Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

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sarahgoodson
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Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#1

Post by sarahgoodson » 19 Mar 2016, 02:51

I've just been recently reading the talk page of the Wikipedia article of Adolf Hitler and people are discussing his identity as an Austrian and/or German.

Now it's a fact that Hitler was born and raised in Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary) in a little town, Braunau am Inn very close to the German border and which was historically under Bavarian rule but then later became under Austrian rule. Hitler in Mein Kampf writes "a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian state" when describing his birthplace, he wasn't wrong.

Hitler developed German nationalist views from a very young age and after reason Mein Kampf it's clear that he viewed Austrians as just another type of Germans like Bavarians, was he wrong?

The judge in 1923 refused to deport Hitler because he was considered an "Austrian-German" and took sympathy on someone who "thinks and feels" like Hitler did. Now, Hitler gave up his Austrian citizenship in 1925 and was stateless for seven years before finally becoming a German citizen in 1932 but did the Germans born in the Reich consider him a foreigner or a German just like them despite not being born in Germany? I know some people called him the "Austrian corporal" but these were mainly Prussians and the Austrians and Prussians have had a dislike towards each other so it's clear to see why this insult came about.

After reading about the history of Austria and Germany it seems that Austrians are indeed Germans as the only reason Austria never became part of Germany or indeed unified Germany itself was because it lost the 1866 war against Prussia known as the "German war". The idea of Austria joining Germany predates the Anschluss in 1938, two attempts were made before the Nazis came to power (1918 "German-Austria" and in the early 1930s) in 1933. I own a good book called "Hitler's Austria" which puts forward the facts and ends many urban legends and myths surrounding the Anschluss, it's a fact that the majority of Austrians in 1938 welcomed the union with Germany.

The whole idea of Austrians (Hitler included) not being considered Germans appears to stem from the fact that after the war ended and Nazi atrocities became well known the Austrians began to develop a distinct national identity from the previous German one.

If Austria had turned out differently, Austria would have remained part of Germany. Even after its exclusion in 1866 it didn't stop the people being Germans and considering themselves as such.

What is your opinion?

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#2

Post by Halfdan S. » 19 Mar 2016, 22:06

Most important, Hitler was in his own opinion German - he felt German, and that was one of the cornerstones of his political thinking. He believed in the Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination - he wanted, as did many german-speaking people in Austria, Sudetenland, Poland, France, Denmark etc., "Heim ins Reich" (Home in the Greater German Reich) - they wanted unification into one German State. Europe after WW1 was in the unique situation that the previous obstacles to this policy (the monarchies) had fallen - the way was open. A unification of the german speaking people of Austria and Germany was already the subject of the St.-Germain treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of ... aye_(1919) The big powers (France, GB, USA etc.) though had no interest in a Greater Germany dominating central Europe. Self-determination is what everyone fights about up till this day: look at the breakup of the Sovietunion, Yugoslavia, Chechoslovakia, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, the Catalans, the Basque etc. in Spain, the Irish and Scots etc. - and also have a look at the problems facing the EU.

So as a native German speaker Hitler was a natural "German" …

The question would be the same for others; was Stalin Russian or Georgian? Napoleon French or Corsican/Italian? Is Obama American, African or muslim or whatever the discussion is …

Best
Halfdan S.


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sarahgoodson
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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#3

Post by sarahgoodson » 20 Mar 2016, 00:40

With regards to self-determination, the first point of the Nazi party 25-point program was "We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination."

I think it all comes down to the definition of "German" as by the time Hitler was born the German Empire had been formed and it excluded Austria so the Austrians were not considered German citizens but from an ethnic point of view the Austrians were considered Germans and considered themselves as such. All the maps showing the ethnic groups of Austria-Hungary show ethnic Germans not ethnic Austrians (as no such thing exists). But from a nationalit/citizenship point of view, Austrians were not Germans after 1871 only between 1938-1945 following the Anschluss.

The idea of an Anschluss is not a Nazi idea, the idea of a Greater Germany or Greater Austria came about in the 1800s when Germany was becoming unified.

Would anybody be questioning whether Austrians are Germans or not if Austria had joined Germany in the unification of Germany? I don't think so, they would have been considered German citizens like other southern Germans e.g Bavarians.

