Reporting on Hitler Read online

  It was not to last. Stresemann ended passive resistance in September 1923 and the monetary crisis was soon resolved by a new currency. But they were fantastical days indeed. Reynolds reflected on the period with an article headlined ‘Alice in Hunderland (Or, First Steps to German Finance)’.120

  The crisis was over, for now. Yet throughout this turbulent period in German history extreme parties waited in the shadows, poised to pounce when the opportunity arose. Reynolds thought the ‘genius’ Stresemann was the best of the Weimar politicians, but he also knew that populist parties were quietly gathering strength, capitalising on the republic’s inability to inspire its citizens. ‘Where there was enthusiasm, it was not for the republic, but for socialism or nationalism, for communism or Catholicism,’ Reynolds said.121 His interest in the popularity of extreme parties led him to track down a man, then of little consequence, who would come to shape Germany’s future.

  - CHAPTER V -

  ‘A MESMERIC STARE’

  One of the men drawing followers with his extreme views was a black-haired Austrian in Munich who had been captivating beerhall crowds with his angry tirades. He had fought for Germany in the First World War and viewed the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles as betrayals. His supporters roared support and smashed their glasses together as the man, whose name was Adolf Hitler, accused weak politicians in Berlin of stabbing German troops in the back. His embittered speeches in the Bavarian capital proved popular and in 1921 he became leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

  Hitler turned thirty-two that year. He was virtually unknown in Britain. Readers of The Times had been informed of his existence by a short article in October 1920 reporting that ‘the National-socialists of Bavaria are emulating the Italian Fascisti’. But it was a brief report, and British newspapers paid him little attention in the first years of his political career. It was more than a year later before he was first mentioned in the pages of the Manchester Guardian.122

  Around this time a young student called Daniel Binchy, the future Irish ambassador to Berlin, was travelling in Munich and chanced upon one of Hitler’s speeches. It made such an impression that he kept a detailed note of what he had witnessed. ‘Here was a born natural orator,’ Binchy wrote of Hitler. ‘He began slowly, almost hesitatingly, stumbling over the construction of his sentences, correcting his dialect pronunciation. Then all at once he seemed to take fire. His voice rose victorious over falterings, his eyes blazed with conviction, his whole body became an instrument of rude eloquence.’ Binchy was entranced:

  As his exaltation increased, his voice rose almost to a scream, his gesticulation became a pantomime, and I noticed traces of foam at the corners of his mouth. He spoke so quickly and in such a pronounced dialect that I had great difficulty in following him, but the same phrases kept recurring all through his address like motifs in a symphony: the Marxist traitors, the criminals who caused the revolution, the German army which was stabbed in the back, and – most insistent of all – the Jews.123

  It was a message that would become familiar. But despite some provincial success, Hitler remained virtually unknown elsewhere in Germany and internationally. Binchy had happened upon him by accident. The idea at the start of the 1920s that Hitler would one day lead Germany was laughable. Yet he continued to attract supporters with his message. Kurt Ludecke was one early convert. ‘He was holding the masses, and me with them, under a hypnotic spell by the sheer force of his conviction,’ he wrote. Ludecke was a useful fundraiser for Hitler in the 1920s.124

  By 1923 Hitler’s status as a rising star in Munich had led to a small amount of outside interest, though he was dismissed as irrelevant by most. A Times reporter who saw him speak in May of that year noted his growing support but did not regard him as a serious contender for power nationally. ‘Adolf Hitler has been described recently as one of the three most dangerous men in Germany. This is probably a rather flattering estimate of the little Austrian sign-painter,’ the dispatch read. ‘Nevertheless, the Hitler party today has to be reckoned with as one of the most important factors in the political situation of Bavaria.’125

  ‘Childish, childish,’ was the verdict on Hitler from an unnamed diplomat whose opinion had been sought by Reynolds. In October 1923 Reynolds had an assignment in Munich and knew he would have some spare time on his hands. He was travelling to interview Eugenio Pacelli, a leading Catholic dignitary who would later be named Pope Pius XII.126 Discussing ecclesiastical matters was a great pleasure for Reynolds, but could not alone justify the expense of a trip from Berlin to Munich.

