Читать книгу Adolf Hitler - Clemens von Lengsfeld - Страница 20

Mein Kampf

The book made its author well-known as it revealed his plans in detail, but it was rarely entirely read.⁵⁶ The book contained Hitler’s guiding principles such as his demand for lebensraum in the East, which he promised himself through the conquering of Eastern European states and Soviet Russia. In his writings he also revealed his in the meantime unashamed anti-Semitism, whereby he no longer demanded just the expulsion of the Jews from Germany but also their extermination. Thus he maintained that the defeat in the First World War would never happened if the German government had not failed to “wipe out the Jews without mercy by holding 12,000 or 15,000 of them under poison gas”.⁵⁷ Later he would romanticise his time as a “Drummer” as “his period of struggle” and declare Munich, where he had been involved in the putsch against the government, to be the “capital of the movement”.

Even during his trial he had explained his world view with the following words: “I left Vienna as an absolute anti-Semite, as the bitter enemy of the entire Marxist world view, as completely German in my outlook.”⁵⁸ At this point in time his – then by the way still acceptable in polite society – anti-Semitism was precisely what it was for most of his contemporaries: not a racist but a political conviction, a mixture of an anti-stance and an unreflecting demonstration of wild combat readiness. His aim was a chimera of neo-Germanic wider area thinking, anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism.

When the failed artist arrived in the German Kaiserreich in 1913, he hated much and variously: his homeland Austria, the multi-ethnic state, the Jews, Social democracy, the trade unions and the parliament, the masses and people in general. He probably hated himself too at times. And back then those around him must have noticed that there was something particular about the way he hated. Hitler did not harbour a hot-headed hate but a cold hate. He also revealed a lack of feeling, which made clear that he could neither put himself in the place of others nor himself so that an observational distance to himself was impossible. Today this is the very thing that is regarded as making someone human: knowing oneself and understanding others, even in their otherness and difference. The ability to empathise with others was completely lacking in Adolf Hitler. His “inner coldness” was coupled with a particular ability, the designation of which derives from the ancient Greek word for picture – “eidos”. Eidetic people⁵⁹ – as stated by the political psychologist Manfred Koch-Hillebrecht in his analysis of Hitler – can store away their surroundings to the last detail internally and preserve them forever. As with certain high-functioning kinds of autism, a so-called filter is missing, which protects the brain from being overwhelmed by impressions. Everything the eidetic person perceives, he has “made his own”. This applies to all sensory perceptions: visual and acoustic, but also olfactory stimuli.

Hitler’s photographic memory also repeatedly stunned those around him. He was able to remember everything: figures, faces, complete details of weapons systems such as calibres and ranges, even the fleet calendar.⁶⁰ He would again and again quote entire pages of books off by heart or whistle overtures from Wagner operas from memory. This particular faculty was said to be coupled with a fundamental disinterest in what others thought of him. But even the “threatening stare” typical of him, a striking insensitivity to pain, his ability to shed tears at will, his messianic zeal for his mission and his selective perception of reality, which was restricted only to himself and his preconceived, clichéd world view, is attributed by Koch-Hillebrecht to Hitler’s eidetic nature. What, at first glance looked like a defect, proved to be the possibility for the later politician of exerting his will ruthlessly regardless of any limitations of empathy, existing values and customary morals.

This thesis, to attribute certain properties by retrospective analysis to Hitler’s photographic memory, has been criticised as speculative. Associated with this criticism came the warning not to attribute the dictator, supposedly suffering from a personality disorder, with all responsibility for the wrongs. This is because this would then exonerate not only the masses hailing him but also the elite working for him from their guilt. Now as before one should bear in mind Hannah Arendt’s words from the “Banality of Evil”: in 1963 with regard to Eichmann she had adjudged that psychological normality and the ability to commit mass murder, as they were found hand in hand amongst the national socialist perpetrators, did not exclude each other. That, with regard to the monstrous crimes “words fail and thinking founders”⁶¹ may well explain why there are continuously fresh attempts “just to get to grips with the phenomenon” – to use Sebastian Haffner’s words⁶².

in prison at the fortress of Landsberg, February-November 1924: Hitler in the recreation room at the fortress with Emil Maurice, Hermann Kriebel, Rudolf Heß and Christian Weber. Such a cosy get-together was never to be the lot of prisoners under the control of the National Socialists.

When Hitler left the prison after less than one year in December 1924, he was determined to take the “path of legality” as this now seemed to him the only one that promised success. “Instead of achieving power by force of arms, we will get our foot in the door of the Reichstag to the annoyance of those in the centre and the Marxists. Even if it takes longer to outvote them than to shoot them, ultimately, their own constitution will guarantee us success.”⁶³ In view of this apparent reformation, the new Bavarian government was only too glad to fall for Hitler’s tale of the “tamed beast”.⁶⁴ On 26 February the NSDAP could be re-established and its “Führer” once again loudly promote himself and his cause.