#Ernst Hanfstaengel

[nebris]

Ernst Hanfstaengel 

Ernst Hanfstaengel, the son of a wealthy publisher and art dealer, was born in Munich, Germany, on 2nd February, 1887. He had an American mother and his grandfather, William Heine, was a general who fought in the American Civil War.

Hanfstaengel was educated at the Royal Bavarian Wilheim-Gymnasium where his form master was the father of Heinrich Himmler. He completed his education at Harvard University. After graduating in 1909 he joined the family business on Fifth Avenue.

Hanfstaengel remained in the United States during the First World War and did not return to Germany until 1919. Soon after arriving in Berlin he met Captain Truman Smith, a military attache at the American Embassy. It was Smith who advised Hanfstaengel to go and see Adolf Hitler speak at a National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) meeting.

Hanfstaengel later recalled:  "In his heavy boots, dark suit and leather waistcoat, semi-stiff white collar and odd little moustache, he really did not look very impressive - like a waiter in a railway-station restaurant. However, when Drexler introduced him to a roar of applause, Hitler straightened up and walked past the press table with a swift, controlled step, the unmistakable soldier in mufti. The atmosphere in the hall was electric. Apparently this was his first public appearance after serving a short prison-sentence for breaking up a meeting addressed by a Bavarian separatist named Ballerstedt, so he had to be reasonably careful what he said in case the police should arrest him again as a disturber of the peace. Perhaps this is what gave such a brilliant quality to his speech, which for innuendo and irony I have never heard matched, even by him. No one who judges his capacity as a speaker from the performances of his later years can have any true insight into his gifts."

Hanfstaengel became one of Hitler's inner circle. He was one of his earliest financial supporters and in March, 1923, provided $1,000 to ensure the daily publication of  Volkische Beobachter. The newspaper, an anti-Semitic gossip sheet had previously appeared twice a week. With Hanfstaengel's money it was published every day. As the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) has pointed out: "It became a daily, thus giving Hitler the prerequisite of all German political parties, a daily newspaper in which to preach the party's gospels."

In November 1923, Hanfstaengel took part in the Beer Hall Putsch. "Hitler began to plough his way towards the platform and the rest of us surged forward behind him. Tables overturned with their jugs of beer. On the way we passed a major named Mucksel, one of the heads of the intelligence section at Army headquarters, who started to draw his pistol as soon as he saw Hitler approach, but the bodyguard had covered him with theirs and there was no shooting. Hitler clambered on a chair and fired a round at the ceiling."

After the failed coup he hid Hitler in his villa in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler was eventually arrested and put on trial for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. If found guilty, Hitler faced the death penalty. While in prison Hitler suffered from depression and talked of committing suicide. However, it soon became clear that the Nazi sympathizers in the Bavarian government were going to make sure that Hitler would not be punished severely. At his trial Hitler was allowed to turn the proceedings into a political rally, and although he was found guilty he only received the minimum sentence of five years. Hanfstaengel visited him during his prison term at Landsberg am Lech and helped to reestablish his political career after his release. The two men remained close and Hanfstaengel became a member of his inner-circle.

Hanfstaengel later recalled that Hitler talked to him a great deal about America. He was especially interested in the ideas of Henry Ford and the Ku Klux Klan. "In his questions Hitler revealed to me that his ideas about America were wildly superficial. He wanted to hear all about the skyscrapers and was fascinated by details of technical progress, but failed utterly to draw logical conclusions from this information. The only American figure for whom he had time for was Henry Ford, and then not so much as an industrial wonder-worker but rather as a reputed anti-Semite and a possible source of funds. Hitler was also passionately interested in the Ku Klux Klan, then at the height of its questionable reputation. He seemed to think it was a political movement similar to his own, with which it might be possible to make some pact, and I was never able to put its relative importance in proper prospective for him."

His biographer, Louis L. Snyder, has pointed out: "A towering 6-foot, 4-inch giant with an enormous head, a pugnacious jaw, and thick hair. Hanfstaengel endured the nickname Putzi throughout his career. He was a gifted pianist who used his huge hands to pound out the more flamboyant passages of Liszt and Wagner.... Hanfstaengel, the only literary member of Hitler's inner circle, introduced the coarse Austrian to the Munich milieu of art and culture and attempted to make him socially acceptable.... The tall Bavarian was a gay and amusing companion on political campaigns. With his practical jokes and broad sense of humour, he was regarded as a kind of Shakespearean jester whose main task was to provide relaxation for the harried leader."

