A man full of determination and persistence, something that majority of world leader get along with in haste. He was born in 28th, April 1937 in Tikrit village, in Iraq. His thirst for readership oozed up when he was still a student, since 1957, while he was still at the university he was recruited in the ‘revolutionary Baath party’. As a man of a worldwide mind, he was determined to get his way at all mean to be an upstaired position.
“He proved this in 1958 when he launched his political career by assassinating a supporter of Iraq ruler Abdul-Karim Qassim” (Aburish, 40) The higher lank gone thirstier it makes” got on him as in 1959 Saddam felt that he had what it takes to rule Iraq and to do it in a practical was he opted to assassinate the current president Abd al-Karim Qasim. However, this mission failed and was forced to flee to Egypt Cairo, where he took this opportunity and attended a law school (45).
All in all, his determination and a spirit of “tomorrow is the best day” seemed to keep him going. Being in exile didn’t kill his dream of once becoming an Iraq leader.
Talking of being opportunistic, when Ba’thist gained power in 1963, he returned to Iraq but all was not well on his side because, in1963, Ba’thist were overthrown and he was jailed. He portrayed a mind of international oriented since dealing with his own country alone was a theory out of his envelop. He expanded his fume not only to the neighboring countries but also globally.
When he took over the presidency, he did it with the aim to cause an effect to other countries. For instant, he had an aim of replacing Egypt as leader of Arab world and gain hegemony over the gulf of Persian. He also launched war against Iran and Kuwait in 1980-88 and 1990-91 respectively. “Fear for him spread throughout the world due to his production of weapons of mass destruction” (Renfrew, p.53).
Saddam was one man who never believed in the spirit of “now I give up” his consecutively failed mission never deterred him from moving forward. For instant, his fail in invasion to the Islamic Republic in 1980 in Kuwait I 1990 among other only made him more hard-core.
According to Renfrew (32), “Saddam became vice president of Iraq in1968 following the seizure of power in a military coup and only after a decade of eliminating civilian officials and military officers ruthlessly, he forced out his predecessor and benefactor, Gen. Ahmad Hassan al- and became president in July 1997”.
He killed his opponents, among them thousands of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, (whom he had instituted a brutal dictatorship and directed intensive campaign against the) which either rebelled or supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war which ended in 1988. He was a man with a reputation for ruthless suppression of opposition.
The country’s economic strength, constituted by growing oil wealth enabled him to support the development public work and to massively purchase arm. In spite of this, Iraq was nearly bankrupt with loans of $80 billion from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. His tendency of taking calculated risk pushed him to bullying Kuwait into bailing him out as well as invading emirate. (Renfrew p.37)
Saddam’s dictatorship rule and threat he posed to the whole world, led to invasion of the U.S. Government on Iraq. He was captured on 13th December 2003 and on 5th Nov 2006 after several trials, was convicted of crime against human rights and given capital punishment sentence.
Despite his request to be shot, the execution was carried out on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, 30 December 2006 at camp justice, an Iraq army in Kadhimiya northern Baghdad (Aburish p. 187). He has portrayed himself as a brutal dictator, whose goals are (to him) more important than the means of obtaining them, making him quick to slice throat to gain.
Adolph Hitler
Born in Austria, in Braunau –am-inn village on 20th April 1889, Hitler grew up in a very low tone a profile. His early age was met by many blocks and misfortunes which included losing his father and two siblings. His attempt to gain formal education was also unfruitful as his school records were poor and he was forced to leave school before completing his tuition.
In spite of this, he seemed to have a heart of determination, and he tried to become an artist but was rejected by the institution of fine art. He lived a penniless life with no formal education till 19th birthday when he moved to Vienna after his father’s death. By then, he had gained a passion in political matters and historical studies.
He took occasional menial jobs there for sustenance at the time the First World War was beginning, in 1914 when he was recruited for work in the Germans armed forces. His humbleness determination commitment enabled him to move up ladder smoothly. His talent and interest in war was noted and was promoted to corporal. (Toland p.12).
However, the war was not always giving in into him since by 1918, when the armistice was being announced he was hospitalized from a temporally blindness caused by gas explosion in war. As a phenomenon of preparation of his later leadership, he took different role like; prisoner-of- war camp, part of local army organization, spy on certain local political groups and, his tirade impressed the founder of the party, Anion Drexler who asked him to join his organization in 1919.
He gradually started attracting people through his publicity and propaganda in various organized meetings. He was discharged from army on February but he determiningly strengthened his party which was changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi).
It is at this point when he started giving out warning on whom he really is when he began forming private groups of thug to create disorders in other meetings. By 1921 he had secured total control of the Nazi party, which he was determined to maintain by all mean, for instant he threatened to resign when he learned member were not in good term with him.
His thirst for leadership pushed him to attempt to take over the local Bavarian Government though the coup was unsuccessful. He was arrested and sentenced for five year and after only six month in prison he was released. He ran for presidential post several but defeated by Hindenburg and became chancellor in 1932-33. (Kershaw p. 63).
Hitler gained complete control over the destiny of Germany and when Hindernburh died on august 1934 Hitler took control over Germany as a “Fuehrer and Reich Chance” and the title president was abolished. He strengthened his force and started testing his power by intimidating France and Britain.
He gradually invaded Poland, Britain and France whom on September, 1, 1939 declared war on Germany which lead to death of thousands of people. “On April 29th, he married Eva Bruam, and eventually on April 30th they committed suicide in an underground bunker of the chancellery building having ordered their bodies to be burned” (Leeson p. 101).
In comparison Hitler and Saddam had commonalities as well as differences. Whereas Saddam used force and blood spill to attain power, Hitler was elected and promoted. In dealing with opposition, Hitler did not brutally kill his people as Saddam did. While Saddam was an international threat, Hitler was a threat to his neighboring countries.
On other hand, both Hitler and Saddam were dictators and they led to mass killing which were brutally done. In addition, they also both exercised coup against their presidents and were seen as a threat to both citizen of their country and other nations. Simply put both Hitler and Saddam are people who will always be remembered for their inhuman role in their regime.
Works Cited
Aburish, Said . The politics of revenge. London: Bloomsbury,2000. Print
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Bibliography. New York: W. W. Norton& Com., 2008. Print
Toland, John. Adolph Hitler. Waterloo: Military History Series. Frankfurt: Wordsworth military library, 1997. Print
Leeson, Waite & Robert, George. The psychopathic god: Adolph Hitler. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1999. Print.
Renfrew, Nita. Saddam Hussein. Chelsea; Chelsea House, 1992. Print.
Brief history and family background of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was certainly a disharmonious and destructive personality and, in order to define the main underpinnings and causes of his psychological disorders, family background and history information should be carefully considered. Born to an ordinary family of a customs official, Adolf accepted Catholicism and entered baptism (Zalampas, 1990 p. 4).
The future dictator made enormous effort to conceal his origins. He resisted to the NSDAP directives and rejected to provide records about his descent because any interruption in his private life was considered unacceptable. Therefore, the cases reveal that Hitler waxed indignant over the interview with Patrick Hitler, his half-brother Alois’s son (Zalampas, 1990 p. 4).
Hitler’s reluctance to discuss the facts from his family background was also explained by his fear to revealing the Jewish ancestors. However, even thorough investigation withdrawing the assumption did not make Hitler reveal the details of his genealogy (Zalampas, 1990 p. 5). The facts from the lineage also suggest that Alois and Klara, Adolf’s parents, were official cousins. Investigations assume that Johann Nepomuk Huttler was, in fact, Alois’s great-grandfather, and Klara’s grandfather.
According to the above-consideration, it can be assumed that Hitler’s fear of uncovering his lineage was due to his fear of disclosing his inferiority. Because of ambiguousness presented in his family ties, Hitler could not feel himself as a full-fledged personality. He desperately wanted to detach himself from the family background because his origins prevented him from becoming a legitimate and commendable leader for German people.
While considering general psychological aspect, the name of the dictator has always been associated with a mentally abnormal person who guided Nazi concentration camps and put fear in Jewish people’s hearts. Judging from historical events and facts linked to the personality, including Holocaust and the World War II, Hitler was, indeed, inexplicably evil. In social interaction with people, Adolf was revealed as a reserved and serious person (Zalampas, 1990 p. 6).
Judging from the above psychological and social conditions, the hypothesis is that Hitler suffered from posttraumatic disorder and schizophrenia revealed at the first Axis of DMS-IV.
Assessment
Assessment and Methodology Tools
Due to the fact that the analysis and diagnosing of the patient is carried out posthumously, the clinical interview is certainly impossible. In this respect, more emphasis is placed on historical records revealing face-to-face psychological testing, clinical interviews, and self-report techniques. The research studies of people who directly interacted with Adolf Hitler will also be included to present the accurate conclusions.
As a result, posthumous DSM analysis can be presented with the help of informant ratings. Using the method of Coolidge Axis II Inventory, the research will be able to fit the criteria of DSM-IV (Coolidge, 1995). The models will not be used as the basis for the analysis, but some references will be made to identify the extent of the disorders. The core assessment of Hitler’s disorders will be performed with the help of DSM-IV coding.
The given study will also be based on the scholar’s published articles and books disclosing Hitler’s life and psychological portrait with regard to the identified DSM-IV diagnosis. Studies dedicated to the analysis of similar mental disorders are also included to better comprehend possible causes of psychological deviations.
Preview of Deviations as Presented by Coolidge Axis II Inventory
The main scope of the model consists in measuring all scales of measuring psychological and neuropsychological dysfunction (Coolidge, 1995). Hence, the scales are also aimed at defining the deficits, including decision-making problems, task completion difficulties and planning barriers.
Hostility scales should also be highlighted to measure dangerousness, anger, aggression, and impulsiveness. Personality assessment is subjected to such aspects as apathy, paranoia, and liability. According to these results, Hitler had difficulties in adjusting to new and changing environments (Payne, 2001).
