Adolph Hitler wasn’t fundamentally a political ideologue. He wasn’t very well educated. His ideas were the sort that are somewhat populist and street. People develop such ideas with a kind of intellectual feminism that hasn’t the genius of intellectual vigor. Physical rather than intellectual development is the rule, and that can be dangerous in leaders.
Hitler inherited an anti-intellectual tradition that General Hindenberg (later to lead the Weimar Republic until appointing Hitler to lead) established; he bragged that he had never read a book. Hitler’s origin and personal history can’t be ignored; it shaped his mature outlook on life. The First World War affected his opinions. He won an Iron Cross as a messenger on the battlefield. He was gassed and hospitalized and recovering when the armistice happened. The news gave him a relapse into what people regard as hysteria-induced blindness. Hitler and the veterans generally didn’t believe the war was really lost and that they had been betrayed by leftists and communists. Kaiser Wilhelm II was given an ultimatum to abdicate or there would be a popular revolution because he had been regarded by the German public as losing the war. He quit the job and left for Belgium.
There were some prominent Jews in leadership positions in the near-revolution. One had spoken at the Munich beer hall where Hitler would later lead the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler found it easy to blame the Jews for the armistice and revolution, He was wrong about that though. Hitler also blamed communists for the revolution- they were very active in Germany. When the Russian Revolution happened near the end of World War One the Red visage to the east affected popular opinions.
However it was the German leadership that sent Lenin in a sealed train east to Russia where they knew he would lead the revolution. Probably they had some secret agreement with Lenin to be given the Ukraine in exchange for allowing Lenin to return to Germany and not to invade the new communist state after the revolution. Lenin did sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk after destroying Russia and creating the Soviet Union. Germany owned most of Ukraine until Hitler lost it to the Soviets himself after invading Russia.
Hitler was sent to take over the National Socialist Workers Party by the Wehrmacht leadership. With the aristocracy deposed the 1% needed to restore their position in some way, and Hitler was the key to creating a corporatist government that would let the former aristocracy unite with government at the top level through business. His desire to be a new Caesar was just following the tradition of the Kaiser. Karl Rohm led S.A. Storm Troopers helped let Hitler take over German society and end the republic. Hitler's Storm Troopers: A History of the SA: The Memoirs of Wilfred von Oven
Hitler was a great, charismatic speaker able to lead the populace with a vision of a restored Aryan Germany purified of all of those that had brought Germany to lose the first world war that they could have won if the armistice had not been signed. Hitler was damaged by the war and not the best and brightest in the first place. A peaceful Germany with it’s scientific and engineering brilliance had all it needed. The uneducated veteran of the great war saw nothing besides expansion materially and killing hypothetical opponents.
Corporatism as a political philosophy co-opts the left socialist movement and grafts it into the Aristocratic/Corporate 1%’s will to power. Benito Mussolini invented it, and Hitler used it.
Communists on the left were the enemy. The right of the day and post-hoc are considered to be the fascists/Nazis, that initially were a leftist party. Neither side were U.S. founder style constitutional liberals that are today thought of as conservatives. In a way people never really know what left and right mean outside of a present context. One should use linguistic philosophy and a paradigm like Kripke’s naming and necessity to understand well that the meaning of words can change yet keep a little lasting meaning in some respects. Left and Right just cannot replace a good historical understanding of the people and events, circumstance and pressures, opportunities and challenges that led particular political situations to exist.
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