The greater the demands of his perversion became, the more he hated the Jews and the more he talked against them. Everything which was bad was attributed to them. Here was his political career in an embryo state. He now spent most of his time reading books, attending political talks and reading newspapers in cafe houses. He himself tells us in so many words that he skipped through this material and only took out those parts which were useful to him. In other words, he was not reading and listening in order to become educated sufficiently to form a rational judgment of the problem. This would have been a violation of his earlier inhibition on thinking. He read only in order to find additional justification for his own inner feelings and convictions and to rationalize his projections. He has continued this technique up to the present time. He does a great deal of reading on many diverse subjects but he never forms a rational opinion in the light of the information but only pays attention to those parts which convince him that he was right to begin with. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
In the evening he would return to his flophouse and harangue his associates with political and anti-Semitic speeches until he became a joke. This, however, did not disturb him too much. On the contrary, it seemed to act as a stimulant for further reading and the gathering of more arguments to prove his point of view. It was as though in trying to convince others of the dangers of Jewish domination, he was really trying to convince himself of the dangers of being dominated by his perversion. Perhaps Hitler is really referring to his perversion when he writes:
“During the long pro-war years of peace certain pathological features had certainly appeared. . .There were many signs of decay which ought to have stimulated serious reflection.” (MK, 315)
The same may also be true when he says:
“How could the German people’s political instincts become so morbid? The question involved here was not that of a single symptom, but instances of decay which flared up now in legion…which like poisonous ulcers ate into the nation now here, now there. It seemed as though a continuous flow of poison was driven into the farthest blood vessels of this one-time heroic body by a mysterious power, so as to lead to ever more severe paralysis of sound reason and of the simple instinct of self-preservation.” (MK, 2O1)
As time went on the sexual stimulation o. the Viennese environment seemed to aggravate the demands of his perversion. He suddenly became overwhelmed by the role that sex plays in the life of the lower classes and the Jews. Vienna became for him “the symbol of incest” and he suddenly left it to seek refuge with his ideal mother, Germany. But his pre-war days in Munich were not different from those he left behind in Vienna. His life was still one of extreme passivity and although we know little about them we can surmise that his days were filled with inner troubles.
The first World War.
Under these circumstances, we can understand why he thanked God for the first World War. For him it represented an opportunity of giving up his individual war against himself in exchange for a national war in which he would have the help of others. It also represented to him, on an unconscious level, an opportunity of redeeming his mother and assuming a masculine role for himself. Even at that time we may suppose he had inklings that he would be the Great Redeemer. It was not only his mother he was going to redeem, but also himself.
His advent in the German Army was really his first step in attempting to redeem himself as a social human being. No longer was he to be the underdog for he was joining forces with those who were determined to conquer and become great. Activity, replaced his earlier passivity to a large degree. Dirt, filth, and poverty were left behind and he could mingle with the chosen people on an equal footing. But for him this was not enough. As we. have pointed out in an earlier section, he was not content to be as clean as the average soldier. He had to go to the other extreme and become exceedingly clean. Whenever he returned from the front he immediately sat down and scrupulously removed every speck of mud from his person, much to the amusement of his comrades. Mend, his comrade during this time relates an experience at the front when Hitler upbraided one of the other men for not keeping himself clean and called him a “manure pile”, which sounds very much like a memory of himself in Vienna.
During this period, as previously mentioned, his passive feminine tendencies were finding an outlet in his abasive conduct towards his officers. It looks as though he had not progressed sufficiently far in his conquest of himself to maintain a wholly masculine role. But with the help of others and the guidance of his respected officers he was making some progress toward what appeared to be a social adjustment. The final defeat of Germany, however, upset his well-laid plans and shattered his hopes and ambitions.
The defeat of Germany.
Nevertheless, it was this event which proved to be the turning-point in his life and determined that he would be an outstanding success rather than a total failure. UNconscious forces, some of which had been dormant for years, were now reawakened and upset his whole psychological equilibrium. His reaction to this event was an hysterical attack which manifested itself in blindness and mutism. Although the hysterical blindness saved him from witnessing what he regarded as an intolerable spectacle, it did not save him from the violent emotional reactions it aroused. These emotions, we may assume, were similar to those which he had experienced as a child when he discovered his aprents in intercourse. It seems logical to suppose that at that time he felt his mother was being defiled before his eyes but in view of his father’s power and brutality he felt himself utterly helpless to redeem her honor or to save her from future assaults. If this is true, we would expect that he swore secret vengance against his father and, as has been shown, there is evidence to this effect.
