The Life of Hans Guenther Part 1

 

Publisher's foreword

This text was written in the winter of 1967/1968. It is the author's last. The work had already been set, the first typesetting samples had been sent to the author, edited by him and enriched with additions, when Prof. Dr. Hans F. K. Günther died unexpectedly on September 25, 1968. He had worked on this text until his last hours in order to expand it. In a special folder there were numerous additions that he had wanted to add when reading the typesetting samples; they are included in this book. 

This text certainly shows us the man Adolf Hitler, as Hans F. K. Günther saw and experienced him; but there is more to it. The author also reports on his own life. In this way, beyond the given topic, a portrait of Günther's life emerged, a report on his own fate. Above all, however, this resulted in the confession of a man of determined individuality who placed freedom above all else - an intelligent confession that shines impressively in the course of fateful decades of our history. And because it is the confession of a man who, in an age of masses and mass leaders, knew that he was committed to the highest values, I have included his image in the text. 

Easter 1969 

Franz Freiherr Karg von Bebenburg 

Anyone who depends on the misguided 

doings of the ignorant masses

does not belong in the ranks of great men. 

Cicero 

Section 1 

I could not and did not want to comment publicly on Adolf Hitler's essentially misguided domestic policy - also misguided because Hitler, with his lack of knowledge of human nature, chose so many incompetent, dishonest, even unscrupulous men as his subordinates - until North American and English researchers, who had access to files withheld from German researchers, had exonerated Hitler's foreign policy to such an extent that in 1965 an English friend wrote to me that he had gained the impression that only Germany still believed that Hitler was solely responsible for the war. Similarly, after the publication of an English book (1965) about the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, only Germany still believed that Quisling was a traitor, a "Quisling". I will have to come back to this outstanding Norwegian. 

I spoke about Hitler's essentially misguided domestic policy in the foreword to the second edition of my book "Farmer's Faith: Testimonies about the Faith and Piety of German Farmers" (1965), but more so in the foreword to the fourth edition of "Heredity and Environment" (1967), because this book, even in its first edition (1936), was intended to be a warning to Hitler and the NSDAP. At the time I had assumed - still harmlessly enough - that fortunate coincidences could contribute to such warnings being heeded. 

I am only able to speak publicly about the man Adolf Hitler, as he appeared to me, after foreign researchers had contradicted the hateful "judgments" about Hitler, the "greatest war criminal of all time", the "sole culprit", on the basis of their knowledge of the files. So it is only today (1968) that I am attempting to describe publicly how Hitler appeared to me, what impression Hitler the man made on me, and I only want to speak about those aspects of his character that were directed at me, and I do not want to and cannot give any "overall judgment" about Hitler and will not, or only briefly, discuss the statesman and, as some have proclaimed, the general Hitler in conclusion, although I will not be able to avoid shedding some light on the statesman from a human perspective. Right at the beginning I would like to say that my impression of Hitler as a person was unfavourable, but I would like to point out that this impression was my impression, just as I would like to point out that Hitler had to be the way he was because of his inherited disposition: "That is how you must be, you cannot escape it" (Goethe). But I can also cite the same insight into the immutability of inherited characteristics in my favour. 

I know very well that Hitler appeared differently to other people, to some in a much more favorable light, to some who were not qualified or qualified to judge, as the devil himself. I therefore ask readers to note: what follows is nothing more or hardly more than my own impression. With this impression of mine I do not want to turn against the impressions of other people, but I must ask those who doubt or reject my impression how I could have managed to gain an impression other than my own. However, I would like to stress right at the start that many of the circumstances and events that incriminated the "Führer", including the "final solution" to the Jewish question, only became known to me, like most Germans, in 1945 and

afterwards - unfortunately, however, with the intention of "re-education", which mixed truth with lies. So my "impression" only reflects what I noticed before Hitler's death and what I still remember today. From these memories I will conclude by attempting to indicate Hitler's place in the history of his era, as I look back and see these events today. 

The fact that I am only summarizing this impression today (1968) is not only due to the fact that foreign researchers have exonerated Hitler, but also and much more because since 1945 and up to now I have not been able to join in the well-known and, especially among Germans, untenable denigration of Hitler. What halfway decent person would have wanted to join in with those who, before Stalingrad, loudly praised Hitler as the "greatest general of all time", but after Stalingrad, first more quietly and then more loudly, said: "I have always said...", but after 1945, with inflammatory cries, condemned Hitler to hell as "the greatest war criminal of all time", even to "victorious" foreign countries? 

So I could not bring myself to say anything in the concentration camp, where I spent 3 years and 20 days, or before the denazification tribunal that was trying to denazify me, that could only have been interpreted as a departure from Hitler or the NSDAP, and so I remained silent in the camp when camp comrades spoke favorably about Hitler and the NSDAP, camp comrades whom I could have corrected with my better insight. I also remained silent before the tribunal about the fact that the NSDAP, in the form of the despicable Martin Bormann - whom Hitler had chosen - had banned the publisher and me from publishing a book I had written and already set. Bormann had three high party offices that had asked him on my behalf give three different reasons for refusing. Professor Gross, the head of the Racial Policy Office, who had campaigned in vain on my behalf, wrote to me at the time that he must assume that I had overlooked the fact that we live in a dictatorship whose "real dictator" is Martin Bormann. 

But now others - not all of them asked to do so by my wife or me - had taken it upon themselves to send the tribunal exonerating certificates - then called "Persilscheine" - certificates from which it was clear that I had turned away from the NSDAP and parts of Hitler's domestic policy immediately after the "seizure of power". Former students testified that it was always clear in my lectures and colloquia that I had distinguished between "National Socialist" and "ethnic". "Ethnic" was and is always the noble (aristocratic) view that seeks the means to renew a nation of free people from the ground up, from its genetic makeup. 

