# Hanns and Rudolf ![[Assets/fb080359b292b95f53fdbf8560f99ffe_MD5.jpg]] ## Metadata - Author: [[Thomas Harding]] - Full Title: Hanns and Rudolf - Category: #books ## Highlights - Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was born on November 25, 1901. His mother, Paulina Speck, was twenty-two years old, and his father, Franz Xaver, was twenty-six. Rudolf was their first child. They lived at 10 Gunzenbachstrasse, a small whitewashed house with a red-tiled roof, situated in a wooded valley on the outskirts of Baden-Baden. ([Location 131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=131)) - Located in southwest Germany, Baden-Baden sat along the banks of the gently meandering Oos River, at the bottom of a lush green valley full of well-tended vineyards. Five hills overlooked the town, and beyond them, the Black Forest stretched to the horizon. ([Location 134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=134)) - When he was five, he was kidnapped from the forest’s fringes by a band of Gypsies. They carried him to their caravan, perhaps planning to sell him to another family or to put him to work in one of the local coal mines. Luckily for Rudolf a local farmer recognized him just as the Gypsies were leaving and came to his rescue. After the kidnapping, Rudolf was not allowed to walk far. ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=153)) - He was, however, permitted to visit the neighbors’ farms, where he mucked out the stables and brushed the horses. It was during this time that Rudolf discovered he had an instinctive feel for these animals. ([Location 156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=156)) - Rudolf was more attracted to becoming a missionary than a soldier fighting in some foreign land. ([Location 168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=168)) - It was from his father that Rudolf learned about the traditions and principles of the Catholic Church. Franz Xaver took his son on pilgrimages to holy sites in Switzerland and to Lourdes in France. Rudolf became a fervent believer; he later recalled that he “prayed with a child’s earnest gravity, and was ready and willing to act as an altar boy,” and he took his “religious duties very seriously.” ([Location 169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=169)) - For every misdemeanor Rudolf was severely punished. Even a small unkindness to one of his sisters—a harsh word or teasing remark—resulted in kneeling for long periods of time on the cold hard floor, seeking God’s forgiveness. ([Location 172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=172)) - Upon the birth of his first daughter, Franz Xaver swore an oath that his three-year-old son would become a priest: he would go to a seminary, he would be celibate, and he would pledge himself to prayer, learning and community. Rudolf’s education was planned with the sole purpose of preparing him for a religious life. ([Location 174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=174)) - Great emphasis was always laid on my duty to obey and immediately comply with all the wishes and orders of my parents, my teachers, priests, indeed all adults, even including the servants, and to let nothing divert me from that duty. What adults said was always right. Those educational principles became second nature to me. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=177)) - However, when Rudolf was eleven years old, one fight went too far. He and his friends had been involved in a lighthearted skirmish, during which one of the boys had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his ankle. Horrified, Rudolf went straight to church and confessed to the priest, who was also a friend of the family. The priest promptly told Franz Xaver, who in turn punished Rudolf. This betrayal of the confessional code deeply upset Rudolf, destroying his belief in the trustworthiness of the profession. ([Location 182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=182)) - When he told his captain that he had been scared, the man simply laughed and said that he should not worry. Over the coming months, Rudolf grew to love and trust this man, who came to be “like a father” to Rudolf, and an authority figure he revered. Rudolf felt that the captain treated him as if he were a son, showing pride when Rudolf was promoted and ensuring that he wasn’t assigned the most dangerous missions. For the first time in his life, he realized that somebody was looking out for him. As he confessed: “It was a far closer relationship than I had had with my real father.” ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=258)) - The war had transformed him from a frightened and innocent young schoolboy into a toughened soldier. In Rudolf’s eyes, the war “had matured me, both outwardly and inwardly, far beyond my years.” ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=282)) - Even more, he had learned what he saw as leadership skills: displaying knowledge rather than rank, showing “icy, imperturbable calm” in the face of adversity, and endeavoring to “set an example all the time and never lose face, whatever one’s real feelings.” ([Location 287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=287)) - Three weeks earlier, on November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication had been announced and the German Empire officially came to an end. ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=307)) - The Freikorps exposed Rudolf to brutality and violence on a scale he had not seen before. Yet it was also here that he witnessed men pledge deep personal allegiance to a cause and, more important, to a leader. ([Location 481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=481)) - At the last, when Rossbach’s Freikorps needed help the most, the republic proffered no assistance at all. This was the biggest lesson for Rudolf, Rossbach and the other members of the Freikorps: their greatest enemy was no longer the Bolsheviks or the Latvians; it was the German republic. ([Location 489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=489)) - The NSDAP was slow to build, however. When Hitler attended his first meeting in September 1919, there were only forty other people present. By 1921, largely due to Hitler’s extraordinary gifts as a public speaker, the party had over three thousand members and, by 1922, its reputation had grown sufficiently to attract the attention of Rossbach and his men. ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=508)) - These were the golden years of the Weimar Republic. A new currency had been introduced and the economy had stabilized. This had been further underpinned by large loan agreements negotiated between the new government and American banks. Soon after, with the government agreeing not to challenge its western borders by force, Germany was accepted back into the international community, even joining the League of Nations. A sense of calm and order had descended on the country. The right-wing nationalists were deprived of their political oxygen, thereby removing any incentive that the government may have had to approve Rudolf’s parole. ([Location 586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=586)) - In this way, Rudolf developed two existences. First, there was ordinary family life: his time with his four children, evenings out with his wife, socializing after work. Then there was the world of the camp guard: a cruel and hard existence during which he became increasingly inured to the pain of those he governed. Somehow, Rudolf was able to reconcile these two apparently opposing aspects of his life. He had mastered a new skill: he could exercise profound cruelty, and then come home to kids and dinner, as if nothing significant or disturbing had happened. The brutality that his loyalty demanded was by now second nature, if not yet fully expressed. ([Location 910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=910)) - During one of these visits Fritz was sitting with Rudolf in the villa drinking wine, and he asked why Rudolf used the term Untermensch, or subhuman, to describe the prisoners. Rudolf replied: “Look, you can see for yourself. They are not like you and me. They are different. They look different. They do not behave like human beings. They have numbers on their arms. They are here in order to die.” ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1374)) - “The Führer has given orders for the Final Solution of the Jewish question to be implemented, and we—the SS—are to put those orders into practice. The Jews are the eternal enemies of the German people, and must be wiped off the face of the earth. Now, during this war, all the Jews we can lay hands on are to be exterminated, without exception. If we do not succeed in destroying the biological foundations of Jewry now, then someday the Jews will destroy the German people.” ([Location 1479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1479)) - Rudolf had now “solved” the problem handed to him by Himmler: to find a technique for murdering hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people. As he later wrote: Now my mind was at ease. ([Location 1523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1523)) - Later that evening, Hanns sent a quick note to his parents. It was written on Pioneer Corps stationery, with its emblem—a crown, a pickaxe, a shovel and a gun—embossed on the top, underneath which was stamped the Corps’ motto: “Labor Omnia Vincit” (“work conquers all”)—eerily similar to the slogan—“Arbeit Macht Frei” (“work sets you free”)—that hung above the gates at Auschwitz. ([Location 1554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1554)) - Rudolf regretted not spending more time with his family, always believing that there was more work to be done: “I have always made life harder for myself than it really was because of this very strong sense of duty.” ([Location 1844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1844)) - On August 10, 1942, an unclassified telegram was passed from the consul general in Geneva to the Department of State in the United States—which had joined the war eight months earlier—and the Foreign Office in London: Receiving alarming reports stating that, in the Führer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering three and a half to four million should after deportation and concentration in the East be exterminated at one blow in order to resolve once and for all the Jewish Question in Europe. Action reported planned for autumn methods under discussion including prussic acid. ([Location 1928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1928)) - In October 1943, Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States, along with the governments in exile, had established the United Nations War Crimes Commission. ([Location 1937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1937)) - In response, on March 24, 1944, President Roosevelt issued a statement to the press: “In one of the blackest crimes of all history—begun by the Nazis in the day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war—the wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour.” He added, “All who knowingly take part in the deportation of Jews to their death in Poland, or Norwegians and French to their death in Germany, are equally guilty with the executioner. All who share the guilt shall share the punishment.” ([Location 1945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1945)) - Finally, it was agreed that the list of war criminals should include any person responsible for an act of violence committed since January 30, 1933. ([Location 1960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=1960)) - Departmental meetings were held in a large conference room near Glücks’s second-floor office. The room had windows on three sides, and its wood-paneled walls were covered with a square motif that mirrored similar designs on the green-and-white tray ceiling. It was here, around tables set out in a U-shaped formation, that the Final Solution was planned in detail; decisions that would determine the fate of millions. ([Location 2100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=2100)) - On May 15, 1944, the first trains from Hungary arrived in Auschwitz. By July 8 more than 437,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported on 151 transports. Of those trains, 136 were sent to Auschwitz, where 90 percent of the prisoners were exterminated upon arrival. ([Location 2142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=2142)) - More than 60,000 men, women and children were forced on a thirty-five-mile march to trains waiting for them in Loslau. They wore only thin shirts and trousers. The majority had no shoes or socks. Despite being weakened by years of starvation and hard labor, they were pushed forward at gunpoint, trudging through snowdrifts, across icy roads and in winter storms. More than 15,000 Auschwitz prisoners died during this forced march. ([Location 2185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=2185)) - Today I deeply regret leaving the path I had so far trodden. My life, my family, everything would have been different, although still we would have no home and no farm. But we would have had years of satisfying work in the interim. However, who can foresee what will become of those whose lives are linked together? What is right, and what is wrong? ([Location 3400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=3400)) - What was less clear to me were the details. Through the research process I came to learn that history—like the story of the blind men describing the elephant—differs depending on the point of view, and is never as clear as you would expect. ([Location 3649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00A25F8MS&location=3649))