| Hermann Rauschning | |
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In office June 20, 1933 – November 23, 1934 |
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| Preceded by | Ernst Ziehm |
| Succeeded by | Arthur Greiser |
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| Born | August 7, 1887 Thorn, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, now Toruń,Poland |
| Died | February 8, 1982 Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Political party | National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) |
Hermann Rauschning (7 August 1887 – February 8, 1982) was a German conservative and reactionary who became a Nazi member in 1932 in the Free City of Danzig, and in 1934 renounced Nazi party membership and fled to the United States where he denounced Nazism. Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Hitler Speaks, in which he claimed to have many meetings and conversations with Hitler. Many historians now regard this book with suspicion.
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Rauschning was born in Thorn, in the German Empire, to a Prussian officer in the province of West Prussia. He was educated in the Prussian Cadet Corps and was wounded in World War I. After the war, he settled in the area around Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), where he owned land. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Danzig and the surrounding area were designated a "free city" under the control of the League of Nations.
In January 1919 Rauschning began to collect reports and newspaper-articles about the atrocities committed by the Polish government and the so called "Westmarken-Verein" (association for the western territories) in the districts of Thorn (Torun and Posen Poznan[1] which had become under Polish control as a consequence of the treaty of Versailles.
Rauschning claimed that before World War I, about 1 200 000 Germans had lived in these districts and that there was only 350 000 left in 1929. Therefore he concluded that more than 800 000 had been expelled from their homes[2]. He also claimed that the expuslsion was performed by exercising of psychologigical and economic pressure and also by internment of thousands of people. He especially highlighted the city of Szczypiorno which he claimed had functioned as an internment camp where 8000 people - among them 7 years old children, 70 years old men and 24 lLtheran parsons (among them General-Superintendent Blau) were kept as prisoners for months under worst conditions and without medical care[3].
During the session of the League of Nations in Lugano 15 December 1928 the german foreign minister and Nobel Laureate Gustav Stresemann directed a furious charge against Poland because of these atrocities against the german minority.
As a wealthy landowner and agriculturist, Rauschning became President of the Farmers' Association of the Free City. At this time he became a supporter of the National Socialists (Nazis), believing that they offered the only way out of Germany's troubles, including the incorporation of Danzig into Germany. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932[4]. He became President of the Danzig Teachers' Association in 1932. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis in Danzig won control of the Free City's government, and Rauschning became the President of the Senate of Danzig on 20 June 1933; that is, head of state of the Free City government.
The Nazis in Danzig decided to impose the same Gleichschaltung (total restructuring) that was being carried out in Germany. This included arresting Catholic priests, disenfranchising Jews, and suppressing all other political parties. But Rauschning resisted.{cn} He was a bitter rival of Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig. On 23 November 1934, he resigned from the Senate and the Party. In the April 1935 Danzig elections, he supported "constitutionalist" candidates against the Nazis. The Nazis won, and Rauschning found himself in personal danger. He sold his farming interests in 1936 and fled from Danzig to Switzerland. He moved to France in 1938 and to the United Kingdom in 1939. In 1941 Rauschning moved to the United States, and purchased a farm near Portland, Oregon, where he died in 1982.
Disillusioned with Nazism, Rauschning wrote The Revolution of Nihilism, one of the first inside stories of the Nazi movement. He wrote it in the winter of 1937-38 for his fellow Germans. He also hoped it would lead to a counter-revolution against the Nazi regime. He believed that the alternative to Nazism was the restoration of the monarchy. His book went through seventeen printings in the United States.
Rauschning's definition of Nazism:
The authenticity of the discussions Rauschning claims to have had with Hitler between 1932 and 1934, which form the basis of his book Hitler Speaks[6], was challenged shortly after Rauschning’s death by Swiss researcher Wolfgang Hänel. Hänel investigated the memoir and announced his findings at a conference of the revisionist association Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt[7] in 1983.
