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The figurehead of evil, a young artist, and against all odds, Hitler intrigues us because of his unlikely propensity towards genocide. It shocks us that any human can justify mass murder that of the Holocaust, but Hitler is even more shocking, born as a quiet young child and the descendant of Roman Catholic peasants whose mother was incestuous. These conditions make us think that someone that could have been called Adolf Schicklgruber would inevitably be forgotten to the vast knowledge of history. Yet, he wasn’t. He wasn’t forgotten but engrained in every history textbook world wide as a force of evil.

My biggest takeaway from these readings is how, honestly, normal Hitler was. His personality and upbringing would fit into any nonfiction or fiction book. The article from the Wyman Institute talks about his love of food, especially “Caneton à la presse and truite saumoné à la Monseigneur” and his obsession with music, ranging from Mozart and Brahms. He loved painting, architecture, and the arts. He had a humble home looking upon Austria and the natives. All these descriptors paint a vivid image of a humble man dedicated to the enrichment of human life. Yet, as history would play out, this quickly disappeared. The rejection from art school and death of his parents became the beginning of the end. The New Yorker describes that he became a hog farmer, nearly starving himself, and started to read into different books and became interested in politics. He read into French Count De Gobineau which established a lot of his racist sentiments, history books establishing a sense of extreme nationalism, and Nietzsche who argued that the strong is preferable to the weak. Interestingly enough, he began a 2 year journey to antisemitism in Vienna, a highly racist and antisemitic place. This suggests that Hitler, at least, during his early years wasn’t as antisemitic and moreover, the broad human implications that an environment changes people- even years after puberty, education, and life experiences. The interview with Kershaw explains that Hitler was a powerful speaker, and could take a negative and view it in the positive which most people could not do. This displays a powerful talent of Hitler to rile people and truly inspire them (a positive skill used in the wrong way).

Understanding Hitler is incredibly important. History has a tendency to distance humanity from facts, but learning about the specifics of Hitler reminds me of a quote from the Holocaust Museum that says when you learn about history, you don’t simply learn about facts, you start to ask questions. Learning about Hitler puts him into a perspective of our world: our music, our geography, our intersections with history. Hitler could have been any man based on his past, most would have assumed he was destined for a life abject from the books of history and destitute in name.

These facts warn us about the propensity for humanity towards violence and how much our environment can shape the actions we take.

Adolf Hitler is one of the most notorious figures in history, and his actions and ideas had a significant impact on the world. Many people are interested in learning about him and his role in shaping the events of his lifetime and the future. Hitler's ideology and tactics have been used as a warning and a point of reference in modern politics, and many people are interested in understanding how his rise to power and actions could be prevented from happening again.Hitler's personality and behavior have been the subject of much speculation and analysis, and many people are intrigued by the question of what motivated him and how he was able to gain the amount of people that followed him.

While Hitler was definitely one of the biggest figures in World War II and was responsible for many atrocities committed during the war, he can’t be completely responsible for every evil thing that happened during that time. There were many other individuals and factors that contributed to the war and its outcome, leaders, military commanders, and the political circumstances of the time (also the citizens supporting them). Most of the atrocities committed during the war were not carried out by Hitler himself, but rather by other people operating under his orders and with the ideals of the Nazis. Hitler was definitely held a big part in implementing the ideology of Nazism but wasn’t 100% of the holocaust. It’s easy to oversimplify the holocaust and blame one person or a few people, ignoring the complexities of the holocaust.

Hitler was the greatest surprise of the 20th century. Coming from an unassuming background, Hitler seemed to have had a childhood as any in his time did. Hitler grew up with a loving and supporting mother, aspirations to become an artist, and in a society that could be deemed civilized. According to Janet Flanner’s reporting, Hitler loved to read Goethe and go to operas every night. He seemed as any quintessential pure, clean, vegetarian, music-loving man as could be. So our first question is typically, “How did such a civilized and cultured man become the orchestrator of what is often deemed the greatest atrocity to happen in history?”

To us, Hitler should have been a blip in human behavior, but he isn’t. He represents the darkness that all human beings have, that the world can easily turn upside down if we just let into the evil and selfish side of us. That “civilized” society can turn into what feels like organized apocolypse over the course of a few months.

