Chapter 8 Volume 1 Chapter 4 Adolf Hitler

Blind corporal|Leader from humble beginningsMunich riots of 1923Mein KampfHitler's problemHitler and the German ArmySchleicherConspiracyThe attack of the economic stormChancellor BrüningA constitutional monarchyEqual armament Schleicher interfered with Brüning's resignation. In October 1918, a German corporal was temporarily blinded by mustard gas when the British army attacked the area near Coming.While he was hospitalized in Pomerania, Germany was defeated and revolutions broke out.He was the son of a low-level tax collector in the Austrian customs office. When he was young, he dreamed of becoming a great artist, but he failed to enter the Vienna Art Academy, lived a poor life in Vienna, and later moved to Munich.He sometimes does house painting work, often works as a temporary worker, and lives a life of extreme poverty materially, but hides extreme resentment and resentment in his heart, thinking that the world has subdued his talent and prevented him from achieving anything.The misfortunes he encountered did not make him join the ranks of communism.He honorably took the opposite path, and instead embraced a perverted notion of racial loyalty and a fanatical and incredible admiration for the German and Germanic peoples.When war broke out he enlisted with enthusiasm and served four years in a Bavarian regiment on the Western Front.Such was the early fate of Adolf Hitler.

When he was lying blind and helpless in the hospital in the winter of 1918, it seemed to him that his personal failure was inseparable from the suffering of the entire Germanic nation.The shock of defeat, the breakdown of law and order, the victory of the French, plunged the convalescent regiment orderly into anguish, leaving him weak and haggard, but from which a strange and resolute The immeasurable spiritual power of human life and death.The defeat of Germany seemed to him incomprehensible in ordinary terms.He thought there must be a major and vicious conspiracy of collaborating with the enemy.The melancholy soldier, alone, brooded over the causes of this catastrophe, relying only on his own narrow personal experience.Previously in Vienna he had mixed with groups of the extremist National People's Party, where he had heard of all the crimes and sabotage of one race, the Jews, enemies and exploiters of the Norse Germans.His patriotic indignation and envy of the rich and elite merged into an irrepressible hatred.

The unnoticed patient was finally discharged, still in military uniform.He had almost the pride of a schoolboy in military uniform.What a scene he saw when he removed the veil from his eyes!Defeated riots are scary enough.In the atmosphere of despair and rage, around him, the outline of the Red Revolution flashed.Armored vehicles rammed the streets of Munich, dropping leaflets and firing bullets at fleeing passers-by.Some of his fellow soldiers openly wore red armbands on their uniforms and chanted wildly against everything he loved on earth.As if waking up from a dream, everything suddenly became clear.The Jews, the fortune-makers and collaborators in the rear, and the hateful Bolsheviks, the international intrigues through Jewish intellectuals, stabbed Germany in the back and knocked it down.He saw his duty shining before his eyes: he would save Germany from these pestilences, he would avenge her, he would lead this master race to its long-destined destiny.

The officers of his regiment were terrified by the seditious revolutionary mood of their men, but they were glad to have at any rate found a man who seemed to understand the origin of the situation.Corporal Hitler was still willing to stay in the army and took up a job as a political instructor or spy.In this name, he gathered information on plots of mutiny and subversion.Soon, his superior, a security officer, sent him to rallies of various local political parties.One night in September 1919, the corporal attended a meeting of the German Workers Party held in a beer hall in Munich. Against the Jews, against the opportunists, against the November criminals [1] who plunged Germany into the abyss.On September 16, he joined the party.Soon, to complement his work in the army, he was in charge of the party's propaganda work.In February 1920, the German Workers Party held its first congress in Munich, which Hitler manipulated and laid down twenty-five points for the draft party programme.At this time Hitler has become a politician, and his national salvation movement has begun since then.In April of the same year, he was demobilized from the army.Since then he devoted his whole life to the expansion of the party.By the middle of the second year, he had driven out the original leaders one by one.With his zeal and genius he made his fascinated companions accept his personal dictatorship, and he was already a leader.He paid for a poorly run newspaper, the Volk Observer, to serve as the party organ.The communists soon recognized their enemy.They attempted to disrupt Hitler's rallies, and in a few days towards the end of 1921 Hitler organized his SA for the first time.Up to this point everything had been done within the local Bavarian confines, but since the German people were in dire straits in the post-war years, many across the Reich began to hear the man's new gospel.In 1923 the French occupation of the Ruhr and the outrage throughout Germany swelled the membership of what is now known as the National Socialist Party.Mark's collapse destroyed the foundations of the German middle class.Many of them became members of this new party out of desperation.In hatred, vengeance, and patriotic fervor they found comfort in their misery.

