THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

BY HINRICHSIEFKEN

O n 25 March 1939 the CmigrC journal Das Neue Tagebuch published, in Paris,
Thomas Mann’s essay Bruder Hitler. An English version, entitled That Man is My
Brother, appeared in Chicago in the magazine Esquire the same month. That
translation was accompanied by a political cartoon: a gigantic gathering of
Germans young and old, with faces betraying fear and adulation, surprise and
terror, looks past the reader up to a speaker who remains invisible. In the
distance one recognises huge swastika banners. The cartoonist Sharp alludes
to the Nuremberg rallies, but the crowd under the spell of the invisible orator
consists of civilians and not of formations of organised followers in uniform.
The subtitle of the English version was: ‘And if genius is madness tempered with
discretion, this sly sadist and plotter of revenge is a genius’. That is a fitting
summary of Mann’s argument (based on Mann’s own words).’ Thomas Mann
writes about Hitler in Nietzschean terms. He falls back on Nietzsche’s psychology
of the genius and on the philosopher’s aphorisms about the social psychology which
generates great men and their influence over others.
The cartoon and the subtitle emphasise the essential plot. Mann presents
National Socialist Germany as entirely under the spell of one man. The man
himself is never mentioned by name in the text (nor in the title even, at least
in its original form). Author and reader know what it is all about and understand
whose ‘fatales Seelenleben’ is being investigated. Mann’s own title for the essay
had been Ein Bruder. The title Bruder Hitler is an adaptation for which Leopold
Schwarzschild, the editor of Das Neue Tagebuch, was responsible.2 Mann’s own
disrespectful and condescending title was a refusal to pay homage. His text
speaks of Hitler only as ‘dieser Mensch’ and ‘seine trube Figur’, as ‘dieses
offentliche Vorkommnis’. It wishes to unmask in Hitler a tradition gone to the
dogs, the ‘Verhunzung des grossen Mannes’. Such a debasement is to Mann
symptomatic of his time: ‘unserer Zeit gelang es, so vieles zu verhunzen’.
Hitler is deprived of the aura of greatness. He is not exceptional; he is merely an
inferior manifestation of a familiar phenomenon. The strategy of unmasking by
reference to a psychological model is a strategy of aggressive irony. In it we
discover also a favourite theme of Mann the essayist and literary politician:
that the Third Reich has debased many a tine tradition and deprived it of its
human values.
* * *

Writing about Hitler in these terms Thomas Mann uses two Nietzschean models
which he deployed elsewhere in trying to understand the psychology, and the
influence over others, of Frederick the Great, Bismarck, Napoleon and Goethe.
These are the model of the psychology of the creative artist (and the resulting
cult) and the model of the power and effect of the great man. Thomas Mann’s
image of Goethe in Lotte in Weimar, which was being created in 1938 as a great
166 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

example for our time, stems from the same basic assumptions which lead Mann
to attack Hitler.’
Nietzsche had written in Menschliches, Allzurnenschliches:

Die Menschen verkehren mit ihren Fursten vielfach in ahnlicher Weise wie
mit ihrem Gotte . . , Diese fast unheimliche Stimmung von Verehrung
und Angst und Scham war und ist vie1 schwacher geworden, aber mitunter
lodert sie auf und heftet sich an machtige Personen uberhaupt. Der
Kultus des Genius ist ein Nachklang dieser Gotter-Fursten-Verehrung.
Uberall, wo man sich bestrebt, einzelne Menschen in das Ubermenschliche
hinaufzuheben, entsteht auch die Neigung, ganze Schichten des Volkes
sich roher und niedriger vorzustellen, als sie wirklich ~ i n d . ~

Nietzsche saw clearly the connection between the cult of the creative genius
and the dangerous self-humiliation of large groups of people who are willing to
see themselves as less equal than others. That in turn will lead to the worship
of the ‘grosse Mann der Masse’,j whose power derives from the projection by
subjugated individuals of their egotistic wish for power onto the great man.
The consequences of this cult are potentially devastating both for the great
human individual and for the mass that worship him:

Es ist jedenfalls ein gefahrliches Anzeichen, . . . wenn der Opferduft,

welchen man billigerweise allein einem Gotte bringt, dem Genie ins Hirn
dringt, so dass er zu schwanken und sich fur etwas Ubermenschliches
zu halten beginnt. Die langsamen Folgen sind: das Gefuhl der Unver-
antwortlichkeit, der exzeptionellen Rechte, der Glaube, schon durch
seinen Umgang zu begnadigen, wahnsinnige Wut bei dem Versuche, ihn
mit anderen zu vergleichen oder gar ihn niedriger zu taxieren und das
Verfehlte seines Werkes ins Licht zu setzen. . . . Fur grosse Geister selbst
ist es also wahrscheinlich nutzlicher, wenn sie uber ihre Kraft und deren
Herkunft zur Einsicht kommen, wenn sie also begreifen, welche rein
menschlichen Eigenschaften in ihnen zusammengeflossen sind, welche
Glucksumstande hinzutraten: also einmal anhaltende Energie, entschlossene
Hinwendung zu einzelnen Zielen, grosser personlicher Mut, sodann das
Gluck einer Erziehung, welche die besten Lehrer, Vorbilder, Methoden
fruhzeitig darbot. Freilich, wenn ihr Ziel ist, die grosstmogliche Wirkung
zu machen, so hat die UnMarheit uber sich selbst und jene Beigabe eines
halben Wahnsinns immer vie1 getan; denn bewundert und beneidet hat
man zu allen Zeiten gerade jene Kraft an ihnen, vermoge deren sie die
Menschen willenlos machen und zum Wahne fortreissen, dass iibematurliche
Fuhrer uber ihnen her gingen. J a , es erhebt und begeistert die Menschen,
jemanden im Besitz Ubernaturlicher Krafte zu glauben: insofern hat der
Wahnsinn, wie Plato sagt, die grossten Segnungen uber die Menschen
gebracht.6
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 167

Nietzsche points out how easily the great individual is spoilt and becomes a
tyrant because others treat him as if he were more equal than others. Mann
shows us this danger also in his Goethe in Lotte in Weimar. To counteract the
danger great insight, strength of character and a powerful intelligence are
necessary. Only the proper understanding of his role will protect the great
individual against the destructive tendencies of this situation. Mann’s Goethe
has the redeeming qualities. Nietzsche also knows that the assumed role of more
than human, of supernatural, powers will be played more effectively, will
convince others more easily, if the psychological model of role-playing and
interaction is not understood and carefully kept obscured. The enthusiastic and
rousing belief in ‘great’ leaders will be interfered with if there is any awareness
of the mechanism at work. Therefore any attempt to compare such a person
to other mortals will result in mad fury. That, however, is exactly what Thomas
Mann is doing. His polemical and ironic attempt to compare himself with Hitler,
to compare Hitler to others, is a way of looking behind the facade in order
to further our understanding and to increase our awareness.

