By: Laurence Rees
Stop for a moment and imagine Adolf Hitler. Picture it in your mind. What do you see? I think you are seeing an image that is not too different from the portrayal of Hitler in the 2004 movie Downfall. An aggressive, screaming and insensitive character.
German actor Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in this film, shocked viewers so much that one of the main scenes of the film has gone viral on the Internet, being used for various satirical messages with changed subtitles. But while it is true that in his last days Hitler had gone off the rails, that moment does not represent the whole story.
Moreover, the problem is that this image taps into a deep desire, which I think most of us secretly have. We want Hitler to be mad, from start to finish. We want Hitler to be insane because he committed monstrous crimes, especially during World War II, that are easy to explain.
It's simple, we can tell ourselves: Calm down, Hitler was a madman who hypnotized millions of ordinary Germans into doing things against their rational judgment. In fact, he was not crazy and did not hypnotize anyone. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 by democratic means. A good part of the German elite - sharp and wise people - decided to support him. But why did they support a fool? The way Hitler ran his party between 1930 and 1933 showed him to be a shrewd but thoroughly unscrupulous politician.
His calculations about where power really lay in Germany, and how best to manipulate the emotions of ordinary Germans, were highly sophisticated. In addition, Hitler created a large and sincere support. His views often coincided with those of a large number of the German population.
I've been making documentaries and writing books about the Nazis and World War II for 20 years, and I've met hundreds of people who lived through that period – including many who met Adolf Hitler in person. The picture they paint is much more complex and nuanced than the behavior of a madman in the film we mentioned above. Many of them talk in particular about the incredible "charisma" they thought Hitler possessed.
For example, Fridolin von Spaun met Hitler at a dinner with Nazi supporters in the early 1930s. When he saw Hitler staring at him, he felt as if Hitler's eyes were penetrating directly into his innermost thoughts. And when Hitler put his hands on his back for a moment, von Spaun felt "a tremor from his fingers penetrating me". “I actually felt it. It wasn't a nervous tremor. On the contrary, I felt that this man, this body, is simply the means to carry out a great, all-powerful will here on Earth. In my view, this was a miracle," he recalls.
Meanwhile, Emil Klein, who heard Hitler speak in a Munich beer hall in the 1920s, believes that Hitler "had such charisma that people believed everything he said."
What we learn from eyewitnesses like von Spaun and Klein is that charisma is the first and most important element in connecting people.
No one can be charismatic, alone on a desert island. Charisma is formed in a relationship. As the British ambassador in Berlin wrote in the 1930s, Hitler "owes his success in the struggle for power, to the fact that he was the reflection of the unconscious mind of his supporters, and to his ability to express in words what the unconscious mind thought he wanted".
This is a view confirmed by Konrad Heiden, who heard Hitler speak many times in the 1920s: “His speeches always begin with deep pessimism and end with great enthusiasm, a joyful triumphant ending. Often they can be rejected by reason, but they follow the most powerful logic of the unconscious, which no refutation can touch…”!
People like von Shpaun and Emil Klein were predisposed to describe Hitler as charismatic because they already believed in most of the policies that Hitler advocated. So did Albert Speer, who attended one of Hitler's speeches for the first time in the early 1930s: "I was swept up in a wave of enthusiasm, and I could almost feel it physically. He seemed to feel that he was expressing what the audience, already transformed into a single mass, expected of him.
But if you didn't believe in the policies that Hitler propagated, then he did not exercise any charismatic power. For example, Josef Felder was appalled when he heard the spread of Hitler's hatred of the Jews: "When I left the meeting, at one point I said to my friend: 'My impression is that this man, Hitler, I hope never comes to power!'“.
However, if Hitler established a bond with his audience, then he built upon that bond in a number of other ways to consolidate this charismatic bond. More importantly, he was always confident in his judgments. He never expressed doubts about anything to his audience. He knew the problems Germany was facing and he said he knew the solutions. In addition, he presented himself as a heroic figure - a simple and brave soldier from the First World War - who wanted his supporters to have "faith" in him. As a result, some Nazi supporters even made blasphemous comparisons between Hitler and Jesus - both were 30 years old when they began "preaching" and both aimed at the "salvation" of their people.
But in 1928, nine years after Hitler joined the German Workers' Party and seven years after he became party leader, it looked as if the Nazi party would never come to power. In that year's elections, the Nazis received only 2.6 percent of the vote. It took the collapse of the Wall Street stock market and the terrible economic crisis of the early 1930s that caused millions of Germans to heed Hitler's appeal. Suddenly, for people like student Jutta Ruddiger, Hitler's call for a national revival made him seem like "the savior".
So much so that in 1932 the Nazis were suddenly the largest political party in Germany. The German elite were more concerned about the dangers posed by communism than by Nazism. On the afternoon of Sunday January 29, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor. This moment signaled the end of democracy in Germany.
The story of Hitler's appointment as chancellor teaches us some important things. We discover that Hitler was an instinctive and extremely powerful politician - but a light years away from the demoralized and demented man portrayed in Downfall.
Above all, we can see there the power of the situation to change perception. Hitler was rejected as a peripheral figure in 1928, but was praised by millions in 1933. What changed was not Hitler, but the situation. The economic catastrophe caused a large number of Germans to seek a charismatic "salvation". As we see economic events unfold in Europe today, it is impossible to imagine a greater warning from history than this. /Taken with abbreviations from: "HistoryExtra"/In Albanian from: bota.al/
Prigozhin - Putin war
More
Fadil Hoxha and Veli Deva, Enver Hoxha in 1968: Be careful with Tito, because you are making it difficult for us in Kosovo
The tragic life of Victor Hugo. Early death, love, pain, madness...
Ibrahim Kodra, the painter whose signature remains a work of art

ELDERS

Magic realism

What are the ancient monuments in Kosovo that will be protected by UNESCO? (Video)

104.5m² comfort - Luxurious apartment with an attractive view for your offices

Invest in your future - buy a flat in 'Arbëri' now! ID-140

Apartment for sale in Fushë Kosovë in a perfect location - 80.5m², price 62,000 Euro! ID-254

Ideal for office - apartment for rent ID-253 in the center of Pristina

Buy the house of your dreams in Pristina - DISCOUNT, grab the opportunity now! ID-123
Most read

A video of Gjesti going viral, where he addresses Egli with banal language in the bedroom

"Some people were killed here, inside our office": Zelensky reveals how they tried to kill him in the presidential palace

Who sells the most steel and aluminum in the US and who is facing tariffs?

Another fatal accident on the highway to Prizren

Gashi: LVV is trying to form the government itself – if it does it with the Serbian List, it is suicide

Professor from Belgrade: If an Association is created for Serbs in Kosovo, it should also be created for Albanians in Serbia