Everybody knows the Nazis were very clever when it came to propaganda but it's certainly not Nazi propaganda to say the majority of Austrians in 1938 considered themselves Germans and welcomed the annexing of Austria "Ostmark" to Nazi Germany.

It was only after the end of the Third Reich that the Austrians distanced themselves from considering themselves as Germans. Any pan-German idea these days is considered far right/Nazi.

When it comes to Napoleon, he was born in Corsica when it was under French rule, thus born a French citizen but he was ethnically Italian. Stalin was born in Georgia when it was under the Russian empire and was ethnically Georgian and part Ossetian.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#4

Post by Sid Guttridge » 20 Mar 2016, 17:49

I would suggest that it would be difficult to make a case that Hitler wasn't "German".

His native language was German.

He was born in a German-speaking state.

He considered himself German.

He therefore chose to serve in the German Army, which accepted him without apparent quibble.

Nobody else is claiming him.

However, there is some possibility that he may have had Czech ancestry as well. Hindenberg used to call him "The Bohemian Corporal". Furthermore, the results of an investigation into Hitler's ancestry for Himmler, designed to show how Germanic the Fuhrer was, was reportedly never released, possibly for the same reason. It would have been embarrassing if Hitler had failed to meet the racial qualifications for the SS!

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#5

Post by sarahgoodson » 20 Mar 2016, 20:21

@Sid Guttridge

Being born in a country that speaks a certain language doesn't necessarily mean one is a certain ethnicity. Language and ethnicity are separate concepts. A Canadian who speaks French isn't necessarily ethnically French.

In the case of Austria, the Austrians speak German because they are ethnic Germans; until 1866 Austria was considered as much part of Germany as Bavaria or Prussia.

Hitler considered himself both Austrian and German, he considered Austrians as Germans.

Hitler was called the Austrian corporal and Bohemian corporal by his opponents.

According to Brigitte Hamann Hitler's Vienna there is no evidence Hitler had any Czech ancestry.

Regarding Hitler's ancestry and the requirements of the SS, his paternal grandfather is unknown. Although all investigations and published family trees of Hitler accepted Johann Georg Hiedler as his paternal grandfather (he was the later legitimised grandfather) and noted that illegitimacy was not uncommon in the area Hitler's family came from. So since Johann Georg was officially accepted as his paternal grandfather by the Third Reich, he qualified for the SS requirements as he was able to trace his ancestry back to 1750.

Despite there being no concrete evidence, the rumour he had Jewish ancestry has prevailed since the 1920s, ranging from names on gravestones to so-called DNA results, despite all attempts though there is no evidence he had Jewish ancestry. It's the argument from ignorance because it can't be proved either way, historians have disregarded the Hans Frank theory but there is still a possibility his paternal grandfather was Jewish.

Joachim Fest in his book The Face of the Third Reich wrote:

"The indulgence normally accorded to a man's origins is out of place in the case of Adolf Hitler, who made documentary proof of Aryan ancestry a matter of life and death for millions of people but himself possessed no such document. He did not know who his grandfather was. Intensive research into his origins, accounts of which have been distorted by propagandist legends and which are in any case confused and murky, has failed so far to produce a clear picture. National Socialist versions skimmed over the facts and emphasized, for example, that the population of the so-called Waldviertel, from which Hitler came, had been 'tribally German since the Migration of the Peoples', or more generally, that Hitler had 'absorbed the powerful forces of this German granite landscape into his blood through his father'."

The truth is that nobody will ever know.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#6

Post by sarahgoodson » 21 Mar 2016, 00:11

John Toland in his biography "Hitler" wrote that Hitler told Josef Keplinger (a classroom school mate) that "you are not a Germane [old German]" because "you have dark hair and dark eyes." Hitler noted proudly that he had blue eyes and light brown hair.

Keplinger said German nationalism is what most of the 'boys' back then thought and Bismarck was their hero.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#7

Post by sarahgoodson » 01 May 2016, 20:52

After searching the German Propaganda Archive, I've found a few pamphlets published by the Nazis which stressed Hitler being German, despite not being born in Germany. Hitler and the Nazis were open about Hitler being born in Austria.

