Hitler was recommended for the Iron Cross award in WWI by his superior officer Hugo Gutmann, who...

On August 4, 1918 Adolf Hitler received the Iron Cross first class for bravery on the recommendation of his Jewish superior, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann. He was one of two Jews that Hitler helped leave Nazi Germany. The other was the Jewish doctor who treated his dying mother. An excerpt from the article:

"Though Klara Hitler’s last days were agonizing, Bloch did everything he could to help her. When she died on December 21, 1907, Hitler (whom Bloch called “the saddest man he had ever seen” upon her death) expressed his gratitude towards Bloch, telling him that “I will always be forever thankful to you.”

By the way, Eduard Bloch was Jewish.

Hitler had even written a friendly letter to Dr. Bloch in 1937, one year before Germany added Austria to its empire. In 1938, when Germany annexed Austria, Dr. Bloch wrote a letter to Hitler asking for his help during the wave of brutal anti-Semitism that followed the annexation. Remembering his promise, Hitler instructed Bloch (and his wife) to be given special protection, referring to the doctor as “a noble Jew.” Shortly thereafter, Bloch was miraculously able to sell his house for what it was actually worth (most of the Jews in Germany or Austria were paid peanuts for their homes – people knew how desperate to sell they were), and emigrate to the United States, where he died just one month after the fall of the Third Reich. Sadly, however many of Bloch’s extended family were killed during the war.

Amazingly, Dr. Bloch was not the only Jewish person who played a role in the life of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was living in Munich, Germany when World War I broke out in 1914. Like millions of others, he enlisted in the army, though with the Bavarian contingent of the German army, not the Austrian, as he should have. By all accounts, Hitler was a good soldier, and he found happiness in both the experience of army life and war. In 1914, he was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd Class, for bravery at the front during the first Battle of Ypres (Belgium).

Four years later, the corporal (in German: “Gefreiter”) and future Führer was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class, for his role as a messenger, running important information between units under fire.

Hitler’s actions must have truly stood out that day, since the awarding of the first class medal was a rarity for a lowly corporal. The man responsible for awarding the Iron Cross to Hitler? Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, who was Hitler’s commanding officer from late January to late August 1918.

Unlike some dictators, who have military honors bestowed upon them after the fact, or simply have them invented for them, Hitler only wore his Iron Cross, Wound Badge in Black (for numerous wounds sustained under fire), and his Nazi Party Badge.

Gutmann had mustered out of the army in 1919, and become a furniture salesman. In 1933, he qualified for his military pension – which, “luckily” for him (and other Jewish veterans) had been protected by President (and Field Marshal) Paul von Hindenburg. However, in 1935, German-Jewish veterans, like the other Jews of Germany, began to suffer even greater discrimination when the Nazis enacted the prejudicial Nuremberg Laws. Gutmann, however, kept his pension, most likely due to the influence of his former corporal, Adolf Hitler.

During the wave of intense anti-Semitism taking place around the time of “Kristallnacht” in 1938, Gutmann was arrested by the Gestapo. SS officers with an insiders’ knowledge of Gutmann’s relationship with Hitler had him released from custody. Like Dr. Bloch, former lieutenant Gutmann was allowed to leave Germany in 1939, first stopping in Belgium, but successfully emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1940, ahead of the German invasion of Western Europe.

Hugo Gutmann lived and worked in St. Louis, Missouri as a typewriter salesman. He died in San Diego in 1962."