Chapter 19 Chapter 3 "Delirious with Joy" (5)

At the end of November 1918, Hitler left the Paschalk Hospital because the patient "had no other complaints except the burning of the eye mask" and was "fit for service".Later, Hitler testified in court that at that time he could only make out the outlines of newspaper headlines and feared that he would never be able to read again. "The hospital records," he complained, "were written during the revolution. Almost no one was cared for; we were discharged in groups. For example, I didn't even get my soldier's paybook." He was sent to report to the reserve battalion of the Sixteenth Regiment.The battalion headquarters are located in Munich.On the way, he must have passed through Berlin—at that time, Berlin was in the hands of the “Executive Committee of the Workers’ Soldiers’ Deputies”—a union of soldiers, workers, and “independent and majority socialists.”The coalition government has embarked on social reforms that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago.It established an eight-hour day; allowed workers the unlimited right to form unions; increased benefits for the sick, old, and unemployed; abolished newspaper censorship; and released political prisoners.

Although Hitler agreed with these social reforms, he mistrusted the revolutionaries who initiated them: the Executive Committee was a tool of the Bolsheviks, a betrayer of soldiers at the front; its ultimate goal was another Red Revolution.Hitler encountered the same spirit of rebellion when he reported to his barracks at Turkenstrasse near Schhobing.Earlier that month, the facility had defected to the Eisner regime, under the jurisdiction of the "Soldiers' Council."There was no military discipline at all, and the barracks became a pigsty.No respect is shown to veterans who have served in the trenches from the first weather of war.The purpose of many people is just to ask for three meals a day and one night for a night.This place is worse than Mannerheim.What particularly displeased Hitler was the behavior of the commissars. "Their activities were all disgusting to me and I immediately decided to leave this place as soon as possible."

Fortunately, he found an old comrade who had the same distaste for that place. “The laziest, the most brazen, let alone the soldiers, were those who had never been near the trenches,” recalled Hitler’s fellow signalman, Ernst Schmidt, “the place was full of lazy cowards. "About two weeks later, Hitler suggested to Schmidt that the two of them sign up for the Tronstein prisoner-of-war camp (located on the way to Salzburg, about 60 miles east of Munich) and needed guards. .Most of the members of the guard group are "revolutionary soldiers".It was an officer who came to greet him.His order to stand in line was laughed at by the soldiers: Didn't he know that drills had been cancelled?The next day, all but a few soldiers who had served in the trenches were transported back to Munich.Hitler and Schmidt stayed.