DSM-IV Differential Diagnoses Analysis
Axis I
Examination of the first scale reveals that the deviations are closely connected with posttraumatic stress disorder (code 309.81) and schizophrenia (paranoid type, code 295.3). Hence, the first deviation is justified with regard to such symptoms as chronic, acute reactions to traumatic events and recurrence of flashback distressing memories (Summerfield, 2001, p. 95). In our case, the trauma is strongly associated with military combat and assault.
Displays of schizophrenia were revealed through the analysis of Hitler’s psychological behavior that was accompanied by delusions and hallucinations. This type of schizophrenia is marked by the presence of grandiosity, delusions, and suspiciousness (Murray, 1943). According to Murray’s (1943) report, “[Hitler] has exhibited … all of the classical symptom of paranoid schizophrenia: hypersensitivity, panics of anxiety, irrational jealousy, delusions of persecution, delusions of omnipotence and messiahship” (p. 14).
Axis II
The overview of personality disorders has revealed the emergence of paranoid, antisocial, sadistic, and narcissistic deviations. Based on the research conducted by Renato et al. (1998), Hitler’s personality has been diagnosed with histrionic and paranoid personality disorders.
At this point, Hitler was defined as “enfeebled self that lacked any capacity for self-worth or self-regard; …he felt that the German people after World War I suffered this same collective defect in self…” (p. 65). Judging from the above records, the personality disorders include antisocial personality disorder (301.7), histrionic personality disorder (301.50), and narcissistic personality disorder (301.81). All these psychiatric deviations referred to dramatic and emotional instabilities.
Axis III
It is documented that Hitler had serious somatic problems, although no evidence was found to believe that he had neuropsychological dysfunction (somatic and grandiose subtype of delusional disorder, 297.1) (Murray, 1943, p. 15). The disorder is premised on the physical impairment and emotional instabilities (Renato et al., 1998). In addition, it is purposeful to state that memory execution functions deficiency was also present due to the difficulties in decision-making.
Axis IV
Because Hitler had significant problems with adjusting to a changing social environment, it can be assumed that this was one of the main stressors of the disorders diagnosed in Axis I. According to Murray (1943), Hitler’s resistance to opposition was the motivation for living.
The stronger the opposition was, the more frustrated reaction was reveled through emotional outbursts, displays of inertia, and melancholy. Frustration caused by failure to gain victory while struggling with Russia was followed by collapse, which means that Hitler did not have natural mechanism for defense.
Axis V
With regard to the above-presented symptoms, GAF amounts to 50 at admission (before the World War II) and about 30 at discharge (after the World War II). The last period of his life proved that psychological and social conditions were aggravated and Hitler failed to explain his actions (Munson, 2001, p. 75).
Etiology: Theoretical Perspectives
Because most of the symptoms presented above refer to a psychoanalytic theoretical perspective, the related frameworks should be discussed to understand the causes and underpinnings of Hitler’s psychological disorders.
According to Welham et al. (2010), “subtle impairments on neurocognitive measures during childhood or adolescence are associated with an increased risk of non-affective psychosis in young adult males”. In this respect, cognitive deficit can be considered the core reasons of schizophrenia emergence. The presented analysis also explains mood and emotional abnormalities observed in Hitler’s behavior.
Psychoanalysis presented by Gaylin (2004) also underscores the above-discussed idea. Specifically, the researcher states that the main trait of the paranoid character include negativism, suspicion, chronic anger, self-referential attitude, and narcissism (Gaylin, 2004, p. 114). All these features are presented in Hitler’s personality.
To enlarge on this point, the dictator often displayed negativism when his life position was not approved by others. He never expected positive outcomes and always anticipated that each occasion was accompanied with danger. Finally, he always expressed indignation and anger on each possible occasion.
Types of Treatment
If Hitler had not committed suicide, the following treatment and therapeutic techniques should have been introduced. It would have been purposeful to present a complex approach to reducing the original causes of Hitler’s disorders.
Before analyzing the cases and possible treatment, it should be stressed that personality disorders are difficult to treat because people with such psychological deviations do not recognize those as a serious disease that should be intervened (Gaylin, 2004). The only decision that could have been made in this situation was to encourage the individual in his actions and make him persuade that all his decisions and beliefs were highly appreciated.
Because Hitler had significant family problems and because he did not want to recognize the ambiguousness and inferiority of his family lineage, the dictator strived to compensate it with other actions augmenting his feeling of superiority. Emotional outburst displayed as a result of family problems took place. These instabilities, however, could have been treated with the help of holding therapy embracing emotionally driven principles and intensified therapeutic interventions.
Notably, using a purely psychological approach would not have been effective because of Hitler’s inability to recognize his mistakes and make the right decisions based on previous experience. Most of his problems, therefore, were premised on the failure to accept the world as is it, which made it impossible for Hitler to adjust to new treatments (Murray, 1943). In this respect, mere acceptance of the rules and orders presented by Hitler was the only way out to minimize the psychotic effects.
Regarding somatic disorders treatment, it should be noted that somatic disorders treatment should have relied heavily to non-psychiatric interventions due to the fact that the depression often appeared as a result of physical impairments and dysfunction. In this respect, specific attention should have beeen paid to Hitler’s problems with physical health.
Hypothetical Prognosis and Limitations
While predicting Hitler’s behavior, it is rational to refer to Murray’s (1943) report discussing behavioral patterns of the patient before committing the suicide. Specifically, the scholar asserts that Hitler’s “neurotic spells with increase in frequency and duration and his effectiveness as a leader will diminish” (Murray 1943, p. 29). The dictator could have been seized by the military arms; in this situation, the patient’s reaction would have been worse because the possibilities of being deprived of the hero title would have been disastrous.
One of the predictions happened was that of committing suicide in case Hitler’s plans and decisions were not affected. Because Hitler did not have defense mechanisms, life termination was the only solution to the problem. Importantly, Hitler was ready to resort to all means to remain a hero in the hearts of the German people.
Murray (1943) notes that there was a possibility of Hitler’s going insane because “paranoid schizophrenia…with the mounting load of frustration and failure may yield his will to the turbulent forces of the unconscious” (p. 31). Finally, the scholar admits the possibility Hitler dying of natural reasons due to this inability to adjust to a social environment.
Conclusion
A thorough analysis of DSM-IV scales for paranoid type of schizophrenia has approved the diagnoses. The criteria support symptoms related to the exaggerated feelings of persecution, suspicion, negativism, and presence of delusions. Associated traits also include anger, aggression, anxiety, and apathy.
In addition, the presented DSM-IV assessment argues that persecutory displays can predispose paranoid individuals to committing suicide. Grandiose delusions and emotional outbursts also presuppose the individual’s increase predisposition to violence. Consequently, the presence of cognitive impairment and superior behavior accompanied with intense interpersonal interaction can serve a logical explanation of Hitler psychotic state.
As to personality disorders, the clinical assessment has discovered antisocial, paranoid, and sadistic deviations. These findings are sufficiently supported by reports provided by Murray (1943), Gaylin (2004), and Summerfield (2001). Specifically, life descriptions and explanations of psychological disorders are relevant because theoretical underpinnings have managed to define how Hitler’s lifestyle and position can be interpreted with regard to existing psychoanalytical frameworks.
References
Coolidge, F. L., Burns, E. M., & Mooney, J. A. (1995). Reliability of observer ratings in the assessment of personality disorders: A preliminary study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 22-28.
Gaylin, W. (2004). Hatred: The Psychological Descent into Violence. US: Public Affairs.
Munson, C. E. (2001). The mental health diagnostic desk reference: visual guides and more for learning to use the Diagnostic and statistical manual. NY: Routledge.
Murray, H. A. (1943). Analysis of the personality of Adolf Hitler with predictions of his future behavior and suggestions for dealing with him now and after Germany’s surrender. US: Harvard Psychological Clinic.
Payne, K. B. (2001). The fallacies of Cold War deterrence and a new direction. Kentucky, US: University Press of Kentucky.
Renato, D. A., Foulks, E. F., and Vakkur, M. (1998). Personality Disorders and Culture. New Jersey.
Summerfield, D. (2001). The Invention of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders and the Social Usefulness of a Psychiatric Category. BMJ. 322(7278). 95-98.
Welham, J., Scott, J., Williams, G., Najman, J., Bor, W., O’Callaghan, M., & Mcgrath, J. (2010). The Antecedents Of Non-Affective Psychosis In A Birth-Cohort, With A Focus On Measures Related To Cognitive Ability, Attentional Dysfunction And Speech Problems. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 121(4), 273-279.
Zalampas, S. O. (1990). Adolf Hitler: A Psychological Interpretation of his views on architecture, art, and music. US: Popular Press.
The role of individuals can hardly be overestimated in international relations as foreign policy is a set of actions of individuals that influence the development of countries and the entire human society. Although many world leaders influenced international politics in the 1930s, Hitler and Stalin could be seen as some of the most prominent actors. The focus of this dissertation will be on the personalities of the two leaders and their opinions on war and peace.
The theoretical basis of the present study will be a cognitive model that implies the analysis of the way individuals shape or create political agendas. The operational code approach will also be utilized to consider the two people’s traits and beliefs. The quantitative method and statistical analysis of data collected from diverse sources will be instrumental in identifying the trends and peculiarities of the viewpoints of Stalin and Hitler.
Introduction
The role of an individual in foreign policy has been analyzed from different perspectives, and there is hardly a universally accepted approach to the matter. In the nineteenth century, the theory of the Great Man was rather popular, and it was assumed that great leaders were the primary driving forces of major historical events (LeRoy Malchow, 2015). This approach was highly criticized later, and more attention was paid to other actors, such as the masses.
Some researchers placed rational choices first while others concentrated on discourses and meanings. The role of an individual in international relations is undoubtfully considerable. The examination of the events of major significance can help in explaining the role an individual plays, and the Second World War is one of such episodes in the history of humanity. This study will dwell upon such key figures as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin with a focus on their views regarding war and peace and their personalities.
