Hitler's Detachment, Dogmatism, Uncompromising Nature (Book Notes: Hitler: 1936-1945)

There is a popular perception of Hitler as a charismatic and popular leader. This is all true, to a certain extent, but it's also not the whole story. Hitler was charismatic in public because he practiced hard. Out of the spotlight, more of his true character revealed itself: he tended to be detached from others' suffering, dogmatic in his beliefs, and completely uncompromising.

In Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis, Ian Kershaw describes how these personality traits showed up:

The war was all that mattered to Hitler. Yet, cocooned in the strange world of the Wolf's Lair, he was increasingly severed from its realities, both at the front and at home. Detachment ruled out all vestiges of humanity. Even towards those in his own entourage who had been with him for years, there was nothing resembling real affection, let alone friendship; genuine fondness was reserved only for his young Alsatian. ... He never visited a field-hospital, nor the homeless after bomb-raids. He saw no massacres, went near no concentration camp, viewed no compound of starving prisoners-of-war.

His enemies were in his eyes like vermin to be stamped out. But his profound contempt for human existence extended to his own people. Decisions costing the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers were made — perhaps it was only thus possible to make them — without consideration for human plight. As he had told Guderian during the winter crisis, feelings of sympathy and pity for the suffering of his soldiers had to be shut out. For Hitler, the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed were merely an abstraction, the suffering a necessary and justified sacrifice in the 'heroic struggle' for the survival of the people.

Even if we assume that someone's wars of aggression had some legitimate purpose or cause, it would still be abhorrent for a national leader to be so detached from the suffering they are causing. Merely mouthing platitudes about the importance of sacrifice is not enough. A leader who takes their nation to war should be willing and able to do things like visit the wounded and attend military funerals.

Hitler had until Stalingrad been largely exempted from whatever criticisms people had of the regime. That now altered sharply. His responsibility for the debacle was evident. 'For the first time,' as Ulrich von Hassell noted, 'the critical murmurings relate directly to him. To this extent there is a genuine leadership crisis... The sacrifice of most precious blood for the sake of pointless or criminal prestige is again plain to see.'

The relative absence of criticism of Hitler over such a long period of time is one of the most interesting features of Hitler's Third Reich. No matter what happened, people tended to insist that Hitler knew nothing of it and, if he did, he would immediately change things. People always said that the problems were caused by Hitler's underlings who were themselves petty and corrupt, hiding their true behavior from the Führer.

Once Stalingrad hit, though, the reality of the situation became too difficult to pretend that Hitler had nothing to do with things. We must remember that the press had been feeding everyone good news for a long time. Those able to listen to foreign broadcasts knew that the situation wasn't good, but for many the loss of Stalingrad came as a terrible shock. It finally started to wake them up to what was happening around them. It didn't wake Hitler up, though...

Far more gifted individuals than Hitler would have been overstretched and incapable of coping with the scale and nature of the administrative problems involved in the conduct of a world war. Hitler's triumphs in foreign policy in the 1930s, then as war leader until 1941, had not arisen from his 'artistic genius' (as Speer saw it), but in the main from his unerring skill in exploiting the weaknesses and divisions of his opponents, and through the timing of actions carried out at breakneck speed.

Not 'artistic genius', but the gambler's instinct when playing for high stakes with a good hand against weak opponents had served Hitler well in those earlier times. Those aggressive instincts worked as long as the initiative could be retained. But once the gamble had failed, and he was playing a losing hand in a long-drawn-out match with the odds becoming increasingly more hopeless, instincts lost their effectiveness.

Hitler's individual characteristics now fatefully merged, in conditions of mounting disaster, into the structural weaknesses of the dictatorship. His ever-increasing distrust of those around him, especially his generals, was one side of the coin. The other was his unbounded egomania which cholerically expressed itself — all the more pronounced as disasters started to accumulate — in the belief that no one else was competent or trustworthy, and that he alone could ensure victory.

Hitler believed that he was placed in his position by God. He believed that he had been given the task of remaking the world, transforming it into something ultimately better and purer. Hitler demanded absolute loyalty from those around him, but didn't trust others to come up with plans for the goals he had in mind. He exploited the weaknesses of his enemies ruthlessly, but when things turned bad he didn't have any truly new ideas or any means for getting out of his troubles.

Does this sound like any other national leaders you've heard of?

The 'either-or' dogmatism, the stubbornly principled refusal to entertain compromise or concession, had served him well and had invariably proved successful in his political 'career' as long as he was combating weak, divided, and irresolute opponents. But it was a massive and insuperable obstacle when enemy positions were strong and united, when initiative had been irretrievably lost, bargaining power was weakening by the day, and more flexible military tactics and more subtle political skills were desperately needed.

Not just the scale of the monstrous crimes against humanity perpetrated by his regime eliminated the possibility of any search for a negotiated end to the war — which could conceivably have been attained by a different leadership despite the Allied demands for 'unconditional surrender' stipulated in 1943 at Casablanca. His character, and everything he had stood for since entering politics, also categorically ruled it out.

Hitler's temperament... inclined him to impose self-destruction as the alternative having his own way. ...His philosophy of life as 'struggle', his reduction of all elements of conflict stark 'black' and 'white', 'either-or', his instinctively radical stance on matters, precluded any thought of retreat or compromise, leaving only threat of self-destruction as his alternative to domination of his will.

A different leader might have been able to lead Germany to a different conclusion. Hitler, however, was unable to imagine compromise, concessions, or simply settling for less than he originally wanted. Throughout his entire life he always "went for broke." He rarely gambled when he thought he had a good chance of losing. When faced with the prospect of a loss, he would use threats and bluster to force a victory — even at times threatening suicide if he didn't get what he wanted.

What sort of leader eschews negotiation, compromise, and concession? Well, leaders of America's Christian Right in modern America are very much like that. I've never heard of any threatening suicide if they didn't get what they wanted, but they consistently deny the compromise has any value. They regard themselves as emissaries of God and the instruments of God's will. Compromising with their opponents means compromising on what God wants with the enemies of God.

 

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