(Note): ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl (Ernst Franz Sedgwick) wrote down a total of 68 pages to make up this archive. However, page number 36 is missing from this copy of our document and was not found in Hitler’s Original 201 File.

AHThe day after his conversation with Dietrich Eckart, Dr. Sedgwick left the Pension Moritz. He was accompanied on his walk down to Berchtesgaden by Hitler and some of his friends but not by Eckart. Hitler must have felt that Eckart had been criticizing him.

Soon after they started Hitler turned the conversation onto Eckart. ‘Dietrich Eckart has really become an old pessimist’, Hitler said, ‘a senile weakling, who has fallen in love with this girl, who is thirty years younger than him. He is as undecided as Hamlet or rather he is like Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, which he translated only too well, a man who never knows what he wants. Schopenhauer has done Eckart no good. He has made him a doubting Thomas, who only looks forward to Nirvana. ‘Where would I get if I listened to all his transcendental talk? A pearl of nice ultimate wisdom that! To reduce oneself to a minimum of desire and will. Once the will is gone all is gone. This life is War.

He raved on and on against Eckart, partly because Eckart had shown his disapproval of Hitler comparing himself to the Messiah, and partly because Hitler was furiously envious of Eckart having fallen in love with a young girl.

The conversation changed and Hitler started to whistle the ‘Swan Song’ from Lohengrin. He did this in a curious soft tremolo, which he kept up both breathing in and out. Then again followed outbursts against Eckart whom he called an old fool as though he wanted to make sure to discredit absolutely anything Eckart might have said to Dr. Sedgwick, who was thereby made all the more certain that what Eckart had said was correct. There was another cause for Hitler’s raving in that way and trying to discredit Dietrich Eckart. Anton Drexler and his wife had been up at the Pension Moritz and together with Dietrich Eckart and others they had been discussing the past and the future of the Party. They had all agreed that so far the year 1923 had not succeeded in achieving the results that Hitler had prophesied. At that time there was a large conservative majority of small bourgeois elements, headed by the Drexlers, who objected to the lawless and revolutionary course that Hitler and Rosenberg were pursuing. They were dissatisfied with Hitler’s continual promises of securing power in Bavaria in the course of a few weeks. These promises, given in the middle of January 1923, when the French had occupied the Ruhr, were constantly renewed for the succeeding five months.

Nazy Party - 1922People like Drexler, Esser, Eckart, and Feder had begun to see that Hitler’s plans for immediate and violent action were attracting an increasing bunch of desperadoes to the Party instead of substantial Socialists from the working class who wanted to build up the Party machine throughout Germany until power could be obtained through sheer weight of numbers with relatively little violence.

These malcontents had soon clearly the intention of Hitler which was to copy the methods of Mussolini, who had some months previously succeeded in his ‘March on Rome‘. However, they also remembered that the March on Rome was far better prepared, by a Party numerically enormously stronger, headed by such men as Michel Bianchi, Italo Balbo, Gen de Bono, and Gen de Veochi and that the March was undertaken on the tacit invitation of Victor Emmanual III. The March succeeded in being carried out bloodlessly because of its very careful preparation. Eckart said to Dr. Sedgwick: ‘Suppose we even succeeded in taking Munich by a Putsch, Munich is not Berlin. It would lead to nothing but ultimate failure.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who was the leader of the National Fascist Party. He ruled Italy as the prime minister from 1922 to 1943; he constitutionally led the country until 1925, when he dropped the pretense of democracy and established a dictatorship. Mussolini inspired several totalitarian rulers, such as Adolf HitlerIt was at this time that the German and Continental opposition press began to speak of Hitler as the vest pocket Mussolini, making fun of his failures to take over power on May 1, 1923, when the National Socialist battalions had to be hastily disarmed by Capt Roehm.