Now the same thing was happening again but instead of his real mother it was his ideal mother, Germany, who was being betrayed, corrupted and humiliated and again he was unable to come to her rescue. A deep depression set in of which he writes:
“What now followed were terrible days and even worse nights. Now I knew that everything was lost….In those nights my hatred arose, the hatred against the originators of this deed.”
But again he was weak and helpless - a blind cripple lying in hospital. He struggled with the problem:
“How shall our nation be freed from the chains of this poisonous embrace?”
It would seem that the more he thought about it, the more his [unreadable] him that all was lost. He probably despised and condemned himself for his weakness and as his hatred continued to rise in the face of this frustrating experience he vowed ten and there:
“To know neither rest nor peace until the November Criminals had been overthrown…”
Undoubtedly his emotions were, extremely violent and would serve as a powerful motive for much of the retaliation which becomes so prominent in his later behavior. There are, however, many ways of retaliating which do not involve a complete upheaval and transformation of character such as we find in Hitler at this time.
From our experience with patients we know that complete transformations of this kind usually take place only under circumstances of extreme duress which demonstrate to the individual that his present character structure is no longer tenable. Naturally we do not know exactly what went on in Hitler’s mind during this period or how he regarded his own position. We do how, however, that under such circumstances very strange thoughts and fantasies pass through the minds of relatively normal people and that in the case of neurotics, particularly when they have strong masochistic tendencies, these fantasies can become extremely absurd. Whatever the nature of these fantasies might have been, we may be reasonably sure that they involved his own safety or well-being. Only a danger of this magnitude would ordinarily cause an individual to abandon or revolutionize his character structure.
It may be that his nightmares will yield a clue. These, it may be remembered, center on the theme of his being attacked or subjected to indignities by another man. It is not his mother who is being attacked, but himself. When he wakes from these nightmares he acts as though he were choking. He gasps for breath and breaks out in a cold sweat. It is only with great difficulty that he can be quieted again because frequently there is a hallucinatory after-effect and he believes he sees the man in his bedroom.
Under ordinary circumstances, we would be inclined to interpret this as the result of an unconscious wish for homosexual relations together with an ego revulsion against the latent tendency. This interpretation might apply to Hitler, too, for to some extent it seems as though he reacted to the defeat of Germany as a rape of himself as weel as of his symbolic mother. Furthermore, while he was lying helpless in the hospital, unable to see or to speak, he could well have considered himself an easy object for homosexual attack. When we remember, however, that for years he chose to live in a Vienna flophouse which was known to be inhabited by many homosexuals and later on associated with several notorious homosexuals, sych as Hess and Roehm, we cannot feel that this form of attack, alone, would be sufficient to threaten his integrity to such an extent that he would repudiate his former self.
A further clue to his thoughts during this period may be found in his great preoccupation with propaganda which, in his imagery is almost synonomous with poison.
“Slogan after slogan rained down on our people.”
“…the front was flooded with this poison.”
“…for the effect of its language on me was like that of spiritual vitrtol… I sometimes had to fight down the rage rising in me because of this concentrated solution of lies.”
This type of imagery probably has a double significance. There is considerable evidence to show that as a child he believed that the man, during intercourse, injected poison into the woman which gradually destroyed her from within and finally brought about her death. Ths is not an uncommon belief in childhood and in view of the fact that his mother died from a cancer of the breast, after a long illness, the belief may have been more vivid and persisted longer in Hitler than in most children. On the other hand, the importance of poison in connection with his perversion has already been considered. We know about his inhibitions against taking certain substances into his mouth. These were not present during the early days of his career but developed much later in connection with his transformed character.
In view of all this it may not be too far-fetched to suppose that while he was fantasying [sic] about what the victors might do to the vanquished when they arrived, his masochistic and perverse tendencies conjured up the thought that they might attack him and force him to eat dung and drink urine (a practice which, it is alleged, is fairly common in Nazi concentration camps). Interestingly enough, this idea is incorporated in the colloquial expression “to eat the dirt of the victors.” And in his weakened and helpless condition he would be unable to ward off such an attack. Such an hypothesis gains credence when we review the behavior of Nazi troops in the role of conquerors.
Transformation of character.
