Hitler at the Front

By TD Conner

Massive armies fought to the death in muddy and bloody trenches on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918. One soldier was Adolf Hitler, later to become the Fuhrer of Germany. This is the story of the years of warfare which helped to shape his mindset and world-view and made him one of the most evil presences known to mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TD Conner
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019

TD Conner

TD Conner is an ex-newspaper man. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia. He lives on Wilmington Island, GA

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Published 2020 by Writeplace Press

POB 9704

Savannah, GA 31412

Copyright 2019 TD Conner

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review this book or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior or written permission of the publisher.

Also by TD Conner:

The Rifles of Elm Street: History Takes a Detour

War on the South Coast 1861-1865

Node Space, stories

Mountain Romance, fiction

Demolition Man: Hitler, from Braunau to the Bunker

Ironwork of Savannah

Pirates and Raiders of the Southern Shore

Nazi Medical Experiments

Young William Bonney, screenplay

PREFACE

The 1914 outbreak of the Great War, as it has come to be known, lifted the hearts, minds and spirits of many people in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At last the two Imperial regimes, both ruled by German-speaking royalty, would have a chance to crush their long-perceived enemies, France, Russia, and Britain, and in the case of Austria-Hungary, to give payback to upstart Serbia for the travesty occurring that summer in Sarajevo, the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Empire’s throne.

Or so ran the popular sentiment at the time--feelings which would change as the massive bloodletting continued endlessly, generating death, destruction, depravation and desperation-- to those of anger, helplessness and deep, soul-searing depression.

But at the start, happy, eager crowds filled the streets and squares when war was declared to hear the rousing, high-energy nationalist patriotic speeches detailing with great, heartfelt emotion just how the Teutonic armies would soon drive all enemies before them, ending this short, glorious war in a smashing triumph before Christmas.

Among the masses jamming the streets of Munich during this delirium was a young Austrian--Adolf Hitler, later to become Fuhrer of Germany.

A picture of the fevered crowd in the Odeonsplatz was taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, who would one day become the official photographer of the Nazi regime, and who showed his work to his Fuhrer in later years. It was the face of an eager young man--Hitler-- one face in a sea of faces, glowing in warm approval of the stirring phrases being mouthed from an unseen dais by some demagogue.

As history details, Hitler soon joined the Bavarian (German) Army. He then spent four full years fighting in and near the trenches of the Western Front. (Bavaria at the time was an autonomous kingdom under the auspices of Imperial Germany.)

The veteran Hitler emerged at the end of the war in 1918 outraged, as were many Germans, at the Fatherland’s stunning defeat and what he saw as a twisted new Germany taking shape after the conflict: Marxists seizing violent control of sections of the country; a roaring inflation where profiteers made fortunes off the plight of others, leading to grinding, relentless poverty; maimed and decorated veterans begging in the streets; a great decline in social mores; forced reparations paid to scornful foreigners; joblessness; the open, unhindered rise of prostitution and hard drug use; and allied military occupation of parts of Germany, along with full control by the victorious foreigners over the weak Weimar government which replaced Kaiser Wilhelm.

He blamed the Social Democrats, the trade unions, Marxists, slackers, prostitutes, Reds, and Jews for what had happened to his beloved Germany. He resolved to do something about it.

He went into politics.

This presentation is not meant to be a recapitulation of the great battles, strategy, or maneuvers which occurred for four years along the Western Front.

Many excellent books expertly cover all facets of that subject.*

This is a focus on events affecting or affected by Hitler’s List Regiment and thus Hitler himself.

This book starts with an outline of some of the events and incidents which molded and shaped the rather shiftless, uneducated young man who joined the List Regiment at the end of summer 1914.

No official records have been found of Hitler’s day-to-day activities along the war front, but it is known that he first served as a front line infantry soldier, later as a military courier.

NB: I am not an academic, nor do I claim to be a scholar. I approached this presentation purely as an ex-newspaperman, a writer much interested in history. I do not read or speak the German language and thus have relied on some of the non-primary sources and translations available in English. I much appreciate the help of the friendly and skillful staff at the University of South Carolina’s ultra-modern Bluffton Campus Library.

* A very good account of WWI is that of Gerard de Groot, The First World War.

1

Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of Germany, was born on April 20 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, just across the Inn River from Bavaria.

His father, Alois, was a mid-level official with the Austrian Customs Service.

Due to requirements of that job, the family moved from time to time during Hitler’s growing-up days to locations in both Germany and Austria. Hitler spent part of his school days in Linz, an Upper Austrian town rich in architecture and history. His father, with whom he had a contentious relationship, died in January 1903.

At a young age, Hitler told his family he intended to become an artist. His father took bitter exception to that plan and ordered his son to follow a path leading to a civil service career. Hitler refused to accept his father’s wishes and ill will rose between the two of them.

Hitler always claimed Linz as his hometown though he only lived there for about two years. While he was Fuhrer he laid out plans to rebuild and renovate Linz.

This included opening a large hotel there along with an art museum full of paintings, many of them stolen by his underlings in the Nazi Party since 1933.

No one except Hitler ever voiced support for the Linz renovation plan (other than the Nazi satrap who ruled there until 1945,) but the dictator’s word was law.

He said he would build his retirement retreat on the Freinberg Mountain near Linz after the hoped-for WWII victory and live there with Fraulein (Eva) Braun, and his dog Blondi in a modern-equipped home designed to look outwardly like a simple Austrian farmhouse.

While Fuhrer, Hitler had his friend, the architect Hermann Giesler, prepare him a special model of Linz, complete with the improvements he had designed over much of his life built in.

Giesler even installed special lighting on the table model so Hitler could view his new Linz in morning sunshine, at dusk, and at mid-day. At the end of his days, with Russian shells thudding down in the streets near the Berlin Chancellery, Hitler would spend long hours in his underground warren, carefully studying his Linz model.

In his final testament, dictated to a secretary the day before he took his life, he referred to the art collection he planned to send to the Linz museum he wanted built.

Nibelung Bridge

One of the few civic improvements Hitler was able to carry out while Fuhrer still exists in Linz, the Nibelung Bridge, the Nibelungs being a mythical race of dwarfs in the Old Norse legends, all of which were carefully studied and often recounted by Hitler for the knot of hangers-on and sycophants in his entourage very late into the long nights at his Berghof home when he entertained his guests with drawn-out, repetitive monologues until near-dawn during WWII. (He said he couldn’t sleep until he felt the last allied bomber had left the skies over Germany.)

Among other improvements Hitler envisioned in Linz were a large Nazi Party center with seats for 100,000 people, a Bismarck Monument, a new city hall, a home for the region’s governors, a grave for his parents with a steeple Hitler ordered to be built taller than the St. Stephen’s Church tower in Vienna, a large sports stadium, a grand hotel with a special tunnel beneath it linking it with the local railroad station, a flying school for the air force, a music school, and a