What was most fascinating about Ian Kershaw’s interview was when he talked about democracy and how “the government of the people, by the people, for the people” allowed Hitler to rise to power. Hitler would have been nothing without the German people who voted for him. Power was handed to him. We often conflate democracy with freedom, and we view it as what made America “a great country” … yet democracy is what caused the atrocity that brought out the darkest corners of society.

To that question I asked in the first paragraph, there are a few errors. Hitler is not just a one-man band: we should view the monolith that Hitler is often seen as, as representative also of the Nazis, the government officials, the Germans who fought for his cause, the civilians who supported him. Hitler is not the sole essence of all evil in society. We must remember that many people enabled and supported Hitler and they gave him the power and the reins to do what he did. That the making of Hitler wasn't just an accident or a coincidence. It isn’t solely present in the Nazi party, it exists through racism, colonialism, Trumpism — and everyone who took part in these.

Back to Hitler: however, it does seem as though he was viewed as a celebrity, at least in various publications. Whether it be seeing Dorothy Thompson’s “I Saw Hitler!” page in the Holocaust Museum or reading through “Hitler’s Mountain Home” (which for some reason, sounds like an oxymoron), I felt as though I was reading a gossip magazine or watching an episode of Architectural Digest’s “Open Door: Inside Celebrity Homes.” The tone felt romantic, and for that, it was truly unsettling. Truly, how could we read about Hitler’s “bright, airy chalet” and “rustics [sitting] at cottage doors” when at the same time, we think about the horrific conditions of the gas chamber and piles of bodies who once had homes.

While at first glance, Hitler may be a symbol of how random and unpredictable humans are, but really, his story goes to show that humans, no matter how much of a villain they could be, are in the end, (I’m sorry to say it) human. No matter who or what you are, you eat, sleep, poop, drink, talk, fart, burp, hate, love, give — and take.

Thus, to study Hitler is important because to study Hitler is also to study ourselves. We all have a Hitler inside of us. We all have that dark corner, and so to sign a light on it, to be conscious of it, will do us more good than to ignore it.

We are taught, from a very young age, through media, schooling, and our surroundings that the word “Hiter” is synonymous with evil. And he is deserving of that title. His actions directly led to the deaths of millions of innocent people. As such, it is intriguing to look at his life and see what led him to become the man he is. We do very similar things with many serial killers, school shooters, or sadistic and violent criminals. I think that these individuals are so different to the ordinary person that we can’t help but be curious as to what happened to them. However, I think there’s another reason that we are so interested in Hitler. When we, as a nation, decide that it was Hitlers’ fault that the holocaust happened, we completely remove blame from ourselves. It makes it very easy for a nation, like America, to forget that we too were complacent during World War Two, and put the blame entirely on Hitler. At the end of the day, however, he was just a single individual, and the world powers allowed the holocaust to occur.

I think that reading the articles about Hitler from the 1930s was actually a somewhat humorous experience. It feels very strange to read someone talk about Hitler in such a mild and pleasant way. It felt similar to how an article might talk about a president's home life, or an actor's twitter drama. In the article about his home, the appraisal it received almost felt conducive to praising Hitler himself. As such, it seems like the article aged very poorly.

One of my biggest takeaways from this post is that human beings can be inherently unpredictable. It is very hard for anyone to say exactly what was going through Hitler’s mind when he was the leader of Nazi Germany, and exactly which factors led him there. Although we have some rough ideas about his struggle to find purpose after his rejection from Vienna Art School, and the ending of World War One, it takes an extremely narrow set of circumstances for this exact outcome to occur. One other thing that I took away from this is that we, as humans, will always have the desire to understand that which we do not know. Likewise, there was, and still is, so much interest in knowing every detail of Hitler’s life, and trying to piece out, specifically, what made him do the things he did.

It's a relatively easy question to answer, we’re intrigued with Hilter because we want to try to understand him. It’s human nature to want to know more and that’s what people want when they think about Hitler, they want to know more: the whys. We want to know WHY he did this? Why did he only target Jewish people? Why did he let it go on for so long? Why didn’t he feel any remorse?