The journalist, William L. Shirer, met Ernst Hanfstaengel while working in Germany: "An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind, Hanfstaengel was a virtuoso at the piano and on many an evening, even after his friend came to power in Berlin, he would excuse himself from the company of those of us who might be with him to answer a hasty summons from the Fuehrer. It was said that his piano-playing - he pounded the instrument furiously - and his clowning soothed Hitler and even cheered him up after a tiring day. Later this strange but genial Harvard man, like some other early cronies of Hitler, would have to flee the country for his life."

in 1931 Hanfstaengel was appointed Foreign Press Chief of the Nazi Party. Over the next few years he tried to use his contacts to improve the image of Hitler in other countries. He also spent time with foreign visitors. This included Unity Mitford, the daughter of Lord Redesdale. According to Armida Macindoe: He (Hanfstaengl) was more of a means than an end, he introduced her to Nazis." Hanfstaengel admitted that Unity and Diana were outstanding Nordic beauties: "They were very attractive but they made-up to the eyebrows in a manner which conflicted directly with the newly proclaimed Nazi ideal of German womanhood." As a result he insisted they removed some of it: "My dears, it is no good, but to stand any hope of meeting him (Hitler) you will have to wipe some of that stuff off your faces."

Ernst Hanfstaengel arranged for British journalists like George Ward Price and Sefton Delmer to meet Hitler. He pointed out in Hitler: The Missing Years  (1957): "Sefton Delmer of the Daily Express took a great interest in our campaign and became very much persona grata with the nazi leadership. He was really very partial to Delmer and, when he became Chancellor, willingly agreed that the Daily Express man should be given the first exclusive interview." He also introduced the British politician, Robert Boothby, to Hitler: "I received a telephone call from my friend Putzi Hanfstaengel, who was at that time Hitler's personal private secretary and court jester. He told me that the Führer had been reading my speeches with interest, and would like to see me at his headquarters in the Esplanade Hotel. It is true that when I walked across the long room to a corner in which he was sitting writing, in a brown shirt with a swastika on his arm, he waited without looking up until I had reached his side, then sprang to his feet, lifted his right arm, and shouted Hitler!, and that I responded by clicking my heels together, raising my right arm, and shouting back: Boothby!"

Hanfstaengel  had serious doubts about Hitler's radical political beliefs. Louis L. Snyder has pointed out: "Hanfstaengel attempted in subtle ways to influence the Hitler to moderate his political, religious, and racial views, while Hitler on his side resented any interference. On one occasion at a crowded reception, Hanfstaengel loudly called Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, a swine. This kind of frankness did not endear him to the Nazi establishment."

In March 1937 Hanfstaengel was warned that Joseph Goebbels was involved in a conspiracy to murder him. He later recalled: "The evil genius of the second half of Hitler's career was Goebbels. I always likened this mocking, jealous, vicious, satanically gifted dwarf to the pilot-fish of the Hitler shark. It was he who finally turned Hitler fanatically against all established institutions and forms of authority. He was not only schizophrenic but schizopedic, and that was what made him so sinister."

Deciding he was in danger, Hanfstaengel fled to Canada. In the summer of 1942, Hanfstaengel was interviewed by John Franklin Carter. He left the meeting convinced was eager to work for the Allies against the Nazis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed that Hanfstaengl should be recruited but Winston Churchill disagreed because he feared that it would confuse people into believing "that there are good and bad ex-Nazis". Roosevelt eventually got his way and on 24th June, 1942, he was flown to Washington under the name of Ernst Sedgwick. In July 1942, he was established on a farm in Virginia under the control of Donald Chase Downes. He later was used by Roosevelt as a "political and psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany."

After the Second World War Hanfstaengel returned to Germany where he published his book, Hitler: The Missing Years (1957).

Ernst Hanfstaengel died in Munich on 6th November, 1975.

http://spartacus-educational.com/GERhanfstaengel.htm

[theculturedmarxist]

Konrad Heiden, a   journalist who investigated Hitler's time in Vienna, pointed out that the fact Victor Adler was Jewish had a major impact on the development of his political philosophy. "But whatever Hitler learned or thought he had learned from his model, Lueger, he learned far more from his opponent. And this opponent, whom he combated from the profound hatred of his soul, is and remains plain ordinary work. Organized, it calls itself labour movement, trade union, Socialist Party. And, or so it seems to him, Jews are always the leaders." Hitler was also aware that Adler's hero, Karl Marx, was also a Jew.