Although a thought of this kind would have certain pleasurable aspects to a masochistic person, it would also arouse fear of consequences together with violent feelings of guilt and disgust. If the thought kept recurring at frequent intervals and refused to be suppressed, we can easily imagine that it might drive an individual into such depths of despair that death would appear as the only solution. Hitler’s fear of death has already been reviewed and it is possible that it was this alternative which shocked him out of his former self. Certain it is that in his public utterances, as well as in his actions, he attributes extraordinary powers to the fear of death.
“I shall spread terror by the surprise employment of my measures. The important thing is the sudden shock of an overwhelming fear of death.”
And in MEIN KAMPF he tells us that:
“In the end, only the urge for self-preservation will eternally succeed. Under its pressure so-called ‘humanity’, as the expression of a mixture of stupidity, cowardice, and imaginary superior intelligence, will melt like snow under the March sun.”
Sentiments of this sort suggest rather strongly that he was brought face to face with the prospect of his own death and that in order to save himself he had to rid himself of a bad conscience as well as the dictates of the intellect. The following quotations illustrate his attitude towards conscience and the need of rendering it inactive:
“Only when the time comes when the race is no longer overshadowed by the consciousness of its own guilt, then it will find internal peace and external energy to cut down regardlessly and brutally the wild shoots, and to pull up the weeds.”
“Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision.”
“I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge; from the dirty and degrading modifications of a chimera called conscience and morality”
And of the intellect he says:
“The intellect has grown autocratic and has become a disease of life,”
“We must distrust the intelligence and the conscience and must place our faith in our instincts.”
Having repudiated these two important human functions, he was left almost entirely at the mercy of his passions, instincts and unconscious desires. At the crucial moment these forces durged to the fore in the form of an hallucination in which an inner voice informed him that he was destined to redeem the German people and lead them to greatness. This, for him, was a new view of life. It opened new vistas to him particularly in connection with himself. Not only did it confirm the vague feeling he had had since childhood, namely, that he was the “Chosen One” and under the protection of Providence, but also that he had been saved for a divine mission. This revelation served to crystallize his personality on a new pattern. He writes:
“In the hours of distress, when others despair, out of apparently harmless children, there shoots suddenly heros of death-defying determination and icy coolness of reflection. If this hour of trial had never come, then hardly anyone would ever have been able to guess that a young hero is hidden in the beardless boy. Nearly always such an impetus is needed in order to call genius into action. Fate’s hammer-stroke, which then throws the one to the ground, suddenly strikes steel in another, and while now the shell of everyday life is broken, the erstwhile nucleus lies open to the eyes of the astonished world.”
In another place he writes:
“A fire had been lighted, and out of its flames there was bound to come some day the sword which was to regain the freedom of the Germanic Siegfried and the life of the German nation.”
How, one may ask, was it possible for a person with Hitler’s past life and abnormal tendencies to take this seriously? The answer is relatively simple. He believed it because he wanted to believe it - in fact, had to believe it in order to save himself. All the unpleasantries of the past he now interpreted as part of a great design. Just as it was Fate which ordained he should be born on the Austrian side of the border, so it was Fate which sent him to Vienna to suffer hardships in order to take the “milk-sop out of him by giving him Dame Sorrow as a foster-mother” and “kept him at the front where any negro could shoot him down when he could have rendered a much more worthwhile service elsewhere,” and so it was probably Fate which decreed his past life and tendencies. These were the crosses he had to bear in order to prove his mettle. He might have been speaking about himself when he said of Germany:
“…if this battle should not come, never would Germany win peace. Germany would decay and at the best would sink to ruin like a rotting corpse. But that is not our destiny. We do not believe that this misfortune which today our God sends over Germany has no meaning: it is surely the scourge which should and shall drive us to new greatness, to a new power and glory…”
Before. this new greatness, power ana glory could be achieved, however, it was necessary to conquer the misfortune. The misfortune in Hitler’s case, so he probably thought, was the emotional identification he had made with his mother during childhood. He. had used this as a cornerstone for his personality which, instead of leading to greatness as he had hoped, had carried him to the brink of degradation, humiliation and self-destruction. It exposed him to untold dangers which were no longer compatible with self-preservation. Consequently, if we were to survive he must rid himself not only of his conscience and intellect but of all the traits which were associated with false “humanity”. In its place he must set a personality which was in keeping with the “Law of Nature”. Only after he had achieved this transformation could he feel safe from attack. To overcome his weakness and to grow strong became the dominant motive of his life.
“…feels the obligation in accordance with the Eternal Will that dominates this universe to promote the Victory of the better and stronger, and to demand the Submission of the worse and weaker.”
