Hitler Essay, Research Paper

HITLER

Countries crumbled, cities fell, and people were slaughtered. It was all part of the plan, a plan to unify Germany under the control of one man, Adolf Hitler. Over six million innocent people were massacred under his command. In an age when an insane leader could lay waste to the planet and yet managed to lead a major power of destruction, was it justifiable? (Green V)

For the first thirty years of his life, Adolf Hitler was a nobody. In the last twenty-six years of his existence he came to leave an unforgettable mark on history as the dictator of Germany and instigator of a genocidal war which marked the steepest descent in civilized values known in modern times, finishing with his own country and most of Europe in ruins (Kershaw 1).

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria. His father Alois worked as a customs officer, and his mother Klara, like most women of the time stayed at home. Hitler grew up with a poor school record and left before he was seventeen. With aspirations of becoming an artist, Hitler applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine arts but failed to make the cut. For the next five years, Hitler neither worked to earn his keep, nor formally studied, but gained an interest in politics and history (Stokesey 1). By the time he was twenty, both parents had passed away and he had no relatives willing or able to support him. He then moved to Vienna in hopes of earning a living. Within a year, he was living in homeless shelters and eating at soup kitchens. Hitler s early life offered not a single hint of the figure who was to make the world hold its breath (Kershaw 1).

Hitler quickly volunteered for service in the Bavarian army. As a high-ranking officer, he was distinguished twice for bravery and considered unfit for promotion on the grounds that he lacked leadership qualities (2). After leaving the army, he joined what was to become the Nazi Party. He had no political experience, no position of note, no access to the corridors of power, and he wasn t even a German citizen until later in life. (2). Class, breeding, education, background, all told against him (3). How could such a person, if only for a few years, come to control one of the most economically developed and culturally advanced nations of the world? How could Hitler become the most powerful man in Europe?

First, Hitler used propaganda as one the main ways of getting on the good side of the German people. A key to the extraordinary character of Hitler s power lies in the notion of charismatic rule (Kershaw 194). It began with the publication of a major propaganda book entitled Adolf Hitler. It was accompanied by photographs of himself taken only by one man, his good friend Heinrich Hoffman (Laffin 2). The book and pictures were distributed in such a way that, it was to draw the owner of each book into repeated loving and adulatory caresses of Hitler s image (3). Hitler s facial expressions and body language were also unwillingly used against Germans. In every photograph of him, Hitler fixes his eyes on one person and those eyes transmitted energy and eagerness and, when necessary, intimacy (5). Hitler had a way of linking himself with the person he was speaking to, and making them feel as if they were the most important person in the world. He used this tactic on everyone. He made ordinary people feel proud that the Fuhrer had singled them out. He used a form of personalized rule based on perceptions of heroic leadership (Kershaw 195). It relates firstly to his quasi-messianic attractiveness and the German people became ready to accept a form of government based upon personal rule (195). He was looked at like a savior. Someone who can take Germany out of the gutters and bring them back into the world. He certainly was very skilled in his ability to influence what people thought and how they should behave. Hitler once said: It is possible by means of shrewd and remitting propaganda, to make people believe that heaven is hell and hell is heaven (Green 231). If this man was so great, so divine, where did this hatred spawn from and why was it there?

All of these questions that are now being asked can be answered in one phrase, Mein Kampf, an autobiographical novel written by Adolf Hitler while he was in Landsberg. Mein Kampf, meaning my struggle, is an unbearably tedious book, which gives a little insight into the mind of Adolf Hitler. It portrays a man who is not of stable mind and who sees the world with distorted vision. In one instance, Hitler projects an infantile, sado-masochistic sexual fantasy into social reality (Koenigsberg 58). Consequently, he sees the German people to be in danger of being attacked, contaminated, and humiliated (58). In another instance, Hitler projects the image of his mother dying of cancer, into social reality (58). Therefore he perceives the nation to be diseased, disintegrating, and in the process of dying (59). Hitler s anti-semitism only began when he felt the German people to be in trouble and when he begins to experience doubt with respect to the self-worth of the German people. Hitler did not always perceive Jewish people as bad. And at one point was repelled by the idea of anti-semitism (65). The fact that they (the Jews) had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account (because of their strange religion) turned my distaste at unfavorable remarks about them into horror (Hitler 63). In Vienna however, Hitler begins to notice the foreign characteristics of Jews. And poses the question: Is the Jew a German? (Koenigsberg 66) In hopes of resolving this question, Hitler studies the anti-semetic literature. Gradually, Hitler comes to distinguish Jews from other Germans, and begins to perceive that it is the Jew who is responsible for the badness that exists in German life. For the first time, I recognized the Jew as the cold-hearted, shameless, and calculating director of the revolting vice traffic in the scum of the big city (Hitler 61).