Literature Review
The political figures mentioned above have attracted substantial attention in academia, and numerous researchers have explored different aspects of these leaders and their legacy. These men had quite different perspectives, backgrounds, political agendas, but they had to interact at a certain point in history (Groom, 2018). These two persons have also been in the lenses of historians, but their worldviews and some aspects of their personalities remain under-researched.
Although the relationships between Hitler and Stalin could hardly be referred to as political (or any other kind of) friendship, their interactions have been explored in detail. The alliance between Germany and the USSR is seen as one of the central premises for the start of the war (Kotkin, 2017). For the contemporaries, the close collaboration between the two dictators came as a surprise, which now seems, nonetheless, logical (Spielvogel & Redles, 2016).
The two dictators tried to create new empires based on the political views they developed during their early years and had a different perspective on the future of the world. Finally, Communism and Nazism were very different political systems, and their leaders often criticized each other heavily at certain periods (Ascher, 2016; Reynolds & Pechatnov, 2018). Nevertheless, the two systems also shared certain similarities that made Hitler and Stalin allies for a short period.
One of the primary prerequisites of this alliance was the fact that the leaders of the two countries opposed the democratic values of the rest of the world and wanted to control vast territories (Kotkin, 2017). The personalities of these two historic figures have been explored in many works and certain similarities can be found. Ascher (2016) claims that Stalin’s features of character enabled him to gain power. This man who adopted a new name ‘made of steel’ (Stalin) sought power and tried to create a specific image of himself (Ascher, 2016). At the same time, he was, in some ways, insecure, anxious, and indecisive.
Kotkin (2017, p. 341) named Stalin as a “self-centered, intrigue-prone” person. He used various ways to achieve his goals, including terroristic acts, murder, bribery, blackmail, torture, intrigues, and so on. Ascher (2016) noted that the past of the Soviet leader had a significant impact on his personality and his behavioral patterns. His relationships with his parents, as well as his studies in the religious school, affected his development.
The personality of the German dictator also had such traits. Hitler, as well as millions of German people, was dissatisfied with the world order based on the Treaty of Versailles that was regarded as unfair and ineffective (Spielvogel & Redles, 2016). Adolf Hitler dreamt of building the mighty state described in the stories of the past. Hitler was quite insecure, anxious about the way people saw him, and affected by a messianic complex (Spielvogel & Redles, 2016, p. 125).
It is noteworthy that the psychological state of the German leader was questioned by his contemporaries, and many psychiatrists analyzed Hitler’s personality (Kaplan, 2017). Kaplan (2017) stressed that researchers had a biased attitude towards the German dictator, which affected the quality of their studies. Therefore, the conclusions of many researchers, especially Hitler’s contemporaries, will be taken with the necessary caution. Spielvogel and Redles (2016) agreed that the past of the German dictator was also instrumental in his personal development. He also had quite difficult relationships with his father, and Hitler’s participation in the First World War became one of the pillars that shaped his personality.
In his turn, Joseph Stalin was absorbed with the ideas of the world Communist revolution as he saw this political system as the only possible for humanity. Another significant contributing factor was the nature of the two dictator’s power in the late 1930s (Kotkin, 2017). They both could hold power by making their citizens believe that they were surrounded by enemies who would defeat them without the wise rule of their leaders. Therefore, the war became almost inevitable due to the worldviews of the two leaders.
Purpose and Contribution to Literature
The purpose of this study is to examine the views on war and peace and the personalities of the two individuals. Although the input of each of these persons has received the necessary attention of researchers, the role their relationships shaped by their worldviews played in the international relations of that period remains obscure. The utilization of quantitative methods will be instrumental in tracing the most relevant trends regarding the matter.
This type of methodology is not common, although also used, so the contribution of the present study will be considerable. At that, the major contribution of the present study will be the focus on this topic that will enrich larger literature regarding the role of the individual in foreign policy. The research questions guiding this study can be formulated as follows: What were the worldviews of Stalin and Hitler on war and peace? How were the personalities of these people similar, and in what ways were they different? How did the personalities of the two leaders affect the interactions of the two countries in the 1930s?
Theoretical Framework
As mentioned above, different approaches to exploring the role of an individual in international relations exist. The cognitive model will be utilized to address the research questions mentioned above. The model is based on the assumption that decision-makers do not always (or rather seldom) make rational choices due to the concentration on their beliefs, as well as the way they perceived data (Carlsnaes, 2016). This model is instrumental in addressing the set research questions and can help explain the decisions made by the two people in question. The cognitive peculiarities of Hitler and Stalin could explain the reasons for their collaboration and the fact that Hitler decided to start the war in 1939.
This approach is often employed by researchers who have examined the personalities, choices, and impact of Stalin and Hitler (Ascher, 2016; Kaplan, 2017). These two person’s beliefs and ideas regarding diverse topics have been considered to explain their behaviors and decisions that had a substantial effect on the development of their countries and the entire world.
Methodology
The present research will be based on the quantitative research method and case study design. Two case studies (Hitler and Stalin) will be developed, and the two leaders’ personalities and perspectives concerning war and peace will be central to the research. The case study design enables the researcher to explore diverse aspects of the personality of a particular figure (Bernard, 2017). Quantitative analysis is rarely employed to explore people’s features and worldviews as qualitative methods often offer more opportunities to explore different aspects (Bernard, 2017). Nevertheless, quantitative data are instrumental in detecting the existing trends. For instance, the prevalence of some codes in the leaders’ accounts will help in developing these person’s profiles.
The operational code approach will also be utilized to profile the two leaders’ personalities and their worldviews. The operational code model involves the analysis of philosophical beliefs and instrumental beliefs towards the politics of particular people (Dyson & Parent, 2018). Diverse sources are often used for this type of analysis, including but not confined to speeches, interviews, as well as secondary sources such as biographies, monographs, and peer-reviewed articles. The collected data will be used to identify the prevalent ideas and beliefs, as well as the traits of the characters of Hitler and Stalin. Statistical analysis will be employed to evaluate the data taken from these sources.
Ethical and Confidentiality Issues
The focus of this study is on historical figures and their worldviews. No sensitive information will be disclosed or utilized as published works will be employed. The project will not include the personal life of the two leaders and their relatives will not be in the spotlight. Therefore, the chance of facing any confidentiality issues is minimal. Since no human subjects will be involved, gaining people’s consent regarding the use of the data they provide is not necessary.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is necessary to note that this study will attempt to describe the views of Hitler and Stalin on war and peace. The analysis of the personal traits of these two political leaders will be implemented. The 1930s, and especially the late 1930s, will be the major focus of this study. The utilized theoretical frameworks will be the cognitive model and operational code scheme due to their basic premises regarding the reasons for humans’ and political leaders’ decisions and actions.
The underlying assumption is that the interactions between Hitler and Stalin based on their personality traits influenced the onset of the Second World War, so individuals play the leading role in international relations. The quantitative research methodology will be employed as it ensures the identification of the most apparent trends associated with the personalities of the two historic figures in question.
Reference List
Ascher, A. (2016) Stalin. London, England: Oneworld Publications.
Bernard, H. R. (2017) Research methods in anthropology: qualitative and quantitative approaches. London, England: Rowman & Littlefield.
Carlsnaes, W. (2016) ‘Actors, structures, and foreign policy analysis’, in Smith, S., Hadfield, A. and Dunne, T. (eds.) Foreign policy: theories, actors, cases. Oxford, England: Springer, pp. 113–130.
Dyson, S. B. and Parent, M. J. (2018) ‘The operational code approach to profiling political leaders: understanding Vladimir Putin’, Intelligence and National Security, 33(1), pp. 84-100.
Groom, W. (2018) The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the unlikely alliance that won World War II. Washington, DC: National Geographic Books.
Kaplan, R. M. (2017) ‘Adolf Hitler and the psychiatrists: psychiatric debate on the German dictator’s mental state in The Lancet’, Journal of Forensic Science & Criminology, 5(1), pp. 101-107.
Kotkin, S. (2017) Stalin: waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941. New York, NY: Penguin.
LeRoy Malchow, H. (2015) History and international relations: from the ancient world to the 21st century. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Reynolds, D. and Pechatnov, V. (ed.) (2018) The Kremlin letters: Stalin’s wartime correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt. New York, NY: Yale University Press.
Spielvogel, J. J. and Redles, D. (2016) Hitler and Nazi Germany: a history. 7th edn. New York, NY: Routledge.
The last century was rich in ideologically driven and cruel dictators, with Hitler and Mussolini as the most infamous. Broadly and retrospectively, Hitler’s method of political rule can be considered fascist. According to experts, “fascism typically centers around extreme nationalism and an opposition to democracy and liberalism” (Nazi vs. fascist, 2020, para. 6). Both considered such punitive measures as political repression and state violence as legitimate methods of state governing.
Differing Ethnic Policies
The ideological and political differences between the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler are nuanced. They lie in such government branches as ethnic and military issues. For example, anti-Semitism was not an original element of Italian fascist ideology; it only became so right before World War II due to pressure from their Nazi ally (Italy, n.d.). It explains the historical paradox that many Jews could find a relatively safe haven in a country that was the main ally of Nazi Germany, both de jure and de facto (Italy, n.d.). It is also noteworthy that the Italian society had no anti-Semitic sentiment compared to the German one, even in prewar and wartime.
Differing Military Policies
Views on purpose and purpose for the coming World War II are another thing where Mussolini and Hitler’s views differed. For the creator of fascism, war was not just a method of forcible expansion of the state but a way of reviving the Roman Empire, both physically and ideologically. According to historians, “the Fascist regime hoped to establish a new “Roman” Empire” (Italy, n.d., para. 7). Hitler perceived the future war as a necessary and long-awaited rematch for the lost World War I, a way to unite the Germanic ethnic groups and increase their living space. Moreover, he saw it as an opportunity to purge Europe and the world of the religious, cultural, and ethnic ones that he and other Nazis considered inferior. One can say that Mussolini’s ideas were comparatively more egalitarian and less oppressive than Hitler’s ones.