“A stronger generation will drive out the weaklings because in its ultimate form the urge to live will again and again. break the ridiculous fetters of a socalled ‘humanity’ of the individual, so that its place will be taken by the ‘humanity of nature’, which destroys weakness in order to give its place to strength.”
If our hypothesis concerning his mental processes while he lay helpless in Pasewalk Hospital is correct, we my assume that in order to quiet his fears he sometimes imagined himself as a person who far surpassed his enemies in all the “virile” qualities. Under these circumstances he could conquer his enemies and do to them what he now feared they would do to him. This is, of course, pure wishful thinking, but evidently this play of imagery yielded him so much pleasure that he unconsciously identified himself with this super-man image. We would guess that it was at the moment when this mechanism, which is known as “Identification with the Aggressor”, operated, that the aforementioned hallucination was produced. He was no longer the weak and puny individual who was exposed to all kinds of attacks and indignities. On the contrary, he was fundamentally more powerful than all the others. Instead of his being afraid of them, they should be afraid of him.
The image Hitler created was a form of compensation for his own inferiorities, insecurities and guilts. Consequently the image negated all his former qualities and turned them into their opposites and to the same degree. All the human qualities of love, pity, sympathy and compassion were interpreted as weaknesses and disappeared in the transformation.
“All passivity, all inertia (became) senseless, inimical to life.”
“The Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate pity-ethics. ‘
“Unless you are prepared to be pitiless you will get nowhere.”
In their place we find what Hitler’ s warped mind conceived to be the super-masculine view:
“…if a people is to become free it needs pride and will-power, defiance, hate, hate and once again hate.”
“Brutality is respected. Brutality and physical strength. The plain man in the street respects nothing but brutal strength and ruthlessness.”
“We want to be the supporters of the dictatorship of national reason, of national energy, of national brutality and resolution.”
Anti-Semitism.
When the “Identification with the Aggressor” mechanism is used, however, there is no conscious struggle within the personality in which the new personality gradually overcomes the old one. The identification takes place outside the realm of consciousness and the individual suddenly feels that he is this new person. There is no process of integration or assimilation. The old personality is automatically suppressed and its characteristics are projected onto some external object against which the new personality can carry on the struggle. In Hitler’s case, all his undesirable characteristics were projected onto the Jew. To Hitler he became Evil incarnate and responsible for all the world’s difficulties, just as Hitler’s earlier femininity now appeared to him to be the source of all his personal difficulties, This projection was relatively easy for him to make inasmuch as in his Vienna days the Jew had become for him the symbol of sex, disease and his perversion. Now another load of undesirable qualities was poured upon his head with the result that Hitler now hated and despised the Jew with the same intensity as he hated his former self.
Obviously, Hitler could not rationalize his projection as long as he stood by himself as a single individual, nor could he combat the Jew single-handed. For this he needed a large group which would fit the picture he had created. He found this in defeated Germany as a whole. At the close of the war it was in a position almost identical with his own before the transformation had taken place. It, too, was weak and exposed to further attack and humiliation. It, too, had to be prepared to eat the dirt of the conquerors and during the inflation period, it, too, was confused, pasive and helpless. It, therefore, made an excellent symbol of his earlier self and Hitler again shifted his personal problems to a national and racial scale where he could deal with them more objectively. Providence had “given” him the spark which transformed him over-night. It was now his mission to transform the remainder of the German people by winning them to his view of life and the New Order. The Jews now played the same role in the life of Germany as his effeminate, masochistic and perverse adjustment had played in his own life. He now resolved to become a politician.
Many writers have expressed the opinion that Hitler’s anti-Semitism is motivated primarily by its great propaganda value. Undoubtedly, anti-Semitism is the most powerful weapon in his propaganda arsenal and Hitler is well aware of it. He has even expressed the opinion on several occasions that the [Page 226] Jews would make Germany rich. All our informants who knew him well, however, agree that this is superficial and that underneath he has a sincere hatred for the Jews and everything Jewish. This is in complete agreement with our hypothesis. We do not deny that he often uses anti-Semitism porpagandistically when it suits his purpose. We do maintain, however, that behind this superficial motivation is a much deeper one which is largely unconscious. Just as Hitler had to exterminate his former self in order to get the feeling of being great and strong, so must Germany exterminate the Jews if it is to attain its new glory. Both are poisons which slowly destroy the respective bodies and bring about death.
