Germany a few months later. Following a visit from the Gestapo he ended up dead, with cause of death given as "suicide." Although his case flies were destroyed, Forster confided some details about Hitler's psychiatric treatment to Ernst Weiss, who wrote a fictional account, The Eyewitness, in 1939.

Dr. Walter Langer found it significant that Hitler mentioned his mother in connection with Germany's defeat. He believed Hitler associated Germania with his abused mother and her enemies with his abusive father. Reliving this trauma triggered a hysterical reaction. At this time Adolf Hitler heard voices which ordered him to save Germany.

The Veteran's Return

Dietrich Eckart and Anton Drexler realized that they lacked the energy and charisma necessary to attract multitudes of young workers and soldiers to the volkisch cause. A German redeemer must be made of sterner stuff. One night, while soused at the Brenessel Wine Cellar, Eckart expounded on the qualities needed by the coming Fuhrer:

"We need a fellow at the head who can stand the sound of a machine gun. The rabble need to get scared shitless. We can't use an officer, because the people don't respect them any more. The best would be a worker who knows how to talk ... He doesn't need much brains; politics is the most stupid business in the world, and every market woman in Munich knows more than the people in Weimar. I'd rather have a vain monkey who can give the Reds a juicy answer, and doesn't run away when people start swinging table legs, than a dozen learned professors. He must be a bachelor, then we'll get the women." [13]

Due the effects of poison gas Eckart's future protege was unable to read anything smaller than newspaper headlines. After leaving Pasewalk Military Hospital on November 19, 19 I 8, Hitler went to Turkenstrasse Barracks in Munich's Schwabing district. He and his buddy Ernst Schmidt, also on light duty because of war wounds, disapproved of the "laggards and cowards" in their new unit. Discipline and morale had broken down completely. Hitler, who had become progressively more Judeophobic since the age of eighteen, nursed a delusional conviction that "Jewish anarchists" had created this woeful situation. Hans Mend bumped into him and Schmidt on Lochstrasse in late December. In the course of conversation Hitler asserted: "Thank God the kings have been knocked off their perches. Now we proles have a say." 14 But he also denounced communists, leading Mend to remark: "Adi the Red has changed color!" [15] Wishing to get away from Turkenstrasse Hitler and "Schmidl" volunteered for guard duty at Traunstein p.o.w. camp on December 18th. When that compound closed down six weeks later, they returned to the 2nd Infantry Regiment in Munich and sorted gas masks for 3 marks a day. Anton Joachimsthaler claimed to have found a photograph of Hitler, marching with red armband in the funeral parade of murdered Jewish Socialist Kurt Eisner in late February, 1919.

The army officially discharged Hitler on April 12, 1919, but secretly kept him on its payroll as a spy until 3/31/20. The Spartacist Revolt broke out in April, 1919. Hitler exhorted military comrades not to support Jewish Bolsheviks such as Eugene Levine, Ernst Toller, and Max Levien. When Red agents tried to enlist the support of soldiers at Turkenstrasse Barracks on April 26, 1919, Hitler shouted: "we're not revolutionary guards for a pack of vagrant Jews!" When Spartacists tried to arrest him on April 27th, he turned them away with a loaded rifle. Hitler later received death threats for appearing as a witness in the courts-martial of communist soldiers. Konrad Heiden claimed that his testimony resulted in the deaths of several men.

Officers soon recognized the Bohemian corporal's potential as a soapbox orator. In June Captain Karl Mayr ordered Hitler to report to the University of Munich for a two week indoctrination course given by history professor Karl Alexander von Mueller and his brother-in-law Gottfried Feder. Noticing Hitler address a rapt circle of classmates in the back of the room one day, Mueller judged him an excellent mob-master. When the course ended on July 5th Mayr summoned Hitler and told him to prepare some lectures for the German prisoners of war returning from the Western Front. Between July 21st and August 25th the excitable lance corporal gave a series of speeches in Lechfeld Barracks to the men of the 41st Rifle Regiment.

Captain Karl Mayr associated with the clique that published the South German Review. This group included his boyhood chum Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller, Paul Nikolas Cossman, Gottfried Feder, and Fritz Gerlich. Mayr used Suddeutsche Monatshette articles as texts for his army indoctrination courses. According to Hermann Esser, who worked for him, Mayr originally intended to employ Hitler, Rohm, and Eckart to further his own political ambitions. He eventually fell out of favor, becoming a Social Democrat in 1930, and dying in a concentration camp during World War II.

One of those who sat in on Hitler's performances was Divisional Headquarters' press secretary, Hermann Esser. He introduced himself and urged Hitler to "go public" with his demagogic talents. Hitler also impressed Major Hierl, his regimental commander. Hierl ordered him to attend a meeting of Anton Drexler's new German Workers Party in the backroom of the Sterneckerbrau beer hall on September 12, 1919, where Dietrich Eckart was scheduled to speak.

Eckart cancelled out due to illness and sent Gottfried Feder in his place. Hitler walked over to the Sterneckerbrau and signed in as "Lance Corporal, Munich 2nd Infantry Regiment." He listened to Feder's windy ramblings about interest slavery for nearly two hours. Bored to death, he jumped up as soon as the question-and-answer period started, and headed for the exit. A Professor Baumann rose and began arguing for Bavarian separatism. Hitler whirled around and launched into a spontaneous Pan-German tirade. Those wanting to divide Germany into small impotent duchies played right into the hands of her enemies! Hitler ranted for fifteen minutes. According to Hermann Esser, Baumann "slunk out of the room like a wet poodle."

Anton Drexler rushed over when Hitler finished, and handed him a copy of his forty-page booklet, My Political Awakening. Hitler read it that night. He agreed with Drexler's premises that a patriotic anti-communist parry could be built with a constituency of workers, Army enlisted men, and small businessmen. Although the Skat club atmosphere of the German Workers Party repelled him, Hitler saw that it provided an opportunity to break into politics. A young enlisted man from Austria with controversial views would have no chance of making headway in the other parties. People like Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer could never match his gifts for oratory and political intrigue. They needed an energetic and imaginative young fanatic with histrionic talents. Furthermore, Hitler knew that their German Workers Party conformed to army specifications. The Reichswehr General-Staff had been writing checks from a secret fund to this miniscule organization because they believed it could draw the working classes away from the Communist Party.

On October 14, 1919 Hitler requested Captain Mayr's permission to join the German Workers Party. It was against regulations for army personnel to engage in political activity. Nevertheless, Mayr consented and Hitler became the 55th member of the D.A.P. He immediately imposed his own agenda. Revealing both arrogance and a gambler's mentality, Hitler demanded that the entire sum in the party treasury be spent to purchase a newspaper ad announcing his first public political speech at the Hofbrauhaus. After much hemming and hawing Drexler and Harrer ponied up the money. On October 16, 1919 seventy people filed into the Hofbrauhaus at 7 P.M. to hear him speak. He dazzled them with a forceful tirade against the "November criminals." Party members passed the hat while Hitler raved, so that the next meeting could be financed. On November 13th he electrified a gathering at the Eberlbrau beer hall with a speech on the Brest-Litovsk and Versailles treaties. After that performance the volkisch playwright Dietrich Eckart, whom he had briefly met in late September or early October, complimented him on his eloquence. During the next few weeks the two men collaborated on the German Workers Party's 26-point program.

Hitler was on a roll. He harangued an audience of one hundred and seventy on December 10th. A meeting at the Zum Deutschen Reich Tavern netted 400 paying customers a few days later. Gratified by the reports he heard about a growing anti-communist party that catered to workers and common soldiers, General Erich Ludendorff ordered 121 army men to join The German Workers Party. Hitler soon addressed crowds of between 1,200 and 3,500 people. His political career had taken off.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1943, pp. 126-127.

2 Eugene Davidson, The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth & Rise of Nazism, MacMillan, New York, 1977, pp. 43-44.

3 Stefan Lorant, Sieg Heil! Bonanza Books, New York, 1974, p. 55, op. cit. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

4 Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler, trans. John Brownjohn, Basic Books, New York, 2001, p. 69, op. cit. The Mend Protocol.

5 Ibid., p. 68.

6 H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944, Farrar, Strauss & Young, New York, 1953, p. 156.

7 Werner Maser, ed. Hitler's Letters and Notes, Bantam Books, New York, 1976, p. 61.

8 Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard & Clara Winston, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974, p. 133.

9 Ibid., p. 159.

10 John Lukacs, The Hitler of History, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997, p. 63, op. cit. Erhard Jaeckel & Axel Kuhn, editors, Hitler's Letters.

11 Machtan, p. 71.

12 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 204.

13 Barbara Lane Miller and Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1978, p. 9.

14 Machtan, p. 70.

15 Ibid.

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18: Personal Chemistry

"Dietrich Eckart ... was Hitler's mentor and the spiritual founder of National Socialism."

-- William Gillespie

"(Hitler and Eckart) developed a close personal as well as political relationship. It was the most important friendship in the lives of both men."

-- Ralph M. Engelman

Adolf Hitler's father Alois has been described as a "vigorous, opinionated, bullet-headed man" who held court in local taverns. The same brief description fits his "fatherly friend," Dietrich Eckart. British-American historical scholarship still tends to overlook Eckart in spite of his seminal importance as Hitler's mentor.

The parallel lives of Dietrich Eckart and Adolf Hitler both conformed to a pattern of let-down followed by public acclaim. Disappointments wounded both of them, creating the same spiritual malady. Hitler and Eckart projected their dread and inner concupiscence onto "The Jew," a mythical stereotype . which embodied malevolence in their minds. Carl Gustav Jung spoke of this process as "objectifying one's shadow." Bruno Bettelheim, who systematically researched the etiology of anti-Semitism, thought of it as externalizing and personifying one's own inner conflicts. Eckart and Hitler felt painful angst due to alienation and an "inner void," but misdiagnosed European Jewry as its root cause.

Their compatibility derived in part from a common pathology. Dietrich Eckart was a heavy drinker and drug addict, Adolf Hitler the codependent son of an alcoholic, who habitually acted like a "dry drunk." The addictive behaviors exhibited by both men included grandiosity, hypersensitivity, refusal to admit mistakes or compromise, petulance, desire for revenge, morbid feelings of doom, manipulative schemes, and spiritual emptiness. Hitler consistently engaged in all-or-nothing ventures, as illustrated by his huffy resignation from the party in 1921, suicide threats when things went wrong (e.g. after the Beer Hall Putsch's failure,) and compulsive need for conquest during World War II. Perhaps most significantly, Hitler and Eckart both possessed the substance abuser's propensity toward bigotry. They projected their inward dread, guilt, and sinful inclinations onto Jews. Psychologists point out that projection reinforces denial and helps an addict preserve the status quo. He or she will derive comfort from the illusion that 'X' is the problem, not me.

Dietrich Eckart and Adolf Hitler had many traits in common. Both had negative attitudes toward other people, mistaking a jaundiced view for sophistication. They were paranoid autodidacts with peculiar gaps in their learning. Each had a life span of approximately 56 years. They loved the Bavarian Alps and shared passions for art, current affairs, Wagnerian opera, Ibsen's plays, and "volkisch romanticism." Eckart and Hitler both made a transition from art to politics, and shared a common interest in propaganda. They had stern fathers who worked as government officials, and doting mothers who died young. Neither wanted to enter his "old gentleman's" profession. Both abhorred irate Old Testament God Jehovah, whom they identified with their grumpy, authoritarian fathers. They lived in fantasy worlds as adolescents. Both took drugs. Pharmacist Gregor Strasser noticed that Hitler popped "uppers" to pep himself up, whereas Eckart preferred to get smashed on "downers." These two high-strung artists exasperated others with their lazy streaks, and split personalities, which alternated between sentimentality and brutality. As young men Eckart and Hitler emigrated from small towns to big cities. "Ambition propelled these moody provincials to rapidly expanding cosmopolitan capitals," [1] where they experienced failure. Hitler endured poverty as a struggling artist in Vienna. Eckart led the existence of a destitute writer in Berlin between 1906 and 1911. The pair eventually achieved notoriety in Munich. In Richard Hanser's words, both were "essentially .. : bohemians, rootless and antisocial." [2] Correlating their own marginalization with Jewish emancipation, they allowed animus toward Jews to unhinge them. As self-styled intellectuals Eckart and Hitler touted ideological anti-Semitism, rather than the emotional Judeophobia of Russian pogroms.

There were marked differences as well. Hitler gave up smoking at eighteen, and rarely imbibed alcohol, while Eckart chain-smoked cigars, drank like a fish, and took morphine. Hitler struck many observers as a humorless loner. During the manic phases of his bi-polar mood swings, Eckart exuded a bonhomie appreciated by barroom companions. Hitler clung to narrow, simplistic views and repeated them ad nauseum. Eckart was more learned and complex. Sensitive to nuances and ironies, he played variations on themes without constant repetition. Eckart could never resist a jest or well-turned phrase, though his embellished stories invariably provided more entertainment value than truth. Unlike Hitler, he had misgivings about the military-industrial complex. Eckart was more cosmopolitan with his concept of trans-national unions to adjust European wages, and idea of punishing journalists in foreign countries who published false war propaganda. His anti-Semitism, though virulent, stopped short of being homicidal. Yet, because of these dissimilarities, the duo complemented one another. From late 1919 to early 1923 dramatist Eckart directed temperamental actor Adolf Hitler. They interacted as kindred spirits with different strengths. According to Hermann Esser, Eckart was a formidable debater and first rate propagandist, but not an effective public speaker. Hitler mesmerized audiences with passionate orations, but his disorganized and prolix writing required rigorous editing. Therefore, Eckart functioned as a theoretician and specialist in the written word, Hitler as man of action and master of the spoken word.