It is only when Hitler is able to convince himself that the Jew is separate from the German people is he able to identify Jewish people as the source of destruction in German life. It is possible now to look at Hitler and his feelings towards the Jews as an infantile complex whereby the child believes that the mother participates in sexuality only because she is forced to do so by the father (Koenigsberg 68). Hitler looks at the self-degrading tendencies of the German s as a projection of his discovery as mother s participation in sexuality, and generates a tendency towards drifting away (68). Hitler proceeds to deal with the situation the same as a child deals with the infantile situation; he excuses the German by forgiving him of responsibility (68). It can be said that the German, like the mother, is perceived to be a victim in the hands of the seducer (68). Then the father is held responsible for the sexual behavior and degradation of the mother, so is the Jew held responsible for the sexual behavior and degradation of the German people (68). The Jews then are seen as the seducer of German women and to be responsible for the filth in German culture (68). Hitler then, is attempting to draw a clear line of segregation between goodness and badness. The German people (the mother) come to be the embodiment of all that is good and virtuous; the Jew (the father) comes to be the embodiment of all that is evil and immoral (68). Hitler attempts to create two separate objects. A perfect Germany (which generates pure love); and a perfectly evil Jew (which generates pure hate) (68). The destruction of the Jews makes up, for Hitler, a way to remove the evil from the mother s body and restore her purity and perfection (68).

Adolf Hitler s mental state may have very well been the result of his extreme hypochondria. Throughout the later part of his life, he was constantly producing ailments he thought he had. It began with depression, then gradually leading to tremors in his left arm and leg (Maser 209). Throughout the years of depression, Hitler was unhealthily thin. He also contemplated many times to take his own life. After he came out of his depression, he soon complained of heart trouble, but when looked at by doctors, they could conclude that nothing was wrong with him (210). Hitler was only truly cursed with a sore throat. This led him to believe he had cancer, but was quickly proven otherwise (210). Hitler claimed to be plagued by stomach cramps, kidney pain, and flatulence (210). Hitler became fearful that he would leave something undone or die before he accomplished everything he had intended.

Over a period of ten years, Hitler visited doctors all the time. Always leaving with the same answer, that he was healthy. Eventually, probably from all his worrying, Hitler developed high blood pressure, heart damage, and irregular stomach and digestive disorders (214). Hitler was put on an enormous amount of medication to treat these ailments. But these medications had their defects. While under the influence of the medications, during a speech Hitler called Churchill and Chamberlain cacklers and broody hens (215). He proceeded to threaten Britain with a night raid in which a million kilograms of bombs would be dropped, an amount that was ridiculously excessive (215). It was at the same time that instructions were issued concerning the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe (215).

Hitler soon began to complain of severe headaches and for the first time a loss of memory (217). Soon, a slight curvature of the spine induced a stooping posture and caused more than a minimal distortion of his body symmetry (218). He once again developed a tremor in his left arm and leg, and soon walked with a dragging left foot (218). As this progressed, he also complained of the deterioration of his right eye (219). Life had become a torment to him. His illnesses and the effects of his medication were taking its toll. The odd thing about all of these illnesses was when they occurred. In the early stages of the war, they wee highly present (232). They miraculously disappeared as soon as he was out of danger and was no longer under threat, but oddly reappeared towards the end of the war and their probable consequences to himself (232).

It is still unclear of Hitler s sexual preference or of his behaviors. Did Hitler have any love life? Was he even capable of love? In the earlier years before the war, Hitler became infatuated with his niece. His sister s daughter, Geli. It was rumored that Hitler had a bizarre sexual perversion, which he acted out with her (Green 97). He derived sexual gratification from having women urinate on him (97). It was also thought that he liked to examine girls at close range, this somehow excited him (98). After years of their affair, his niece committed suicide with no explanation. This was a horrible blow for Hitler. Hitler also had an adolescent love affair with which he never spoke about but was willing to commit murder and suicide (106). A few other affairs continued throughout his life with similar scenarios. A girl named Frau Hoffmann, which was said to be just as perverse as the affair with Geli, Mimi Reiter, a teenager who made a suicide attempt; Renate Mueller who committed suicide or was murdered; Eva Braun who made two suicide attempts; Suzi Liptauer, who tried to hang herself in a Munich hotel room; Frau Inge Ley, who committed suicide after having an affair with him; and Unity Mitford, who shot herself in the head (106). To most of these events, he had little or no reaction. He finally married Eva Braun, after a relationship of many years, just before a suicide pact, which was acted out in his German bunker.

