From
Chapter 10 of David Irving's forthcoming biography
of Heinrich Himmler:  [Canvassing
a wealthy diplomat for funds at the end of 1922
Hitler put his cards on the table. His target was
Eduard Scharrer, publisher of the Münchner
Neueste Nachrichten and a former consul-general
from Stuttgart; but the Swabians are known for
their thrift, he would need persuading. They met at
Munich's five-star Regina Palace Hotel in
Maximilians Platz.
Aged now
just thirty-three, Hitler played his hand with the
skill of a seasoned statesman, turning his 'cards'
face up one at a time with a brutal frankness he
had not risked before. What made the meeting
unusual was that Scharrer's secretary took
shorthand notes - of infinitely greater
historical importance than Hitler's later work,
Mein Kampf, and he closely grilled Hitler on the
concealed nugget of his real ambitions - his plan
to stage an armed revolution in Bavaria, sweep away
the corrupt Berlin regime, and take power
himself.]  "THE
QUESTION IS,' began Hitler, as the rare
stenographic fragments show, 'will it [the
revolution] succeed or not? I know that if
Bolshevism were to come today, I'd either swing
from the nearest lamp post or end up in some
dungeon. . . I personally have the blind
conviction that it will succeed. Absolute
certainty.' 'We began three and half years ago with
six men behind us, today three years later I am
convinced we'll succeed.' The bans inflicted on his
movement were not hurting but resulting in
publicity one hundredfold, and far beyond Bavaria.
Bavaria, he argued, had no choice now but to strike
northwards - to march on Berlin. All the northern
waffle about their own nationalist organisations
was just hogwash; their leaders were 'compromised'
and bogged down.
It was time to face facts:
bit by bit, the communists were taking over all the
North's biggest cities. 'The Reds are brilliantly
organised,' he admitted. In cities like Frankfurt
the security police, the Sipo, already formed the
cadres of this coming Red army - 'The bulk of Sipo
officers are socialist, Red, Jewish.' Under General
von Seeckt the Reichswehr was sound, he agreed, but
limited to 'upholding law and order' and
'protecting the Constitution.' Scharrer interrupted to ask
about the balance of power in Bavaria. Hitler replied smoothly
that three-quarters of the Sipo here were on his
side, the green-uniformed Landespolizei 'even
better,' and they could definitely depend on the
Reichswehr - essentially, the Seventh Infantry
Division under General Otto von Lossow. After sketching the
possible scenario under which the Bolsheviks might
gradually take over in Berlin, Hitler argued that
the situation was already a powder-keg, and the
slightest spark might ignite the tinder.
'Rathenau's murder was the product of fanatical
hotheads. The danger is still great. The more you
suppress the activities of nationalist groups, the
more you force them underground.' He had no
confidence in Bavaria's new prime minister Eugen
von Knilling, and spoke contemptuously of him; nor
in any parliamentarian for that matter. 'They must
be willing to advance through blood and
charnel-houses,' said Hitler, and he scoffed: 'What
we need is not a Knilling the Kindly, but an Ivan
the Terrible.' 
NOW WAS STILL not the time to strike, however.
Every week brought thousands of new supporters to
his movement, but he was holding back until it had
reached maximum strength.
'Do you have the arms?'
asked Scharrer. 'I hope we'll be getting
the weapons at the appropriate moment,' replied
Hitler. He had seventeen hundred 'centuries'
already complete, he boasted, using the archaic
word Hundertschaften to describe his stormtroop
legions, 'and with them on my side there's not a
soul that ventures onto the street if I don't
choose.' Eighteen hundred of Mussolini's fascists
had sufficed to smash the Reds' general strike in
Italy in August 1922. 'I hope my stormtroop
detachments are also men of the right stuff. I've
had no cause to complain on that score up to now.
If I send in these men of mine at the right moment,
as a self-contained force, there is nothing I can't
suppress.' Scharrer's next question
brought Hitler round to foreign policy and the
balance of power in Europe. 'What kind of state,'
he asked, 'do you have in mind then?' 'Civil war first, with a
lengthy struggle for supremacy, supported by the
one European country interested in both France and
Germany - and that's Britain.' 'So your interest is in
getting together with the British.'