Acquaintances perceived Eckart as a social creature with a rough, but amusing manner. He

"spoke gutter language as well as that of the parlor ... and bridged both worlds without belonging to either." [3]

Eckart introduced Hitler to well-heeled conservatives like Edwin and Helena Bechstein, Hugo and Elsa Bruckmann, Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, author Houston Stewart Chamberlain, publisher Julius Lehmann, racist historian Adolf Bartels, chemist Dr. Emil Gansser, Augsburg notary Dr. Gottfried Grande!, General Franz Ritter von Epp, and minions such as Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Hanfstaengl, and Heinrich Hoffman. Eckart's newspaper articles puffed up Hitler. His fund-raising activities kept the fledgling German Workers Parry alive. He even floated personal loans to Hitler, as proven by an I.O.U. for 15,000 marks dated February, 1921. The hard-drinking playwright upgraded his young comrade's wardrobe and table manners, and tutored him in metaphysics as well as practical politics. Thanks to him an intra-party revolt against Hitler was quashed in 1921.

Hitler sensed that fellow artist Eckart really understood him. Philosophers have pointed out the amorality of aesthetes, for whom style and form take precedence over ethics. The artistic proclivities of Eckart and Hitler may account in part for their moral blindness. In any case, both blamed the "Boyg" (Clammy Blob) of materialism for frustrating their dreams of success on the art scene.

The two men became personal friends. Hitler regarded Eckart as a literary lion with mature political judgment. The playwright's massive bald head and deep voice impressed him. Years later Hitler recalled

"(his) wonderful cranium ... a mighty forehead like that of a bull ... in addition, a voice of wonderfully honest timbre." [4]

Hitler had spoken to August Kubizek in 1907 about establishing a salon for like-minded artists. By 1920 he huddled almost daily with an inspiring theatrical personality. He and Eckart discussed philosophy, art, and politics. They attended the theater and opera together.

Eckart had always liked young people. He had affectionate relationships with his nieces and nephews, maintained a lengthy correspondence with teenaged Xaver Steinbach of Neumarkt, carried on romantic affairs with pubescent Eleonore and Annerl, and briefly acted as mentor to Ernst Lauterer ("Tarnhari"), a "prophet" more than ten years his junior. Political neophyte Hitler now looked to him for guidance. The middle-aged dramatist, twenty-one years his senior, welcomed the opportunity to groom a militant young Parsifal. As Joachim Kohler noted: "Eckart used to create tragic heroes for the stage; now he created a national savior (in) real life." [5]

The Aryan folk spirit seemed to possess Hitler while he spoke. His impassioned words won people's hearts and minds, and unified them into a powerful force. Eckart regarded Hitler as a nascent Germanic prophet, opposed to all things corrupt, "before whom night will recede." This description conjures up the Die Meistersinger scene in which Hans Sachs expels Jewish villain Beckmesser, causing dawn to break. Eckart conceived of himself as a latter day John the Baptist whose mission would be to herald and coach the Teutonic Messiah.

Though Eckart truly believed Hitler had genuine mediumistic powers, he often found him a less than ideal "vehicle," perhaps affected by "lower spirits." Like most charismatics, Hitler frequently lapsed into near hysteria. Their relationship had its ups and downs. Nevertheless, these unfulfilled artists would feed each other's neuroses for nearly four years.

In 1923 Eckart vacillated between devotion and hostility toward Hitler. Ernst Hanfstaengl and Kurt Ludecke recorded his dissatisfaction with "Der Fuhrer." The quotations Hanfstaengl attributed to him ring true. However, readers should be aware of Eckart's ambivalence about everyone, and his habit of getting a rise out of tavern mates by scoffing at those not present. It must also be borne in mind that Hanfstaengl and Ludecke had not only fallen out of favor with the Nazis at the time they wrote their books, but were trying to distance themselves from a criminal regime. Therefore, both professed sympathy with Eckart's reservations. Despite his disapproval of Hitler's grandiose delusions, Eckart ultimately remained loyal to him. Yet we must bear in mind that he never foresaw Hitler as having the remotest chance of becoming Germany's chancellor.

The Question of Homosexuality

Adolf Hitler and Dietrich Eckart were both bisexual. On November 15, 1923, Eckart told Bavarian police:

"I was ... inwardly attached to Hitler. .. drawn to his whole being ... and my relationship with him became more intimate." [6]

Lothar Machtan cited that quotation to document Eckart's bisexuality, as well as this poem written to a male pal in 1892.

"You often saw me deeply engrossed in dreams, And saw me ever struggle, wrestle, strive; You saw me exultant, drunk with love, And saw my young life sullied with self-hate. True to myself I've never truly been, Save only in my own true love for you." [7]

After Eckart's death close friend Karl Guido Bomhard provided information to Nazi officials about him only on condition of anonymity. In a confidential letter to Philip Feldl he hinted that homosexuality was permissible for the cognoscenti, in their role as successors to Socrates, Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and other gay men of genius. "Eckart did not want to divulge things that showed him in a false light." [8] The "things" alluded to were "highly personal matters which stemmed from our common originality, and are to be indulged in only by Bohemians." [9] Bomhard thought homosexual love stimulated creativity in aesthetically-inclined males. He described Eckart's relationship with Hitler as "deep-rooted and sincere." [10]

Machtan asserted that Eckart's patron Count Georg von Huelsen-Haeseler was a homosexual; so were Freikorps commanders General Ritter von Epp, Lieutenant Gerhard Rossbach, and Captain Ernst Rohm. These men considered themselves members of the "pederastic elite," which upheld Spartan military ideals and scorned the bourgeois values of heterosexual "breeders."

Eckart evidently could neither live with nor without the feminine gender. In 1937 Alfred Rosenberg wrote that for him

"woman was nature and no more ... They had a penchant for trivialities, (dwelled in) a purely personal sphere, ... (and) were incapable of truly grasping profunditities." [11]

He agreed with Arthur Schopenhauer's essay "On Women."

"Her reason is of very narrow limitations. This is why women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearances of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important." [12]

Rosenberg noticed that the female characters in Eckart's plays were generally "sensual and treacherous," in accordance with the anti-feminism of Otto Weininger, Adolf Lanz von Liebenfals, and Schopenhauer. Although a misogynist, who regarded women as shallow and childish, Eckart preferred female sexual partners, such as Eleonore, Rose, and Annerl.

In 1922, irregardless of his own bisexuality, Eckart bashed early gay rights exponent Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), "The Einstein of Sex," as:

an apostle of sodomy ... determined to drag the vice even further out into the street. He means to poison young people through and through ... (German) proles are to act as catamites to this satiated Galician Jewish rogue ... .The filthy old beast should have his skull stoved in." [13]

In 1897 Hirschfeld, a Jewish physician from Magdeburg, whose personal predilections included homosexuality, transvestitism, and foot-fetishism, founded The Scientific Humanitarian Committee. This organization portrayed homosexuals as "the Intermediate Sex." In 1919 Hirschfeld purchased a former royal palace in Berlin and established the Institute for Sexual Research, with an extensive library and "Museum of Sex." That same year he helped produce the movie Different from Others, which cast silent mm star Conrad Yeidt as a sympathetic homosexual character who suffered persecution.

Known in gay circles as "Madam Magnesia," Hirschfeld actually was a shady character who twisted Sigmund Freud's warnings about sexual repression into license for promiscuity. Nationalistic homosexual Hans Blueher visited his Institute of Sexual Research and deemed it "a downright brothel." [14] Others accused him of pimping, "outing" opponents, blackmailing patients, and advertising ineffective aphrodisiacs. Although some of these charges were exaggerated, Hirschfeld reigned as the poster boy for "Jewish depravity" in Germany from 1897 to 1935.

In addition to homosexuality Hirschfeld advocated free love, women's rights, and abortion. His message that perversions were natural phenomena worthy of scientific study, rather than hostility, polarized Germans. In 1921 a group of moralistic thugs jumped Hirschfeld during Munich's Congress for Sexual Reform and fractured his skull. On May 6, 1933, while Hirschfeld was out of the country, a band of Nazis vandalized the Institute for Sexual Research, and burned more than 10,000 of its books on Opera Square. In a climactic gesture of abhorrence they carried a bust of Hirschfeld outside and heaved it onto their bonfire. This violent demonstration convinced him to stay abroad. On May 14, 1935 he died as an exile in Nice.

No evidence has surfaced indicating that Hitler ever had an active homosexual relationship with father figure Eckart, who remained married to Rose between 1919 and 1921, and recruited Anna Obster shortly after their divorce. He apparently considered homosexuality a second rate means of satisfying biological urges when down on his luck, comparable to the way one ate oleomargarine instead of butter in war time, or drank "coffee" brewed from dried dandelion root during a recession. For him homosexual acts were pale substitutes for relations with attractive females.

Lothar Machtan referred to Hitler's homosexuality as his "great secret. .. and Achilles heel." [15] Machtan's book Hidden Hitler proved Adolf Hitler's homosexual proclivities between 1913 and 1927. Before 1933 Commissioner Otto Hermann von Lossow produced six fat Munich Police Department file folders containing Hitler's criminal record, and showed Eugen Dollman several signed statements from young men. Dollman, a homosexual who later became an SS colonel and diplomatic translator, quoted some of these affidavits in his book, Roma Nazista:

"I, Josef, was approached while out walking by a man with whom I went to a movie theater, and then he wanted to take me with him to his room after giving me food and cigarettes. Because 1 told him I had been a keen soldier ... he spoke to me for hours about a new German army and urged me to engage in propaganda among my comrades in behalf of a new military formation founded by himself. He talked a great deal, but did not wish me to smoke in his room. I spent the whole night with him .... Signed Josef."

"I, Franz, an apprentice, made the acquaintance of a gentleman, who spoke in an Austrian dialect and told me a great deal about Vienna. When he saw I was interested in his remarks, he proceeded to explain the need for the reunification of Germany and Austria. He asked if I would be willing to devote myself to that end He invited me to stay the night with him, and I accepted The gentlemen's name is Adolf Hitler; he wore a pale gabardine overcoat, and one of his distinctive features is a lock of hair that kept flopping onto his forehead. Signed Franz." [16]

General von Lossow swore to Dollman on his honor as a German officer that these depositions were genuine, and not false testimonies extracted from arrested criminals seeking leniency.

Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld claimed to have transcripts from two male clients who testified that they had sexual relations with Hitler. Samuel Ingra, author of The German Vice, wrote that Hitler "had been a male prostitute in Vienna ... from 1907 to 1912, and that he practiced the same calling in Munich from 1912 to 1914." [17] No reliable witnesses have ever come forward to verify this allegation. Early associates such as Reinhold Hanisch, August Kubizek, and Karl Honisch make no mention of Hitler working as a "rent boy." In any case, Ingra's statement can never be proven because the Gestapo confiscated and destroyed all of Hitler's Austrian and German criminal records in the 1930's.

Bisexuality was another condition shared by Hitler and Eckart, even though they probably did not have a sexual relationship. However, another odd similarity manifested in their lives. Both ceased homosexual activity in their late 30's. Hitler commenced a romance with niece Geli Raubal in 1927, and remained in a heterosexual relationship with Eva Braun from the time of Geli's suicide in 1931, until the end in 1945. Recent psychological studies have associated repressed male homosexuality with aggressiveness.

Professor from the School of Hard Knocks

Hitler and Eckart were united by their obsessive anti-Semitism. Colleagues such as Karl von Bothmer and Gottfried Feder thought Eckart overemphasized the "Jewish Peril" due to a monomania. Not so Hitler. He and Eckart were "co-hallucinators" with respect to "International Jewry." They concurred that

"The Jewish Problem is mankind's problem; in it all the rest of the problems are contained." [18]

Although Eckart helped clarify and systematize his pupil's biases, he did not convert him to Pan-German nationalism or anti-Semitism. Hitler's prejudices were fully developed from reading intellectual rubbish in Vienna, and suffering traumatic experiences which he wrongly ascribed to Jewish malfeasance. At the behest of Captain Karl Mayr, Lance Corporal Hitler wrote a report dated September 6, 1919 to Herr Alfred Gemlich which outlined his views on the Jewish Question.

"And the facts are: first, Jewry is unequivocally a race and not a religious community... If the Jew's feelings move in purely material realms, even more so does his thinking and striving Everything that prompts man to strive for higher things all that to him is only a means to ... satisfying his craving for money and dominance ... The anti-Semitism of reason ... must lead to the planned judicial opposition and elimination of the privileges of the Jews ... Its ultimate goal, however, must absolutely be the removal of the Jews altogether." [19]

These words, which expressed long-held convictions, demonstrate that Hitler advocated the expulsion of Jews before he met Dietrich Eckart. Scholars such as Fritz Redlich and Brigitte Hamann argue that his eliminationist anti-Semitism "emerged gradually between the end of World War I and Landsberg (prison.)" [20] This implies that Eckart and Alfred Rosenberg contributed to its intensification. Indeed, Hitler's August 13, 1920 speech echoes Eckartian sentiments in its attribution of "Mammonism," materialism, sedition, and white slavery to Jews. In a March 13, 1921 Volkischer Beobachter article Hitler first broached the idea of "protecting" Germany's Yolk by quarantining Jews.

