Letters from the War Period – Part I
The
actor Eugen Rex and his wife Helene, from Berlin, wrote to thank God that Hitler
had survived the assassination attempt. He died in 1943; what happened to his
wife Helene is not known.
My Leader!
Together with the
entire German people I would like to express my most sincere good wishes on the
occasion of your miraculous salvation.
We thank God and
beg him to keep you in good health and strength for us for a long time.
With a German
salute
your Party
comrades
Eugen Rex & wife
Hitler’s private
office replied on 22 November 1939.
Dear Mr Rex!
The Leader wants to
express his sincere thanks to you and your spouse for your concern and for the
good wishes that you have communicated to him on the occasion of the Munich
attack.
With a German
salute
Albert Bormann
Good wishes for the
New Year were received from the writer Hanns Johst, who on 29 December 1939 sent
his congratulations.
My Leader!
The enormous
gravity of this time obligates me to thank you for the determination that you
have put into every heart devoted to you. Our love for you makes every task easy
and makes everything done for you a song of praise. The truth is that for all of
us you have become Germany, and so this is our wish and prayer at this turn of
the New Year: may heaven bless your creative power, so that in 1940 you may
achieve your work: the Great Reich!
I would not be your
poet and visionary, my Leader, if I did not already see this.
But veneration puts
the courage of prophecy before the humility of the earnest inner wish!
All the best
from your obedient
Stormtrooper
Hanns Johst
Adolf Hitler did
read the letter from his former orderly Max Wünsche. Wünsche, who had in the
meantime become a company leader in Hitler’s personal bodyguard regiment, wrote
on 31 March 1939 to the then Head Adjutant Brückner to report on the real facts
of the preparation for the war against France. Brückner had the letter retyped
on the ‘Leader’s typewriter’ - a typewriter with oversize letters to counter
Hitler’s extreme far-sightedness. Brückner then presented it to Hitler.
Esteemed:
Lieutenant General [of the SS]!
Since I assumed
that at Easter you would in any case be very busy dealing with the mail, I have
waited until today to send you my Easter greetings. They are no less sincere on
that account, and even though they are belated, I ask that you communicate them
to all the gentlemen and ladies in the Adjutant’s office.
For me, Easter
coincided with my recovery from a terrific cold. In the past weeks we have often
travelled over and also in the Ems river, and in doing so have gotten somewhat
damp, and so I also caught cold. But after Easter we merrily continued and even
had to submit to several inspections. In such matters Wünsche is always the
leader of the advance party (15th motorcycle company, armoured reconnaissance
unit, infantry artillery unit, anti-tank unit and sapper unit, and also a mobile
radio), that’s the make-up of this bunch. It is an incredible pleasure to work
with such a group, and also with our young men, who are all simply splendid
fellows. So we have not been asleep, but rather have been preparing everything
for the attack, and we now believe we are ready for any assignment. Although we
are very comfortable in our present quarters, and the local population, while
very Catholic, are exceptionally helpful to us, we are nevertheless waiting with
great excitement for the day when the attack will finally begin. I am
particularly impatient, I never imagined it would be so long. But now I hope
that the Leader gives me enough time to prove myself.
How is the Leader?
I would have liked to write to him, but I know that he has so much to read every
day that I did not want to burden him with my letters as well. But I may ask you
to tell the Leader that I am well and that I will try, as the leader of a
company of his regiment, to do my best; and therefore I ask for as much time as
is necessary for the mission. We are all very confident, whether officers,
non-coms, or privates, and the Leader can be sure that his regiment will never
disappoint him. In the same vein I ask that you too, Lieutenant General, accept
my belated Easter greetings, and remain
Your Max Wünsche
SS-First
Lieutenant
Wünsche rose in the
armed wing of the SS, the Waffen-SS, to become commander of the Hitler Youth
tank division. When he married, Hitler gave him a cheque for over 10,000 marks.
Brückner sent his
reply on 5 April 1940 to the military postal number 33 752.
Dear Wünsche!
Unfortunately, I
received your letter of 31 March belatedly, also as a result of sickness. I,
too, lay doubled up in bed for two weeks with a stupid case of phlebitis (a sign
of old age!). Now I am hobbling about in the Chancellor’s Office part-time
again, to the annoyance of others and with no great joy to me! But I also hope
that I will get over this sad episode of ‘springtime’ pneumonia.
I was very happy to
hear that you and your young men are well.
