Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 383It has been observed that, having attained power, he frequentlycommuted the death penalty to imprisonment for murder inspired byerotic motives. Exponents of the psycho-analytical school havediagnosed a 'castration complex,' a pathological fear of losing hisvirility. His strange, furious discourse against syphilis in Mein Kampfmight support such a theory. A more reliable indication is the fact thatboth in his speeches and writings he likes to linger on the presentationof killing, especially the death penalty. Hanisch relates that young Hitleronce told him of a visit he had made with his father to the courthouse inthe Upper Austrian town of Ried; his father showed him all sorts ofinstruments of murder which the police had taken away from brawlingpeasants or real criminals — revolvers, knives, blackjacks; and Hitlerowned that the sight of all these implements of murder had put him inhigh spirits. In his early speeches he liked to describe how the NationalSocialists, after their victory, would hang the lamp-posts full of theiradversaries; the heads of their enemies would roll. And, in general,beheading is one of his favorite ideas. In the early years of hismovement he had 'promissory notes' printed to serve as receipts for aloan floated by the Volkischer Beobachter, redeemable after the victoryof the movement. These notes were designed by Adolf Hitler himself.The note was a rectangle the size of a dollar bill, and was intended tolook like a bank-note. The text, framed in a maze of swastikas,obligated the N.S.D.A.P. to pay back ten marks. The left quarter of thenote was taken up by a little picture — and what a picture! A youngman with an open shirt and a head covering not clearly recognizable(though the mustache was lacking, the grave, threatening face had thefeatures of an idealized self-portrait) held by the right hand a sworddripping with blood; the left hand grasped the curls of a severed femalehead. Head and sword seemed to lie on the page of a newspaper,perhaps the Volkischer Beobachter. In the background a banner with theswastika; beneath the picture in Gothic letters: 'Warriors of truth,behead the lie!' A warrior of truth might have been expected to piercethe lie, to face it in battle, to struggle against its embrace — the artistHitler, however, dreamed of beheading a defenseless woman.Is this, then, the true picture? A Bluebeard, a murderer of