Operational code has been a widely used methodology in analysing the decision-making process of political leaders. The model was developed in the middle of the twentieth century when the American government needed to evaluate the potential conduct of and choices made by Soviet leaders and political elites (Dyson and Parent, 2018). The operational code is often referred to as a set of diagnoses and perceptions affecting an individual’s choice of tactics and strategy (Dyson and Parent, 2018). The model encompasses a person’s philosophical beliefs concerning the political universe and instrumental beliefs related to the norms and standards shaping the individual’s choices and behaviour (Walker, Schafer and Young, 1998).
The framework proved to be effective for both qualitative and quantitative analysis, which made it applicable in diverse settings. The approach has also undergone certain changes based on the transformations that have taken place in international relations throughout decades. In the late 1970s, a typology based on six and later four major categories of operational code was introduced (Özdamar, 2017). The four types of operational codes differ in terms of the nature (permanent or temporary) and the source of conflict (a person, society or the system). Although some weaknesses of the paradigm can be found, the framework has proved to be an effective tool to examine individuals’ mindsets and the choices they make.
Literature Review
The role of individuals in foreign relations remains one of the relevant topics for researchers exploring the peculiarities of geopolitics. Such figures as Hitler and Stalin have attracted considerable attention in the academic world as the roles in the course of the history of these leaders can hardly be underestimated. Diverse studies have been published regarding different aspects of these two persons, including but not confined to their biographies, psychological portraits, and worldviews. This literature review provides a brief analysis of the available literature on the aspects mentioned above, as well as certain theoretical frameworks that guide the present research.
The Two Leaders’ Backgrounds
The vast amount of literature on biographical facts regarding different leaders and historical figures is available. The biographical approach has been widely used in political science research, but it has gained more popularity rather recently (Goeschel, 2018). It has been acknowledged that people’s backgrounds largely shape their behaviour and decisions they make (Husain and Liebertz, 2019). At the same time, researchers also consider the limitations linked to this approach as such controversial figures as Hitler or Mussolini, as well as other dictators including Stalin, tended to facilitate the development of alternative biographies (Goeschel, 2018; Meyer, 2017). Hence, it is critical to ensure the utilisation of reliable sources and valid data when using biographical information.
Biographers analyse the most meaningful details, often trying to draw parallels between historical figures’ backgrounds and their choices that affected their further lives as well as the lives of other people. Ascher (2016) paid considerable attention to Stalin’s childhood stating that the future Soviet leader had a difficult childhood with an abusive father and negative education-related experiences. At the same time, Kotkin (2014) emphasised that Stalin’s deprivation in his childhood was not severe compared to the rest of his contemporaries. For instance, having been the only surviving child in the family, he received an education, and the family had a house and certain financial security (although minimal). His young adulthood and adulthood receive more attention as this was the period of his involvement in the struggle against the political regime that existed at that time. Stalin’s involvement in terrorist acts, diverse unlawful activities, and his travels are regarded as important building blocks of his leadership and the choices he made during his time in Kremlin (Kotkin, 2014). Kotkin (2017) also provides numerous facts about his decisions during the 1930s and his interactions with other political leaders and his subordinates.
Similar attention has been paid to Adolf Hitler, who is often juxtaposed with the Soviet dictator. It is noteworthy that recent studies sometimes provide a revisionist account of Hitler’s biography and the role his background played in his interactions with other people. For example, Simms (2019) attempted to explain and justify Hitler’s attitudes towards the German history, other countries and nations, as well as other aspects, by analysing his birthplace and his early years. On the other hand, Kaplan (2017) stated that Hitler’s life and legacy were rather biased due to the attitude of his contemporaries and later researchers, so thorough analysis and caution were needed to consider Hitler’s biography and his role in history.
Irrespective of the bias and attempts to create a certain image, historians manage to provide facts regarding the German dictator’s life. Longerich (2019) presented rich details and carried out an in-depth analysis of Hitler’s life. The biographer stated that Adolf Hitler’s childhood was marked by the authoritarian rule of his father and, later, the young man’s search for his place in the world in his early adulthood. Spielvogel and Redles (2016) concentrated on Hitler’s way to power through the prism of the political and socio-economic situation in the country of that period. The researchers tried to explain the impact of external factors on Hitler and the new leader’s influence on the development of Germany, as well as possible reasons for Hitler’s and his ideas rise.
Although the way to the power of the two leaders in question was quite different, certain attempts to draw parallels have been made, and they have been successful. Husain and Liebertz (2019) compared the lives of the two dictators and found many similarities that could be seen as the basis for these people’s authoritarianism. Some of these reasons are found in the leaders’ childhood and their social status.
Psychological Profiles
The comparisons of psychological profiles of Hitler and Stalin are more frequent as compared to the comparison of their backgrounds. Haycock (2019) implemented a comprehensive psychological investigation of the major traits and psychological profiles of several dictators, including Hitler and Stalin. The author claimed that a set of traits influenced by the environment and experiences made the two leaders’ authoritarian rulers with controversial ethical codes. Such traits as narcissism, Machiavellianism, neuroticism, and introversion were typical of a dictator, and they were characteristic features of the German and Soviet leaders.
Zoja (2017) expressed his ideas regarding the psychological states of Stalin and Hitler in his deep account of paranoia and its role in the development of human society. The author stated that people were prone to this mental state due to both external and internal factors, and many leaders tended to radiate and facilitate the spread of universal paranoia in their countries and on the global scale. Researchers also pay attention to the features that seemed impossible and displaced. For instance, Haffner (2019) mentioned Hitler’s shyness in some aspects and his fear of commitment. Ascher (2016) noted that Stalin was indecisive and insecure at some points of his life, which seemed inconsistent with the figure who is responsible for terror across a large country and millions of deaths.
Again, it is stressed that certain precautions should be made when analysing the data associated with the two leaders’ psychological profiles due to the biased nature of many primary and secondary sources (Goeschel, 2018; Marsh, 2017). The data regarding the two historical figures’ traits need additional considerations due to the interpretive nature of the information related to people’s psychological states and the way they are manifested or instrumental in shaping individuals’ choices. The analysis of valid data regarding the psychological profiles of Stalin and Hitler is critical for understanding these people’s beliefs, mindsets, and personal codes.
Worldviews, Beliefs, Personal Codes
The examination of the life and legacy of dictators suggests that these leaders tend to have similar worldviews with certain cultural peculiarities (Haycock, 2019). For example, Hitler and Stalin concentrated on the creation of new entities in the global political arena. For instance, Hitler tried to create Grand German Empire that would combine all German people even though that would mean the change of the borders that existed at that time (Malchow, 2020). Stalin, in his turn, was committed to the idea of Global revolution that encompassed the establishment of Communist governments in other countries that would be loyal to Moscow. In simple terms, the Soviet leader tried to set a Communist block that would become the staging area for further expansion.
They both placed a specific group in a privileged position (the Germans in Hitler’s case and Communists in Stalin’s situation). They wanted to prove the superiority of those cohorts in diverse ways in their national contexts and the global setting. Both tyrants saw the conflict as inevitable and the most appropriate method to achieve their goals.
Hitler shared the view of thousands of German people regarding the end of the First World War. His revanchist attitude guided his entire life after 1918, when he accepted Germany’s loss in the war as his personal humiliation (Longerich, 2019). The dictator believed that the Treaty of Versailles was an unfair and humiliating event, so the countries that signed the document had to be punished for that humiliation. The idea of German Reich that was superior to other nations was central in terms of Hitler’s set of beliefs.
Researchers have paid considerable attention to the religious beliefs of the two leaders that were quite similar. Both were baptised Christians coming from families where religion was practised. Nevertheless, in their adult life, the two dictators were not practising Christians. Both dictators contributed to the “ritualisation of the political process and leader cults completed the striking similarity with the veneration of the divine” (Van Ree, 2016, p. 143). Hitler and Stalin tried to create a new religion that would be more consistent with their political goals than traditional Christian values.
Hitler believed that Catholicism, as well as Christianity in general, was over, and a new religion was to replace old beliefs (Bear, 2016). Clearly, Hitler saw his political agenda (the Nazi ideology) as a new religion. At the same time, he understood that religious beliefs could be an effective platform for promoting the ideas of National Socialism (Berger, 2017; Van Ree, 2016). In public, he referred to Christian values and even Biblical motifs, but still there was hardly any place for Christianity in new Hitler’s Germany (Weikart, 2016).
Stalin had even a more peculiar attitude towards religion. He studied in a seminary and was to become a part of the clergy, so he was well aware of the major concepts and texts of the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, Communism was the ideology of atheists, and, hence, Communist leaders, including Stalin, tried to destroy the religious tradition that was rather strong in the Russian Empire (Andrews, 2016). The clergy were prosecuted, tortured, and subjected to physical destruction, which was implemented at an unprecedented scale in the 1930s. During the war and afterwards, Stalin also acknowledged the potential benefits of using religion as a tool to make people more loyal to the regime (Bociurkiw, 2019).
As for the ethical codes the two dictators followed, their moral and ethical standards were different from the norms of democratic societies. Both leaders found thousands of deaths an acceptable cost for the attainment of certain goals. At that, Stalin was significantly less concerned with any losses, including people’s lives, compared to Hitler, who was not prepared to sacrifice millions of German people (McCauley, 2019). The conduct of the two authoritarian leaders was rather similar in terms of their attitudes towards subordinates. They did not trust anyone and could easily destroy any person they found dangerous to their power, as well as use those who could help them reach their objectives.
The Application of Cognitive Model in International Affairs Research
It is important to identify the major theoretical premises guiding the present research. The cognitive model is the theoretical framework that enables researchers to examine the reasons behind people’s behaviours and choices. This theoretical approach is based on the perspective that people’s decisions are not always rational due to the cognitive peculiarities of an individual (Jones, 2017). It is stressed that people have certain beliefs and backgrounds that shape their behaviour and the decision-making process (Zmigrod, 2020). Cognitive peculiarities of a person also define the way decisions are made since the speed of processing data, risk aversion levels, and other features influence the choices leaders make.
