What is interesting about modern history is not the mentality of dictators, since they existed even before modern age, but how one single man has been able to force his will, obsessions and grievances on society and ruin half of the world. How can society give any member of it, especially to such a gigantomaniac and apocalyptic figure like Hitler was absolute power, whatsoever? Mind Blowing to think about it, for it is also difficult to assess the significance of what this one man did, for the world order in which we live was created from a coalition against Hitler.
It is part of the truth that these were not normal times. Germany has experienced a huge crisis and trauma in the post WWI period. It lost significant areas after the war, and this was compounded by the economic collapse of the 29s, hyperinflation, and mass unemployment. Just imagine that all our savings will be devalued overnight and we will lose our jobs and our livelihood as well. These problems weren’t unique, they affected the whole German society.
However, all these problems would not have been enough to gain absolute power for nazis. It took more than that. And that was a realistic chance of communist takeover. Everyone was fully aware what’s going on in Russia. And no one wanted that nightmare. This united the country from workers to factory owners, from middle class traders to the Prussian aristocracy, from conservative Christians to social democrats. And Hitler had a promise to everyone. He had a strong gut feeling about what people want to hear.
The totalitarian movement that have arisen after the First World War are basically religious movement. The aim is not only to change political and social institutions, but also to remodel the nature of man and society.
Waldemar Gurian The Totalitarian State
At the time, the vision of a totalitarian state was not optional. Everyone seriously thought this is the future which has no alternative. Anyone who is thoroughly familiar with the circumstances at the time considers it out of the question that no way any miracle beetle would have not emerged from the chaos. It could have been anyone, because any sort of order is better than chaos for the most people. However the reign of terror is that price, which is too high for not having chaos. It solves nothing and just procrastinates chaos which takes back that belongs to it exponentially from arbitrary created order, as happened to Germany after the WWII. But the people do not care about the future. They want order now. They want order at all cost. Hitler as a lottery winner of history was only in a good place at a good time. In normal circumstances he would never have had a chance to seize power. History creates Hitlers, before Hitlers can make history.
The German economic “miracle”
Which is a false interpretation, because what Hitler did with Germany is an economic disaster, roughly saying consuming the reserves of the future to meet the needs of the present. Yet Hitler was considered a genius in his day for this. The nazi economic model contained so many Keynesian methods regarding the huge public labor programs, and even Marxists elements with regards of price control. which can be said by the way, it has never worked in history and has always ended the same everywhere, i.e., shortages of goods and economic collapse. But Hitler fled ahead and started a war. However, he could not avoid his fate.
There are few historians who do not overlook the fact that the German economy came close to collapse in the 1930s. The Nazi regime would have collapsed at the late 30s if they didn’t start conquering. Hitler desperately needed the Austrian gold reserve to keep the German economy alive. So it is a logical impossibility to assume that the Germans could have won the war they started in order to survive the present in any way. Simply because the Nazi economy model wasn’t susstainable, as no economy based upon institutionalized robbery.
Nevertheless Hitler solved the problem of unemployment, as anyone can solve it this way. Nothing is easier. Here is the recipe:
Give each man a spade and send them out to dig a ditch in fields.
Someone might ask who would have a little wit: Okay, but what do we pay for trench spades from?
Answer: From money robbed from banks, from foreign loans, from goods looted from Jews, and if this won’t be enough, we’re gonna print more money.
Again, the skeptic: Alright, but what will happen if we run out of money robbed from banks, and no one wants to lend?
Is this a problem too??? In that case we occupie Poland, and loot it. If we run out of that money either, we invade Russia, and loot it, and so on.
I don’t even understand why modern economists don’t teach Hitler’s method of reducing unemployment. Because it’s so simple. Not Hitler was that, who has been awarded to economic Nobel prize in 1939 by the way? Or he was only nominated? Either case this method was considered some miracle. Apart from the robbery of money and the confinement of the owners in a concentration camp, and the trifle that Germany’s state debt was 400% in 1939, while FDR incraised public spending with 50% in USA, it seemed really some miracle. After all the employment rate was 100% in Germany in 1939, so much so that whoever did not want to work was executed. Everyone got a job in the Third Reich.
Hitler’s economic program was little different from Stalin’s. Both are based on central control, collectivism, hostility towards free market economy. Both are tragic disaster.
War against the East
If the German troops would have been a real liberators as the eastern peoples hoped, who suffered of Stalin’s oppression, the Bolshevik regime most likely would have collapsed before the Germans reach Moscow. Soviet rule would have been overthrown by the Soviet citizens themselves. But the nazis weren’t liberators, but destroyers and raiders, who spared no one. Hitler started the war against Russia that the victory was in his hands, but he did every possible thing to lose it. For seventy years, historians thought that this was because he did not really intend to liberate Russians. Hitler was obsessed in lebensraum. That has been a misconception so far, that he wanted to exterminate Slavs to make space for German farmers and colonists. If that would have indeed his intention he would have entrusted the Russians with overthrowing their own government, and the extermination would have followed only that. Because it’s not logical at any way to overload German troops with that, what the Russians can performe themselves, even for tactical reasons. But the truth is even more terrible, because as turned out Hitler didn’t care about Germans either. Otherwise every sane person could have seen that invading such a giant country like Russia, and keeping it invaded are an absolutely hopeless experiment. It’s militarily completely impractical. Throughout the war, the Germans could occupy only five percent of the Soviet Union, and even that proved so enormous that made the German capacity completely overwhelm. What really was Hitler’s purpose?
