Dec 26, 2024
Dec 26, 2024
Everyone accepts now that Hitler was psychologically ill. In terms of psychology, he was a psychopath. But no psychopath in the history of human race has caused so much damage as Adolf Hitler. That makes him special. He caused the World War II. He killed millions and millions of Jews for no fault of theirs. He killed them through unspeakably cruel means. He plunged innumerable people into violence, exploitation, revenge and guilt because of his psychopathic personality.
Mein Kampf is the only notable work by Adolf Hitler. He established totalitarian rule in Germany in the first of half of the 20th century. He institutionalized dictatorship. He established racism as the governing principle of his rule. He mobilized the German people for war and conquest.
The book was originally written in two parts. The first part was written when Hitler was jailed for holding mass demonstration for formation of a unified socialist Germany. He was tried at the Court in Munich and subsequently imprisoned in a Bavarian Fortress for thirteen months. During these thirteen months he wrote the first volume. He wrote the second volume after he was released. Mein Kampf is Hitler's autobiographical and ideological account of his struggles and hopes for Germany. Dictated to Rudolf Hess at Landsberg Prison in the summer of 1924, the book was originally entitled 'Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice’, but Hitler's publisher and business manager, Max Amann, shortened it to Mein Kampf. Until 1930, the book appeared in two separate volumes, but then it was combined in one volume.
The book has been immensely popular. It has been translated into almost all the languages of the world. Hitler holds tremendous negative fascination for human kind. He is the ugliest face of humanity. The curiosity of the human kind never diminishes regarding Hitler. People want to know every facet of this evil genius. The question is simple. How can a man be so bad? Mein Kampf is an effective method to read Hitler's mind and thereby derive conclusions. At the beginning of the autobiography, Hitler seems stunned at his own imprisonment. He cannot see his fault. That is his basic problem. We can easily see that his vision is distorted. He desperately tries to justify his political ideology. We can say that he is trying to justify the unjustifiable.
"I recognized the infamy of that technique whereby the movement carried on a campaign of mental terrorism against the bourgeoisie, who are neither morally nor spiritually equipped to withstand such attacks. The tactics of Social Democracy consisted in opening, at a given signal, a veritable drum – life of lies and calumnies against the man whom they believed to be the most redoubtable of their adversaries, until the nerves of the latter gave way and they sacrificed the man who was attacked, simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace.”
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1899 in Braunau am Innin, Austria and died on April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany. He was the dictator of Nazi Germany during 1933 to 1945. The name of his father was Alois Hitler and the name of his mother was Klara Hitler. The name of his wife was Eva Braun whom he married just before a day of his death in an underground bunker in Berlin. Hitler and his wife committed suicide.
All the wrong elements combined together to create this villain called Adolf Hitler. Hitler had schizophrenic genes. He faced extreme ups and downs during childhood and adolescence. He received severe shocks, and rejection. Repeated rejections became his fate. In a very sharp and insightful biographical novel Hitler Here, George Thomas Clarm writes,
"Adolf, then only thirteen and unrivalled man of the house, intensifies his disregard for authority and withdraws further inside a suffering self. Indeed, the disconsolate boy can't help being what he is. And it’s certainly his right – even his destiny to scowl and feel bad and be unable to interact in a normal way. There will always be lots of people like him, quitting school at age sixteen, getting drunk for the first (and only) time, and losing his certificate for that year's work. That's understandable. But his next part is rather unusual.
He is in the school director's office to seek a duplicate for his mother. And he waits and waits, terribly hung – over and nervous until the frowning director marches out and hands him his original certificate torn into four pieces and used for toilet paper. It’s easy to imagine how ashamed he is but its comprehensible why so many times he tells people about it.... And he's reading that the Jews are sexual deviate of a particularly uncouth sort. Is not that ironic? At the stage, however, Adolf is incapable of any sort of intimacy. He cannot even tell Gustl when the Academy of Fine Arts rejects him again. All night he cringes under a downpour loud in the leaves, and in the morning he stands there skinny white and naked, and everything's wet, and his paintings and sketches are destroyed, and he beings roaming for weeks, sleeping on an under benches until it gets very cold and he scurries into a cavernous pipe and curls up with back to the other bums. 'It's sad to see anyone have to beg. Can you image?' There is Adolf Hitler asking cultured Viennese for handouts ...
