Читать книгу Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II - Len Deighton - Страница 47

Unlike their counterparts in Italy and Russia the German veterans felt that their leader – Führer – was an archetypal ex-soldier. There has been a mountain of contradictory material written about Adolf Hitler’s wartime service. In fact he was a dedicated soldier who respected his officers and showed no cynicism about the war.

During the fighting Hitler was selected to be a ‘runner’ taking messages from the front line to the staff. It was a dangerous job usually given to intelligent and educated fit young soldiers. He won the coveted Iron Cross 1st Class in August 1918 when advancing German troops came under ‘friendly fire’ and his officer – Lt Hugo Gutmann – promised the award to anyone who could get a message back to the artillery. Hitler completed this ‘suicide mission’ and Lt Gutmann kept his promise. By that time Hitler had also won the Iron Cross 2nd Class, the Cross of Military Merit 3rd class with swords, and the regimental diploma. Details of Hitler winning his Iron Cross 1st Class – a notable award for a low-ranking soldier – were not widely publicized, leading to suggestions that it was never awarded at all. Probably Hitler felt his virulent anti-Jewish policies did not go well with receiving a medal from a Jewish officer.

Entering politics, Hitler’s coarse regional accent and wartime lowly rank were appealing to thousands of ex-servicemen who heard their thoughts about war-profiteers and self-serving politicians voiced by a man with natural skills as an orator. The Communists kept blaming the soldiers for the war: Hitler’s patriotic respect for the army was more to the taste of the veterans, and the relatives of those who had been killed and injured. The Nazis were fiercely xenophobic: Germany’s troubles were blamed on foreigners. Socialists and Communists owed their true allegiance to Moscow, the Nazis said. Capitalists were equally unpatriotic, for they used cheap overseas labour for their imported goods and sent their profits to foreign banks overseas. Never mind that it wasn’t true; in the harsh postwar climate it was the sort of explanation many Germans wanted to believe.

Hitler’s anti-Jewish tirades were well received in Bavaria, the Nazi party’s home, where both Lutheranism and the Catholic Church provided soil in which deep-rooted prejudice had flourished over hundreds of years. The Communists proposed a workers’ paradise from which all ‘privileged’ Germans should be excluded; while Hitler’s vision of a new Germany was designed to appeal alike to generals and tycoons, schoolteachers and physicians, as well as to workers and beggars.