Researchers applying this approach pay specific attention to the ways individuals process and store, as well as utilise, information (Király, Köves and Balázs, 2017). It is believed that humans’ cognitive capacity is limited, which often results in irrational choices. Leaders make decisions that seem inadequate due to the limits of their cognition, mistakes they can make, and the overall availability of data necessary to make optimal choices (Volkan, 2018). It has also been accepted that leaders tend to ensure that the rational decisions they make are consistent with the set of beliefs and norms they have developed during their lives (Baumgartner and Jones, 2015). In simple terms, every person has their own reality that is formed by a range of views, norms, and biases. People perceive information and make choices within the scope of their realities, which makes others see their decision irrational.
The cognitive model is also based on the assumption that people’s traits have an impact on their decisions. It is accepted that psychological profiles of humans shape, to a considerable extent, the behavioural patterns and values they develop (Van Bavel and Pereira, 2018). On the other hand, cognitive model researchers believe that individuals’ cognitive peculiarities also shape the development of their psychological traits. Although people tend to behave in different ways and make rather diverse choices in similar situations, certain generalizability is apparent. People with a particular set of features tend to have some behavioural peculiarities and mindsets, shaping their decisions (Choma and Hanoch, 2017). Researchers also emphasise that individuals process information on the grounds of pre-existing beliefs and tend to neglect information that seems discrepant.
Operational Code
One of the effective methods to decipher political leaders’ worldviews and predict or explain their choices is the operational code model. While some theoretical paradigms place leaders’ decisions in the context with the focus on external factors, the operational code approach enables investigators to examine internal factors that have had an impact on certain decisions and choices (Kertzer and Tingley, 2018). This framework was developed by Nathan Leites, who attempted to analyse the political strategies of the members of the Soviet Politburo (Özdamar, 2017). This work was largely implemented to satisfy the needs of the American government to estimate potential behaviours of the Soviet decisionmakers in the post-war period (Dyson and Parent, 2018). The researcher managed to determine some of the Soviet ruling party members’ rules and mindsets, as well as the impact Stalin’s and Lenin’s works had on this cohort (Özdamar, 2017). This analysis enabled the investigator to make a number of generalisations regarding political decisions Soviet leaders made in particular settings.
Leites’s approach was effective but the instruments employed were not properly developed. Alexander George addresses this gap and introduces a set of clear questions and answers, concentrating on “the core beliefs that comprised the Bolshevik view of the nature of the political universe and the best way to advance Bolshevik interests within that universe” (Dyson and Parent, 2018, p. 85). The researcher referred to operational code as a “prism” that influences the way individuals create strategies and tactics when responding to particular situations (Dyson and Parent, 2018, p. 85). Importantly, George (1969) stated that although operational code provides insights into the decision-making process and unveils some probabilities, it should be regarded as one of a set of variables that should be analysed. The researcher stressed that real-time intelligence, as well as other instruments, are critical as diverse factors (including but not confined to individuals’ operational codes) affect the choices political leaders make.
The operational code model encompasses the focus on two clusters of beliefs. The first set of beliefs is related to the person’s views on the political world, its being friendly or hostile, as well as the perceived degree of control over this universe (Walker, Schafer and Young, 1998). The second cluster is associated with the leader’s guidelines and personal standards that affect their decision making. George’s model entails the identification of the leader’s mindset and the choice of a conflictual or cooperative strategy.
It has also been found that people’s beliefs tend to be stable with only some of them subjected to changes due to certain external or internal factors (Renshon, 2008). Renshon (2008) found that although some beliefs may transform during some period, the system of beliefs and norms remain consistent and largely unchanged. The factors triggering the change may be different, and the development of the new convictions often depends on the personality, cognitive peculiarities, environment, and the changes in the accepted norms and values in the society.
George (1969) also stated that the paradigm should be utilised to analyse individuals’ operational codes as the code of a group can be hardly scrutinised due to the abundance of different operational codes of the members of the group. When exploring an organisation’s operational code, the focus is still on their leaders’ codes as their decisions tend to be the most influential in their organisations’ agendas (Ayaşli, 2018). As far as the methodological peculiarities of the model, researchers tend to concentrate on speeches, writing, biographies, and other similar types of evidence (Dyson and Parent, 2018). Kim (2017) notes that speeches provide a wealth of data that can be utilised to quantify leaders’ philosophical and instrumental beliefs that define their attitudes and behaviour in their pursuit after certain political goals. Alexander George developed a set of questions to be responded in order to identify the operational codes of leaders and quantify their decision making (Dyson and Parent, 2018). These questions address the concepts grounded in the operational code paradigm, including pessimism, optimism, conflict, control, interest, action, impact, to name a few.
The operational code model has been widely used since the middle of the twentieth century and has undergone certain changes. For instance, several typologies have been introduced to provide researchers with an effective and valid instrument to assess leaders’ operational codes (Özdamar, 2017). Ole Holsti created six types of operational codes based on the nature of the conflict and its sources (Walker, 1983). The researcher juxtaposed permanent and temporary nature of the conflict and focused on such sources as international, societal, and individual systems as the sources of the conflict. Walker (1983) modified the framework by reducing the typology to four major types. The author pays attention to such concepts and pessimism and optimism and stresses that DEF codes can be regarded as one type.
Existing Gaps
This literature review suggests that various aspects of Hitler’s and Stalin’s personalities and decisions have been explored in detail. However, these leaders’ choices and worldviews have hardly been quantified. Although some attempts to compare the two dictators have been implemented, researchers tend to concentrate on narrow areas. For instance, Luck (1974) implemented a psycholinguistic analysis of Hitler and Stalin, as well as Liu Shao-ch’I and Mao. It is noteworthy that the author acknowledged the benefits of the use of the operational code framework but stated that it was inappropriate for his study. The scholar concentrated on psycholinguistic aspects and identified some of the primary differences between Hitler (and his loud articulation of certain needs) and Stalin (who quietly climbed the top of the political hierarchy and tried to occupy his place in the international arena).
Satterfield (1998) examines risk-taking and the political aggression of Hitler, Stalin, as well as Roosevelt and Churchill. The researcher employed the operational code approach, which provided researchers with insights into the ways this model can be effectively utilised. However, an in-depth examination and comparison of operational codes of Hitler and Stalin have not been implemented, especially in relation to their decision making in the period of the onset of the Second World War.
Reference List
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Frederick Nietzsche created a unique understanding of social order and the place of man in the world. Many of his ideas about superpower and man were borrowed and introduced by Adolph Hitler who transformed them into Nazi ideology. Nietzsche’s all-out assault on the entire Western Judeo-Christian cultural and philosophical tradition is one of the most important issues of the abandonment of the faith in progress through the submission of human reason that had been central to the Enlightenment. This turn away from faith in reason was itself one of the most important markers in the turn from utopian to dystopian thinking as a dominant mode in modern imaginative literature. Many of Nietzsche’s descriptions of the sterility and decadence of his contemporary German society anticipate the descriptions of stagnant would-be utopias often found in dystopian literature. In addition, many of Nietzsche’s specific ideas and concepts bear close affinities with those of the writers of literature.
In his writings, Nietzsche develops the concept of Ubermensch based on the rejection of Christianity and of the “slave morality” that it helped to propagate carries resonances of the oppressive power of official ideologies frequently depicted in dystopian fiction. Meanwhile, the radical individualism that informs all of Nietzsche’s thoughts anticipates the opposition between individual freedom and social obedience that is so important to dystopian literature. As a whole, Nietzsche’s philosophical project represents a radical rejection of both Christianity and classical science, the two central discourses of authority in Western history and two of the principal sources of utopian energies in the West. In his writings, Nietzsche argues that politics and power in fact have a great deal in common. Speaking about Ubermensch, Nietzsche strikes out against the growing mechanization of life brought about by the epistemological imperialism of science, deriding science as a new form of religion, worshipping. Nietzsche’s important meditations on language and truth are also of central relevance to dystopian literature, in which language is often a crucial topic. The political regimes often attempt to manipulate language (and perceptions of reality) in ways that recall Nietzsche’s discussions of politics.
Under Ubermensch, Nietzsche implies a superman and strong political power able to control social life. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche explains:
“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment” (Nietzsche)
Nietzsche’s treatment of Ubermensch, influential for the historical visions of intellectual descendants like Foucault, offers a number of promising possibilities for productive dialogues with the treatment of history in dystopian literature. In the essay that de Man cites Nietzsche discusses three distinctly different modes of approaching the past, which he identifies as monumental, antiquarian, and critical history. Ubermensch involves a view of the past as determined by the great deeds of mighty men. Antiquarian history involves a reverence for all things past, great or not, purely because of their anteriority. Critical history involves an uncompromising, violent, and antagonistic confrontation with the past. Nietzsche supposes that even in a critical history that rejects a mere continuation of the chain of past events, “it is not possible to wholly free oneself from this chain. If we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originate in them” (Nietzsche 76). Nietzsche’s main point is that any one of his three modes of history is ultimately destructive if pursued to the exclusion of all others. He himself emphasizes the critical mode largely because he believes that his own contemporary society is being strangled by an overemphasis on the monumental and antiquarian modes of viewing history. He felt that his presence was thus being overwhelmed by the past, causing the past to become the “gravedigger of the present” (Nietzsche 62). Nietzsche claims that the motto of monumental historians might be “let the dead bury the living” (Nietzsche 44) and that a purely antiquarian history “hinders any firm resolve to attempt something new, thus it paralyzes the man of action” (Nietzsche 76). The solution, according to Nietzsche, is not to turn away from the past, but to put it to use in the service of the present. He describes the ability to appropriate the past in this way as the “plastic power” of an individual or of a culture, where plastic power is defined as “the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign” (Nietzsche 77). The paralysis cited by Nietzsche has clear affinities that are often associated in dystopian literature with utopian visions. Ubermensch implies the dynamism and ability of society and community to change that is frequently lacking in the societies described in the literature. Still, Nietzsche’s consistent implication that his own work contains “plastic power” and that his project potentially ushers in a new era of human history suggests a positive and even utopian element in his work, creating a mixture of utopian and dystopian energies that can also be found in the work of recent thinkers (Shirer 71).