Perhaps there was an artist hidden within the cruel personality of Adolf Hitler. The artist was throttled and political events created a Hitler. It was fate only that took Hitler to war and political happenings. Hitler's mind was full of rotten ideas. His frustration, hostility, failures and humiliation were all misdirected towards the Jew community. There are various forms of hostility. A hostile action can be defined as an action aiming at the annihilation of the object. One kind of hostility arises from the need to protect one's own self. The second type of hostility is caused by frustration and is usually combined by hate. It is aimed at the destruction of a menace. It is the hostility for survival, hostility aimed at destroying the force which jeopardizes survival. The last type of hostile action is intentional hurting. It is displaced hate or escapegoatism. Destruction turns against not the real cause of frustration but against something else, the scapegoat.
If Hitler suffered poverty or he was betrayed, he should have fought against poverty or the tendency of betrayal as such. But his anger got displaced to Jews. Klaus P. Fischer describes in detail, the deep rooted hatred in Hitler's psyche for the Jews community. In a falling economy in Hitler's times, the Jews prospered due to their economic sense. Coupled with this humiliation were Hitler's personal experiences of Jews. He thought,
"Jews can never be German because they are racially and religiously different; and their difference is so vast, their character so alien, that they must be removed from German society by every possible means.
Hitler's perception of the Jews as alien beings was emotionally heightened by his belief that they smelled differently. Like leeches, the Jews graft themselves on a social body and suck out its blood ...Jewish influence, Hitler believed, was particularly poisonous in the press, the theatre, the fine arts, and literature. Jews also have a stranglehold on the economic life of a nation; they exploit shamelessly without replenishing anything. Since they have no commitment to the society in which they reside they care nothing about its basic values. This is why nothing is sacred to Jews, except their own Jewish characteristics. For this reason, Hitler even claimed to have discovered a connection between Jewish-ness and prostitution...
The Jew, in Hitler’s eyes, was the common denominator of all the negative sides of the social equation. Everything repulsive and offensive, every quality Hitler hated in himself and others, was inevitably projected onto the Jew. When speaking of Jews, Hitler habitually used words drawn from scatology or parasitology claiming that anything touched by Jewish hands reeked of syphilis, filth, decomposition, maggots, germs, poisoning, bacilli, and so on. In the alley as well as in the haunts of the mighty we always find a leering Jew who wants to exploit and ultimately subvert Aryan purity. In the alley it is the black haired Jew boy, diabolic joy in his face, (who) waits in ambush for the unsuspecting girl (Aryan) whom he defiles with his blood and thus robs her from her people.
With this thinking, it is no wonder that Hitler butchered millions and millions of Jews to purify his land. Hitler imagined his problems but the destruction that he caused as a remedy to his problems was real. In early 1930s he systematically denied Jew's prestigious positions in different professions and government posts. Jew children were not allowed to go to school. The shops owned by Jews were boycotted and attacked. He passed laws that defined Jews as a separate, inferior race. He made them wear yellow clothes, star of David, armband and discriminated them in many ways. In 1983 when a Nazi official was killed by Jew, the Nazis carried out a campaign of mechanized destruction of Jews shops and synagogues throughout Germany. Till late 1930s Hitler encouraged Jews to go out of Germany. But many countries barred their entrance. This was caused by anti – Semitism in those countries as well as a failure to understand what a terrible fate awaited the Jews. When the armies of Hitler conquered large areas of Europe, millions and millions of Jews came under his direct rule. Now he could not order them to go away. There was no place that could take these ill fated Jews. Hitler then changed his policy to that of extermination of the Jewish people. At the Wamsee Conference in February 1942 he ordered shipment of Jews to death camps. This black chapter in the history of mankind is known as the holocaust. The holocaust led to the death of more than six million Jews as well as three million non-Jewish enemies of Hitler.