'Yes!' Hitler added that the
Americans were also interested, as they regarded
his party as anti-Marxist. Britain realised that if
Germany were destroyed, France would rule and
Britain would become a third-rate power. So the
French would back the Bolsheviks, and the British
Germany. As for Italy, he predicted that Germany
would need her support if it came to another war
between Germany and France, as was likely within
the next twenty or thirty years, in his view, and
that would require acceding to Benito Mussolini's
demands over the disputed South Tyrol region. 'The
Andreas Hofer League is pursuing an idiotic
policy,' he said, using the word saudumm. 'I would
not be inclined to shed a drop of German blood over
the South Tyrol. You need Germans on the Rhine, not
sent to Bolzano. We might negotiate a coalition of
the Latin races,' he added, a further fascinating
hint of his grand strategy: 'The South Tyrol
problem can be resolved only by compensation.'
'Do you think,' Scharrer
pressed him, 'we'll march against France within the
next two or three generations?' 'Methinks sooner,'
said Hitler, then reverted to his pet theme, his
affection for Britain and her Empire: 'We won't do
better than five percent from any political
horsetrade,' he said, 'except as Britain's second.
We've got to have something of a free hand in
foreign policy, and that's possible only with
Britain's help.' 'If Bolshevism breaks out in the
north, then we can't stop France getting involved
in Germany.' Alluding perhaps to the
death of Otto von Bismarck, Hitler stated: 'In 1899
I would have formed an alliance with Britain,
smashed Russia, and gained a free hand against
France. If Germany had been calling the shots in
Europe, we would never have been at war with
Britain.' In short, between them they could have
kept France permanently in check. They had to
reverse their policies towards Britain. Warming to his views on
strategy he turned to Russia. Germany's future lay
in the east, he said, 'the destruction of the
Russian empire and the distribution of its land and
property, which will be settled by German settlers
and exploited by German power.' 'There are vast
areas there for us to colonise. But not by way of
land reform à la Damaschke. The solution is
to smash Russia, and to win land and real estate
for the Germans to settle and cultivate.'
After successfully invading
Russia the newly powerful Germany could deal with
France without any intervention by Britain. It
would give Germany what he called 'elbow-room.'
Germany could show the Allied disarmament
commissions the door, and prepare their industries
for a new patriotic war. 'It could all be done in
secrecy,' he suggested, and he referred to certain
work done on a flamethrower. In further remarks Hitler
touched on Gerhard Rossbach's targeted killings
(the 'Vehm courts'), the rule of law, and the
worsening economic crisis. He saw trades unions as
no threat provided they kept out of politics.
'Britain has trades unions too,' he reminded
Scharrer. As for inflation, Hitler
suggested the obvious: 'On the day they stop
printing paper money, the devaluation of the mark
will stop.' The government was just printing money
to make up for its wastefulness - for example
overmanning, with three or four men doing a job
where one did it before. 'Only a brutal government
will get anywhere against this paradise for
parasites - a dictator who foregoes all
popularity and says: Who cares if I am hated!' They
needed another Bismarck. 'How would you break
resistance?' asked the consul-general. 'The moment the dictator
arrives there will be a general strike,' conceded
Hitler. 'But precisely that enables him to make a
clean sweep. The general strike will be broken.'
The state must be run along economic lines just
like any other business. 'Inflation leads to
Bolshevism,' he defined. 'Because it undermines the
incentive to save. That's what the Bolsheviks
want. . . Nowadays people aren't
saving.' Scharrer asked the key
question: 'When will the time come?' 'The moment the Bolshevik
wave breaks,' replied Hitler. 'In my view, we wait
for that. Our nationalist strength is growing. The
moment our rate of increase tapers off, then -
wham! Immaterial who starts first, us or them. The
world will proclaim whoever wins is
right.'
FOR A FEW minutes Hitler lectured on the Nazi theme
of 'smashing interest-bondage.' In the Middle Ages
Christians had been forbidden to charge interest -
the privilege had been allowed only to Jews.
