Charmed: Hitler's Influence over Germany

Charmed: Hitler’s Influence over Germany

J.M. Rogers

 

            To crudely simplify and then castigate the causes and effects of societal crises is the fundamental basis of radical thought. Such views rely on human emotion and personal ideology rather than pragmatic resolutions to issues that are rooted in logical reasoning. Societal problems develop in myriad ways that are too complex to explain with the simplistic rhetoric radicals offer, and yet, such explanations are undeniably attractive to those members of society facing unfamiliar or seemingly unsolvable dilemmas. What draws people to radical agendas are the uncomplicated solutions they offer, which often exaggerate the individuals’ intellectual grasp of the crisis at hand. When a radical leader gains mass popularity, such as in the case of Adolf Hitler, it is a direct result of the leader’s ability to manipulate the thoughts and feelings of the audience through provocations of fear, which they then offer to remedy. In such a case, the control of one’s followers becomes increasingly absolute, as the leader becomes their hero, whom they in turn worship. The followers then subordinate their views to the leader’s, after which any attempt to reclaim personal freedom requires a revolutionary act. Such a relationship developed between Hitler and a majority of the German people between 1923 and 1945. Drawn in by his unquestionable certainty about the cause of Germany’s issues and the novel solutions for eradicating these issues, which he claimed would provide inroads to former glory, Germans committed themselves to the radical directive of an individual whom they trusted implicitly and were willing to commit horrible acts to appease.[1] 

            For many, Hitler’s agenda represented a change of pace. Sometimes that pace was perceived as forward, towards a new future; at other times, it was a pace backward, towards the glory of monarchy, but always, it was a pace towards a utopian vision of society that would relieve years of suffering. Minute details do not constrain such agendas. Instead, such details become blurred as followers focus on the destination in the distance, allowing vague visions of grandeur to overpower precise cogitation. Hitler spent much of his youth dreaming of such a destination.[2] Amidst the disappointments of his early life, he created an ideological utopia of what he thought society should be, only to find reality rejecting and disappointing. No doubt, men and women like Hermann Goring (1893-1946), Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Rudolf Hess (1894-1987), and Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), likewise, had envisioned some utopia of their own making during their early lives in Germany, which was fraught with economic inconsistencies and rife with the anti-Semitic societal views that Hitler propagated. [3]  It was among such disappointed dreamers that Hitler found his most sycophantic followers. With the Weimar Republic in flames and Germany in the grips of its second crippling economic crisis in a decade, such disenchanted men and women became increasingly frustrated with the protracted nature of the political solutions democratic governance enabled and sought to blame someone for the state of affairs. Overwhelmed by the complexity of international economic issues and pluralist political disputes within Germany, Hitler’s apocryphal resolutions, though anti-Semitic, violent, and unvetted, afforded these individuals a release from the patience necessary to manage modern problems. [4] 

            There were those among Hitler’s followers who were not as blindly loyal as these men and women, and even those who only saw Hitler as a figurehead to parrot their visions, but few could say that they did not feel some attraction to the passionate speeches that the unassuming German roared from the pulpit and the loudspeaker.[5] Those who had no attraction to Hitler’s simplistic rhetoric were often the most pragmatic of German individuals, like Franz von Papen (1879-1969), Alfred Hugenberg (1865-1951), and President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), all of whom saw Hitler for what he was: a loud, emotional, man, with a penchant for attracting the downtrodden of society.[6] All these men sought to use Hitler’s influence for their gain, but they did not feel any unique influence from the charisma that seemed to consume those individuals with uncertainties about present dilemmas and dreams of halcyon days, ahead or behind, in their minds. Hugenberg and Papen personify this feeling of detached implementation better than any others.[7] Both sought to employ Hitler as a subordinate, but as they soon found out, such thoughts were no more realistic than any utopia that the Nazi leader espoused.[8] Like Gunther von Below (1907-1983), they, despite having no personal allure towards Hitler’s charisma, all ended up as subordinates to Hitler’s agendas as the swelling of Nazi loyalists attenuated their ability to act on their original intentions.[9] Eventually, von Papen and Hugenberg defected, but only after realizing they were powerless to challenge the influence Hitler held over the German people.