His autobiography has been called the Bible of the Nazis. The surprising fact is that how millions of learned and noble Germans could come to worship a man willingly, obey his every word, whim and fancy. Hitler was proud of being a German. But due to his wrong path of massacre he has been labeled as one of the greatest evil geniuses of the world. The reason was his belief in fascism, racial purity and mentality of war. He threatened the fragile Weimar Republic. His party was known as National Socialist German Worker's Party. Hitler promised to end unemployment and poverty of Germany caused by hyperinflation. He promised to build the country into a great state after its humiliation in World War-I. Amid political turmoil and violence, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor in January 1933. As Fuhrer (leader) Hitler crushed all opposition, and ordered the murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and others. By April 1933, he gained absolute power in Germany, and established one-party rule. He set out to avenge the humiliation forced on Germany by the Versailles Peace Settlement. His mission was make Germany a powerful empire. Blaming the Jews and the labor unions for Germany's problems, Hitter began persecuting them. Hitler had hatred for the Jews and the Nuremberg laws of 1935 deprived Jews of their German citizenship and banned them from marrying new – Jews. Many Jews were forced to live in ghettos and wear a yellow star to show that they were Jews. Hitler's evilness is clearly highlighted when in November, 1938, Nazi mobs attacked Jewish property and synagogues all over Germany. Some 30,000 Jews were arrested; they started a full-scale massacre of Jews in Germany. Over the following seven years, nine million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and colored people were sent to concentration camps. It will not be exaggerated to consider Hitler one of the most evil men to have wrecked the human race, as "the demonic immensity of the crimes of Fascism, and of Hitler in particular leave little room for sympathy or a sense of shared humanity.”
The autobiography reveals the circumstances that made Hitler such an evil dictator. It is thought provoking as it is based on his views and concepts behind his path. An ordinary child, who faces so many difficulties or period of depression, might have turned into a depressed person. But Hitler had germs of insanity combined devilish thinking. Unfortunate circumstances created the greatest villain born on earth. He even led Germany in 1939 into World War II. He had a feeling of self pride in being a German and never wanted to be shot dead by others if arrested. So he dared to kill himself when faced with defeat. This was his ego that led him to end his life.
Hitler's Mein Kampf is an insight of his own attitudes towards life and dogmas. Hitler has presented himself from his childhood to adulthood. It is written in the defense of his doctrines. His ideas are associated together in organic unity-ideas of human life, human values, cultural and religious ideas, politics, economics etc. In fact, he presents a totalitarian view of human existence.
In the volume I of his autobiography A Retrospect, Hitler gives development of his mind from his birth up to leading the Nazi Party. He has also emphasized in racial purity of the Germans.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau-on-the Inn situated just on the frontier between the two states Germany and Austria. He emphasizes the reunion of the state as they were separated during the First World War. He suggests to the younger generation to devote their lives in the favor of the motherland. He also states, "People of the same blood should be in the same Reich. German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in the one state". Hitler has tried to see coherence in world through the idea of racial purity. He wants to belong to some big and solid thing in order to confirm his identity. Bombastic ideas of racial purity and nationhood give Hitler a kind of mental cushion. These nonsensical ideas give him a sense of solid identity. Hitler mentions the tragic calamity during 1792 to 1814 when the French Revolutionary Armies overran Germany. It was the time of Germany's deepest humiliation as Munich was occupied by France and Bavaria shared the Austrian defeat. The town to which Hitler belonged was haunted by the memory of a German martyr. Hitler's father wanted him to become an officer. Hitler writes,
"Indeed he had decided on that career for me. The difficulties through which he had to struggle in making his own career led him to overestimate what he had achieved. The characteristic pride of the self-made man urged him towards the idea that his son should follow the same calling and if possible rise to higher position in it. Moreover, this idea was strengthened by the consideration that the results of his own life's industry had placed him in a position to facilitate his son's advancement in the same career.”
This was father's decision for a comfortable life of his son. He did not want his son to face problems. He wanted him to rise.
But Hitler was firm in his decision "I would not become a civil servant." No amount of persuasion and no amount of 'grave' warnings could break down that opposition. 'I would not become a state official, not on any account'. Even when there was conflict with his father he was not agitated. Hitler was so firm and keep in his decision that even he says, "My own resolution not to become a Government official was sufficient for the time being to put my mind completely at rest." This very quality to consider the situation very keenly and stick to the cruel side from early childhood is very obvious in his personality that made him an evil dictator. He thought to satisfy his father as a counter suggestion by being a painter or an artist.
