Adolf Hitler’s rabid anti-Semitism and virulent nationalism were not directly prompted by his experiences on the Western Front in World War I, historical research suggests.
Unpublished letters and a diary written by veterans of Hitler’s wartime regiment are among newly unearthed documents that challenge previous notions about how the conflict shaped the future dictator’s views.
The documents overturn Hitler’s subsequent portrayal of his unit, the List regiment, as united in its intolerance and anti-Semitism, with Hitler “a hero at its heart.”
They challenge long-held views on Hitler’s supposedly brave war record, revealing that frontline soldiers shunned him as a “rear area pig” based several kilometers from danger.
The papers also disclose that List men saw Hitler as an object of ridicule, joking about him starving in a canned food factory, unable to open a tin with a bayonet. He was viewed by his comrades in regimental headquarters as a loner, neither popular nor unpopular.
They noticed that he did not indulge in their favorite pastimes — letter-writing or drinking — but was instead often seen reading a political book or painting, earning him the sobriquet the “painter” or the “artist.”
He was also viewed as particularly submissive to his superiors.
Perhaps no other individual has been more scrutinized than Hitler, but research on the List regiment by Thomas Weber, lecturer in modern history at Aberdeen University in Scotland, has unearthed new evidence.
Weber said that previous biographies relied on evidence from Hitler and Nazi propagandists.
“Since Hitler was an ordinary soldier in the first world war, there was not an easily available file on him. Biographers didn’t dig deep enough,” he said.
Within the Bavarian War Archives, Weber discovered papers undisturbed for almost nine decades. Elsewhere, he found unpublished letters and Nazi party membership files, and traced Jewish veterans of the List.
Speaking of Hitler’s famous first-class Iron Cross — the second class was a relatively common award — Weber said that this was often received by those in contact with more senior officers, typically those posted to regimental headquarters, rather than combat soldiers. Drawing on an unpublished diary by a Jewish List soldier, the documents also indicate a lack of widespread, virulent anti-Semitism.
Hitler’s Iron Cross was recommended by Hugo Gutmann, a Jewish List adjutant, but Weber discovered that when Gutmann was incarcerated by the Gestapo in 1937, List veterans enabled him to survive.
Weber’s research will be published next month in Hitler’s First War, by Oxford University Press.
Ian Kershaw, a leading Hitler biographer, applauded the research for raising “interesting questions,” while Conan Fischer, another eminent historian, said: “Weber has ferreted out a wealth of new evidence.”
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