This was from a pamphlet given to the Pimpfs (aged 10-14) who were members of the larger Hitler Youth organisation.

From "The Life of the Führer":
Today Adolf Hitler’s birthplace belongs to Germany. He was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn in Upper Austria. But he is German. He does not feel like an Austrian. When war breaks out in 1914, he volunteers for the German army. As Point 1 of the National Socialist program states: “We demand a Greater German Reich.” On page 1 of the Führer’s autobiography Mein Kampf we find these words: “Common blood belongs in a common Reich.” We can better understand the first point of program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party when we realize that Adolf Hitler himself is a German who was born outside of Germany. We affirm that the law of common blood transcends state borders. Austria fulfilled this German longing on 13 March 1938.
Source: The source: Reichsjugendführung, Pimpf im Dienst (Potsdam: Ludwig Voggenreiter Verlag, 1938).

Another is from "Facts and Lies about Hitler" which was published in 1932 to refute lies spread by his opponents.

From “Hitler — A Czech!”:
Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn. Those opponents who spread the lie of a “Czech Hitler” depend on the confusion of Braunau am Inn with the Braunau in Czechoslovakia. Braunau am Inn is on the Bavarian border, with only the Inn River between them. It is over 80 kilometers as the crow flies to the Czech border, twice as much as the distance between Dresden and the Czech border. Up until the second half of the 18th century, Braunau belonged to Bavaria.

Hitler, therefore, was born within Greater Germany. Both parents are of German blood. They could not even speak Czech (and Hitler lived many years of his youth with his parents on Reich German soil, in Passau). Hitler became a German citizen before he became a candidate for Reich President by act of the National Socialist government in Braunschweig. He himself always refused to ask the Reich government to give to him what it gave without hesitation to tens of thousands of Galician Jews, even though he had long-since earned it through four years of service at the front in the German army during the war.
Source: und Lügen um Hitler (Munich: Franz Eher, 1932).

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#8

Post by Sid Guttridge » 02 May 2016, 15:31

Hi sarahgoodson,

This shows(1) that the Czech-origin story was sufficiently widespread at the time as to need addressing and (2) that the rebuttal provides no more than anecdotal evidence about his parents and not even that about his deeper ancestry. On these recognizances alone, Hitler would never have qualified for his own SS!

This brings to mind Mandy Rice-Davis's reply during the Profumo Affair, "Well,he would say that, wouldn't he!"

Ironically, it also brings to mind Obama's problems with his own "birthers", including Donald Trump, over his place of birth!

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#9

Post by sarahgoodson » 02 May 2016, 15:50

Sid Guttridge wrote:Hi sarahgoodson,

This shows(1) that the Czech-origin story was sufficiently widespread at the time as to need addressing and (2) that the rebuttal provides no more than anecdotal evidence about his parents and not even that about his deeper ancestry. On these recognizances alone, Hitler would never have qualified for his own SS!

This brings to mind Mandy Rice-Davis's reply during the Profumo Affair, "Well,he would say that, wouldn't he!"

Ironically, it also brings to mind Obama's problems with his own "birthers", including Donald Trump, over his place of birth!

Cheers,

Sid.
Sid,

It's well known that by the early 1930s opponents of Hitler, including members of the Nazi party, had begun to spread rumours that his ancestors were Jews and Czechs. However, there is no evidence to support either accusation. Hitler himself was aware that his father had been born illegitimate but never doubted that Johann Georg Hiedler was his paternal grandfather, he was the officially accepted paternal grandfather by the Third Reich.

Because Johann Georg Hiedler was officially accepted as Hitler's paternal grandfather, he was able to fit the requirement of tracing back Aryan ancestry back to 1800/1750 to join the SS. Hitler had several genealogists publish his family tree and his ancestors all came from around the same region and had lived there for centuries. None of the genealogists questioned his father's illegitimacy, it was quite common in that part of Austria at that time.

The parts of the requirements to join the SS that Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and other top Nazis would have failed were the ones regarding physical appearance, that is the height, etc, to be accepted as Nordic.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#10

Post by Sid Guttridge » 04 May 2016, 11:11

Hi sarahgoodson,

I think I might have found Hitler was German through and through if I was employed by him as a genealogist, too!