            Defectors like von Papen and Hugenberg were uncommon, but they occurred. Most chose to go along with the tidal force of public support because increased fanaticism prohibited defection due to the risk of Hitler’s followers implicating them for treason. [10] Some who had started following Hitler, after his trial for the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, eventually came to see the unquestionable certainty that their leader possessed as psychopathy rather than genius, but such revelations often came too late for a clean break.[11] In truth, by 1945, some Germans had begun to realize the grave mistake they had made by placing power in an extremist’s hands.[12] By then, it was too late, however, to dislodge the Nazi regime that gripped the country wholly. Outright disapproval of Hitler and the Nazi machine became illegal, and defeatism became an act of treason, which led to thousands of German citizens’ executions and kept millions who became acquiescent to the atrocities the regime committed.[13]

Despite harrowing recourses, like beheadings and forced suicide, some still chose to defect from the Nazis.[14] General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944) was perhaps the most famous defector, along with Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (1907-1934), both of whom were major players in the most successful assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944.[15] Nevertheless, Operation Valkyrie was merely one example of defection among the Nazi ranks, albeit the most legendary. Gregor Strasser’s (1892-1934) and Ernst Rohm’s (1887-1934) public denials of Hitler’s undisputed power helped set the stage for future defectors, like Beck and Stauffenberg, but these were also Strasser and Rohm’s final acts of defiance, as they were both murdered on  June 30, 1934, during the “Night of Long Knives.”[16] Such high-status murders were critical in establishing that the cost of breaking ranks with Hitler applied to everyone, which effectively discouraged other officers and politicians from speaking out against him publically.

            Strasser and Rohm, much like Beck, Franz Halder (1884-1972), and Werner von Fritsch (1880-1939), all represent a similar form of defector among Hitler’s followers. These men sought personal glory and elevated status rather than following Hitler based upon a quasi-religious infatuation.[17] These professional soldiers remained faithful to the Nazi cause for the prospective booty until the Fuhrer directly curtailed their gains.[18] What Hitler’s radical agenda had promised to these soldiers was an honorable vaunt amidst the historical annals of Teutonic heroes.[19] Despite any misgivings they had about Hitler’s policies, they all clamored at the opportunity to have their names etched into German history. These men were either naïve or blinded by avarice, for Hitler had already displayed, by his treatment of von Papen, Strasser, and Rohm, that he did not intend to share the historical stage with his subordinates.

Even the most delusional individual will awaken with enough cold water. As each of these men discovered, Hitler’s charm was merely a façade for the megalomaniacal nature of his inner persona. He viewed himself as infallible and did not accept blame for failures nor feel any qualms about implicating his staff for his errors.[20] As Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus (1890-1957) discovered, when he defied Hitler’s suicidal orders to hold Stalingrad, even questioning the value of one’s own mortality was an act of betrayal in the face of a command from the Fuhrer, no matter how futile such commands might be.[21] Coupled with a lack of value for his officer’s opinions was a complete lack of loyalty to their respective positions in the Wehrmacht.[22] Immediate dismissal of commanding officers was a common trait that Hitler exhibited from the beginning of his military offensives, and constant reshuffling of military leadership was only possible due to the blind allegiance that young officers, and Nazi hardliners, like Goring and Goebbels, had to the Fuhrer.[23] The most dramatic of these leadership shakeups followed on the tail of his proclamation to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938, after which Werner Fritsch, then General Commander of the Army, was dismissed. Along with Fritsch’s dismissal went the former notions of honor that Hitler held among officers like Ludwig Beck.[24] Among high-ranking officials, many of whom came from noble backgrounds, Hitler’s lack of honor and duty to his officer corps dissolved any thirst they held for historical notoriety alongside their Fuhrer.