* * *

How essential this purpose became to Thomas Mann can be shown if we

compare the published form of the essay with its earlier version of April 1938.
It still exists as a typescript (Yale University Library) with the harmless title
T~gebwh-Blatter.~ It had originally been intended for publication, but Mann
realised quickly that it was ‘unverwendbar’ in that form.* Nevertheless he could
not let go of it. His diaries show that he read it to friends and discussed it with
them on a number of occasions in July 1938-but he also sent a telegram to
his American agent to prevent its publication in that imperfect form.g He knew
by then what was wrong with it. On 7 July he had noted, after a conversation
about it with Erich von Kahler: ‘Las bei mir die “Tagebuchbliitter” aus Beverly
Hills vor. Eindruck des halb Gegluckten; Grunde im Gegenstand. Kernteil,
Hitler als Kunstler oder Gegenkunstler, Antichrist ware gesondert auszu-
fuhren’. l o A comparison of the two versions proves that Mann later followed this
suggestion. He sacrificed nearly half the original version, six of fourteen pages,
to focus more sharply on the theme of Hitler the ostensible artist. As a result
the title changed too. The Tagebuch-Blatter become Ein Bruder, an idea first
documented on 1 August 1938.” The actual revision of the essay was finally
achieved on 3 and 4 September and Mann read it to his family the following
day. Heinrich Mann and Therese Giehse were also present. The essay was now
intended for the volume Achtung, Europa! and Mann wrote in his diary that
night: ‘Fur den Band akklamiert. Vorlesung des Schlusses von Henri IV durch
Heinrich’.I2In fact, the essay could not be included in that volume.
If we read the opening passages of the original version we are struck by the
reflective, pensive mood which tends to appear rather self-indulgent. However,
we soon hear a tone of aggressive irony and polemical rhetoric which is the one
which asserts itself in the final version. The original read:
168 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

Tagebuchblatter
Anfang April April 1938, Berverly Hills (sic), Californien.
Es ist gut, wieder zu schreiben, die introvertierte Lebensform literarischer
Sammlung wieder zu kosten nach tumultuosen, uberfullten Wochen einer
ganz nach aussen gerichreten Anspannung und Aktivitat, . . . Wochen,
die vie1 von der dankbaren Heiterkeit eines Erntefestes hatten haben
konnen, wenn sie nicht von den grauenvollen Ereignissen der heimatlichen
Ferne so tief beschattet gewesen waren.
Nun hat eine Art Ruhestand, ein vorlaufiges Gleichmass der Lage sich
hergestellt; ein Tisch ist aufgeschlagen, eine Arbeitsstatte bereitet,-wieder
einmal-zum wievielten Mal? Wie oft schon haben diese Schauplatze eines
ernsten Spieles, des heiteren Kampfes gegen die Verganglichkeit,
gewechselt seit den Schulerstuben, wo erstes Leid und Gluck sich in der
Ordnung des Wortes zu kuhlen suchte? . . . Die Statte meines gegen-
wartigen Bleibens und Schreibens scheint excentrisch. Ein Himmel uberhellen
Lichtes, unter dern Palmenfacher schaukeln, strahlt durch die Jalousieen
herein; Orangenbaume duften . . . Aber ich fuhle wenig Neigung, dem
Unvermuteten, der Ausgefallenheit meiner Situation nachzuhangen . . .
Was verschlagt es, dass ich ‘weit weg’ bin? Weit weg wovon? Etwa von
mir? Unser Zentrum ist in uns. Ich habe die Fluchtigkeit ausserer
Sesshaftigkeit erfahren. Wo wir sind, sind wir ‘bei uns’. Was ist Heimatlo-
sigkeit? In den Arbeiten, die ich mit mir fuhre, ist meine Heimat. Vertieft
in sie, erfahre ich alle Traulichkeit des zuhause Seins. Sie sind Sprache,
deutsche Sprache und Gedankenform, personlich entwickeltes Ueber-
lieferungsgut meines Landes und Volkes. Wo ich bin, ist Deutschland.
Das Verhaltnis des individuellen Schicksals zum allgemeinen, wie sie
einander uberschneiden, jenes sich in diesem bewahrt, indem es vom
Charakter der Epoche zwar alteriert wird, aber die eigene Grundfarbung,
das Gesetz seines privaten Sternenstandes gegen ihn durchsetzt; wie also
das Typisch-Personliche sich dem Zeitlich-Typischen bequemt und
zugleich die eigene Einheit dagegen behauptet,-das gehort zu den
merkwurdig-anziehendsten Lebensratseln.

Is this indulgent tone not a little irritating? I seem to hear an unwitting parody
of Professor Kuckuck. Some of it may be mere literature in the sense that we are
conscious of an attempt to stylise into generalisations what is personal though
it claims representative importance: the writer’s task is ‘Gluck und Leid . . .
in der Ordnung des Wortes zu kuhlen’, is ‘heiterer Kampf gegen die Vergang-
lichkeit’ and ‘das Gesetz seines privaten Sternenstandes gegen [den Charakter der
Epochel durchzusetzen’. Thomas Mann later decided to omit it.
There followed a longwinded reflection, ‘dass die Geringschatzung der
Geschichte, der man gerade bei deutschen Geistern, wie Goethe und Schopenhauer
begegnet, heute eine eindrucksvolle Bestatigung erfahrt’. Mann interprets
the will of National Socialism to make history, ‘uber Weh und Wohl des
Einzelnen dunkelhaft erhabene . . . heroisch-politische (Geschichte)’, as proof
that he had been right in 1918 when he ‘in dem Buche “Betrachtungen eines
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 169