"One has to prevent Jewish subversion of our people, if necessary by securing its instigating virus in concentration camps." [21]

Eckart's essay "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" (analyzed in Chapter 20) summarizes his discourses with Hitler. The cumulative effect of these lessons may be measured by reading Hitler's 1922 declaration to Josef Hell, which argued for a "final solution."

"Once I'm in power the annihilation of Jews will be my first and foremost task. I'll have gallows erected on Munich's Marienplatz. Then Jews will be hanged one after the next ... and will remain hanging till they stink... After they're cut off, the next group will be hanged, until the last Jew in Munich is extinguished. The same will happen in other cities until the German is at last freed of the Jew." [22]

Hitler's anti-Semitism worsened after Eckart's death. In the summer of 1924 he went beyond what Eckart taught him. During a July 29, 1924 jailhouse interview Hitler snarled:

"I have changed my opinion concerning the methods to fight Jewry. I realize that up to now I have been much too soft!" [23]

Dietrich Eckart was the first man of sophistication to take a serious interest in Hitler. Despite outward joviality, the Bohemian writer had a dark side. His satires, Auf Gut Deutsch columns, and pamphlets reflected pathological hatreds. He blamed Jews for his own personal shortcomings and the inexorable adversities of life. Eckart's lurid fantasies implicated "Hebrew manipulators" in a plot to destroy European society. These fictions reinforced Hitler's Judeophobia.

Eckart introduced Hitler to well-off supporters, dispensed political advice, passed on rumors, told jokes, provided fashion tips, and gave him books. From him Hitler received a signed copy of Lorenzaccio, Artur Dinter's racist novel Sin Against Blood, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, articles about Gustave LeBon's Psychology of the Masses, Hans Horbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory, and much more.

Hans Horbiger made a fortune from inventing steam engine valves. His unscientific cosmological hypotheses so entranced Hitler that he planned to dedicate a huge observatory to him in Linz. The Cosmic Ice Theory, published in 1913, appealed to his liking for sweeping changes over huge areas. According to Horbiger, extremes of temperature (fire and ice) caused by massive intergalactic forces, wrought cataclysms over the earth for eons. Hitler utilized Horbiger's geological imagery to explain historical forces. Just as gigantic glaciers and volcanic eruptions altered our planet, great conquering armies would determine the fate of nations, and a ruthless dictator could upgrade humanity by killing off "undermenschen." Upheaval and destruction made the world go 'round. "Visionaries" must think big.

Horbiger visualized the ozone layer as earth's membrane. He and his followers issued dire warnings against shooting projectiles into the stratosphere. Such missiles would rupture earth's protective sheath, causing toxic compounds of hydrogen, nitrogen, and ether to leak into our atmosphere. Thus, Hitler did not push his V-2 rocket program until 1945, when he no longer cared whether or not the world ended, and felt "lured by the prospect of ... universal annihilation, which included his enemies, victims, people, and himself." [24]

Hitler and Eckart realized that any modern leader had to have the ability to move the common people. They both read Dr. J. R. Rossbach's September, 1919 Volkischer Beobachter article which recapped the ideas of Gustave Le Bon, a French doctor who wrote Psychology of the Masses in 1895. The public's imbecility puzzled Le Bon. He could not fathom why the hoi polloi wholeheartedly embraced fallacies, sentimentality, bad art, and superstition, while spurning logic, science, and documented truths. The masses routinely dismissed incontrovertible facts presented in an uninspiring manner, but would enthusiastically accept preposterous absurdities so long as they were compellingly expressed. Le Bon held that

"creating belief ... is the special task of ... great leaders. They don't create until they themselves have become fascinated with a belief. The strength of their faith lends suggestive power to their words ... " [25]

Hence, the more faith Hitler had in Volkish ideas, the more persuasive he would be in preaching them to frustrated workers and small tradesmen.

Eckart and Hitler equated crowds' emotional irrationality with "femininity." As Hitler later told members of his entourage:

"Do you know the audience at a circus is just like women. Someone who does not understand the intrinsically feminine character of the masses will never be an effective speaker. Ask yourself: what does a woman expect from a man? Clearness, decision, power, and action. What we want is to get the masses to act. Like a woman, (they) fluctuate between extremes ... The mob is not only like a woman, but women constitute the most important element in an audience." [26]

Eckart taught Hitler that he must project a macho image to win over audiences.

"The psyche of the broad masses does not respond to anything weak or half-way. Like a woman whose spiritual sensitiveness is determined less by abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional longing for fulfilling power and who for that reason, prefers to submit to the strong rather than the weakling -- the mass, too, prefers the ruler to a pleader." [27]

Le Bon asserted that a concept lacked practical value unless it motivated people. Truth didn't matter. All that counted was that large numbers of chumps bought into it. Eckart and Hitler agreed that most Jews knew this. Thus, they had to learn from their enemies, and adopt a modus operandi similar to Jewish media moguls and businessmen, who cozened gulls with clever advertising. They instructed Rosenberg to lower the intellectual level of the Volkish Beobachter immediately. A few weeks later he reported back that readership had increased. In this democratic age politicians had to pander to voters. A would-be demagogue could never attain office unless he learned how to hit the electorate's hot buttons. In Eckart's opinion Hitler had to de-emphasize his extreme views and tailor the party platform to the actual hopes and desires of Germany's Volk.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Ralph Max Engelman, Dietrich Eckart and the Genesis of Nazism, Washington University, 1971, UMI, Ann Arbor, MI, 1971, p. 246.

2 Richard Hanser, Putsch!, Peter Wyden, New York, 1970, p. 219.

3 Klaus B. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History, Continuum Publishing Co., New York, 1995, p. 134.

4 Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler, trans. John Brownjohn, Basic Books, New York, 2001, p. 117, op. cit. Adolf Hitler, "The Ten Year Struggle," Illustrierte Beobachter, 8/23/29.

5 Joachim Kohler, Wagner's Hitler, trans. Ronald Taylor, Polity Press, 2000, Malden, MA, p. 155.

6 Machtan, op. cit. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, National Socialism, Volume 26, p. 2,180, 11/15/1923 police interview with Dietrich Eckart.

7 Ibid., op cit. Alfred Rosenberg, Ein Vermachtis (A Legacy,) 1937, p. 15.

8 Ibid., p. 118, op. cit. Karl Guido Bomhard's letter to Philipp Feldl, 8/2/35.

9 lbid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., op. cit. Alfred Rosenberg, Vermachtis, 1937, p. 16.

12 Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Women," etext library.Adeiaide.edu.au, p. p 2 & 3 of 13.

13 Machtan, p. I 18, op. cit. Richard Linsen, Kabale unde Liebe, Uber Politik und Geslechtsleben, Berlin, 1931, p. 296.

14 Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika, Veritas Aeterna Press, Sacramento, CA 2002, "The Homosexual Roots of the Nazi Party," p. 9.

15 Machtan, p. 21.

16 Ibid. p. 136, op. cit. Eugen Dollman, Roman Nazista, Longanesi Publishing Co., Milan, 1949, quoting Munich Police reports.

17 Samuel Ingra, Germany's National Vice, Quality Press Ltd., London, 1945, p. 67.

18 Engelman, p. 101, op. cit. Auf Gut Deutsch, p. 181.

19 Eberhard Jackel & Axel Kuhn, editors, Hitler Samdiche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924, Deutsche Verlag Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1980, pp. 88-90, Adolf Hitler letter to A. Gemlich, 9/16/1919.

20 Fritz Redlich M.D., Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, Oxford Press, New York, 1999, p. 31.

21 Eberhard Jackel, Hitler's Weltanschaung, trans. Herbert Arnhold, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1972, p. 52, op. cit. Adolf Hitler's 3/13/1921 Volkisch Beobachter article.

22 Archives of Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, ZS 640, Adolf Hitler statement to Josef Hell, 1922.

23 Jackel, op. cit. Der Nationalsozialist Magazin, Leipzig, #29, 8/ I 7/1924 publication date.

24 J. P. Stern, Hitler: Fuhrer of the People, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1975, p. 221.

25 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 215, op. cit. Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie der Massen, Leipzig, 1908, p. 84

26 Robert G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1977, p. 52.

27 Walter C. Langer M.D., The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1972, p. 47, op. cit. O.S.S. Interview with Ernst Hanfstaengl.

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19: Historic Collaboration

"Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune."

-- Dietrich Eckart

The Socialization of Adolf

According to Hermann Esser, Captain Karl Mayr introduced Adolf Hitler to Dietrich Eckart sometime in late September or early October of 1919. However, the pair did not work closely together until after Hitler's November 13,1919 speech at the Eberlbrauhus beer hall.

During this early period as a political agitator Hitler sought to keep all options open. He asked Eckart's artist friend Max Zaeper to appraise his paintings so he could have art dealers sell them at fair market value. Georg Grassinger claimed that Hitler applied for a newspaper reporter's job at Rudolf von Sebottendorf's Munchener Beobachter in the Autumn of 1919, but was turned down.

In 1920 and 1921 Hitler visited Eckart regularly at his apartment on Franz Josef Strasse, Auf Gut Deutsch's office, various cafes, and his cousin Simon Eckart's lavish home in Giesing. Simon was an executive with Hansa Bank, who owned rental properties and controlling interest in a small brewery. He also collected art. Hitler recalled him being dissatisfied with an unsatisfactorily restored Murillo. The two cousins were very dissimilar.

"A whole world separated them. Dietrich was a writer full of idealism, Simon a man deeply immersed in ... realities." [1]

Noticing Hitler's gauche manners and disheveled appearance, Eckart schooled him in the social graces, and bought him some suits, hats, and a gabardine trench coat. Like a theatrical director he dressed his young star for the stage, then presented him to wealthy rightwing sympathizers Count Ernst zu Reventlow (Fanni's brother), Helena Bechstein, and Hugo Bruckmann with the words: "meet the man who will one day liberate Germany! ... This is the man of the future. One day the whole world will be talking about him." [2]

In upper class drawing rooms Hitler distinguished himself by a voracious appetite for cakes, low Austrian bows, and moody silences interrupted by vitriolic monologues. Eckart attempted to make him more "salonfahig" (socially acceptable,) but sometimes found the gentrification of Adolf a trial. The nattily dressed writer disapproved when his young Lohengrin paraded around in ridiculous outfits. At a fashionable party one evening Eckart winced as Hitler entered clasping a dog-whip, clad in trench coat and "gangster hat," with revolver handle sticking out of his tuxedo's cummerbund. At soirees Hitler, who typically hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, gobbled hors d'oeuvres four at a time, and stuffed his mouth so full of pastry that he could barely speak. With other guests seeking light cocktail chatter, he blurted out unpleasant diatribes against Jews. Eckart could never predict how Hitler would act in social settings. He either sulked in a corner, or ranted like an evangelist. On other occasions, he turned on saccharine Viennese charm -- usually for the wrong people. "Uncle Dietrich" complained that his understudy ignored constructive criticism, and resented any suggestion that he was less than infallible.

To Hanfstaengl, Ludecke, and others, Eckart poked fun at Hitler's "Austrian slavishness." Society columnist Bella Fromm observed this characteristic at a 1921 soiree.

"He bowed and clicked and all but knelt in his zeal to please the oversized... Princess Luise von Sachsen-Meiningen, her brother, hereditary Prince Georg, and their sister, Grand Duchess of Sachsen-Weimar. Beaming in his servile attitude, he dashed personally to bring refreshments from the buffet." [3]

Carola von Hoffman, widow of a school teacher, baked cakes for Hitler and washed his clothes. She fondly addressed him as "Wolfschen." He called her "Muttichen." Eckart moaned as he watched Hitler snub wealthy Junker contributors, while waiting on that "old biddy."

Eckart introduced the Nazi enfant terrible to people he would never have gained access to on his own. In October, 1923 Eckart's friend Helena Bechstein and her piano manufacturer husband Edwin Bechstein, accompanied Hitler to Bayreuth in October, 1923 to meet Mr. and Mrs. Siegfried Wagner. Bisexual Siegfried dismissed Hitler, who was dressed in checked shirt, leather shorts, and lederhosen, as "a fraud and upstart." His attractive English wife Winifred registered a very different impression. At first sight she regarded the young Bohemian as Germany's Messiah.

Eckart's referral of Hitler to theatrical producer and designer Clemens von Franckenstein did not bear fruit. Franckenstein's "queer eye" divined something amiss, under the general category of "bad vibes." Hitler appeared at his plush home in Lenbach Villa with whip in hand, wearing riding breeches and slouch hat. Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen provided an account of their meeting.

"When he had gone, we sat silently confused and not at all amused. There was a feeling of dismay, as when on a train you suddenly find that you are sharing a compartment with a psychotic ... Finally, Clemens stood up, opened one of the huge windows and let the spring air into the room It was not that an unsanitary body had been (there,) but something else: the unclean essence of a monstrosity." [4]

Eckart himself felt more at home in local bars than the townhouses of the rich. He brought Hitler and his comrades down to the Brenessel Wine Cellar, Bratwurst-Gloeckle Restaurant, Cafe Neumeier, and Cafe Heck for food, drink, and talk. He'd buy his abstemious young friend a beer, then loosen him up with humorous conversation. The usually stern Hitler slapped his knee when Eckart made him laugh. Hitler's closest companions in 1921 were Eckart, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Esser, Ulrich Graf, Max Amann, Alfred Rosenberg, and Christian Weber.

