By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
As WWII veteran John Toland opined in his 1,036-page masterpiece on Hitler’s life, Hitler “was far more complex and contradictory than I had imagined.” Quoting Graham Green, Toland observed that “The greatest saints have been men with more than a normal capacity for evil, and the most vicious men have sometimes narrowly evaded sanctity,” which he concluded described Hitler.
Hitler’s fault was, to the end, obsessed by his dream of cleansing Europe of less evolved races: a goal he and much of the educated West were convinced was necessary to create a perfect society; a dream still held today by millions of Iranians, Palestinians, and Middle Easterners.
One person who intimately knew Hitler was his personal secretary, Gertraud “Traudl” Junge. She was at Hitler’s side 24/7 for close to four years, 1942 to 1945.
She constantly had very positive experiences with her boss, describing him as an extremely pleasant man to work with, always polite, and was openly fatherly protective of her. Junge typed Hitler’s last private and political Will and Testament in the Führerbunker the day before his suicide.
Hitler had long and warm relationships with the family of composer Richard Wagner, particularly his daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner. He also had a close childhood friendship with the Austrian musical conductor and writer, the Czech August Friedrich Kubizek.
Kubizek, in a book about their time together when they lived in Linz and Vienna, described his close friend’s many admirable qualities, asserting that “no power on earth could compel me to deny my friendship with Adolf Hitler.” Kubizek wrote that Hitler was an excellent listener and a worthy confidant. They would often talk for hours on end about their dreams.
One reviewer of Kubizek’s book wrote that Kubizek was a very reliable source for insight into this complicated human being.
Kubizek related three decades later that Hitler, as Führer, was still a passionate, gifted, serious man who had a grand obsession to make the world better. Today, most people write Hitler off as the embodiment of evil. After all, he led the world into the most devastating war in all of history.
When Hitler lived in the Männerheim Brigittenau hostel in Brigittenau, Vienna, a number of Jews lived there with whom he was on excellent terms. Most of his paintings were sold by Jewish dealers whom Hitler also consistently spoke highly about.
One of the most loyal buyers of his paintings in Vienna was the Jew, Samuel Morgenstern. Hitler once expressed his open admiration for another friend, a Rothschild, for sticking to his religion, even though this meant he could not use the German courts to settle valid grievances.
Throughout most of 1918, during WWI, the Jew, Lt. Hugo Gutmann (1880 –1962), served as Adolf Hitler’s direct superior. Gutmann later recommended Hitler for the award of the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded to persons of Hitler’s low Gefreiter rank.
The decoration was presented to Hitler in August 1918 by the regimental commander, Major von Tubeuf. Hitler wore this medal throughout the remainder of his life, even while serving as Führer.
In 1938, Gutmann was arrested by the Gestapo but released as a result of Hitler’s intervention. Gutmann even received his full Nazi Germany pension until the end of the War.
In October 1918, Adolf’s unit of over 100 soldiers was exposed to a gas attack while fighting the British. Adolf was transferred to Pasewalk Hospital, where Jewish neurologist Dr. Karl Kroner successfully treated Adolf’s vision loss.
When the Holocaust began, Dr. Kroner was arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen. On Hitler’s orders, he was released, and Dr. Kroner and his non-Jewish wife obtained visas, later emigrating to New York, where he lived until his death in 1954.
Hitler’s family doctor in Linz was the Jewish physician Eduard Bloch (1872 –1945). When Hitler’s mother, Klara, was dying of breast cancer, Bloch billed the family at a reduced cost, often refusing to bill them outright.
In 1908, Hitler wrote to Bloch assuring him of his enormous gratitude for his loving care given to his mother when she was ill. Hitler expressed his appreciation with significant gifts, including a large, valuable wall painting. As late as 1937, Hitler was very concerned about Bloch’s well-being and called him an Edeljude (a “noble Jew”).
When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, the 66-year-old Bloch wrote to Hitler asking for protection. In response, Hitler awarded Bloch special protection and personally intervened to ensure his safety.
Without any interference, they were able to sell their family home at market value, highly unusual with the distress sales of emigrating Jews then. Even the required Nazi expropriation of Jewish assets through the Reich Flight Tax was ignored.
The Blochs were allowed to take the equivalent of 16 Reichsmarks out of the country. The usual amount allowed to Jews was a mere 10 Reichsmarks. Dr. Bloch lived in the United States until he died in 1945.
The wife of Hitler’s professor, Karl Haushofer, when he was in prison, Martha Mayer-Doss, was half-Jewish. Rudolf Hess intervened repeatedly to secure “honorary German” status for Haushofer’s family and exemptions from anti-Semitic legislation. Hitler agreed, and Haushofer’s family survived. Enough other examples exist to fill an entire book.
The fact is, Hitler was able to carry out the almost total destruction of the Jewish people in Europe. He was the main cause of a war, leaving over 80 million dead and millions more grieving their lost ones, attempting to put their shattered lives together.
Never before in history has such total ruination, both physical and moral, occurred. Hitler’s name will justifiably stand forever as the primary instigator of the most profound collapse of civilization in our modern era. To do this, he had almost the full support of all levels of society, especially academics and the well-educated.
Yet he, as a person, was a loyal friend, even to Jews, and repaid their kindness more than tenfold. As Toland said, he was a complicated man who was attempting to produce a superior race to create a more perfect society.
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Dr. Bergman is a multi-award-winning professor and author. Has 9 degrees and has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level for over 40 years. His over 2,100 publications are in both scholarly and popular journals. Dr. Bergman’s work has been translated into 15 languages. He has spoken over 2,000 times to college, university and church groups in America, Canada, Europe, the South Sea Islands, and Africa. He lives in Montpelier and is available to present in churches and schools. Jerry can be reached at JerryBergman30@yahoo.com