【1】Revolution broke out in Germany in November 1918.translator Hitler made it very clear from the beginning that in order to seize political power, he must start with fierce opposition and blows to the Weimar Republic government that was born out of the humiliation of the defeat. In November 1923 the leader had at his side a firm group of party members, the most prominent of which were Goering, Hess, Rosenberg and Rohm.These activists decided that the time had come to seize power in Bavaria.General Ludendorff, with his prestigious name in the army, justified the venture, and in this insurrection he was at the head of the ranks.Before the war it was often said that there would be no revolutions in Germany, because all revolutions were strictly forbidden in Germany.The local authorities in Munich revived this maxim in this incident.The police fired, but were careful not to hit Ludendorff, and General Ludendorff walked straight up to the police line and was saluted by the police.About twenty of the demonstrators were killed. Hitler fell to the ground and fled the scene with other leaders.In April 1924, Hitler was sentenced to four years in prison.

Although order was maintained by the German authorities, and the German courts punished the perpetrators, all parts of the country believed that the authorities were attacking their own flesh and blood, serving foreigners, and sacrificing the most faithful sons and daughters of Germany.Hitler's prison sentence was reduced from four years to thirteen months.His ten months in prison in Landsberg enabled him to complete the outlines of Mein Kampf, his work of political philosophy dedicated to the victims of the recent riots.After he finally came to power, nothing deserved more careful study than this book by the political and military leaders of the Entente.The program of German revival, the party's propaganda techniques, the program of the struggle against Marxism, the National Socialist concept of the state, Germany's rightful claim to the highest position in the world, all these are clearly stated in the book.This is the new Koran of faith and war: hyperbolic, long, rambling, but embodying the mission of this party.

The theme of "Mein Kampf" is very simple.Man is a fighting animal; therefore, the state, as a collection of fighters, is a fighting unit.Any living organism that ceases to fight for survival is doomed.A nation or a race that ceases to fight is also doomed to perish.The combat effectiveness of a race depends on its purity, therefore, foreign contamination must be excluded.The Jewish race, because of its worldwide presence, is necessarily pacifist and internationalist.Pacifism is a heinous crime, because it means racial surrender in the struggle for existence, and therefore the first duty of every state is to nationalize the masses.On the personal side, intelligence is not the primary quality; will and determination are the primary qualities.A man born to command is more valuable than thousands of men who are only worthy of obedience.Only violence can guarantee the survival of the race, so military means are necessary.Races must fight, and Gou'an's race must corrupt and perish.Had the Germanic race been united in time, it would have been masters of the earth.The new German Empire must gather in its arms all the Germans scattered throughout Europe.A race that has suffered defeat can be saved by regaining its self-confidence.The most important thing is that the army must be educated to believe that it is invincible.In order to revive the German nation, it was necessary to convince people that it was possible to regain liberty by armed force.The principles of aristocracy are fundamentally correct.Intellectualism is unacceptable.The ultimate aim of education is to produce Germans capable of becoming soldiers with a minimum of training.The greatest earth-shattering upheavals in history would have been inconceivable without the impetus of fanatical, hysterical enthusiasm.The bourgeois virtues of peace and order do nothing.The world has now turned to such a great upheaval, and the new German state must keep our race ready to fight the last and greatest battle on earth.

Foreign policy can be unscrupulous.The task of diplomacy is not to let a nation die heroically, but to enable it to prosper and survive.Only Great Britain and Italy could be allies of Germany.No country will enter into an alliance with a cowardly pacifist country ruled by Democrats and Marxists.If Germany cannot keep itself alive, there will be no one to keep her alive.The provinces it loses can never be regained by prayers to God or pleas to the League of Nations, only by force.Germany must not repeat the mistake of fighting all enemies simultaneously.It must choose one of its most dangerous enemies and attack with all its might.Only when Germany regains equality of rights and restores her place under the sun will the world stop against Germany.German foreign policy must be absolutely free from sentimentality.It would be foolish to attack France on purely sentimental grounds.All Germany needs is territorial expansion in Europe.Germany's pre-war colonial policy was wrong and should be abandoned.Germany must seek to expand into Russia, especially the Baltic states.There can never be an alliance with Russia.It would be a crime to join Russia in waging war on Western Europe, because the purpose of the Soviets was the victory of international Judaism.