Gottfried Feder had adopted the rallying call in
1919. Years ahead of his time,
Hitler expressed the view they should allow
interest only where it was beneficial. 'What do the
people want?' he asked, and answered: 'First, a
lord and master . . . second, a
government which is firm but just, not exploiting
or suppressing the people but acting for their own
good.' He cited the example of Prussia in the Seven
Years War: 'The people had to bear huge burdens,
but recognised that everything the king did was for
their own good.' Reverting to the need for a
dictator in Berlin, he jested: 'For myself, I too
would be a republican but only if the German people
consisted just of Lower Saxons.' They had the
finest Roman blood, they were pure Aryans, and
needed no monarch. The way things were however they
needed an idol, almost but not quite a
monarch - 'I consider a monarchy would be a
disaster for Germany. What we need today is a
bloodthirsty and ruthless ruler, and I do not think
you will find one of those among the present
pretenders to the throne.' What Germany needed was
an Oliver Cromwell, he said, reverting to English
history. The country must however have proper
courts too with 'real judges, as the only guarantee
for the rule of law.'
AFTER BRIEFLY sketching his own simple
origins - his time spent labouring on
construction sites, alternating with studies ('a
fanatical passion for reading, six hundred books
over the last six years') - he reverted to the
Judenfrage, the Jewish Problem. Hitler adduced once
again the illustrious example of Frederick the
Great: 'He excluded the Jews where they were bound
to do harm, but made use of them where they were
useable.' 'In our political life,' he
continued, 'the Jews are absolutely detrimental.
They systematically poison the people. I used to
regard anti-Semitism as incredibly brutal, but when
I came to regard the Jews not as a religion, I
became their deadly enemy. They have no in-born
right to rule, as they are bereft of any spark of
organisational talent. . . They are born
destroyers. They have no culture of their own, no
architecture - and architecture is the soul of
entire nations that has been cast in stone. They
are totally uncreative, negativity incarnate, the
voice which always says no. The Jew can't help
being that way, but we don't have to stand for it.
Other peoples have a soul, but the Jews are just
mathematicians. 'That explains why
only Jews could found Marxism, as that denies
and destroys the very basis of every culture.
The Jews calculate that they will create a broad
mass of the people without any intelligence
whatsoever, people who will be willing tools in
their hands. The Jews want a caste-like
stratification of the people.'While an Aryan nation
is constantly able to bring forth fresh blood
from its depths, and is forever rejuvenating
itself, the Jews try to divide humanity into
castes, which will lead only to its slow
morbidity. For proof of the harm caused by the
caste system see ancient Egypt and India. The
Catholic church provides the opposite
example. . . 'If I remove the head
from a people,' he continued, 'and replace it
with a different head, the people itself are
doomed. That is the inherent danger of the
Jewish Problem. Already eight-two percent of the
doctors in Berlin are Jews. Where will it all
end? Either servitude, or revolution. If the
Jews were more honourable, then you could say
it's just fate.' 'A solution of the
Jewish Problem is bound to come. If it can be
resolved with common sense, so much the better.'
If not, he predicted, there
were two or more possibilities - 'either the
Armenian, Levantine, way, or a bloody
confrontation.' In 1915 the Turks had brutally
expelled the Armenians from their country. 'As a
human being,' added Hitler, 'I agree with Bismarck,
who said once, "Don't expect me to defend your
Emancipation Laws. As a man, I would find it
shameful to be a soldier having to stand before a
Jewish officer, or to be a citizen before a judge
of Jewish origin.' 'The warlord,' concluded
Hitler in this telling exchange, 'needs a blindly
obedient and instinctive mass-following. He has to
convince them that they are faced with nothing but
outright enemies. Never should we state, "We are
not entirely devoid ourselves of guilt for the
war." Look at the British! Take a leaf out of the
Catholics' book too. Their church totally
suppresses the slightest doubts.' The
consul-general wrote a cheque for a million
Reichsmarks to Hitler's Party; it was a generous
donation even in those inflationary times. It was
intended to buy arms. Over the next twelve months
Hitler tried twice to seize power. Heinrich Himmler
climbed aboard the juggernaut of the Nazi movement,
clinging to the outer rungs, for both adventures,
and saw Hitler fail each time.  Copyright
© David Irving, 2011 | 
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