It was this lack of actual power and lack of support which made a march on Berlin militarily impossible and which drove Hitler to see himself in the role of the Messiah with a scourge marching on that Babel of sin (Berlin) at the head of a small gang of desperadoes, who would inevitably be followed by more and more of the dissatisfied elements throughout the Reich. Hitler quoted the motto of Prince Eugen of Savoy which Dr. Sedgwick had shown him some months before, ‘You speak of the lack of support – that is no reason to hesitate when the hour is ripe. Let us march, then supporters will find themselves’.

Even then as later Hitler refused to accept the advice of the conservative parliamentarian elements within the Party, knowing well that any compromise with them would nullify his dreams of being Germany’s future Messiah. ‘Alles Oder Nichts’.

AH Poster

Self Identification Patterns
Introduction

The purpose of the following expose is to show the important role of auto-suggestion in the career of Hitler. Himself, only one of the many unknown soldiers, Hitler made it known early that while in the infirmary of Pasewalk (fall of 1918) he received a command from another world above to save his unhappy country. This vocation reached Hitler in the form of a supernatural vision. He decided to become a politician then and there, he felt that his mission was to free Germany. In fulfilling this mission Hitler has made use of a number of self-identifications. The first noticeable identification pattern was that of the ‘drummer’. At a number of meetings that took place at the beginning of the year 1923, Hitler would refer to himself as the drummer marching ahead of a great movement of liberation to come. He had the idea that his role was that of an announcer of a new epoch. The great leader was to come spine day. He did not yet see himself as this leader.

There was a note of subservience to Gen Luedendorff and the military caste. It was about this time that Dr. Sedgwick advised Hitler to study the Lutheran Bible, which as well as being the equivalent of the well-tempered clavichord in German literature contains a perfect arsenal of forceful passages, highly useful in the fight against the atheistic Bolsheviks, and doubly suited for Bavaria, the home of the Oberammergau Passion Plays. It must be remembered that at that time the Party was fighting for what their program called ‘positive Christianity’, and that Rosenberg’s anti-Christian book ‘The Myth of the Twentieth Century’ had not yet been written.

It was not long before Hitler began to use quotations from the Lutheran Bible. The National-Socialists at that time were opposed by many people to whom World War I had opened a new religious, pacifistic outlook and Hitler’s quotations evoked an especially warm response on the part of his audience. Soon Hitler began to vary the ‘drummer pattern’ to one of self-identification with John the Baptist. Hitler used practically the words of St Matthew, calling; himself a voice crying in the wilderness and describing his duty as having to straighten the path of him, who was to lead the nation to power and glory. Passages like these made a tremendous impression on his audiences. They seemed to denote a disarming simplicity and modesty, reminiscent of Joan of Arc. In his ecstasies as an orator, Hitler like La Pucelle d’Orleans seemed to hear voices from Valhalla from some Heiligland above – voices that ordered him to save Germany.

Since 1933 the ‘drummer pattern’ has been totally dropped, – the drummer having become the Fuehrer. Nazi historians even go so far as to deny altogether that Hitler used to call himself only ‘the drummer’. They have falsified the facts to such an extent that they claim it was Hitler’s enemies, not he himself who referred to him as a drummer – as a great drummer – in order to kill his chances for supreme leadership and that the reference to Hitler as the drummer was meant to have, a negative influence on his qualifications – Hitler and Messiah. In the same way, the ‘John the Baptist’ is muted entirely. Instead of the deification of Hitler is progressing steadily. In Dr. Sedgwick’s belief, if Egypt should ever fall it would not be long before Hitler would visit the Oasis of Siva, as a second Alexander, a demigod.

AH PosterIn order to combat Rosenberg’s atheistic tendencies Dr. Sedgwick frequently talked to Hitler, trying to prove to him how wrong it would be to continue in the attacks on Christianity, as Christ himself could be termed the first socialist in the history of the world. The Bible and Christianity were far from played out in their hold on the imagination of the German people and even in atheistic Paris, only sixteen years ago, a picture had been exhibited at the Paris Salon during the summer of 1907 which showed Christ on the Cross with the caption ‘Le Premier Socialiste’, and not ‘Christ the Nazarene, King of the Jews’. This over-life-size canvas made a tremendous impression and the room in which it was exhibited was crowded with officers, businessmen, students, and priests – all Paris in fact including the demi-monde.