The Leader read
your letter. He often asks about you, and that is why I ask you to report on
your experiences from time to time.
Schaub had to
undergo a goiter operation that was exceptionally painful. But now he is doing
better, and he will show up in a fortnight.
With all good
wishes for you and your comrades and
Hail Hitler!
Your Brückner
Head of the
Leader’s Personal Adjutants’ Office
The Slovakian
People’s Party in Bratislava (Pressburg) collected signatures. In the Party
offices bureaucrats set out sheets of paper that Hitler-admirers could sign. The
lists, bearing more than twenty thousand names, were bound in a book and sent to
the Chancellor’s Office. This homage was highly official, and the first pages of
the book were filled with organizations’ stamps. Only much further on were the
lists of signatures finally found.
A large-format
certificate, sumptuously produced and decorated with swastikas and oak leaves,
was received from Melk in lower Austria.
For our Leader and
supreme master builder’s fifty-first birthday we ask the Almighty’s eternal
blessing!
May his noble life
goal fully succeed to the benefit of the whole German people!
For the plant
manager & the workforce
of the
[stamp]
Radebeule Basalt Works
Enterprise for
concrete construction and road repair, successor
Anton Kosta,
Vienna
On his next
birthday, 20 April 1941, Adolf Hitler received a very interesting poem of
homage, though the cover letter has been lost. The unknown author sent
congratulations on the occasion of ‘Our beloved Leader’s birthday! War year
1941’, and drew a large swastika in the upper corner.
If every country
had such a leader,
as Providence has
given us,
How nice it would
be in this world,
how happy and
content all would be!
Wars would no
longer need to rage,
everyone would
protect his land from them.
And trade and
change ever gloriously bloom:
for every leader
would seek that goal:
They would sit
peacefully at green tables,
and with pure zeal
rack their brains
to quickly solve
problems, even the hardest,
not with weapons,
no, with good, not evil;
and pointless blood
need then no longer flow,
here everyone could
enjoy his bit of life
For this life is
short, comes only once, and lies
in God’s hand!
Must it be taken
before its time and by force
by the enemy’s
hand?
Yes, even the most
pious cannot live in peace,
When it does not
please the evil neighbour.
So it has always
been, and so it still is today
in this otherwise
so beautiful world.
But if every
country had such a leader
as Providence has
given us,
then there’d be no
more war in this world,
we would have only
the finest peace!!!
But this wish, I
have to admit, seems even to me a dream,
for its fulfilment
would be too beautiful, I think I could hardly
imagine it
But still I must
think of the beautiful word
and hope that
Providence will yet guide us
THAT THE WHOLE
WORLD WILL STILL
BE HEALED BY GERMAN
NATURE!!!
We thank our LORD
GOD that he has given us the Leader,
stands ever at his
side and guides his step himself!
Some may have
already considered in a quiet moment
How the Leader
might have also made his life easy!
Some would have
already bent down after a short battle
and thrown in the
towel, would have preferred
perhaps to work as
a writer in some nice quiet place
wholly undisturbed
and lead his life
there as comfortably as possible,
but our Leader set
himself a higher goal, the
very highest goal,
and chose a path
that was very hard and demanded
much from him:
He fought, suffered
and struggled and struggles still today for
our nation!!!
For that the dear
LORD himself gave him his well-deserved
reward!
Has it ever already
occurred in history,
has it ever been
already heard or read anywhere,
that a soldier,
once nameless, almost unknown,
was named leader of
a great empire?
Thus GOD crowned
his fighting and his struggling
and also helps
subdue the enemy today!
For dear GOD likes
to help whoever helps himself:
protects,
preserves, shelters him, keeps not far from him!
In fighting for us
the Leader often made his life very hard,
And for that today
the whole people stands behind him like a
wall:
Millions of hearts
reaffirm once again today their loyalty in great
love and gratitude
to the Leader!
Millions of hearts
are prepared to make any sacrifice for the
Leader!
The bravest
soldiers with the best leadership of all stand at his
side.
Millions of hearts
hail today their beloved Leader and wish
with all their
hearts that he might soon have his well-deserved
rest
after this war
forced upon us by the enemy
with a victory
granted us by the dear LORD!!!
So at the centre of
this day today stands our great request:
May GOD protect our
beloved Leader here in our midst!
Grant the brilliant
general constant health,
that highest
earthly good,
continue to give
him
strong willpower,
decisiveness,
endurance,
and courage,
fulfil his wishes
for the future of Germany
for peace with
nations here in this world
and help prevent
the one who rejected the hand of peace, who
always wanted war,
from resisting too much longer!
