Hitler s political beliefs
This page specifically covers the political beliefs of Adolf Hitler.
See also Nazi Party, anti-semitism.
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Hitler was most notable for his anti-Semitism and his racist beliefs, but he was also a vegetarian, a person who worked to gain personal power, and a supporter of German expansionism.
After the war Hitler stayed in the army, which was now mainly engaged in suppressing the socialist uprisings that were breaking out across Germany - including in Munich, where Hitler returned in 1919. Hitler took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Mayr. One key purpose of this group was to create a scapegoat for the outbreak of the World War and for Germany's defeat. Jewish people, at the time, seemed like an obvious choice for a scapegoat. Unsurprisingly, the scapegoat was found in "international Jewry", but the scapegoat was also found in communists and in politicians across the party spectrum.
For Hitler, who had experienced the horrors of war firsthand, the question of guilt was essential. Already influenced by anti-Semitic ideas, he eagerly believed in Jewish responsibility and soon became an efficient multiplicator for the propaganda conceived by Mayr and his superiors. In July 1919 Hitler, because of his intelligence and oratory skills, was appointed a V-Mann of an "Enlightenment Commando" for the purpose of influencing other soldiers with the same ideas. [1] (http://ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/festjc/chap2.htm)
He was assigned by Headquarters to infiltrate a small nationalist party, the German Workers' Party. Hitler joined the party as member number 555 (numbering began at 500 to make the party seem larger than it actually was) in September 1919. Here he also met Dietrich Eckart, an anti-Semite and one of the early key members of the party.
In the same month, Hitler wrote what is often deemed his first anti-Semitic text, a "report on anti-Semitism" requested by Mayr for one Adolf Gemlich, who participated in the same "educational courses" that Hitler had taken part in. In this report to his superior, Hitler argued for a "rational anti-Semitism" which would not resort to pogroms, but which would instead "legally fight and remove the privileges enjoyed by the Jews as opposed to other foreigners living among us. Its final goal, however, must be the irrevocable removal of the Jews themselves." [2] (http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/antisemitismus/hitler/gutachten.shtml) Certainly everyone at the time understood this as a call for forced expulsion; whether Hitler himself understood it that way is less clear given the genocide that Hitler ordered 22 years later. (Europe has a long history of expulsions of Jewish folks and the auto-da-fe, and it also has a history of massacres of various peoples, including the Jews.)
Hitler would not be discharged from the army until 1920; after this he began to take full part in the party's activities. He soon became its leader and changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - NSDAP), usually known as the Nazi party from National Sozialistische, in contrast to Sozi, a term used for the Social Democrats. The party adopted the swastika (supposedly a symbol of "Aryanism") and the Roman salute, also used by the Italian fascists.
The Nazi party was but one of a large number of small extremist groups in Munich at this time. But Hitler soon discovered that he had two remarkable talents - for public oratory and for inspiring personal loyalty. His street-corner oratory, attacking the Jews, the socialists and liberals, the capitalists and Communists, began to attract adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Ernst Röhm, head of the Nazis' paramilitary organization, the SA. Another admirer was the wartime Field-Marshall Erich Ludendorff. Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempt to seize power in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, later known as the "Beer Hall Putsch" of November 8 1923, when the Nazis marched from a beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry, intending to overthrow Bavaria's right-wing separatist government and then march on Berlin. The army quickly dispersed them and Hitler was arrested. Fearing some of the "left-wing" members of the Nazi party might try to seize the leadership from him during incarceration, Hitler quickly appointed Alfred Rosenberg temporary leader.
Hitler was put on trial for the German version of high treason, and used his trial as an opportunity to spread his message throughout Germany. In April 1924 he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Landsberg Prison. Here he dictated a book called Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his faithful deputy Rudolf Hess. The book was written during 1923 and 1924 at Hitler's prison and later at an inn. Reading Mein Kampf is like listening to Hitler speak at length about his youth, early days in the Nazi Party, future plans for Germany, and ideas on politics and race. The original title Hitler chose was “Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” His Nazi publisher knew better and shortened it to Mein Kampf, simply My Struggle, or My Battle.
In his writing, Hitler announced his hatred toward what he believed to be the twin evils of the world: Communism and Judaism, and he stated that his aim was to eradicate both from the face of the earth. He announced that Germany needed to obtain new soil called lebensraum which would properly nurture the "historic destiny" of the German people; this goal explains why Hitler invaded Europe, both East and West, before he launched his attack against Russia. Hitler presented himself as the "Übermensch", or "Superman", that Friedrich Nietzsche had referred to in his writings, especially in his book, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. Since Hitler blamed the current parliamentary government for much of the ills against which he raged, he announced that he would completely destroy that type of government. It is in Mein Kampf that the true nature of Hitler's character can be discovered. He divides humans up based on physical attributes. Hitler claims that German "Aryans" with blond hair and blue eyes were at the top of the hierarchy, and assigns the bottom of the order to Jews, Poles, Russians, Czechs and Roma. Hitler goes on to say that dominated peoples benefit by learning from the superior Aryans. Hitler further claims that the Jews are conspiring to keep this master race from rightfully ruling the world, by diluting its racial and cultural purity and by convincing the Aryan to believe in equality rather than superiority and inferiority. He describes the struggle for world domination as an ongoing racial, cultural, and political battle between Aryans and Jews. This suggested struggle for world domination between Aryans and Jews was widely accepted by the German population at the time when Hitler came to power. He could not have succeeded for so long if the population of Germany had not had a tradition of anti-semitism.
Considered relatively harmless, Hitler was given an early amnesty. He was released in December 1924. By this time the Nazi party barely existed and Hitler would have a long effort in trying to rebuild it. During these years he established a group, which later became one of his key instruments in carrying out his objectives. As Ernst Röhm's Sturmabteilung ("Stormtroopers" or SA), were unreliable and formed a separate base of power within the party, Hitler established a personal bodyguard, the Schutzstaffel ("Protection Unit" or SS). This elite black-uniformed corps was to be commanded by Heinrich Himmler, who was to become the principal executor of his plans with respect to the "Jewish Question" during the Second World War.
A key element of Hitler's appeal was the sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated German Empire by the Allies. The German Empire lost territory to France, Poland, Belgium and Denmark, and had to admit sole responsibility for the war, give up her colonies and her Navy, and pay a huge reparations bill, totaling $6,600,000 (32 billion marks). Since most Germans did not believe that the German Empire had started the war, and did not believe until later that they had been defeated, they bitterly resented these terms. Although the party's early attempts to garner votes by blaming all these humiliations on the machinations of "international Jewry" were not particularly successful with the electorate, the party's propaganda wing learned quickly, and soon a more subtle propaganda - which combined anti-semitism with a spirited attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties which had supported it - began to come to the fore.
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