Dr. Sedgwick told Hitler that if this Christ-Socialist had made such a deep impression in Paris it must have the same effect in Catholic Munich. He asked Hitler why he did not use this Christ-Socialist as a point of departure which would help to silence the clerical and pseudo-clerical opposition more than anything else. Hitler promised to think it over and undoubtedly consulted Rosenberg on the subject as the suggestion interested him deeply. To Dr. Sedgwick’s surprise, Hitler used an entirely different picture of Christ, at a meeting soon, afterward instead of the Christ-Socialist he used the words: ‘I come to bring you not peace, but a sword’. He used this phrase to rebut the pacifists’ idea of eternal peace.

Hitler’s growing tendency to identify himself with the Messiah is shown in an incident that occurred in the spring of 1923. The ‘Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten’, the most widely read morning paper in Munich, published the story of Hitler’s engagement to Dr. Sedgwick’s sister Erna as a rumor. As this was a complete invention, Dr. Sedgwick consulted with Hitler as to the best method of refuting it. Hitler was very much flattered by the rumor and when pressed said: ‘I authorize you hereby to tell the press that I shall never engage myself to a woman nor marry a woman. The only true bride for me is and always will be the German People.

To anyone familiar with Christian literature the reference to Christ’s true Bride, the Church, comes to mind. This makes absolutely clear Hitler’s self-identification with the Messiah. Thus it is seen that Hitler’s conception of the Messiah is not Christ crucified but Christ furious – Christ with a scourge. The connection between Hitler as the Messiah with a scourge and Hitler the frustrated Narcissus did not occur to Dr. Sedgwick until very recently. However, it is unquestionably the formula by which the most incongruous features of Hitler the Man and Hitler the Statesman can be reconciled and understood.

Hitler oscillates constantly between these two personifications. This explains Hitler’s predilection for the word brutal (pronounced in German Broutahl), which so often highlights his speeches, and which he pronounces with special vehemence. He places it with great stress at the end of a sentence and accompanies it with his fiercest expression. After he came into power, in 1933, Dr. Sedgwick tried to make him see that in view of the fact that the Party was now in power such demagogic words were really no longer necessary. Dr. Sedgwick wrote a letter to Hess on that subject, warning him of the evil consequences of associating the word brutal with the Party because in German this word means ‘cruel’ or ‘merciless’ but in English means ‘savage’ or ‘bestial’. Millions of English-speaking people would read the word brutal and misunderstand it. The dangerous thing was that it was not being used by them but by members of the Party who used this term. No attention was paid to this warning. The word ‘brutal’ remained both in Hitler’s vocabulary and in that of hundreds of his underlings. It became a cliché in all Nazi oratory.

Hitler and Cromwell

Besides admiring Cromwell as an enemy of Parliamentarianism, Adolf Hitler admires him also as the enemy of universal franchise, of Communism, and of Roman Catholicism. In Oliver Cromwell, he admires the self-appointed Dictator, the breaker of the British Parliament, the creator of the British Navy, and to a lesser degree, the military leader. That Cromwell, the Puritan, had the courage to sign the death warrant of Charles I and have him beheaded is of special and pathological interest.

Hitler and Frederick the Great

Frederick II was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786. His most significant accomplishments during his reign included his military victories, his reorganization of Prussian armies, his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment, and his final success against great odds in the Seven Years’ War. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia and declared himself King of Prussia after achieving sovereignty over most historically Prussian lands in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a leading military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed ‘Der Alte Fritz’ (‘The Old Fritz’) by the Prussian people and the rest of Germany. In regard to the life of Frederick the Great, it is the early period, during which the young Prince is in violent opposition to his aged and stern soldier father who has the greatest fascination for Hitler. The similarities between Frederick’s own early life with that of Hitler’s childhood are so obvious. Frederick’s struggle against his father Frederick William I of Prussia and Hitler’s own struggles with the brutal and whip-wielding Alois Schickelgruber Hitler show clear similarities. But it is anomalous that in this (rare) case Hitler should side part with the Father. Dr. Sedgwick remembers that in the spring of 1923, he took Hitler to see a then-famous film ‘The Life of Frederick the Great’. In one scene the tyrannical father ordered his son’s French books and music burnt. When the Prince protested his father struck him in the face. Hitler sat enthralled. Dr. Sedgwick saw him nod vigorously when the Prince was brought back to his father after trying to escape his Spartan life as a Prussian soldier by absconding to England. The Prince’s friend and abettor in this planned flight, Herr von Katte, was taken prisoner.