It has been believed that Hitler was fond of sado-masochism and self-defamation. To some of his girlfriends, he would describe the ancient medieval torturing techniques (108). First, rumors of Hitler s homosexuality received fresh impetus after WWII (Maser 196). But there were rumors about whether or not Hitler was homosexual. Maybe this was because he never married, until right before his death, or because of his feminine traits. Hitler had many friends who were homosexuals and was apparently more comfortable with them than with other men (Green 109). Also, his personal bodyguards were almost always homosexual (109). Hitler was constantly plagued by nightmares of being attacked by men from behind and suffocated, which suggest his homosexual tendencies and fear of them (110). There is a possibility that Hitler participated in homosexual relationships at one point in his life, but the evidence is only strong enough to say maybe.

Hitler never wanted to have children; afraid they would be retarded (115). He said that the children of geniuses are always a disappointment (115). He went on to say, All of us are suffering from the ailment of mixed, corrupted blood. How can we purify ourselves and make atonement One of the reasons for not marrying and having children was his fear of tainted blood and a family history of feeble-mindedness. He felt that the Jewish blood of Jesus was a special curse (115).

Adolf Hitler rose to absolute power between the years of 1938 and 1943 (Kershaw 133). His brilliant tactics and persuasive speeches allowed Hitler to climb straight to the top and put him in a position to shape events in a measure unusual even for dictators. Hitler s diplomatic maneuverings and strategic shifts, based on rational political calculation, gave way increasingly to the readiness to go for it all, and to decisions founded upon ideological truths of his rational world philosophy of the once-and-for-all great quest for German supremacy and racial domination (134). Hitler s first action towards becoming a total dictator was when he began to cancel meetings of the cabinet (135). It was the very idea that a group of people, deriving their authority from their constitutional office, could check on his expression of power (135). Hitler even refused informal meetings of cabinet members. As Hitler s rule progressed, he put himself at less and less access to people, making him almost god-like.

The trademark of Hitler s power was destruction. Twelve years of his rule destroyed old Germany, both territorially and in terms of social order (188). They also destroyed old Europe, both physically and in terms of its political order (188). From the beginning, Hitler s most powerful driving force was a destructive one. The word annihilation was seldom far from his lips, from his earliest speeches to his apocalyptic visions (188). No matter what, the Jews still remained a centerpiece of Hitler s thinking and their destruction became the foundation of his entire world-view. Meanwhile, in Germany, Hitler had personally sanctioned a programme of action to destroy the useless life of the mentally sick and physically handicapped (189). His opinion on war was two options, final victory or total destruction (189). It ruled out compromise. His destructive drive didn t even spare his own army or cities. Towards the end of the war, his hope rested not on building a fighter defense capable of heading off enemy bombers, but on reducing English cities to rubble (189). If the atom bomb had been available, there is no doubt whatsoever that he would have used it (189). As German cities were attacked and destroyed, Hitler never once visited them, nor showed signs of sympathy or remorse for the German families (189). In the end, true to his own principles, Hitler tried to destroy Germany s chance of surviving him, through his Nero order and scorched-earth commands (189). In his eyes, the German people deserved their own destruction since they had not proved strong enough to destroy the enemy. Maybe his rule and his ideas would have lasted if it weren t for his need to rush and conquer everything. All of this suggests that not only destruction, but also self-destruction, was natural to the Nazi form of rule. Nazism was capable of destruction on a massive scale (193). But it was not capable of creating a lasting system of rule (194).

