The Ideologists and First Financiers of
Hitler P.2
Both the National Socialist Party, over which Hitler
exercised dictatorial control from July 1921 onwards, and Organization C vied
to influence the other. Hitler communicated regularly with Ehrhardt and tried
to gain as many of Ehrhardt's followers for the NSDAP as he could.(1) Ehrhardt
for his part, sent the student Hans Ulrich Klintzsch to lead the paramilitary
Sturmabteilung (Storm Section) plus Hermann Goering in hopes of gaining control
over it. Goering indeed became leader of the Storm Section from February 1923
onwards. And Klintzsch dispatched Franz Jaenicke, the co-founder of the
Deutsch-Russischer Club (GermanRussian Club) in Berlin to found the NSDAP in
the German capital.(2)
Organization C displayed a preoccupation with overt and
subversive threats from the Soviet Union, seeking to coordinate its activities
with White Russians, including members of Aufbau. Section A of Organization C
under Captain Alfred Hoffmann cultivated contacts with nationalist German and
various White Russian circles and led an anti- Bolshevistic
counter-intelligence service.(3)
Already in November 1920, the time of Aufbau's founding,
Hoffmann had declared in a speech that the far right's “emergence" in
Bavaria could only occur after “the shattering of the Treaty of
Versailles," and that this, in turn, would only be possible after the
"successful German orientation of the coming Russia." Organization C
policy thus connected nationalist Germany's welfare with that of a restored
Russian monarchy.
Letters seized from Captain Hoffmann and the police
questioning of members of Organization C indicate a high level of collaboration
between the anti-Bolshevik organization and the National Socialist Party. Even
before Organization C existed. Hoffmann had written Hitler personally with
regard to personnel matters in the NSDAP and had worked to "prepare the
ground for Hitler" in Wilhelmshaven.(4)
Moreover, Hoffmann's colleague Lieutenant-Commander Paul
Werber, who represented Organization C in Northwestern Germany, carried out
propaganda for the NSDAP and its organ, the Voelkischer Beobachter, even
opening branches of the Party in this region.(5)
Lieutenant-Commander Werber also collaborated with Aufbau
leader Scheubner-Richter. Werber became acquainted with a certain Dr.
Ruethenick of the German Voelkisch Protection League in Bremen.(6)
Werber arranged for him to hold talks with the "leading
personalities" in Munich, and in late August 192 1, Dr. Ruethenick met
with Scheubner-Richter. Another member of Organization C, a certain Dr.
Boermer, reassured Ruethenick that he had “come to the right person" in
Scheubner-Richter, who had written a letter that had aided Ruethenick in
raising $5,000, apparently for a mission to America under Dr. Boerner to gain
financial support for far right activities in Germany, most likely from the
anti-Semitic industrialist Henry Ford.(7)
Section B of Organization C under Manfred von Killinger
oversaw military matters, notably supporting German self-defense organizations
in Upper Silesia, most importantly Volunteer Corps Uplands, the only
fully-armed formation of the roughly 80,000 German soldiers who opposed Polish
Invaders." Pavel Bermondt-Avalov likewise possessed connections with
Oberland in the fall of 1921, overseeing efforts in "Russian"
military camps in Gerrnany to raise volunteers for action against the Poles in
Upper Siiesia.(8) Volunteer Corps Uplands (Freikorps Oberland) displayed an
ideology similar to White forces in the Russian Civil War, advertising for
members with the assertion that "we fight Jewish-Russian Bolshevism and
American-Jewish capitalism, both of which are diseased outgrowths of economic
life. (9)
Hitler admired the Volunteer Corps Uplands, using it as a
model for National Socialist paramilitary forces that had begun with the
creation of a “Turn- und Sportabteilung”, actually a large-scale armed
bodyguard, in the fall of 1920.(10) In his deposition for a court case against
members of Oberland (Uplands)given in March 1921, Hitler noted that when
"the concept of self-protection is taken up, then this selfprotection
cannot effectively be achieved in the form of weak local
defense(Einwohnerwehr), but only in the form of shock and fight-ready (stoss-
und schlagbereiter) organizations roughly of the type “Oberland” (Uplands).(11)
In late 1922, Hitler called for the creation of the Greater
German Worker's Party with Rossbach's assistance in order to expand his
influence in northern Germany. Hitler did not achieve the success he had hoped
for, but this initiative under Rossbach's immediate supervision improved
collaboration between the southern National Socialist and northern voelkisch
movements.(12)
Years after the Hitler/ Ludendorff Putsch of 1923 (see foto
of the following “Hitlerprozess” on SESN home page) the Reichskommissar fur die
Uberwachung der Offentlichen Ordnung, Weimar Germany's secret police, stressed
the key role of Freikorps-type organizations in the early "radical night
movement" in Germany, primarily Rossbach, Oberland, and Ehrhardt, which
"stood at the center of the different putsch undertakings."