In October, 1922 Eckart's photographer friend Heinrich Hoffman joined the circle. That relationship started inauspiciously. An American news service offered Hoffman one hundred dollars for a photo of Hitler. At that time the going rate for an ordinary politician's picture was five dollars. Hoffman approached Eckart and requested his assistance in arranging a photo shoot. Though a drinking buddy and customer of Hoffman's Eckart refused, stating that Hitler had just turned down a 20,000 dollar offer from another wire service. The incredulous Hoffman resolved to sneak up on Hitler, snap a shot, then make a fast getaway. Adolf Muller, who printed the Volkisch Beobachter happened to have his shop directly across the street from Hoffman's studio on Schellingstrasse. A few days later he saw the N.S.D.A.P.'s green Selve car roll to a stop. Hitler jumped out and strode into Muller's office. Hoffman stationed himself near the printer's door. While nervously waiting, he saw a cart horse lean into the Selve's open back window and take a bite of its seaweed seat cushion stuffing, then spit it out. A moment later Hitler walked out. Hoffman pressed the shutter. Two burly bodyguards immediately dashed over, grabbed his camera, pulled out the plate, and threw it on the cobblestones. Hitler grinned at him.

A few months later, at Hermann Esser's wedding, Hitler apologized for that incident. He agreed to be photographed, and soon became a close friend. Hoffman eventually introduced him to Eva Braun, an employee in his studio. Over the years he earned a fortune as Hitler's personal photographer.

Political Activism

In mid-November, 1919 Dietrich Eckart, Adolf Hitler, Anton Drexler, and Gottfried Feder gathered in a beer hall to confer on the German Workers Parry's platform. From this time until August, 1922 (when he fled Munich to avoid arrest,) Eckart would be Hitler's closest adviser.

Eckart probably wrote Article 4 of the German Workers Parry's 26 Point Platform, stipulating that German citizenship must be based on race, and Article 23 which banned Jews from journalism. Ralph Engelman also suspected him of being the author of points 5 through 8:

"#5) Non-Germans may only live in Germany as guests;

#6) The right to determine matters of law belongs only to German citizens;

#7 The state must provide all German citizens with employment opportunities;

#8) Germany must ban all further immigration and deport all immigrants who arrived after August 1, 1914." [5]

Hitler and Eckart adopted some socialistic planks from Gottfried Feder and Anton Drexler which were later dropped, such as a 10,000 mark limit on war profits, and the mortgaging of noble estates to pay down Germany's war debt.

In January, 1920 Eckart supported Hitler in his successful bid to supplant Sports writer Karl Harrer as party information chief His political origins as a propagandist reveal Hitler's true nature. He and Eckart shared the conviction that they must have a daily newspaper to counteract the "Jewish press."

Both men spoke before 2,000 at Zum Deutschen Reich Hall on February 5, 1920. Many thought that Eckart wrote Hitler's speeches. Although he did incorporate some of the playwright's ideas and catch-phrases into his speeches, Hitler never used him as a "ghost-writer."

During that turbulent period politicians from Germany's multitude of parties debated the questions of democracy vs. absolutism, militant foreign policy vs. accommodation, humanitarianism vs. racism, multi-cultural ism vs. nationalism, populism vs. elitism, and socialism vs. capitalism. On most of these issues Eckart and Hitler came down on the same side. Their program would combine absolutism, militancy, racism, nationalism, and populism. Eckart leaned toward socialism because of his obsession with usury. Hitler's detestation of Marxism made capitalism seem more palatable, though he recognized the value of socialist rhetoric for winning over workers. He ultimately decided that the best course would be duplicity-that is, to pose as a socialist before working class audiences, and a capitalist when addressing businessmen.

Hitler and Eckart's first joint political endeavor was a comic attempt to coordinate with the Kapp Putsch's incompetent instigators in March, 1920. General Walther von Luttwitz's Freikorps troops marched on Berlin and installed a minor official named Wolfgang Kapp as Chancellor. Eckart knew Kapp, who not only subscribed to Auf Gut Deutsch, but donated 1,000 marks to help it thrive. Some time during January, 1920 Kapp visited Eckart in Munich to seek his advice for the planned coup. In late February, Eckart traveled to Berlin for another meeting with his friend, counseling him to adopt stern measures against the Jews, who would surely rouse credulous proles to oppose a nationalist revolution. After the Putsch Kapp enforced only small sanctions, such as the impoundment of matzo flour -- which Eckart derided as not merely ineffective, but ludicrous.

Threats from Britain and France to bring criminal charges against the former Kaiser and 900 senior military officers provoked outrage toward the hated Weimar Republic, which most Germans viewed as the creature of Entente powers. In January, 1920 the leaders of Berlin's officer corps proposed to toss out President Friedrich Ebert's regime and install Kapp as chancellor. With the collusion of General Walther von Luttwitz, General Erich Ludendorff, and Colonel Max Bauer, Kapp occupied government offices on March 12 and proclaimed himself chancellor. Ebert absconded to Dresden. But things went down hill from there. No prominent men would accept cabinet appointments from Kapp. Berlin's civil servants staged a sick-out. The German Reichsbank refused to approve Kapp's signature on government checks, thus freezing the nation's assets. On March 17th Kapp tendered his resignation and fled to Sweden.

The new "chancellor" proposed to abolish the Weimar Republic and arrest all Jews suspected of stabbing Germany in the back during World War I. On Captain Mayr's recommendation Augsburg businessman Dr. Gottfried Grandel agreed to pay for Hitler and Eckart's expenses for a trip to Berlin. On March 17, 1920 the two emissaries took off in a three-seat sport plane piloted by air ace Robert Ritter von Greim, on a mission to enlist Kapp's aid in overthrowing Bavaria's Provisional Government. Red-faced Eckart, with double chin quivering under a tight leather cap, watched Hitler vomit over the side with goggles askew. Once on the ground Eckart posed as a paper merchant. The woozy Hitler clapped on a fake beard and pretended to be his assistant.

Upon reaching Kapp's headquarters in Hotel Adlon they encountered Hungarian Jewish conman Ignaz Thimotheus Trebitsch-Lincoln -- an amazing character who combined spying with the careers of an Anglican minister, British M.P., published author, and Chinese religious leader. He informed them that "Chancellor" Kapp had skipped town to avoid arrest. Eckart turned to Hitler and snapped: "Come, Adolf, we have no further business here." [6] Hitler subsequently remarked:

"When I saw and spoke to the press chief of Kapp's government I knew this could be no national revolution ... for he was a Jew." [7]

Six months later Trebitsch-Lincoln sold his account of the Kapp Putsch to the French Foreign office for 50,000 Czech crowns.

Refusing von Greim's offer of a return flight, Eckart and Hitler took the next train back to Munich. They learned from the Kapp Putsch's collapse that a rightist insurrection stood little chance of victory. This reinforced their strategy of courting blue collar workers and small business proprietors.

The Kapp Putsch gave Hitler an object lesson on how not to stage a coup against the Weimar Republic. A spur-of-the-moment military action without sufficient political organization would never succeed. The German Workers Party needed a coordinated action with military and civilian cooperation. Of course, Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer, and other timid Skat club members feared such risky designs.

Eckart did not concentrate exclusively on Hitler in 1920. He still operated as a volkisch consultant-at-large, mobilizing opposition against the" Jewish-Bolshevik Peril." As cheerleader for counter-revolution, he exhorted Germany's youth to rise up against both communism and the "foreign" Weimar Republic.

"This is no time for young Germans to spend studying philosophy and sitting behind a desk full of books ... (It's) a question of into the storm troops who must rescue Germany." [8]

Though an excellent barroom raconteur, Eckart was not a particularly effective public orator. Nevertheless, he delivered plenty of speeches between May, 1919 and February, 1923, as shown by the following partial list of speaking engagements:

May 30, 1919 On the Jewish Peril at Four Seasons Hotel before Rudolf von Sebottendorf's German Order,

August 14, 1919 before Anton Drexler's German Workers Party at the Hofbrauhau, on Productivity vs. Parasitism (with examples from Eckart's melodrama, Familienvater,)

August 22, 1919 before Julius Streicher's Schutz & Trutz Bund on Peer Gynt's "Mittendurch" (Ability to Penetrate Illusion,)

February 2, 1920, On German Communism at Das Gasthaus, May 19, 1920, On the Jewish Character at Hofbrauhaus,

September 9, 1920, The Reich Smash-Up and the French, Kindl- Keller,

January 15?, 1921, on National Socialist Journalism before the Alldeutsche Verband,

February 3, 1921, Fighting International Jewish Finance, Hofbrauhaus,

March 11, 1921, The Jewish Problem at Hofbrauhaus- Festaal,

July 21, 1922, German Needs and German Politics, Burgerbrau-Keller,

November 30, 1922, Attack against Dr. Georg Heim, Hofbrauhaus,

January 18, 1923, Eckart introduces Henry Hamilton Beamish,

January 28, 1923, What's Happened and What Do You Want to Do? Hofbrauhaus-Festaal,

February 26, 1923, German Students and German Workers: Bearers of the Future, Lowenhrau-Keller,

April 20, 1923, Hitler, Bismarck, and Lenin, Circus Krone,

October 30, 1923, Criticism of Commissioner Gustav von Kahr.

In concert with Gregor Strasser and Father Bernhard Stempfle, Eckart tried to unite Georg Heim's Catholic Center Party with the Bayerische Volkspartei of Gustav von Kahr and Georg Grassinger's German Socialist Party. Through Rosenberg's White Russian connections, he met Henry Ford's European tractor sales manager, Warren C. "Fuzzy" Anderson, who funneled Ford Motor Co. donations into the party treasury. Eckart also made a futile attempt to form a multi-national league against "International Jewry" with Henry Hamilton Beamish, a British mineworker who founded an anti-Semitic organization known as The Britons. On January 18, 1923 Hitler and Eckart entertained Beamish as their guest of honor at the Circus Krone. They discussed the necessity of forming a worldwide gentile union to fight International Jewry. Ulrich Fleischhauer, founder of the anti-Semitic Welt-Dienst (World Service), asserted that Eckart first broached this idea to him over drinks at the Brenessel Wine Cellar, where he said:

"If our idea comes to power, the Jew will try again to starve us out ... then try to ruin us through wars and revolutions. Adolf must therefore have an international movement that can help him from the outside ... " [9]

In "Men!," his first Auf Gut Deutsch article, Eckart solemnly swore not to serve any individual or party. His testimonials on behalf of Anton Drexler's German Workers Party violated that oath. However, Eckart never mentioned Hitler in print before January 31, 1921. On February 3rd the two men appeared together publicly before a crowd of 5,600 at Circus Krone. Eckart soon abandoned his posture of journalistic independence that day by wholeheartedly endorsing Hitler. Overcome by emotion, he sincerely believed that the eloquent 31 year old ex-corporal could save Germany.

Anton Drexler and others worried that perverted schoolteacher Julius Streicher of Nuremberg would be a liability to the National Socialist movement. Hitler believed him to be afflicted with "nympholepsy" or sex addiction, a condition likely to generate scandals. Eckart had counseled whip-brandishing Streicher, who headed the German Socialist Party as well as the Offensive & Defensive Association (Schutz und Trutz Bund.) He admitted being surprised that such a brazen bounder liked him. Because Streicher controlled a sizable group of disgruntled workers and war veterans in Nuremberg, Eckart advised Hitler to cultivate him as an ally. The party needed energetic district leaders to grow. Utilize the unsavory Streicher to attract discontented blue collar workers as you'd use worms to catch fish. Who cared if he molested young girls every now and then? Eckart declared Streicher's miniscule German Socialist Party "redundant" and accurately predicted its absorption into the N.S.D.A.P. Hitler remembered:

"More than once Dietrich Eckart told me that Streicher was a schoolteacher and lunatic to boot. He always added that one could not hope for the triumph of National Socialism without men like Streicher ... " [10]

Years later Hitler recollected Eckart's belief that the fickle middle class could always be wooed back if their interests were betrayed, but not hardheaded workingmen. Thus, he must cater more to the bloc-voting proletarian dragon. Opportunistic bourgeois "whores" would rapidly flock into the party if numerically superior workers catapulted Hitler into office.

Eckart supported Hitler in his bid to push Drexler aside and recruit a group of street fighters into its "Sports-Section." He later helped persuade scar-faced Captain Ernst Rohm to transfer his Reichsflagge paramilitary organization into the N.S.D.A.P. By 1923 Rohm commanded Hitler's Sturm Abteiling, a more lethal version of the "Sports Section," which numbered fifteen thousand roughnecks by 1923.

At 2 A. M. on December 17, 1920 Hitler burst into Anton Drexler's apartment and pleaded with him to raise enough money to buy the Munchener Beobachter from Rudolf von Sebottendorf. A nervous Drexler rang Eckart's doorbell at 8 A.M. After grumbling about being rousted out of the sack so early, Eckart agreed to speak with some of his military and industrial patrons. General von Epp once hinted that the army might subsidize Auf Gut Deutsch's transformation from a weekly to a daily. The time had come for him to make good on that offer.