The idea of Ubermensch was borrowed and adopted by Hitler in order to create a theory of the Aryan race and super nation. From the mid-1920s Hitler regarded himself as the great leader possessed of messianic vision who would lead Germany to victory or death. Germany’s mission, he believed, was the conquest of living space in the East, at the expense of ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ Russia. Germany’s ability to achieve this goal depended on overcoming its own decadence by breaking with democracy and purging itself of racial enemies. Living space would in turn provide the resources needed to unite the people in a racially pure Germany.
Similar to Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, Hitler’s Aryan Ubermensch accepts the idea of superman and super nation but applies it to Germany and the Aryan race. In Hitler’s writings, Ubermensch is the Aryan race that should dominate in the world. In themselves these ideas were crude. They were powerful because they issued from the Wagnerian strand in German culture, and derived from 19th-century social politicians, imperialist, and racist ideas which had been dressed up as ‘science’ in certain university faculties and professions, where they informed a host of projects for the engineering of a strong society. Hitler claims:
Without this possibility of using lower human beings, the Aryan would never have been able to take his first steps toward his future culture; just as without the help of various suitable beasts which he knew how to tame, he would not have arrived at technology which is now gradually permitting him to do without these beasts (Hitler)
Hitler’s ideas, including his Jewish obsessions, were not shared by the whole German population, or even by all Nazis. Hitler’s popularity permitted him to implement his radical racial and military schemes. He was certain, too, of the backing of the Nazi hierarchy, linked to him by personal loyalty.
Hitler’s Aryan Ubermensch was based on the sense of national identity. Similar to Nietzsche, Hitler supposes that Aryan identity is always biologically defined. In the early 20th century educated Europeans usually understood race in terms of history and culture. An individual belonged to a nation if she or he inhabited the nation’s historic territory, spoke the national language, or practiced its religion. This racism is less extreme in that it allows for ‘assimilation’ by learning the national language or changing one’s religion. Another complication is that racism has never been the monopoly of the right or extreme right. Racist assumptions, sometimes explicit, sometimes unconscious, have often informed left-wing thought and practice too. The history of left-wing racism lies outside the scope of this book, but it is worth pointing out that left-wing racism differs from fascism in important respects. The left has usually been optimistic about the possibility of assimilation, and it has rarely been believed that racial policy was a panacea for society’s ills. By definition, socialists believe class to be more important than race. The case of Nazism might seem straightforward, were it not for the fact that certain of the approaches deployed by academics have diminished the significance of racism in Nazism (Shirer 65).
Similar to Nietzsche, Hitler rejected other races to accept supernation. For Hitler, the Jews were engaged in a permanent struggle to undermine the Aryan race, especially by promoting cosmopolitan capitalism and communism and encouraging war between ‘healthy’ nations. Hitler also saw prostitution as a means for Jews to corrupt Aryans through the transmission of syphilis. Indeed, all hereditary diseases were said to be spread by Jews. Hence his advocacy of eugenicist solutions to the racial question: selective breeding, sterilization of the unfit, welfare legislation for the sound elements of the population, and encouragement of healthy women to reproduce. Hitler did not speak of extermination, but the language he used to describe Jews – bacilli, leeches, parasites – could, and did legitimate extermination. Antisemitism, eugenicism, anticapitalism, and anticommunism were different aspects of the same policy. Historians have rightly pointed to the fact that during the Nazis’ rise to power, as part of their bid for conservative support, the Jews were only one of several enemies attacked by the Nazis (others included the Poles, Catholics, Communists, and socialists), and that since the Jews were perceived to pose no immediate threat, they were not usually the primary target of Nazis at this time. In Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche claims:
Our attitude to the “internal enemy” is no different: here too we have spiritualized hostility; here too we have come to appreciate its value. The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition; one remains young only as long as the soul does not stretch itself and desire peace (Nietzsche).
This philosophy was adopted by Hitler and could help to explain a negative attitude towards Jews seen as the “internal enemy”. Although the extermination of the Jews was not inevitable at the time of the seizure of power, the Nazis set about implementing their racist designs as soon as they won power. The great credit earned by Hitler as victor over the communists and architects of Germany’s national resurrection permitted him and those who were loyal to him to implement their racist designs. Some of the first measures to follow the passage of the Enabling Act restricted Jewish employment in civil service and professions. In 1935 Jews were forbidden to marry or to have sexual relations with Aryans. Aside from these clearly racial laws and principles, other aspects of legislation and Hitler’s ideas had racial objectives.
In 1935 a certificate of racial fitness was required of all those who wished to marry. Shortly before the war – without any formal legal sanction – there began a program of killing the psychiatrically ill and mentally handicapped. Once the principle that all regulations were racially conditioned was established, subsequent legislation routinely included racial clauses (Shirer 77). All these measures were aspects of a single policy: the creation of a racially pure, physically and mentally healthy population, fit to make war on inferior races and conquer living space in the east (Shirer 87).
Following the ideas of Nietzsche, Hitler stated publicly that the fate of the Jews was to be confined to ghettos. In practice, the hope was that life would become so uncomfortable for Jews that they would emigrate, but the government’s reluctance to let Jews take assets with them, and of foreign governments to accept them, thwarted these hopes. It was followed by state plunder of Jewish wealth. Emigration remained the goal, but ominously the SS was accorded greater power over the Jewish question. Scholars agree that the final radicalization of Nazi policy towards the Jews was precipitated by war in the east. It must be remembered, though, that war against ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ had long been the Nazis’ goal.
Hitler accepts the idea of cultural superiority and the importance of cultural dominance. Nietzsche claims:
Even a rapid estimate shows that it is not only obvious that German culture is declining but that there is sufficient reason for that. In the end, no one can spend more than he has: that is true of an individual, it is true of a people. If one spends oneself for power, for power politics, for economics, world trade, parliamentarians, and military interests — if one spends in the direction the quantum of understanding, seriousness, will, and self-overcoming which one represents, then it will be lacking for the other direction (Nietzsche).
Hitler claims to be ‘anti-racist’ on the grounds that it favors equal rights for all races. Yet it demands the application of racial principles to immigration and social policy and favors the departure of those considered racially undesirable. The lesson of history is perhaps that the goal of racial homogenization is difficult to realize in practice, requires enormous compulsion and a radical break with democratic values. Even the Nazi regime’s actions had contradictory results. To exterminate the Jews, the Nazis had to mobilize enormous resources and negate everything hitherto considered decent. Even then, they failed to make Germany racially homogeneous. The war machine’s desire for labor dictated the importation of seven million foreign workers and slaves by 1944. Although these laborers were subject to unimaginably harsh treatment, the regime could not prevent loving relations between Germans and foreigners. Paranoia about the effects of racial mixing simply drove the regime to greater, but equally futile, excess.
The Third Reich and the Nazis set themselves up as representatives of ‘the people’ and claimed to express popular opposition to a corrupt and foreign political establishment – potentially a very broad appeal indeed. They were able to channel the resentment of small shopkeepers into attacks on ‘Jewish’ department store owners. They won the support of many workers by incorporating the symbols used by the left – such as red flags modified with swastikas, or the grinning, gluttonous, top-hatted, cigar-smoking capitalist – into a nationalist and anti-Semitic program. They told workers that their enemy was not business, but Jewish business. This nationalist anticapitalism had the advantage of being relatively attractive to many employers, too, for it potentially spared German capitalists the blame for the workers’ plight. The Nazi conception of the nation was influenced by conscious and unconscious ‘biases’. Many Nazis saw Germany as intrinsically Protestant or even pagan, a view that excluded Catholics from their electorate.
These human facts are objective, but they do not stand alone. The structure of nature with which the human body is associated bears the imprint of the same laws. Man must defend himself against the brute, and in doing so he must adopt the weapons of the brute. Hitler explains: “The reason why the Jew decides suddenly to become a ‘German ‘ is obvious. He feels that the power of the princes is slowly tottering and therefore tries at an early time to get a platform beneath his feet” (Hitler). So, for Hitler success of the Aryans is the primary aim of the moral agent, and success means the promotion of the interests of self. There is first an aggressive and concentrated purpose that does not falter before the difficult tasks confronting it. The particular price which most men will be obliged to pay is a state of fear. Fear is a tremendous lever in the pursuit of moral values; it “holds by the apprehension of punishment” (Nietzsche 99). Hitler supposes that the man will build up a reputation for hard and stern dealings. Reputation counts in the long run; it is not what a man really in his heart is, but what he can coerce others into believing that he is, that makes him influential. This is the same as moral goodness. In the course of his progress towards success, it may be essential to concede certain ends, for example, one’s religious beliefs. It does no harm to go with the group in these matters, provided the desired result is accomplished. Intuitionism supposes moral concepts to exist as eternal and immutable truths. This implies that a true idea must exist whether or not the object embodying it does or ever will exist. The crude realism of the previous historical period still keeps a stranglehold over certain types of minds. The fact is that truth grows with experience, and this is proven by the attitude of the social mind towards moral formulas. Men’s conceptions of honor, honesty, veracity, generosity, are fluid, not fixed.
The analysis shows that Hitler accepts the ideas of Nietzsche and transformed them into a new theory of Aryan dominance. Thus, retaliation is defined today in terms both of Christian ethics and of the creed of Nietzsche. Similar to Nietzsche, Hitler supposes that the superman, conscious of his individual superiority, regards his fellows as chattel slaves, mere sheep and oxen who exist for the purpose of promoting his personal interests. Here retaliation can take but one form, condign and inescapable punishment, not only pains of the body but the exacerbating stings of soul. Politics, economics, education, religion, social intercourse, entertain conflicting judgments, moral principles that can be united by no logical issue. The law of the nation was to be converted into the law of social intercourse. The state had said, there is to be no ownership of human bodies; the individual must say, there is to be goodwill in dealing with human creatures inferior in mind and in the social background but equal in rank before the law. Only the broadest maxim, such as sympathy for the disabled, could be summoned to satisfy the terms of the new situation. Obviously, duty is not the mere execution of the law; it is the execution of law in such a way that the true ends of human behavior will be accepted. Hitler assumes that only a person of sovereign intelligence is fit to offer to his equal some word which, while it is a promise in form, is in substance a command upon his own will. The principles developed by Nietzsche permit racists to adapt their racism to whatever purpose they espouse. Earlier in the century, it was customary to evoke the fundamentally different characteristics of Aryans.