Unpolitischen” der Politisierung Deutschlands so verzweifelt-eidenschaftlich

widerstand’. To Mann the false emphasis on politics and totalitarian power is
misguided, ‘anachronistische Geschichtemacherei’ and ‘politisches Amoklaufertum
Deutschlands’ at a time when the ‘demokratischen Staaten Europas’ breathe
‘eine “richtigere” Zeitluft’. In other words Mann argues that ‘Deutschland die
ihm verhangte mythische Charakter-Rolle auch heute durchfuhrt: die Rolle
ewiger Halsstarrigkeit gegen den mittelmeerlandischen Universalismus, die
“Civilisation”, die “Demokratie”, denen es von jeher mit seinen “Volks-
bewegungen” protestierend begegnet’. What happened in the Teutoburg Forest,
then during the Reformation, in the Wars of Liberation and in 1914 is repeated
one more time in ‘moderner Erscheinungsform, deren Wustheit und kulturelle
Niedertracht freilich alles Dagewesene weit in den Schatten stellt’: a so-called
German movement fights European morality. Thus ‘Goethes eisige Verein-
samung’ of 1813 is the example Mann wants to follow, is for him ‘mythische
Vorschrift’, because his ‘tief vergramtes Nein zu all der volkischen Trunkenheit
rings um ihn her’ was similarly directed at the ‘ganzlich kulturwidrigen
Gemiitszustand des deutschen Volkes’.
The links between the essay and Lotte in Weirnar are very close here. The
essayist argues what ‘Adeles Erzahlung’ turned to fictional use. Yet one cannot
help feeling that in the essay Mann’s favourite notion of mythical roles and
conscious imitation of great models has a frightening tendency to turn history
into something nebulous and fictitious, particularly since Mann also returns to the
concept of a national character which he had rightly abandoned in earlier
essay^.'^
The final version of Mann’s essay avoids these problems too. He concentrates
on the character Hitler and his effect on Germany and Europe. The bitter
ironic view of Hitler as a brother artist of sorts (which was there in the later
parts of the Tagebuch-Hatter and could be used almost verbatim) comes into its
own in Bruder Hitkr.

* * *

It is an extraordinary text. Even if we remember that Thomas Mann had

confessed in 1905, when planning a novel about Frederick the Great, ‘das
Bruderproblem reizt mich immer’, we are stunned by the technique of honouring
Hitler of all people with the title of brother. In 1905 Mann had explained that
what he was after was the ‘Helden menschlich-allzumenschlich darstellen, mit
Skepsis, mit Gehhsigkeit, mit psychologischem Radicalismus und dennoch positiv,
lyrisch, aus eigenem Erleben’.’* His technique in 1938 is largely the same,
although admittedly he introduces Hitler as ‘einen etwas unangenehmen und
beschamenden Bruder’ and ‘eine reichlich peinliche Verwandtschaft’ .
We ought to remind ourselves that throughout his life Mann approached the
subject matter of his work, in his essays as much as in his fiction, in the light of
 ~ ~ _ _ ~~ ~~

170 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

personal experience. Much of his life was in some way or other transposed
into fiction. He saw the great historical characters which fascinated him in the
light of his own experiences. Frederick the Great, Schiller, Erasmus and Goethe
are some of the better-known examples. This technique was not always understood
or liked. As early as 1906 Mann was forced to explain it publicly. Buddenbrooks
seemed brimful of details from the life of his own family in Lubeck and lists
circulated there which gave the real names of the people Mann was supposed
to have used rather indiscreetly as models. The author, in a brilliant piece
called Bilse und ich, argued in his defence that he had not written a roman-b-clef.
He had made all that material his own and was, in the final analysis, only
writing about himself. ‘Nicht von euch ist die Rede’, so he informed his Lubeck
public, ‘sondern von mir, von mir’ (X,22). The interpretation of the material,
its transposition, the artistic use made of it with bitter-sweet insights and
brilliantly sparkling formulations, remained entirely his own. He also liked to think
that his interpretation, personal as it was, had general validity and expressed
the view of many.’j More than thirty years later, in exile, Mann still felt that
he was expressing his very personal view-for Germany: ‘Wo ich bin, ist
Deutschland’ .

The essay Bruder Hiller opens abruptly:

Ohne die entsetzlichen Opfer, welche unausgesetzt dem fatalen Seelenleben

dieses Menschen fallen, ohne die umfassenden moralischen Verwiistungen,
die davon ausgehen, fiele es leichter, zu gestehen, dass man sein Lebens-
phanomen fesselnd findet.

In three sentences Mann sketches the problem as he sees it. A dismal figure is
playing the part of the conquering hero while a spellbound Europe looks on and
does nothing. The price for this spectacle, paid in human misery and moral
corruption, is such that it might discredit the essayist to admit that the fascination
of this figure affects him too. Mann’s argument is complex. He is partly
objective, detached and critical, partly involved and subjective but of an analytical
disposition. He recognizes the scenario and as a moralist objects to its abuse.
At the same time he is intensely interested in the psychology of it. He is
struggling with the moral complexity of a situation in which he abhors what he
understands but is curious enough to investigate further. Such curiosity appears
as a potential lack of effective opposition, just as it had done in Mann’s story of
1930 Mario und der Zauberer.
Mann has intentionally chosen this contradictory attitude, in which hate
and fascination merge, as his starting point. He prefers the interest which leads to
insight to ‘grosse Affekte’ and pleads for a more detached attitude, for ‘Freiheit’
and ‘ungebundene Anschauung’, for ‘Ironie’ rather than hate. Again one feels
that Nietzsche is his inspiration here, who in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches had
written very similar things about ‘Die Lust am Erkennen’ and the ‘Zunahme des
Interessanten’.I6Mann argues:
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 171

Es ist mit dem Interesse ein selbstdisziplinierter Trieb, es sind humoristisch-

asketische Ansatze zum Wiedererkennen, zur Identifikation, zum
Solidaritatsbekenntnis verbunden, die ich dem Hass als moralisch
uberlegen empfinde.