Hitler felt terrorism and brutality were necessary, hence concentration camps and secret police. Early on, he was impressed by the idea of physical terror (Green 234). He also used psychological terror on his own troops and meant it literally (235). He also went on to learn of any weaknesses; frailties or vulnerable points of people so he might better exploit them (235). Hitler was a master of the exploitation of fear. Hitler gave a great deal of thought to the techniques that would help mold the thinking of people. One was to put people in a position where they had a choice: executor or victim (236). In regard to the treatment of the Jews, Hitler convinced the German people that these kinds of changes, the murdering of the Jews, were signs of becoming a more enlightened master race (237).

Most important of all, Hitler had no capacity to care for other human beings except as objects to sacrifice in his psychotic acting out, or as objects of destruction. But he had the capacity to make them think he cared (254). In the end he sacrificed his own people, the children, close associates and their children, his wife of only a few hours, and even his dog (254). The only purpose served was his destructive impulses. His teachers could have told us (254). The street people of Vienna knew (254). His fellow soldiers in WWI knew he was strange (254). But because he was a stranger in their midst, he got by until it was too late.

Furthermore, during Hitler s power, art, architecture, music, and literature were stifled, along with originality. No lasting form of politics or economics was produced (Kershaw 190). Lack of system and lack of structure were the characteristics of Hitler s state. Hitler s regime left only negative lessons for the future (190). Hitler s errors from 1939 onward were so gross that any reference to his mistakes tends to divert attention in the direction of the war (Lewin 58). The result was a society without structure and a nation that traveled down lawless roads (59). To further support this, was his idea on lawyers, juries and judges. He would always talk against them as if attacking some foreign enemy. He was convinced that the law should not safeguard against the individual against the state, but that the law should see to it that Germany would not perish (63). Little by little, Hitler began to erode the legal system, by declaring himself to be Germany s supreme judge and convincing civil servants and the military to swear an oath to him (63). He became both the lawmaker and the judge whose duty it was to preserve the law. As to that, Hitler was his own worst enemy. He created situations and organizations whose very existence was contrary to success. Hitler was reported as saying, during the last weeks of the Third Reich, that he needed twenty years to produce an elite which had drunk the ideals like milk from the mother s breast (Kershaw 191).

It can easily be said that poor judgment was used on Hitler s part. Hitler himself had said that fighting a war on two fronts at the same time was a mistake. He also knew how devastating and destructive Russian winters could be to an invading army (Green 199). Nevertheless, while troops were on their way to invade Russia, he impulsively invaded Yugoslavia and Greece (199). This idiotic maneuver lost them the war. The invasion of Russia brought an end to their rapid domination of other nations (199). An example of Hitler s incredibly poor judgment was when the German Army was outside Leningrad and Stalingrad. Hitler had an idea to eliminate the population by starvation, hence holding off from any fighting (200). Time was of the essence, but his need to torture and starve people was dominating his judgment. Later, his army was trapped inside and upon Hitler s orders they were not to retreat or fight, because vital living space would be lost (200). The German s had the opportunity to escape but stayed to fight. Surrounded by Russians, they were slaughtered, but not before a German General surrendered. Hitler was furious when he heard this. He thought, if only the General had killed himself and the whole army used their last bullets to form a common bond of suicide and annihilate themselves (200). A similar situation arose in Courland, Latvia when the Germans were hopelessly cut off and should have been taken out of there (201). Hitler said retreat was out of the question (201). Hitler s lack of conscience was soon turned on his own people. His sense of omnipotence projected on to the German soldiers made him disastrously overestimate his own troops and underestimate his enemies (203).

Hitler s deadly hatred is naturally directed against those intellectuals who have sided with the working class struggle for freedom or are connected with pacifist organizations (Marley 161). Scientists of all kinds were persecuted and dismissed. A famous example of this was the removal of Albert Einstein. Einstein s scientific works were burnt in the bonfire at the University of Berlin (162). This act alone was enough to make Hitler s Germany a laughing stock of the scientific world. Hitler also then went on to cleanse libraries of books of un-German spirit (165). He also burnt and destroyed opera houses and universities. Giant bonfires were made in the streets and on them were thrown books of poets and pacifist writers. Along with the fires went the free and independent minds. Hitler did keep some poetry though. But I am stronger than he. Now I have him by the throat The death rattle in his throat I trample on his brains (178). These were the types of poetry that he kept. Theatre, painting, film, music, all were destroyed and run out of Germany, especially if you were a Jewish actor or composer. In film, Jews were only to be portrayed as negative roles such as thieves, murderers, and criminals.