"Baron" von Sebottendorf's trustees wanted 470,000 marks from a prospective buyer -- 120,000 in cash, plus the buyer's assumption of his unpaid bank loan for 350,000 marks. General Ritter von Epp ponied up 60,000 marks from the army slush fund. Private contributors Dietrich Eckart, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Grandel, Simon Eckart, Emil Gansser, and Friedrich Krohn came up with the 410,000 balance. According to Rosenberg, Eckart pledged the duplex he co-owned with Rose as collateral-- without her permission. At 2 P.M. on December 18,h Hitler, Drexler, and Eckart sat down with Sebottendorf's lawyer, his sister Dora Kunze, and Kathe Bierbaumer, the Baron's sultry mistress. They hammered out a deal. By 4 P.M. the National Socialist German Workers Party owned Der Volkischer Beobachter (People's Observer.) It would be the Nazis' chief propaganda organ from December, 1920 until April, 1945. Hitler wrote an effusive thank-you note after the settlement:

"Dear Herr Eckart:

After the finally successful transfer of the (Munchener) Beobachter to the Party, I want to, dear Eckart, express my warmest thanks for the great help you provided at the last minute. Without your assistance the matter would probably not have come off, and I believe that we would have lost the opportunity to have our own newspaper for many months to come. I am so devoted to the Movement, body and soul, you could scarcely believe how happy I am, as a consequence of reaching this much-desired goal, and cannot refrain from expressing my deep-felt thanks for this present good fortune.

In True Admiration,

Yours,

A. Hitler" [11]

Eckart's active participation in Nazi affairs upset his home life. Rose did not approve of Dietrich's reckless wheelings and dealings with household finances during the Volkischer Beobachter negotiations. Objecting to his disreputable friends, nonconformist life style, and imprudent spending, Rose kicked him out of the house. According to Alfred Rosenberg Eckart's co-signing of the Beobachter loan led to their separation. Albert Reich wrote that it was just the crowning blow. As a proper lady and "particular housekeeper," [12] she took exception to his lethargy and slovenliness. Eckart cared little for respectability, frequently inviting shady characters into their home without consulting her. The court issued a divorce decree on March 7th. Eckart moved to an apartment near the second floor flat on Thierschstrasse that Hitler rented from a Jewish couple, Herr and Frau Erlanger.

After the Nazis' acquisition of the Volkisch Beobachter, Eckart neglected Auf Gut Deutsch. Alfred Rosenberg now produced it almost singlehandedly, but circulation dropped because of his tendency to write abstract gobbledygook in a turgid style. The little tabloid died on May 17, 1921.

Eckart did not become editor-in-chief of Der Volkischer Beobachter (The People's Observer) until August. He wanted to rename it. "What's the meaning of that word 'observer?' .. .I could understand something like chainsmasher!"  [13] He continued his unorthodox editorial practices. Ostentatiously clinging to Bohemianism, Eckart held most editorial conferences at the Stinging Nettle. Wine Cellar. On August 11, 1921 his poem Feurjo!, which eventually became the Nazi anthem Sturm lied, appeared on the paper's front page. Another poem, in honor of Hitler's birthday, displaced all other news in an April, 1923 edition. He published several provocative articles for the new paper which triggered lawsuits and government bans. During one period of closure in September, 1921 he risked jail by putting out a tabloid similar to Auf Gut Deutsch under the title Bayern Heraus (The Bavarian Out With It).

Though determined to keep their home base in Munich, Hitler and Eckart knew that they could not ignore Berlin. In June, 1921 they again journeyed to the capital. Through Dr. Emil Gansser's influence Hitler obtained a speaking engagement at the prestigious National Club, and United Fatherland Society,

Eckart's friend Karl Guido von Bombard, a mechanic and inventor, had introduced him to chemist Dr. Emil Gansser in Berlin, around 1910, Gansser, the son of a Protestant minister, worked for Siemens & Halske A.G. and held patents for numerous chemical products and devices. This "mad scientist's" home workshop resembled Dr. Frankenstein's cellar, with flickering Bunsen burners, gauges, smoking test tubes, bubbling retorts, and gurgling beakers. Co-workers called him "Pretzel" because he lived on pretzels for days while working on new discoveries. "Pretzel" had his share of laboratory explosions-not surprising since one pet project was an egg-sized bomb capable of blowing up a three story building. A rightwing paranoiac in politics, Gansser feared that the coordinated efforts of Jews, Freemasons, and Jesuits would soon devastate Germany. Lest these antagonists open his mail, he wrote Eckart letters in code, punctuated liberally with exclamation points and red ink. In February and May of 1922 Gansser invited Hitler and Eckart to Berlin, so they could mingle with such National Club stalwarts as Dr. R. Burhenne of Siemens, Count von Behr, Count Yorck von Wartenburg, Count Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, and media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg.

Hitler claimed that he would eliminate communism, strikes, and the hostility of workers toward management. Most National Club members were unimpressed, dismissing Hitler as a "bullshit artist" with bad haircut and Charlie Chaplin mustache who talked too much. He rattled off unrealistic promises about "controlling" unions, which contradicted what he told workers in beer halls. Since many S.A. men belonged to trade unions, few took seriously Hitler's pledge to deploy them as strike-breakers. Against Eckart's advice, he blurted out radical student nonsense about "unproductive loan capital." Siemens and Thyssen Steel Works would never have prospered were it not for loans from Jewish bankers such as the Warburgs, Kahns, and Rothschilds. To suggest abolishing interest in front of industrialists and financiers marked one as a certified crackpot. At one point former Tiergarten hobo Eckart provoked catcalls by reprimanding Dr. Eduoard Stadler for having business relationships with Jews. National Club executives considered "Pretzel" Gansser a cranky genius bereft of common sense. Those lab explosions must have addled his brain. Discerning businessmen viewed Hitler and Eckart as a couple of naive amateurs who shared "Pretzel's" bizarre notions. They were like children -- "passionate after dreams and unconcerned about realities." [14] For their part, Hitler and Eckart griped that some National Club bigwigs were "dumber than proles."

During off hours, Eckart acted as a tour guide. He took Hitler to a performance of Peer Gynt at the Staatliches Schauschelhaus and brought him to the Old Bavarian pub for drinks. There they met Willi Kannenberg, a corpulent jokester who so amused Hitler that he later hired him as the Munich Brown House's cook and court jester.

Berlin had gotten even worse since Hitler's hospital stay during the war. Thirteen year old prostitutes stood on street corners dressed in "Raggedy Ann" outfits. Nightclubs staged nude revues. Brothels catered to every perversion. A strong Communist Party subsidized by the Soviet Union sowed discord wherever it could. Novelist Stefan Zweig described the capital's decadence in Die Welt auf Gestern:

"Bars, amusement parks, and pubs shot up like mushrooms ... The Germans brought to perversion all their vehemence and love of system. Made-up boys with artificial waistlines promenaded along the Kurfustendamm -- and not professionals alone: every high school student wanted to make some money, and in the darkened bars one could see high public officials courting drunken sailors without shame. Even the Rome of Suetonius had not known orgies like the Berlin transvestite balls, where hundred of men in drag, and women in men's clothes danced under the benevolent eyes of ... police. Amid the general collapse of values a kind of insanity took hold of precisely those middle class circles which had hitherto been unshakable in their order. Young ladies proudly boasted that they were (loose); to be suspected of virginity at sixteen would have been considered a disgrace in every ... Berlin school." [15]

After returning to Munich, Hitler referred to the capital as "Germany's Babylon," and held "Jewish purveyors of vice" responsible for its deplorable state.

Since February, 1920, Hitler reigned supreme as head of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Under his direction, it grew from a handful of patriotic workers to 3,000 dues-paying members of all classes. When Drexler suggested that the party form a coalition with other volkisch parties, Hitler obstinately refused. He wanted to annex the competition under his rule, not dissolve into it. Both Drexler and Eckart were embarrassed by Hitler's sullenness during an April, 1921 conference with Dr. Otto Dickel of the Artisans' League. Dickel, "a second outstanding speaker with (the) popular touch," [16] mocked the N.S.D.A.P's twenty-six point program, and suggested improvements. Hitler angrily bellowed that no outsiders had any authority to second-guess his carefully crafted platform, then stalked out of the room. Eckart and Drexel glanced at each other, silently acknowledging their leader's

"prima donna-like (histrionics) ... hypersensitivity to personal criticism, ... inability to engage in rational argument ... rapid resort to extraordinary outbursts of uncontrolled temper, (and) extreme aversion to any institutional anchoring ... " [17]

Hitler's impassioned speeches transported Eckart, but his conduct away from the podium dismayed him.

While Hitler tarried in Berlin with Eckart, Drexler secretly resumed conversations with Otto Dickel, as well as Alfred Brunnner of the German Socialist Party. The Nazis hardly existed outside of Munich, whereas Brunner's party had chapters all over Bavaria and in several northern cities. Drexler wanted to resurrect Germany within the Weimar Republic's parliamentary system. Eckart learned of Drexler's activities from Esser on July 11, 1921 and notified Hitler, who flew into a rage and resigned from the party. This spoiled brat behavior confirmed Eckart's suspicions about his emotional unsteadiness. In depressive moods he chided himself for coddling such a neurotic. But Eckart was accustomed to "artsy" types. Therefore, he counseled Hitler on how to handle the situation. When Drexler approached "unbiased" Eckart to arbitrate this intra-party squabble, he readily consented in order to guarantee a favorable outcome for his young friend.

Having the respect of both factions, Eckart convened a meeting on Friday, July 29th. Hitler delivered a brief speech before 544 members. He wanted full authority. Why should a party which rejected democracy govern itself along democratic lines? All talk of mergers with other parties must cease forthwith. Munich would remain the base of National Socialism. Only he had the power to alter the sacrosanct twenty-six point program. Any "heretics" who didn't like it should quit immediately. Hitler's charisma again won them over. They voted to make him undisputed leader by a margin of 543 to 1. Librarian Rudolf Posch cast the only dissenting vote. Drexler got an empty title: "honorary party chairman for life." Georg Franz-Willing commented: "without Eckart's mediation Hitler would never have become dictator of the party; at least not at that time and under those circumstances."18 According to Margarete Plewnia the mediation crisis represented the "high point of (Eckart's) influence on Hitler." [19]

Eckart once swore he would "draw my revolver" [20] to defend his young friend. Fallout from Hitler's power grab soon mobilized him. The Munchener Post published an anonymous letter (written by Ernst Ehrensperger), contending that Hitler's drive for absolute sovereignty created dissension within the party. True, but unfortunately, the author ruined his credibility by falsely charging that Hitler misused party funds on women, "to whom he has often referred to himself as 'King of Munich." Eckart refuted this untruth in an August 4, 1921 Beobachter article.

"No person anywhere can serve a cause more selflessly, more self-sacrificingly, more devotedly, and more sincerely, than Hitler devotes himself to ours." [21]

Eckart referred to Hitler in an August 21, 1921 Volkisch Beobachter article as Der Kommenden Grossen (The Coming Great One.) This title ascribed to him the mystical powers of an Araharl (Teutonic Chieftain.) Shortly after this Rudolf Hess began addressing Hitler as Der Fuhrer (The Leader.)

"The Great One" again showed his intolerance of competitors when he ordered Hermann Esser and others to beat up Deutscher Bund Party head Otto Ballerstedt while the latter tried to give a speech on September 14, 1921. Like Otto Dickel of the German Artisans' League, Ballerstedt was a spell-binding orator who inflamed Hitler's jealousy. His chief sin in Nazi eyes was to espouse a Danubian Federation, requiring Bavaria's secession from Germany and merger into Austria. The police arrested Hitler and his toughs for this incident, which left Ballerstedt partially disabled for life. In August, 1921, due to health and legal problems of his own, Eckart retreated to the alpine village of Obersalzburg for a long vacation.

After his return to Munich in the fall, he and Hitler concocted a sympathetic mini-biography, in the form of a letter published by the Volkischer Beobachter on November 29th. Fiction again won out over fact. The news release exaggerated Hitler's poverty in Vienna and his war wounds. It described his father as a "postal clerk" instead of a customs official, and circulated the falsehood that Hitler had only 80 crowns (rather than 800) when he emigrated to Munich in 1913. Feeling that the occupation of "landscape painter" would sound too effeminate to blue collar constituents, Eckart revised Hitler's former trade to "builder." He wanted to characterize his high-strung Austrian crony as "down to earth."


This grainy photograph taken during January 28, 1923 NSDAP rally in Munich shows Eckart standing behind Hitler.

Hitler achieved greater success on his May, 1922 trip to Berlin. His polished speech before the National Club on May 29th made no mention of "interest slavery" or "unproductive capital." In attendance this time were not only "stiffs" like Dr. Eduoard Stadler, but hard-core nationalists such as General Erich Ludendorff, Max von Scheubner-Richter, coffee merchant Richard Frank, Marine Admiral Ludwig von Schroeder, and Dr. Hans Lammers, a banker who would later serve as a Nazi cabinet minister. They lapped up his message and gave him a standing ovation. Just before Hitler departed for Munich Dr. Emil Gansser handed him a suitcase full of American dollars and Swiss francs.

Max von Scheubner-Richter introduced Hitler to General Erich Ludendorff in Berlin. The general promised to put him in touch with other patriotic veterans' groups. A few weeks later Ludendorff accompanied Hitler to the Landshut drug store of ex-officer Gregor Strasser. Upon arriving General Ludendorff commanded Strasser to merge his anti-communist soldiers' organization into the Nazi Party. The former lieutenant clicked heels, saluted, and obeyed orders. While these fast-moving events unfolded Eckart rusticated in Obersalzburg with Annerl, his sixteen year old girlfriend.

