Two weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a statement attributed to former President Donald Trump by his former chief of staff, General John Kelly, in an interview with The New York Times, that “Hitler did some good things,” received widespread but brief news coverage. The Trump camp denied the General’s claims and the story dropped out of the news cycle almost as quickly as it had arrived.[1]
In the 1930s, a significant number of Germans, along with many non-Germans, credited Hitler with notable successes from January 30, 1933, when he became the German Chancellor, and throughout much of the rest of the decade. But those successes have been obscured by weightier, subsequent historical facts: the Holocaust and Germany’s unconditional surrender at the end of the Second World War in Europe, which was preceded by a matter of days by Hitler’s suicide.
Adolf Hitler, the new German Chancellor, the fourth in eight months, speaks on February 1, 1933.
The “good things” or successes fall into two broad categories: one emotional, the other economic. These were phenomena of restoration that arose seemingly phoenix-like when Hitler came to power. Over a relatively short time, they erased the hardship and suffering, along with a widespread sense of victimization, endured by Germany since the advent of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which had been imposed by the victors following the First World War.
Pastor Martin Niemöller, who became the most famous German opponent of Hitler and the Nazis, and who, starting in the mid-thirties, was jailed by them on numerous occasions, including continuously from 1937 to 1945, was initially a strong supporter. He voted for them in 1924, 1928, and 1933, and greeted Hitler’s appointment as chancellor with delight.[2] In his memoir From U-boat to Pulpit, written during the summer of 1934, he stated his belief that Hitler would bring light and “National Revival” to Germany, ending the long “years of darkness” from 1919 to 1932.[3]
Known to Germans as the Versailles Diktat, the Treaty of Versailles, in the words of Matthew Hockenos, Niemöller’s most recent biographer, deprived the country of “13 per cent of its territory, 12 per cent of its population, 48 per cent of its iron industry, 16 per cent of its coal production, 80 per cent of its naval fleet, all of its colonies, and, as far as the people were concerned, all of its dignity.”[4] After the Second World War, Winston Churchill wrote that “the economic clauses of the treaty were malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile. Germany was condemned to pay reparations on a fabulous scale.”[5] Hitler exploited the treaty’s harshness to rally sufficient Germans to the Nazi cause to enable them to take power.
Public servant Hans Bernd Gisevius, who was a consistent opponent of the Nazis from the outset, wrote in To The Bitter End, his memoir of the Nazi years, that “a wild national jubilation broke out” when Hitler took power. “Day after day people sang and marched into ever-madder states of intoxication…. Even the doubters were sucked into the torrent of joy and hope.”[6]
Although concentration camps like Dachau were established by the Nazis to deal with their opponents almost as soon as the former had come to power, Hitler was seen by many as an avenging savior determined to restore the country’s economy, military, and its pride. While the Great Depression saw German unemployment grow from 1.3 million in 1929 to over six million when the Führer assumed power,[7] he saw it reduced to less than five million in 1934 and eliminated by 1937.[8] Moreover, gross national product and national income both doubled between 1933 and 1937.[9] “Under Hitler,” according to historian Gordon A. Craig, “Germany emerged from the depression with a speed that amazed the world.”[10]
This period also saw Hitler withdraw Germany from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933;[11] announce, in March 1935, that Germany had a new military air force, was increasing the size of its army more than five fold, and would no longer abide by the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles;[12] and, a year later, in a daring move opposed by his generals, he used a small number of troops to reoccupy the Rhineland.[13] The national euphoria ignited by this conquest eclipsed even that of the previous triumphs of 1933 and 1935.[14]
On the day of the reoccupation, Hitler told the Reichstag, the German parliament, “We all unite in two sacred vows. First, we swear to yield to no force whatever in restoring the honour of our people. Second, we pledge that now, more than ever, we shall strive for understanding between the European peoples. We have no territorial demands to make! Germany will never break the peace!”[15] This was one of the more spectacular lies he told during these years. But these deceits were generally not seen as such among Hitler’s supporters or, as the American journalist William L. Shirer described them, “the German herd.” Rather there was a great sense of the new German fact, of inevitability, of history correcting itself.[16]
Such was the Führer’s impact on the popular imagination of those years that, according to historian and Hitler biographer Sir Ian Kershaw, he became “arguably the most popular head of state in the world.”[17] This was the same man who went on to rule Germany for twelve years, reduce it to a ruin and whose virulent hatred of the Jews produced the Holocaust.
Matthew Hockenos, Then They Came For Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis (New York, Basic Books, 2018), 74. Patrick Wolfe, A Snake on the Heart: History, Mystery, and Truth – The Entangled Journeys of a Biographer and His Nazi Subject (Toronto, Iguana Books, 2025), 37. ↑
William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940 (Boston, Toronto, Little Brown and Company, 1984), 152. Wolfe, 37. ↑
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), 7. ↑
Hans Bernd Gisevius, To The Bitter End (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 94, 95, 93. ↑
Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London, Penguin Books, 1974), 152. Wolfe, 36. ↑
Shirer, 148. Gordon A. Craig, Europe since 1815, 2nd edition (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 657. Wolfe, 36. ↑
Did Hitler do some good things?