Adolf Hitler, Frederick the Great and HindenburgThe king orders, both of them tried before a military tribunal for high treason. The tribunal decides that they shall both be imprisoned. The king enters the courtroom, reads the verdict aloud, and says ‘Not good’. He then tears up the parchment and orders the court to condemn them to death. ‘Better that they die than that justice should fail’. The young Prince is finally condemned to only two years in a fortress while Katte is beheaded. In the big scene, the scaffold is shown with the block, the executioner, and the ax. Soldiers from a hollow square around it. Katte mounts the scaffold and the camera swings up to a window where the Prince, who has been ordered by his father to witness the execution, is standing. The two friends exchange glances. The drums roll. The young Prince collapses.

When Dr. Sedgwick and Hitler left the theater, Hitler whistled the theme of the Frederick – March. He said that Albert Steinbeck (died 1929) had played the part of the father superbly, ‘It is imposing to think that old King would have beheaded his own son to enforce discipline. That is how all German youth will have to be brought up someday. That is the way German Justice should be handled. Either acquittal or beheading’. Here again, is the same leitmotiv: Heads will roll. Another angle of the life of Frederick the Great which interested Hitler at the time was Frederick’s tolerance of religious matters. It cannot be emphasized enough that prior to his imprisonment in Landsberg Hitler was quite willing to copy Frederick’s tolerant policy toward the Church, based on his famous phrase: ‘Let everyone travel to Heaven in his own fashion’.

Gebhard Leberecht von Bluecher, Fürst von WahlstattHitler and Bluecher

Generalfeldmarschall von Bluecher has always been a source of inspiration to Hitler. Bluecher was and remains the symbol of German Faith and Courage. The man is expressed in one word ‘Vorwaerts’ (Forwards). Generalfeldmarschall Vorwaerts as Bluecher was called by the people, must be regarded as the driving force against Napoleon. In 1923, when Dr. Sedgwick had played for almost two hours at a stretch to Hitler he suddenly said ‘Why don’t you get somebody to write a film on Bluecher, Generalfeldmarschall Vorwaerts? He is one of the greatest Germans who has ever lived and is more important to us today than Rembrandt or Goethe. Germans above all must be brought up to be courageous. It was Blucher’s courage and his technique of perpetual attack which made Napoleon lose his nerve at Leipzig and Waterloo, it was the courage of that old man which turned the battle of Waterloo into a catastrophe.

Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleone di Buonaparte, Italian), (August 15, 1769 – May 5, 1821) was a French statesman and military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic WarsHitler and Napoleon

In 1923 Hitler’s admiration for Napoleon was an outstanding feature. This admiration sprang from several causes; his admiration for Napoleon as a man and as a German, and his admiration for Mussolini’s success typifying a Bonaparte reincarnated. By 1932 Hitler’s admiration for Napoleon had eclipsed his admiration of Frederick the Great because the latter typifies the end of a period while the former, the dominator of the revolutionary French and world chaos, seemed to offer an inspiring example in an analogous fight against Bolshevism.