_______________

Endnotes

1 Hugh Trevor-Roper, editor, Hitler's Secret Conversation 1941-1944, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, Farrar, Straus & Young, New York, 1953, p. 240, night of 2/5/1942.

2 Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler, trans. John Brownhohn, Basic Books, New York, 2001, p. 152, op. cit. Alfred Zoller, Hitler Privat Erlenisbericht seiner Gehiem Sekretarin, Dusseldorf, 1949, p. 117.

3 Walter C. Langer M.D., The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1972, p. 90, op. cit. Bella Fromm, Blood and Banquets, Harper & Row, New York, 1942, pp. 96-97.

4 Friedrich P. Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, trans. Paul Rubens, MacMillan, New York, 1970, p. 24.

5 Alfred Rosenberg, Das Parteiprogramm: Wesen, Grundsatze und Ziele der NSDAP, Munich, 1922.

6 Otto Dietrich, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, Henry Regenery Co., Chicago, 1955, p. 164.

7 Eberhard Jackel & Axel Kuhn, Hitler: Samtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, Sungan, Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1980, p. 117.

8 Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Venewitz, Holt, Rinehan & Winston, New York, 1966, p. 328.

9 William Gillespie, "Dietrich Eckart: An Introduction for the English-Speaking Student," vnnforum.com, 1975, p. 13, op. cit. April 7, 1938 letter from Ulrich Fleischhauer to Herr Hunke, Haptarchiv folder #1311.

10 Hitler's Secret Conversations, p. 126, night of 12/29/1941.

11 Gillespie, p. 15, op. cit. Georg Franz-Willig, Die Hitler Bewegung, Vol. I, Sursprung, Hamburg: R. V. Deckers Verlag, 1962, p. 181.

12 Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der Volkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart, Schunemann Universitatasveriag, Bremen, 1971, p. 73.

13 Hitler's Secret Conversations, p. 282, Hitler's conversation of 2/5/1942.

14 Agnes Repplier, In Our Convent Days, Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston, 1905, p. 30.

15 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, Harper & Row, New York, 1968, 129-130, op. cit. Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern, p. 287.

16 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936, Hubris, W. W. Norton, New York, 1998, p. 162.

17 Ibid.

18 Plewnia, p. 79.

19 Ibid., p. 153.

20 Machtan, p. 121, op. cit. 8/1/1922 Munchener Post.

21 Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1989, p. 206, op. cit. Volkisch Beobachter, 8/4/1921.

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20: Dietrich Eckart's "Spiritual" Anti-Semitism

"For Eckart "Jewishness" was not a racial condition but a spiritual one ... The Jews are those, (he) said, who do not believe in a life after death; they therefore have no 'soul' themselves and seek to deny it in others."

-- Barbara Lane Miller & Leila J. Rupp

"There is no doubt that Mephisto, as Chamberlain says, embodies nature, since like an animal he is self-interested, quite brutal, insidious, and without shame or sorrow. In brief, it is as if he's soulless, and there is just as little debate that he symbolizes Jewish existence which is rooted in the physical world."

-- Dietrich Eckart, Das Is Der Jude, Auf Gut Deutsch, 1921

Toward a Hitler-Eckart Mythos

Hitler once told Josef Goebbels that Dietrich Eckart expressed "a clear, intellectually superior anti-Semitism, based on reason, not haphazard antipathies." [1] However, attentive readers will find it paradoxical and inconsistent. Eckart fancied his theories "spiritual," though they were actually profane. The chief expositions of his metaphysical anti-Semitism appeared in Auf Gut Deutsch articles "Jewishness In and Around Us" and "Das Ist Der Jude," and posthumous pamphlet "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin."

Between January and April, 1919 Eckart published the four-part "Jewishness In and Around Us." It opened with a scene from Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 23, with Paul being condemned by the Jewish Council for his belief in resurrection of the dead. As usual, high priests wanted to "reward ... the prophet's admonitions ... by stoning." [2] Eckart believed that orthodox Judaism's denial of post mortem existence indicated no "trace of feeling ... for the eternal in mankind." [3] Oblivious to spirituality, they concerned themselves exclusively with temporal matters. "If you do not believe in the immortality of the soul, all thoughts and endeavors are limited to ... earthly existence."4 According to Eckart, such

"pure affirmation of the world, ... the unchecked desire for transitory existence, leads to ... insanity ... Jewishness wants the de-spiritualization of the world and nothing else; but this would be the same as annihilation." [5]

Eckart's use of the terms world-affirmer (Welt-bejaher) and worlddenier (Welt-verneiner) comes straight from Otto Weininger's writings. World-affirmers are "half-natures mired in the here and now ... blind to the hierarchical nature of moral and social order. .. (who) embark on a journey of the flesh," [6] and have no appreciation of genius. World-deniers, on the other hand, realize that" ... the physical world is but a sordid reflection of a higher reality." [7] Eckart's "affirmer-denier" bifurcation corresponds approximately to the Aristotelian-Platonist distinction. He considered his anti-Jewish bigotry a boon to spiritual growth.

"My anti-Semitism rejects materialism and directs itself toward the positive free path of creativity." [8]

Citing Goethe's adage "as the man, so is his God," Eckart declares Jehovah "nothing but the projection of (Jews') innate existence." [9] For him this vengeful, legalistic, and xenophobic deity reveals Jewry's essence.

"Only the Jewish people exist for him; besides them no other volk is really worth thinking about. Unscrupulously, he robs ... other peoples of the fruits of their labor; they do that with equal joy. Often he abuses his own people; the same is true of them. Like the pettiest hairsplitter he sticks to the letter; they also ... " [10]

Since he does not acknowledge the soul's survival after death, Jehovah punishes the earthly descendants of evildoers "for the sins of their fathers, unto the fourth generation." [11]

Nowhere in this article does Eckart call for the extermination of Jews. He regards them as a part of creation, like tigers and jackals, which contribute to the planet's ecological balance.

"Jewishness belongs to the organism of mankind as, let us say, certain bacteria belong to the human body ... The body contains ... small organisms without which it would be destroyed, even though these microorganisms feed on it. Similarly, man needs the Jewish presence in order to remain vigorous until the fulfillment of its earthly mission." [12]

Eckart conceives of the Jewish "species" as a perennial and unavoidable scourge, like smallpox, sharks, and tornadoes. He asserts that the Jewish "crypto-nation ... will continue to survive until the end of time,"13 and concludes:

"Thus, we must accept the Jews among us as a necessary evil for how many centuries to come." [14]

The aging dramatist always had a greater interest in myth than reality. His worldview resembled a third-rate melodrama with Jewish villains persecuting hapless Aryan suckers. He agreed with Guido von List's conviction that the German Volk needed a new Ariosophical Mythos to replace Mediterranean Christianity. Germans must understand that Aryan blood meant "Soul" or "Inner Worth," which implied a special capacity to apprehend the Divine. In an Auf Gut Deutsch article he declared: "to be Aryan and to perceive transcendence are one and the same thing." [15] German idealists, like Parsifal, must form "a religious brotherhood of Templars to guard the Holy Grail, ... august vessel containing the pure blood ... that can absorb god-knowledge."16 According to this Manichean view lesser beings, such as Slavic "beast men" and Jewish "devil men", lacked Aryans' ability to comprehend the Transcendent. Eckart contended that any spiritual elements in Jewish tradition had been cribbed from other cultures -- monotheism from Atlantis, and the Kabbalah from Chaldea. These negative assumptions reflected deep-seated prejudices. Eckart deluded himself with his own myths, seemingly unable to discern where actuality began and his wild imagination ended.

Eckart's theological views bear a striking resemblance to Marcionism, an early Christian heresy which rejected Hebrew scriptures and Jehovah on the grounds that Jesus was sent by a Higher God. Marcion, a wealthy ship owner, and son of the Bishop of Sinope in Asia Minor, lived from about 110 A.D. to 160 A.D. His Antithesis, written c. 144, argued that Jehovah was

"inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal; and that the material world he created is (a) defective, ... place of suffering .... " [17]

The bungling and malicious demiurge who made earth into a den of strife and pain could not be the Transcendent God. This Higher Deity, which Marcion denominated "The Stranger God," eventually sent Jesus to reveal spiritual truths such as love and mercy. The Church excommunicated Marcion, who soon established his own sect in Asia Minor. In 208 A.D. Tertullian wrote Adversus Marcionem, which condemned his doctrines as erroneous and speculative. This five volume critique, which ironically preserved Marcion's writings for posterity, objected particularly to his acceptance of only Luke's Gospel and Paul's epistles as canonical, while jettisoning Matthew, Mark, John and the entire Old Testament.

Eckart despised the Old Testament and "black magician Moses," holding that "dark forces of separativeness and materialism use the Jewish race."18 "Diabolical" Jehovah was one of his pet hobby horses. He believed that Jews worshipped this malefic tribal deity and were consequently "possessed." Echoing Helena P. Blavatsky, Franz Hartmann, and other Theosophists Eckart regarded Jehovah as a wicked demiurge.

"Jehovah is the projection of the Jews' innate existence." [19]

He and other Ariosophists adopted the dualistic Zoarastrian legend which postulated that God created spirituality and Aryan super-men, while Jehovah made "sub-men" and the world of matter. Hitler shared this view, once telling Hermann Rauschning that Jews were "anti-men," creatures of an inferior God -- perhaps Uda Baoth, Helena Blavatsky's name for Jehovah. He and Eckart regarded Jews as "anti-natural," because of their internationalism, penchant for modernity, openness toward the synthetic and artificial, tendency to settle in urban areas, and supposed contempt for what stolid Germans considered "familiar and dear."

German Romanticism grew out of the Protestant Reformation. Every man could be a heretic and devise his own cosmology cafeteria-style. In the Protestant spirit, Helena P. Blavatsky, Franz Hartmann, Guido von List, Rudolf Steiner, Dietrich Eckart, and Adolf Hitler all designed customized belief systems. Eckart subscribed to an Ariosophical metaphysic. Though difficult to reconstruct exactly, its broad outlines conform to Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical doctrine that humans act as channels for spiritual forces. He repeatedly quoted Jesus's assertion in Luke 17:21: "the Kingdom of God is within you." Like Theosophy, Ariosophy accepted the Eastern doctrine that humans possessed not only physical bodies, but astral bodies of "higher vibration" and "finer texture." Communications from Spiritual Hierarchies osmose into men and women's nervous systems through these astral bodies, which are attached to the "crown chakra" (scalp) by means of an etheric umbilical cord. Unfortunately, lower spirits also inhabited the astral plane -- some benign, others evil. In either case, they often interfered with the Hierachies' transmissions. So did men's carnal personalities. Theosophists maintained that the Spiritual Ego (Oversoul, or Individuality) lies beyond our astral bodies. This ghostly "membrane" included previous incarnations, ancestral spirits, and other helpful entities comprising one's extended "support group." The next layer consisted of angels: Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Seraphim, and Cherubim. Beyond them were the Seven Elohim who created the universe. They emanated from the Triune Deity -- "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," above which reigned the One/Most High (Atma.)

According to the Eastern Adepts with whom Madame Blavatsky communicated, each man and woman has a physical body, astral body, and spirit. After death, one's astral body dies in the etheric realm. This discarded capsule may take hundreds of years to decompose in Kama Loka ("Lower Heaven.") Mediums can only contact these "reliquae," or vacated astral remains, consisting of fading memories and "skandhas" (disembodied attributes.) Such Kama Lokic shells possess psychic intelligence merely by being outside earth's three-dimensional ambience. However, most of these ghostly entities are mischievous and amoral in character because of their detachment from the Higher Manas (Spiritual Ego, Hierarchies, Elohim, Trinity, Atma.) Hence, Blavatsky cautioned followers not to base metaphysical theories on information supplied by mediums.

Ariosophists referred to the Elohim's earthly interventions as "Sham ballas," and anticipated that one would occur soon. From the Armanen's revelations to Guido von List and Tarnhari, Pan-German occultists expected "Lords of Light" to send an Aryan Messiah to overcome "Lords of Material Form" who worshipped Moloch-like Jehovah. Blavatsky disciple Rudolf Steiner believed that Ariosophic mediums obtained such spurious information from elementals, not higher spirits.

In Eckart's eyes the crucifixion proved "Judah's hate for everything poured down from heaven." [20] The Jewish Temple establishment" had crucified Christ, who represented the Aryan spirit of transcendence. He quoted Otto Weininger's observation that the books of Exodus and Joshua showed Jews' "blind desire for annihilation" [21] against Canaanites, Moabites, and other neighboring ethnic groups. Because of Hebrews' alleged incapacity for state-formation, Palestine would never become their homeland, but only "an attempt at a state-or at worst, a training ground for the exploitation or destruction of foreign peoples." [22] They were, in Arthur Schopenhauer's words "a people governed by madness" who now hampered Germany's efforts to transfigure Europe.

Eckart contradicted himself when he labeled Jews a "crypto-nation" in one passage and "incapable of state formation" in another. Jewish kings ruled a national homeland from before the time of David (l,000 B.C.E.) until Zedekiah's defeat by Babylonian tyrant Nebuchednezzar in 587 B.C.E. Later restorations occurred under the Maccabees and Herods. Jews preserved a sense of nationhood -- with or without borders -- from the era of Egyptian captivity (1,400 B.C.E.) to present times.

