Hitler: Personal Recollections : Memoirs of Hitler From Those Who Knew Him by Heinz A. Heinz

Author:Heinz A. Heinz [Heinz, Heinz A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II: HIS027100
ISBN: 9781473849570
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

HERR DREXLER CONTINUES HIS STORY

FROM THE DATE of Adolf Hitler’s joining the “Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” to that of the apparent ruin of all their hopes, in November, 1923, an enormous amount of spade work had been accomplished. Adolf Hitler, without home and ties of any sort, gave himself body and soul to the nascent movement. He lived for it alone: had no other thought. It was quickly perceived by Anton Drexler and his five original companions that Hitler was the only man among them with the force and drive and will to bring this thing into the open and to make of it a nation-wide affair. The whole direction of the infant Party was soon to be confided, with the utmost enthusiasm and unanimity, to his hands alone.

Hitler’s colleagues perceived just what his audiences were soon to comprehend, that with him this Movement meant action and not merely talk. This man, with his gift of apt and ready political speech, could conceivably have won for himself a sufficient position with one or other of the big established factions; as it was he devoted all his time and strength and powers to the promotion of one of the obscurest efforts to find a way out of the despair and confusion of the time. From the date of his first taking over entire conduct of the propaganda, January 5th, 1920, the Party took to itself a more comprehensive name. Since Germany owed the sad plight in which she found herself to the un-Socialistic Nationalists, and to the anti-National Socialists, so it must be through the programme of a properly conceived National Socialism that she must be rehabilitated.

It has been the endeavour of a great many writers to make these distinctions intelligible and significant to foreign students of German politics. Whether or not they have succeeded may be open to question. It is no part of the present writer’s intention to essay the attempt again. Suffice it in this place and in this connection to say that the revolution of thought and programme indicated by this new juxtaposition of old political labels, was abundantly plain to the man-in-the-street in Germany in 1920. It was not only plain to him, but the combination was, through Hitler’s exposition, so peculiarly apt, that none other would have captured public attention so sharply.

The programme of the party was epitomised under some twenty-five headings, the very first of which, of course, pledged it to loud and insistent repudiation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. But to recapitulate this “platform” here, would be to postulate some adequate explanation of it, and an adequate explanation would entail a book in itself. The writer rather proposes to confine himself to the story of how Drexler and Hitler put their heads together to draw up this momentous document, and how it was received by the public in the great gathering of February 24th, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaussaal.

“Hitler and I had been hammering hard for a real big meeting for some time” continues Herr Drexler, “but Herr Harrer feared the risk of failure was too great.

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