The Banality of Evil: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

The Wolfsschanze, (Wolf's Lair) was the name given to Adolf Hitler's Eastern Front military headquarters for Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was located in the Masurian woods, outside of the East Prussian town of Rastenburg, now Kętrzyn in Poland.

In her book Adolf Hitler: a psychological interpretation of his views on architecture, art, and music Sherree Owens Zalampas tells us that Hitler had the habit of whistling the Walt Disney tune "who's afraid of the big bad wolf?":

This latter tune appealed to him as it was a play on an old German diminutive of “Adolf". Early in his political career, he enjoyed being called "Wolf" by his associates and later, gave variations of the name to his various military headquarters and favored the Alsatian wolfhound as a pet.

There is a baseless "Mickey Mouse theory" going around that the wolf in Wolfsschnaze is an nebulous reference to the Wälsungen in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. Wolfsschanze was the name for only one of Hitler's military headquarters invoking wolves. Another was named Werwolf (Werewolf). A military operation was also named Werwolf. Of course, there are absolutely certainly no werewolves in any of Wagner's works. The only opera involving supernatural tales of wolves is Weber's Der Freischütz, with its famously eerie Wolfsschluct (wolf's glen) scene. Zalampas also tells us that Hitler was also highly fond of Weber, the father of German opera. Indeed, two of Hitler's military headquarters were actually named Wolfsschlucht I and II. So why isn't anyone suggesting that Hitler got the idea for naming headquarters after wolves from Weber?

In reality, the obscurity of the reference to wolves buried in the finer detail of the Ring, makes it much more likely that if there is a musical influence, the Walt Disney song is the more obvious inspiration for the name Wolfsschanze—that and the fact that the "wolf" is the diminutive form of "Adolf". Hence, Hitler loved to whistle the tune of "who's afraid of the big bad wolf".

Hitler's favourite film was the Disney cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — he even owned a copy for personal viewing. More recently, coloured cartoons drawn by Hitler have come to light of the characters Bashful and Doc from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,  along with a sketch of Pinocchio as he appeared in the 1940 Disney film.

The dates can only mean that these can only have been drawn while Hitler held political office!

It seems that where Wagner is concerned, there is a bizarre assumption that everything Hitler did can be understood in Wagnerian terms. This is far from the truth — you may be better off looking to Walt Disney for sources that inspired his twisted mind. Such is the "banality of evil". In fact, in his final days in the Berlin bunker the only composer whose music was played was that of Franz Lehár's.

In his book Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, Frederich Spotts says on p.263 that:

... after the German army's disaster at Stalingrad, [Hitler] could no longer bear to listen to [Wagner's] opera. Before then he would still sometimes hold 'recording evenings', as he had in the good old days. But as the military situation worsened, hope vanished, memories were melancholy and dreams faded. Now an odd thing happened. After Stalingrad all he wanted to hear was Lehár. His valet, Heinz Linge, noted an occasion when Hitler was left deeply depressed by a military briefing. Afterwards he turned himself to him and asked, 'Linge, what music recordings do you have there?' The valet, who evidently never travelled anywhere without them, replied, 'Wagner and several operettas'. The choice fell immediately on Lehár. Marlene Exner, his cook at the military headquarters, recalled that The Merry Widow was all she ever heard him listen to from then on.

Hitler was fanatical about Lehár as this recreation of a real life incident shows:

That is to say, in his final days he was more likely to have been listening to this very recording in his bunker (Richard Tauber sings accompanied by Franz Lehár himself conducting the Berliner Staatsoper):

However, Zalampas describes another bizarre scene:

On April 20, 1943, with German troops fighting for survival in North Africa and Russia, Hitler decided to entertain his birthday guests with a recording of The Merry Widow. When Borman asked Hitler whether he wanted to hear the performance by Johannes Heesters in Munich or the Berlin production conducted by Lehár himself, Hitler discussed the merits of each before he asserted the Munich performance was "ten percent better".

So that means, he was more likely to have been listening to this particular recording from 1940 sung by Jonannes Heesters:

Hitler believed that Lehár's The Merry Widow was "the equal of any opera". Yes, that means the equal of anything by Mozart, Weber, or Wagner! Zalampas also tells us that:

He also believed his Die Fledermaus, Die Vogelhandler and Die Zigeunerbaron “were sacred portions of the German cultural heritage." In Berlin, Hitler never missed a production of Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow and contributed considerable sums to have them staged in an elaborate style!"

Does this mean that those of you who still insist on taking Hitler even remotely seriously as a musicologist are going to start to read all sorts of elaborate cryptic Nazi conspiracies and messages into the operettas of Johann Strauss and Lehár, or into Walt Disney cartoons just like you do with Wagner? For a start are those dwarfs in Snow White Jewish or not? Does Pinocchio have a long nose because he is Jewish? And do any of these hidden message and conspiracies involve alien abductions or Mickey Mouse? Because, if they don't, they probably should:

Further Reading

The previous part of this post: musicological quackery—the rubber ducky in your brain.

A review of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's Hitler: the Prophet and his Disciple.

A critique of right-wing cultural pseudo-histories of the origin of National Socialism.

Bibliography

1. Title: Adolf Hitler: a psychological interpretation of his views on architecture, art, and music
Author: Sherree Owens Zalampas
Publisher: Popular Press, 1990
ISBN 0879724889, 9780879724887

2.  The Daily Telegraph - Did Hitler Draw Disney Characters?