The sarcastic revaluation of Hitler which denies itself the grand gestures begins:
not hatred but interest, not the terrible simplifications of imagined moral
superiority emotionally expressed but the cool and detached look of the moralist
who is willing to start from a basis of empathy and identification with his object so
that he may proceed the more effectively to an analysis which will reveal that this
object is, in fact, an inferior variant of a behavioural pattern which is both
typical and personally familiar to the author.
The essay continues: ‘Dieser Bursche ist eine Katastrophe; das ist kein Grund,
ihn als Charakter und Schicksal nicht interessant zu finden’. This sentence later
caused Mann’s publisher Bermann Fischer concern, but Mann defended it with
the argument that it had ‘rein stilistisch . . . in seiner Geradheit den Wert
einer Erfrischung bei sonst vielfacher Kompliziertheit’ . l 7 It launches Mann’s
analysis of the social psychology of Hitler’s popularity. Looking back over the
history of this ‘fatales Seelenleben’ he points to the striking parallel between the
‘tief schwarende Rachsucht des Untauglichen, Unmoglichen, zehnfach
Gescheiterten, des extrem faulen, zu keiner Arbeit fahigen Dauer-Asylisten und
abgewiesenen Viertelskunstlers’ and ‘den (vie1 weniger berechtigten) Minder-
wertigkeitsgefuhlen eines geschlagenen Volkes . . . welches mit seiner Niederlage
nichts anzufangen weiss und nur auf die Wiederherstellung seiner “Ehre”
sinnt’. This is the situation Hitler can exploit for his own ends. With the help
of his base but effective form of rhetoric he uses the nation’s inferiority complex
for his rise to power so that he can take his personal revenge on the world
which had earlier denied him recognition. Mann’s psychological interpretation
reduces an apparently impressive phenomenon to a text-book example of
compensation by revenge. It explains how Hitler can make the

nationale Gemutsleiden das Vehikel seiner Grosse, seines Aufstiegs zu

traumhaften Hohen, zu unumschrankter Macht . . .-zu solcher Glorie
und schrecklichen Heiligkeit, dass jeder, der sich fruher einmal an dem
Geringen . . . versundigt, ein Kind des Todes, und zw’ar eines moglichst
scheusslichen, erniedrigenden Todes, ein Kind der Holle ist.

The hysterical actor of national honour can only become a success because his
performance dupes others and turns him into what Nietzsche in Menschliches,
Allzumenschliches had called the ‘grosser Mann der Masse’ . Nietzsche had
observed:

Das Rezept zu dem, was die Masse einen grossen Mann nennt, ist leicht
gegeben. Unter allen Umstanden verschaffe man ihr etwas, was ihr sehr
angenehm ist, oder setze ihr erst in den Kopf, dass dies und jenes sehr
angenehm ware, und gebe es ihr dann. Doch um keinen Preis sofort:
172 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

sondern man erkampfe es mit grosster Anstrengung oder scheine es zu

erkampfen. Die Masse muss den Eindruck haben, dass eine machtige, j a
unbezwingliche Willenskraft da sei; mindestens muss sie da zu sein scheinen.
Den starken Willen bewundert jedermann, weil niemand ihn hat und
jedermann sich sagt, dass, wenn er ihn hatte, es fur ihn und seinen
Egoismus keine Grenze mehr gabe. Zeigt sich nun, dass ein solch starker
Wille etwas der Masse sehr Angenehmes bewirkt, statt auf die Wiinsche
seiner Begehrlichkeit zu horen, so bewundert man noch einmal und
wunscht sich selber Gliick. Im iibrigen habe er alle Eigenschaften der
Masse: um so weniger schamt sie sich vor ihm, um so mehr ist er popular.
Also: er sei gewalttatig, neidisch, ausbeuterisch, intrigant, schmeich-
lerisch, kriechend, aufgeblasen, j e nach Umstanden alles.

Hitler’s power is the result of his popularity which in turn is the product of the
heroic role skilfully adopted and carefully manipulated. Worshipping their idol
the people create the tyrant he thus becomes. Heinrich Mann had, in Der
Untotun, shown a similar mechanism at work in Imperial Germany. Thomas Mann
wonders-and he is writing before Munich and before the invasion of Czecho-
slovakia which then seemed to confirm his analysis-where Hitler’s progress
will end as he ‘im Begriffe scheine, sich Europa, Gott weiss es, vielleicht die
Welt zu unterwerfen’. The influence of his methods already reaches beyond
Germany as he has learnt to exploit the anxieties of the nations of Europe,
particularly their fear of war.
* * *