Telegrams were
received from National-Socialist Party leaders, including this one:
Sincerest wishes
for happiness and success in the New Year.
Georg Joel,
deputy Regional Leader
On 21 April 1941
Joel received the standard answer:
For the good wishes
you sent me on the occasion of my birthday, I offer you my sincerest thanks.
Adolf Hitler
Among the good
wishes sent by artists and writers that of Hanns Johst once again stands out. He
sent his greetings from Starnberg in Bavaria to the Leader’s headquarters.
With my heartfelt
personal wishes for your well-being I send you, my Leader, a birthday homage
from all those working on the German book. Never in the course of our history
were poets and scientists, publishers, booksellers, and printers more united in
loyal sentiments than they are today.
Hail Hitler,
ever your
obedient and devoted
Hanns Johst
Hitler answered the
state councillor and SS Group Leader on 21 April:
For the good wishes
that you sent me on the occasion of my birthday, on your own behalf and on that
of all those working on the German book, I offer you my sincerest thanks.
Hitler did still
continue to receive some letters from individuals. One was Dagmar Dassel, a
woman living in Berlin. There are no letters of reply from Hitler’s private
office. It is more than probable that Dassel never received any mail from the
centre of power. She sent enthusiastic, long, and verbose letters to Hitler,
amounting to more than 250 pages in all.
On Sunday, 11 May
1941, she added to her letter a complementary report entitled ‘My path to the
culminating splendour to the divine realm of a high and noble humanity.’ This
letter is informative and is cited here in full, not because it expresses an
exceptional veneration, but rather because it refers to Hitler’s speech in the
Berlin Sports Palace, where he spoke to 6,000 officer candidates. On 4 May 1941,
Dassel could write only ‘with an overflowing grateful, happy, and proud heart’:
My Leader - today I
can only once again emphasize my steadfast - unchanging - inalterable loyalty
and love: my whole life - thoughts and feelings belongs to you - my Leader - my
most beloved - best – noblest - greatest - most splendid - unique most brilliant
man - the prayed for and divinely sent - only to you - my Leader - only to your
splendid work of salvation and peace - only to you, the chosen - anointed -
crowned and beloved child of God - God’s emissary of peace - the executor of
God’s will on earth - to your greater German people and Reich - now in
particular to your splendid heroic Army - to you - my Leader - the first soldier
and the supreme commander of this splendid Army - to the most brilliant and
greatest general and strategist of all times - to the most brilliant statesman -
to the greatest German - only to you - my Leader - the most sublime hero - the
greatest victor in time and eternity - only to you - my Leader - to the pure and
inner man - do I ceaselessly work, watch and pray in silence - with a pure heart
- joyful in love for you and your great German people and Reich for God’s
protection and blessing - my soul surrounds you and thanks your splendid heroes
- the Army on all your victorious campaigns with the armour of divine love - and
also your loyal allies until the final victory - my soul rejoices without cease.
My Leader!
Mrs Dagmar
Dassel
Dassel, who was
obviously seriously ill, died in April 1941. She sent her farewell letter to
Hitler, telling him that she believed in him ‘in unchanging fidelity and love of
the sacred future’.
Adolf Hitler also
continued to receive requests, including some from the nobility. Prince
Friedrich, the head of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringer, which was related
to the former ruling house of Prussia, wrote to Hitler’s office on laid paper
decorated with a stamped and gilded crown in keeping with his status. The
disempowered prince sent his letter on Christmas Eve 1941 to Otto Meissner, the
head of the President’s Office, probably because of some old connection.
Meissner seemed to be the right man to fulfil a private wish.
Dear State
Secretary!
I request that the
enclosed sealed letter to the Leader be forwarded to the highest level.
On the occasion of
the New Year, I ask you to accept my most sincere and heartfelt good wishes.
May the New Year be
a good and happy one for you and your family, and also for your position, which
involves great responsibility.
At the conclusion
of the old year, I wish to express my very special gratitude for the many
favours and counsels that you have been so kind as to give me.
With the assurance
of my particular esteem, I remain as always, with Hail Hitler,
Your devoted
Friedrich
Prince zu
Hohenzollem
Meissner forwarded
the enclosure, the letter so expressly characterized as ‘sealed’, to Hitler. The
latter dealt with it with surprising speed and had the notoriously underemployed
Meissner answer it. His letter, with the letterhead ‘State Secretary and Head of
the President’s Office of the Leader and Reich Chancellor’, is dated 29 December
1941 and clearly reflects the spiritual ancestry of this bureaucrat, who had
already held office under the Republic:
Your Royal
Highness!
