By Joachim Fest, this is a synopsis of his "The Face of the Third Reich."
The
Incubation Period
The curiously fragmented, neurotic
character of the post- 1918 era brought about by the collapse of a traditional order,
the difficulties of adapting to new forms of state, the loss of economic and
social status by broad sections of the population, and, connected with this,
the widespread fear of life, the exhaustion in the face of a time that was out
ofjoint together with an increasing mass flight into irrationality, the mindless
readiness to renounce reason, and an ever more uninhibited susceptibility to
myth: all this could by itself have led to crisis and distress, but, without
the person of Hitler, never to those extremes, reversals of established order,
mass hysteria and barbaric explosions which actually resulted.
What we call National
Socialism is inconceivable without his person. Any definition of this movement,
this ideology, this phenomenon, which did not contain the name of Hitler would
miss the point. In the story of the movement's rise, as in the period of its triumph
down to its catastrophically delayed end, he was all in one: organizer of the party,
creator of its ideology, tactician of its campaign for power, rhetorical mover
of the masses, dominant focal point, operative centre, and, by virtue of the
charisma which he alone possessed, the ultimate and underived authority:
leader, saviour, redeemer. It was to him that the masses looked in their hunger
for faith.
The pathological factors
which Hitler the individual shared with the post-war society that brought him
to the top may be observed from many different points of view. There was the
overvaluation of the individual and of society that had met with such sudden
disillusionment, the seething desires of restless millions and their inability
to meet the demands of responsible and independent existence, the embittering
`experience of proletarianization that went
hand in hand with a search for objects of blame and hate, the erroneous
attitudes and maniac emotions which made any realistic approach to life
impossible and created that distorted image of man in which both
Hitler and his age saw
themselves.
Adolf Hitler wanted to be
an artist. There is reason to suppose that his choice of the profession was
determined not least by vague notions of the unfettered bohemian life in the
mind of a provincial middle-class boy; it certainly sprang also from a wish to avoid
the demands of a practical training. . . .
For a time he took piano
lessons, until he grew tired of them and gave them up. He visited cafes, the
theatre and the opera. It was the life half of a man of private means, half of
a good-for-nothing, and he was able to lead it thanks to his mother's pension
as a widow. He refused to take up any definite work, a ‘bread-and-butter job,’
as he contemptuously described it. Even at this time his great love was the
music of Richard Wagner, which had an extraordinary power over him.
Filled with faith in his
special vocation, Hitler went in 1907, now in his nineteenth year, to Vienna to
enroll in the painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts; but he failed the
entrance examination and was rejected. . . .
He again tried and failed
to enter the Academy of Fine Arts; after showing his work, he was not even
allowed to take the examination. But he did not give up the aimless life to
which he had mean-while become accustomed. Kubizek, who, as a music` student,
for a time shared with him the room at the back of the house at 29 Stumppergasse,
has given a vivid description of this phase of Hitler's development.` Even then
Hitler used not to get up till midday; he would go for a stroll in Schonbrunn Park,
then sit up late at night over grandiose and senseless projects in which
practical incompetence fought with impatient self-inflation. `
By 1909 the savings left
him by his parents had evidently all been used up, and, still incapable of
leading a regular life, Hitler now began to go downhill. That summer he `spent
chiefly on park benches in the town; then he took refuge in a charity ward at` Meidling.
His subsequent claim to have worked as a labourer on building sites, which` he
even associated with his political awakening, has been proved false. Kubizek already noted with dismay the element
of frenzy in his friend's makeup, the sudden unrestrained attacks of rage, the
wild outbursts, the capacity for hatred. Hitler's growing lack of human
contact, his inability to communicate, turned his conflicts inwards, where they
renewed and intensified his aggressions. These in turn merely increased his
isolation. Right up to the end, even when he was parading in triumph before
hundreds of thousands of people, there remained a curious element of solitude
in his life.
His feeling of superiority,
which was necessary to him after he had failed in every personal challenge he
had met, was founded not only on an arrogant contempt for mankind but also on
the racial-biological twist, which, clearly following in the footsteps of Lanz
von Liebenfels, he gave to his vulgarized Darwinian ideas. In his description of the ‘anti-man’ we come
again and again upon unmistakable projections of Hitler's own character: the
Jews' alleged obsession with revenge, their feelings of inferiority, their lust
to subjugate and destroy, represent the transference on to his enemy of
compulsive character traits which Hitler sensed within himself.
This war promised an end
to his loneliness, despondency and mistakes. At last he could flee from the
misery of his aimless hate, his misunderstood and dammed-up emotions, his
exaltations, into the security of a great community. For the first time in his
life he had work to do, could feel solidarity with others, could identify
himself with the strength and prestige of a powerful institution. For the first
time Adolf Hitler, twenty-five years old, without a trade, for years the inmate
of a men's hostel and a copier of postcards, knew where he belonged. The war
was his second great formative experience, his positive one. He himself
asserted with the telltale arrogance of the drop-out: “The war caused me to
think deeply on all things human. Four years of war give a man more than thirty
years at a university in the way of education in the problems of life.”
He made no friends; he was
the odd man out, the ‘dreamer,’ as they [his List Regiment comrades]
reported almost unanimously. He often sat in a corner “with his helmet on his
head, lost in thought, and none of us was able to coax him out of his apathy.”
He was certainly brave, was twice wounded, and was decorated with the Iron Cross
First and Second Class. And yet he never rose above corporal. His then regimental
adjutant has stated that all his superiors agreed that this doubtless courageous
but extremely odd individual could not be made a sergeant. He would never
command respect.
In the chaos of collapse,
Germany assumed the shape of an enormously magnified men's hostel. Vast armies
of people had been uprooted, threatened by the war or its economic and social
aftermath. In the failure of a whole social order, the type of the failure had
his chance of a fresh start. When society was thrown back to zero, those whose
own lives were at zero had their historic opportunity.
This was Adolf Hitler's
hour. The incubation period was over. In the brooding sullenness of the
previous few years the fermenting elements - hatred, feverish fantasies, pathological
delusions - had mysteriously settled. As Adolf Hitler puts it in the final
chapter on the November Revolution: “I decided to become a politician.”
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