Heiden argued in Der Führer – Hitler's Rise to Power (1944): "The relatively high percentage of Jews in the leadership of the Socialist parties on the European continent cannot be denied. The intellectual of the bourgeois era had not yet discovered the workers, and if the workers wanted to have leaders with university education, often only the Jewish intellectual remained - the type which might have liked to become a judge or Government official, but in Germany, Austria, or Russia simply could not. Yet, though many Socialist leaders are Jews, only few Jews are Socialist leaders. To call the mass of modern Jewry Socialist, let alone revolutionary, is a bad propaganda joke."

Heiden rejected the idea that Hitler's anti-semitism had anything to do with the role that Jews played in capitalism: "It was in the world of workers, as he explicitly tells us, that Adolf Hitler encountered the Jews. The few bourgeois Jews. The few bourgeois Jews in the home city did not attract his attention... But he did notice the proletarian and sub-proletarian figures from the Vienna slums, and they repelled him; he felt them to be foreign - just as he felt the non-Jewish workers to be foreign. With amazing indifference he reports that he could not stand up against either of them in political debate; he admits that the workers knew more than he did, that the Jews were more adept at discussion. He goes on to relate how he looked into this uncanny labour movement more closely, and to his great amazement discovered large numbers of Jews at its head. The great light dawned on him; suddenly the 'Jewish question' became clear. If we subject his own account to psychological analysis, the result is rather surprising: the labour movement did not repel him because it was led by Jews; the Jews repelled him because they led the labour movement. For him this inference was logical. To lead this broken, degenerate mass, dehumanized by overwork, was a thankless task. No one would do it unless impelled by a secret, immensely alluring purpose; the young artist-prince simply did not believe in the morality of pity of which these Jewish leaders publicly spoke so much; there is no such thing, he knew people better - particularly he knew himself. The secret purpose could only be a selfish one - whether mere good living or world domination, remained for the moment a mystery. But one thing is certain: it was not Rothschild, the capitalist, but Karl Marx, the Socialist, who kindled Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitism." (49)

Hmmm.

Also:

Adolf Hitler liked being in the army. For the first time he was part of a group that was fighting for a common goal. Hitler also liked the excitement of fighting in a war. Although fairly cautious in his actions, he did not mind risking his life and impressed his commanding officers for volunteering for dangerous missions. However, his fellow soldiers described him as "odd" and "peculiar". It is significant that the fact he was a dispatch-runner  was omitted from Mein Kampf. This was probably because most soldiers saw the job as a "shirker's post." (58)

One soldier from his regiment, Hans Mend, claimed that Hitler was an isolated figure who spent long periods of time sitting in the corner holding his head in silence. Then all of a sudden, Mend claimed, he would jump up and make a speech. These outbursts were usually attacks on Jews and Marxists, who Hitler claimed were undermining the war effort. He was nicknamed "crazy Adolf" by  the men he came into contact with. "He struck me as a psychopath from the start. He often flew into a rage when contradicted, throwing himself on the ground and frothing at the mouth". (59)

A close friend, Ernst Hanfstaengel, claims that Hitler was the victim of sexual bullying while in the army: "Old army comrades, who had seen him in the wash-house, had noted that his genital organs were almost freakishly underdeveloped, and he doubtless had some sense of shame about displaying himself. It seemed to me that this must all be part of the underlying complex in his physical relations, which was compensated for by the terrifying urge for domination expressed in the field of politics." He was nicknamed "monk" because of his lack of interest in women. When one of the soldiers asked him: "Haven't you ever loved a girl?" Hitler replied: "I've never had time for anything like that, and I'll never get round to it." (60)

Adolf Hitler: Original Incel/Virgin with Rage

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Interned Here?” North Bay Nugget. September 25, 1940. Page 5. ---- According to information from Cambridge, Mass., supposedly received via a letter to his son, Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengel, above, former confidante of Hitler, and at one time Nazi foreign press chief, is held in a Canadian internment camp. Hanfstaengel left Germany some years ago after a mysterious break with Hitler. His son, Egon, is attending Harvard University.