The End and the Beginning and Hitler’s First Photograph by Wisława Szymborska are two poems that share thematic elements concerned with time, war, and the invisibility of evil. The poems will be analyzed and contrasted with the central theme and each other. The thesis of this work suggests that both works by Szymborska illuminate the duality of time, both as reciting historical patterns with ease, such as the aftermath of war, and being completely untelling of events to come, such as the transformation of an innocent baby into a mass murderer.
The End and the Beginning by Szymborska recounts the reconstruction of affected areas after a war. The particular imagery refers to the effects of the Second World War, the pushing of rubble, the collection of corpses, and miring in sofa springs and glass. However, the poem begins with “after every war, someone has to clean up” (Szymborska, lines 1-2), which is the focal point of the poem. Wars exist within a universal timeline as outlined by Szymborska. She illuminates a process in which the war demolishes nations, the press and media become disinterested at its end, and as rebuilding begins, the nation becomes populated with individuals who knew little or nothing of the war (Szymborska, lines 1-4). Here Szymborska refers to the generations that will inhabit the heritage which they did not live (lines 39-42). Birth and innocence become a prevalent theme at the end of the poem and will be especially vital in understanding the thematic analysis of both works by the author.
The second poem, also by Szymborska, Hitler’s First Photograph, provides various imagery of Hitler as a newborn and is heavily contrasted by allusions to his future as a dictator and contributor to a genocide. The poem suggests uncertainty through statements that wonder if Hitler could have been a doctor, priest, or worked at the Opera House in Vienna (Szymborska, lines 3-7). Only his present as a child is known in the poem that creates an illusion of the past. Hitler as a newborn is referred to as a little boy with teensy hands, a little angel, and a lucky fortune. Szymborska recalls how no omen of death or signs of the future prior to his birth were visible (line 13), which supports her thesis that no person is born evil. The normalcy of Hitler’s youth is supported through images of him being alike with other children in family albums and prone to regular child-like behaviors of crying when waiting too long for the photographer to take a picture.
The works share a number of stylistic similarities, which can be assumed as they are both written by Szymborska. However, there are also stark differences, especially in the purpose of her using certain written elements such as metaphors, allusions, and imagery. Metaphors are prevalent throughout both works, with The End and the Beginning hosting rough, melancholic, and foreboding symbols while Hitler’s First Photograph provides symbolic features that are almost exclusively associated with innocence and goodness. In The End and the Beginning, the most prominent images include the reference through collapsing walls, broken windows, and missing doors. These elements are not explicitly stated but are fostered in the mind of the reader when Szymborska states that someone must prop up the walls, glaze the windows, and hang doors. Szymborska gives physical form to a mental concept of opinion by describing that “sometimes someone still unearths, rusted-out arguments and carries them to the garbage pile.” (lines 36-37). The closing images of the poem allude to the new generations, free of the experiences of the war and with a “blade of grass in his mouth, gazing at the clouds.” (Szymborska, lines 47-48).
Hitler’s First Photograph, on the other hand, is totally involved in the past. The language of the poem refers to the hypothesis of future events and questions, inquiring where will baby Hitler wander and who he will be. He is constantly referred to by affectionate names such as honeybun, sugar, and mommy’s sunshine (Szymborska, line 11). These elements work to form irony, as Hitler’s future events worked to defy all these early assumptions. Here Szymborska hints at the impossibility of tacking potential evil, as someone who once seemed like an angel had killed millions in his later life. His birth is accompanied by images of geraniums, organ music, doves seen in dreams as agents of good news, and rosy paper. Szymborska makes subtle allusions to the irony of these metaphors, by reminding the reader that “no one hears howling dogs, or fate’s footsteps” (line 31) not as a signal of unawareness of those around him, but at the unattainability of predicting evil.
While both works seem to offer conflicting metaphors and images and refer to the future and past respectively, an argument can be made that they have an identical underlying thesis. Both poems are deeply associated with the passage of time, both from the perspective of the past and present. Essentially, the passage of time is able to teach both undeniable lessons and confirm nothing with a certain probability. Szymborska almost states that the future is entirely predictable and totally unknown in the same frame. War has always proceeded in the same manner and has left patterns of the aftermath. Conflict breeds destruction and chaos, those that have survived rebuild and make room for future generations. Szymborska hints that those that do not know war have a higher propensity to begin or fall into another. As such, the cycle becomes familiar and possibly endless. Alternatively, time does not allow for the attainment of certain knowledge. Unlike war being a precursor for reconstruction, the birth of a future dictator comes with no warning. Szymborska’s poems work to ascribe this duality to the reader through imagery, symbolism, and allusions.
Adolph Hitler was a prominent politician in the German history of the twentieth century. He was born in the provincial Austrian town of Braunau in 1889. After the death of his mother in 1907, Hitler moved to the city of Vienna, where he hoped to join the Art Academy. He did not succeed in securing a place at the academy, and so he spent most of his time doing various jobs especially selling sketches and paintings of Vienna. He referred to this as the most miserable phase of his life. He displayed a personality with temperamental issues, and often he burst out with rage, especially if corrected by his colleagues. Hitler had a lot of interest in reading newspapers, political articles, and many other German histories and mythology books. His condition of languishing in poverty extremely influenced him to take up a ruthless and cruel state of mind.
Historians have generally argued that he suffered psychological distress in his childhood. At the age of 21, he concentrated his interest on the politics of Vienna. He witnessed protest marches by workers and admired the way they used fear and propaganda as political weapons in their rallies. In Vienna, he developed a hate passion for the multicultural Austrian empire after studying Jewish and distinguished them from the rest of humanity. He chose to become an anti-Semite. He later moved to Munich, where he volunteered to the German government during the Second World War. After the war, he joined the German Workers Party in 1919, and this marked his entry into politics. In 1920 the Nazi party was formed, and Hitler demanded the chairman position with dictatorial powers. This was granted to him due to his great influence on the party.
In 1993 Hitler attempted to overthrow the German Bavarian government and make himself the new leader using his Nazi party. Upon failure of the Nazi revolution, Hitler was arrested and charged guilty of treason. He was sentenced to five years in jail. In his private cell of the old fortress at lands berg, he continued expressing his political ideas, and this gave birth to his book,” Mein Kampf.”
In this book, Hitler outlines his political and racial ideas, which later came into reality in his reign after acquiring power. Hitler categorized humans based on their physical appearance and whether they established higher and lower orders. He gave the highest rank to the German man with fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. He called this type of person an” Aryan,” who he placed as a supreme human or a master race. Aryan, in this case, referred to the noble or the most honored German man. Having expressed his thoughts of supreme humans, he discussed the less supreme humans who he referred to as the racially inferior. This position was assigned to the Jews and the slaves, who were the Czechs, Poles, and Russians.
In Mein Kampf, he stated that the Nazi philosophy had no place for equality of races, and with respect to their differences, the philosophy recognized races of higher value and those of lesser value. In accordance with the eternal will that dominated the universe, Hitler placed Nazis as obligated to promote the victory of the better and stronger and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker. The Aryans, according to Hitler, were also culturally superior to other races. He argued that the first cultures which became the first technical instruments in service of developing culture arose in places where the Aryans lived. He also stated that the people of lesser value actually benefited from being conquered since they gained a lot of experience from being in contact with the Aryans. This, however, was only possible if the Aryans remained the masters and did not intermarry with the inferior people. He blamed the Jews for conspiring to prevent the superior race from holding its position as rulers of the world by ruining its cultural and racial purity. He accused the Jews of forming governments in which the Aryans came to believe in equality and consequently losing on its racial superiority. He described the struggle of the world as a continued racial, cultural, and political battle between the Aryans and the Jews. In this respect, he accused the Jews of internationally conspiring to take charge of global finances, control of the press, the invention of liberal democracy, Marxism, prostitution, and taking advantage of culture to disrupt harmony. In his entire book, Hitler despised the Jews and used very harsh words to refer to them.
“Hitler refers to Jews as parasites, liars, dirty, crafty, sly, wily, and clever, without any true culture, a sponger, a middleman, a maggot, eternal bloodsuckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, monsters, foreign, menace, bloodthirsty, avaricious, the destroyer of Aryan humanity, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity…”
Hitler’s idea of competition between Jews and Aryans turned out to be a great belief in Nazi and was even taught to the children. This racial attitude towards the Jews influenced the Germans to get rid of the Jewish race. The book further defends the military conquests by Hitler and Germans, explaining that the Germans who were deemed as the masters had a right to acquire more land for themselves. He Cleary states that the land to the east of Germany (Russia) would be acquired by force. The slaves who had occupied the land were either to be removed, eliminated, or enslaved, and the land used to cultivate food and room for the expansion of the growing Aryans population. This was to be achieved only after the Germans defeated France in order to gain the dominion of the western borders. He traces the defeat of the First World War to the political treachery in Germany and largely blames the Jewish conspiracy. Though the book did not get a good command of the market after its release, it was later read by millions of people, but it did not trigger any thoughts of what lay in the future.
Hitler was released in late 1924, having had a clear thought of his actions in the Nazi revolution. He regretted his attempt to overthrow the democratic government without the support of the established institutions and the German Army. He decided to forgo an armed coup to acquire power and followed a slow and lawful process in his ambitions. He decided to reorganize the Nazi party like a government in preparation for taking up power.10This was not easy since the Nazi party and its paper had been banned and its members scattered. In 1925, he managed to convince the then Prime minister to lift the ban and published an article of a new beginning in the Volkischer Beobachter paper.
In 1929, Germany suffered the great depression owing to its reliance on foreign capital. This made it very easy for Hitler, an eloquent public speaker, to make it for his Nazi party in the 1930 September elections.