So far Mann’s essay tried to explain Hitler’s rise to power in its frightful
logic and apparent inevitability by analysing its psychological mechanism. Mann
had tempered his ironic admiration of the phenomenon with reductive critical
psychology. He now proceeds to reduce it further: what is unique about it is
only its scale. Once we recognise the model the case loses its aura: ‘das alles ist
durchaus einmalig, dern Massstabe nach neu und eindrucksvoll’ . Mann’s interest
in mythology has the same purpose as his use of psychology: we recognize familiar
patterns. Hitler’s rise is essentially a fairly-tale debased and distorted. It uses the
substitution of cheap fiction for fact, make-believe, an imitation of Wagnerian
opera. It is a version of the story of poor Jack who in the end married the princess
and was given the whole kingdom,lg of the ugly duckling which grew into a
beautiful swan, of Sleeping Beauty (Briinhilde’s wall of fire has turned into a
rose-hedge) smiling under the kiss of Siegfried, the hero, who woke her.
‘ “Deutschland erwache!” ’ All this is awful, Mann concedes, but it seems to
fit. It is a mixture of ‘Volksgemiit’ and scandalous pathological features. The
essayist wants to demonstrate that these characteristics are deployed as a faCade
which hides the ugly reality of the struggle for power behind pseudo-mythical
make-believe. Having thus used Nietzschean concepts effectively to demythologise
Hitler Thomas Mann turns his attention from Hitler the event in history to
Hitler the character.
~~~~ ~~~

THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 173

In doing so he uses Nietzsche’s concept of the artist and genius and he will
eventually judge the ‘Viertelskunstler’ Hitler by the standards of what genuinely
human art and a truly great individual ought to be. Hitler is not only not above
comparison, he is in fact below the standard we must expect. To make this point
Mann has to withdraw even further from the real historical situation-and he
had largely ignored the economic and political aspects of his theme from the
beginning.*O
Mann is struck by the similarity between Hitler’s early years and the life
of bohemian artists struggling for recognition. We could add that some modern
biographers of Hitler, notably J. C. Fest, have come to similar conclusions.*’
Mann writes:

Es ist, auf eine gewisse beschamende Weise, alles da: die ‘Schwierigkeit’,
Faulheit und khgliche Undefinierbarkeit der Fruhe, das Nichtunter-
zubringensein, das Was-willst-du-nun-eigentlich?, das halb blode Hinvege-
tieren in tiefster sozialer und ethischer Boheme, das im Grunde hochmutige,
im Grunde such fur zu gut haltende Abweisen jeder vernunftigen und
ehrenwerten Tatigkeit-auf Grund wovon?

He continues to list similarities, among them the urge to take one’s revenge on
the world. The only difference he can detect between Hitler and the artist as
outsider is again one of scale only. In politics everything is bigger, louder, more
monumental: it involves millions. But reduced to its essentials the case is the
same. The heroic Siegried is a little man with an inferiority complex lusting for
revenge. The impressive external circumstances are ephemeral trappings (for the
psychologist and moralist), ‘deren aussere Grossartigkeit gar nichts fur die
Ausserordentlichkeit des seelisches Falles beweist, fur das eigene Format dieses
effektreichen Hysterikers’. Like all such characters he needs visible signs of
impressing the world. The feeling of inferiority is the motor which drives them
into further aggressive self-assertion so that the world may applaud-a model,
incidentally, which Gunter Grass has used with great effect in the bitter story of
‘der grosse Mahlke’ growing up in the Third Reich, in Katz undrtlaus. 22
This is the character whom Mann calls a brother. That may be painful, but
it is better to recognise yourself even in this base version of an artist, even
though, in so doing, you may run the ‘moralische Gefahr . . . , das Neinsagen zu
verlernen’ . For Mann morality cannot mean suppressing and censoring
unpalatable facts. To expect from a writer the public propagation of moral values
is too crude. It will result in poor art, in this case in an inferior essay. We must
not, Mann insists, deprive the artist of his freedom to do justice to the com-
plexity of reality by forcing him to simplify and pervert the issues. Morality
implies a commitment to the complexity of the truth-and that is the one, and
essential, quality the artist Hitler lacks. In the first version of the essay the
author had signalled that by saying that being an artist ‘in segensreicheren
Fallen Anderes, Reineres, Edleres, menschlich Fordernderes in sich schliesst,
Impulse, von denen das hier beobachtete Individuum sich nicht einmal etwas
traurnen Iasst, zum Beispiel, nur als Beispiel genannt, den Drang nach
174 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

Wahrheit’. This one quality marks the difference, despite all apparent similarities,
between Hitler and other artists. But for the moment the similarity is more
important to Mann’s argument: to recognise oneself in Hitler would be an act
of liberation, would break the spell and lead to ‘Erkenntnis, Aufklarung,
Analyse’ . Critical insight can restore their individuality to potential victims of
mass psychology as they learn to understand and recognise ‘Wirkung, Geschehen,
eindrucksvollste Projektion des Unbewussten in die Realitat’.
For Mann the proper function of art is ‘Mittlertum zwischen Geist und Leben’.
Translated into a human attitude (and Mann’s ideal is Goethe) that would
mean striking the delicate balance between the contradictory and conflicting
claims of conscious insight and spontaneous feeling, between transcending the
limitations of a given situation and the indolent acceptance of the imperfect
stage reached. What matters is the tempering of the irrational and selfish drives
of animal man with the civilising and socialising forces of enlightened respect for
others. Human values have to be asserted both against the perfectionist doctrines
of uncompromising positions of intellectual perfectionism which make no
allowances for human frailty and against the barbarity and bestiality which cynically
justifies its cruelty and lack of compassion by reference to the laws of nature. A
mediation, a marriage of the opposing forces is necessary. Let the light of reason
burn brightly, but respect also the healing and rejuvenating powers of the
elementary forces in life and nature. How precarious this position is can be
illustrated with a passage from Thomas Mann’s speech of 1931 about the
Wiedergeburt der Anstandigkeil in which he compared his task as a public figure
to that of a man trying to keep a boat on a n even keel. If it lists too much in one of
those two directions, instinct or reason, he will put the weight of his argument
on the opposite side-whichever that happens to be (XII,653). In 1938 Mann
inveighs against the cult of barbaric primitiveness to which the whole of Europe
seems willing to fall prey. National Socialism is ‘Primitivismus in seiner
frechen Selbstverherrlichung gegen Zeit und Gesittungsstufe’, a ‘dreister und