Hänel declared that Gespräche mit Hitler (the German title of Hitler Speaks) was a fraud and that the book has no value "except as a document of Allied war propaganda" and concluded that:
Articles in the Institute for Historical Review [8] by Mark Weber reviews and supports Hänel’s work from a revisionist viewpoint.[9] [10] The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich also considers that "The research of the Swiss educator Wolfgang Hänel has made it clear that the 'conversations' were mostly free inventions." [11]
The non-revisionist historian Hugh Trevor-Roper’s initial view that the conversations recorded in Hitler Speaks were authentic [12] also wavered as a result of the Hänel research. Whilst, in the introductory essay[13] he wrote for Hitler's Table Talk in 1953[14] he had said:
"Hitler's own table talk in the crucial years of the Machtergreifung (1932-34), as briefly recorded by Hermann Rauschning, so startled the world (which could not even in 1939 credit him with either such ruthlessness or such ambitions) that it was for long regarded as spurious. It is now, I think, accepted. If any still doubt its genuineness, they will hardly do so after reading the volume now published. For here is the official, authentic record of Hitler's Table-Talk almost exactly ten years after the conversations recorded by Rauschning".[15]
in the third edition, published in 2000,[16] he wrote a new preface in which he did revise, though not reverse, his opinion of the authenticity of Hitler Speaks:
"I would not now endorse so cheerfully the authority of Hermann Rauschning which has been dented by Wolfgang Hanel, but I would not reject it altogether. Rauschning may have yielded at times to journalistic temptations, but he had opportunities to record Hitler's conversations and the general tenor of his record too exactly forestalls Hitler's later utterances to be dismissed as fabrication."[17]
In writing his biography of Hitler, Ian Kershaw has written "I have on no single occasion cited Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks, a work now regarded to have so little authenticity that it is best to disregard it altogether."[18][19]
The Hänel research was reviewed in the West German newspapers Der Spiegel [20] and Die Zeit in 1985 [21]
Other historians have not been convinced by Haenal's research.
David Redles attacked Haenel's method which consisted of 'pointing
out similarities in phrasing of quotations from other individuals
in Ruaschning's other books...and those attributed to Hitler in
Voice of Destruction[i.e. Hitler Speaks]. If the
two are even remotely similar Haenel concludes that the latter must
be concotions. However the similarities, which are mostly slight,
could be for a number of reasons....[they] need not stem from
forgery'[22]. Eberhard Jaeckel also concluded that,
whilst the work cannot be regarded as a verbatim account it is a
good guide to Hitler's world view from someone who met with
Hitler.[23]
Hitler, Adolf (1953). Bormann, Martin. ed. Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944. trans. Cameron, Norman; Stevens, R.H. Preface and Introduction: The Mind of Adolf Hitler by H.R. Trevor-Roper (1st ed.). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Hitler, Adolf (1973). Bormann, Martin. ed. Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944. trans. Cameron, Norman; Stevens, R.H. Preface and Introduction: The Mind of Adolf Hitler by H.R. Trevor-Roper (2nd ed.). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 746. ISBN 0297765841.
Hitler, Adolf (2000-10-01). Bormann, Martin. ed. Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944. trans. Cameron, Norman; Stevens, R.H. Preface and Introduction: The Mind of Adolf Hitler by H.R. Trevor-Roper (3rd ed.). London: Enigma Books. pp. 800. ISBN 1929631057.
Kershaw, Ian (1998). Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (1st ed.). London: Penguin Press. pp. 845 + (xxx). ISBN 0713990473.
Rauschning, Hermann (1990) [1930 (Berlin, R. Hobbing)] (in German). Die Entdeutschung Westpreussens und Posens : zehn Jahre polnischer Politik (Reprint ed.). Verl. für Ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur. pp. 405. ISBN 3922314961. OCLC 5452961.
| Government offices | ||
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| Preceded by Ernst Ziehm |
Danzig Head of State 1933–1934 |
Succeeded by Arthur Greiser |
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  | Institute for Historical Review - Hermann Rauschning's Phony 'Conversations With Hitler': An Update |
| | Swiss Historian Exposes Anti-Hitler Rauschning Memoir as Fraudulent - Swiss Historian [Wolfgang Haenel] Exposes Anti-Hitler Rauschning Memoir as Fraudulent |
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