How a man like Adolf Hitler managed to seize power in Germany and plunge the world into war is a question that still baffles people more than seven decades later.
In his recently-released book, “1924: The Year That Made Hitler” (Little, Brown and Company), journalist Peter Ross Range adds his own voice to the conversation. A specialist on Germany, Range has written for publications including The New York Times, Time magazine, and U.S. News and World Report – where he served as a national and White House correspondent – and has also been an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The Jewish Press: The subtitle of your book is “The Year That Made Hitler.” How did 1924 make Hitler?
Range: Hitler said he thought about revolution every day for four years – from 1919 to 1923. He did not participate in elections and did not allow any of his party members to run for office. He thought the only way he could ever gain power in Germany was by overthrowing the Weimar Republic. And that’s what he tried to do in November 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch. He came closer to success than many people realize – it was not a comic opera as it has sometimes been described – but it failed for various reasons.
So Hitler ended up in prison, hit bottom, and went into suicidal depression. When he came out of that, though, he started preparing for his treason trial, which became a great political platform for him. He was able to get the Nazi brand out into the world in ways that had never been done before because the national press covered the trial.
You argue that the half year Hitler spent in prison following the trial was crucial to his political formation. How so?
Because that’s where he wrote Mein Kampf, and by the time he came out, he was a new man. His self-belief and self-confidence were soaring.
In addition, it was during this time that he realized that being a revolutionary was not going to work and that the only route to power was the electoral way. He said, “It will take us longer to outvote them than to outshoot them, but at least we will win it by their rules, which will guarantee the outcome.” He also said, “We will take the parliament in order to destroy it.” So that was his thinking when he left prison.
Why was Hitler so set on revolution in 1923?
Because Germany was a mess, and 1923 was the worst year of the Weimar Republic. In January the French and Belgians invaded the Ruhr area and occupied it and inflation was out of control. The exchange rate was four trillion marks to one dollar. There were hunger strikes and the police were shooting at hungry Germans.
So conditions were indeed awful, and Hitler blamed all of this on democracy. He thought democracy was a terrible form of government, and parliamentary decisions were weak decisions because they were by definition compromises and sometimes done by bare majorities. He thought only a strong man and a dictatorship could save Germany.
During his treason trial in 1924, the presiding judge, Georg Neithardt, indulged Hitler endlessly, at one point letting him speak nonstop for four hours. Why?
The political atmosphere in Bavaria at this time was sympathetic to the direction Hitler was going, and his was just one of many far-right movements at the time. Hitler was also a dramatic speechmaker and held the court room in total thrall. People loved hearing what he had to say, so it was big entertainment for everybody and big news as well.