In place of Judeo-Christian sects Eckart and other Ariosophists wanted to establish a Teutonic cult which preached racial hygiene, and used a liturgy based on Wagnerian opera. He lauded "Aryan Christ" (Chrestos) for driving moneychangers out of the Temple and rebelling against the narrow-minded Pharisaic establishment. Eckart repeated the absurd theory -- also held by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, Arthur Dinter, and others -- that Jesus was not a Jew because the word Galilee meant "district of the gentiles." On October 21, 1941 Hitler told those gathered in his drawing room that Jesus was the son of "Gallic" Roman Legionnaire "Pantheros" (or "Pandera") and a prostitute who might have been Jewish. Ironically, Hitler's sources -- probably Lagarde via Gougenot via Drach -- obtained the Pandera legend from The Talmud. King Solomon had sold that province to Tyre's monarch because so few Hebrews lived there. 2 Kings: 15-29 asserted that Assyrian potentate Tiglath Pileser had conquered Gilead and Galilee in 750 B.C., then carried off most survivors into foreign captivity. However, the province became predominately Jewish again more than two hundred years before Jesus's birth. Chamberlain quoted Jesus's words in Matthew 8: 12 as "further proof" that he wasn't Jewish: "the sons of the kingdom (observant Jews) will be cast into outer darkness." [23] Jewish high priests condemned the Aryan "Baldur Chrestos" to death because he preached against worldliness and promoted Nordic spirituality.

Eckart also praised Jesus as an Aryan hero:

"Christ stands never otherwise than erect, ... always upright. .. eyes flashing in the midst of cringing Jewish rabble ... His words fall like whiplashes: 'your father is the devil!' (John 8:44.)" [24]

Of course, the Gentile Jesus Theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Even a cursory examination of the Bible proves that Jesus was steeped in Jewish tradition. He constantly quoted Hebrew texts. For instance, "man shall not live by bread alone (Matthew, 4:4) comes from Deuteronomy 6: 13. "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," (Matthew 9: 13) cites Hosea 6:6. As New Testament footnotes confirm, Jesus alluded to Old Testament passages more than forty times in the Book of Matthew alone -- odd behavior for an "Nordic missionary." Eckart's anti-Semitic biases refused to admit that western civilization's saintliest man could be a Jew, but in fact he was.

Jesus the initiate (or Jehoshua) — the type from whom the “historical” Jesus was copied — was not of pure Jewish blood, and thus
recognised no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary god beside his own “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed as every high initiate does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.”

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky

Eckart declared himself "above politics." He considered himself a mystic like his favorite poet, Angelus Silesius, and appreciated Houston Stewart Chamberlain's aphorism that "every mystic is a born anti-Semite." [25] Germany's new order must be built on a spiritual foundation, not animal urges. Jewish popular culture prevented the German Yolk from actualizing their God-given potential. Eckart detested the advertising, fashion-madness, and consumerism of modern society, and bemoaned his nation's transition from a humane agrarian country to a soul-less industrial state. Germans must renounce acquisitiveness and get back to their roots. In "Men!" he wrote:

"I call a man substantial when he is so deeply anchored in essentials, that is, in spiritual things, that he can never wholly lose himself in worldliness." [26]

Eckart's favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer compared the world's delusory appearances to "Maya's Dance." In order to see beyond this distracting show, one had to forsake sensuality-something that neither he nor Schopenhauer ever did. Eckart felt that the "Jewish-controlled press" functioned as Maya's instrument for propagating "world-affirmation" and secular modernism. In his March 23, 1916 letter to fellow Pan-German nationalist Ludwig Fruehauf he expressed fear of a Jewish "conquest."

"To me it appears that the thing so disastrous for our nation, an attack that one can do practically nothing about, is the demonic thirst for power of the Jews who tolerate no other leadership but their own: but as long as they have not reached it, they fight with all their strength to bring about disorder and chaos." p. 27]

By 1919 he wrote in Auf Gut Deutsch that Jews had already gained ascendancy

"by depriving mankind of its sentient soul, Injecting the cold, materialistic serum of Judaism into institutions of man, and by conspiring to assume power over the gentile world." [28]

Jewish domination hindered spiritually-evolved Aryan-Germans from "rescuing" mankind.

"If the Jews were to overgrow us permanently, we would never be in a position to fulfill our destiny, which consists in the redemption of the world, but would rather descend into insanity." [29]

Eckart dilated on this idea in "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," his final anti-Semitic treatise.

Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin

After the leadership crisis of July, 1921 Hitler turned more often to Max von Scheubner-Richter for political advice. Although unhappy about that, Eckart retained his status as Hitler's chief consultant on philosophical matters. In that capacity he wrote "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" during the last year of his life. This unsigned, unfinished pamphlet elaborated on his favorite theme, the alleged subversion of gentile societies by Jews. Despite its brevity "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" ranks with Hitler's Mein Kampf and Rosenberg's Myth of the 20,h Century as a key apology for Nazi Judeophobia.

The ominous propositions set forth in "Men!," "Jewishness In and Around Us," "Das Ist der Jude,"and other Auf Gut Deutsch articles foreshadowed "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," published posthumously in 1925. Although this vile dissertation truly sinks to the level of theological pornography, one cannot fathom Nazi anti-Semitism without taking it into account.

Hitler and Eckart shared a hallucinatory worldview. Both envisioned a nightmarish tableau in which ubiquitous Jewish "puppet masters" subverted Germany from within and without. Their unlikely conspiracy theory held that Jewish Bolsheviks, the Rothschilds, and "lice-ridden peddlers from Galicia" were all in league with one another to sabotage gentile civilization.

Hitler ranted that Germany had to root out these usurpers in order to survive. For Eckart, all issues boiled down to the "Jewish Question." In Auf Gut Deutsch he wrote that naive Germans ignored the issue, even though it was

" ... the chief problem of humanity, in which, indeed, every one of its other problems is contained. Nothing on earth could remain darkened if one could throw light on the secret of the Jews." [30]

Eckart insisted that Otto Weininger had unveiled "the secret of the Jews:" their mission to take over the world, secularize its institutions, and ultimately destroy it.

"To the Jew Weininger his own nation appears to be an invisibly connected web of plasmodium, always existing and spread over the wide earth ... The secret of Jewishness could not have been revealed more plainly. It wants the de-spiritualization of the world and nothing else, but this would be the same as annihilation." [31]

Eckart's biological analogy painted a bleak picture. The malignant fungus of materialism -- like The Great Boyg -- infested the German Soul, and would eventually suffocate it unless patriotic citizens quickly took remedial action. Anxiety produced by the vision of this encroaching blob prompted a violent outburst from the drama king.

"No people in the world would allow (the Jew) to remain alive if it could suddenly see through what he is, what he desires; shrieking with horror it would strangle him the very next instant." [32]

"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," was an anonymous fifty-seven page pamphlet written in Eckart's hand and printed one year after his death. James Webb described it as "an approximation of an Eckart-Hitler consensus." [33] Konrad Heiden, Margaret Plewnia, and others consider it exclusively Eckart's work. Ralph Engelman suggested that he wrote it "to provide a literary testament to his role as Hitler's mentor." [34]

"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" pretends to be a factual account of the "International Jewish Conspiracy" through history. Eckart characterizes himself as a seasoned reporter, and Hitler as an "expert" on the Jewish Question. Their discussion apes the conversational style of Schopenhauer's dialogues. Eckart again parodies sound journalism by presenting a faked "interview" with one who shares his own biases. As usual, he makes no attempt to solicit other sources for differing viewpoints. Hitler and his agreeable interlocutor want their prejudices confirmed, not challenged.

Imitating the approach of Theodor Fritsch's Handbook on the Jewish Question, Eckart makes his "authority" on Judaism appear learned by reciting anti-Semitic comments attributed to Cicero, Luther, Kant, Goethe, Dostoevsky, and other prominent thinkers. Ernst Nolte enumerated several additional sources for Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, including historian Werner Sombart, pseudotheologian Friedrich Dollinger, Swiss prehistorian Otto Hauser, Hammerbund founder Theodor Fritsch, French anti-Semite Henri-Roger Gougenout des Mousseaux, and U.S. auto manufacturer Henry Ford. "Jewish specialist" Hitler begins with fictionalized history.

"My friend, the reading of Strabo shows that even in his day, which was shortly after the birth of Christ, there was scarcely anywhere in the whole earth that was not dominated by Jews." [35]

He omits the inconvenient fact that Rome ruled all of the Mediterranean basin -- including Palestine -- during that period.

The Hitler character emphasizes that Jews first utilized Mosaic Law, then Christianity, and now Bolshevism to inspire commoners to overthrow "the nations" (Goyim.) To support this claim he provides a plethora of fractured ancient history. Jacob's son Joseph cornered the Egyptian grain market. The Hebrews fled Egypt, not to found their own nation, but to avoid a pogrom at the hands of Pharoah Ramses II in retaliation for espionage against his dynasty. Captive Jews in Babylon and Persia helped bring those empires down. "The Secret of the Jews," an unsigned pamphlet distributed by Tsarist Secret Police circa 1905, expounded similar fantasies.

Hitler cites the Hebrews' extermination of Canaanites, Moabites, and Ammonites, then mentions the massacre of Persians described in Esther, and Edward Gibbon's questionable accounts of Jewish pogroms against Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans in 1st Century Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus which allegedly compromised Trajan's campaign against Persia. Lacking the power to subdue neighboring peoples by military force after 67 A.D., Jews redirected their energies toward undermining gentile states from within. Hitler claimed that "Jews ...destroy nations by vitiating their racial integrity." (Secret Conversations, Oct. 21, 1941, p. 101.)

In "Jewishness In and Around Us" Eckart featured Paul as a hero who defied the Sandhedrin's denial of an afterlife. However, the Hitler character in "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" portrayed "rabbinical student Schaul" as a revolutionary agitator, who weakened the Roman Empire by preaching "oriental idleness," meekness, and egalitarianism. His effete doctrines helped topple Rome and usher in the Dark Ages. Eckart's characterization of Paul as an anarchist derived from such 19th Century French anti-Semites as Louis Jacolliot, Charles Maurras, and Henri-Roger Gougenot de Mousseaux.

All men are equal! Brotherhood! Pacifism! No more privileges! And the Jew triumphant!... One can only understand the Jews when one realizes their final purpose: to master the world, then destroy it ... While they pretend to raise mankind up, actually they contrive to drive man to despair, insanity, and destruction ... " [36]

Eckart accused Jews of being the main impetus behind progressive ideas such as democracy, pacifism, internationalism, and humanitarianism. Jews gravitated toward liberalism because they had suffered persecution themselves. However, Eckart viewed Jewish leftists as cynical opportunists who wanted to acquire power by exploiting lower class discontent.

Recent archaeological research has demonstrated that the original Israelites were poor Canaanites who separated from Canaan's upper classes to form their own society. This same group subsequently endured periods of servitude at the hands of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. Those bitter experiences gaev Jews a love of freedom as well as sympathy for the underdog. Concern for the downtrodden appears to be hard-wired into the Jewish psyche.

Hitler believed that any concern Jews showed for civil rights was pure self-interest. In Austria they liked having Czechs and Ruthenians around as "buffers." The worse Slavs behaved, the better. That took the spotlight off them. Austrian Social Democrats such as Viktor Adler didn't really give a hoot about Slovaks or Croats, but observed those minority groups' fortunes as a "barometer" of Jewish prospects. Jews monitored Magyar and Gypsy human rights the way colliers checked the condition of pigeons caged in coal mines. If police authorities began manhandling Gypsies, Jews realized they might be next.

Hitler believed Jewish liberalism to be a ruse. In Mein Kampf he predicted that "the democratic Jew will shed his disguise and become a tyrant." [37] Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg maintained in Myth of the 20th Century that Jews employed Christianity to bring down Rome in 476 A.D., and communism to oust lawful authority in November, 1917. Their modus operandi was to foment anti-aristocratic revolts among racially inferior slaves. Hitler went so far as to say "Jews invented class warfare." (Cf. Hitler's Secret Conversations, November 30, 1944, p. 664.)

How credible were these charges? In reality, propertied middle class Jews wanted no part of political insurgency, which would have threatened their own livelihoods. Ferdinand Lassalle, Hugo Haase, Otto Landsberger and most other Jewish Social Democrats repudiated Marxist revolution.

Fast-forwarding to the late middle ages the Hitler character informed Eckart that supposed Jewish popes and anti-popes, such as Innocent II, Clement VII, and Alexander VI, corrupted the Roman Catholic Church. Unnamed Jewish agitators allegedly fomented the Crusades in order to ruin both Christian and Moslem nations. Later, their unspecified descendants divided Christendom by concocting the Reformation. Protestants read the Old Testament which "Judaized" them, lending impetus to exploitative capitalism and legalized usury (banking.) In modern times "Jewish" Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Tsar and established a communist government, killing "30 million" gentiles," [38] a fantastically inflated number Eckart obtained from Rosenberg's Russian emigre contacts.