Hitler was not capable of any love. He had loyalty, and solidarity but without any humane touch. The resulting situation was not pleasant. If his father forbade him to entertain any hopes of taking up the art of painting as a profession, Hitler went a step further and declared that he would not study anything else. His father's decision was irrevocable and the situation became more strained. His father decided to 'assert his parental authority at all costs'. His father's cruelty made him go back to his mental den and corridors of darkness.
"That led me to adopt an attitude of circumspect silence, but I put my threat into execution. I thought that, once it became clear to my father that I was making no progress at the Realschule, he would be forced to allow me to follow the happy career I had dreamed of".
But the tussle between the father and the son did not last long.
"The conflict between Adolf and his father never reached a breaking point because Alois died of a heart attack in January 1903. It is probably true that Adolf's attitude toward his father was extremely ambivalent, but it is doubtful, as one historian has claimed, that this flawed father-son relationship could serve as a textbook description of the Oedipal conflict. Alois Hitler certainly left an indelible mark on his son's character; like the father, the son displayed a stubborn will, a groveling awe for authority, a quick and calculating intelligence, and a terrible temper that could be easily aroused but not so easily suppressed.”
Those days the old Austria was a multi-national state. Hilter knew that the citizens of the German Empire could not understand what the fact 'multi-nationalism' meant in everyday life of the individuals within such a state. He had the idea that the Germans of the Reich did not realize that the Germans in Austria had the best racial stock. Only very few of the Germans in the Reich itself had an idea of the bitter struggle which those Eastern Germans had to carry daily for the preservation of their German language, their German schools and their German character.
Language fight raged in the old Austria. The fight was waged in its bitterest form around the school. Hitler depicts very clearly the reason of this fight in the school. The technical objective of the fight was the winning over of the child, and it was to the child that the first rallying cry was addressed.
"German youth do not forget that you are a German", and "Remember, little girl, that one day you must be a German mother".
"Those who know something of the Juvenile spirit can understand how youth will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry." Hitler also understood the result of that rallying cry. And the result was that the juvenile passion for nationalism was seen everywhere. "Under many forms the young people led the struggle, fighting in their own way with their weapons. The passion was so strong that they even refused to sing non-German songs. Even if they were checked away from their German allegiance, 'the more they exalted the glory of their German heroes'. 'They were incredibly alert to the significance of what the non-German teacher said and they contradicted in unison. They wore the forbidden emblems of their own kinsfolk and were happy when penalized for doing so or even physically punished. In miniature they were mirrors of loyalty from which the older people might learn a lesson."
This was the passion for the nationalism. He took part in the struggle which the nationalities were waging war against one another in the old Austria. As the citizens of the Germany they were not allowed nationality. The youth thought it politically correct to become ardent "German Nationals'.
Thus at a very young age of fifteen Hitler's mind raced rapidly towards the misplaced nationalism. He understood the distinction between dynastic patriotism and nationalism based on the concept of folk or people.
During Hitler's time, universal history was the subject almost exclusively taught in the Austrian schools. There was no division of German history and Austrian history. It was closely bound up with the existence and development of Germany as a whole. But indeed when German people came to be divided between two states, this division of German history began to take place.
Hitler wanted to apply the lessons drawn from history into practical situations. As he was interested in history and was a good orator, his mind was inclined in seeking 'the true purpose of the study of history. "To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events. The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential".
This was the essence of Hitler's learning. This keen perception came as he observed the elucidation of basic facts in teaching history by his ideal teacher Dr. Leopold Poetsch. Hitler as a student was interested in history. The professor was able to capture the examples of everyday problems that agitated the minds the students. He utilized the national fervor while teaching. He often appealed to Hitler's sense of national honor. His inclination in pondering over the changing facts of the history and practical application of the study of history had a deep impact on the young mind of Hitler. Hitler in his early years of youth came to certain conclusions and became more profoundly convinced of them as the years passed. The dissolution of the Austrian Empire is a preliminary condition for the defence of Germany; further, national feeling is by no means identical with dynastic patriotism; the House of Habsburg was destined to bring misfortune to the German nation; and finally Jews had no right to live Germany.