liigenhafter Ruckfall’. However much M a n n had argued that the writer had
to be the ironic partisan of life (and he had done so particularly in the Betrachtungen
eines Unpolitischen of 1918), he cannot tolerate the anachronistic cult of blood
and soil which ignores the most basic principles of human decency. Mann uses the
Old Testament terms ‘Greuel’ and ‘Narrheit’ for such abomination.
Mann had so far assumed that his reader would be sufficiently familiar with
his work to recognise those features in the analysis of Hitler’s make-up which
are also to be found in Mann’s life and work. Such a reader would know the
figure of the misfit and outsider with a guilty conscience who, intellectually
and also in his work, takes his revenge on the world to which he would like to
belong, and who even finds sometimes that the world applauds such efforts. This
figure is almost an archetypal one, particularly in Mann’s early period. It was to
return later in the novel Doktor Faustus of 1947 which goes back to an idea dating
from 1905. Mann’s unpublished notebooks from the turn of the century reveal
how much personal experience went into the creation of such figures. T h e author
knows what he is talking about.23Personal experience is meant to lend his analysis,
and rejection, of Hitler its credibility.
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 175

T o help the reader realise this in its significance the essayist illustrates explicitly
now, as he had done in the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (XII,96; 516f.), that
in the play Fiorenza of 1905 and the story Tod in Venedig of 1912 he had toyed
with the idea of a conscious rejection of psychological sophistication-with tragic
consequences for the character involved in the second experiment:

Ich war nicht ohne Kontakt mit den Hangen und Ambitionen der Zeit, mit
dem, was kommen wollte und sollte, rnit Strebungen, die zwanzig Jahre
spater zum Geschrei der Gasse wurden. Wer wundert sich, dass ich
nichts mehr von ihnen wissen wollte, als sie auf den politischen Hund
gekommen waren und sich auf einem Niveau austobten, vor dem nur
primitivitatsverliebte Professoren [like Mann’s former friend Ernst Bertram]
und literarische Lakaien der Geistfeindlichkeit nicht zuruckschrecken?
Es ist ein Treiben, das einem die Ehrfurcht vor den Quellen des Lebens
verleiden konnte. Man muss es hassen. Aber was ist dieser Hass gegen
denjenigen, den der Exzedent des Unbewussten dem Geist und der
Erkenntnis entgegenbringt! Wie muss ein Mensch wie dieser die Analyse
hassen! Ich habe den stillen Verdacht, dass die Wut, rnit der er den
Marsch auf eine gewisse Hauptstadt betrieb, im Grunde dem alten
Analytiker galt, der dort seinen Sitz hatte, seinem wahren und eigent-
lichen Feinde,-dem Philosophen und Entlarver der Neurose, dem
grossen Ernuchterer, dem Bescheidwisser und Bescheidgeber selbst
uber das ‘Genie’.

In one great sweep Thomas Mann has moved from some links between his early
work and the trends which later favoured National Socialism, via his own rejection
of those ideas and their vulgarisation by German academics, to the enmity
between reason and the powers of unreason. The bitter climax is reached when
the march on Vienna is interpreted as a march on Freud who knows rather
too much about the neuroses which sometimes also constitute genius. Mann is
defending the power of sobering insight and critical thought-everything he had
learnt from Nietzsche and later from Freud. We remember that Mann had
publicly honoured Freud in Munich in 1929 with a lecture given to the club of
democratic students on Freud’s role in the history of modern thought, Die
Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte(X, 256-280). He had also delivered a
‘Festrede’ in Vienna in 1936 on the occasion of Freud’s eightieth birthday,
entitled Freud und die Zukunft (IX, 478-501). Both lectures had been published in
psychoanalytical journals. We know that in 1938 Mann defended Freud after
academics and students had collaborated in the burning of his books, and of the
periodical Imago of his school, with slogans about the nobility of the German soul
which had to be protected against the corrosive influence of intelligent analysis.*‘
Thomas Mann uses what Nietzsche and Freud had taught him about the
genius. He is willing to apply the term to Hitler-sarcastically as faint praise:

Wenn Verriicktheit zusammen rnit Besonnenheit Genie ist (und das zst
eine Definition), so ist der Mann ein Genie. Um so freimutiger versteht
176 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

man sich zu dem Anerkenntnis, weil Genie eine Kategorie, aber keine
Klasse, keinen Rang bezeichnet.

Mann is familiar with the pathology of great men; Theilhaber’s book on Goethe
had been another important source of such i n f ~ r m a t i o n . ’I~n a sense he is quite
serious when he claims that madness tempered with reason is genius. But within
that category entirely different degrees of human achievement are possible.
Goethe was the rare example of a genius who in a life-long struggle with himself
had achieved that essential human quality of his life and work which encompassed
an awareness of his own destructive tendencies. There is the difference. Hitler
lacks the human standing, the ‘Rang’, which Goethe possessed. His case is one of
‘Verhunzung’ and now M a n n does not mince his words. Hitler is a ‘grosser
Feigling und Erpressungspazifist’, ‘trister Faulpelz, tatsachlicher Nichtskonner und
“Traumer” funften Ranges’, ’duckmauserischer Sadist’ and ‘ehrloser Rach-
suchtiger mit “Gemut” ’. Yet the author sees n o reason why one should dismiss
the concept of genius altogether. Mankind may have had a lot to put u p with from
its great men, but in transcending the limitations of mang6the best of them have
made us shudder with bliss. To drive the point home M a n n launches into a
comparison between Hitler and Napoleon, illustrating that Hitler represents a
debased form of genius:

Ich sprach von europaischer Verhunzung: Und wirklich, unserer Zeit

gelang es, so vieles zu verhunzen: Das Nationale, den Sozialismus-den
Mythos, die Lebensphilosophie, das Irrationale, den Glauben, die Jugend,
die Revolution und was nicht noch alles. Nun denn, sie brachte uns auch
die Verhunzung des grossen Mannes.

M a n n suggests that Hitler, the great coward, would be finished on the first
day of war. It is easy with hindsight to pick on this flaw in Mann’s vituperative
rhetoric but, despite this real weakness, within its own limitations his analysis
remains impressive, stressing as it does the reactionary and irrational nature of
Hider’s appeal. We must also accept Mann’s analysis of the background: the
distortion and debasement of traditions and traditional values.
Mann takes the word National Socialism as a supreme example of such
distortion. Nationalism, once a valuable revolutionary attitude but now outmoded
in an era which cries out for cosmopolitan cooperation (as M a n n had stressed
increasingly since 1922), has here assumed the arrogance of a racial doctrine
which rejects as un-German everything it despises in German history and culture.