Brutality and torture were a norm during Hitler s rule. People were ripped from their homes and sent to torture chambers, only to await false trials. Even if the person was completely innocent, the slightest utter in his defense only meant a harder beating and a slower death. Rumors of so-called cellars existed, in which prisoners were tortured endlessly. One account of this was when a prisoner had his teeth pulled apart and a bottle of caster oil was poured down his throat (199). They then asked him politely to take off his pants and make him wait standing up for over an hour (199). The Nazis proceeded to pick up steel rods and beat him until his bowel emptied (200). Nazi doctors were present during all of the tortures but not to administer help, only to determine whether the prisoner may be beaten more (200).

There were certain cardinal virtues that made up a Nazi; they were a new type of man. Adolf Hitler had an odd view on education. The kind of values and virtues Hitler deemed the most desirable in a young German were not what most would want their children to be. We would want our children to be free, honest people. Conversely, Hitler s type of man is capable of being obedient, faithful, and silent only within the group, but he is ruthless and ferocious against the outsiders (Staudinger 116). For Hitler, the main goal of education was the healthy body (117). It was by the process of physical education that a feeling of superiority was to be implanted into the characters of all young Germans (117). He sought to eliminate individual self-confidence and expand it into group and later national self-confidence (117). This self-confidence and feeling of superiority created the striving for leadership. Every young man must be trained and must discipline himself to unfold his character qualities towards responsibility as a leader as well as towards obedience as a servant of a higher leader (117).

Self-confidence of the individual was commuted into a strong community spirit, which above all pervaded the groups of the Hitler Youth (118). Only groups made up of young Aryans could the herd instinct be spread which guaranteed unity and the mutual enforcing of morale (118). Hitler s army was to become the university for teaching national self-confidence. If the young healthy German felt himself a member of a pure and strong racial community, he would observe the rules, and thereby help found the basis for a pure united nation (118). Hitler claimed that group training with its strong emphasis on physical education, would fortify these values and virtues, which were to be characteristic for a new German generation (122). The task that Hitler assigned to every German youth was to build a new Germany in the image of the Nordic man, to build a race that was to make the world the sacred abode of Aryan culture (124). Yet before this could be done, the world had to be rid of the sickly ideas of pacifism, poisoned by democracy, and weakened by humanitarian sentiment (124). German youth had to learn to die not only for the good and glory of Germany, but also for the creation of a new world. In a speech to Hitler Youth, Hitler said:

We want to be a peace-loving people but at the same time courageous. We want our people to be honor-loving; to that end, from earliest childhood you must learn the conception of honor. We want to be a proud people and you must be proud to be the youthful members of the greatest nation. We want an obedient people and you must learn to practice obedience. We want a people that is not soft but hard as flint and we want you to learn to overcome hardships and privation (Laffin 144).

What, if anything, did Hitler consider moral? As far as Hitler was concerned, mankind only differed from the animal kingdom only to the extent that men are able to think and consequently to provide for the survival of the species in the struggle for existence (Green 207). His first and main goal was the preservation of the German people. According to Hitlerian morality, a people had the right to exist only if it were racially valuable (207). With that logic, he began the struggle against Communists, Protestants and Catholic Clergy, Freemasons and Liberals (207). And so, the extermination of the mentally ill, gypsies and Jews was a moral thing (207). He was almost like an animal thinking of hunting or killing. The only difference was that an animal didn t kill in such an indiscriminate way. It was much less civilized than an eye for an eye; it was total destruction because he felt like it (208). But how did nature decide that Germany was racially advanced? It was clear that by nature he meant himself alone (208). Hitler threw out the systems of law, religion, and conscience. The only thing Hitler said was the lion does not feel bad for the gazelle (208). This one statement contains all his ideas and philosophies. He and the German people was the lion (208). But how did nature choose him? Nature cannot be replaced by Hitler s narcissism (208). We see how bad the German people did under his leadership. He was the complete opposite of a superman, or even an ordinary man (208). He used that rationalization for his need to kill. He, his illness, not nature, chose himself, the Greatest German, and the Germans the greatest people (208). What if there were only Germans left, would he have stopped killing?

In the scheme of things, the reign of Adolf Hitler was not very long, but the damage was everlasting. Generations of people were destroyed and a country was left in ruins. Hitler, the man once hailed as a blessed savior by so many Germans, left his people in a disastrous position unprecedented in their national history. He vanished without a trace from a world, which, because of him, would never be the same again.