I am honoured to
confirm the reception of your letter of the 24th December as well as the letter
to the Leader dated the same day. The Leader has asked me to express his sincere
thanks for best wishes you sent him for the New Year.
With regard to your
request that your son-in-law, Count Heinrich zu Waldburg-Wolfegg, be promoted to
Reserve Officer, I have forwarded, as ordered, your letter to the Leader to the
army personnel office, Berlin, for the relevant examination and processing.
For the good wishes
for the New Year you have addressed to me personally, I most respectfully thank
your Royal Highness; I reply with my best wishes for a good and happy new year.
Hail Hitler
Your Royal
Highness’s
most
respectfully devoted
Dr Meissner
In the summer of
1941 several congratulatory telegrams from high ecclesiastical officials were
presented to Hitler. On 28 June, 1941, one week after the attack on the Soviet
Union was launched, the bishop of Jaroslaw in occupied Poland sent the following
telegram to the Leader’s headquarters.
Please inform the Leader of the German people of the following event:
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy in the General Government communicates to
the Leader its feeling of gratitude for the battle against the enemy of
Christianity and Christian culture and asks almighty God’s heavenly blessing on
him in this battle.
The Catholic bishop in Jaroslaw
Representatives
from the German Evangelical Church wrote to Hitler on 30 June 1941:
To the Leader,
Leader Headquarters
The ecclesiastical
executive council of the German Evangelical Church, which has assembled for the
first time since the beginning of the decisive battle in the East, once again
assures you, my Leader, of the inalterable loyalty and devotion of the whole of
evangelical Christianity in the Reich in these breathtakingly eventful times.
You have, my Leader, averted the Bolshevist peril in our own land and now call
upon our people and the peoples of Europe to wage the decisive battle against
the mortal enemy of all order and all Western Christian culture. The German
people, and with it all its Christian members, thank you for this act of yours.
The fact that British policy now also openly serves Bolshevism as its accomplice
finally makes it clear that it is concerned not with Christianity, but solely
with the destruction of the German people.
May Almighty God
stand by you and by our people, so that we can succeed against the twofold enemy
with the eventual victory to which we must devote all our will and action. At
this time the German Evangelical Church recalls the Baltic Evangelical martyrs
of 1918. It recalls the unspeakable suffering that Bolshevism has inflicted on
the people of its own sphere of power and seeks to inflict on all other nations,
and, with all its prayers, it stands by you and by our incomparable soldiers,
who are now engaged in eliminating the heart of the plague through such powerful
blows, so that a new order might emerge under your leader [ship] throughout
Europe and so that all internal subversion, all defilement of the most holy, all
desecration of freedom of religion might be put to an end.
The
Ecclesiastical Executive Council
of the German
Evangelical Church
Maharens,
Schultz, Hymmen
The Evangelical
Free Church declared its approval on 12 July 1941.
To the Leader and
Reich Chancellor in the Leader’s Headquarters
The union of
Evangelical free Churches sends you, my Leader, its heartiest congratulations on
the magnificent victory in the East, in the certainty that you, as God’s
instrument, are thereby finally breaking the power of Bolshevism, which is
hostile to God and to Christianity, and so ensuring not only the future of our
beloved German Fatherland, but also a new order in Europe. We assure you once
again of our intercession and unreserved devotion.
Director Paul
Schmidt
Bishop Meile
The telegram from
the Holy Ascension monastery in Pochaev (Ukraine) arrived in the Chancellor’s
Office on 25 August 1941.
The bishops
assembled on Mt Pochaev, in the Temple of the Ukrainian people in Volhynia,
congratulate Adolf Hitler and his victorious Army on the occasion of the
liberation from a world deprived of God by the Bolsheviks.
The ecclesiastical
assembly of Ukraine, with its faithful population, asks in belief and love the
great God to grant the creator of the great German Reich, Adolf Hitler, who has
the divine gift of directing the future of peoples along good paths, a long and
happy life.
We bishops once
again thank our liberator Adolf Hitler and his victorious Wehrmacht.