Socialism has similarly been made a mockery of. Let us remind ourselves what
socialism meant to Thomas Mann. H e wrote a Bekenntnis rum Sozialismus for a
demonstration of the socialist Kulturbund in Berlin. T h e demonstration never
took place. Hitler came to power. Mann’s text was, however, read in his absence
at the congress ‘Das freie Wort’ in Berlin on 19 February 1933. (Mann was
in Paris, where on the same day his brother Heinrich arrived from Germany to
escape from National Sociali~m.)~’ To M a n n socialism meant
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER 177

nichts anderes als der pflichtmassige Entschluss, den Kopf nicht mehr
vor den dringendsten Anforderungen der Materie, des gesellschaftlichen
Lebens in den Sand der himmlischen Dinge zu stecken, sondern sich auf
die Seite derer zu schlagen, die der Erde einen Sinn geben wollen, einen
Menschensinn. (XII, 681)28

He could find none of that in National Socialism.

The quotation proves how strongly and personally felt Mann’s general point
about the debasement of traditions, respectable in themselves and personally
dear to him, really is. The same could be said of the concept of myth. Mann’s
interpretation of it sustained the serene and touching retelling of the biblical story
of Jacob and Joseph in the four novels of the Joseph cycle which was still in-
complete in 1938. The new myth-makers had discredited the word myth in
their own brand of Aryan myths of the twentieth century. In the same way
the National Socialists usurped and misrepresented the philosophy of Nietzsche
and the music of Wagner, the two formative influences of Mann’s early years.
Mann’s attempt to correct their image of Wagner publicly in Munich in 1933
had, after a slight delay, led to an official protest by the ‘Richard-Wagner-
Stadt Miinchen’. That was one of the factors that had finally persuaded Mann
that the Germany which could no longer tolerate the views expressed in his essay
Leiden und Grosse Richard Wagners would not tolerate him.2gHe had found himself
in involuntary exile. The denunciation of Hitler contained in the aggressive
polemic of the later parts of Bruder Hitler forces Mann to abandon the strategy of
ironic solidarity with this ‘brother’, which had served him well to establish his
credibility as a critic:

die Solidaritat, das Wiedererkennen sind Ausdruck einer Selbstverachtung

der Kunst, welche denn doch zuletzt nicht ganz beim Worte genommen
sein mochte.

The essay ends not with an attack on Hitler but with another invocation of
Mann’s great theme: the true purpose of art. Art has the human task of
reconciling the desires of instinct with the claims of reason: Such a reconcilia-
tion should result in the serenity of apparently effortless perfection and harmony
which bears little sign of the very real human effort and struggle which created
it. Such art would not be ‘schwarze Magie und hirnlose unverantwortliche
Instinktgeburt’ but ‘Licht und Geist’, ‘hellerer Zauber’: ‘Mittlertum zwischen
Geist und Leben’. It is an epitome of human civilisation. There will be no
attempt ever to transcend the limitations of man, continually re-imposed by
ignorance, prejudice and self-interest, towards a more human society, unless man
fights for it. To recognise this need for the guiding light of reason is in itself a
spiritual quality.
* * *
178 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HITLER

It is relatively easy to agree with Thomas Mann here. It may be too easy for us.
We must not forget the political context and should compare Mann’s critical
analysis and faint praise of brother Hitler with the official picture of the Fuhrer
if we want to recapture a little more of the historic quality of Mann’s text.
Let me quote Hermann G ~ e r i n g ,writing
~” for an English public:

But when the need was greatest God gave the German people a champion,
an unknown soldier of the World War, a man from the people, without rank
or possessions or connections, a plain, simple man, but one who had over-
whelming genius and greatness of character . , . as the herald of German
freedom and justice [he] passed through all Germany, appealing, stirring up
the people and inflaming their hearts like the incarnation of the German
conscience itself. . . The struggle for the new Germany could not be
carried on in the name of Nationalism only; it was just as imperative
that German Socialism should be represented. . . . O u r battle-cry-
‘Germany awake!’-had stirred up the stragglers . . . The world held its
breath and listened . . . We National Socialists believe . . . that for us the
Leader is in all political and other matters concerning the national and
social interests of the people simply infallible . . . it is something mystical,
inexpressible, almost incomprehensible which this unique man possesses,
and he who cannot feel it instinctively will not be able to grasp it at all. For
we love Adolf Hitler, because we believe deeply and unswervingly that
God has sent him to us to save Germany . . . His unique personal charm
holds everyone in its spell. . . . And thus it is all over Germany; wherever
the Leader goes there is rejoicing, gigantic crowds; all want to be where
he is, to see the Leader. One sees their eyes shine, particularly those of
youth; one sees in their boundless gratitude crowds of men and women reach
a state bordering on ecstasy.

In idolatrous accounts like this one we recognise the features Mann had picked
on: the fairy-tale of the simple man of the people who became the God-sent
saviour, the conquering hero and Prince Charming who wakes Germany, the
sleeping beauty; the misuse of national as well as socialist traditions; the entirely
irrational nature of the pseudo-mystical cult of the infallible Leader; the masses
spellbound by the genius (who knows how to make his carefully stage-managed
appeal to their emotions). Those who cannot feel it instinctively cannot be true
Germans.j’ Entirely lacking in such a characterisation are the critical look and the
detached analysis which use reason to control and to question, to judge and to
unmask. The features listed by Mann and Goering are similar; the meaning given
to them is entirely different. The topicality of Mann’s essay of 1938 futes it firmly in
history. His critical perspective has given it, within its own restrictions, a lasting
validity.
If it strikes us as far fetched that Mann should call Hitler an artist of sorts,
we ought to remember that Hitler’s burning ambition to become a painter
was part of the official legend. He himself had written: ‘eines Tages war es
mir klar, dass ich Maler werden wiirde, Kunstmaler’.’I Later he took a keen
 THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY BRUDER HfTLER 179

personal interest in the ideological battle for truly German art. He opened in
Munich in July 1937 the two contrasting exhibitions of un-German art
(‘entartete Kunst’) and of officially sanctioned German art (‘Deutsche Kunst’).
He had great plans for Berlin and Linz as art centres. His table talk reveals
that as late as July 1941 it was still his ‘dearest wish . . . to be able to wander
about in Italy as an unknown painter’.33Thomas Mann’s technique of comparing
