He often used to speak of his sisters, who were simply ‘geese’ for him. He would criticise them for their disapproval of his favourite sport, rat-hunting in the churchyard with an air gun. He confided to us that when his half-sister Angela got engaged, he advised the prospective groom, whom he liked, to break off the engagement and ‘let the stupid goose go’. Hitler had no sense of family. His sister Paula was quite a few years younger than he was. She was a quiet, shy child and he had no great opinion of her. It may have been for the difference in their ages that he shut her out of his life. Paula lived in Vienna until the end of the Second World War, and then in Berchtesgaden until her death.
In a letter dated 29 August 1956 she wrote: ‘I did not grow out of Vienna, in the true sense of the word, until after the war ended.’ In another letter dated 7 February 1957 she said:
I always had to give way to my half-sister, who was older and more ebullient than I, although my brother and I had the same parents. It was clear to me that we could not allow everybody to see that we were fighting over him. Therefore I stayed in Vienna and my half-sister became his housekeeper on the Obersalzberg. That era ended in 1935. He wanted to be free and unrestricted in every direction. In every direction in a private sense.
On 5 February, two days earlier, she had explained: ‘We sisters were too jealous of him in his eyes; he would rather have strangers around him whom he could pay for their services.’
Alois Hitler, his half-brother senior to him by seven years, never played a role in his life. This half-brother married an Irish girl who gave birth to two sons. The first of these, William Patrick Hitler, came to attention in 1939 when he wrote a book, Mon Oncle Adolphe. The other son fell as an officer on the Eastern Front. Alois Hitler had a restaurant on the Wittenberg-Platz [in Berlin] during the Third Reich but his name was never mentioned in Hitler’s presence, neither were the relatives at Spittal.
Hitler spoke frequently about the period of struggle and Dietrich Eckart. He once said that ‘this friendship was amongst the finest to which I was party in the 1920s!’ Dietrich Eckart, born the son of a notary at Neumarkt in the Upper Pfalz, was a journalist and ethnic poet. He had made his name as a theatre critic at Bayreuth and was friendly with Henrik Ibsen. Eckart translated Peer Gynt from the Norwegian into German, which brought him much recognition. He had met Hitler at a political meeting in 1920. Eckart was a father figure and would often help Hitler out of his financial plights. Hitler always became very emotional when recounting this to us in detail. Eckart served time with Hitler in 1923 at Landsberg prison, from where he was released at Christmas that year suffering from a terminal illness, spending his last days with a friend, the owner of the Brüggen fief at Berchtesgaden, where he died before the end of 1923. He was buried in the old section of the Berchtesgaden cemetery. His motto Deutschland erwache! was turned by Hitler into the battle cry of the Nazi Movement.
Eckart’s death was a heavy blow for Hitler. In later life he was never to find a friend with whom he had similar harmony in thought and feeling, he said. Whenever he spoke of Dietrich Eckart his eyes would water. Repeatedly when in power he would rue the death of the ‘loyal Ekkehard’ and regret that now he had the power to do so he could not repay all the good Eckart had done him. Everything connected with Dietrich Eckart touched Hitler. When I told him one day of a female friend who had inherited some handwritten poems by Dietrich Eckart from the widow of Ernst von Wolzogen, Hitler wanted to buy them at once, and when he identified them as Eckart’s earliest work, most of which had been destroyed by his jealous wife, he raised his bid immediately, so great was his joy at having something in his friend’s handwriting in his own hands. It was from his loyalty to Dietrich Eckart that he based his attachment to Johanna Wolf, Eckart’s former secretary, whom he nicknamed ‘Wolferl’.
Hitler spoke a lot of the journeys he made in the years of struggle. In the summer they always drove in the open Mercedes, Hitler seated beside chauffeur Julius Schreck, who died in 1936. Schreck was succeeded by Erich Kempka. They would often stop for a rest at Lambach on the Chiemsee. Hitler was very fond of Lambach;[42] he had been there when Hindenburg’s invitation reached him in 1932, summoning him to Berlin. Hitler related how difficult it was on these journeys to remain anonymous. When Schaub reminded him of the Hotel Elephant at Weimar, Hitler went on:
I had a permanent room there with running water but no bath, and the bathroom was at the other end of the corridor. Every time I was forced to run the gauntlet, for whenever I left my room the word got round like wildfire through the entire hotel and by the time I left the WC, the corridor would have filled with people, and with raised arms and an embarrassed smile I would be manhandled hither and thither all the way back to my room.
He described the games they played to pass the time on the drives, for example ‘Dr Steinschneider’. There were no fixed rules, and one did not realise it was a game until one had lost. Somebody would tell a story so convincingly that the listeners were forced to ask at the end: ‘Who was with them?’ If the answer was ‘Dr Steinschneider’, everybody realised it was a hoax and the questioners had been caught out. Another game was ‘The Beaver’. A ‘beaver’ was a man wearing a full beard, and if one was spotted on the journey you had to shout ‘Beaver!”, and the first to do so won a point. This kind of game would always put Hitler in the best of humour. Occasionally he would imitate the speech and mannerisms of his old comrades. He was an excellent mimic. A highlight of his repertoire was his imitation of the fast-speaking and repetitive Bavarian publisher Max Amann. From Hitler’s impression one could imagine him shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating furiously with his right hand. The tremendous voice of the partially-deaf printer Adolf Müller was also the subject of Hitler’s mimicry. He also liked to imitate foreign statesmen. He could copy exactly the sharp laugh of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, and showed very skilfully how the king, who appeared gigantic when seated, could stand up and appear to be of normal size.
In this prewar period Hitler could be merry and humorous and knew the value of humour: ‘A humorous word in a difficult situation has often worked wonders’, he said, ‘not only in the First World War, but also in the period of struggle.’ That would not be the case once the first setbacks began in 1941◦– 2, when Hitler became more reclusive and almost inaccessible. He often spoke of the financial bonds in which the Party invested earlier, and were signed by him. Often somebody had to be found at the last moment to redeem them. He liked to quote this example:
I had signed a Loan Note for the Party for 40,000 RM. Money I was expecting had not been received, the Party coffers were empty and the redemption date on the note was coming nearer without any hope of my getting the money together. I was considering shooting myself, since there seemed no alternative. Four days before the redemption date I informed Frau Bruckmann of my unfortunate plight. She phoned Emil Kirdorf[43] and sent me to see him. I told Kirdorf of my plans and won him over at once to the cause. He placed the money at my disposal and thus enabled me to liquidate the debt on time.
Hitler also related that at Landsberg prison he either typed parts of the text of Mein Kampf himself or dictated it to Hess. His time there was very strictly scheduled, and he confined his reading matter to history, philosophy and biographies. Whilst in Landsberg he worked on plans for the autobahns and to make available to every citizen a four-seater car for 990 RM. The car was to resemble a May beetle, which already has his garage with it. The ideas for the VW car and the autobahn both occurred to Hitler in 1922 and he said that he had drawn up the plans for both at Landsberg. The highway over the Bavarian Alps was also his idea. This would enable people to experience the beauty of the mountains. The Transalp highway from Lindau to Berchtesgaden was the second point of his programme.
42
August Kubizek,
43
Emil Kirdorf (b. 1847, d. 1938). From 1892 Dir-Gen. Gelsenkirchner Bergwerke AG; 1929 guest of honour Nuremberg rally; from 1931 arranged that for every ton of coal sold by Rhine-Westfalen Coal Syndicate, 5 pfennigs would go to the NSDAP.