The report further noted that "the National Socialists
were strongly infiltrated by Freikorps leaders and Freikorps ideas in the first
years of its existence up until 1923.(13)
As a further indication of early Freikorps influence on
National Socialism, Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich branch of the
Corps Rossbach, stressed in a speech at a National Socialist congress in
November 1922 that everyone present shared the ethos of the
"Baltikumer" (Baltic fighters).(14) Around this time, members of the
NSDAP were heard singing a Freikorps song, "The Republic Asked Us,"
which includes the lines: "We do not want a Jew republic / Phooey! Jew
republic, ! For it is to blame. / For they yelled:
bow-wow-wow! / And we yelled: throw them out! Throw them out! Throw them
out!(15)
The intensely anti-Semitic Organization C became best known
for assassinating the Jewish leader Walther Rathenau, who had served as
Germany's Foreign Minister since January 1922, in Berlin on June 24, 1922.(16)
On April 16, 1922, Rathenau had signed the Treaty of Rapallo with Soviet
Foreign Minister Georgil Chicherin, making Germany the first western country to
recognize the Soviet Union officially.(17)
Already in early April, Organization C had sent agents to
Genua, Italy, where an international conference was taking place from which the
Rapallo Treaty ultimately emerged, in order to assassinate Soviet
representatives if given the chance.(18)
This mission demonstrates the degree to which Organization C
leadership despised efforts to seek rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
Rightist Germans and White Russians in Germany hated Rathenau for signing the
Treaty of Rapallo, and his action sealed his doom.
A few days prior to Rathenau's assassination, a high-level
Aufbau delegation that included Scheubner-Richter, Biskupskii, and
Poltavets-Ostranitsa arrived in Budapest, where they met with members of the
Russian Monarchical Club, which represented Hungary's approximately 3,500 White
Russians. The Club's president, Prince Mirza Kazern Bek, had long cultivated
close ties with Aufbau.Kazern Bek gave a public speech at which the Atijbatt
delegation was present soon after Rathenau's assassination, noting that the
death of the politician had "cleared many obstacles out of the way of the
German nationalists."
