learntoquestion ltq discussions

If anyone could understand why Adolf did what he did that person would be rich. It seems like the discussion we had at the beginning of the year about Jeremy Strohmeyer, according to his friend he didn't seem like the type of person who would commit such an awful crime, but he did. Looking at Hitlers life he doesn't seem like the person who could commit such atrocities but he did. As a society we want to take people like Hitler and make them the "ultimate boogeyman", but the scariest part is that they're not biologically half monsters, or the reincarnation of the devil. They had to eat and function, and have a house or a family. I think it would also be somewhat comfortable for society to say that Hitler was insane, or has some villain backstory, but he really doesn't. I think we are so intrigued by Hitler is after studying what he did, we want to say that he was an exception, he had something evil in him no other human could possibly have, but what is important to note is he didn't. He's not like Voldemort or Darth Vador, who had some "evil magic" influencing them. The point of studying him is to find what human qualities made such an awful person, who could come up with the idea to commit a genocide of an entire people. We also like to think something like this could never happen again, but turn on the news everyday there are murders, currupt politians, or people dehumanizing other people, Hitler is an exteme example of all of this and was public about it, where now a lot of this is either swpt under the rug, or so many things happen so often we often hear of an atrocity that happened within the past few days and move on to the next thing of the day.

There is no excuse for what Hitler did, but it's important to note he wasn't under some evil spell, he was biologically a human, and in order to prevent another atrocity, we need to study the people that committed them to understand how a human society could have let this happen.

I think that people are so intrigued by Hitler because he was one of the most powerful people in history. How does a person get so powerful? Adolf Hitler rose to power very quickly and managed to murder millions of people. Under his rule, his soldiers brutally murdered innocent people as well. He is so intriguing because we all wonder how he was powerful enough to do this. In Ian Kershaw’s interview, he said how Hitler had “a deep-seated, lasting sense of revenge—something you don’t come across in history too often.” This could help explain why his geneocide was so popular. His leadership style must have helped him get to that point. I do not associate our curiosity with Hitler with our obsession with certain celebrities such as the Kardashians . We obsess over celebrities in a good way because they are inspirational, cool, or/and successful. Hitler was not inspirational. He was evil and destructive. In the same interview with Ian Kershaw, he mentioned that, “People with medical backgrounds have examined the evidence and rejected the idea that Hitler was insane.” We can conclude from this that Hitler was in fact pure evil and not insane or challenged. People are fascinated by pure evil because it is something you don’t see in real life often. It is horrifying to me how he was such an unexpected candidate (someone who isn’t even insane) to be able to commit geneocide. It is also mind boggling because no one truly knows why or how he did what he did.

I think our fascination with Hitler should not be seeing him as a celebrity like Kim Kardashian and certainly not like Beyoncé, but is similar to that of Trump since he was a political leader with a lot of similar views about who should be in power and who the best kind of people in our society are. I think the image of pure evil is really fascinating to many people because it is so hard to fathom how someone can treat others so horribly and have such hatred for a group of people for their race, religion, etc. I do think we kind of see him as this ultimate bogeyman and this man responsible for all of the Holocaust and World War II because it can be easier and more simple to blame something like that on one person, even though Hitler was definitely not solely responsible for all of the horrors since one person can not do that by themself. He was able to do everything he did because people followed him and bought into his beliefs. He was definitely a horrible person and had many convoluted ideas that he wrote about in Mein Kampf as well as how he took ideas from so many other places and turned them into something to oppress others. Trying to understand him and looking at his life could possibly help to understand how someone’s life could take such a course as his did. I did not know before that he got rejected from art school twice or even thought about what his home looked like. I think knowing these things can help us understand Hitler a little better, for example things that tell us how he got to becoming dictator and his anger from the first World War and his sense of revenge. I think trying to understand him better is a worthwhile pursuit because though we’d like to think nothing like the Holocaust or another World War could happen today, he was after all just an aspiring artist before he was a dictator. It is important to take away from Hitler how someone can be so charismatic and lead a country to commit terrible atrocities so we can prevent future leaders like him from doing the same. Furthermore, appeasement did not work and I worry about the Russian invasion of Ukraine right now and what might happen. I think a lesson we can learn from looking into Hitler’s life is to expect that something like the Holocaust or on a smaller scale could be attempted and it is our responsibility to do as much as we can to stop it.

The biggest take away that I got from this is that Hitler was well known amongst the public for his charisma and his diet, for some reason. Both the New Yorker and the Homes and Garden article fixate on his vegetarian diet, but something that didn’t sit right with me is that Ian Kershaw seemed very “as-a-matter-of-fact” with his answers for the interview. He talks about how Hitler was almost detached from the persecution of those in the concentration camps, and how it was all from people trying to please Hitler, or interpret what he wanted. I think this is a deflection of blame, even if Hitler never gave an exact order, he knew exactly what was going on and he knew how far people would follow him and his rule.

I feel as if I don’t understand him any better than I did before. These articles give me very little insight on why he felt compelled to exterminate any Jews, disabled people, the Roma and Sinti, and anyone from the LGBTQ community. They simply show me his way of life and his habits, not his real reasoning and drive for starting another World War. I have to admit the Homes and Gardens article was very telling when talking about his charisma and his effect on people; the person who wrote the article made him seem “larger than life,” but at the same time the author found different parts of his day-to-day that made him seem more relatable to a common person. I wouldn’t say I understand him any better, but I would say I understand he has the same effect on someone just like a celebrity would have.

I believe trying to understand him is a worthwhile pursuit, and by learning these facts it’s interesting to see that he wasn’t a monster like most of us think, although he did commit monstrous actions. Learning about his life is humanizing, but also extremely scary because when you see articles and articles of a “normal person” who is a vegetarian, has a quaint country house, and enjoys talking to the people who work for him, it’s hard to picture someone like that being the root of a second world war and a devastating genocide. It’s nerve racking to think that someone so human can commit such atrocities, but then again we have seen time and time again the effect power has on people from history, and from our celebrities today.

At the end of the day I don’t think I value learning that Hitler was a vegetarian, that he sold his water-paintings for extra marks, or that he enjoyed staying at his humble mountain home in the Alps, but I do value learning about the influence Hitler had over people at the time. Like Donald Trump, Hitler captivated the public and people aimed to please him since he was treated like a celebrity figure. It’s interesting to see his effect on people, like how Kershaw said that people were just trying to please him when they created and used the concentration camps, and the tone of the Homes and Garden article seemed to be in awe with his every movement. I believe that it is important to see his influence rather than an answer to a question like, “what is Hitler’s favorite color?”