Was Hitler’s Year in Prison his Key to Power?

George Elvin (PR L6)

On 8th November, 1923 Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. In total, he spent less than a year behind bars, but these would be amongst the most formative and influential months in Hitler’s rise to power. His nine-month imprisonment proved to be fruitful, as Hitler dedicated much time to writing his autobiographical manifesto, which played an instrumental role in his ascendancy to Führer. Hitler’s time in prison was further influential in the creation of his newly defined image as a martyr and in presenting his political philosophies.

Beyond doubt, the most significant impact of the time Hitler spent confined in Landsberg prison was the emergence of Mein Kampf. Few books have ever been more generally condemned as the one composed by Hitler (with the assistance of his deputy, Rudolph Hess). The book – although condemned by literary critics who describe it as a poorly written mess – acted as Hitler’s manifesto, its tone in no way concealing the furious philosophy from which thousands of atrocities and millions of casualties would stem.

The scars of history seen during the era of the Nazi Party Government and following Hitler’s dictatorship can all be said to have been suggested – often even planned – in Hitler’s time in jail. The aggregate output resulted from such time and thought was in the tangible form of this book, and this, by the late 1920s had become widely read (or at least widely owned) throughout Germany, propagating Hitler’s ideas on race and political ideology to a large audience. Hitler’s vision for Germany through this book plagued every community in Germany, dismantling stable ideologies and conjuring up hate while Nazifying the population. Such impacts of Mein Kampf resulting from Hitler’s time in prison should not be understated; it led the way as a guide for Nazi Germany, and also German voters prepared to support the Nazis in the elections of the early ’30s.

Lockdown in prison also had unexpected, less quantifiable boons for Hitler. Though there had been a trial before his imprisonment, it had been a show trial which promoted his popularity and brought him to national attention on the German stage.

However, his time in prison also influenced his political philosophies and his public image. Throughout his prison sentence, German people felt sympathetic towards his cause – this is exemplified in the shortness of Hitler’s sentence in comparison with Communist equivalents. The image of Hitler, in the eyes of some German people, significantly changed thanks to his prison time. He became a popular martyr, and a challenge to the injustices and failures rife throughout Germany. This new-found sympathy from the German people spearheaded

the idea of him as the man of the people, rising up in the face of communism and in the face of chaos, to build a better Germany while trying to reclaim the glorious attributes associated with monarchical rule before the First World War.

Hitler greatly benefited from the label of martyr; it put him at the centre of political discourse and furthered his image as a man behind whom the German people could rally, in the hopes of expelling woes. This idea of martyr and man of the people coincided with his concept of how to obtain power, made in the cells of Landsberg. During his nine months in prison, his roadmap was drastically changed: he diverted from aiming to gain political power through force as he had done in Munich, to attempting to win power through the usual political system. Hitler’s change in policy was crucial in the timeline of his ascendancy – without such changes to his beliefs on obtaining power, it is reasonable to state that he might never have risen through the ranks of politics to become Führer.

The nine months spent in prison were doubtless the beginning of his relatively non-revolutionary, nonviolent political journey, which would quickly snowball into fully-fledged rule after the effects of the Great Depression and political and financial collapse were felt in the early 1930s. Hitler’s jail time also acted as a formative period of reflection: the ideas solidified in his book would go on to be instrumental not only in his rise to power, but also in the following decade where the terrible and awful ideas cemented in Mein Kampf were implemented as policy.

January 2021 by Mr E.F.J. Twohig