The guy who wrote the anonymous article was Korbinian Rutz, Commander of 1st Company, in which Hitler had served. He was a dispatch runner, like Hitler, and he said that Hitler’s accounts of his war years were largely fictional. This has been backed up by recollections from people like Hugo Gutmann, the highest-ranking Jew in Hitler’s regiment, and Jakob Weiss, one of Hitler’s closest peers from the war.
In specific:
This is interesting largely because, as per the linked article, previous historians have never seriously questioned Hitler’s accounts of his Great War record; now that we have better evidence it was fabricated, it may well cause a spate of new Nazi-sploitation documentaries on the Hitler Channel.
There don’t seem to be any startling revelations here, even with the supposed identification of the anonymous author of a 1932 newspaper article by a non-Hitler fan.
I don’t recall the “received wisdom” of historians insisting on any of these things.
For instance, the accounts I’ve read all suggest that Hitler was viewed as odd by most of his fellow soldiers, in part because he didn’t take part in typical grousing about Army life and was a standoffish sort. If there’s definitive refutation of the long-held view that running dispatches between units (Hitler’s job for the most part) was a dangerous occupation, I don’t see it. And it’s interesting that the blogger left out the fact that Hitler was recommended for an Iron Cross by that Jewish commanding officer who was mentioned (Hugo Gutmann).
I’d be among the last to defend Hitler, but there’s considerable well-supported evidence that he was a brave soldier who served his country in WWI honorably and was highly decorated. Postwar his “service” to his country takes on a noticeably different tinge.
Yea, I’m kinda underwhelmed as well. The historian seems to be kinda assuming what he was trying to prove, that the anonymous article writer was in Hitler’s unit. A regiments got a few thousand people in it, that he was able to find one whose biographical details match the anonymous writer seems like it could just as easily be coincidence.
That said, kinda bizarre to learn that Hitler was swift-boated.
I had never heard that Hitler was regarded as anything apart from a serviceman, who fought at Fromelles. Some other Nazi’s (Goering in particular) referred to him as “The Corporal” in a derogatory manner so it would appear that they were under no delusions.