Hitler with other men is in itself an adaptation of a favourite National Socialist
educational pastime designed to ‘prove’ that Hitler dwarfs them all. (To parody
it Mann has to adopt the highly personalised view of history of that model.)
Mann’s daughter Erika published her book School for Barbarians. Education under
the Nazis in London in 1939, with an introduction by her father. She quotes some
examples.34My example here is a passage used for dictation in a primary school
in Munich in 1934, taken from a different

‘Jesus und Hitler’

Wie Jesus die Menschen von der Sunde und Holle befreite, so rettete
Hitler das deutsche Volk vor dem Verderben. Jesus und Hitler wurden
verfolgt, aber wahrend Jesus gekreuzigt wurde, wurde Hitler zum Kanzler
erhoben. Wahrend die Junger Jesu ihren Meister verleugneten und im
Stiche Lessen, fielen die 16 Kameraden fur ihren Fuhrer. Die Apostel
vollendeten das Werk ihres Herrn. Wir hoffen, dass Hitler sein Werk selbst
zu Ende fuhren darf. Jesus baute fur den Himmel, Hitler fur die deutsche
Erde.

Julius Streicher echoed these sentiments on 26 July 1935 when he told educa-
tionalists that comparisons between Hitler and Christ should be sparingly used
since Hitler was really too great to be compared to one so insignificant.36 Kurt
Tucholsky has written a bitter satire of such infantile logic and its effect on
children in his ‘Hitler und G ~ e t h e ’ . ~ ~
* * *

Mann’s hope that the essay Bruder Hitler would appear in the volume Achtung,
Europa! of 1938 was not fulfilled. Although Mann had rejected his publisher’s
first and second appeal for caution on 15 September and 27 October 1938, that
is to say before and after the Munich conference and the invasion of Czecho-
slovakia, he had to respond to a telegram of 11 November by agreeing to the
omission of the essay from the volume. The telegram referred to the
‘Reichskristallnacht’ of 9 November when in a night of carefully organised,
pseudo-spontaneous terror almost all synagogues in Germany were destroyed.
So were 7,000 stores, owned by Jews.38 It began with the words: ‘Erwaget
ob nicht angesichts furchtbarer Pogrome Eliminierung Bruder ratsam da
unabsehbar ob nicht gerade dieser personliche Angriff verscharfte Folgen
verursacht’ . Mann replied: ‘Empfinde Ausfall schwer konnte aber Weigerung
nicht verantworten da Sie Dingen naher stelle Entscheidung Ihnen anheim’
and, later the same day: ‘Entschlossen Bruder wegzula~sen’.~~The essay appeared
180 T H O M A S MANN’S ESSAY B R U D E R H I T L E R

in Paris and Chicago in March 1939. T h e German text was not published again
until 1953.

NOTES

Parts of this paper were used in my Inaugural Lecture at Nottingham University in November
1980 and, at the invitation of Professor Herbert Kraft, in a public lecture at Munster University in
July 1981.
‘The German version appeared in Dar Neue T q c b w h , 7 (1939), 306-309, the translation in
Esquire, 11 (1939), 31, 132-133. Cf. Thomas Mann. Gesammelle Werke in dreizehn Banden, Frankfurt
1974, vol. XIII, pp. 845-952. All references are to that edition
Cf. P. de Mendelssohn (ed.). Thomar Mann. Tapbirrher 1937.1939, Frankfurt a . M . 1980, p. 435.
Cf. my book Thomas Mann. Godhe- ‘Ideal dn Deutschhcit ’. Wiederholte Spiegelungen 1893-1949,
Munich 1981. pp. 26, 216.
’ K. Schlechta (ed.), Friedrtch Nielzsche Werkr in drei Bundm, Munich 1966, vol. I, p. 676.
Ibid., pp. 675f.
‘ Ibid., p. 556.
‘ Cf. H. Lehnert. ‘Thomas Mann in Exile 1933-1938’, G m n i c Reuiew, 38 (1963), 277-294.
Dr Christa Sammonds kindly made available to me a copy of Thomas Mann’s typescript. I am
indebted to Yale University Library for permission to quote from i t .
a Tagcbucher 1937-1939, p. 227
‘’ Ibid , p. 261
“ I b i d . , p. 251.
Ibid., p. 264.
[bid, p. 281.
I3 See the essay Kosmopolitirmur of 1925 (X, 184-191)
H . Wysling(ed.), T h o r n Mann. HeinnchMann Enefwerhsel1900-1949, Frankfurt a . M . 1969, p. 44.
l5 Cf. my paper in M L R , 73 (1978), 337-350.
bt’erke in drio Randen. vol. I , pp. 601-603
Cf. P. de Mendelssohn (ed.), Thomas Mann. Briefwechsel mil seinem Verlep B m n n Fischer,
Frankfurt a . M 1973, pp. 186f.
Werkein drei Eandm, vol. I, pp. 675f.
Mann had so described himself in anticipation of his marriage to Katia (see Thomas Mann.
Heinnch M u m Ericfwtchsel, p. 26). In Befrnchfungmeines Unpofitischcn he used the reference to describe
what he saw as an archetypal figure of German romanticism (XII, 378). Modern critics agree
with this part of Mann’s interpretation; see R. Schneli, ‘Die Zerstorung der Historie. Versuch iiber die
Ideologiegeschichte faschistischer Asthetik’, in R. Schnell (ed.), Kunst und Kuftur im deutschm
Faschismus, Stuttqan 1978, pp. 17-55. particularly pp. 29-33.
2o For a more general discussion of this problem see G . Sautermeister, ‘Widerspruchlicher
Antifaschismus. Thomas Manns politische Schriften (1914-1945)’, in L. Winkler (ed.), An f i-
fnrchisfirche Litoafur, vol. 1 , Kronberg 1977, pp. 142-222.
,J. C. Fest, HifJer. Eine Bigraphie, 2 vols., Frankfurt a.M. 1978, vol. 1, pp. 40-89
T h e story seems inspired by a passage in Hitler’s table talk. Cf. H. R . Trevor-Roper (ed.),
Hitkr’s Table Talk, London 1953, p . 492.
 ~ ~ ~~

THOMAS MANN’S ESSAY B R U D E R HITLER 181

23For further striking evidence see the notes for Geist und Kurut of 1909/10, published in P.
Scherrer, H. Wysling, Quellmkritische Studien rum Werk Thomas Manns, Berne 1967, pp. 189f., 197f.,
207.
24 Cf. H. Brenner, Die Kunstpolitik rles Nationalsorialismus, Reinbek 1963, p. 186
F. A. Theilhaber, Goethe. Sexus und Eros, Berling 1929. For a discussion of its importance to
25
Mann see my book (note 3, above), particularly pp. 230-233.
26 Mann is alluding to Goethe’s poem Grazm der Mmschheit
” Cf. H. Biirgin, H.-0. Mayer, Thomar Mann. Eine Chronik seines Lebem, Frankfurt a.M. 1974,
pp. 115f.
Mann is alluding to Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra (cf. Werke in drei Bundm, vol. 11, pp. 281f.
338).
29 Cf. my contribution to Essays in honourofC. D. Chandaman, Triuium, 15 (1980), 83-90.
30 Hermann Goering, Germany Reborn, London 1934, pp. 51, 52, 77f., 79,87.
3’Goering’s ‘he who cannot feel it instinctively will not be able to grasp it at all’ is another example of
‘Verhunzung’. It passes itself off as a quotation from Goethe’s Faust I (1.534).
32 Mein KampJ Munich 1944, p. 7. Brecht’s satirical codename for Hitler was ‘der Anstreicher’,
turning the artist into a decorator and specialist in whitewash.
33 Ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, p. 11. This is confirmed by L. P. Lochner (ed.), Goebbefs Tqebiicher,
Zurich 1948, pp. 127,444.
34 Op. i t . , pp. 84-86.
35 W. Hofer (ed.), Der Nationalsorialismus. Dokummte 1933-1945, Frankfurt 1957, p. 128.
36 I am quoting W. Knoche, Thepoliticalpoetry ofthe Third Reich: themes and metaphors, Ph.D. thesis,
Ohio State University 1968, p. 34, fn. 35.
37 W. Werth (ed.), Kurt Tucholsly. Man solltemal . . , , Stuttgart 1966, pp. 76-79.
38 See K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship. The Oripins, Structure and Conseyumces of National
Socialism, Harmondsworth 1978, pp, 454-457.
39 Thomas Mann. Briefwechsel mit seinem Verkzer, p. 191.