ADOLF HITLER Robert: Years ago I read Mein Kampf, and recently I went back and read parts of it again. It’s very interesting to read. Very enlightening about what Hitler was about and where he was coming from. It can’t be denied that he was politically a genius. He was a brilliant political strategist, as was Stalin, and as was Mao Tse Tung. All three of those guys understood what it took to galvanize the masses and get them to do your bidding. But the problem with Hitler was his theories about how society should be run were so half-baked and crazy. His understanding of history was really half-baked... the Jews and all that stuff. He goes on for 20 pages about the Jews in Mein Kampf, how they caused all the problems. But then he also wrote, cynically, in other places in the book, that what you need in order to galvanize the masses are simple answers to complicated problems. One thing you have to do is be able to point the finger at an enemy that the masses can understand and blame everything on them. That will really help you to unite the people for your cause, if you can isolate an enemy they can easily grasp. He says that in Mein Kampf. And obviously, he had a personal animosity toward the Jews, it was deeply personal, you can tell that in the book. But it can’t be denied, he was brilliant politically. He was also a great speaker. That was the thing that got him going. Here he was, this drifting guy after World War 1, who felt betrayed by the stab-in-the back surrender. The German army, the military was everything to him. But then he found he could talk well, and that he could give good speeches to the other disillusioned soldiers in some small, embryonic political organization. He built the National Socialist Party up from nothing, just from his speaking powers. I read an interesting book about Hitler, things that I hadn’t read in any other book, where soldiers who had been in the army with him in the First World War were interviewed. They said Hitler was the guy who never went on leave. In the entire four years, he really had no place to go home to. He just stayed on the front. And he was the guy who would always go out and drag the wounded soldiers off the battlefield. He would never shirk from any duties. He was the most fanatic soldier. That helped to understand how Hitler, who had seen so much death in those four years, that it became acceptable to him. To kill people, to face the possible violence of opposing forces was nothing to him. So he built up his Nazis into a brutal organization. They would just violently break up Communist meetings, punch people out, smash the place up. That was nothing to them, because they had previously seen so much violence and death in that war. And then they lost the war, and then there was the treaty of Versailles which stuck the knife in even deeper. Some historian wrote that ‘Hitler had the Treaty of Versailles stamped on the seat of his pants.’ The French wanted to punish Germany severely. Georges Clemenceau insisted on these harsh measures against the Germans, the heavy reparations, the ceding of territory, etc. He was as much responsible for the rise of the Nazis as Hitler or the American and British elite of finance. Now, people have this knee-jerk reaction that Hitler was this inhuman monster, but he’s really only the result of the social forces of the time. As was Mao, and Stalin, as was Pol Pot.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 20:55:09 +0000