When von Lossow took the stand, Hitler stood up and yelled a question. Thereupon the General, a tall bony man, with a corrugated shaven head and a jaw of steel, pulled himself up to his full height and began yelling at Hitler and throwing his long forefinger as if it were a weapon at Hitler’s face. Hitler started to shout back, but the General shouted so much louder, and looked so menacing, that presently Hitler fell back in his seat as if he had collapsed under a physical blow. Hitler had his revenge on June 30, 1934 when he had von Lossow assassinated along with the hundreds of others who perished in the Blood Purge. In retrospect it is fascinating to reflect that Hitler, the most successful bully our world has seen, can himself be bullied.
Q. Do you think that Hitler is personally responsible, or largely responsible, for this war? Is it possible to ascribe that much importance to one individual?
A. I do ascribe that much importance to the individual Hitler. We would no more have had this war, in the form it has taken, and at the time it has taken place, without Hitler, than we would have had the Napoleonic wars without Napoleon. Without Hitler, Germany would either have forged slowly ahead as she was doing under the Weimar Republic, or she would have come under some other leader of Pan-German Imperialism who would have attempted on a lesser and not so successful scale something like the thing Hitler has attempted. It is extremely unlikely that anyone else could have been found with Hitler’s genius. It is more likely that the Weimar Republic would have persisted. Remember, when Hitler was sentenced to fortress confinement for his 1923 Putsch, his National Socialist German Workers Party practically disappeared, but immediately upon his emergence from prison it began to grow until by 1928 he had 12 seats, and in 1930, 130 seats in the Reichstag.
You may say this growth of a radical party would have been inevitable under the circumstances of economic crisis, unemployment, and so on. I agree that the growth of radical votes would have been inevitable, but it was far from inevitable that so many of these radical votes should be canalized into one great, super-efficient, terroristic, militaristic party. This was the accomplishment of one man, Adolf Hitler.
I was a correspondent in Germany from 1923 on, and during that particular decade, 1923 to 1933, when Hitler took power, two-thirds of the German electorate voted consistently in favor of some form of collectivism, either Social Democracy, or National Socialism, or Communism. I contend that it was solely the genius of Adolf Hitler which eventually brought the whole country under his particular brand of collectivism. Without him the votes given the Nazis would have been split in half a dozen ways, and the probability is that the conservative parties representing one-third of the votes, with the Social Democrats who wanted a democratic republican collectivism, would have won out in the long run, and we should have had a republican Germany today and no war. This is sheer retrospective speculation, but it is useful to point out the importance of the personality of Hitler.
The Marxists have always insisted that individuals do not count; that history is made by economic and social forces which in the long run accomplish their destiny no matter who lives or dies. The longer I live the less I believe in this explanation of history, at any rate as it applies to our span of life.
Over centuries it may be that the great forces carry mankind irresistibly along no matter what leaders it has, but within a single generation we are bound to feel that the history of our nation would have been quite different if this or that individual had not existed. Objectively it may be true that over long periods of time the individual leader counts for little. But subjectively, for short periods of time, the individual leader counts for nearly everything. What a difference it would have made for the Jews of the whole world, if a Hitler had not obtained control of the collectivist movement in Germany.
There was nothing inherently anti-Semitic in the German yearning for a Gemeinschaft, a collective. Anti-Semitism need not have played any part in National Socialism any more than it did in Communism or Social Democracy. Yet, because Hitler from his early youth had been infected with this curious kind of psychic sickness, anti-Semitism became a part of the German state religion, and from this accident of history has grown the tragedy of twelve million people.
Q. Is Hitler really the boss of Germany, or is there not someone behind the throne?
A. There is nobody behind the throne. Hitler is the whole regime, its author, its parent, its spirit, its brains, and its boss.