Seriously, though, the nearest to a case that he may have had some Czech ancestry I can find is: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9e6 ... in&f=false

It is rather less than a smoking gun.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#11

Post by sarahgoodson » 05 May 2016, 03:57

Hi Sid,

There are a few other books that mention the possibility that the surname is of Czech origin.

However, there is no evidence any of Hitler's known ancestors were of Czech ancestry (Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man By Brigitte Hamann, p. 42). Genealogy doesn't lie, although it was used entirely for propaganda, the Hitler family tree published can easily be verified, the only thing that is open for dispute is who was his paternal grandfather.

Despite all the rumours, there is no evidence to suggest to the contrary that Johann Georg Hiedler was Alois' father. Hitler's family tree was very closely related, so close that his parents needed permission to marry (they were first cousins once removed).

In all fairness, having Czech ancestry wouldn't have made any difference according to his own racial laws. Czechs were used in the Ahnenpass as being of related blood and Austrians who had Czech ancestry were still allowed Reich citizenship after the annexing of Austria in 1938 since they too were considered to be "Aryans". Although members of the Nazi party wishing to marry someone who had two or more Czech (and Polish and Hungarian/Magyar) grandparents had to seek permission.

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#12

Post by George L Gregory » 05 Jan 2021, 20:06

Not according to British historian Richard J. Evans:

“Hitler was the product of circumstances as much as anything else. Had things been different, he might never have come to political prominence. At the time of the Bavarian Revolution, he was an obscure rank-and-file soldier who had so far played no part in politics of any kind. Born on 20 April 1889, he was a living embodiment of the ethnic and cultural concept of national identity held by the Pan-Germans; for he was not German by birth or citizenship, but Austrian.”

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#13

Post by Cantankerous » 06 Jan 2021, 18:37

This topic has been discussed elsewhere on this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=44&t=254652

Remember that Austria differs from Germany in being Roman Catholic and not Protestant despite speaking the same language. A 2010 news article published in a Belgian journal reported DNA tests suggesting that Hitler had both Jewish and Berber ancestry, in which case it is possible that Hitler partly considered Jews inferior to Aryans because disliked physical characteristics of himself that he deemed Jewish (e.g. plump nose, low, retreating forehead) (https://www.history.com/news/study-sugg ... -ancestors).

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#14

Post by mrwolfe1988 » 07 Jan 2021, 01:08

Hi all,

As you have discussed, Hitler would have considered himself German for racial and ethnic reasons. Political reasons too, as he considered "ethnic Germans" in Austria and the old Habsburg Empire to have been synonymous with Germans within German borders.

I think that by modern standards it would be problematic to argue that these ideas hold legitimacy though, and it is uncomfortable too to think that Hitler's citizenship as a German holds legitimacy based on his appointment to a political role by another member of the NSDAP. But I do think that by modern standards it is fair to consider Hitler as a German rather than as an Austrian. As an adult Germany was his main place of residence and work for a far longer time than is required nowadays in order to attain citizenship of a country. If you were to live in Germany now I believe you only need to have lived and worked there for a period of 7 years before you can claim citizenship, and if I am not mistaken Hitler began living in Germany, or fighting in the Great War for the German Empire at the outbreak of war in 1914. As such by modern standards we could consider him to have been German by around 1921.

Therefore I would argue that we should consider Hitler as German based not only on the dubious legitimacy of the clerical errors which allowed him to serve for Germany in WWI, and the citizenship which was dubiously appointed to him by his own political party, but also German based on the more modern legislation concerning citizenship in Europe today.

That said if you were to point to Hitler as a child and ask me his nationality, it seem obvious to me that he was then Austrian.
Translated Memoirs of Otto Poschacher, Gebirgsjäger in the 2nd Gebirgsdivision.

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&r ... _sr_book_1

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Re: Can a case be made that Hitler was a German?

#15

Post by George L Gregory » 21 May 2021, 16:03

mrwolfe1988 wrote:
07 Jan 2021, 01:08
Hi all,

As you have discussed, Hitler would have considered himself German for racial and ethnic reasons. Political reasons too, as he considered "ethnic Germans" in Austria and the old Habsburg Empire to have been synonymous with Germans within German borders.