He offered the hope that "German policy, which had gone
astray, now will be directed in a better path," and he further noted,
"it goes completely without saying that Rathenau's death will also
strengthen our connection with Germany, for it has given rise to a
strengthening of the national idea.”(19) Aufbau's high-level delegation attracted
unfavorable attention in the wake of Rathenau's assassination, notable when the
Wiener Morgenzeitung (Vienna Morning Newspaper) released an article on the
conference in Budapest under the provocative title, "A Conference of
Murderers in Budapest," in its July 1, 1922 edition.(21)
The Wiener Morgenzeitung’s article assertion that (Aufbau
member) Colonel Karl Bauer, whose adjutant Lieutenant Alfred Gunther had been
arrested in connection with the Rathenau murder, maintained close connections
with various White Russians and Hungarian rightists was indeed true.(22)
In his own defense, Scheubner-Richter told the German Embassy
in Budapest that his arrival date of June 22, 1922 demonstrated that he had not
come with the purpose of discussing the changed political situation that had
arisen with Rathenau's death.(23)
While hard evidence is lacking. it is quite possible that
Scheubner-Richter and his colleagues possessed advanced knowledge of Rathenau's
impending assassination and left Munich in order both to distance themselves
from suspicion of complicity and to strengthen ties with Hungarian rightists in
light of the soon-to-be altered political situation. In any case, Biskupskii
and others around him in Aufbau praised Rathenau's assassination, drawing
suspicion of their involvement in the deed.(24)
As a further indication of Aufbau's complicity in Rathenau's
murder, the former Kapp Putsch conspirator Karl Bauer who, among other duties,
worked as Aufbau's contact man in Vienna, was implicated in Rathenau's
assassination, throwing suspicion on, among others, his close colleague
Biskupskil and the contact man whom he and Biskupskii used in Budapest, General
Glasenap.(25) Moreover, Bauer's adjutant and Ludendorff s secretary during the
Kapp Putsch, the above-mentioned Gunther, a Gruppenleiter (group leader) in
Organization C, was suspected of conspiring in Rathenau's murder, and
authorities found recent suspicious letters from Aufbau members Ludendorff and
Bauer at his residence.(26)
Like another promint conspirator of Organization C arrested
in connection with Rathenau's assassination, Walther Steinbeck, Ganther had
close links with the NSDA. providing a link between Aufbau and the National
Socialist Party in conspiratorial terrorist operations. After his brush with
the authorities, Ganther went to Munich, where he was well acquainted with
Sturmabteilung leader Klintzsch and Hitler as well, and he began working for
the NSDAP, serving in the Fahndungsabteilung (detective department) that
observed the political police. He was later sought in connection with the June
4, 1922 assassination attempt on Phillip Scheidemann, who had proclaimed the
German Republic on November 9, 1918.(27)
Despite the evidence against him and his close associates,
Bauer was able to avoid prosecution for Rathenau's murder, and he continued his
subversive activities in league with Aufbau. In August 1922, he transferred
large sums of money to Aufbau in general and to Biskupskii in particular.
Authorities concluded that some of these funds were to be used to carry out
political terrorism in Gcrmany.(28) Bauer threw more suspicion on Aufbau as an
organization that fostered terrorist activities when he was ultimately arrested
for planning the assassination of Scheidemann.(29)
In addition to engaging in political terror against leftist
political leaders in the course of 1922, Aufbau broke with Markov II's
increasingly pro-French “Supreme Monarchical Council”, unequivocally supporting
Kirill Romanov. The pro-German heir to the Russian throne.
Kirill and his wife Viktoria channeled considerable amounts
of money from the anti-Semitic American industrialist Henry Ford, as well as
from their own means to Aufbau, which diverted some of these funds to further
the rise of Hitler's National Socialist Party.
In February 1922, Aufbau leaders Scheubner- Richter,
Biskupskii, and Ludendorff urged Kirill to move from the French Riviera to
Bavaria so that he could act in the center of his German base of
support.(30)
Anticipating Kirill's arrival in Germany, General Ludendorff
worked to establish an intelligence service for Kirill in early April 1922. He
asked Walther Nicolai, who had served him as the head of the German Army High
Command Intelligence Service during World War one, to use his considerable
experience and connections to establish a reliable pro-Kirill intelligence
service for the struggle against Bolshevism.(31)
Nicolai met with Aufbau leaders Ludendorff and Scheubner-
Richter in the middle of April 1922 and agreed to establish an anti-Bolshevik
intelligence service under his leadership so that Ludendorff and his allies,
including Hitler, would have a reliable source of information on events in the
Soviet Union. The money for the intelligence service, code-named "Project
S,- came from Kirill, and Nicolaj sent the information his service acquired in
regular reports beginning in the first half of July 1922.(32)
Scheubner-Richter, in addition to using the agency's
information for Aufbauf's purposes, passed it on to the National Socialist
Party, with which Aufbau as a whole was ever increasingly allied .
