Before he seized control of Germany and launched a barbaric war that destroyed three continents and killed 50 million people, there were popitious moments — sliding doors — when Hitler, and the Nazis, could have been stopped and the world saved from destruction.
Schicklgruber
Culprit: Johann Heidler, Hitler’s grandfather
The curious tale of how a surname resulted in one of history’s most consequential sliding doors.
The geneology is a bit confusing. At age 42, Maria Schicklgruber, an Austrian peasant woman, gave birth to an illegitimate son she named Alois. Five years later, she married an itinerant miller named Johann Hiedler, who may or may not have been the boy’s father. In any case after their wedding he did not legally adopt the child, who grew up Alois Schicklgruber. When the boy was 10, his mother Maria died and he was sent to live with relatives. His father disappeared.
Thirty years later, at age 84, Johann Heidler, turned up to locate Alois, and in a notary’s office in a nearby town testified in front of three witnesses that he was indeed Alois Schicklgruber’s father. Alois, now 39, belatedly adoped his father’s surname, which had been revised from Heidler to Hitler. Years later, Alois married Klara and they had a son they named Adolf.
Sliding Door: Could Adolf Hitler have commanded such monstrous power with the unwieldy and slightly commical name Schicklgruber? Heil, no!
The Beer Hall Putsch Trial
Culprit: Franz Guertner, Bavarian Minister of Justice
The Beer Hall Putsch was a botched coup d’etat by the fledging Nazi party at the Buergerbraukeller in Munich. Hitler and nine Nazi plotters were arrested to stand trial for treason. Franz Guertner, a rabid anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer, was the Bavarian Minister of Justice. He made sure the judge and court were compliant towards Hitler.
Hitler was a gifted orator and a genius at manipulating public opinion. He knew correspondents from national newspapers would be attending the trial, so from the jump he took control of the proceedings; his fiery opening statement was 4 hours long! The inert judiciary allowed the head conspirator to interrupt testimony, cross-examine witnesses, and address the court with long harangues.
Hitler turned a fiasco into a triumph. Treason carried a lifelong sentence but Hitler received only five years to be served in a “country club” prison. He was out in nine months and used his incarceration to write his infamous memoir Mein Kampf.
Sliding Door: The trial could have resulted in locking up Hitler for good, if only Guertner had not intervened and the court capitulated. Surely the Nazi movement would have withered without its firebrand leader.
Mein Kampf
Culprit: All the non-Nazis who did not read it.
Ascension to Chancellor
Culprit: Von Schleiger, Von Pappen, Hindenberg
Invasion of the Rhur
Culprit: The French Army
Before the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 that triggered World War II, AH rolled the dice on several military actions into bordering countries. In each case, his generals were terrified because they knew these incursions, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, could have been easily crushed by England or France.
The first was the invasion of the Rhur, an industrialized strip of territory between Germany and France, divided by the Rhine. The Generals panicked. They had only XX divisions, which could have been crushed by France’s XX divisions. Indeed, years later AH told friends at Berghof that he was bluffing and only had 5 brigades. The French government wanted to act, but in this case it was their generals who lost their nerve and offered no resistance.
Sliding Door: A bully’s first act of aggression is a probe to see what he can get away with. It must stopped in its tracks, no matter how insignificant. Bad behavior that is not stopped continues. If France had shown force then, as testimony at Nuremberg later revealed, the German army would have been crushed — and burgeoning Nazi regime along with it.
Anschluss
Culprit:
Munich
Culprit: Neville Chamberlin, with a supporting performance by Diladier
Munich has come to mean appeasement. In XX 1938, Chamberlain and Diladier, weak and intimidated, gave permission to AH to invade the Sudetenland, the German-speaking strip of western Czechloslovakia, if only the dictator pretty please promised to stop there. Rereading the history, the events were even more shocking than I remembered. The German generals were terrified of what AH was planning, and several times that spring sent emissaries to meet with government leaders in England, and even Chamberlin himself, to warn them about Hitler’s intention to take all of Czech by military force.
When such an invasion took place, the German generals planned a coup triggered when Hitler ordered the invasion, but they needed a guarantee of France and England’s military support. The Czech army was strong and its border strongly fortified. If the English and French had guaranteed military support, an invasion have ended in disastrous defeat.
However, Chamberlin was old, weak and naive. When he gladly gave permission for AH to invade the Sudentland, against the will of the Czechs who were not even invited to the negotiation, the incursion offered another bloodless victory to the Fuerher. The generals lost their justification for a coup.
Sliding Door: If England and France had declared support for Czecho and mobilized along the German border in the west, but AH went forward with the invasion anyway, the German generals would have had cover for a coup d’ etat since the German people did not want war.