  He decided he would try to track down Hitler, or as Reynolds described him, the ‘hothead of whom people were talking’. As a journalist, Reynolds was used to pursuing leads and interviews even if there was only a slim chance they would lead anywhere. ‘It hardly seemed a waste of time to go and see him,’ he wrote.127 The meeting took place in the office of the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper of the National Socialist movement, which Hitler, as leader, edited. Without making an appointment, Reynolds found the office in a small house in a street he described as dismal. Gingerly he stepped through the front door of the building and ascended a nondescript staircase leading to a narrow passageway. Halfway along it was a small room where two of Hitler’s young supporters were talking. Reynolds thought they looked like dishevelled colonial soldiers. The two men, facing each other across a desk, looked up at their surprise visitor.

  Reynolds explained the purpose of his visit. He was in the city for another appointment and thought, since he had some extra time, it might be interesting to meet Hitler. The pair were in no hurry to introduce the unexpected guest to their leader, who was working in a room at the end of the passageway. The office doubled as the headquarters of Hitler’s storm troopers; rifles and machine guns were stacked up in a corner of the room. Reynolds was struck by the spirit of revolutionary enthusiasm, which reminded him of times he had spent among angry revolutionaries in Russia before the war.

  While they waited for Hitler, the men talked. One of them had a pale and mild appearance that concealed an angry disposition. He informed Reynolds that ‘international Jewish capitalists’ were a grave danger to the world. Even the British Empire was not safe from its tentacles. He fervently stated his opposition to American loans to Germany, fearing that his countrymen would become the slaves of Jewish capitalists.

  His storm trooper comrade passionately attacked the government of Berlin. ‘You cannot have a rebellion,’ he said, ‘unless you clear out one quarter of the nationalists. We shall find enough trees in Germany to hang all the socialists and democrats who have betrayed Germany.’128 Reynolds thought he talked like a madman, but was also fearful. He thought he seemed a dangerous madman, one who could possibly commit assassinations or other atrocities.

  Reynolds was kept waiting for forty-five minutes until the word came that Hitler was ready. He was nervously led to the end of the passageway. The door was opened and Reynolds had his first glimpse of Hitler, attired in a similar fashion to his men. He said nothing as his visitor approached. ‘He stared at me straight into the eyes,’ Reynolds wrote. ‘I thought that was a game two could play at so I stared back. We stared until it became ridiculous and until at last he sat down, and I sat down.’129

  It was Reynolds’s first experience of Hitler’s stare, which he later described as mesmeric. Hitler’s eyes were frequently commented on by his visitors (once they had left his intimidating presence). Reynolds felt that the manner in which Hitler stared at people in his presence was almost an attempt at hypnotism. It set the tone for a tense meeting that lasted more than an hour.

  Reynolds started by asking for Hitler’s opinion of the government in Berlin, and what type of system he wished to see. Hitler dismissed the question by saying the form of government in Germany was unimportant for National Socialists.

  ‘It is not a question of republic or monarchy,’ he said, ‘but of delivering Germany from the men who have betrayed her.’

  Hit
ler then moved on to the recently ceased policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr region.

  ‘Never should passive resistance have been abandoned. We blame the German government for yielding to the French. It is clear that we could not have prevented the French from holding the Ruhr, but before we gave in, every mine, every factory, and every furnace should have been destroyed. Poincaré [the French Prime Minister] should have had the deathly triumph which Napoleon had when he saw Moscow in flames.’