[walzerjahrhundert]

Ernst Hanfstaengel, Bei der Kartenleserin, 1871

[nebris]

Dietrich Eckart was born in Neumarkt, Germany, on 23rd March, 1868. His mother Anna Eckart, died when he was young and he had a difficult childhood being expelled from several schools. His father, Christian Eckart, a successful lawyer, also died and left him a sizeable amount of money.

Eckart  studied medicine but left before he obtained his degree. For the next few years he attempted to make a living from writing plays and poems. After spending his family inheritance he found work as a journalist. Eckart developed right wing views and associated with members of the Thule Society.

Konrad Heiden, was a journalist working in Munich who investigated the life of Eckart: "Born of well-to-do parents in a little town of northern Bavaria, he had been a failure as a law student because he had drunk too much and worked too little. Then in Berlin - already in his forties - he had led the life of a vagrant who believes himself to be a poet.... He had grown to be a morphine addict and had spent some time in an asylum for the mentally diseased, where his theatrical gifts finally found a haven, for he had staged plays there and used the inmates as actors."

Eckart opposed the German Revolution in 1918 which he regarded as Jewish-inspired. He also edited the anti semitic periodical Auf gut Deutsch. During this period he became friends with Alfred Rosenberg. In January 1919 he joined with Hermann Esser, Gottfried Feder and Karl Harrer, to form the German Workers Party (GPW). Harrer was elected as chairman of the party. Eckart pointed out: "We need a fellow at the head who can stand the sound of a machine gun. The rabble need to get fear into their pants. We can't use an officer, because the people don't respect them any more. The best would be a worker who knows how to talk... He doesn't need much brains.... He must be a bachelor, then we'll get the women."

On 30th May, 1919, Captain Karl Mayr, was appointed as head of the Education and Propaganda Department. He was given considerable funds to build up a team of agents and informants. On 12th September, Mayr sent Adolf Hitler to attend a meeting of the German Workers Party (GWP). Hitler recorded in Mein Kampf (1925): "When I arrived that evening in the guest room of the former Sternecker Brau (Star Corner)... I found approximately 20–25 persons present, most of them belonging to the lower classes. The theme of Feder’s lecture was already familiar to me; for I had heard it in the lecture course... Therefore, I could concentrate my attention on studying the society itself. The impression it made upon me was neither good nor bad. I felt that here was just another one of these many new societies which were being formed at that time. In those days everybody felt called upon to found a new Party whenever he felt displeased with the course of events and had lost confidence in all the parties already existing. Thus it was that new associations sprouted up all round, to disappear just as quickly, without exercising any effect or making any noise whatsoever."

Hitler discovered that the party's political ideas were similar to his own. He approved of Drexler's German nationalism and anti-Semitism but was unimpressed with what he saw at the meeting. Hitler was just about to leave when a man in the audience began to question the logic of Feder's speech on Bavaria. Hitler joined in the discussion and made a passionate attack on the man who he described as the "professor". Drexler was impressed with Hitler and gave him a booklet encouraging him to join the GWP. Entitled, My Political Awakening, it described his objective of building a political party which would be based on the needs of the working-class but which, unlike the Social Democratic Party (SDP) or the German Communist Party (KPD) would be strongly nationalist.

Anton Drexler had mixed feelings about Hitler but was impressed with his abilities as an orator and invited him to join the party. Adolf Hitler commented: "I didn't know whether to be angry or to laugh. I had no intention of joining a ready-made party, but wanted to found one of my own. What they asked of me was presumptuous and out of the question." However, Hitler was urged on by his commanding officer, Major Karl Mayr, to join. Hitler also discovered that Ernst Röhm, was also a member of the GWP. Röhm, like Mayr, had access to the army political fund and was able to transfer some of the money into the GWP. Drexler wrote to a friend: "An absurd little man has become member No. 7 of our Party."

In February 1920, the German Workers Party published its first programme which became known as the "Twenty-Five Points". It was written by Eckart, Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Anton Drexler. In the programme the party refused to accept the terms of the Versailles Treaty and called for the reunification of all German people. To reinforce their ideas on nationalism, equal rights were only to be given to German citizens. "Foreigners" and "aliens" would be denied these rights. To appeal to the working class and socialists, the programme included several measures that would redistribute income and war profits, profit-sharing in large industries, nationalization of trusts, increases in old-age pensions and free education. Feder greatly influenced the anti-capitalist aspect of the Nazi programme and insisted on phrases such as the need to "break the interest slavery of international capitalism" and the claim that Germany had become the "slave of the international stock market".

