Harry´s Blog

 Herbert Kuhner

Hitler was aware of the legacy he was helping to undermine: he devoted part of a Nuremberg rally in 1937 to criticism of an overzealous party official who had declared the Masonic theme of Die Zauberflöte ideologically unacceptable. “Only a person lacking respect for his own nationality would condemn Mozart’s Zauberflöte because its text may be ideologically opposed to his own outlook,” he reprimanded Hitler also condemned as “grotesque” the “Aryanization” of operatic texts such as Carmen and Tosca. Tellingly, he declined to visit the Degenerate Music Exhibition organized by Hans Severus Ziegler in Düsseldorf in 1938 to expose the “triumph of arrogant Jewish impudence”.
- Peter Aspen: Orchestrating the Holocaust, Financial Times, Jan. 15/16, 2005, p. W7

Here was the Führer contradicting himself. After laying down the law, he may have had some slight compunctions and made some slight exceptions. His number one toady and henchman was a stickler who had no compunctions and made no exceptions. When Adolf vacillated, he was there to set things straight. When asked by his son and namesake Martin Jr. what National Socialism was all about, he replied, “Implementing the will of Adolf Hitler.” This also may have meant implementing it on Hitler, if necessary.

Hitler’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann relates topsy-turvy anecdote in his memoirs titled Hitler Was My Friend.

Hoffmann was a jovial bon vivant who was exposed to Hitler’s human side. He snapped and shot his friend and his friend’s entourage from their beginnings in the Nineteen-Twenties till the end in April of 1945. Hitler may have had millions killed, but he was swell to Hoffmann. When both of them got together, the conversations were about art, not politics. Hoffmann stayed in Hitler’s good graces and used his friendship to save many from the gallows or the chopping block.

There’s a photo that shows Hitler walking hand-in-hand with a blonde child Hoffmann calls “Hitler’s little sweetheart.” Hoffmann relates how „an overzealous busybody” found out that the little girl was not of pure Aryan descent and promptly informed Martin Bormann who forbade further contact without informing the Führer. When Hitler became aware of what had happened, he and Hoffmann were united in indignation. Their anger was directed against Bormann and the informer who had spoiled Hitler’s joy. The Führer sighed and “felt that he had to be logical and refuse to see the child anymore.”

The “busybody” and Bormann who had reaped Hitler’s scorn were just following the Nuremberg Laws to the letter, laws that Hitler had instigated and authored. What did not enter Hoffmann’s mind was that had that Germanic-looking child been completely non-Aryan, rather than of mixed descent, she would have joined other children in cattle cars on their way to certain death. And it should be added that children of mixed descent also ended up in cattle cars if their parents’ racial rating did not warrant exclusion from that fate.

Strangely enough, it did not occur to Hoffmann to direct his anger against the initiator of the racial laws that were the basis for the annihilation of children.

Hitler’s laws and tenets were authored to be followed with unswerving loyalty and integrity. No one was exempt. And if they were not followed, there were consequences. Strangely enough, the Führer at times seemed to oppose the Führer. But of course, only slightly.

Anna Maria Sigmund, Die Frauen der Nazis, Überreuter, 1998, p. 211; Henk van Capelle, Peter van de Bovenkamp: Hitler’s Henchmen; Bison Books, London, 1990; Heinrich Hoffmann: Hitler Was My Friend, Burke, London, 1955, p. 190.
Anna Maria Sigmund, Die Frauen der Nazis, Überreuter, 1998, p. 212.
Heinrich Hoffmann: Hitler Was My Friend, Burke, London, 1955, p. 193.