Further, he asserts "As a logical consequence of these convictions, there arose in me a feeling of intense love for my German Austrian home and a profound hatred for the Austrian state." Hatred was the keystone of Hitler's mind. His capacity to hate was infinite.
Hitler's mind absorbed the historical thinking of that kind. He considered the contemporary historical events equivalent to politics. In this respect world history became an inexhaustible source and there was less to learn in politics. Beside the world history and polities he was interested in art. The play, "William Tell' and opera "Lohengrin" inspired him when he was twelve years old. The intense interest in these subjects and the fervor of nationalism arose in him a profound aversion for the career that his father had chosen for him. He became drastically against to a job, which limited his ambitions.
But the unfortunate demise of his father due to sickness, while Hitler was only thirteen shocked him. Now he had to face the bitter reality of life which his father had faced in his life to fight for the livelihood of the family.
His father had the strenuous struggle in his life against poverty but never gave in. He learnt to cope with the stresses and strains of public life. But then Hitler's mother found it her duty to continue his education and fulfill his father's desire. But Hitler's firm determination not to become an official of the state became profound. He disagreed with the curriculum and teaching methods followed in the middle school. Hitler's idea of ideal education was different. He wanted to raise the fervor of nationalism. Naturally Hitler could not let his mother be sad by his rejection of fulfilling the father's wishes. Adolf's three elder brothers Gustav, Ida and Otto all had died and two of them Gustav and Ida, tragically passed away after contracting diphtheria. Obviously, Klara, his mother showered all her tender care on her fourth child, Adolf. Since he was a sickly looking child, his mother smothered him with care because she feared that he, too, would not be able to survive to adulthood. Adolf was, therefore, overprotected, pampered, and sheltered by his mother, inviting the conclusion that some of Hitler's subsequent tendencies-his obsessive need for self indulgence, his excessive demands, even his needs for oral gratifications – stemmed from the impaired mother-child relationship. Hitler persuaded his weak-willed mother to let him quit school. Unfulfilled and mentally sick parents produce maniacs like Hitler. His optimistic nature sought hope in his illness and his illness assisted him in his devices. The doctor advised his mother very strongly not to allow him under any circumstance to take up a career, which would necessitate working in an office. He ordered him to give up attendance at The Realschule for a year at least. Then the longstanding family conflict about the career came to an end. But Hitler was not destined to be happy for more time. Two years later, his mother's sudden demise came as a terrible blow to him. He also lost the love of his dear mother. Like his father, to cope the miserable situation and with an indomitable resolution in his heart along with his uncertain future he left for Vienna.
The second chapter of volume-I is about Hitler's years of study and suffering in Vienna. It seemed to him the most miserable time of his life.
Before his mother's death, Hitler had come to Vienna to take the entrance exam for the Academy of Fine Arts. He was sure of his success but it was a great shock to him when his hopes of success were shattered after the declaration of the result. But he realized that he was better in architectural designing and he knew that he ought to become an architect. But in this respect his fate did not favor him as to get an admission in the Technical building school. A leaving certificate from the middle school was must which he did not have.
After his mother's death when he came to Vienna, Hitler had a blank mind and a dark fate. But evil genius like Hitler never tire. They keep on conspiring and planning. It is but natural for Hitler to present a sympathetic view of his adolescent years. But the fact remains that his mind grasped all that was violent, ugly and provocative. He was not an extrovert. He bottled his true emotions. Out of every situation, he sought to carve out evil and more evil.
Thus we can see that Hitler was born in very crude circumstances. Refinement was beyond him. Traditionally his family was that of peasants. Living in his own mental prisons, Hitler was extremely lazy as a child. He was forced to leave school due to total academic failure. He went to Vienna in an attempt to get admission to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. It was an extremely unfortunate event for Hitler and for the history of mankind in general that the Art school thought that Hitler lacked talent in drawing and art. Thus he was formally rejected. Later in the same year his mother died of cancer. He was a total orphan by then. He went back to Vienna on an orphan's pension. He kept on trying to get an admission to the Academy of Fine Arts. He failed again and again. Hitler had nothing to do. He stayed back in Vienna. He painted post-cards and tried to sell them to prosperous Jews and also to tourists. This deep humiliation led an indelible spot on Hitler's psyche. He developed his own whimsical ideas. He thought that people like him had the sole right to live in the country.
