ABSTRACT
Did Adolf Hitler pursue his ideas with revolutionary means during the years of the Weimar Republic? The answer must begin by explaining why Hitler chose a career in politics anyway. His time in Pasewalk hospital during the final stages of the First World War played a part (Eitner, 1994, p. 45). To a patriot lying blinded by mustard gas, to a man who had fought four long years for his adopted country, November 1918 was a singular trauma. German sailors rebelled, the General Staff capitulated, the Kaiser abdicated, across the nation traditional political order fragmented in favour of Soviet-style workers’ and soldiers’ councils. In Mein Kompf Hitler wrote that during these days ‘my own fate became known to me’ (Hitler, 1985, p. 187). Gerald Fleming says that this period ‘gave him his true raison d’être’ (Fleming, 1986, p. 15). It set Hitler on a trajectory which led in unswerving fashio n to his subsequent career. The truth of the matter was probably not quite so simple. Hitler’s transition from soldier to politician was actually a gradual one.