Hitler had more respect for Eckart than other leaders of the GWP. The journalist, Konrad Heiden, pointed out: "The recognized spiritual leader of this small group was Eckart, the journalist and poet, twenty-one years older than Hitler. He had a strong influence on the younger man, probably the strongest anyone ever has had on him. And rightly so. A gifted writer, satirist, orator, even (or so Hitler believed) thinker, Eckart was the same sort of uprooted, agitated, and far from immaculate soul.... He could tell Hitler that he (like Hitler himself) had lodged in flop-houses and slept on park benches because of Jewish machinations which (in his case) had prevented him from becoming a successful playwright." Alan Bullock, the author of Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1962)  agrees: "He (Eckart) talked well even when he was fuddled with beer, and had a big influence on the younger and still very raw Hitler. He lent him books, corrected his style of expression in speaking and writing, and took him around with him."

Eckart decided that the GWP needed its own newspaper. Major Ernst Röhm agreed and together they persuaded his commanding officer, Major General Franz Ritter von Epp to purchase the Völkischer Beobachter (Racial Observer) from the Thule Society for 60,000 marks. The money came from wealthy friends and secret army funds. Eckart became the editor of the paper and used it to publicize the policies of the GWP. Later, Ernst Hanfstaengel provided $1,000 to ensure the daily publication of the newspaper. As William L. Shirer, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1964), has pointed out: "It became a daily, thus giving Hitler the prerequisite of all German political parties, a daily newspaper in which to preach the party's gospels."

Hitler's reputation as an orator grew and it soon became clear that he was the main reason why people were joining the party. At one meeting in Hofbräuhaus he attracted an audience of over 2,000 people and several hundred new members were enrolled. This gave Hitler tremendous power within the organization as they knew they could not afford to lose him. One change suggested by Hitler concerned adding "Socialist" to the name of the party. Hitler had always been hostile to socialist ideas, especially those that involved racial or sexual equality. However, socialism was a popular political philosophy in Germany after the First World War. This was reflected in the growth in the German Social Democrat Party (SDP), the largest political party in Germany. Hitler, therefore redefined socialism by placing the word "National" before it. He claimed he was only in favour of equality for those who had "German blood". Jews and other "aliens" would lose their rights of citizenship, and immigration of non-Germans should be brought to an end.

Adolf Hitler advocated that the party should change its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler, therefore redefined socialism by placing the word "National" before it. He claimed he was only in favour of equality for those who had "German blood". Jews and other "aliens" would lose their rights of citizenship, and immigration of non-Germans should be brought to an end. In April 1920, the German Workers Party became the NSDAP. Hitler became chairman of the new party and Karl Harrer was given the honorary title, Reich Chairman.

Konrad Heiden, a journalist working in Munich, observed the way Hitler gained control of the party: "Success and money finally won for Hitler complete domination over the National Socialist Party. He had grown too powerful for the founders; they - Anton Drexler among them - wanted to limit him and press him to the wall. But it turned out that they were too late. He had the newspaper behind him, the backers, and the growing S.A. At a certain distance he had the Reichswehr behind him too. To break all resistance for good, he left the party for three days, and the trembling members obediently chose him as the first, unlimited chairman, for practical purposes responsible to no one, in place of Anton Drexler, the modest founder, who had to content himself with the post of honorary chairman (July 29, 1921). From that day on, Hitler was the leader of Munich's National Socialist Movement."

Eckart's biographer, Louis L. Snyder, has argued: "By 1923 Eckart's connections in Munich, added to Hitler's oratorical gifts, gave strength and prestige to the fledgling Nazi political movement. Eckart accompanied Hitler at rallies and was at his side in party parades. While Hitler stirred the masses, Eckart wrote panegyrics to his friend. The two were inseparable. Hitler never forgot his early sponsor... Hitler, he said, was his North Star... He spoke emotionally of his fatherly friend, and there were often tears in his eyes when he mentioned Eckart's name."

Dietrich Eckart died of a heart-attack on 26th December, 1923.