Herr Hitler and the War

Inangahua Times, 2 April 1936, Page 1

Herr Hitler and the War

| lo Bn election speech Harr 1 1 Hitler referred to the Germans r . I who were in despair at the close of 3 the Great War, including among 3 I them himself, “lying half-blinded [ in hospital.” Herr Hitler spent , four years on tbe Western front, i He became lance-corporal and ■ trench-runner. In this latter . capacity his duty was to maintain contact between the forward tenches and regimental head--01 arters. lie had several hairbreadth escapes, including a meeting With a British tank. Had the tank a»t got stuck in a shell Sole. ; t is very probal le that Herr Hifcle would not be alive to-day. For the courage he showed on this occasion he received the Iron Cross. In October, 1916, when the British occupied Le Sars, he was wounded and sent to hospital, where he remained for a few months. He was back with his comrades in plenty of time for the British offensive that opened along the Ypres Bector in June, 1917. The German front lines were practically annihilated. Part of Herr Hitler’s regiment suffered severely as the result of an explosion of a British mine under the German trenches. Hitler escaped uninjured. On October 13, 1918, the British put over a gas attack south of Ypres The poison entered Herr Hitler’s eyes and rendered him blind. Picked up by stretcher-bearers, he was found to be wounded in several places and quite,.blind. It was I while lying thus in hospital that he , heard the news of the German army s defeat and the surrender, and, he says in his autobiography, 1 he determined then he would devote 1 his life-—he was still under 30 —to the political work of reawakening the German spirit and steeling it against the internal enemies whom he believed to have been respensi ble for the military break-up. It was several months before his sight was fully restored.