[Mauser720]

Office of Strategic Services
Hitler Source Book
The Foe We Face
by Pierre J. Huss
(Part 1 of 4)



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[Page 1]

Pierre J. Huss: The Foe we face, 1942

In January of 1935 Adolf Hitler was sitting out the winter in his alpine chalet on the 0bersalzberg, above Berchtesgaden, somewhat tensely awaiting the outcome of the plebiscite .....He let Goebbels and others loudly beat the drum while he sat up there in the snow and went walking with the huge white Hungarian shepherd dog always at his side.

At such times the German Fuehrer strictly forbade his guards to follow; he relied entirely on the dog at his side, the heavy waking stick of knotted wood, and the rapid-fire luger automatic in his pocket. He wore a gray golf suit with heavy woolen socks stuck into snow boots and an old felt hat drawn over his right eye, and on days when the wind whistled sharply or snow whipped through the air, a gray mackintosh with a muffler around his neck. He'd crunch the snow with a slow step and proceed by a short cut over the hill back of his chalet toward a somewhat forsaken Bavarian-style cafe.

..... I had arranged through Karl Boemer and Alfred Rosenberg for an interview with Hitler on the day of the Saar pelbiscite [sic] returns, on the assumption that it would be an opportune moment sure to find him in the best of moods, provided everything went in his favor. I arrived there to find him in high glee, with Goering on hand in a huge white sweater to help celebrate the victory of the Saar with its overwhelming majority in favor of the immediate return to Germany. Hitler was in his golf suit, studying the latest returns, and his eyes were alight with joy. Without wasting time on ceremonies, he got his hat and stick and insisted that I accompany him on his usual walk before lunch. The big Hungarian dog plowed ahead of us through the snow, cavorting and barking with delight. But he seldom rushed further than ten yards away, turning back to see that his lord and master was following in good order. Later I was told that this dog could be relied upon to rip to pieces any stranger approaching Hitler unannounced.

We reached the crest of the hill at the edge of the pine woods and looked back. I was breathing hard, for this was not my customary daily routine. Hitler grinned slyly and said it was good exercise, this walking through thedeep [sic] snow, the only kind of exercise, he said, he had time or inclination to take. He pointed with his stick to his chalet below and to the sweeping hills around it.

"A good rifle shot, aiming through telescopic sights, could easily pick me off from here while I am sitting on the porch or in that back room there," Hitler said in a matter-of-fact way. "I am buying up all these hills and making it forbidden property so that Himmler can quit worrying. I have also had the road you came up on commandeered, closing it to public traffic so that in effect this whole section of the mountain will be closed off to any but authorized persons."

His walking stick pointed far across the valley to the distant city of Salzberg we could just make out under the clouds over in Austria. "Himmler and the army people got together sometime ago and figured out that a few well directed cannon shots from over there some dark night could blow us out of bed," the Nazi Fuehrer said with something of a forced laugh. He resumed the walk and added: "I cannot just walk over the border and take a piece out of Austria, and I will not move this house away or abandon it just to get out from under the range of Austria and cannons. I am a fatalist and all those things take care of themselves."

I thought to myself that Hitler was taking chances walking by himself in these lonely mountains, even if he did buy them by the mile in order to keep strangers at a distance. A legion of people would gladly have knocked him off. With this in mind, I pointed to two wood choppers making their way some hundreds of yards ahead of us toward the lonely Bavarian cafe and boldly said they could easily overpower him before he'd have a chance to defend himself or call for help. I wanted to hear [Page 2] what he'd say.

He nodded and whistled for the dog and held him by the collar,while he told me to press a hard snowball together and throw it high and afar. I did this, and the snowball went sailing off into the air.

Hitler whipped an automatic out of his pocket and with deliberate aim fired at my snowball. A split second after his shot rang out the snowball burst apart in midair, obviously torn by the passing bullet. I suppose I looked a bit skeptical, for Hitler asked me to throw a second snowball. He shot leisurely, and, it seemed to me, almost without aiming. The snowball broke violently to pieces in midair.

Hitler replaced the pistol in his pocket and tapped me on the arm. "Sehen Sie, I am not entirely defenseless" he smiled. "It is generally conceded in the S.S. and the army that I am a better pistol shot than most of their best ones. I also make it a point to know more about guns and weapons and bullets of all kinds than those who come to me to explain the intricacies of a new rifle note or a cannon's mechanism. I have read and studied many technical books on those subjects, including one or two by your American experts. I believe I can say with justification that I am one of the few all-around ballistic experts in the world today."

I checked up in German army circles on that claim and found it generally substantiated. He has a standing order out for every book on that subject and frequently reads deep into the night to absorb a new experiment with shells or bullets. He can draw a blueprint on the involved mechanism of German foreign large-and-small caliber guns and do it from memory. That is one of those things about Hitler one shouldn't forget in sizing him up as the man we now are about to beat.

He is a fanatic, every inch of him, going into a passion or fury when the occasion demands. I touched him off on that walk in the snow with a hint that some of his twenty-five-point program would set the world afire if carried out to the letter. He stopped dead in his tracks and like a flash he changed from the Bavarian alpine rambler to Adolf Hitler, dictator of flaring temperament and rabble-rousing fanatic. He stamped the snow with his boot and waved his walking stick in fervid agitation.