These were the essence of Hitler's policies. Hitler's incessant struggle and gradual emergence as a national figure did not attract much attention from the victorious powers, which were troubled and obsessed with their own troubles and factional struggles.The National Socialist Party, later the so-called Nazi Party, took hold of the German masses, the army and the state apparatus, and the industrialists who were not without reason afraid of Communism, for a long time, so that they became the main force that the whole world had to face. A force in German life with admiration.When Hitler was released from prison in late 1924, he said that it might take five years to reorganize his movement.

One of the democratic clauses of the Weimar constitution provided for elections to the Reichstag every four years.It was hoped that by this clause the complete and continuous control of the Reichstag would be secured by the masses of the German people.In practice, of course, this provision simply made them live in a situation of constant fanatical political excitement and constant electoral campaigns.Thus, there is an accurate record of Hitler and the development of his doctrine.In 1928, he held only 28 seats in Congress, increased to 107 seats in 1930, and 230 seats in 1932.By this time the entire establishment of Germany was filled with National Socialist agents and bound by its discipline.All kinds of threats, insults and atrocities against the Jews became rampant everywhere.

It is not necessary in this book to detail this complex and horrible affair, with all its passions and crimes, and all its successive processes, year by year.The dim light of the Locarno Convention was but a flash in the pan.Spending on massive US borrowing has given rise to a sense that prosperity is returning.Field Marshal Hindenburg was President of Germany, and Stresemann was his Foreign Minister, and the calm and respectable majority of the German people embraced Hindenburg with their deep-seated love of great and dignified authority. , until he breathed his last breath.But other powerful factors were also at work in this deranged country, and the Weimar Republic could neither provide security nor gratify national honor and vengeance. In the postwar years, behind the veneer of republican government and democratic institutions imposed by the victors and bearing the stigma of defeat, it was the German Army General Staff that wielded the real political power in Germany and as the permanent institution of the state.The appointment and removal of the president and the cabinet are in the hands of these people.They considered Marshal Hindenburg to be a symbol of their power, an agent of their will, but in 1930, Hindenburg was already eighty-three years old.From this time on, his character and intelligence gradually declined.He is becoming more and more a prejudiced, stubborn and assertive old man.In the war, Hindenburg was regarded as a great image, but now, German patriots express their admiration for him by wishing for his early death.This clearly shows that the present Hindenburg has become a wooden Titan [1].The generals had understood for some time that they should find a satisfactory leader to succeed the aging field marshal.However, the search for newcomers was suppressed by the violent development of the National Socialist movement.After the failure of the Munich uprising in 1923, Hitler had published a party program that was strictly in line with the Weimar Republic system legally, but at the same time he encouraged and planned to expand the military and semi-military organization of the Nazi Party.The Stormtroopers, or Brownshirts, and a small but disciplined nucleus, the SS, grew from a small start to a group so large in numbers and vigor that the military There is great consternation about its activities and its potential power. [1] Children of the gods of heaven and the gods of the earth in Greek mythology.translator The leader of the stormtroopers was the officer Rohm who was born in the army. He was Hitler's comrade, and he was always Hitler's close friend during the years of struggle.Romm is the chief of staff of the stormtroopers, a man of great ability and courage, with strong personal ambitions, and a sexual pervert.His misdeeds did not prevent Hitler from cooperating with him on the arduous and dangerous road to power.As Brüning lamented, the SA absorbed most of the old National People's Party, including the Free Comrades who fought the Bolsheviks in the Baltic and Poland in 1920, There is also the Helmet Regiment, an organization for National People's Party veterans. An in-depth study of domestic trends by the army generals had to convince them that an officer class like theirs, opposed to the Nazi movement, could no longer rule Germany.Both factions were determined to save Germany from hell, and both wanted to avenge their defeat.But the German Army was an institution created on behalf of the Reich and to protect the feudal lords, aristocrats, landowners and other wealthy classes of German society; A revolutionary movement fueled by the discontent of the subversives and the desperate struggles of the bankrupt.The differences between them and the Bolsheviks whom they condemned were like fire and water. The Army believed that fighting the Nazi Party was tantamount to tearing defeated Germany apart.In 1931 and 1932 the top generals of the Army believed that for themselves and for the country they must unite with the Nazi Party, although they had opposed it with all the fortitude and sternness of the Germans. The internal affairs of the Nazi party.On Hitler's side, although he was ready to use any weapon of attack to seize the citadel of power, before his eyes were those leaders who had led the great and splendid Germany, and these men he had admired in his youth and loyalty.Therefore, the conditions required