Adolf Hitler Awarded Iron Cross through Jewish Recommendation

In the attempt to understand the person Adolf Hitler and his importance for the course of modern history, researchers of all descriptions have attached primary importance to the analyses of the written evidence that illustrates his pseudo-religious world-view: his "Bible" (Mein Kampf) and his "sermons" (the speeches).

Considerably less stress has been laid on the other parts of the "liturgy," which he himself saw as a vital part of his National Socialist "religion." A religion does not consist exclusively of Holy Scripture, but certainly includes symbols and rituals as well - things often emotionally much more important than the more rationally accentuated sides of religious worship. It was not without reason that Hitler again and again appealed to emotion rather than to reason in his speeches as well as in Mein Kampf.

As our experience of Reality consists of a complicated mixture of pictures, images, words, smells, emotions and tastes, the same appplies to our consciousness and consequently to our mental activity as well. We all know that we do not say all of what we think. We also know that our deepest thoughts and feelings can have decisive importance in our relations with others - and that we do not always communicate exclusively with words, but also with more or less implied signs.

Finally, we know that the same word does not always carry the same meaning to everybody. Sociologists therefore speak of the social construction of Reality, which is different to every individual. If we employ these general considerations in our attempt to penetrate deeper into Adolf Hitler's world of thought, it necessarily leads us to draw in the whole of his symbol-laden world in order to understand his world-view. It positively teems with symbols and rituals, and some are easier to decipher than others.

The ritual at the armistice negotiations at Compiègne after the campaign in France 1940 is well known. It took place in the same railway carriage as the armistice negotiations after World War I. Adolf Hitler participated in the ritual without saying a word, and he left the carriage in the middle of the meeting.

He had in five weeks achieved what Kaiser Wilhelm II had not been able to do in four years; but did he attach any importance to the fact that the sun shone from a clear sky - Führerwetter - or that the negotiations took place on June 21, the date that as the "Aryan" midsummer celebration had become a holiday in The Third Reich? Did the Führer see anything symbolic in the fact that this was also the seventh anniversary of the formal collapse of the Weimar Republic - the day when all the other parties dissolved themselves?

Adolf Hitler took part in World War I as a common soldier, and in the inhuman world of the trenches he witnessed the death and mutilation of his comrades. It would mark him for life.

His baptism of fire came on October 29, 1914, near the village of Wervicq in Flanders. He almost lost his life on this occasion. A bullet tore the sleeve of his uniform, but by a wonder he avoided injury. As his comrades in the 16th Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander) were killed in large numbers, this experience gave him a feeling of being destined by fate for something special. On a later occasion he was wounded, but asked to be sent back to his regiment as soon as possible.

The framework of the army undoubtedly gave him the security he had missed since the death of his mother in 1907. At the same time he had a certain amount of liberty, as he was employed as an orderly in carrying reports between the front line and regimental headquarters. After four years of war he could, in 1918, be counted among the veterans, but in spite of the heavy slaughter during all that time he was never promoted. His superior officers were of the opinion that he was not capable of being in command.

When Adolf Hitler volunteered for the German army at the outbreak of war in August 1914, he had long been under antisemitic influence. His comrades-in-arms would afterwards relate that he was a somewhat strange person who would regularly give vent to his feelings against the Jews, but since the research done by Brigitte Hamann has demonstrated that he had not become an open anti-Semite when he left Vienna in 1913, the trustworthiness of those sources may be questioned. It is at any rate a remarkable paradox that his superior officer, the man who recommended him for the coveted Iron Cross 1st Class was - a Jew. More