As said earlier, Hitler developed an infinite capacity for hatred, He hated Jews. He hated the world. Like Satan, he had a sense of injured merit. He thought that he deserved a better fate. He thought that he was highly capable and highly intelligent. He thought that his abilities were not respected by the unjust world. He sought to take revenge against the world that mistreated him. Ironically, Hitler would have died if Jews would not have helped him. His mother's doctor was a Jew. He helped Hitler financially and also gave him many presents. Nobody knew then that a monster was living within Adolf Hitler and this monster will take over the whole world by storm and havoc one day. As we have pointed out earlier, Hitler was a psychopath. His hatred was misplaced. As he stayed in Vienna longer, the target of his hatred focused more on the Jews. He came to believe that the Jews were the key reason for all that was bad in the world. His hatred toward the Jews grew largely due to the numerous outside influences. In Vienna, he was influenced by the German anti-Semitic nationalists and racists. Most importantly, he was affected by the striking racist remarks expressed in a series of pamphlets published by a monk called Ostara. The pamphlet announced the idea of the monk who tried to establish a group of male masters who were to produce pure Aryan offspring. The males that were less pure will either be sterilized or fully eliminated. Hitler's ideas began to blossom on the lines of these pamphlets.
Thus we can see that it was fear of self that led Hitler to form racist ideas. His head was full of silly ideas like 'the Aryan race will extinguish, 'there will be no pure blood' in this world and so on and so forth.
As fate would have it, World War I gave a chance to Adolf Hitler to express the violence within him. He entered the German army. There was nothing heroic in his gesture. He was unemployed and unemployable. He was an orphan. He had nothing to cling to. He fought desperately for the German army. At last he was recognized in the army for his outstanding cruelty, violence and deadly instincts. But Germany's failure in World War I collapsed Hitler once again. He was back to where he had started as a young man without occupation. As fate would have it, he re-entered the army. He was given the job to investigate radical, political groups of Germany. He started investigating German Worker's Party. He was charmed by the radical ideology like anything. He joined the party. It was at this late stage in life that his skill to give speeches came to light. He quickly gained control over the party. It was the beginning of the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Till now Hitler had enjoyed only a limited audience, consisting largely of reluctant hearers; but now, with the help of the army, he was given the opportunity of addressing much larger groups. His reputation as a natural orator grew. Hitler was a born demagogue; his fanaticism and popular appeal compelled his audience to listen to him.
The young Hitler who returned to Munich in November 1918 carried within himself the raging turmoil of a divided personality. He was seething with pent-up hatred, paranoid fears, and twisted visions of reality. The chaos of the postwar period in Germany made it possible for him to express his pathology within a growing circle of likeminded believers. By looking at Hitler in 1918 we can already see the disturbing traits of the future dictator with remarkable clarity. These traits, representing permanent aspects of his habitual style, changed little over time except in intensity or further distortion. The unknown soldier who suddenly came out of shadow of war in 1919 and began to mesmerize an ever increasing number of people exhibited a syndrome of alarming characteristics, involving :
(1) A Paranoid fear of Jews.
(2) A pigeon–hole mind dividing the world into sharp and unambiguous opposites.
(3) A habitual need to project or externalize inner failings onto outer scapegoats like Jews, pacifists, democrats, communists, and so on.
(4) An inability to form loving ties especially with women, and corresponding attitudes of callousness and manipulating in all interpersonal relationships.
(5) Extreme self – absorption in unrealistic fantasies and grand illusions.
(6) Admiration for brutal strength and success”
It is extremely difficult to describe the destruction caused by Hitler. Klaus P. Fischer has described in detail the waves of anti Semitism that Hitler was able to generate.