I think that by modern standards it would be problematic to argue that these ideas hold legitimacy though, and it is uncomfortable too to think that Hitler's citizenship as a German holds legitimacy based on his appointment to a political role by another member of the NSDAP. But I do think that by modern standards it is fair to consider Hitler as a German rather than as an Austrian. As an adult Germany was his main place of residence and work for a far longer time than is required nowadays in order to attain citizenship of a country. If you were to live in Germany now I believe you only need to have lived and worked there for a period of 7 years before you can claim citizenship, and if I am not mistaken Hitler began living in Germany, or fighting in the Great War for the German Empire at the outbreak of war in 1914. As such by modern standards we could consider him to have been German by around 1921.

Therefore I would argue that we should consider Hitler as German based not only on the dubious legitimacy of the clerical errors which allowed him to serve for Germany in WWI, and the citizenship which was dubiously appointed to him by his own political party, but also German based on the more modern legislation concerning citizenship in Europe today.

That said if you were to point to Hitler as a child and ask me his nationality, it seem obvious to me that he was then Austrian.
Austrians who weren’t even German nationalists considered themselves Germans. The “Austrian” composer Mozart considered himself to be a German. The Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph called himself a ‘German prince’.

Hitler wasn’t the only Austrian who thought that the Austrian Germans were just another type of Germans and that Austria should have been part of the German Reich. Austrians had ruled Germany for hundreds of years before the war in 1866 which excluded the Austrians and Austria from being included in the unification of Germany in 1971. Since Hitler was born less than 20 years after Germany had become a nation-state and was taught German nationalist ideas since he was a child.

Hitler’s citizenship wasn’t an issue for supporters of the Nazi Party or Germans in general, it was only problematic for him because he wasn’t able to become Chancellor of Germany without being a German citizen. He didn’t even use a loophole to gain German citizenship - what he did was legal as far as the German law was concerned.

No genuine historian would try and claim that Hitler was anything other than an Austrian German. Richard J. Evans’ description that he wasn’t a German because he was wasn’t born in Germany is contradicted by his own words:
Throughout the 1920s all the major political parties had been committed to reunifying Austria - part of Germany in its various incarnations all the way up to 1866 - with the Reich.
In 1989 he also wrote “One nation, two states”, which reads:
The East German population has so far shown a degree of identification with its own country which might seem surprising. Here we might turn for enlightenment to the example of Austria, which was part of Germany until 1866, under the Holy Roman Empire and its successor the German Confederation. With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, the inhabitants of what was now known as German-Austria were virtually unanimous in wanting their country’s absorption into the fledgling Weimar Republic. The merger was prevented by the Western Allies, who could not accept that the Germans should come out of the war with their territory enlarged. It was an Austrian statesman, Ignaz Seipel, who then coined the phrase ‘one nation, two states’ which has been applied more recently to the GDR and the FRG. When the Nazis came to power many Austrians started to have second thoughts about a merger with Germany, yet the Anschluss of 1938, which resurrected the ‘greater German’ idea of unification ditched by Bismarck in 1866, was still in all probability welcomed by a majority. It was only after the harsh experience of Nazi rule, and above all after 1945, when the Austrians, for all their heavy involvement in Nazism, were offered a fresh start, that ‘German reunification’ ceased to mean a union including Austria.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n24 ... two-states

Hitler did serve in WW1 in the German army by mistake, that is a fact. But, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch the judge refused to report Hitler back to Austria and called him an Austrian German who feels and thinks like a German.

Does the fact that Hitler was born an Austrian citizen mean that he wasn’t a German? I would argue no.

I would agree with British historian Alan Bullock:
Hitler, of course, was a German, but he was born a subject of the Habsburg Empire, where Germans had played the leading for centuries. However, with Bismarck's creation in the 1860s of a German Empire based on Prussia, from which the Austrian Germans were excluded, the latter found themselves forced to defend their historic claim to rule against the growing demands for equality of the Czechs and the other "subject peoples".
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, page 2.

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