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

84 DER FUEHRERto be sure, recount similar feats by other members of the regiment whoconsequently received far higher distinctions; but the history does notmention Hitler's fifteen English or French prisoners.Even so, it cannot be denied that Hitler was a brave soldier. Why,then, did this enthusiast remain an eternal gray private? The GermanArmy needed leaders; the need for them became more and more acuteas the war progressed; yet Hitler never became a leader. One of hissuperiors, Reserve-Lieutenant Horn, maintained in the same trial: 'IfAdolf Hitler had been promoted to the rank of sergeant, he could nothave remained a battle orderly and the regiment would have lost one ofits best dispatch carriers.' It has also been claimed that Hitler did notwant to be a leader, but insisted on remaining a dispatch carrier. And hisletter shows what delight he took in simple, uncomplicated soldiering.One of his superiors, it is true, is said to have declared that he did notwant Hitler to become a non-com on account of his mental instability.Although Hitler was a good soldier, he was not always a goodcomrade. He impressed — and not favorably — his fellows by nevercomplaining about the length, the hardships, and the general nonsenseof the war; by never grumbling nor getting bored. 'We all cursed himand found him intolerable,' one of them later said. 'There was this whitecrow among us that didn't go along with us when we damned the war tohell.' It was actually the war that interested him, not his own life as asoldier. 'News came of Hinden-burg's great victory over the Russians,'he wrote home; ' . . . three cheers . . . long live our great marshal . . .' —and he did not add, as most of them would have done: 'And now let'shope that the whole thing will be soon over, and in your next parcel,please send some salami. . . .'It has often been said that the sudden escape from domestic ties intothe virile world of war has a singular attraction for many men. But thiswas certainly not true of Hitler, for he had had no domestic life. It wasthe business of war itself; the burning desire for victory and thedestruction of the enemy that shaped this human nonentity into a figureof super-personal strength.If personality is like a shell which covers our inner world of