Conversations with Hitler
| Author | Hermann Rauschning |
|---|---|
| Original title | Gespräche mit Hitler |
| Language | German |
| Publication date | 1939 |
| Publication place | France |
Conversations with Hitler (German: Gespräche mit Hitler), also translated as Voice of Destruction in American title, and Hitler Speaks in British title, was a controversial book written by German politician and anti-Hitler activist Hermann Rauschning that claims to record the author's conversations with Adolf Hitler between 1932 and 1934.
Publication in France
It was published in 1939 in France. At the beginning of the war, the French dropped leaflets on the Western Front containing excerpts from Rauschning's writings but with little response.[1] The book claimed to be based on actual discussions with Hitler, though they were probably entirely Rauschning's invention.[2] Despite the initial doubt over its authenticity, the work won great popularity and its inaccuracies had not been widely known until the 1980s.[3]
Literary impact on other works
The work was widely cited by many scholars, such as Hannah Arendt in her The Origins of Totalitarianism and Richard Pipes in his Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.
It was influential in its suggestion that Hitler was possessed by demons. This influenced a later genre of literature which promoted a variety of spurious occult theories about Nazism and occultism, many of which quoted heavily from the work.[4]
See also
- Hitler Diaries, another falsified work about Adolf Hitler
References
- ^ Andrzejewski, Marek Hermann Rauschning. Biographische Skizze (Hermann Rauschning biographical sketch) in Gornig Gilbert (ed.), German-Polish meeting on science and culture, Societas Physicae Experimentalis, Series of Gdansk Scientific Society, Volume 5, 2001, pp. 170–185
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 110.
- ^ Bedürftig, Friedemann; Zentner, Christian (1997). The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press. p. 1162. ISBN 0-306-80793-9.
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 108–111.
- Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2002). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3124-6.
- Nilsson, Mikael (2024). Christianity in Hitler's Ideology: The Role of Jesus in National Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009314961. ISBN 978-1-009-31495-4.