  Reynolds noticed how Hitler’s voice rose during moments of passion. It was almost as if he was addressing a mass meeting. He struggled to interrupt as Hitler continued his diatribe. The invective was stinging. Reynolds felt it was useless to ask Hitler what he would have done to provide for the inhabitants of the Ruhr. He waited for Hitler to calm down before asking him a more general question about the aims of the Nazi movement. What did it hope to achieve?

  Hitler looked up in surprise. ‘You cannot expect me to answer a question like that.’ He explained that the German people were crying out for a saviour, citing Benito Mussolini’s rise to leadership in Italy the year before.

  ‘If a German Mussolini is given to Germany,’ he said, ‘people would fall down on their knees and worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshipped.’130

  Reynolds persisted without success in his attempts to obtain clear answers from Hitler. Then, as abruptly as he had been shown in, the meeting was over. Reynolds was led away. As he walked through Munich to the train station he reflected on his meeting. He was not impressed by Hitler. ‘I went away thinking no more of the encounter than it had given me the chance of seeing an odd type of unbalanced fanatic,’ he wrote.131

  At the station, Reynolds rang the office in London to pass on his report. ‘I am afraid that the truth is that neither Hitler nor his followers have any plan. All I heard from them was the denunciation of other people and diatribes against the evils of the parliamentary system,’ Reynolds reported to Daily Mail readers the next day. ‘Whatever his idea is, he does not possess the genius to play the hand of [Mussolini]. When I left the headquarters I felt as if I had left a madhouse.’132

  Reynolds returned to Berlin from Munich. He was struck by the difference between his two meetings that morning. ‘It was an extraordinary change to go from that dignified intellectual presence to the little insignificant Austrian tub-thumper.’133 Reynolds would scarcely have believed then that Pacelli would go on to be pope, yet his other meeting that morning would prove more interesting in historical terms.

  For a small-town demagogue, whose influence did not extend beyond Bavaria, Hitler was remarkably blunt and graceless with his visitor from a well-known newspaper in London. Reynolds found the conversation markedly one-sided. ‘It is extremely difficult to have a conversation with Adolf Hitler because when once he begins to speak he addresses an individual as if speaking to a public meeting. You can’t get a word in edgeways,’ he later remarked.134

  Though his reputation did not extend far beyond Germany in those days, Hitler had evidently started to believe in his own greatness. Even his own followers were commenting on his egomania. In 1923, one of his associates said Hitler had ‘megalomania halfway between a Messiah complex and Neroism’. His biographer Ian Kershaw believes Hitler’s confidence in the interview with Reynolds is evidence that he may have been starting to view himself as a great man who could one day assume national leadership. When he talks of a German Mussolini, it is not difficult to imagine who he sees in the role.135

  Hitler, however, was no Il Duce. Munich, let alone Germany, was out of his reach. His organisation was amateurish, poorly organised and he himself lacked sound judgement. Less than a month after receiving Reynolds, Hitler marched his followers into the centre of Munich to mount their botched coup, the Beer Hall Putsch. A handful of Nazis and police officers died in the fighting before Hitler and his associates were arrested. It was an abysmal failure to seize power in Munich.

  As so often, however, Hitler managed to grab victory where seemingly there was none. He used the publicity surrounding his trial the next year to spread his message and gain more attention nationally. More Germans heard his embittered and extreme ideas and a growing minority were won over, boosting the reach of his movement. Hitler served just over a year in prison and used the time to write Mein Kampf, which became another crucial instrument for spreading his message.

  At the time of his trial, however, Hitler’s stock was low internationally. While there was sympathy for General Ludendorff, a hero of the First World War who had thrown his lot in with Hitler, the leader of the revolt was broadly regarded with contempt. For most Germans, wrote Reynolds, it is ‘unutterably painful to see the once idolised general arraigned on the terrible charge of high treason, along with Adolf Hitler, a political adventurer and demagogue of the worst sort’.136

  Back from his Munich assignment, Reynolds continued to file reports illuminating for readers at home the details of life in Germany. Extremism may have prospered on the fringes of national life, but from the hyperinflation crisis until the final year of the 1920s, Weimar Germany was largely a story of progress. The economic development in the republic was slow but real, while culture flourished.

