Eckart was instrumental in creating the persona of Adolf Hitler as one of the future dictator's most important early mentors, and was one of the first propagators of the "Hitler Myth". Their relationship was not simply a political one, there was a strong emotional and intellectual bond between the two men, an almost symbiotic relationship. It was Eckart who gave to Hitler his philosophy of the necessity of overcoming "soulless Jewishness" as the basis for a true German revolution, unlike the false revolution of 1918. Although the need to present himself as a self-made man prevented him from publicly writing or speaking about the debt he owed to Eckart, in private Hitler acknowledged Eckart as having been his teacher and mentor, and the spiritual co-founder of Nazism.