Not so Legit

            The general theme I took away from this week’s reading was the utter illegitimacy of Hitler’s rise to power.  Kershaw has already characterized him as a lazy, unskilled, unimpressive dreamer in the preceding chapters.  The “ability to speak” seems to be the sole criterion that suddenly jumpstarted Hitler’s life and career, facilitating a sudden rise to popularity among the völkisch movement of Germany.  It is stressed repeatedly that Hitler was not a smart politician; he is an idealistic propagandist capable of rallying the masses—he could “speak.”  “Politics to Hitler…was propaganda,” and the failure of the putsch was largely dependent on what I envisioned as a hot-headed, emotional Hitler urging the leaders of the Kampfbund to strike earlier because of an exaggerated perception of threat (170, 206).  But the level of disorganization of the entire putsch movement stresses again that Hitler was not a politician.  The only thing he had going for him seems to be his celebrity status as a speaker.

            Kershaw’s narration of the putsch itself is quite telling of this.  Hitler’s “coup” consisted of an unplanned, terroristic threat against those in the Bürgerbräukeller in an emotional and theatrical gesture, what with the standing on the chair and the shouting of, “Either the German revolution begins tonight or we will all be dead by dawn!” (207).  From then on, there was a “hurried improvisation of the planning” that eventually led to the “[rapid deterioration]” of the putsch effort, and “by late evening, Kar, Lossow and Seißer were in positions to ensure the state authorities that they repudiated the putsch” (208-9).  Hitler’s plan of action seemed to rely on the combination of threats and his rhetorical skills in a sad attempt to overthrow the entire Reich and appoint himself as Chancellor.  This again fits the personality Kershaw has constructed thus far (as seen previously in the lottery ticket anecdote) that Hitler was wildly idealistic and did not truly grasp the possibility, or even the concept of, failure.

            As seen in Mein Kampf, the parallelism Hitler saw between himself and Mussolini is also important in his redefinition of his self—a key factor, combined with his celebrity, that allowed Hitler to climb his ladder.  The illegitimacy of his rise to power is again apparent as Kershaw repeatedly states that his beliefs after the putsch and his time in jail circled around his anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist sentiment, repetitious of his past speeches; nothing is mentioned of parliamentary strategies (that he avoided) or even notions of some or any political knowledge.  All he knew was that he hated Jews and Marxism, scapegoats to blame all of Germany’s failure.  His fantastic idealism of the “March on Rome…[the] ficticious…Fascist legend of a heroic ‘seizure of power’” furthered the conversion of his self-image “into the presumption that he was the ‘heroic leader’ himself’” (180,185).  His desire to somehow “save” Germany stems not from a legitimate political ideology but one based on illegitimate hate and emotions.

I expected there to be some sort of redeeming quality other than his celebrity and his ability to speak that could directly account for his particular rise to power, but all I saw in these pages was the same egocentric man of ideals and the fantastic going crazier with a ridiculous sense of self-importance.