Hitler is more interested in Napoleon than by any other figure in European history. He is unwilling to admit this openly because it would not be good propaganda. The fact remains that Hitler has taken more leaves out of Napoleon’s book than from anywhere else. It is Napoleon the Jacobin and friend of the younger Robespierre, Napoleon the conspirator, Napoleon the soldier, the propagandist, the coiner of phrases, the tyrant, the Imperator that interests Hitler. Napoleon got France to follow him because he was an example and a leader. Napoleon realized that in order to become the leader of the French nation he had to stick to a leadership pattern and had, in turn, to demand that his followers imitate his thoughts and actions. He thus created around him an ever-widening circle of people who fashioned themselves after him. In this way, Napoleon became France and France Napoleon. Hitler has quite obviously taken note of this method. If Hitler is Germany, and if Hitler is Europe it is because the people who he gets to follow him are or have become little Hitlers.

NapoleonOther features culled from the Napoleonic propaganda are Hitler’s anti-Conservative, anti-Capitalistic and anti-bourgeois attitude. Thus Hitler like Napoleon will always come out for the have-nots, for living labor as opposed to dead capital, and for those who have their fortunes to make. Like Napoleon, Hitler comes out for youth, for the element which is on the make is aggressive, bold, and self-reliant. Like Napoleon, Hitler will plead the cause of an increased birth rate. On the other hand, Hitler follows Napoleon in his dislike for an old age point of view, his dislike of the rich, cultured class, because this class, having something to lose, is timid and selfish, illiberal, skeptic, exclusive, reserved and immovable. Furthermore, this established class is not a growing thing, on the contrary, is diminishing in numbers.

Heinrich Heine in talking of Napoleon used the phrase ‘Heroic Materialism’. Both, Napoleon and Hitler, are mechanical-minded men, who subordinate all intellectual and spiritual forces to means of material success. Both of them realized that to be successful and powerful as a nation it is necessary to raise the standard of living of the masses. Both are thoroughly modern and mechanistic, with the one difference that Napoleon refused Robert Fulton’s scheme of the steamboat, while Hitler in Napoleon’s place would have probably asked some Goering for advice before so doing.

NapoleonThen there is the newspaper-consciousness of both Hitler and Napoleon. Monopolizing the attention of their contemporaries by adapting themselves to the mind of the masses around them, both not merely became representatives but actually monopolizers and usurpers of other minds. Both felt themselves not only entitled to do this. They considered this usurpation and plagiarism of other minds as their duty and normal function, by arguing that these thoughts, which their presence and personality inspired, were as much their own as if they had said them. In fact, they argued that the thin adoption of other people’s brains constituted so to speak, the act of final eternal adoption.

Their idea was that in repeating a thought of others was a process of rebirth. In fact, men of Napoleon’s and Hitler’s stamps almost cease to have either private speech or opinion. They are 30 largely crowd-receptive and are so placed, that they come to be the pooling reservoir for all contemporary intelligence information, misinformation, wit, prejudice, and power. They listen and are listened to as the media of all wavelengths of their day. Every sentence spoken by them is voicing merely what every man woman and child of the nation feels that they always felt before – but merely did not know how to express. Hitler and Napoleon, being mediums of the innermost libido patterns of the principal sections of the nation, these great men are like avalanches. They devour everything in their path. Great men set their stamp on the times.

NapoleonSo it happens that everything successful, memorable, witty and beautiful is credited to them and hitched onto their names. Bonaparte and Hitler at the height of their lives were the idols of common men (Babbitt type) because they have in a transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. Just as common men aim only at power and wealth so Bonaparte and Hitler wrought in common with that great class they represented, for power and wealth and did so – to the secret delight of the common men of their time, without any scruples as to the means.
There is always a certain kind of ‘coquetterie’ in his voice when Hitler is speaking of his foreign aims and he would end his lengthy expose with the confession of his intention to realize his program without any regard to legal obligations. The sacro-egoismo of Benito Mussolini taken from Napoleon’s notebook became a part of Hitler’s vade-mecum. If a thing is good for the Party a crime is no crime. If it is good for Germany a crime is not a crime. The common man hears this and thinks: ‘Is it not delightful to know, that while we poor suckers have to live according to the statutes, our leaders be it Napoleon, Mussolini or Hitler can infringe on the Law’.



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