“All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died off through blood-poisoning.”
“…alone the loss of purity of the blood destroys the inner happiness forever; it eternally lowers man, and never again can its consequences be removed from body and mind.”
The symbolism in tehse quotations is obvious and the frequency with which they recur in his speaking and writing bears testimony to their great importance in his thinking and feeling processes. It would seem from this that unconsciously he felt that if he succeeds in ridding himself of his personal poison, his effeminate and perverse tendencies as symbolized in the Jew, then he would achieve immortality. [Page 227]
In his treatment of the Jews we see the “Identification with the Aggressor” mechanism at work. He is now practicing on the Jews in reality the things he feared the victors might do to him in fantasy. From this he derives a manifold satisfaction. First, it affords him an opportunity of appearing before the world as the pitiless brute he imagines himself to be; second, it affords him an opportunity of proving to himself that he is as heartless and brutal as he wants to be (that he can really take it); third, in eliminating the Jews he unconsciously feels that he is ridding himself, and Germany, of the poison which is responsible for all difficulties; fourth, as the masochist he really is, he derives a vicarious pleasure from the suffering of others in whom he can see himself; fifth, he can give vent to his bitter hatred and contempt of the world in general by using the Jew as a scapegoat; and sixth, it pays heavy material and propagandistic dividends.
Early political career.
Armed with this new view of life Hitler sought for opportunities to put his resolve to become a politician into effect and start on the long road which would redeem Germany and lead her to new greatness and glory. This was not easy in post-war Germany which was now engaged in violent internal strife He remained in the Reserve Army for a time where he engaged in his “first political activity” - that of spying on his comrades. His duties were to mingle with the men in his barracks and engage them in political discussions. Those who voiced opinions with a Communict flavor he reported to his superior officers. Later, when the offenders were brought to trial, it was his job to take the witness stand and give the testimony which would sent these comrades to their death. This was a severe trial for his new character but he carried it off in a brazen and unflinching manner. It must have given him tremendous satisfaction to find that he actually could play this new role in such an admirable fashion. Not long afarwards it was discover that he had a talent for oratory and he was rewarded for his service by being promoted to instructor. The new Hitler, the embryo Fuehrer, was beginning to pay dividends.
“Identification with the Agressor” is, at best, an unstable form of adjustment. The individual always has a vague feeling that something is not as it should be, although he is not aware of its origins. Nevertheless, he feels insecure in his new role and in order to rid himself of his uneasiness he most prove to himself, over and over again, that he is really the type of person he believes himself to be. The result is a snow-ball effect. Every brutality must be followed by a greater brutality, every violence by a greater violence, every atrocity by a great atrocity, every gain in power by a greater gain in power, and so on down the line. Unless this is achieved successfully, the individual begins to feel insecure and doubts concerning his borrowed character begin to creep in together with feelings of guilt regarding his shortcomings. This is the key to an understanding of Hitler’s actions since the beginning of his political activities to the present day. This effect has not escaped the attention of non-psychological observers. Francois-Poncet, for example, writes in the French Yellow Book:
“The Chancellor chafes against all these disappointments with indignant impatience. Far from conducing him to moderation, these obstacles irritate him. He is aware of the enormous blunder which the anti-Jewish persecutions of last November have proved to be; yet, by a contradiction which is part of the dictator’s psychological make-up, he is said to be preparing to enter upon a merciless struggle against the Church and Catholicism. Perhaps he thus wishes to wipe out the memory of past violence with fresh violence…” (p. 49)
The mechanism feeds on itself and must continue to grow in order to maintain itself. Since it has no real foundations to support it, the individual can never quite convince himself that he is secure and need fear no longer. The result is that he can brook no delays but must plunge ahead on his mad career.
Hitler’s political career shows these tendencies to a marked degree. Scarcely had he affiliated himself with the group which had founded the Party than he connived to get control over it. Then followed a rapid expansion of membership, the introductiom of terror, a series of broken promises, collusions and betrayals. Each brought him fresh gains and new power, but the pace was still too slow to satisfy him. In 1923 he believed himself to be strong enough to undertake a Putsch and seize the reins of government. The Putsch failed and Hitler’s conduct during it has been the subject of much comment. There are a number of versions c oncerning what happened. Some report that when the troops fired on them Hitler fell to the ground and crawled through an alley which carried him to safety while Ludendorff, Roehm and Goering marched ahead. Some claim that he stumbled, others that he was knocked down by his bodyguard who was killed. The Nazi version is that he stopped to pick up a small child who had run out into the street and been knocked down! Years later they produced a child on the anniversary of the event to prove the story!
