Hindenburg: A love affair in Bohemia and the spectre of Hitler
What would Europe look like today if the young Prussian soldier named Paul von Hindenburg had succumbed to his injuries sustained in the Battle of Hradec Králové on 3 July 1866? One thing is for sure: he would not have become the president that enabled the onset of Nazism in 1933.
Hindenburg, the son of Prussian aristocrats, participated in the Battle of Hradec Králové as a 19-year-old lieutenant. He soon recovered from his head injury and fell in love with the landlord's 17-year-old daughter during his stay in Pardubice. He wished to learn Czech because of her. But the army moved on. He retired with a general's rank at the age of 40. He returned to service in 1914 and destroyed two Russian armies in present-day Poland during World War I. Shortly afterwards, he became the commander of the Eastern Front and the most popular soldier in Germany.
Hindenburg was praised everywhere for his victorious campaigns and a personality cult arose around him in the course of the War. People took him for the model of German manly honour, honesty, decency and strength. Municipalities built wooden statues of him all around Germany. After the war was lost in 1918, Hindenburg left the armed forces and locked himself away. When the German parliament was looking for people to blame for the defeat, Hindenburg too had to testify before a committee, but avoided prosecution as a war hero.
He became President of Germany in 1925, when the National People's Party convinced him to run as an independent candidate. He did well at first, but then he surrounded himself with people who only used him to their own advantage. Although he could not bear Hitler from the start, he appointed him the Chancellor under pressure from those closest to him in 1933. Hitler then forced 86-year-old and ill Hindenburg to restrict political freedoms, thus enabling the onset of Nazism. After Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler abolished the President's office and declared himself as both the "Leader and Chancellor". That was the beginning of the path towards World War II