The most striking aspect of the development of Hitler’s ideologies was the inference that his ideas and “world-view” seemed to primarily stem from personal experience rather than a direct association with preexisting theories.
Kershaw’s portrayal of the young Hitler is one of a stubbornly passionate boy who had “the run of the house…throwing tantrums if he did not get his way…[and was] used to having the last word” (14). From a psychological point of view it seems that this childhood personality, complemented by the weak, submissiveness of his friend Kubizek had much to do with the development of the idealistic man who eventually moved to Vienna. For a child of such a personality to grow up having such a compliant and almost servile friend must have only reinforced the ideological persona that later manifested itself in a monstrous anti-Semitism. What also intrigued me was his obsession with the fantastical ideals of his life, his talents, and future which, I think, sheds some light on the relatively unanswered question of the source of his anti-Semitism. His confidence in the overly ideological outlook on life is especially inferable from the story of the lottery ticket, wherein he so sure-heartedly plans the “elaborate vision of their future residence” with the conviction that he would win: “his fury at the state lottery knew no bounds when nothing came of their little flutter” (22).
I think Kershaw makes a great structural decision in the biography to describe the personality of the young Hitler as thoroughly as possible—especially with his relationship with Kubizek, the power-play of which is reiterated many times. By pre-establishing this (almost aggressively) stubborn disposition of Hitler honed by this odd friendship, Kershaw flows into Hitler’s dismal times of failure and struggle in Vienna as a very important period in his upbringing and creation of his ideologies. Only speculations are made about how and when exactly Hitler embraced the maniacal anti-Semitism that we know of today. Kershaw doesn’t seem to write much about how “German” Hitler felt, which I think is a central theme that allowed anti-Semitism to become so quickly accepted by the German population during the rise of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich. We are told that Linz was indeed the “most German town of the Austrian Empire,” but whether Hitler also felt the ‘Germanness’ himself is unclear (15). What seems to be the focus is the numerous failures Hitler encountered with his arts at the Academy. After such a long developmental narrative of Hitler’s ideological, I-can -never-lose-personality, the reader can only imagine the vehement anger this man must have felt when he so confidently took, many times, and failed the entrance examination into the Academy (39). The following time in his life, when he “hit rock bottom” must have been a tremendous blow to his pride and confidence (52). Because Hitler was so confident in his capabilities, Kershaw aptly points out that he was looking for “scapegoats” to direct the causes for his failures. Even before the anti-Semitist feelings, we see that Hitler began to develop strong feelings against the Social Democratic Party. Though he most belonged to the proletarian class—he certainly could not have associated himself with the bourgeois at the time—Kershaw says Hitler, “far from eliciting any solidarity with the ideals of the working-class movement, this [his social decline into the proletariat] merely sharpened his antagonism towards it” (59). Kershaw’s quote from Mein Kampf shows that Hitler stressed “the hard struggle for existence of the ‘upstart,’ [believing] he had risen ‘by his own efforts from his previous position in life to a higher one’, that ‘kills all pity’ and destroys ‘feeling for the misery of those who have remained behind’” (59). I think it is important that Kershaw stresses this point; I believe it is crucially related to the personality so carefully constructed in the beginning of the biography—due to pride, he could not attribute his own failures to himself and neither to the social system. His “social question” was a search for “scapegoats to explain his own social decline and degradation…[the question] ‘did not invite [him] to study, but to experience it in [his] own skin’”(60). And from his experience of failures non-attributable to his own incapacities, he developed his “visceral hatred” for Social Democracy, from his own personal experience rather than the proper understanding or studies of theories of Marxism or Socialism, as Kershaw suggests.
Hitler chose Social Democracy to be the scapegoat to his failures, and I feel that there is a sudden and illogical jump from his hatred for Social Democracy to the Jewish people. Hopefully we will get to read more of the relationship between Social Democracy and the Jews, if it was already-existing, or perhaps some event that made Hitler transfer his vehement hatred over to the Jewish population.
I completely agree that Kershaw did a brilliant job structuring the relationships between the young Adolf and his family/friends, which vividly reflected, and at the same time, shaped Hilter’s personalities.
ReplyDeleteEven though Hilter had an authoritarian, bad-tempered father, through Kershaw’s description we can tell that in his childhood there had never been someone that held actual control over his mind. The conflicts between Adolf and his father turned him into an angry kid. The care and protection his lack-of-power mother gave him, especially after Alois’ death didn't make Hilter more caring. Instead it further developed the self-centeredness and insistence Hilter had already gained. The excess of domination Hilter experienced before his father’s death, and the lack of being-dominated after his father’s death are what I believe to mainly cause his sick desire of power.