From a psychological point of view it would appear that he turned coward on this occasion and that he did fall down and crawl away from the scene of activities. Although he had usurped considerable power and had reason to have faith in his new character, it seems unlikely that it was sufficient for him to actually engage the recognized authority in physical combat. His attitude towards recognized superiors and authority in general would make such a direct attack improbable. Furthermore, his reactions after his escape would seem to indicate that his new role had temporarily failed. He went into a deep depression and was restrained from committing suicide only by constant reassurances. When he was taken to Landsberg prison he went on a hunger strike and refused to eat for three weeks. This was his response to being placed again in the position of the vanquished. Perhaps memories of his fantasies in the hospital were returning to harass him! It was only after he discovered that his jailers were not unkindly disposed to him that, he permitted himself to be persuaded to take food.
During his stay in Landsberg he became much quieter. Ludecke says:
“Landsberg had done him a world of good. Gone from his manner was the nervous intensity which formerly had been his most unpleasant characteristic.”
It was during this period, that he wrote MEIN KAMPF and we may suppose that his failure in the Putsch made it necessary for him to take a fresh inventory and integrate his new character more firmly. He resolved, at this time, not to try another Putsch in the future but to gain the power by legal means alone! In other words, he would not participate again in an open conflict with the recognized authority.
His rise to power.
It is scarcely necessary for us to trace the history of his rise to power and his actions after he achieved it. They all follow along the same general pattern we have outlined. Each successful step served to convince him that he was the person he believed himself to be but brought no real sense of security. In order to attain this he had to go a step higher and give additional proof that he was not deluding himself. Terror, violence and ruthlessness grew with each advance and every recognized virtue was turned into a vice - a sign of weakness. Even after he became the undisputed leader of the nation, he could not rest in peace. He projected his own insecurities onto the neighboring states and then demanded that they bow to his power. As long as there was a nation or a combination of nations more powerful than Germany, he could never find the peace and security h’ longed for. It was inevitable that this course would lead to war because only by that means could he crush the threat and prove to himself that he need no longer be afraid. It was also inevitable that the war would be as brutal and pitiless as possible for only in this way could he prove to himself that he was not weakening in his chosen course but was made of stuff becoming to his conception of what a victor should be.
Rages.
Although space will not permit a detailed analysis of the operation of the various psyqhological streams we have enumerated, in the determination of his everyday behavior, a few have aroused sufficient speculation to warrant a place in our study. One of the outstanding of these is his rages. Most writers have regarded these as temper-tantrums, his reaction to minor frustrations and deprivations. On the surface they appear to be of this nature and yet, when we study his behavior carefully, we find that when he is confronted by a real frustration or deprivation, such as failure to be elected to the Presidency or being refused the Chancellorship, his behvaior is exactly the opposite. He is very cool and quiet. He is disappointed but not enraged. Instead of carrying on like a spoiled child, he begins immediately to lay plans for a new assault. Heiden, his biographer, describes his characteristic pattern as follows:
“When others after a defeat would have gone home despondently, consoling themselves with the philosophic reflection that it was no use contending against adverse circumstances, Hitler delivered a second and a third assault with sullen defiance. When others after a success would have become more cautious, because they would not dare put fortune to the proof too often and perhaps exhaust it, Hitler persisted and staked a bigger claim on Destiny with every throw.”
This does not sound like a person who would fly into a rage at a trifle.
Nevertheless, we know that he does fly into these rages and launches into tirades on very slight provocation. If we examine the causes of these outbursts, we almost invariably find that the trigger which sets them off is something which he considers to be a challenge of his super-man personality. It may be a contradiction, a criticism or even a doubt concerning the truth or wisdom of something he has said or done, or it might be a slight or the anticipation of opposition. Even though the subject may be trifling or the challenge only by implication, or even wholly imagined, he feels called upon to display his primitive character. Francois-Poncet has also detected and described this reaction. He writes:
“Those who surround him are the first to admit that he now think himself infallible and invincible. That explains why he can no longer bear either criticism or contradiction. To contradict him is in his eyes a crime of ‘lese-majeste’; opposition to his plans, from whatever it may come, is a definite sacrilege, to which the only reply is an immediate and striking display of his omnipotence.”