  Six years after the end of the war, Reynolds was still warning readers that some Germans viewed the conflict as unfinished business. In one article he told of meeting a policeman who revealed they had been trained to use machine guns and throw grenades.

  ‘Whatever have policemen got to do with hand-grenades?’ Reynolds asked.

  ‘But we’re not policemen,’ his interviewee responded. ‘We’re really soldiers, and when the war with France comes the whole hundred and fifty thousand of us will go straight in.’137

  Periodically painting Germans as villains was part of his job as the Daily Mail’s man in Berlin. That is not to say it was untrue that some in the country wanted another war with France – many did. But Reynolds also recognised that life in Weimar Germany was improving for many. People were moving on and looking to the future. ‘The masses of the people were not perpetually harping on the loss of the French and Polish and Danish provinces that had been taken from them and given back to their lawful owners,’ he wrote.138 There was a widespread realisation that progress was being made.

  Bitterness about how the war had ended gnawed for some, but for many others it represented a fresh start. ‘The war had ended in defeat; but at any rate people were free to follow their peaceful occupations, and no German was haunted by the fear of receiving the announcement that father or son or lover had been killed at the front,’ Reynolds reflected.

  Culture and the arts flowered in Weimar Germany and Reynolds loved being part of it. ‘There was new life in painting, in music, in the theatre. The palace of the Crown Prince in Unter den Linden, which was the property of the state, became the home of a fine collection of works of the French impressionists.’ The pioneering Bauhaus arts movement, which had farreaching consequences for design and architecture, was born. Reynolds saw progress all around. ‘Young men flocked to the universities of Germany, and many foreigners were attracted to them by the high reputation for learning of their professors… New writers were coming to the fore. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front took the country by storm.’139

  Reynolds took Arthur Collins, the playwright and stage manager of the Drury Lane theatre in London, to see the new Berlin opera house. Collins was suitably impressed. There were great advances in ballet, a passion for Reynolds since his time in Russia, as German and foreign groups toured the country. He met Cécile Sorel, a French comic actress, at a party given by Max Reinhardt, the Jewish director whose work would be banned under the Nazis. ‘The great thing in life is experiment,’ Sorel told Reynolds on one occasion. Reynolds later observed that the actress had ‘caught the spirit that animated the artistic life of Berlin’ during the Weimar years.140

  Reynolds was enjoying himself. In one report on the availability of food in Germany, he is diverted fr
om his serious theme by describing an evening of dancing spent with a friend named Jane. ‘We went to a great hall with people drinking at little tables, and we jostled against jolly young clerks and shop-girls to an excellent jazz-band.’141 In another article he describes an evening with Jane, the only person Reynolds ever wrote of in a romantic sense, in which she questioned him about German customs.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Jane, as the pair had coffee after dinner. ‘Do all Germans hold each other’s hands when they sup in a restaurant?’

  ‘All,’ Reynolds replied, seizing the chance. ‘It is a very beautiful German custom, and as we are being thoroughly German tonight–’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Jane replied sharply. Reynolds frowned.

  ‘Well, not until we’re in the taxi,’ she added.142

  His accounts of evenings spent with Jane are notable for being the only articles he ever wrote that referenced a girlfriend. He had a wide circle of friends throughout his life but never seems to have settled with a long-term partner. His private life remains a mystery and whether he preferred the company of women or men is unknown. He was a discreet and private individual. One thing is certain: the nightlife in Weimar Germany was vibrant and Reynolds, who turned fifty in 1922, had a full appetite for it. ‘In Berlin one big ball followed another. I once went to three in one night; a grand ball in the immense halls of the Zoological Gardens, a masquerade ball of artists and actors, and the Rhineland ball… Germany was no gloomy land in the years of restored prosperity.’143