Adolf Hitler

When I was in 7th or 8th grade I had to do a report on 3 heroes of my choice, and for one of those heroes I chose Hitler on the premise that he was SOMEONE's hero. Not my personal hero, but someone's hero. In fact, he was all of Germany's hero for a time. ... My classmates still thought I was strange.

(For me personally, I see this as yet another example of a school project that I tried to tweak to make it more interesting. I mean, it's predictable to write about your own hero, and sometimes even trite and boring ("My hero is my dad who is the greatest guy in the world...blah, blah, blah, and gag on a spoon."), but to write about someone else's hero? Especially if that someone else's hero is a controversial historical figure? That's unpredictable, interesting, and narrowly edging the line between acceptable and inflammatory. Right down my alley, I'd say.)

But strange or not, the truth is still that I have always been fascinated by Hitler. The fact that he rose to power at all. The fact that he got an entire nation to go along with killing off 6 million of a certain people, just cause they were different. And wasn't Germany a democracy anyway? So how did he get to be the dictator of a democracy? It's all strange and interesting and fascinating.

I read a short book on Hitler way back in the day, probably for that project I mentioned. But it wasn't very helpful. It talked about Hitler being the head of his political party, but if you translate that into 1990's American terms, that's not very helpful. Our political leaders aren't unquestioned dictators. (And we'll stay out of American politics for now, since it's not really what I'm talking about.)

Last month I finally decided to get serious about my Hitler studies by tackling a tome by John Toland called (of all things) Adolf Hitler. It starts with Hitler's father, follows Hitler through childhood, and of course right up to the end of his life. Since that's what biographies do. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm to the point where I have something of an understanding of how he came to power, and I wanted to write about it. So if you care to know a brief description of Hitler's early days, as interpreted by Toland and re-interpreted by me, then read on.

Hitler's dad was kind of a putz and died when Hiter was young. Hitler's mother was adorable, and he adored her. She was just about his only family supporter, but she died in Hitler's late teens. Everyone else in the family wasn't a Hitler fan. Partly this is because he wanted to be an artist, and the family thought he should get a "decent" job.

Hitler as a child was much like he was as an adult: a natural leader, a good speaker, very persuasive. Demanded unquestioning loyalty from his friends and, according to one of his best friends, could only handle acceptance. He was angry, passionate, and prone to verbal outbursts.

Spent his late teens and early twenties doing nothing at all with his life. From 17 (when he went to Vienna all on his own) to 24 years of age, he spent time being a bohemian starving artist. Some of that time he spent homeless, and a good chunk of that time he spent getting into violent political debates with his friends. He couldn't make it as an artist (he was denied entrance into Vienna's art academy two or three times) and people who knew art told him that he wasn't meant to be a painter but an architect. His art was very good architecturally, but he had no knack for proportions of the human body. He finally went to Germany to "train as an architect" and promptly didn't apply to any architectural school.

Then WWI started and Hitler was thrilled! Germany was going to be great! He signed up for the army and spent all 4 years of the war fighting on the front lines. Apparently he was uber-brave and did all sorts of very dangerous missions during which his life was spared time and again by what we'd call divine intervention (hearing a voice tell him to move or just getting a feeling that he should or shouldn't do something).

And here's where it gets really interesting politically. At the very end of the war, and right after it, German was in revolution! (The American president at the time refused to talk peace with the emperor of Germany, demanding to deal with a democratic leader. Sounds familiar, eh? Apparently we just reincarnate the same American president over and over. Oh, but we're not getting into American politics in this piece.) I think power changed hands about 6 times in the first year. Lots of assassinations. Lots of unrest.

One of my favorite assassinations was the first Revolution Leader. A guy named Kurt Eisner. Apparently a decent guy, but people were distrustful of a revolutionary (which is funny, if you think about it). Eisner realized he'd never have a chance and wrote out his resignation. He was on his way to deliver that resignation when he was killed by Count Arco-Valley. Arco-Valley was unhappy with Eisner's anti-Semitic political group, because they'd denied him entrance since his mother was a Jew. According to Toland, the government would have been handed over to a middle-of-the-road politcal party, but the assassination once again put people in a frenzy (apparently not hard to do in Germany in 1919) and revolution started all over again. How's that for irony, eh?

It's hard for us to imagine, but nearly EVERY political party was anti-Semitic. The Jews were apparently responsible for unsuccessful revolutions all over Europe, Communism as well as capitalism; the Jews were plotting to take over the world, and were responsible for losing the war. That's a lot to take the blame for. And people were all too happy to blame them. One thing I didn't realize before I read this book was that a lot of Hitler's nasty anti-Semitic rhetoric wasn't invented by him. It had been around for a long time. For instance, how about this guy: Walter Mehring. A poet from Berlin. Wrote this poem, pre-Hitler in power:

C'mon, boys, let's all go
Off to the pogrom with a ho-ho-ho.
Pull in your bellies and throw out the Jews.
With swastika and poison gas
Let's have a go at murder in the mass.

Hitler didn't have to convince people to hate Jews. A lot of people ALREADY hated Jews.

Okay, so we've established that before the war Hitler was useless and a nobody. But he had decided his true calling was politics, and after the war he started giving public speeches. People LOVED his speeches. He was sincere, not too polished, emotional, and moving. Hitler found a fledgling political party and decided to become a member. It was a low-key extremist group that enjoyed being a low-key extremist group. Hitler joined it and in only a year, he'd changed their objectives (he came up with a 25-point program for the group), and increased membership from 7 to nearly 3,000. He became the non-official leader of the group through crowd appeal, sheer force of will, and popularity.

About a year in, the original founders weren't happy with how Hitler had changed things. They thought Hitler was getting too much power for the good of the group. So while he was away from Berlin for a time, they formed an alliance with a political group from another city. Hitler recognized this as an attempt to undermine his power, and he issued an ultimatum to the group: he wouldn't return to the group unless they made him the chairman and gave him dictatorial powers. Said Hitler: "I make these demands not because I am power hungry..." RIIIGHT. The party caved, gave him what he wanted, and Hitler was in absolute power of his group. He created his Storm Detachment army group (Storm Troopers!!). Set up assaults of Jews in the street. Public brawls, that sort of thing.

That's as far as I've read, but it answers a lot already. I wondered what sort of environment would bring a Hitler to power. Now I know. Germany was in a state of unrest, prone to violence and hate. Many Germans were looking for a "German Messiah": someone to come and unite Germany and "save" it (though it's unclear what exactly Germany needed saved FROM. More and more, I think they were looking for someone to return their country to its old Glory, though, again, it's unclear what this really meant). No political party was stable. The country wasn't stable.

Isn't this fascinating?!

I have just summed up 115 pages of Adolf Hitler for you. You're welcome.