Guide Mentor

Character Role Analysis

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born émigré to Germany, and was a prolific author in Hitler's day. Shirer tells us that Chamberlain's treatise Foundations of the Nineteenth Century "provided the Nazis with their racial aberrations," (1.4.120) and he also notes that the Nazis later considered Chamberlain to be the "spiritual founder" of Nazi Germany (1.4.133).

Dietrich Eckart

Dietrich Eckart was another of National Socialism's "spiritual founders" (1.2.43). As one of the founding members of the original German Workers' Party, Eckart "became a close advisor" to Hitler when the young would-be Fuehrer joined the party (1.2.45). As Shirer notes, the final sentence of Hitler's autobiographical treatise Mein Kampf is "an expression of gratitude to this erratic mentor" (1.2.45).

Leopold Poetsch

Leopold Poetsch seems to have been the only childhood teacher that Hitler remembered with any respect, and in Mein Kampf Hitler says admiringly that Poetsch "used our budding national fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor. He made history my favorite subject" (1.1.59-60). Shirer singles Poetsch out as being among the first men who helped to nurture Hitler's fledgling fanaticism.

Alfred Rosenberg

Shirer characterizes Alfred Rosenberg as being "ponderous" and "dimwitted" (2.5.156), and calls him "a muddled pseudo philosopher" (1.4.83). His intellectual qualities seem to have gone over well with Hitler, though, as he became another of the would-be Fuehrer's "earliest mentor." (2.5.156) With characteristic flair, Shirer puts things this way: "From the beginning to the end Hitler always had a warm spot in his heart for this dull, stupid, fumbling man" (2.5.156), and in later years "he was often hailed as the 'intellectual leader' of the Nazi Party" (1.2.79).

That last phrase sounds like an oxymoron.