As soon as his display has served its purpose and cowed his listeners into submission, it is turned off as suddenly as it was turned on. How great is the insecurity which demands such constant vigilence and apprehension!
Fear of domination.
We find this same insecurity at work when he is meeting new people and particularly those to whom he secretly feels inferior in some way. Earlier in our study we had occasion to point out that his eyes had taken over a diffuse sexual function. When he first meets the person he fixates him with his eyes as though to bore through the other person. There is a peculiar glint in them on these occasions which may have been interpreted as an hypnotic quality. To be sure, he uses them in such a way and tries to over-power the other person with them. If he turns his eyes away, Hitler keeps them fixed directly on him or her but if the other person returns this gaze Hitler turns his away and looks up at the ceiling as long as the interview continues. It is as though he were mtching his power against theirs. If he success in overpowering the other person, he rudely follows up his advantage. If, however, the other person refuses to succumb to his glance, he avoids the possibility of succumbing to theirs. Likewise, he is unable to match wits with another person in a straightforward argument. He will express his opinion at length but will not defend it on logical grounds. Strasser says:
“He is afraid of logic. Like a woman he evades the issue and ends by throwing in your face an argument entirely remote from what you were talking about.”
We might suspect that even on this territory he cannot expose himself to a possible defeat which would mar the image he has of himself. He is, in fact, unable to face real opposition on any ground. He cannot speak to a group in which he senses opposition but walks out on his audience. He has run out of meetings with Ludendorff, Gregor Strasser, Bavarian Industrialists, and many others, because he could not risk the possibility of appearing in an inferior light or expose himself to a possible domination by another person. There is reason to suppose that his procrastination is not so much a matter of laziness as it is a fear of coming to grips with a difficult problem. Consequently, he avoids it as long as possible and it is only whe! the situation has become dangerous and disaster lies ahead that his “inner voice” or intuition communicates with him and tells him what course he should follow. Most of his thinking is carried on subconsciously which probably accounts for his ability to penetrate difficult problems and time his moves. Psychological experiments in this field seem to indicate that on this level the individual is often able to solve very complex problems which are impossible him on the level of consciousness. Whenever we turn in studying Hitler’s behavior patterns we find the spectre of possible defeat and humiliation as one of his dominant motivations.
Monuments.
His passion for constructing huge buildings, stadia, bridges, roads, etc., can only be interpreted as attempts to compensate fbr his lack of confidence. These are tangible proofs of his greatness which are designed to impress himself as well as others. Just as he must be the greatest man in all the world, so he has a tendency to build the greatest and biggest of everything. Most of the structures he has erected he regards as temporary buildings. They are, to his way of thinking, on a par with ordinary mortals. The permanent buildings he plans to construct later on. They will be much larger and grander and will be designed to last at least a thousand years. In other words, these are befitting monuments to himself who plans on ruling the German people for that period of time through his new view of life.
It is also interesting to note the frequency with which he uses gigantic pillars in all his buildings. Most of the buildings are almost surrounded by them and he places them in every conceivable place. Since pillars of this sort are almost universally considered to be phallic symbols, we may regard the size and frequency as unconscious attempts to compensate for his own impotence. His huge pageants serve a similar purpose.
Oratory.
No study oh Hitler would be complete without mentioning his oratory talents. His extraordinary gift for swaying large audiences has contributed, perhaps more than any other single factor, to his success and the rartial realization of his ideal. In order to understand the power of his appeal, we must be cognizant of the fact that for him the masses are fundamentally feminine in character. To Hanfstaengl and other informations he has frequently said, “Die Masse ist ein Weib”, and in MEIN KAMPF he writes:
“The people, in an overwhelming majority, are so feminine in their nature and attitude that their activities and thoughts are motivated less by sober consideration than by feeling and sentiment.”
In other words, his uconscious frame of reference, when addressing a huge audience, is fundamentally that of talking to a woman.
In spite of this, his insecurities assert themselves. He never is the first speaker on the program. He must always have a speaker precede him who warms up the audience for him. Even then he is nervous and jittery when he gets up to speak. Frequently he has difficulty in finding words with which to begin. He is trying to get the “feel” of the audience. If it “feels”‘ favorable, he starts in a rather cautious manner. His tone of voice is quite normal and he heals [sic] with his material in a fairly objective manner. But as he proceeds his voice begins to rise and his tempo increases. If the response of the audience is good, his voice becomes louder and louder and the tempo faster and faster. By this time all objectivity has disappeared and passion has taken complete possession of him. The mouth which can never utter a fragment of profanity off the speaker’s platform now pours forth a veritable stream of curses, foul names, vilification and hatred. Hafstaengl compaes the development of a Hitlerian speech with the development of a Wagnerian theme which may account for Hitler’s love of Wagnerian music and the inspiration he derives from it.