1) Remmer's letter from May 7, 1923, BHSAM, BSA6 36, number
103009, 22. 23.
2) Remmer's testimony from June 2, 1923, BHSAM, BS.WA 36,
number 103009, 22, 23; PDM report to the BS,VL4'fTom
June 7, 1923. BHSAM, BSMA'36, number 103009, 31.
3) LGPO report from May 7, 1923, GSAPK, Repositur 77, title
1809, number 9. 121
4) So0 report to the AA from August 22, 1923. PAAA, 83582,
94; Scheubner-Richter. "Russland und England," Aufbau-Korrespondenz,
May 17. 1923. 2.
5) Aus der russisch-monarchistischen Bewegung,-
Aufbau-Korrespondenz--. July 20. 1923, 2.
6) Remmer's testimony from June I and 2, 1923. BHSAM, BSMA
36. number 103009, 8. 9; Remmer's letter from May 7, 1923, BHSAM, BSMA 36,
number 103009, 14, 15.
7) PDM report to the BSMA from June 7, 1923, BHSAM, BSMAf 36,
number 103009, 3 1.
8) RUo0 reports from January 24, 1923 and January 28, 1924,
RGVA (TKhIDK).fond 772, opis 3, delo 81a,45.
9) DB report from June 8, 1923, RGVA (TKhIDK),fond 7, opis 1, delo 386, reel 2. 129.
10) PRO letter to the BSA6 from November 20, 1924, BHSAM.
BS.W.436, number 10435 1, 1: Lampe. Dnevnik Berlin, March 19-22, 1923, GARF,fond 5853, opis 1, delo 10. reel 2. 4132,- DB report from
February 1, 1923, RGVA (TKhIDK).fond 7, opis 1, delo 396, reel 4, 369.
11) DB report from June 8, 1923. RGVA (TKhIDK),fond 7. opis
1, delo 386, reel 2. 129.
12)"Die 'Russische Tribune' uber die Regierungsformen in
Russland.- Aufbau-Korrespondenz. August 25. 1923,3.
13) PDM report to the BSMI from September 3. 1923. BHSAM. BSA
36, number 103009, 36.
14) MAE report to Ferdinand Foch from May 31, 1922, RGVA
(TKhIDK) fond 198. opis 17. delo 406. reel 1.82.
15)RUo0 report from August 6. 1923. BA. Reich 134. number 76.
76.
16) Adolf Hitler, speech on August 19, 1923. Saemtliche
Aufzeichnungen, 975.
17) BSMA- report to the RUo0 from September 26, 1923, BHSAM.
BSMA 36. number 103009. 35.
18) Interview with Mathilde Scheubner-Richter on April 3.
1936. ASDAPHA, BA. NS 26, number 1263. 6.
19) APA report to the A9N from November 2, 1937, RGVfond 519,
opis 4, delo 26,134.
20) Interview with Mathilde Scheubner-Richter on April 3,
1936, NSDAPHA, BA. AS 26, number 1263. 7.
21) Endres, “Aufzeichnungen uber den Hitlerputch.”
22) Endres. "Aufzeichnungen ueber den Hitlerputsch."
BHSAM, AK. Handschriftensammlung. number 925. 56.
23) The Hitler Trial: Before the People s Court in Munich,
vol. 1. trans. H. Francis Freniere. eds. Lucie Karcic. and Philip Fandek
(Arlington: University Publications of America, 1976), 59.
24) RUoO report [ 1925?1. RGVA
(TKhIDK),fond 772. opis 3. delo 781. 4: RUoO report to the BHSAM from January
31. 1924, BHSAM, BSMA 36, number 103456, 8.