It’s the same way people view celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump today, they don’t have any knowledge of them aside from what they hear in the press, so naturally, they want to know more about them. They want to try to see them as human because they can’t fathom that they’re a real person. People especially have fascination with Hitler or people who commit crimes in general because they can’t imagine them as an everyday human doing something so horrible. It’s almost scary because like Janet Flanner said, the most noticeable thing about Hitler is his “hurried dogtrot forced smile.” People aren't necessarily interested in the idea of “pure evil”, but rather the thought that it is a person who did these evils and we are intrigued with the reasons behind the evil and what drove them to that point. I agree with DrakeFan02 when they say that Hitler is not to blame for every evil thing that happened in World War II. There are many other reasons and circumstances behind it like Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Treaty of Versailles like they said. Everyone and everything is capable of good and bad, but it’s more interesting when the person you’re intrigued with is only famous for their bad (the bad things they did). That also raises this question: why are people who commit crimes always more famous than the hero’s who fought against it?

The articles and interviews that circulate Hitler’s life and explore his humanity feed into the idea that Hitler was a REAL HUMAN. The interview and these articles are 1930s equivalents to various talk shows because similar to these talk shows, they explore the truth and the background behind the person. Seeing an article detailing Hitler’s home is similar to vogue’s celebrity house tours. A person’s home is sacred and personal, and seeing it gives insight into their lives. For Hitler though, you would think that someone who seemingly has it all would never be able to amount to such atrocities, but he did. He was a successful politician who WON a very powerful position, just like Arcoiris18 said. He won the position of Fuhrer by the German people which meant that a lot of people agreed with his ideas and trusted his leadership. To add onto this already high mountain of success, you realize that after viewing photographs of his house from Ignatius Phayre’s article, “Hitler’s Mountain Home”, he was obviously fortunate enough to be able to live in a mansion type house on a hill that overlooked Austria. He even had meals that were “often served on the terrace on little tables shaded by big canvas umbrellas.”

Talk Shows and articles like these give personal insight into another person’s life. They answer and ask the REAL questions that people want to know, not just the juicy drama, but also the behind the scenes. Behind the scenes such as their everyday life which makes people grasp the reality that these people are also human (not that that’s an excuse to what he did). It’s just hard for people to believe that in that house, lived a man who is responsible for the death of 11 million people.

My biggest takeaways from this are that Hitler is still as horrible as I thought and my thoughts on him really haven't changed. The interview and the articles showed me more of him as a person and Kewshaw also helped me learn more about his success and how he became successful, discussing his strategies and his life as a person in government. Yes, this humanized him a little bit, but it really doesn’t change my original thoughts about him, though I do understand him as a PERSON more but not why he did the things he did. It also showed how he became the person that he was, with the death of his mother, the new marriage of his father, and his rejection from art school but that really is no excuse. Not that the articles excuse it, but many people go through the same things but you don’t see them putting people in concentration camps and committing mass genocides. I don’t think it’s important to understand him (if that’s even possible) it is important to understand his past. It’s important to know his past so we can work towards fixing it for other children. These dramatic changes and sudden rejections are hard for someone to go through. It’s not an excuse, but he should’ve been given proper coping mechanisms for all these things that caused his brain to go haywire. Maybe then, 11 million people could’ve been saved.

I think people’s intrigue by Hitler comes down to the absurdity of what he did, no one wants to believe that one person can hold so much hatred and power that they attempt -- and semi-successfully-- try and wipe out entire populations. To most people this is so outlandish that it seems almost impossible, but to some it’s exactly the validation they need. Most people are concerned about why he did these things, and what lead him to have to much hatred, but others have just the same amount of hate and the Nazi movement is exactly what they need to continue to fuel their delusionals. Hitler is no where near the Beyoncé of our time to make that comparrison is honestly absurd.

Although these are similar to interviewing famous people today, interviewing an up and coming artist is FAR different than interviewing someone who has committed mass genocide.

I don’t think theres anyway for a sane human being to understand Hitler and through learning more in my target populations project I’ve been able to learn more about how systematically Hitler killed, and just how manipulative he was. He managed to get thousandds of doctors, people have pledged their lives to saving people, to kill people “for their health,” or “out of pity.” Although I knew before how devistating his reign was on the world I wasn’t sure how it effected sick and disabled people, some of the most vunerable of our population. One of my biggest takeaways about Hitler was that he was pure evil, he had no concern for anyone but himself, and although this goes without saying, the more you learn about the Holocaust, the more bone-chilling it is. I think that trying to understand him would be beneficial in ONE situation only, and that is for preventative purposes.

