THE THIRD REICH – the history of National Socialism

Regarding Klara’s character, historical accounts are highly consistent: she is described as decent, modest, quiet, and deeply devoted. A typical peasant woman, she cared meticulously for her household and children—especially her own biological children, and above all, Adolf. She remained staunchly loyal to her husband, publicly praising him despite his faults.

Some historians describe the marriage as functional and content; others point out that Alois was a domestic tyrant who violently beat his sons. Psychoanalysts, such as Alice Miller, have extensively studied this dynamic, suggesting that both realities coexisted. (The original author notes a similar dynamic with their own grandfather, a former Austro-Hungarian dragoon, who was aggressively authoritarian yet simultaneously fiercely protective and caring.)

Was he a hard, distant bureaucrat who raised his son with iron discipline? Or is there something more complex behind that icy portrait? Was he a violent tyrant who terrorised his family – or a man wrestling with the expectations of his age and with his own demons?

MY NEW BOOK

LINKBorderland Between Hitler and Mussolini: Val Canale Between Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia

In this second episode on Hitler's father we dig deeper. We look at fresh source material, personal testimony, and psychological readings of Alois's behaviour within the family. For if we want to understand the later deeds of Adolf Hitler, we have to be willing to look as well at the upbringing, the family dynamic, and the role of a father figure who could be both domineering and – according to some – caring.

Was he a monster at home? Or a man who, for all his faults, believed he was doing the right thing?

This is what so often happens with famous men: the moment they step into the spotlight, everything around them is turned over, and people begin hunting for scandals, contradictions and hidden secrets. Hitler’s father, with his murky origins and his posthumously acquired name, supplied ideal raw material.

Long before Hans Frank, Hitler’s former lawyer and the Governor-General of occupied Poland, wrote his notorious memoirs, various sources had already floated the theory that Hitler’s father might have been of Jewish descent. The possibility was discussed by Walter C. Langer, the American psychoanalyst who compiled a secret psychological profile of Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war, and also by Fritz Thyssen, the industrialist who had been among the earliest supporters and financiers of the Nazi Party before breaking with Hitler and fleeing Germany. The theory was likewise revived by a man writing under the name Hansjürgen Koehler, a former Gestapo employee who was later assigned to the guard detachment at Hitler’s alpine residence, escaped to the West, and published a sensational book entitled Inside the Gestapo.

Johanna Wolf was the oldest of the secretaries and effectively served as their leader—the "chief" among them. She worked for Hitler from 1933 until 1945, with only a few interruptions caused mainly by illness.

Relatively little reliable information survives concerning Wolf's childhood and youth. Nevertheless, surviving memoirs and archival sources portray a conservative, religious, and hardworking Bavarian middle-class family.

During the Second World War, Hanna participated in testing numerous revolutionary German weapons. She helped solve the stability problems of the V-1 rocket (“Vergeltungswaffe,” meaning “retaliation weapon”). Since early rockets had serious guidance issues, a manually controllable version was built, and Hanna was chosen as test pilot. She successfully carried out the flight, and thanks to the data she collected, the Germans corrected the flaws.

She climbed to an altitude of 2,300 meters with Germany’s first helicopter, tested dive brakes, and after the outbreak of war, carried out life-threatening experiments aimed at breaking through British air defense systems. 

Henriette Hoffmann was born on February 2, 1913, in Munich. Her father, Heinrich Hoffmann, was the official photographer of the Nazi Party; her mother, Therese “Nelly” Baumann, was a singer and actress. Her childhood unfolded in Schwabing, an artistic district that during the Weimar years was one of the centers of avant-garde life and political radicalism. The family soon became part of Hitler’s immediate circle: already in the early 1920s, the party’s first meetings were held in Heinrich Hoffmann’s home.

Little Henny thus grew up quite literally in the cradle of the Nazi movement. Hitler was a frequent guest in the Hoffmann household; he treated the photographer’s family almost as his own. Henny was only nine years old when she first met him, and this early acquaintance would shape her life for decades.

The Mitford family had existed since the Middle Ages, long without any particular significance. It was only in the 1930s that the Mitford brothers and sisters entered the headlines, becoming notorious for their scandalous political views.

Each sister drifted in a different direction: one became a National Socialist and an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler. That was Unity, who formed a close relationship with her idol and, between 1935 and 1940, belonged to the inner circles of the Nazi Party.

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Alongside Eva Braun — who, with some exaggeration, might be described as the “principal mistress” — Hitler had several other acquaintances and relationships.

Hitler and Eva Braun met in 1929, when she was only 17 years old and Hitler already 40. He immediately noticed her. Hitler especially sought the company of very young women; he invited them to dinners, took them to the theater and opera, creating the impression of a chivalrous gentleman.

After the death of Geli Raubal in 1931, Eva Braun took over the role of Hitler’s secret companion and lover in 1932. The relationship demanded complete secrecy: Hitler, the “Messiah of the German people,” could not marry — Germany was his bride.

For years, she was treated like a kind of private secretary, though everyone knew she was Hitler’s lover.

Ilse Pröhl came from a national-conservative family. She was one of the three daughters of Friedrich Pröhl, a wealthy Hanoverian physician, and his wife Elsa, née Meineke. Her father was killed during the Kapp Putsch. In March 1920, the Freikorps unit known as the Ehrhardt Brigade with swastikas on their helmets, the uprising or coup d etat led by nationalist politician Wolfgang Kapp and General Walther von Lüttwitz, seized power in Berlin for five days. The coup failed, and during the brigade’s retreat, it carried out a massacre, firing into crowds of protesters. Ilse Hess’s father was killed in this fighting as one of the Freikorps’ “national warriors.” The brigade’s commander, Hermann Ehrhardt, lived undisturbed in Austria’s Waldviertel region only 60 km north from Vienna  until his death in 1971. Whether by coincidence or not, Adolf Hitler’s family also originated from the Waldviertel.

Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels, mother of six children, one of Hitler’s closest confidantes — and the woman who ultimately chose death together with her children in the Führerbunker. “She was the First Lady of the Third Reich — unofficially, but without a doubt within the Nazi propaganda machine — while others might have given that title to Emmy Göring, the second wife of Hermann Göring.”

But how did a well-bred Berlin girl from a strict bourgeois family become the “queen” of National Socialist Germany? Why was she drawn to power, to cult-like political movements, and how did her life intertwine religion, politics, and destructive fanaticism?