Books in my Backseat: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

As those who know me are aware, the back seat of my car always has a number of books in it which are in various stages of being read by me. Family members are tempted to call my Corolla “The Book Mobile.”

Among the various theological and spiritual tomes floating around the backseat is usually a volume of history. Recently I have been slowly wending my way through volume one of Ian Kershaw’s magisterial biography of Adolf Hitler. I am currently about half way through the massive volume, the chapter narrating the events of 1930, the Nazis’ breakthrough year.

I must report that it is an engrossing read. I feel myself being drawn more and more into this nightmare slowly unfolding as the Weimar Republic commits suicide. Kershaw presents each step in the development of the Dictator, skewering facile explanations for Hitler, while following clues for his character evolution to reasonable and illuminating conjectures.

A few things that strike me today as I consider the book:

The Hitler that emerges from these pages is an enigma in many ways. He was first and foremost a public speaker and propagandist of the first order. That, combined with his emerging consciousness that he was the destined Führer after the failed Putsch, made for a dangerous and volatile mixture. From a psychological perspective, although the psycho-biographical card can be overplayed, Hitler was damaged goods, with an inability to make significant interpersonal attachments, sexual or otherwise, and bravado coupled with an inability to make decisions at crucial moments. (On the sexual aspect of his persona, Hitler sometimes referred to the masses to which he spoke and whipped into a frenzy as “feminine.” It would seem that his approach to the German people was orgiastic and sexual, replacing normal relationships.)

What this confronted in me was my image of a buffoon is inaccurate. It is influenced more by Charlie Chaplain and Mel Brooks than the historical record. There were things that were definitely off kilter with the man, but he had some particular gifts and knew how to use them.

One point of interest for me as a Christian is that in the early 1030s as the Nazi movement begins to attract a broader base of support, it came from the Protestant elements of society far more than the Catholic (even though the movement began a decade earlier in largely Catholic Bavaria.) Certainly one of the reasons is that the Catholics had their own center-right party, Zentrum. But might it also have to do with what I suggested a few weeks ago about the tie between Protestantism and the Nation/State? And at this juncture in Nazi history the appeal from Hitler was less to anti-Semitism (which was played down to attract the bourgeoisie) and more toward rising above the factionalism of parliamentary democracy by reasserting German greatness coupled with strong anti-Bolshevik rhetoric. The main villains were those who capitulated to the Western powers at Versailles and overthrew the Germany tradition of strong central government represented by the Kaiser.

Were Catholics somehow more immune to this appeal to power and nationalism? It is an interesting question for which I have no solid answer. (And does Mussolini’s Italy offer a counter-argument?)

Can it happen here? That is always the haunting question that accompanies reading histories of the Third Reich. (Why such questions don’t haunt us when we read of the Bolshevik terror is another question.) In fact, some well known writer (whose name escapes me) recently wrote a volume of alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh becomes the leader of a Fascist USA. And certainly some quarters have leveled the argumentum ad Hitlerem toward aspects of our domestic intelligence gathering of late.

But reading Kershaw’s book on the rise of Hitler convinces me that there are not enough significant parallels to warrant such fears. American constitutionalism is vastly more stable than the strange intricacies and asymmetries of Weimar parliamentarianism.

Furthermore, we do not have a vital tradition in our recent memory of the great Leader, who will lead the nation. Democracy was new in the 1920s in Germany. Many, not only Nazis, longed for the return of a Frederick the Great or a Bismark to unify what historically had been a fractious grouping of Germanic principalities. Hitler fused the German desire for an authoritarian leader with his ideology, thus creating the Führer cult. Such a cult was contiguous with their history and political longings. If anything, we have deconstructed our concept of the political leader since at least the Watergate era. No one is longing for a new Lincoln or Washington recidivus.

And, frankly, I don’t care what I read in the letters section of my local rag, Bush is not Hitler. Not even close.

If I had a rating system, I’d give this book five out of five whatevers.