I think we are so intrigued by Hitler because we see him as “pure evil”, we are fascinated by the amount of destruction he was able to accomplish and the power he held because of his millions of supporters. We know Hitler is bad, however I think it’s a similar concept to the way we remember infamous serial killer’s names but not their victim’s. We often only pay attention to those that are at fault and in charge of terrible things that happen. It is somewhat akin to our fascination with celebrities like Donald Trump, he’s gained so much fame from the outrageous things he says and posts. I think we are so intrigued by people like this because we are so curious to know how they came to make those decisions. Many want to know how Hitler was raised, read his diaries, understand his ideology, find some sort of reasoning for his actions. Ultimately, Hilter is responsible for WWII, it began with his invasion of Poland but the tension goes all the way back to WWI wear Germany was blamed for all grievances.

Some big takeaways about Hitler are, in his youth his mother and other siblings died, and later his father remarried. Before he was a dictator, he was a person, a child, he struggled to find his purpose. He wanted to be an artist but it wouldn’t work out. He became a runner in WWI where he learned about using gas as a military weapon. He was very passionate but somewhere on his path he started one of the most horrific genocides of time. I don’t think trying to understand Hilter is a worthwhile pursuit, at the end of the day he was responsible for the mass murder and cruel treatment of millions of people, I don’t think any information of his upbringing and personality can justify his actions. I do see some point in reading of his beliefs and ideology because knowing what type of person it takes to follow through with this operation is discomforting yet educational.

We are so fascinated by Hitler because we, ourselves, cannot begin to fathom doing such atrocities to other people. From serial killers such as Jeffery Dahmer, we are eager to learn their story, and figure out what made them who they are. In retrospect, Hitler was a serial killer, and for the same reason that crime documentaries are widely favored around the world and suspenseful, we cannot wait to see what happens next, wishing us to learn more about these people. To be solely responsible for the worst genocide in history and worst war thus far, is surely a big title to take on, and as humans, it is part of our nature to learn more and be intrigued, and in this case, it would be Hitler’s motive in doing all this, and the more we learn, the more we want to know, leading us in a rabbit hole of questions and research. The most prominent question when researching Hitler would be how is one man capable of making this much damage, and how could he even begin to consider harming this many people. Regarding celebrities, it is not the same for the most part. It’s inspiring to hear about a celebrity who came up from nothing and gained so much fame. We want to know their lifestyle and how they live and imagine ourselves in that same situation. For most of us, we don’t care for what they have to think, unless it's truly bizarre, such as Kanye and his defense of Hitler (good connection). Hitler isn’t a celebrity, yet we don’t care about how he lived, we care about what and how he thought because this is is the building block of what he did. What is similar though, is that we are curious about how he came to fame, and how he got so much support. We are fascinated by the face of evil because we cannot imagine ourselves doing the same, so we are curious how another human, another person of the same composure of flesh and bones, could manage to do such a thing and think of it too. I would definitely consider him the face of evil for the 20th century, because he is not only responsible for the worst genocide, but also the worst world war ever, and how far he got as well. He is not responsible for everything, however, I believe people say it’s easier to associate it with one person, but we must not forget about people like Goebbels, his propaganda manager. The history of “Mein Kampf” is interesting to many people, and although it may be convoluted and such, Hitler wrote this entirety in prison, so to put yourself in his situation is interesting for the majority of people, or simply just to wonder “what is going on in his brain?”, or such.

Although I am not too familiar with the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” TV series, these articles do seem to be interesting and similar to seeing how Hitler lived and not regarding him as a villain. Especially “The New Yorker” article is interesting because it states from the beginning that he is vegetarian and a leader of a great land, which is not commonly associated when hearing the name Hitler. In Homes and Gardens, it goes in-depth about his living style, even while mentioning his book, “Mein Kampf”, and is so weird that they have not considered his thoughts in his book, but just goes to show that there is more to people than a public image.

All in all, the most important thing about Hitler is that he was a human just like us, and why he thought that way was mostly the way he was taught and really depends on your past experiences. I don’t understand him much better, mostly because I knew most of this beforehand, but it is nevertheless still interesting to reflect on this topic and wonder where my mind takes me. The most important thing to know about Hitler, as stated earlier, is that he is human and to prevent this from happening again, is up to us as people and parents to raise their/our children properly, to make the world a better place.