This steady stream of filth continues to pour forth until both he and the audisnce are in a frenzy. When he stops he is on the verge of exhaustion. His breathing is heavy and uncontrolled and he is wringing wet with perspiration. Many writers have commented on the sexual components in his speaking and some have described the climax as a veritable orgasm. Heyst writes:
“In his speeches we hear the suppressed voice of passion and wooing which is taken from the language of love; he utters a cry of hate and voluptousness, a spasm of violence and cruelty. All those tones and sounds are taken from the back-streets of the instincts; they remind us of dark impulses repressed too long.”
And Hitler himself says:
“Passion alone will give to him, who is chosen by her, the words that, like beats of a hammer, are able to open the doors to the heart of a people.”
Undoubtedly, he uses speaking as a means of talking himself into the super-man role and of living out the role of “Identification with the Agressor”. He carefully builds up imposing enemies - Jews, Bolsheviks, capitalists, democracies, etc., in order to demolish them without mercy (these are all inventions of the Jews to his way of thinking and consequently in attacking any one of them he is fundamentally attacking the Jews). Under these circumstances. He appears to the naive and unsophisticated listener as the Great Redeemer of Germany.
But that is only one side of the picture. On the other side we have the sexual attack which, in his case, is of a perverse nature. It finds expression in his speaking but due to the transformation of character everything appears in reverse. The steady stream of filth he pours on the heads of his “feminine” audience is the reverse of his masochistic perversion which finds gratification in having women pour their “filth” on him. Even the functions of the physical organs is reversed. The mouth which, under ordinary circumstances, is an organ of injection and is surrounded with inhibitions and prohibitions, now becomes the organ through which filth is ejected. Hitler’s speaking has been aptly described as a “verbal diarrhea”. Rauschning describes it as an oral enema. It is probably this unconscious sexual element in his speaking which holds such a fascination for many people.
His appeal.
A word may be added in connection with the content of his speeches. Strasser sums it up very concisely when he says:
“Hitler responds to the vibrations of the human heart with the delicacy of a seismograph…enabling him, with a certainty with which no conscious gift could endow him, to act as a loudspeaker proclaiming the most secret desires, the least permissible instincts, the sufferings and personal revolts of a whole nation.”
We are now in a position to understand how this is possible for him. In regarding his audience as fundamentally feminine in character, his appeal is directed at a repressed part of their personalities. In many of the German people there seems to be a strong feminine-masochistic tendency which is usually covered over by more “virile’” characteristics but which finds partial gratification in submissive behavior, discipline, sacrifice, etc. Nevertheless, it does seem to disturb them and they try to compensate for it by going to the other extreme of courage, pugnaciousness, determination, etc. Most Germans are unaware of this hidden part of their personalities and would deny its existence vehemently if such an insinuation is made. Hitler, however, appeals to it directly and he is in an excellent position to know what goes on in that region because in him this side of personality was not only conscious but dominant throughout his earlier life.
Furthermore, these tendencies were far more intense in him than in the average person and he had a better opportunity of observing their operation. In addressing an audience in this way he need only dwell on the longings, ambitions, hopes and desires of his earlier life in order to awaken these hidden tendencies in his listeners. This he does with inordinate skill. In this way he is able to arouse the same attitudes and emotions in his listeners that he himself now experiences in connection with this type of adjustment, and is able to direct these into the same channels that he has found useful. Thus he is able to win them to his new view of life which sets a premium on brutality, ruthlessness, dominance, determination, etc., and which frowns upon all the established human qualities. The key throughout will be to strive to be what you are not and to do your best to exterminate that which you are. The behavior of the German armies has been an outstanding manifestation of this contradiction. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire To the psychologist it seems as though the brutality expressed towards the people of the , occupied countries is motivated not only by a desire to prove to themselves that they are what they are not, but also by, a vicarious masochistic gratification which they derive from an identification with their victims. On the whole, one could say of many of the German troops what Rauschning said of Hitler:
“…there lies behind Hitler’s emphasis on brutality and ruthlessness the desolation of a forced and artificial inhumanity, not the amorality of the genuine brute, which has after all something of the power of a natural force.”
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