Ernst Hanfstaengl
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Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl (Munich, February 2, 1887 - November 6, 1975) worked for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler.
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[edit] Early Life
Ernst Hanfstaengl, nicknamed "Putzi", was born in Munich, Germany, the son of a wealthy German art publisher, Edgar Hanfstaengl, and an American mother. He spent most of his early years in Germany and later moved to the United States. His mother was Katharine Wilhelmina Heine, daughter of William Heine, a cousin of John Sedgwick. His godfather was Duke Ernst II. He attended Harvard University and became acquainted with Walter Lippmann and John Reed. A gifted pianist, he composed several songs for Harvard's football team. He graduated in 1909. According to John Tolland's biography of Hitler, Hanfstaengl was a tall man, almost six and a half feet tall; his nickname, "Putzi", was a sort of a joke, since it means "little" or "cute".
He moved to New York City and took over the management of the American branch of his father's business, the Franz Hanfstaengl Fine Arts Publishing House. Every morning, he would practice on the piano at the New York Harvard Club, where he became acquainted with both Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. Among his circle of acquaintances were the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, author Djuna Barnes, and actor Charlie Chaplin.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, he asked the German military attache in New York to smuggle him back to Germany. Slightly baffled by the proposal, the attache refused and Hanfstaengl remained in the U.S. during the war. After 1917, the American branch of the family business was confiscated as enemy property.
On February 11, 1920, Hanfstaengl married Helene Elise Adelheid Niemeyer of Long Island. Their only son, Egon Ludwig, eventually enlisted in the US Army air corps. A daughter, Hertha, died at the age of five.
[edit] Hitler's Confidante
Returning to Germany in 1922, he was living in his native Bavaria when he first heard Hitler speak in a Munich beer hall. A fellow member of the Harvard Hasty Pudding club who worked at the U.S. Embassy, asked Hanfstaengl to assist a military attache sent to observe the political scene in Munich. Just before returning to Berlin the attache, Captain Truman Smith, suggested to Hanfstaengl to go to a Nazi rally as a favor and report his impressions of Hitler. Hanfstaengl was so fascinated by Hitler that he soon became one of his most intimate followers, although he did not formally join the Nazi party until 1931. "What Hitler was able to do to a crowd in 2½ hours will never be repeated in 10,000 years," Hanfstaengl said. "Because of his miraculous throat construction, he was able to create a rhapsody of hysteria. In time, he became the living unknown soldier of Germany."
Hanfstaengel introduced himself to Hitler after the speech and began a close friendship and political association that would last through the 1920s and early 1930s. After participating in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hanfstaengel briefly fled to Austria, while the injured Hitler sought refuge in Hanfstaengel's home in Uffing, outside of Munich. Hanfstaengel's wife, Helene, allegedly dissuaded Hitler from committing suicide, when the police came to arrest him.
For much of the 1920s, Hanfstaengel introduced Hitler to Munich high-society and helped polish his image. He also helped to finance the publication of Hitler's Mein Kampf, and the NSDAP's official newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. Hitler was the godfather of Hanfstaengl's son Egon. Hanfstaengl wrote both Brownshirt and Hitler Youth marches patterned after his Harvard football songs and, he later claimed, to have devised the chant, "Sieg Heil". Included among Hanfstaengl's friends during this period were Hanns Heinz Ewers and fellow Nazi party worker and journalist Kurt Lüdecke.
Fluent in English, with many connections to higher society both in England and the United States, he became head of the Foreign Press Bureau in Berlin. Aside from this official position, much of his influence was due to his friendship with Hitler, who enjoyed listening to "Putzi" play the piano. Hanfstaengl later claimed to have alerted Hitler and Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire.
[edit] Fall From Power
As the NSDAP consolidated its power, several disputes arose between Hanfstaengl and Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Hanfstaegl was removed from Hitler's staff in 1933. He and Helene divorced in 1936. Hanfstaengl fell completely out of Hitler's favour after he was denounced by Unity Mitford, a close friend of both the Hanfstaengls and Hitler.
In 1937, Hanfstaengl received orders to parachute into an area held by the nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War, to assist in negotiations. While onboard the plane he feared a plot on his life and learned more details from the pilot about the mission, who eventually admitted he had been ordered to drop Hanfstaengl over loyalist-held territory, which would have meant almost certain death. Hanfstaengl convinced the pilot to let him escape.
This version of the story was related by Albert Speer in his memoirs, who stated that this "mission" to Spain was nothing more than an elaborate practical joke concocted by Hitler and Goebbels, designed to punish Hanfstaengl after he'd displeased the Führer by making "adverse comments about the fighting spirit of the German soldiers in combat" in the Spanish Civil War. Hanfstaengl had been issued sealed orders from Hitler, which were not to be opened until the his plane was in flight. These orders detailed that he was to be dropped in "Red Spanish territory" to work as an agent for Francisco Franco. The plane, according to Speer, was merely circling over Germany containing an increasingly disconcerted Hanfstaengl, with false location reports being given to convey the impression that the plane was drawing ever closer to Spain. After the joke had played itself out, the pilot declared he had to make an emergency landing and landed safely at the Leipzig airport.[1] Hanfstaengl was so alarmed by the event that he defected soon afterward.
He made his way to Switzerland and after securing his son Egon's release from Germany, he moved to England where he was imprisoned as an enemy alien after the outbreak of World War II. He was later moved to a prison camp in Canada. In 1942, Hanfstaengl was turned over to the U.S. and worked for President Roosevelt's 'S-Project,' revealing information on approximately over four hundred Nazi leaders. He provided 68 pages of information on Hitler alone, including personal details of Hitler's private life, and he helped Professor Henry A. Murray, the Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, and psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer and other experts to create a report for the OSS, in 1943, designated the "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler." In 1944, Hanfstaengl was handed back to the British, who repatriated him to Germany at the end of the war. William Shirer, a CBS journalist who resided in Nazi Germany until 1941 and was in frequent contact with Hanfstaengl, described him as an "eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind."
Hanfstaengl wrote Unheard Witness (1957) about his experiences. In 2004, his story was told by author Peter Conradi in his book Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidante of Hitler, Ally of FDR.
[edit] In popular culture
Hanfstaengel has rarely been mentioned or portrayed in dramatizations of Hitler's life or of life in Nazi Germany. He was, however, an important supporting character in both the TV movie Hitler: The Rise of Evil (in which he was portrayed by Liev Schreiber) and author Ron Hansen's historical fiction novel Hitler's Niece.
[edit] References
- ^ Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, (Sphere Books, 1971), Chpt.9, pp. 188-9.
[edit] Further reading
- Hanfstaengl, Ernst 'Putzi'. Hitler: The Missing Years. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957. Arcade Publishing, reprint 1994 ISBN 1-55970-278-8
- Peter Conradi Carroll & Graf. Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidante of Hitler, Ally of FDR, 2004 ISBN 0-7867-1283-X
- Metcalfe, Philip. 1933. New York, The Permanent Press, 1988. ISBN 0-9329-6687-X
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- UK resources for school work
- Neemeyer Genæology
- Putzi Lives!
- Yale Alumni Magazine
- Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony C. Sutton
- "Hitler's Americanization" by Nikos Raptis (Z Magazine)
- Sedgewick Genæology
- Historian: Harvard Was Tied to Nazis
- The Nazi Who Returned to Harvard
- He played piano for Hitler — and FDR; Otto Doelling, Associated Press 2/23/71