"The grisly details of the concentration camps had been known during the war by more people than is commonly supposed. When the war ended, the concentration camps disgorged thousands of victims who lived to tell the tale....No one knows when Hitler gave the order to annihilate the Jews. No written document has ever been discovered. Clues from various sources indicate that sometime in the spring of 1941 Hitler gave a personal order to Himmler that the Jews had to be eliminated. It is also highly likely that Hitler even suggested the precise nature of getting rid of the Jews extermination by poison gas. After all, he had made allusions to this subject since the early days of the party; and in Mein Kampf, he wrote that many German lives would have been saved in World War I if 'these Hebrew corruptors of the people had been subjected to poison gas'. As will be recalled, Hitler had publicly warned the Jews on January 30, 1939, that he would annihilate them in case of war.... Apparently some concern for possible public reaction, combined with a mania for secrecy and perhaps some psychological need to maintain this atrocity at a distance, kept Hitler from revealing the awful secret and his role in it to anyone but a few trusted henchmen (Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, Goring). But the fact is that Hitler had been step-by-step the guiding spirit of what happened to the Jews since he gained power in 1933.
Hitler's views originate from the ideas of the Italian leader Benito Mussolini. Mussolini's ideology is famously known as Fascism. Hitler believed in the political use of Military. He had very rigid ideas regarding nationhood. He was totally against the ideas of Karl Marx. He did not believe in the rights of the labor class. He thought that dictatorship was the best method to run a government. In fact, his ideas were much more racially oriented than those of Mussolini. He believed in creating a completely totalitarian state. Fascists in Italy, Portugal and Spain allowed some private liberties to their citizens. Perhaps this is the reason why Italian monarchy lasted much longer. Hitler was the chief controller of the Nazi Party. His word was supreme. From 1934-1945 he held unlimited political power in Germany and the areas that came under German governance during the above mentioned period. He fully misused his powers. He succeeded in creating an anti – Jew wave in many countries. When other countries stopped selling arms to Germany, Hitler is even reported to have used the bones of dead Jews for making weapons. It is obvious that Hitler suffered from psychosis but no other psychopath in the history of human kind has ever been able to kill so many innocent people in an inhuman manner. Psychosis is defined as a "severe mental disorder involving personality disorganization and lack of contact with reality.”
'Lack of contact with reality' these words are essential to understand Hitler's functioning. He not only held wrong ideas but also held the blind faith in putting them into practice. Totalitarianism is the essence of Hitler's thinking. He believed that whatever Germany had been able to achieve ever in past, had been due to strong nationalism and nothing else. Hitler had an inflated ego. He projected himself as a genius behind the success of his party. He believed in propaganda. He portrayed himself through various agencies as Germany's savior. Here is an example how oratory can be totally false. Through his words he earned a cult following in his party. A special unit of his party was called 'Storm Unit'. The job of this unit was to act violently against leftists, democrats, Jews and all other opponents. With the spread of terror, Hitler succeeded in ending all opposition. It will be no exaggeration to say that he was a monster. His storm unit forced the youth to join Nazi Party and army. Hitler believed in the concept of "Grobdeutschland", or Greater Germany, and believed that the incorporation of the Germanic people into one nation was a vital step towards their national success.
One of the major themes in German history has been the administration of Germanic regions within Northern and central Europe. Germany's economic rivals always wanted that it should be a small state. This was the reason why Poland was created. The goal was to create numerous counterweights in order to balance Germany's power. As Wikipedia says, "Similarly, the 'German problem', as it is often referred to in English scholarship focuses on the issue of administration of Germanic regions within Northern and central Europe, an important theme throughout German history. The "logic' of keeping Germany small worked in the favor of its principal economic rivals, and had been a driving force in the recreation of a Polish state. The goal was to create numerous counter weights in order to "balance out Germany's power". However it was the German passionate support of the Volk concept that led to Germany's expansion, that gave legitimacy and support needed for the Third Reich to proceed to conquer long lost territories with overwhelmingly non – German population like in Poland that it lost to Russia in the 1800s, or to acquire territories with German population like parts of Austria, or "needed" as the Nazi regime claimed for Lebensraun (living space) for a growing population.
George Thomas Clark in an ironical tone justifies Hitler's doings in his own words:
"Germans have always been the procreators of all creative art, I stated at the 1935 Party Rally in Nuremberg. All other art is inferior. The art of the Jew is particularly worthless, especially since they are so fulsomely praised for their artistic ability. The Jews have in fact never created on original work of art because they are fundamentally incapable of originality.
As I had explained in Mein Kampf, the parasitic Jews derive everything, they have from superior races. The Jews undermine financial institutions, then suck in rivers of money. The Jews undermine political institutions, they usurp power. The Jews and this is the real basis of their danger because it sets up all other machinations undermines better races through bastardization. Determined to safeguard the Aryan race, I established the Law for the protection of German Blood and Honor".
