The Cement that Binds

“The Leader does not conform to the masses, but acts in accordance with his mission. He does not flatter the masses; hard, straightforward, and ruthless, he takes the lead in good days and in bad. The Leader is radical; he is entirely that which he does, and he does entirely what he has to do,” (20). I found the preceding excerpt Kershaw quotes from a 1920s text specifying the characteristics of the ‘leader’ to be particularly striking, especially when aligned with the later descriptions of the people’s reaction following the Night of the Long Knives. Kershaw explores the origins of the ‘Hitler Myth’ and continually states how the people of Germany had an envisioned Leader and had already perpetuated a ‘leader myth’ prior to Hitler’s arrival and later on ascribed Hitler the title. This leads me to wonder whether or not the people saw Hitler as something more than he was entirely because they had an archetype already in mind and he seemed to fit it and because the times were so terrible perhaps they attributed Hitler as being this ‘heroic’ figure mainly because they needed someone to be it at that moment. Once entranced by the notion that they had fulfilled the position of the ‘heroic’ figure, the people were then more accepting of Hitler’s inherent shortcomings because if this man was the Leader, then surely at his core was the pursuit of Germany’s prosperity and by default theirs.

In the end, I guess I am trying to understand to some degree how the German people were not more critical of the purge/mass murder of the SA. Granted, the SA weren’t doing great things to begin with and their own actions were highly questionable and endangering society, but regardless, if the President of the United States decided to arrange a shooting spree of a comparable unit (although I am unsure one even exists), I think many Americans would be quick to impeach him and he would surely be sent to prison. The act of purging a unit seems absolutely unthinkable. Moreover, the fact that Hitler was seen as an “upholder of public morality, cleansing public life of the dissolute immorality and corruption of the SA leaders” and whose morality was perceived as “that of the ‘healthy sentiments of the people” is senseless to me. He was clearly involved in a mass murder of several people, former comrades even, and yet the entire act only served to propagate his image, which again makes me wonder how entrenched and how absorbed were the people in this “heroic leader” myth and how willing were they to accept Hitler as that?