            Such preoccupation with honor and prestigious loyalty mattered little to German citizens or military men like Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), Julius Streicher (1885-1946), and the multitudes of SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. Most Germans hungered for bloody reprisal in response to the hardships their country had faced in the aftermath of World War I.[25] These men and women were incensed by Hitler’s anti-Semitic rhetoric, which was strengthened by the social effects of the anti-Bolshevist “stab-in-the-back” legend that Ludwig Beck had begun circulating following the failures of 1918.[26] There was a primal element to the emotions that Hitler provoked in his followers, and the yearning to annihilate “the other” compelled them to commit genuinely atrocious acts under the guise of self-preservation. [27] That anti-Semitism was rife throughout Germany well before Hitler’s rise meant that racism was merely a button the Fuhrer needed to push to garner a vitriolic reaction.[28] When he did, the citizens and soldiers, just like the commanders Himmler and Streicher, followed Hitler down into the heart of darkness with enthusiasm, not because he forced them to behave murderously, but because he enabled them to.[29]

            It is undeniable that when Hitler and the Nazi Party took power that unemployment decreased rapidly, and national pride and unity seemingly reached heights not seen for decades.[30] Still, the effects of national sentiment and economic prosperity cannot fully explain Germans’ determination to continue pursuing the war and persecuting the Jewish population with such sadistic prejudice when military failures suggested a victory for the Reich was unreachable. Until the very end, men and women, citizen and officer alike, fawned over their Fuhrer, eager to impress him, and by so doing, to elevate themselves into his prolonged gaze.[31] While the fear of falling into another economic depression no doubt made Germans more susceptible to the sway of a charismatic leader than usual, one cannot deny that they believed in Hitler and felt he provided the most secure path forward. As a result, they ceased to act independently and chose to outsource their decision-making to a radical sadist whom they worshiped as a savior. Yes, defectors existed, but never in enough numbers to stop the brutal slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust and another five million Romanis in the pursuit of Lebensraum (“living space”). There simply were not enough to stop the forced sterilization and euthanization of the mentally disabled within Germany until many tens of thousands had perished.[32] What was so apparent to foreigners like Winston Churchill (1874-1965), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), and even Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), namely that Hitler was a genocidal lunatic, was beyond the scope of the German people because their eyes were caught in his demonic stare.[33] Ultimately, Hitler’s charisma, and his vision of the future, found a footing because the people of Germany liked what they saw.[34]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Rees, Laurence. Hitler’s Charisma. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.

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[1] Laurence, Rees. Hitler's Charisma (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 23-26.

 

[2] Rees, 9-11, 23-26.

[3] Rees, 26-27,41, 48-49, 53, 97-98.

[4] Rees, 22-26, 77, 139.

[5] Rees, 69-70,72,74, 89, 93-95, 122-123, 147-148, 276-277.

[6] Rees, 69-70, 88-89, 276-277.

[7] Rees, 69-70, 88-89.

[8] Rees, 69-70, 92-93. 

[9] Rees, 93, 276-277.

[10] Rees, 81, 93.

[11] Rees, 41-43, 163.

[12] Rees, 286-289,

[13] Rees, 284, 287,290

[14] Rees, 283.

[15] Rees, 280-281

[16] Rees, 72, 91-94.

[17] Rees, 23, 279-282.

[18] Rees, 123-124, 225.

[19] Rees, 213, 225.

[20] Rees, 97, 203.

[21] Rees, 120, 270-271.

[22] Rees, 120, 123-124.

[23] Rees, 139,149, 265, 287.

[24] Rees, 120, 124.

[25] Rees, 48-49, 139, 143.

[26] Rees, 13-15, 23-24, 48-49.

[27] Rees, 138-139, 143.

[28] Rees, 48-49, 110-113, 234-24.

[29] Rees, 110-111, 139-140, 143-144.

[30] Rees, 100, 106.

[31] Rees, 236, 276, 279.

[32] Rees, 133-135.

[33] Rees, 140,160, 214.

[34] Rees, 143, 213, 230, 250.