Like Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux and Mikhail Bakunin, Eckart averred that Jewish plutocrats (the Gold International) and revolutionaries (The Red International) worked in concert. Political radicals undermined European monarchies, enabling financiers to siphon off their assets. Bakunin, a socialist anti-Semite esteemed by Richard Wagner, once asserted:

"This whole Jewish world ... constitutes a single exploiting sect, a ... bloodsucker people, a collective parasite, voracious and organized in itself, not only across the frontiers of states but even across differences of political opinion. This world is presently at the disposal of Marx on ... one hand and of ... Rothschilds on the other ... the Rothschilds, reactionaries as they are, .. highly appreciate the merits of ... communist Marx ... In his turn ... Marx feels irresistibly drawn by instinctive attraction ... to the financial genius of Rothschild. Jewish solidarity, that powerful (force) ... has ... united them." [39]

"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" advanced the theory that the United States entered World War I against Germany due to the machinations of Bernard Baruch and a British Zionist named Samuel Landman. Though Landman and Baruch never met, many Germany nationalists -- including General Erich Ludendorff -- avidly believed this made-up story. Eckart called the deal as a "quid pro quo contract." [40] Landman supposedly induced Britain to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration authorizing a Jewish state in Palestine by guaranteeing that Baruch would bring America into the war on the Entente side.

Wall Street wizard Bernard Baruch, the son of a Confederate Army doctor from South Carolina, married a gentile woman, raised his three children as Episcopalians, and once quipped that some of his best friends were anti- Semites. Baruch served on President Woodrow Wilson's War Advisory Commission between 1916 and 1918. Wilson asked this trusted counselor to accompany him to Versailles for the Treaty negotiations. In the interests of a lasting peace Baruch sought to reduce Germany's war reparations. Never a Zionist, Baruch once told Israel's Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: ''I'm more interested in the Stars and Stripes, than the Star of David." [41] When asked to purchase Israeli bonds, he replied: "I only buy American bonds." [42] Baruch became known in Jewish circles as a generous contributor to charitable causes, who only attended synagogue on high holy days. When he addressed Jewish groups, he invariably stressed the theme of being an American first and Jew second. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who criticized his apathy toward Zionism, once said: "he would be more likely to consider colonization by Jews on some undiscovered planet than Palestine." [43] Baruch deplored Britain's muddled foreign policy which offered part of Palestine to dispossessed Jews even though T. E. Lawrence had made conflicting deals with Arab tribal leaders to repay them for war-time operations against Turkey. During the late 1930's he supported Congressman Hamilton Fish's idea of a "United States of Africa" which would have provided asylum for refugees of all nationalities and religions in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Congo. Eckart's portrayal of Bernard Baruch as an Elder of Zion was a complete fabrication.

Referring to the Old Testament as "the arsenal of the Anti-Christ," [44] the Hitler character cited several Bible passages in an attempt to brand Jews as gentile-hating racists. Most of them were injunctions against idolatry, such as Exodus 34: 11-13, Deuteronomy 7: 16, Isaiah 19, Isaiah 61 :6, Psalms 2:8, and Sirach 36: 2-12. In Exodus 34: 11-13, Jehovah sanctioned ethnic cleansing:

"Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite, Canaanite, and the Hittite ... (Do not) make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going ... But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images." [45]

Jehovah had no use for multiculturalism. in Deuteronomy 7: 16 He thundered: "and you shall consume all the peoples which the Lord your God shall deliver to you; your eye shall have no pity on them." He ordered atrocities against gentiles for "abominations," such as idolatry, banditry, sodomy, child sacrifice, bestiality, and other violations of Mosaic Law. After Jericho's Fall Joshua's soldiers spared no one but the family of harlot Rahab, who had colluded with Israel's spies.

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword." [46]

I Kings 18:40 provided another example of Hebrew genocide against competing tribes. After winning a sacrifice contest against 450 pagan priests on Mt. Carmel, Elijah commanded Israelite soldiers to murder them all.

"Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape! So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there." [47]

Of course, we must realize that some of the nomads roaming about Palestine in those days were murderous brigands, comparable to Janjaweed militiamen of contemporary Darfur.

"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" reeks of irony. Deceitful Adolf Hitler applied Isaiah's terms "charmers and wizards" to Weimar politicians. The tyrant who liquidated millions of Jews during World War II labeled St. Paul as a "canonized mass murderer," and claimed that Jews want to exterminate Germans. Based on these invalid premises, he later rationalized the killing of innocents as "defense of the Reich." Through a process of psychological projection, Hitler superimposed the image of his own vindictive nature onto Jews.

Eckart and Hitler fully expected a Jewish takeover, which would result in the destruction of Europe. This bizarre hypothesis .originated from Indian sources, as interpreted by the likes of Guido von List, and Adolf Josef Lanz. According to Hindu belief, the Golden Age (Satya Yuga) gradually deteriorated into an Age of Gloom (Kali Yuga) due to race-mixing. "Chandalas" would overwhelm Aryan "Men-above- Time" during this final period of tribulation. As they accumulated decisive power,

"Men-in-Time" (soulless materialists) became "the most thorough, (and) mercilessly effective agents of ... Death-forces on earth working without hesitation ... (or) remorse (toward) the downward process of history and, ... its logical conclusion: the annihilation of man and all life." [48]

Eckart appreciated anti-Semitic Reichstag Deputy Josef Schleicher's metaphor comparing Jews to "a swarm of migratory locusts" [49] which transformed the Garden of Eden into a desert. He referred to them as "the ferment of decomposition." In The Dynamics of Nazism Dr. Fred Weinstein interpreted this view as follows:

"All Jews were internally fragmented ... They sought to reproduce a world in which this internal fragmentation could be expressed." [50]

Eckart's short last chapter functions as "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin's" coda. In this convoluted paragraph he reiterates the mad theory that Jews, though they cherish material goods and sensual pleasure, are programmed to destroy the physical world. An impasse provoked this crazy conclusion, which Eckart tried to pass off as an existential profundity. Why would Jews want to destroy Germany after investing so much into it? The only way out of this untenable contradiction was to posit the absurd proposition that they had a lemming-like instinct for self-obliteration.

"Chapter VIII

The truth is... one can only understand the Jew when one knows what his ultimate goal is. And that goal is, beyond world domination, the annihilation of the world. He must wear down all the rest of mankind ... in order to prepare a paradise on earth. He has made himself believe that only he is capable of this great task, and considering his ideas of paradise, that is certainly so. But one sees, if only in the means which he employs, that he is secretly driven to something else. While he pretends to himself to be elevating mankind, he torments men to despair, to madness, to ruin. If a halt is not ordered, he will destroy all men. His nature compels him to that goal, even though he dimly realizes that he must thereby destroy himself There is no other way for him; he must act thus. This realization of the unconditional dependence of his own existence upon that of his victims appears to me to be the main cause for his hatred. To be obliged to try and annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to suspect that this must lead inevitably to his own ruin, therein it lies. If you will: the tragedy of Lucifer." [51]

Eckart's eccentric musings show up in Hitler's later writings and speeches. In Mein Kampf he wrote: "after the death of the victim, ... the vampire dies too." [52] In another passage he stated:

"If, with the help of the Marxian creed the Jew conquers ... the world, his crown will be humanity's funeral wreath, and once again the planet, empty of mankind, will move through ether as it did millions of years ago." [53]

It was highly ironic for Hitler to accuse Jews of being "annihilators." His own record of 49 million European deaths, hundreds of billions in property damage, followed by his own suicide, won't be beaten any time soon.

Though their jumbled formulations make hair-splitting difficult, Hitler and Eckart disagreed on one point. According to Eckart's spiritual anti- Semitism it did no good to kill Jews or destroy their houses of worship. "Burning ... synagogues ... would be of little avail... The Jewish spirit would still exist." [54] That quality must be opposed by both gentiles and penitent Jews. To Eckart "Mammonism" and Judaism were nearly interchangeable terms. Like Gottfried Feder he felt Germans should fight against "Mammonism," rather than persecute individual Jews.

Hitler's biological anti-Semitism identified spirit with race. In the words of Neo-Nazi exegete, Savitri Devi:

" ... in our eyes -- contrary to what ... Christians maintain -- the capacity to reflect the divine is closely linked with man's race and physical health; in other words, ... spirit is anything but independent of the body... And we (deny) that ... improvements... in education... or... technical matters, have ... made individual men and women more valuable ... " [55]

Eugenically-oriented Hitler fervently believed that Jews, gypsies, and Slavs were "bad seed," with hereditary predispositions for criminality. As Ernst Nolte explained:

"If spirit is character... A harmful spirit can only be eliminated by destruction of its 'substance of flesh and blood,' which for Hitler is the primary reality." [56]

Thus, he set up death camps to accomplish a "Final Solution."

Hitler explicitly renounced Eckart's nebulous spiritual anti-Semitism in a March 13, 1921 Volkisch Beobachter article.

"The internal expurgation of the Jewish spirit is not possible in a platonic way, for the Jewish spirit is the product of the Jewish person. Unless we expel the Jewish people soon, they will have Judaized our Volk within a very short time." [57]

Eckart's "spiritual" anti-Semitism, though blasphemous and deranged, did not advocate the extirpation of European Jewry. Before World War I he went along with Houston Stewart Chamberlain's vague plan of reducing Jewish influence on media, culture, and business-without physically harming Jews. After the war Eckart wanted Jewish-Bolshevik ringleaders executed, but not "kleine Juden" -- humble, law-abiding Jews.

With missionary zeal Eckart and Hitler abetted each other in disseminating falsehoods about Jews. The veteran playwright knew how to manipulate imagined scenarios for maximum effect. He was a connoisseur of prurience with a knack for making lies and half-truths credible. Utilizing salacious devices to shock audiences afforded him perverse gratification. In "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" Eckart attempted to legitimize his bigotry by couching it in high-sounding terms. This booklet's misconceptions reverberated through Hitler's discourse for the next two decades, and provided a warped rationale for the Holocaust.


_______________

Endnotes

1 Josef Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, edited and translated by Louis P. Lochner, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1948, May 13, 1943 entry.

2 Barbara Lane Miller & Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1978, p. 20, op. cit. Dietrich Eckart, Auf Gut Deutsch, 7- part series, Jan. to Apr., 1919, "Jewishness In and Around Us: Fundamental Reflections, also quoted in Alfred Rosenberg's Dietrich Eckart: Ein Vermachtis, Franz Eher Verlag, Munich, 1928, pp. 193 to 230.

3 Ibid., p. 21.

4 Ibid., p. 25.

5 Ibid., p. 25.

6 Ralph M. Engelman, Dietrich Eckart & the Genesis of Nazism, Washington University, 1971, University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, MI, 1971, pp. 70-71.

7 Ibid., p. 70.

8 Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der Volkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart, Schunemann Universitatsverlag, Bremen, 1971, pp. 56-57, op. cit. Auf Gut Deutsch #27, 1919.

9 Lane & Miller, p. 22.

10 Ibid., pp. 22-23.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 24.

13 Ibid., p. 25

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 46.

16 Hannah Newman, The Rainbow Swastika, Philogos.org, p. 14.

17 "Marcionism," en.wikipedia.org, p. 2.

18 Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Miller and Leila J. Rupp, p. 22.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p. 24.

21 Newman, p. 10.

22 Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Miller & Rupp, p. 21.

23 The New King James Bible, Matthew 8:12.

24 Dietrich Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," trans. William L. Pierce, originally published by Hoheneichen Verlag, Munich, 1924, Chapter, IV, p. I.

25 Newman, p. 3.

26 Eckart, "Men!" Auf Gut Deutsch, 12/7/1918, Miller and Rupp, p. 3.

27 Plewnia, p. 28, March 23, 1916 letter from Dietrich Eckart to Herr L. Fruehauf.

28 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, Schocken Books, New York, 1981, p. 297.

29 Dietrich Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Auf Gut Deutsch, 2/19/19 installment, Miller & Rupp, p. 23.

30 Mosse, p. 296-297, op. cit. Auf Gut Deutsch, 1919.

31 Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Venewitz, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1966, p. 328.

32 Ibid.

33 James Webb, The Occult Establishment, Open Court Publishing Co., LaSalle, IL, 1976, p. 335.

34 Ralph M. Engelman, Dietrich Eckart and the Genesis of Nazism, UMI, Ann Arbor, MI, doctoral dissertation, Washington University, Sr. Louis, MO, 1971, p. 237.

35 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter I, p. 1.

36 Ibid., Chapter V, p. 2.

37 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA 1943, p. 326.

38 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, Chapter VII, p. 5.

39 Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, A Life, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 2000, p. 340.

40 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter III, p. 5.

41 Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator, Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1981, p. 559.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., p. 562.

44 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter V, p. 6.

45 New King James Bible, Exodus, 34: 11-13.

46 Ibid., Joshua 6:21.

47 Ibid., I Kings 18:40.

48 Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun, Samidsat Publishers Ltd., Buffalo, NY, 1979, p. 36.

49 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 288.

50 Fred Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism, Academic Press, New York, 1980, p. 144.

51 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter VIII, p. I.

52 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 358.

53 Eberhard Jackel, Hitler's Weltanschaung, trans. Herbert Arnold, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1972, p. 52, op. cit. Adolf Hitler, Volkische Beobachter, 3/13/1921.

54 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter VII, pp. 4-5. Oddly, Eckart put those words in the Hitler character's mouth, which gave them a different meaning. Hitler agreed that destroying synagogues accomplished nothing. However, unlike Eckart, he thought that the "Jewish Problem" required genocide as a "Final Solution."

55 Devi., p. 4.

56 Nolte, p. 328.

57 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Eher Verlag, Munich, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1943 1940, p. 269.