Specifically, what did Hitler think he could learn from Karl May’s cowboys and Indians? In his table talks he insisted that every German officer should carry May’s Indian books (Indianerbücher) with him because this was how they would learn to attack the Russians, who fight just like Indians. Officers, he insisted, could learn something about strategic thinking from Karl May; if they did, they would behave more heroically and less cautiously than they did at the present time. Hitler believed that May’s heroes were endowed with “muscles of iron and sinews of steel.”23 These heroes, of course, are white Germans, noble and warlike, and their leader Old Shatterhand possesses the kind of qualities a future heroic German leader (führer) ought to have. He should be hard (hart) but God-fearing, versatile and creative, and strictly puritanical in his habits. Old Shatterhand does not drink or gamble. In whatever he does he is better than anyone else. His friends as well as his adversaries are constantly amazed by his vast knowledge, which he uses to shame the experts. Moreover, Shatterhand possesses supernatural, paranormal qualities that enable him to foresee future occurrences. He is surrounded by some supernatural aura. His followers know it too, for they obey him instinctively and offer him their lives, and he in return is willing to sacrifice for them. It is important to point out that Karl May’s Wild West heroes are of Germanic origin, another reason why Hitler was drawn to these stories.
If Karl May influenced Hitler’s image of America, Wilhelm Emil Eber, commonly called “Elk” Eber, probably helped shape his visual image of the American West. Eber was a German painter who had spent some time in the United States, where he became a passionate admirer of Indian culture. In 1929 Eber was initiated into the Sioux tribe, adopting the name of Hehaka Ska, the Lakota name for elk. Like Hitler, Eber was a Karl May enthusiast, and he admired the bravery of American Indians. Hitler was impressed by Eber for several reasons. Eber had been an early follower of the Nazi movement, participating in the 1923 coup against the Bavarian government. Hitler prized Eber’s artistic talents and the subject matter of his paintings and drawings. Most of Eber’s works deal with either Indian or war-related subjects. During World War I, Eber had been a war propagandist (Kriegsmaler) who depicted the heroic deeds of German soldiers. Hitler acquired several of these war portraits, one of them called the Last Hand Grenade, which depicted a fatigued but determined German soldier who is about to toss his last grenade at the enemy. But Hitler also liked Eber’s Indian paintings, especially the most famous of them, called Custer’s Last Battle, which can now be found in the Karl May museum in Radebeul near Dresden. Eber may have slightly romanticized the Indians, but his technical depiction of them was true to life, as his knowledge of Indian mores and artifacts was extensive. Hitler did not like the Indians as much as Eber did; he thought they were racially inferior to the Germans. What he did like about them was their tribal solidarity, warlike nature, and bravery in battle. In this sense, Eber visually reinforced Hitler’s image of the American frontier that he had derived from Karl May.
It was not only Karl May’s stories and Eber’s paintings that drew Hitler to America. He was also impressed by the industrial capacity of the United States, and on several occasions he even held up American industry as the model Germany should emulate. He attributed America’s industrial superiority to the availability of more abundant resources and its modern plant equipment, which allowed U.S. manufacturers to outproduce and undercut European competitors, higher U.S. wages notwithstanding. It would be years, he thought, before Europeans could compete with America. As an example of advanced industrial manufacture, Hitler always mentioned the competitive edge of the American automobile industry. Hitler loved automobiles and enjoyed being driven all over Germany. Henry Ford was one of his great heroes, especially after he learned that the American car tycoon was also anti-Semitic. In 1923 and 1924, Hitler dispatched one of his financial supporters, Kurt Lüdecke, to Italy and the United States in an effort to persuade Mussolini and Henry Ford to provide funds for the struggling Nazi Party. In both cases Lüdecke failed, but Hitler continued to rely on the footloose young businessman for advice on foreign countries, especially the United States. Once, on a long drive from Munich to Berlin in 1932, Hitler asked Lüdecke to talk to him about America. He was delighted to hear that as a boy Lüdecke had also devoured Karl May stories. Hitler asked Lüdecke about Roosevelt, the American financial crisis, the probability of radical change in America, and Prohibition.24 Lecturing Hitler about the United States from the back seat of his car may not have been very productive, but Hitler allegedly listened very carefully, as he always did when the topic of the United States came up. During this particular trip, Hitler and Lüdecke made several disparaging comments about another of Hitler’s corps of America experts, Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl, who, like Lüdecke, had given crucial financial support to the fledgling Nazi Party. Hanfstaengl was a burly giant of a man who had a fondness for good food and music, and a wide circle of friends. His mother came from a well-known New England family, the Sedgwicks. His grandfather had established a flourishing art and photography business in Munich, and his father had set up a branch of the family business on Fifth Avenue in New York. In order to learn the business and eventually take over the American branch, Hanfstaengl was sent to Harvard University, where he made a number of friends, including T. S. Eliot, Walter Lippman, Hendrick von Loon, Hans von Kaltenborn, Robert Benchley, and John Reed. Hanfstaengl also became a close friend of Franklin Roosevelt, then a rising senator from New York. Through Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest son, Hanfstaengl received an invitation to the White House in 1908, where he displayed his prowess on the piano. His piano playing actually endeared him to the Harvard football team—he played for them to pep them up before their games. Later, after joining Hitler’s entourage, he convinced the führer to apply American entertainment and advertising techniques to politics, especially the practice of using cheerleaders to whip up the enthusiasm of crowds, though in Germany the cheerleaders were not pretty girls in short skirts but handsome young men bellowing through bullhorns.
Hanfstaengl was marooned in America during World War I and did not return to his humiliated and defeated country until 1921, entering the University of Munich to work on his Ph.D. in history. In 1922 he heard Hitler speak and, like Lüdecke, became a dedicated follower. Again like Lüdecke, he gave freely to the party and used his social connections to give Hitler an entrée into business and society circles. Hitler was a frequent guest at the Hanfstaengls, showing particular fondness for Putzi’s American wife, Helene. In moments of stress for the führer, Hanfstaengl was at Hitler’s beck and call, playing the piano and entertaining him with funny anecdotes. Hanfstaengl knew a great deal about Hitler’s private life, including his chief’s disturbing personality traits and obsessions. Later he told American intelligence all he knew about Hitler and his inner circle for, like Lüdecke, he would become persona non grata to Hitler and his top henchmen. Hanfstaengl was given to indiscretions; he did not like the direction the movement was taking in the mid-1930s, and he denounced the creeping police terror and the insidious militarism of the regime. Although he served briefly in Hitler’s government after the seizure of power in 1933, Hanfstaengl became increasingly disenchanted with the Nazi regime and fled for his life after the Nazis played a cruel hoax on him by telling him that he had been singled out for a secret mission to Spain in which he would be flown to Salamanca to make contact with Franco’s forces and help the local German agents establish better relations with the Spanish Fascists. It was a cruel joke, for Goering, who devised the scheme, planned to dump Hanfstaengl by parachute over hostile Communist territory between Madrid and Barcelona. If the prank had succeeded,