Hitler’s two most important early adult experiences were his exposure to urban life and modernism in Vienna after his failed application for art school and his four years of service in the First World War. Both of these phases determined his cultural and political outlook for the future. The negative outcomes of each fueled his antimodernist and anti-Semitic animus, convincing him that “there is no making pacts with Jews; there can only be the hard: either–or,” and motivating him “to go into politics.” It goes without saying that the former triggered his hatred for modern culture and the Jewish influence supposedly responsible for it. But historians might not yet have sufficiently taken into account the extent to which Hitler’s self-identity was wrapped in his record as a front soldier. While Parkinson’s disease and stress took their deserved toll, resulting in the maniacal image of Hitler in his final bunker, we err in forgetting that his self-image was probably fixed at his stage as a hard-boned veteran of the trenches. Elementary to his perspective was the conviction that First World War duty was his most profound test, for which he “thanked heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.”

As for so many veterans whose efforts ended in defeat, Hitler was incapable of acknowledging that the German cause had been lost. In honor of his fallen comrades, the torch – or as in Nürnberg rally rituals, flags symbolizing each major offensive – had to be raised aloft in renewed efforts at retribution. Idealization and justification of the front experience, therefore, were “unshakeable” components of the Nazi culture he triggered: “Thousands of years may pass, but never will it be possible to speak of heroism without mentioning the German army and the World War. Then from the veil of the past the iron front of the gray steel helmet will emerge, unwavering and unflinching, an immortal monument.” In this, of course, Hitler was not alone: Nazism coordinated with right-wing appropriation of the front experience in general.