Did Hitler do some good things?
PATRICK S. WOLFE
Two weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a statement attributed to former President Donald Trump by his former chief of staff, General John Kelly, in an interview with The New York Times, that “Hitler did some good things,” received widespread but brief news coverage. The Trump camp denied the General’s claims and the story dropped out of the news cycle almost as quickly as it had arrived.[1]
In the 1930s, a significant number of Germans, along with many non-Germans, credited Hitler with notable successes from January 30, 1933, when he became the German Chancellor, and throughout much of the rest of the decade. But those successes have been obscured by weightier, subsequent historical facts: the Holocaust and Germany’s unconditional surrender at the end of the Second World War in Europe, which was preceded by a matter of days by Hitler’s suicide.
Adolf Hitler, the new German Chancellor, the fourth in eight months, speaks on February 1, 1933.
The “good things” or successes fall into two broad categories: one emotional, the other economic. These were phenomena of restoration that arose seemingly phoenix-like when Hitler came to power. Over a relatively short time, they erased the hardship and suffering, along with a widespread sense of victimization, endured by Germany since the advent of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which had been imposed by the victors following the First World War.
Pastor Martin Niemöller, who became the most famous German opponent of Hitler and the Nazis, and who, starting in the mid-thirties, was jailed by them on numerous occasions, including continuously from 1937 to 1945, was initially a strong supporter. He voted for them in 1924, 1928, and 1933, and greeted Hitler’s appointment as chancellor with delight.[2] In his memoir From U-boat to Pulpit, written during the summer of 1934, he stated his belief that Hitler would bring light and “National Revival” to Germany, ending the long “years of darkness” from 1919 to 1932.[3]
Known to Germans as the Versailles Diktat, the Treaty of Versailles, in the words of Matthew Hockenos, Niemöller’s most recent biographer, deprived the country of “13 per cent of its territory, 12 per cent of its population, 48 per cent of its iron industry, 16 per cent of its coal production, 80 per cent of its naval fleet, all of its colonies, and, as far as the people were concerned, all of its dignity.”[4] After the Second World War, Winston Churchill wrote that “the economic clauses of the treaty were malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile. Germany was condemned to pay reparations on a fabulous scale.”[5] Hitler exploited the treaty’s harshness to rally sufficient Germans to the Nazi cause to enable them to take power.
Public servant Hans Bernd Gisevius, who was a consistent opponent of the Nazis from the outset, wrote in To The Bitter End, his memoir of the Nazi years, that “a wild national jubilation broke out” when Hitler took power. “Day after day people sang and marched into ever-madder states of intoxication…. Even the doubters were sucked into the torrent of joy and hope.”[6]
Although concentration camps like Dachau were established by the Nazis to deal with their opponents almost as soon as the former had come to power, Hitler was seen by many as an avenging savior determined to restore the country’s economy, military, and its pride. While the Great Depression saw German unemployment grow from 1.3 million in 1929 to over six million when the Führer assumed power,[7] he saw it reduced to less than five million in 1934 and eliminated by 1937.[8] Moreover, gross national product and national income both doubled between 1933 and 1937.[9] “Under Hitler,” according to historian Gordon A. Craig, “Germany emerged from the depression with a speed that amazed the world.”[10]
This period also saw Hitler withdraw Germany from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933;[11] announce, in March 1935, that Germany had a new military air force, was increasing the size of its army more than five fold, and would no longer abide by the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles;[12] and, a year later, in a daring move opposed by his generals, he used a small number of troops to reoccupy the Rhineland.[13] The national euphoria ignited by this conquest eclipsed even that of the previous triumphs of 1933 and 1935.[14]
On the day of the reoccupation, Hitler told the Reichstag, the German parliament, “We all unite in two sacred vows. First, we swear to yield to no force whatever in restoring the honour of our people. Second, we pledge that now, more than ever, we shall strive for understanding between the European peoples. We have no territorial demands to make! Germany will never break the peace!”[15] This was one of the more spectacular lies he told during these years. But these deceits were generally not seen as such among Hitler’s supporters or, as the American journalist William L. Shirer described them, “the German herd.” Rather there was a great sense of the new German fact, of inevitability, of history correcting itself.[16]
Such was the Führer’s impact on the popular imagination of those years that, according to historian and Hitler biographer Sir Ian Kershaw, he became “arguably the most popular head of state in the world.”[17] This was the same man who went on to rule Germany for twelve years, reduce it to a ruin and whose virulent hatred of the Jews produced the Holocaust.
Text copyright © 2025 Patrick S. Wolfe
All rights reserved. Short segments may be quoted with due attribution.
Patrick Wolfe is a writer and historian based in Victoria, B.C., Canada.
Readers may also be interested in: Adolf Hitler and ‘the luck of the devil’.
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