for an agreement between him and the army were ready-made and natural for both parties.Army generals gradually realized that the Nazi Party was so powerful that only Hitler could succeed Hindenburg as head of Germany.As for Hitler, he also knew that if he wanted to realize his plan to revive Germany, he had to form an alliance with the backbone of the army.Once the deal was sealed, German army generals began to persuade Hindenburg to look at Hitler differently as the future Chancellor of Germany.Hitler promised to limit the activities of the brown shirts, make the brown shirts subject to the constraints of the Army General Staff, and, if necessary, cancel these brown shirts; Received formal administrative jurisdiction and a clear succession to the German head of state.This corporal has risen step by step, and has risen very high. However, there are additional complications at home.If the German Army Staff held the key to the general unity of factions within Germany, there were several hands trying to acquire it.At this time, General Schleicher wielded a subtle and sometimes decisive power.He was a political adviser to cautious and potentially influential military figures.He was viewed with considerable skepticism by parties and parties alike as an astute and capable political activist.His knowledge far exceeds the military drill code of the staff department, which is beyond the reach of ordinary soldiers.Schleicher had long recognized the importance of the Nazi movement and the need to contain and control it.On the other hand, he saw in the horrors of mob violence and the ever-expanding private army of the Stormtroopers that one of them, if used properly by his colleagues on the staff, could be exploited weapons that might be used to re-establish Germany's greatness, and perhaps his own.With this idea in mind, Schleicher began to secretly plan with Roehm, chief of staff of the Nazi Stormtroopers, in 1931.So two important things happened at the same time.The Army General Staff colluded with Hitler; and Schleicher, in the midst of it, carried out his personal conspiracy with Rohm, Hitler's chief aide and possible rival.Schleicher's contact with the revolutionary faction in the Nazi party, especially with Rohm, continued until three years later when the two of them were shot by Hitler's order.Since then, the political situation has been much simpler, and much easier for those who remain. At this time, the economic storm hit Germany.U.S. banks are unwilling to increase their extremely uneconomical loans to Germany in view of the growing domestic debt.As a result, factories across Germany closed down one after another, and many enterprises suddenly went bankrupt, and these factories and enterprises were the foundation on which Germany's peaceful revival depended.In the winter of 1930, the number of unemployed in Germany rose to 2.3 million.At the same time, the issue of compensation has entered a new stage.During the past three years, Mr. Gilbert, Chargé d’Affaires General of the United States, as a representative of the Allied Powers, has received huge reparations from the Allied Powers from Germany, including the reparations paid to Great Britain (which was then automatically transferred to the American treasury by myself).This approach is certainly not sustainable.As early as the summer of 1929, American Commissioner Mr. Younger had drafted, proposed and requested to discuss in Paris an extremely important plan for reducing reparations. The German and German railways were separated from the control of the Allied Powers. In addition, it was proposed to abolish the Compensation Commission and establish a separate Bank for International Settlements.Hitler and his National Socialist movement were allied with the commercial and industrial interest groups represented and to some extent headed by the brutal and ephemeral figure of the business magnate Hulkenberg.They waged a vain but savage campaign against this far-reaching and magnanimous accommodation proposed by the Entente.It took all the effort of the German government to force the Reichstag to approve the Young plan by only 224 votes to 206.Foreign Minister Stresemann, who was dying of illness at this time, did one last thing before he died: to get the Allies to promise to withdraw the Allies from the Rhineland well before the deadline stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles. But the German masses were largely indifferent to the apparent concessions of the victorious powers.Earlier, or under less tense relations, these concessions might have been seen as a big step toward reconciliation and real peace.But now the vast masses of Germany are confronted with the ever-present and dark horror of unemployment.The middle class had already gone bankrupt due to the devaluation of the mark and had to take desperate risks.International economic pressures weakened Stresemann's political position at home.The Nazi Party headed by Hitler and the capital magnates headed by Hugenberg attacked him fiercely and finally overthrew him.On March 28, 1930, Brüning, leader of the Catholic Center Party, became prime minister. Brüning was a Westphalian Catholic and a patriot bent on rebuilding the former Germany in the form of a modern democracy.He continued to pursue the industrial plans Mr. Rathenau had drawn up in preparation for war before he was assassinated.He also sought to maintain fiscal stability amidst the mounting chaos.His proposals for economical savings and reductions in the number and salaries of civil servants were not popular with the people.The tide of resentment was surging.With the support of President Hindenburg, Brüning dissolved the hostile Reichstag.In the elections of 1930, he won a majority in Congress.He is now making a last apparent effort to call upon the remnants of the old Germany against the agitation of the