25) RUo0 report from February 9, 1924. BA. Reich 1507. number
442. 210; Baur, Die russische Kolonie in Munchen; 204, Norman Cohn. Warrant for
Genocide The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the -Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, " (1981), 14 1.
26) PPS report to the AA from November 14. 1924. PAAA. 83584,
168. 170.- RUoO report from July 1927. RGVA (TKhIDK),fond 772. opis 1, delo 91,
5 1.
27) Georg Franz-Willing, Ursprung der Hitlerbewegung
1919-1922 (Preussisch Oldendorf K. W. Schiitz KG. 1974). 198.
28) DB report from July 23, 1920, RGVA (TKhIDK),fond 7, opis 1, delo 1255. reel 2. 209.
29) Remmer's testimony from June 1, 1923, BHSAM. BSMA 36,
number 103009, 12. PBH/A11 report to the RUo0 from July 24. 1922, RGVA
(TKhIDK),fond 772. opis 3. delo 71. 157. RUoO report from August 14, 1925, RGVA
(TKhIDK),fond 772, opis 1. delo 105b. 99.
30) Letter from the organizers of the "Erster
Weltkongress zum Schutze der Christlichen Nationen" to Ludwig Mullier von
Hausen from April 26.192 1, RGVA (TKhIDK).fond 577. opis 2, delo 10. 7. PDM
report to the BHSAM from December 12, 1923. BHSAM, BSMA 36. number 103472. 51.
31) BSMI report to the BSMA from March 22, 1924, BHSAM, BSMA
36, number 103472. 47; letter from Josef Gaal to NSDAP Headquarters from
September 8, 1923 included in a PDM report to the BSMA from December 12, 1923,
BHSAM. BSMA 36. number 103472, 5 1.
32) Biskupskii, subpoena from March 11, 1930, APA. BA, NS 43,
number 35, 129, 131 ob. Letter from Weiss to Hitler from September 17, 1923,
IZG. Fa 88. 30, PDM report from September 18, 1923. BSAM, PDM. number 6697,439.
Introduction: A Russian Connection
In
this series of lectures I will discuss a number of early influences on the rise
of Hitler and the early Nazi party.
Hitler's Secret "Protocols" P.1
The Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion, were not
fabricated in Paris, but within Imperial Russia between April 1902 and August
1903. The earliest versions of the Protocols contain pronounced Ukrainian
features, whereas later ones were given French overtones in order to lend them
the appearance of credible accounts from abroad.
Hitler's
Secret "Protocols" P.2
General Vladimir
Biskupskil, who went on to collaborate closely with Hitler in the context of the
Aufbau Vereinigung in postwar Munich, played a leading role in the Ukrainian
Volunteer Army. "Conservative revolutionaries" in Imperial Germany
and Russia established detailed anti-Western, anti-Semitic ideologies in the
months leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. The largely
internally-orientated voelkisch model focused on alleged Germanic racial and
spiritual superiority through a heightened capacity to negate the will
heroically, whereas the more externally- fixated Russian version offered apocalyptic
visions of concrete political struggle between Russians at the head of all
Slavs and perceived Jewish world-conspirators.
Hitler’s
Source P.1
The Protocols did
provide anti-Semitic arguments that strongly influenced the ideology of the
National Socialist movement, going through 33 editions by the time Hitler came
to power and becoming the most widely-distributed work in the world after the
Bible. The National Socialist regime did not reprint the Protocols after the
outbreak of World War II, though, perhaps precisely due to the Protocols'
parallels with both brutal National Socialist occupation policies in Eastern
Europe and public pacification efforts domestically.
Hitler’s Source P.2
Anticipating Tsarist pretender Kirill's arrival in Germany,
General Ludendorff worked to establish an intelligence service for Kirill in
early April 1922. He asked Walther Nicolai, who had served him as the head of
the German Army High Command Intelligence Service during World War one, to use
his considerable experience and connections to establish a reliable pro-Kirill
intelligence service for the struggle against Bolshevism.
