TIK has a video on the Hossbach Memorandum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N8nuPdV5Ow
In it, he criticized Hoggan for claiming that Hossbach opposed Hitler but not proving it to be the case. I looked around some more and also found this on the Memorandum:
https://codoh.com/library/document/the- ... legend/en/
Mark Weber makes the same claim here but I can't find a source for it. Does anyone have any evidence that Hossbach was opposed to Hitler?
Now personally, I don't care if the Memorandum is legit or not, since I don't really think it's incriminating. AJP Taylor apparently ended up concluding the same thing as well as someone on this forum:
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=55420
I'm just curious about this specific claim.
Was Hossbach Opposed to Hitler?
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Re: Was Hossbach Opposed to Hitler?
It's appreciate if you can get the full name and biographic data on this Mr (?) Hossbach. I have an idea whom you mean, but don't think one can assume that this is the case with everyone.
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Otium
Re: Was Hossbach Opposed to Hitler?
Hektor wrote:It's appreciate if you can get the full name and biographic data on this Mr (?) Hossbach. I have an idea whom you mean, but don't think one can assume that this is the case with everyone.
It's a reference to Colonel Friedrich Hossbach. His 'Hossbach Memo' was a key document at Nuremberg, and it's a nothing burger to anyone who can read and adequately comprehend what it actually says without losing their marbles and jumping to insane conclusions. It's an unofficial report written by Hossbach on his own initiative 5 days after Hitler gave his address, and of course the document is much too short for the lecture Hitler gave to encapsulate everything, it's not a 'minute' and it only reflects Hossbach's concious and unconcious biases. So, it's still a document to be used with caution. But people who want to prove some 'master plan of aggression' like Tik ignore all that nuance and misinterpret the document entirely.
Anyway.
As to the question of whether Hossbach was opposed to Hitler, I could find out, he left two memoirs - or rather - two versions of the same memoir with various alterations but I don't really feel like trawling through them right now.
The German historian Dankwart Kluge who wrote a book entitled 'Das Hoßbach-,Protokoll‘ Die Zerstörung einer Legende' referred to Hossbach as a 'man of the resistance'. So it does seem likely, if for no other reason than we know for a fact that at the time he gave the report he made to General Ludwig Beck - who wasn't at the meeting - but was outraged by the conference (the only person to be outraged by it and see 'expansionist aims' in what Hitler said) and wrote his own report (two typewritten versions are held in the Bundesarchiv: BA-MA, N 28/4) responding to Hitler by way of Hossbach's report. His response is entitled "Randbemerkungen zu einem mir vorlegenen Protokoll der Besprechung des Führers mit Blomberg, Fritsch, Raeder anfangs November 37" (Comments on the minutes of the meeting of the Führer with Blomberg, Fritsch, Raeder at the beginning of November 1937) and dated November 12, 1937, two days after Hossbach wrote the 'memo' or 'protocol'. It's interesting because it helps confirm, more or less, the authenticity of Hossbach's own report. Anyway. The fact that Hossbach gave it to Beck, a fierce opponent of Hitler does seem to indicate that Hossbach himself was sympathetic to the anti-Hitler crowd.
Re: Was Hossbach Opposed to Hitler?
OK....
As for members of the German elites at the time. It can be presumed that many of those did indeed have reservations against Hitler and National Socialism. This is for various reasons. The leadership of the NSDAP were commonly middle class people, but generally not members of previous elites (Your top 5% of officers, politicians, nobility, merchants, industrialists, academics, etc.). That means they may have felt that their "special qualities were not acknowledged".
While - for rather strange reasons - National Socialism is attributed to the 'far right' nowadays, it did actually have many traits that then were attributed to the political left. Workerism, social policy, equality of chance, etc. were rather associated with the Social Democrats and to many upper class people that made those ideas suspicious. The difference between the older leftist parties and the NSDAP was that NS clearly rejected Marxism, class struggle.
I guess that at least some upper class Germans resented the fact that their sons and daughters had to spend a year or so with the 'Arbeitsdienst' (Labor Service) being compelled to do menial tasks like digging trenches or washing toilets in old age homes. While this was embraced by most Germans as a 'good idea', some definitely didn't like this.
I'd see this Hossbach in a similar light, but to call him a 'man of the resistance' requires a bit more proof than only presenting some circumstantial evidence for this. There was a tendency after the active war years and during occupation to present oneself as 'resistance fighters'. Which is rather strange, when those individuals held high position in government, administration or armed forces during the war years.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was perhaps an example thereof. He himself was in the middle field within the administration, yet is considered a 'man of the resistance'. However more than just circumstantial evidence can be given for this assertion.
Notably there were warrants of arrest against Hossbach close to the end of the war.
There is several books by Friedrich Hossbach from the post-war period... But that would of course be self-testimony and probably self-serving types of statements.
As for members of the German elites at the time. It can be presumed that many of those did indeed have reservations against Hitler and National Socialism. This is for various reasons. The leadership of the NSDAP were commonly middle class people, but generally not members of previous elites (Your top 5% of officers, politicians, nobility, merchants, industrialists, academics, etc.). That means they may have felt that their "special qualities were not acknowledged".
While - for rather strange reasons - National Socialism is attributed to the 'far right' nowadays, it did actually have many traits that then were attributed to the political left. Workerism, social policy, equality of chance, etc. were rather associated with the Social Democrats and to many upper class people that made those ideas suspicious. The difference between the older leftist parties and the NSDAP was that NS clearly rejected Marxism, class struggle.
I guess that at least some upper class Germans resented the fact that their sons and daughters had to spend a year or so with the 'Arbeitsdienst' (Labor Service) being compelled to do menial tasks like digging trenches or washing toilets in old age homes. While this was embraced by most Germans as a 'good idea', some definitely didn't like this.
I'd see this Hossbach in a similar light, but to call him a 'man of the resistance' requires a bit more proof than only presenting some circumstantial evidence for this. There was a tendency after the active war years and during occupation to present oneself as 'resistance fighters'. Which is rather strange, when those individuals held high position in government, administration or armed forces during the war years.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was perhaps an example thereof. He himself was in the middle field within the administration, yet is considered a 'man of the resistance'. However more than just circumstantial evidence can be given for this assertion.
Notably there were warrants of arrest against Hossbach close to the end of the war.
There is several books by Friedrich Hossbach from the post-war period... But that would of course be self-testimony and probably self-serving types of statements.
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