The Secret History of Adolf Hitler
The Hitler I Knew by Otto Dietrich
Otto Dietrich was the press secretary of Adolf Hitler from 1932 until a month before Hitler’s suicide in 1945. Dietrich was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to seven years, of which he served only 18 months. He began writing his memoirs of the inside account of the Hitler he had observed but had not publicized about five months after Hitler’s suicide, although the memoir was not published until after his death in 1952.
Dietrich’s stated purpose was to undo some of the damage he had done in propagandizing for Hitler and to expose to the German people Hitler’s “demonic” nature so that they might come to realize how they had been led to destruction and might come to repudiate the memory of Hitler and future Hitlers.
A constant theme of the memoirs is Hitler’s demonic nature. Unlike his intended German audience, contemporary readers can easily credit Hitler’s demonic nature, but they may be surprised to hear Hitler described as jovial and generous, and might really be taken back to hear how Hitler gave his raincoat to a hiker walking in the rain. Likewise, as a vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker, who opposed animal cruelty and favored socialism, Hitler would have made a passable member of the Hollywood community. Dietrich, incidentally, affirms that Hitler was a socialist. (p. 203 – “As a socialist, Hitler made much of the “folk community.’”) Hitler’s goal was to create a “classless race-and-leader state” where all barriers of privilege were removed and advancement would be by competence alone.(p. 91.) Hitler affirmed that animals could think and feel and opposed vivisection, but studiously avoided the subject of concentration camps. (p. 172.)
Dietrich organizes his material by broad topic areas – Hitler as statesman, Hitler as soldier, etc. – but the organization within those categories is episodic and not chronological. Dietrich offers many fascinating stories and insights into Hitler’s life. For example, Hitler did not like flying and discounted the importance of aviation in war. While he spent hours on the subject of tanks and ships, he let Goring handle plane development. Dietrich observes that perhaps Hitler’s dream of nationalism was already dead because Hitler never took into consideration the increased mobility and expansion of interaction provided by aviation. Another story that Dietrich tells is how Hitler was almost killed when his plane got lost in the fog and flew north over the Baltic until Hitler ordered that it turn around and head due south. (p. 146.)
Dietrich shares stories about Hitler’s Bavarian/bohemenian life style, which refused to accept any discipline, and his inability to be alone with himself, which resulted in huge numbers of German officials being trapped in endless after dinner parties hearing Hitler endlessly monologue on some issue, with the result that Hitler would not start work until noon and much morning work would not be accomplished. Dietrich also explains the inefficiency of the Nazi state where Hitler constantly created multiple bureaucracies to handle the same mission and would let the bureaucracies fight it out.
It is interesting to hear Hitler’s interaction with figures from German history. Thus, he was intimate with Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister, and befriended the grandsons of Otto von Bismarck, and was on excellent terms with the composer Wagner’s family. Also of note is that Dietrich repeats the story that Hitler read Schopenhauer in World War I. Schopenhauer, not Nietzsche, was Hitler’s go-to philosopher. I find it interesting that no one has ever attempted to tease out a connection between Schopenhauer and Hitler’s philosophy.
My interest is in Hitler’s religious life. Dietrich puts an end to the idea that Hitler was a Christian, albeit he may have been a weak Deist:
“Hitler was fond of ideas with a cosmic sweep. He spoke of human beings as “planetary bacilli” and was a passionate adherent of Horbeger’s Universal Ice Theory. His evolutionary views on natural selection and survival of the fittest coincided with the ideas of Darwin and Haeckel. Nevertheless, Hitler was no atheist. He professed a highly general, monotheistic faith. He believed in guidance from above and in the existence of a Supreme Being whose wisdom and will had created laws for the preservation and evolution of the human race. He believed that the highest aim of mankind was to survive the achievement of progress and perfection. From this belief there was a sense of his own mission to be the Leader of the German people. He was acting, he believed on the command of this Supreme Being; he had a fixed conception of this Being, which nothing could change. In his speeches he often mentioned the Almighty and Providence. But he personally was sharply hostile to Christianity and the churches, although the Party program came out for a “positive” Christianity. In private conversation, he often remarked sarcastically in reference to churches and priests, that there were some who “boasted of having a direct hook-up with God.” Primitive Christianity, he declared was the first “Jewish-Communist cell.” And he denied that the Christian churches, in the course of their evolution, had developed any genuine moral foundation. Having ordered trials of certain Catholic priests on charges of immorality, he used the findings of the courts as the basis of the broadest generalizations. He considered the Reformation Germany’s greatest national misfortune because it “split the country and prevented unification for centuries.” (p. 126 – 127.)
Hitler’s opposition to Christianity was pursued through his subordinates:
“In view of the highly complicated emotional problems involved, Hitler remained outwardly restrained toward the religious groups. He permitted the publication of Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century only upon the author’s insistent urging. Hitler himself had grave doubts about the matter and stipulated that the doctrines therein must not be considered official. On the other hand, he did not hold back the hotheads of the Party, Himmler and especially Bormann, who incessantly attacked the churches. On the contrary, he supported them and encouraged them by his private, violently anti-church remarks. In the early days he had to endure attacks on National Socialism by bishops and cardinals. He could take no measures against them without alienating some of his followers. But the threatened to take his revenge later on.” (p. 128.)
Hitler encouraged apostasy:
“Considerable unofficial pressure was brought to bear upon functionaries to leave the churches. Hitler himself, for reasons of political strategy, never actually carried out his withdrawal from the Catholic church. He repeatedly took part in official Protestant and Catholic church ceremonies such as weddings, baptisms, and so on. Many National Socialists who had been urged to leave their own churches blamed him severely for this.” (p. 128.)
“At one time Hitler was informed that the mother of the manager of the Party hotel in Nuremberg, the Deutscher Hof, had inserted in a Catholic family magazine an advertisement for chambermaids. The Fuhrer flew into a rage entirely disproportionate to the importance of the matter; the manager was dismissed out of hand and professionally blacklisted. It was only due to my intervention that this man later succeeded in getting another job in the hotel business.” (p. 128.)
“Another time the gauleiter of Northern Westphalia, Joseph Wagner, was accused of maintain private relations with Catholic Action circles. At Bormann’s instigation, Hitler took occasion during a gauleiters’ meeting in Munich to make a scene and expel Wagner from Party leadership The charges against the man were that his wife had attended a papal audience in Rome, and that this same wife had driven their daughter from the house for wishing to marry an SS officer who had withdrawn from the Catholic Church.” (p. 129.)
Here is a surprising example of Hitler’s animosity toward the forms of Christianity:
“Here in Munich he lived the life of a bachelor who did not care for any sort of family life. For example, on Christmas Eve he would give all of his followers leave to visit their families; then he and his adjutant Bruckner would go to motoring through the countryside because he wished to escape the Christmas atmosphere, which he thoroughly disliked. No amount of talk could change his attitude in this matter.” (p. 150.)
And this:
“When he heard that Churchill was in the habit of dictating in the mornings from his bathroom, and when he saw a picture of Churchill bent over a prayer-book, praying for victory, he became absolutely rabid.” (p. 206 – 207.)
This is an interesting book for its anecdotal insights into Hitler. From this account, the reader may get an appreciation of the “qualia” of the Hitler era.
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