It was in the spring of 1932, in the midst of presidential elections, that the National Socialists discovered the publicity value of Adolf Hitler’s private life. The electoral campaign pitted Hitler, then leader of the second-largest political party in Germany, against Paul von Hindenburg, the elderly incumbent revered by Germans as the war hero of Tannenberg, and the Communist leader Ernst Thälmann. On March 13, German voters returned a strong lead of over seven million votes for Hindenburg, throwing the National Socialists, who had expected Hitler to be swept into the presidency, into despair. 1 Hindenburg’s failure to win an absolute majority, however, led to a runoff election the following month, and in the period between the two presidential elections the Nazis seized on a new representational strategy. 2 Although Hitler would lose the next round, the campaign, along with the worsening economic crisis, increased his support among the German people by over two million votes, to a third of the electorate. 3 Having proved its broad appeal, the image of the private Führer would become a staple of National Socialist propaganda until the start of World War II.
The coming out of the Führer’s personal life marked a distinct departure from earlier National Socialist publicity, which had focused on Hitler’s role as agitator of the masses and leader of a militant political movement. In the runoff election, the need to cast a wider net pushed Nazi Party propaganda toward a celebration of their candidate’s personal attributes. Hitler’s youth and dynamism, epitomized by his much-advertised campaign flights across Germany, became a selling point. Against the aura of aristocratic dignity that clung to the remote, eighty-four-year-old Hindenburg, the Nazis offered the modernity and glamour of a candidate who took to the skies to meet face-to-face with the German people. More daringly, Nazi publicists brought Hitler’s private life into the limelight to emphasize his moral and human character and thereby win over the bourgeois voters and women who earlier had overwhelmingly supported Hindenburg. [...]
Germans knew that Hitler was an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor, and leader of a paramilitary force of violent street brawlers. How, then, did Schirach and Hoffmann manage their remarkable reinvention? In short, with an appeal to values rather than to ideology. Hitler was described as a man of Spartan habits and great self-discipline: “It is hardly known that Hitler is a NON-DRINKER, NON-SMOKER, and VEGETARIAN,” Schirach exclaimed in the foreword. “Without imposing his ways in the slightest on others, including those in his immediate circle, he adheres strictly to his own rules for living.” 8 Schirach reinforced this in his captions. “This is how the ‘fat cat’ lives!,” one declared sarcastically under an image of a tired-looking Hitler at the end of a seemingly modest meal. “Marxist liars,” it continued, “tell workers that Hitler revels in champagne and beautiful women. In reality, Hitler does not drink a drop of alcohol! (Hitler is also a nonsmoker.)”
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