The German Kaiser's Confident P.1
By 1937 the NSDAP, the Wehrmacht, and, to a lesser extent,
German society accepted Ludendorffs ideology. In the regime and the Wehrmacht
he had tacit allies who helped to legitimize and propagate Deutsche
Gotterkenntnis. Those who sympathized with him and his ideology existed at all
levels of the Nazi hierarchy. Although today he may be forgotten, and although
his memorial shrine in Tutzing may be neglected, Erich Ludendorff was one of
the most important Germans of the twentieth century.
The German Kaiser's Confident P.2
The Ludendorffs (now Hohe Warte) advocated a return to
traditional rural German culture since they believed that the demands of modem
capitalist society had tom the German people from the soil, causing them to
forget their heritage and ensuring their submission to finance and industrial
capital. The Ludendorffs' ideology paralleled similar intellectual developments
among Conservative Revolutionaries.
The Ideologists and First Financiers of Hitler P.1
Before the establishment of the “Aufbau” Vereinigung in late
1920, the collaboration between Eckart and Rosenberg in the context of
Eckhart’s Newspaper In Plain German.” Formed the crux of the fusion between
voelkisch-redemptive German and White Russian world conspiratonial-apocalyptic
anti-Semitic thought, where "positive" notions of Germanic spiritual
and racial superiority fused with more negative visions of impending "Jewish
Bolshevik" destruction supported by Jewish finance capitalists.
The Ideologists and First Financiers of Hitler P.2
By 1923, Hitler had thoroughly internalized Aufbau’s and the
people around it, assertions, of the nature of socialism and its most
aggressive variant Bolshevism as mere tools of Jewish finance capitalism to
enslave European peoples…
Dietrich Eckart, Rosenberg, and the White Russian Influence on
Nazi Ideology, P.1
The ensuing military conflagration, Eckart continued, had led
to the destruction of Imperial Russia so that "Jewish Bolshevism"
could take root there. He also warned that there would arise "from the
Neva to the Rhine, on the bloody ruins of the previous national traditions, a
single Jewish empire.
Dietrich Eckart, Rosenberg, and the White Russian Influence on
Nazi Ideology, P.2
Hitler in his unpublished 1928 sequel to Mein Kampf, further
expounded upon the Aufbau/Eckartian theme of the "Jewish Bolshevik"
annihilation of the leading elements of Russian society as a precedent for
further Jewish atrocities. He argued that "Jewry exterminated the previous
foreign upper strata with the help of Slavic racial instincts."
The "Final" Solution Before WWII, P.1
Hitler continued to express a view of history whereby Jews
pitted Germans and Russians against each other after 1923. As witnessed in his
unpublished 1928 sequel to Mein Kampf. He argued of "the Jew's" drive
to dominate the European peoples that he -methodically agitates for world
war" with the aim of "the destruction of inwardly anti-Semitic Russia
as well as the destruction of the German Reich. which in administration and the
army still offered resistance to the Jew."
The "Final" Solution Before WWII, P.2
That which Jewry once planned against Germany and all peoples
of Europe. this must (Jewry) itself suffer today, and responsibility before the
history of European culture demands that we do not carry out this fateful
separation (Schicksalstrennung) with sentimentality and weakness, but with
clear, rational awareness and firm determination.” (Rosenberg 1941 press
release dealing with his public assumption of the position of State
Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.)
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.1
Like the mystical inclined author Sergei Nilus, who had played
a crucial role in popularizing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Vinberg
viewed Jews as a satanic force.
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.2
Hitler asserted that "liberalism, our press, the stock
market, and Freemasonry" together represented nothing but
"Instrument[s] of the Jews."
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.3
By the time of Ludendorfrs death, Deutsche Gotterkenninis had
become for Nazis a legitimate Weltanschauung. Ludendorff's vision of a
totalitarian society unified in the face of external and internal threats was
nearly identical to the Weltanschauung of Nazism.