In the wake of Hitler’s victory, his attitude towards the Jewish took the ground as the Nazi storm troopers celebrated the victory by destroying the Jewish shops, restaurants, and department stores. In 1932 Germans went into a presidential election, and Hitler decided to run for the post against President Hindenburg, but he did not succeed. In 1933, Hitler was sworn in as chancellor, and he became very devoted to bringing down the German democratic republic in order to end democracy.He did not have any intentions to abide by the democratic rules but used his position as a stepping stone to dictatorial power and achieved his Nazi revolution. He increased the number of the Nazi members in the Reichstag in order to make it easy to pass his preferred laws legally. With time Hitler managed to use the president to turn things around, including the army, to his favor, and slowly, they managed to take over the states throughout Germany.
The political enemies of the Nazi’s were arrested and subjected to harsh conditions and torture. This marked the beginning of Hitler’s dictatorial power. Anyone who did not conform to his rules or talked negatively was arrested and subjected to torture. Hitler later came up with an act,” Law for Removing the Distress of the people and the Reich.”
The act was voted in, thereby marking the end of democracy in Germany and the legal establishment of Hitler’s dictatorship. In his law, it was clear that the state was supreme to all individuals. All the individuals, on the other hand, were subordinate servants of the state and were to remain obedient to the Fuhrer. Those who disagreed were disposed of. All the German schools were obligated to educate the youths for the service of the Volk and the state in the national socialist spirit. The national socialist teachers taught the Nazi propaganda as true and forced students to recite them.
In response to his tough measures, the Bureaucrats, industrialists, and intellectual persons came out to support him. After the enabling of the act, a national boycott of Jewish shops and department stores was held by the Nazi’s following the orders of one minister Joseph Goebbels. Tracing from his book, Hitler had no place for the Jews and regarded them as the “Eternal enemies.” His thoughts and attitude towards the Jewish since his youth age was well executed in action during his dictatorial regime. The boycott was followed by the enacting of laws that denied the Jewish their rights. In his reign, there were 400 laws and decrees that were directed to the Jews only. The Jewish academies and artistic communities in German cities were taken away from them, following the rules, regulations, restrictions, prohibitions, and bans that were enacted against them. It reached to heights of prohibiting intermarriages and denial of personal freedom. The Germans and the Jews, in his error, lived very frustrating regimes of power.
Hitler was devoted to reviving the Germanic spirit alongside its racial and military qualities and putting an end to Jewish intellectualism. Before his regime, Germany was recognized for its scientific innovation, but this quickly diminished under Hitler. Many intellectuals, such as professors, were forced to forgo their intellectuality and took oaths of the Nazi of intelligence.
Hitler later managed to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia forcefully by manipulating the leaders and issuing death threats. This is also expressed in Mein Kampf, where he says that the supreme had a right to acquire more land by force for its expanding population; in conclusion, we find that the ideas on race and culture that Hitler had expressed in his book came into reality when he gained power. His idea that races were not equal and that only the supreme Germans had power came to be practiced in his regime. He removed all the Jewish intelligence in favor of his Nazi propaganda. He forced all other individuals who he regarded as inferior to conform to his ideologies or face execution. Hitler remains a symbol of the evil leaders in the history of politics and a great threat to democracy. He was a leader who could not cope with defeat but instead blamed his counterparts for betrayal. His regime depicted the dangers of nationalism, the consequences of racism, and the significance of democracy. Hitler committed suicide in 1945 by shooting himself.
Bibliography
Davidson, E. The Making of Adolf Hitler. Macmillan Pub. Co 1977 p 112-125.
Maser, W. Hitler: legend, myth & reality. Harper & Row. 1973 p 24-46.
Nowadays, many credible and educative sources could be used to learn the human history and the development of the events which promoted the creation of the present world. Mein Kampf is one of the most provocative and interesting historical works that help to understand the backgrounds of World War II. The main peculiarity of this book is its author, Adolf Hitler. Therefore, it is not a surprise that many readers find themselves as if they were listening to Hitler’s speeches directly and absorbing each of his ideas. Though Hitler combined the worst human characteristics, it is wrong to neglect the fact that his skills and intentions made him a world leader, and Mein Kampf is the source that describes the creation of the person that made nations unite and be afraid of him for several years.
Beginning from the time when he lived with his parents in Braunau-on-the-Inn and admired every single day of his life and ending by the description of “an epoch of racial adulteration” when it was necessary to follow the duty of “preserving the best elements of its racial stock” (Hitler 557), Hitler introduced his life as it was from his point of view without any guesses or doubts. He knew that his book could be available to many people in different epochs, and he was not afraid to share his fears, anger, weaknesses, and confidence. On the one hand, Hitler mentioned: “I thank heaven that I can look back to those happy days and find the memory of the helpful” (14).
This ability to focus on the past and have feelings for something important in his life makes him an ordinary person with certain dreams and plans, a person, who is ready to use his past to improve his future. On the other hand, it seems that the author tries to escape all possible human feelings to become a strong leader. “When the individual is no longer burdened with his own consciousness of blame… then and only then will he have that inner tranquillity and outer force to cut off drastically and ruthlessly all the parasite growth” (Hitler 32). It is one of the particularly significant quotes in the book because it introduces Hitler as a self-assured person with an ability to divide people into categories and hate not one person or several people only, but a whole nation, whose representatives aimed at “disarming the intellectual leaders of the opposite race” and mask tactics and fool victims talking about “the equality of all men, no matter what their race or color may be” (Hitler 262).
In general, Mein Kampf may be considered as one of the best sources that could describe the development of one of the most successful leaders in the whole world. Hitler was cruel and confident in his correctness. However, the book shows that even under the mask of one of the cruelest people in the world, there is a boy with his own dreams and intentions to have a happy life.
Work Cited
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Translated by James Murphy, Hurst & Blackett, 2014.
The provided passage is taken from Mein Kampf (My Struggle), the most known work of Adolf Hitler, the infamous leader of the NSDAP since 1921, and the Führer of Nazi Germany in 1934-1945. The passage can be found in the first volume of the book, in Chapter 11 (“People and Race”), paragraph 25.
The book was written in the times when Germany had recently lost the First World War and faced severe restrictions imposed on it by the victors. The restrictions (given in the Treaty of Versailles) included a partial occupation of German territories by France, and huge amounts of reparations, amounting to approximately 33-56 billion American dollars. The country that gave birth to a number of prominent researchers, developers, physicians, writers, and artists, and had been one of the most developed countries before World War I, crumbled because of the war and was staggering to recover from all the losses and reparations.
Many Germans, stripped of hope, developed resentment, and National-Socialist ideology found fertile grounds in these people. Mein Kampf, an autobiographical manifesto of Adolf Hitler, was among the texts that planted the seeds of National-Socialism in these grounds. In the book, the Führer explains his National-Socialist views and elaborates on his vision of the future of Germany and the world. It is also important to point out that Hitler joined the NSDAP in 1919 and became its leader two years later. However, in 1923, he organized the Beer Hall Putsch, failed, and was imprisoned. Hitler wrote his work while in jail, and released it in 1925-1926.
The book consists of two volumes. The first volume concentrates much on the author’s biography. The facts of his biography are mixed with his political ideas (such as his thoughts about certain historical events, mostly, plus certain theoretical items such as the hierarchy of races); Hitler gives them much attention and shows how and from what these ideas developed. The second volume focuses more on the National Socialist movement and how Hitler perceives the social and the world order, the role of the Party, the state and the leader, the opposing ideologies, etc. As for the passage in question, it can be found in Chapter 11 (“People and Race”) of the first volume.
Before this passage, Hitler states that in nature, species breed separately and do not mix and that the strongest representatives survive and give birth to the next generations. Then, Hitler claims that the same should be happening in human society (the analogs of species for him here are races). In the passage in question, he says that “the Aryan race,” the founders of civilization, created everything that is known as art, science, and culture, and that in order to retain this heritage and multiply it, “he” (“the Aryan race”) must remain pure. Further, Hitler asserts that there are races that could maintain this heritage, but not multiply it and that there are races that can only destroy civilization and thus deserve no mercy from the superior race. Hitler then dedicates much attention to how atrocious Jews are and how they leech society.
The given passage is rather important for the work as a whole, for it effectively summarizes Hitler’s idea of superiority of “the Aryan race” and explains that, according to the author’s views, “he” (“the Aryan race”) bears the full responsibility for the rise of civilization, of everything that is valued, and that should “he” vanish or be suppressed, the civilization will crumble and fall. The idea of racial superiority is one of the main principles, if not the main principle, of Nazism.
As it was mentioned, National-Socialism found fertile ground in many people of Germany after World War I. The hopelessness and the resentment that those people suffered from allowed them to adopt the flattering idea that they were great but unfairly suppressed race. The book was aimed at this audience. The work contains numerous contradictions (for instance, Hitler appeals to the ideas of both evolution and divine creation).
The logic is mostly poor (for example, the mentioned comparison of different races of humanity to different animal species; the crude comparison of things that take place in wildlife to things that happen in the human society, and the repeating assortment that it is “natural” for the society to act in similar ways, and that not acting in these ways is “a deviation,” etc.). The statements usually contain too much generalization, especially if the fact that the author mostly does not provide the basic facts to generalize from (for instance, in the paragraph from which the discussed passage is taken, it is, in fact, asserted that it is obvious that all the today’s civilization is the product of “the Aryan race”; but it is hard to see from what premises Hitler draws such conclusions).
Still, for a reader who is not trained or used to noticing such subtleties, the logic is very truth-like; in addition, it is reinforced by constant assertions that the author’s thoughts are “natural” and “obvious.” This makes the text of the work look plausible to many readers. Combined with a rather good style of writing, this allows the book to easily convince more susceptible readers (at whom the book is aimed) of the correctness of Hitler’s assertions.
Bibliography
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Vol. 2. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. Web.
Hitler, Adolf. “Mein Kampf.” National Action London. Web.