I think people are generally intrigued by Hitler because we cannot fathom how one individual can hold such hateful sentiments and be responsible for the deaths of millions of people. It seems so out of reach, so dystopian… and it is. It is but people’s progressive bystanderism enabled it to happen. A failure to reflect on the condition of people as it relates to economics, politics, and social life. People were less fascinated by Hitler not (or at least good people) because he was a “fascinating” or “interesting” person but because people ponder: what made Hitler tick.

The beginning of the New Yorker’s Article “Profiles” begins with a set of facts about Hitler before his “acclaim”: Dictator of a nation devoted to splendid sausages, cigars, a vegetarian teetotaler, nonsmoker, and celibate. He was a small-boned baby and was tubercular in his teens”. A seemingly normal man, but we know that’s not true. No normal man finds peace in killing millions under the pretense of illogical and made-up ideologies. Maybe some may attribute his ways to his deficiencies at birth, being like the Austrian Hapsburgs, the article delves into Hitlers family tree. How his mother and father shared a common ancestry, “Adolf’s mothers great-grandfather was his fathers grandfather”. Although, again I doubt this is not the root of his evils. The article also describes how Hitler was good at geography and history, and nothing else, and accounts how at a young age he came into contact with racially insensitive texts. Ideas about white-supremacy and antisemitism as well. I think that’s definitely the most logical look into what made Hitler tick. Although there's no excuse, the literature he became fascinated with, miseducated him, and created further ignorance to reality. The same is the case for today, hence why there is such a heavy push for critical race theory, or queer theory, or any progressive texts to be read by, say students in Florida. Because when people are exposed to the truth they cannot be sensitive to lies, though they have the free will to make their own choices based on their knowledge. It’s interesting that Hitler’s mountain home, as described in “Hitler in Homes & Gardens” by the Wyman Institute speaks of the naturalism that encapsulates his garden… after all he was an artist as we discovered in class. But, the question that keeps one reading, wanting to know more about Hitler, are the little details about his life, that through analysis reveal more about his inner character no matter how evil he was. How can the reality of his external and his actions so juxtapose what he presented in his private life. How can a man like Hitler, have an affinity for the arts, for naturalism and the natural world, when he couldn’t even respect the human beings that inherit it.

As responsible citizens, we should have the sense to prevent the repeating of history whenever possible. Hitler and his regime is the pinnacle of cruelty and depravity, and evokes the curiosity of how we let this happen. We are aware of many of the tactics and methods used to manipulate the public and subjugate the populations deemed unworthy, we are aware of the “how”, but it takes some more digging to figure out the “why”. Why did Hitler turn out the way that he did? Are there some key aspects about him as a person that we could possibly even see in ourselves, or other people? By recognizing what exactly bred the fine-tuned hatred Hitler had for non-Aryans, maybe we believe that we could identify a similar development before it reaches the height that Hitler did. He is most certainly seen as the most prominent villain of the twentieth century, and because we have heard the same narrative about him, we have a very distant picture of him as a person. Although he was the initiator for every evil thing that happened in WWII, his web of influence ended up causing the blame to be spread on a vast number of Germans. We have seen the scale of his influence with all of the Nazi trials and former Nazis still holding power in Germany.

Most of the articles and the interview with Ian Kershaw only brought up more questions and confusion. So many aspects of Hitler’s personal life and interests contradict with his actions, like the fact he was vegetarian, had a strong sense of style and decor in his home, and did not smoke or drink. Hitler clearly maintained control over his health and thoughts, and by the way he was living, one would assume he had a pretty clear head most of the time. In a way, this makes him as a historical figure even more terrifying, as he must have been dead-set on causing the most havoc and devastation as he could. Another surprising fact that Ian Kershaw brings to light is that even though many people think Hitler’s mom’s doctor being Jewish, combined with her death, was the catalyst for his hatred, Hitler apparently was in good relations with the doctor.

My main takeaway from these sources is that Hitler’s personal life and aspects of his past certainly contradict with his actions, and it may be a fruitless pursuit to use reason when trying to identify the “why”. But another thing that these sources bring to light is that almost anyone has a slight potential to develop into a figure as diabolical as Hitler. We do not need a unique circumstance to end up letting that darkness take over, so the most important way to stop from developing in this direction is to talk about it. Therefore, investigating Hitler is worthwhile less to find the whole truth and more to confront ourselves.