I agree with one of the prominent historians. Great empires don’t only take but give as well. In contrast to them the Third Reich had only taken away without giving anything. The Reich hadn’t built cities in occupied territories, and infrastructure, everything they left behind are ruins, tragedy, and disaster.
According to Hitler’s ridiculous accusation declared at the beginning of 1945, the Germans lost war in East due to cowardice and betrayal of Hungarians, Romanians, Italians. It’s interesting because these countries weren’t even taken into account as criteria in winning against the USSR at the beginning of the offensive. According the racist ideology ‘the Lebensraum’ the German race, the overman is designed to win with no external assistance. This accusation was typical of Hitler.
Hitler claimed maximal power without taking any responsibility for anything he had done. The great leaders and generals are great soldiers as well who are not only capable to lead, but they let lead themselves. The great leader says in battle, follow me instead of saying go forward. The great leader risks the most. His soldiers know this, and this is why they’re willing to follow their leader to hell and glory, death and salvation. The great leader starves when his soldiers starve.
These traits characterized Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon a bit. But Hitler lacked these virtues completely. There’s no wonder unlike the mentioned he didn’t seize power as soldier but as political demagogue. He didn’t earn respect and rank as soldier especially as leader. He never got upper on a military rank ladder, thus his decisions and mentality weren’t dominated by military strategic considerations and common sense, but ego, vanity, pettiness, bitterness, and arrogance, racist bias and true malevolence.
And his military superiors were right about him in trenches of WWI, with denying to promote Hitler. They were fully aware of fact that Hitler is unfit for leading. He has no leadership traits, and can’t be more, shouldn’t have been more than Bavarian corporal. Posterity justified them in terrible manner.
The final solution
The fact that the Germans lost the WWII wasn’t accidental at any means, as I mentioned, Hitler did every possible thing to lose the war from his part. In fact the Germans lost the war even before they started it. When the fortune of war began turning against them at winter of 1942-43, it would have been reasonable if they set aside the Jewish issue and mobilize the military capacity for waring. They would have a plenty time to deal with this after the final victory. That’s not what happened. The German society was really mobilized but not to win the war, but to accelerate the genocide, so much so that valuable resources were diverted to this, which were essential to both the war and the hinterland. In fact, the genocide did not end even in early 1945, on the verge of total collapse.
Why would anyone do that, who is sure in final victory, or wants to win the war at all? It does make no sense whatsoever.
The tale that Hitler would want to build a reich which lasts for thousand years, creating some German golden age, is not true. He only wanted to gain the support of German society to implement genocide with this tale.
Germany was not a highly anti-Semitic society before Hitler. There was a kind of Christian anti-Semitism, but it was no worse than in any society of the age. Moreover it was religious based not biological. But Hitler is raised in the Austro-Hungarian empire which was flooded by eastern Jews, who were living in extreme poverty. Hitler was germophobic, that means extreme and hysteric aversation from dirtiness. He abhorred Jews, because he associated their misery with dirt. And this fatal obsession soon escalated to collective and biological scale.
He never really wanted German golden era. What he wanted is not entirely clear, but he wasn’t okay even with one single moment of peace. He never lived a life close to normal. He wanted an apocalyptic world and revenge on society that threw him out of itself. In other words Hitler hasn’t been a kind guy. He was incapable of love, empathy, and compassion. Why would have he want good for Germany or anyone in the world? Someone is controlled by either good intentions or bad intentions, but the two cannot control anyone at the same time. The temperature of water can be either cold or hot, but can’t be both at the same time.
It’s not out of the question of course that for a moment he himself believed he wanted good, especially at the peak of his popularity and success, but he never really wanted good for anyone.
Just think a little with the mind of a sociopath to understand that. Mengele for instance who found a fun and joy in painful and meaningless human experiments, tortured innocent for what a purpose? To make a world a better place? Or he wanted the best for Germany with this? Or the no less sadistic Himmler with sending the Jews to certain death? It’s nonsense. The sadism has no noble purpose. The sadism is for the sadism itself. The sadism serves no one, just the desire of sadistic. They don’t want to make the world a better place, or deliver a golden age for their people. They rather see an opportunistic chance to satisfy their terrorist and sadistic inclination if they can do it impunity. And an oppressive regimes provide them endless opportunity, because they need them.
Hitler was also driven by this goal, not to make his homeland a better place. He did not believe in any golden age or reich. The war and destruction were his reich.
The aim justifies the means to deliver a perfect utopia, but this was the decoy, because the means were the aim themselves. Unfortunately, the Germans realized this too late, when they found themselves in target cross of their beloved führer. It’s revealed at 1945 that Hitler gives a shit about Germans either. He just bought the support of public opinion with übermensch race slogan.
If Hitler would see the world today, he certainly would be very upset, disappointed, and angry, but not because that the most people think, that is, that his visionary utopia was not realized. But rather because he would have to face the world that survived him. He failed to drag Germany and Europe with himself into the final destruction. The history passed him a long time ago, and he is nothing else just a bad memory of the past.
The lesson is there is the price to be paid for believing in political demagogues and endowing some with absolute power. The ideologies are drugs of intellectuals, and the demagogues are the dealers of these drugs. They promise paradise and bring hell.
If the nazi utopia would have actualized in some illogical way, and Europe would only be inhabited by Germans, Hitler would have exterminated them too at the same way as he exterminated Jews. He would have started with round headed Germans, and dark haired ones, and so on. No one would have been good enough for him, as turned out from the infamous euthanasia program or the extermination of ethnic Germans of Jewish religion, Catholic, and Jehovah witnesses. The purpose was the extermination, destruction, total war, at any cost, at all costs.
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