learntoquestion ltq discussions

My biggest takeaway is that Hitler was an extremely charismatic leader, who had a way of impacting people. In Mein Kampf, on two occasions, he writes, “And then I learned I could speak.” After Hitler was gassed, he started giving speeches, and noticed that people listened. However, from what I have read, it doesn’t seem like Hitler was insane. Saying Hitler was insane is just an apology for him, because it implies that he’s not in charge of his actions, not responsible for his deeds, and it excuses his followers of blame as well.

However, when trying to understand Hitler’s rise to power, it is important to observe him in the specific circumstances that he lived in. At this time, Weimar Germany was suffering from a number of crises: hyperinflation, dealing with World War I veterans and their injuries, and a lack of steady political leadership. In times of comprehensive crisis, people invest feelings of hopes or expectations or salvation in an individual they see as possessing extraordinary qualities, and at the time, this was Hitler. He relied on a number of institutions, such as the democratic ones that got him elected. People were scared, and chose to go towards the extreme ends of the political spectrum, who promised the most radical change. Additionally, Hitler could not have come to power without the modern world. His regime required the bureaucracy of a modern state with numerous resources and real military strength. This context absolutely allows me to understand where Hitler was coming from better.

Hitler also had a unique leadership style that contributed to his rise to power. Ian Kershaw said it best when he described Hitler as “having a deep-seated, lasting sense of revenge—something you don’t come across in history too often.” Additionally, although the Nazis were far from unified and had many conflicts, Hitler usually stayed aloof from infighting until it was plain who’d won, and usually sided with the winner. He also often manipulated others to do his policy enforcement for him, simply by stating his opinion on an issue and letting the radicalization follow.

In my opinion, people honestly know too much about Hitler. The focus on his life and what led him to his position is understandably fascinating, from a psychological standpoint: what allows a person to believe and do such awful things? Are they insane, or completely logical? An idiot or an evil genius? And the most terrifying question of all: was this fate or a result of life circumstances? I think Boat1924 said it best: “[people] fear that genocidal maniacs that can cause the death and torture of millions of people due to his extreme and twisted thoughts are not born the way they are, but rather develop these beliefs through their experiences and choices in life.” By studying evil people, we have no choice but to wonder: could this have been me?

But by focusing on his background and understanding him as a person, it feels like we are humanizing him more than he deserves. When we discuss his struggles early in life, or how he slowly rose to power, we begin to have some sympathy for him. Even if it doesn’t make us excuse his actions, we shouldn’t want to know what his house looked like, or how he spent his free time.

At the end of the day, the most important perspective in learning about this narrative is that of the millions of victims of his reign of hate. When learning about the Holocaust, the focus should be on acts of resilience, and stories of survival, instead of the horrific psyche of one demented man.

I have been learning about Hitler for probably around 12 years now, and in all that time I still don’t understand the fascination that people have with him. I learned from these articles mundane facts, like the fact that that he was a vegetarian, and that he liked to wear a very specific outfit, but they are largely inconsequential. In my mind, it doesn’t matter how many details there are about him, his ‘humanity’ means nothing to the millions and millions of people that he killed. I think it seems more reasonable to learn about him through a psychological perspective, but trying to understand who he was as a person seems obsolete, it will not change what he did. If anything, learning more ‘humane’ details about his past seems to only lead to sympathy, of which Hitler should receive absolutely none. The Home Gardens and New Yorker article seem incredibly mundane, like a profile you would see about any given celebrity, and at the time that made sense- he was a charismatic leader who people looked up to (though he had always been very vocal about his beliefs so I was a bit surprised that there was almost no mention of them in these articles). But now, when the whole world knows what he did, the fascination is baffling.

As opposed to the Kardashians, or Donald Trump, the fascination with Hitler seems to me more like the fascination that people have with true crime, and serial killers. I have seen on social media countless accounts of people who are obsessed with killers like Richard Ramirez, or Ted Bundy, dedicating whole fan pages to them. They share ‘fun facts’ and gory details, most of which border on glorification, but pay no mind to the victims of these men. This seems incredibly similar to Hitler, this fascination with the gory and macabre, while disregarding the vast amount of harm that was done. At best it is insensitive, and at worst it is actively harmful and perpetuating a false narrative.