revived, violent and despicable Nationalists.To this end, his first step was to try to secure Hindenburg's re-election as president.Chancellor Brüning wants a new and obvious solution.He believed that only by restoring the imperial system could Germany gain peace, security and glory.If Hindenburg was re-elected President, would he be able to persuade the aged field marshal to serve as regent during his final term, so that the monarchy could be restored at his death?This policy, if successful, would fill the vacuum of supreme power in Germany that Hitler was apparently about to step into.Judging from the overall situation, this is the correct path. But how was Brüning able to lead Germany down this road?Conservatives who are leaning toward Hitler may turn their heads when they see Kaiser Wilhelm restored; but neither the Social Democrats nor the forces in the trade unions will absolutely allow the old Kaiser or the Crown Prince to come back.Brüning's plan was not to rebuild the Second Empire, but to establish a constitutional monarchy in the British style.He hoped that among the sons of the German crown prince there would be a suitable candidate for constitutional monarchy. In November 1931, Brüning confided his plan to Hindenburg, who decided everything.The aged marshal's reaction was violent and peculiar, and he was astonished and utterly disapproving.He said he considered himself merely a man commissioned by the Kaiser.Any other solution would be an affront to his military dignity.The monarchy he believed in was incompatible with the method of choosing one of the princes to be emperor.The legal system of the throne is absolutely inviolable.At the same time, since the Germans did not want the Kaiser to return home, Hindenburg was the only one left in Germany.That's all he said.There is no room for compromise.He said: I am here, I am here to stay.Brüning had a heated, perhaps prolonged, argument with the aged general.The chancellor had a strong case: unless Hindenburg accepted the solution of this albeit unorthodox monarchy, a revolutionary Nazi dictatorship was bound to emerge.But the two sides did not reach any agreement.However, regardless of whether Brüning could change Hindenburg's mind, the re-election of Hindenburg as president was absolutely necessary, because it would at least avoid the danger of Germany's political collapse in an instant.The first phase of Brüning's plan was successful.In the presidential elections held in March 1932, Hindenburg won the majority in the second round of voting, defeating his arch-enemy Hitler and Thälmann of the Communist Party and was re-elected.But now it has to deal with the domestic economic situation and relations with Europe.The Conference on Disarmament was convening in Geneva, and Hitler was unleashing a raucous campaign against the humiliation brought upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. After much deliberation, Brüning drew up an ambitious plan to amend the Treaty of Versailles; and in April 1932 he went to Geneva and was unexpectedly well received.In his negotiations with MacDonald, Stimson, and Norman Davis, a deal seemed likely.The special basis of this conversation is the equalization of military affairs between Germany and France.However, this principle can be interpreted with various reservations.It is indeed astonishing that any sane mind could think that peace could be built on such a basis.This issue will be discussed in the next few chapters.Had the victor conceded on this crucial issue, it would have likely pulled Brüning out of his adversity.There can also be a second step, a more clever one, which is probably to cancel the reparations for the revival of Europe.If this solution were to be implemented, it would certainly elevate Brüning's personal status to that of a victor. America's ambassador at large, Norman Davis, had called French Prime Minister Tardieu and asked him to come immediately from Paris to Geneva.Unexpectedly, Bruening is really unfortunate, Tardieu has already got another news.At this time Schleicher was in full swing in Berlin.He happened to be the first to warn the French ambassador not to negotiate with Brüning, who was about to fall.It may also be that Tardieu was concerned about France's military position under the scheme of equal arms.In any case, Tardieu did not go to Geneva, and Brüning returned to Berlin on 1 May. It was fatal for Brüning to return to Berlin empty-handed in such a situation.In order to deal with the economic collapse, which was so threatening within Germany, drastic and even desperate measures had to be taken.But Brüning's disgraced government no longer had the strength necessary to resort to these measures.Brüning struggled for a full month in May.At the same time, Tardieu was replaced by Heriot in the vicissitudes of French parliamentary politics. The new French prime minister has announced that he is personally ready to discuss the deal reached in the Geneva negotiations.The American ambassador in Berlin was ordered to urge the Chancellor to return to Geneva without delay.Brüning received the telegram on the morning of May 30, but by then Schleicher's efforts had succeeded.Hindenburg listened to his words and decided to dismiss Brüning as chancellor.When the American invitation telegram (a hopeful but imprecisely worded telegram) reached Brüning on this very morning, he already knew his fate was sealed; He offered to resign in order to avoid formal dismissal.Thus ended the last government in post-war Germany that might have enabled the German people to enjoy a stable and civilized constitutional government on the road to good-neighborly relations.The proposals made to Brüning by the Entente would surely have saved Brüning, were it not for Schleicher's intrigue and Tardieu's delay.Now these proposals have to be discussed with another government and another person.