Simon,
Archbishop of Ostrog Panteleimen,
Bishop of
Lemberg Benjamin,
Bishop of
Vladimir in Volhynia
And on 23 September
1941 a telegram came from Chelm (Ukrainian Cholm) in the General Government that
was addressed to:
The Leader of the
German nation, Adolf Hitler, Berlin
My clergy and
thousands of believers, assembled for the Cathedral celebration in Chelm, unite
with me in sending the great Leader Adolf Hitler and his unconquerable Wehrmacht
the most heartfelt thanks for the liberation of the Ukrainian capital Kiev from
godless domination. We all pray most warmly that the Lord God might with his
strong hand help the Leader and his army to establish peace and order all over
the East.
Archbishop
Herion
Although Adolf
Hitler celebrated his birthday in 1942 with a large congratulatory reception,
Regional Leaders and other National-Socialist officials were not invited. Hitler
shunned most of his National Socialist colleagues, including only his innermost
circle. German officers and politicians from subjugated or allied states were,
however, invited to the Leader’s headquarters in the Wolfs Lair, Hitler’s
eastern front military headquarters. It was built during the planning stages of
the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The Führer left for the last
time in autumn 1944.
In the files of
Hitler’s private office there was also a Leitz file box with the title “The
Twelve Labours of Hercules - Dedicated to his Excellency Mr Reich Chancellor
Adolf Hitler on 20 April 1942”. An architect, Heinrich Ritter from
Markgröningen in Baden- Württemberg, southern Germany, had written the poem of
homage to Hitler in the ‘war year 1941’. Ritter was a convinced National
Socialist who was educated in classics. The original classic poem describes a
series of penitential acts undertaken by Hercules, the greatest Greek hero. He
had killed his own children after being driven mad by his step-mother Hera.
Hercules was compelled to perform exacting tasks, including slaying the Nemean
Lion and the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra, both vicious monsters, as well as
capturing the Golden Hind of Artemis, a deer so quick it could outrun an arrow.
Ritter’s re-telling
takes the form of a fictitious conversation between a teacher and a pupil,
condensed into a ‘heroic poem in twelve cantos’. Each of Hercules’s twelve great
labours was described in turn from the teacher’s and the pupil’s perspectives,
and each demonstrated the superiority of the National Socialist cause against a
host of enemies. And who played Hercules? ‘There our Leader’ appeared the
obvious choice to Franz, the eager German pupil. ‘That is what a hero is, he is
a man who can carry out such labours.’ Franz casts England in the role of the
Nemean Lion, whose neck Hitler ‘wrings’ and who he ‘strikes’ so that its ‘far
flies’. England would eventually ‘grovel and writhe in blood’ at a time which
only ‘the Leader can determine’. The teacher applauds Franz’s interpretation,
responding that ‘If Hitler attacks England, He no longer needs to ask us. Count
us in, we’re ready for the trial. We have our Hercules!’
The poem carried on
in this fashion through the other eleven labours, with Soviet Russia playing the
part of the giant serpent Hydra, who spews ‘poison, venom, gall, hellfire’.
Hercules ‘with a quick blow’ ‘struck off their heads’. Where two regrew ‘from
the wound’ ‘Hercules was not afraid. He struck twice as hard and fought until
he’d done it in!’ In Ritter’s imagination ‘Soviet Russia was completely
annihilated!’ Poland appeared as the Golden Hind, while Yugoslavia was a Boar,
and international Jewry the Augean Stables. Augeas’ famous stables housed more
cattle than any other except in Greece. The stables had never been cleaned out,
until Hercules was charged with the task of doing so.
Ritter’s epic poem
concluded with the following lines. Although the original rhyming scheme was
impossible to preserve in translation, they encapsulate both Ritter’s views on
Hitler and Germany, as well as how well Ritter copied the classical lyric style
of writing:
So this
ancient Greek myth
Has become a
mirror-image of our time.
To be the
leader of this new age of heroes
Hitler is
predestined and prepared!
His whole
self, the spirit, his work, his life,
He has given
us, the German people!
What he is to
us will never fade and be forgotten,
But his
greatness will be measured by his work!
It is a
heroic saga, a heroic song,
A heroic
battle, from which a will radiates:
To be equal
to the heroes, to this heroic time,
With heart
and mind ever ready for battle!
And Adolf
Hitler stands, a paragon among heroes,
High and
sublime over all spirits of the world!
Grant him,
who fights and creates for Germany’s peace,
O Lord in
heaven: superhuman power!
Markgröningen,
20 April 1942
Heinrich Ritter