I think the biggest takeaway from this is that Hitler was not some isolated incident. He was not alone in his beliefs or his ambitions, and the only reason that it was him at the forefront of the Nazi party and later on the Holocaust was largely due to circumstance. It is those circumstances that I think we should focus more on, like the effects of that WWI had on Germany, that would ultimately help us to better understand the events that later took place, more than mundane and ineffectual details about Hitler would.

At the end of the day, Hitler was human. And although he demonstrates the worst of humanity, he was still a person with other interests and a life outside of committing genocide. None of this excuses him from the responsibility that he deserves for the Holocaust and Nazi regime in general,, But it does make him more terrifying, as the way someone like us, or even we ourselves, could theoretically do the same, give them the right combination of circumstances, similar to the ones that fuelled Hitler’s rise to power. As Ian Kershaw says in his article of Hitler, people with medical backgrounds have studied Hitler and arrived at the conclusion that Hitler could not have been insane. In our examination of history and atrocities like genocide, the easy way out is of course to blame outside factors, like insanity or simple evil, but it is necessary to grapple with the fact that they are not so different from us in order to truly learn from, and by extension prevent history from recurring.

Reading these articles helped me further understand this, as these articles demonstrates his life outside of genocide. Learning that he enjoyed watching movies, especially historical ones, from the article written by Flanner, and that he was a vegetarian, humanises him. According to the readings, he had an extensive library, especially focused on architecture, art, painting, and history. Personally, I believe he sounds almost like a normal person, and this is further demonstrated by the exercise we did in class about Hitler's art, and how many of us rather liked it.

Hitler's rise to power was caused by many coinciding factors. The economic failure and widespread desperation of the times drove people to political extremes, and all of this together facilitated the rise of Nazi Germany. In the articles, Hitler is described as charismatic, and rather likable, and therefore he was able to have many German citizens support him. He advocated for a return to supposed "traditional values", and promoted the self-sufficiency and strengths that the German people sought at that point, and in doing so was able to appeal to them and convince them to follow him, despite his ostracisation and mass murder of the Jewish people.

Despite all this, I don't believe that Hitler alone was responsible for the Holocaust. However, without him, I do not believe it would've happened. He created a convenient scapegoat for the people suffering, and they believed him. Ultimately, although it may be interesting to learn about Hitler as a person, I believe it's not necessary. More important, is how to prevent his rise to power in the first place, and also just why he was so appealing and therefore able to have people do such horrifying things they never would have considered before. It is necessary to understand that even people like Hitler, and the people below him, as well as the ordinary German people who carried out the genocide of more than 11 million people, were still human. Recognising the genocide is not some abstract thing, separate from us, but instead something that is gradual, and involves people, not monsters, is what I believe is most important.

I agree with Augustine, in that Hitler was not an exception. People like him had to have existed, and ultimately it is merely circumstance that separates them from people like Hitler.

For me, the big takeaway about Hitler is that when given only the more mundane details of his life one would never expect a non-drinking, art-loving, vegetarian to have the capacity to carry out a meticulously planned, systematic extermination of an entire group of people. Yet he did. I found it fascinating reading these pieces because as one of the most evil people to have ever existed, naturally we would expect Hitler to have been a cruel, disrespectful, and murderous man his entire life. Yet he had humble beginnings, born to a poor Austrian family, and the child of a young mother. He was sickly most of his young life, but he was artistic, outspoken, and opinionated, notably declaring that he was a Pan-Germanist at a very young age. He lost both of his parents by the age of 18 and decided to apply to art school, but got rejected a number of times before he was forced into a life of poverty. He already started to have anti-Semitic and anti-Communist beliefs at this time which would only intensify as time went on. When WWI began, he eagerly signed up to join the German army despite his Austrian descent, and got mady accolades for his bravery and service even as a lance corporal and was devastated when Germany lost. Hitler was fiercely loyal to the German cause and intense nationalism was what got him all of the support he needed to carry out genocide.

His habits surprised me a lot as there is some sick and twisted irony in the fact that the instigator of a genocide was a vegitarian who loved children, however many of his personality traits were exactly as I would have predicted them. First and foremost, he was an exceptional speaker. Being able to speak to millions of people and have them not only listen, but believe what you say is a gift, and one that bodes well for someone who wants absolute control of an entire government. His ability to win over millions through brainwashing and propaganda earned him the position of the greatest mob orator in German history, proved in Janet Flanner’s article when she stated that he was “a born spellbinder of the emotional type, who produces in crowds the excitement he produces in himself” and that “his oratorial powers were the bases of his career”. He was able to prey off the declining state of Germany to point people to a common enemy (the Jews) and earned their unwavering adoration on which he was able to carry out one of the most horrifying atrocities in the world’s history.