But immediately after 1932, "National Socialist" accelerated into a mass (ochlocratic) "movement" that either "coordinated" or banned ethnic groups. In 1935 or 1936, I was asked "from higher up" to stop using the word "ethnic", which the "Führer" did not like, and to use only "National Socialist". I refused all the more because the difference between the two views - at that time in Berlin - had become even clearer to me than during the "seizure of power". Students, however, had noticed that I had made a distinction and reported this, as well as other things, to the tribunal. 

I will pass over the testimonies - which I did not request - which testified to my help for those persecuted, including Jewish persecutors, especially since I have forgotten some of them. As an

example, I will only mention the "exoneration testimonial" of my Berlin colleague Eduard Spranger, who testified how I had helped my persecuted and punished Jena colleague Hans Leisegang. In such cases I usually turned to the honorable Reich Minister Frick, who was a notable exception among the high officials chosen by Hitler. 

I will only mention here the testimony of the outstanding Wilhelm Hartnacke, to whom I will return, who had informed the tribunal that a few years before the outbreak of war, when he and I met in Dresden to discuss the situation in the Reich and in the NSDAP and we expressed our horror at the election and promotion of so many dishonest, irresponsible and incompetent men, I had already considered emigrating. That Hartnacke's memory was correct was confirmed to me about a year ago by a lady who was known to my wife and me, whose husband, a senior library official, I had been able to save from persecution by an "official" of the NSDAP: I had asked her before the war how I, as an official, could manage to be retired early and then emigrate with my family to Norway, my wife's homeland; she had replied that, according to her husband's experience, this was only possible if a doctor certified that I had a mental disorder; But I couldn't find a doctor who would dare to do that. So I had to stay mentally healthy. 

The letters of exoneration that were sent in and the diligent search of all my books led the third-instance tribunal - usually only two were required - to certify that I had always operated within the boundaries of international science and had never fallen into anti-Semitic agitation; there was also no reason to prohibit me, the "affected person", from working as a writer. Despite this acquittal - acquittal after three years of internment - my dismissal from university service in 1945 was upheld because I had not protested "sufficiently"; this verdict was pronounced by judges who, as I later learned, had never "protested". Risum teneatis, amici?! (Keep smiling friends?!) 

During the third year of my imprisonment - in one of the worst camps, by the way - French officers had asked the prisoners' neighbors, as long as they were not members of the NSDAP, about the prisoners. In my case, these inquiries had turned out to be favorable, with one exception: I had never worn a party badge and had never greeted them with "Heil Hitler." (This greeting was only possible because of the rarity of the name: "Heil Müller" or "Heil Meier" or - four syllables - "Heil Oberbichler" would have been impossible.) 

One exception was a neighbor with whom I had been on friendly terms whenever we met. He had been the chairman of a pacifist organization that had been banned. He told the French officers that a photograph had been found in my apartment showing my family together with Hitler. Since camp comrades with good language skills worked in the Sürete - German diligence and German thoroughness were valued there - I learned that one of the officers had said: "I'm not crazy for passing on such information." I later learned that the Sürete, which had to give a behavior certificate for every prisoner based on three years of experience, had judged me kindly, although I had once been punished with three days' detention for "stealing some tomatoes from the field," but with the appropriate addition in such a situation: "Il est un peu fou." (“He’s a little crazy”)

Thus, some of the oddities I had indulged in to break up three years of monotony had helped to ease my burden, as had perhaps the fact that our camp commandant had become enemies with the head of the Süret &. Such hostilities were not only possible in Hitler's Germany. My oddities, which Süret & remarked on with a smile, may also partly explain why Hitler seemed strange to me as a person, at times even repulsive - precisely because he was inalterably like that and I was inalterably different from him. 

Many events from which conclusions could have been drawn about Hitler as a man and his domestic policy have disappeared or almost disappeared from my memory. What my memory has retained most precisely, however, is what I - strove from my youth to give my thoughts the appropriate form, that is, to convey what the French call le mot propre - said in those years about Hitler and National Socialism to others, although some of it was only in intimate circles. I vouch for the reproduction of these statements. If they have occasionally taken on a satirical form, then I must confess to this tendency towards satire. A history teacher, during a lesson in lower or upper secondary school, when he was reading historical events to us, noticed a smile on my face which suggested a mocking view of the events being presented. He interrupted himself: "Günther, remember: difficile est, satiram non scribere." Otherwise you may face many unpleasant situations in your life.” - Unfortunately, this teacher was right. 

But it is precisely because of the good memory that has preserved my words about Hitler and National Socialism that I am protected from interfering with insights gained later, especially after 1945, into what came before, as an acquaintance, who I had assumed had a better understanding of my peculiarities, suspected to my astonishment. I had once written to him, trusting in a long-standing acquaintance, expressing my objections to Hitler and National Socialism. He wrote back to ask whether I wanted to join the ranks of the "resistance" with such remarks. This sad experience prompts me to emphasize the accuracy of my memory for my own statements. However, in order not to expose myself to the accusation of abusiveness or injustice, I will keep silent about the most caustic of my statements about Hitler and the NSDAP, even though, stripped of their mocking form, I still find them accurate today in terms of their content, or even more so today. But justice also demands that we add here that a Lucilius, a Persius, luvenalis or Petronius or even a Jonathan Swift would not have found as much material for satire in the world political events and conditions between 1919 and 1945 as in the events and conditions since 1945. 

In order to make the background of the political events since 1919, which are unknown to today's youth or have been presented inaccurately, clearer, I will have to repeatedly add explanations in the following, which I ask you not to regard as superfluous digressions.