Hitler as well as the Nazis opposed women's liberation and feminist movement because they thought it was bad for the society. The Nazis advocated a society in which women would recognize that the world is "her husband, her family, her children and her home."
The picture that emerges is that of a frustrated Austrian loaner who by the ill fate of humanity got a chance to put into practice his violent, evil and abnormal designs.
One of the prominent symbols of Chinese Philosophy is Yin-Yang.
Yin stands for feminine force and Yang stands for masculine force. The symbol of yin-Yang symbolizes balance between the two forces. Masculine force traditionally symbolizes action and aggression. Likewise feminine force symbolizes peace and creativity. Life is the other name of balancing these two forces. The picture of Shiv-ling in India is also a symbol of unification of the two forces. Every man has a woman within him and every woman has a man within her. For a man it is not necessary to be aggressive all the time. A man must realize his feminine instincts in order to have a complete personality.
The spiritual gurus have understood the importance of this combination. In his spiritual pursuits, Swami Ram Krishna Paramhans spent a long time dressing and behaving like a woman. Inspired by his mother and supported by his wife Mahatma Gandhi had also accepted the importance of the feminine side of life. Satyagraha came from his mother who did not eat food if things went wrong. This is the reason why Gandhiji had such a complete personality. His masculine side made him firm and persistent. His feminine side generated unlimited love and kindness. This is the Charisma of Gandhiji's personality. Nobody was afraid of him; everybody loved and respected him. He was pure like a child because he had killed the aggression within him. His non-violence manifested itself so strongly because non-violence existed in his mind. He did not threaten any one. He only evoked goodness.
Hitler had a misconception of masculinity. He was afraid of his feminine side and never accepted it. Anything soft and peaceful was repulsive to him. This was his mental illness. He had a disorganized personality. The components of his personality were disproportionate and disorganized. This mental set-up reflected itself in all that he did-his paintings, his writings, his behavior and his actions. He generated fear in others even from a distance. He was a burning and dissatisfied soul.
Hitler's inner conflicts and ego never allowed him to compromise. It was due to political and ideological climate of postwar cynicism, extremism and despair that he became the amalgam of narcissism, crude social Darwinism, abnormalities, and irrationalities. He developed in himself negative survival skills as manipulative, callous and exploitative rather than positive means of adaptation. His Mein Kamf presents his weakest sides, his vanity and self-importance and his terrible obsession of paranoid fear of Jews.
Going through Mein Kampf we can recognize four major prejudices: a racist interpretation of history, a social Darwinist view of life and nature, a preference for the militaristic style of life, and a belief in transforming Germany into a world power. These prejudices make Hitler to stand in very narrow path of thinking before Gandhi's broad way of attitude and thinking of equality and belief in peace. Hitler's 'granite foundation' of worldview was his belief in the biological and cultural superiority of the Aryan race that formed the basis of his philosophy of history and his political ideology. He believed that strength, resilience and intelligence are the result of racial purity, struggle and the mating of superior types with each other. He was passionately convinced that a people's historical greatness depended upon the purity of its blood. In the modern scientific perspective, we find Hitler's view unacceptable as there are only three types of blood groups 'A', 'B' and 'O'.
Hitler was against the democratic system as he experienced the corruption in the German parliament. Hitler was keen to the discrepancy in the social democracy and human frailties in the whole social system. The frustrated ego of Hitler found no alternative to overcome all the frailties but only to govern the state in his own way by the means of dictatorship. His principles of 'no right to vote for the public shows his lack of faith in public. He gave no importance to the common masses. He assumed that the common man had no intelligence.
Hitler through his 'Mein Kampf' is seen as inflated by the compensating energies of the self in response to his deeply wounded ego, a wound he could not mourn. Consequently, he identified with the dark and destructive energies of the self which inflated and usurped his ego. His behavior in his autobiography seems an effective response to some real-life factors, but when he consolidated his position in real life, his reality-testing capacities diminished. As a consequence he runs into difficulties, his behavior becomes more erratic and his paranoid defenses become more exaggerate.
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02-Oct-2011
More by : Prof. Shubha Tiwari