I think an important distinction has to be made between understanding and justification. Learning about Hitler’s background to see why he committed genocide or to potentially justify his campaign against the Jews of Europe and other groups with a sad backstory is a dangerous thing to do. It starts to enter the territory of making sense of why he did what he did. Ultimately, there is no real logic to what he did (although he and many others thought differently), and he senselessly killed millions of innocent people. It is unequivocally unjustifiable. Conversely, learning about Hitler to see the experiences that shaped him into the man he became and learning about his rise to power is essential to understanding how he did what he did. Learning about the connections that he made, the skills he had, and his ability to garner massive public support helps to clarify how he even got into the position to be able to carry out such atrocities in the first place.

At the end of the day, none of Hitler’s kindness, artistry, practicality, friendliness, or sobriety can or will ever change what he did. Learning about Hitler is admittedly interesting because it gives insight into the person he was outside of his role as the leader of the Nazi party, but at the end of the day, his actions against the marginalized groups in Germany at the time are utterly unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that children loved him. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t eat meat, didn’t smoke, and loved art. His memory does not deserve to be honored with understanding, and I truly think it is best if all he is known as into perpetuity is a man with the blood of millions on his hands.

I think society’s fixation on Hitler revolves around our desire to make a reason for why he did what he did. When somebody plots something as sickening as the Holocaust, it’s enough to make anyone wonder what would possess a person to try to exterminate an entire group of people. I think that a lot of people find themselves coming to the conclusion that Hitler must’ve been mentally ill if he was able to carry out such an atrocity. However, something that Ian Kershaw brought up in his interview that really struck a chord with me was the notion that deeming Hitler a “crazy” person would only give him an out for all of the monstrous things that he did throughout his life, almost acting as a barricade of protection. The truth was that Hitler, according to Ian Kershaw’s beliefs, was not a madman, and the way in which he spewed his fascist rhetoric was very systematic, given that the political, social, and economic climate of Germany at the time was in deter and was ripe to be exploited by anyone seeking power. It is completely understandable why people might have an intrigue for how and why Hitler came to power, but it should also be noted that his efforts were far from the workings of someone mentally ill.

To say that I actually understand Hitler better after reading the articles would be a complete lie, because, let’s be honest, there is no justifiable or logical reason that Hitler grew to become such a terrible individual who brutally murdered the lives of so many innocent people. It wouldn’t matter if I knew every detail of his life- it still wouldn’t give enough insight on how someone could possibly do such awful things. If I had to take a guess, after having read Flanner’s article on Hitler, I would think that Hitler needed some kind of outlet to blame for all of the misfortunes that he underwent in his life, given that he grew up poor and he lost his parents at a very young age. But to be crystal clear, absolutely none of these things make for any kind of excuse; they merely prefaced Hitler’s emerging German patriotism and fascist beliefs. It was actually rather interesting to me that the article worked so hard to humanize Hitler, considering what he would grow to become after childhood.

Overall, I don’t particularly believe that anyone should spend their time trying to figure out Hitler’s motives, for it wouldn’t ever undo any of the irreversible damage he caused in his lifetime. Reading the Homes & Gardens article, where Hitler’s dwelling and diet was distinctly detailed, it doesn’t really hold any relevance how the man who systematically annihilated millions of Jews and other marginalized communities also liked flowers and didn’t eat meat. I really think that, in this day and age, the only important reason to be informed on Hitler’s life and his background is so as not to repeat the same mistake again in this century. The main takeaway of the articles shouldn’t be to understand Hitler better, but to understand how Hitler got to the level of power that he did. Given the effects of the first World War and the Depression, Germany was vulnerable to be corrupted by someone who, in Ian Kershaw’s words, held charismatic authority. As Hitler gave voice antisemitism, other people also saw opportunities for exploitation, continuing to add fuel to the piling discrimination within Germany. Knowing these warning signs of Hitler’s power is the only effective way that we can prevent a similar dictator from rising up in power -although given the climate of today’s international politics, maybe our efforts have not been preventative enough.