“Heroes, Heroines, Saints, & Exemplars”, Part 2 by David Weissbard, November 6, 2017
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
Heroes?
Dave Weissbard
First Universalist Society
Central Square, NY
November 6, 2016
[leaders AND context]
This is actually a followup to my October sermon on “Heroes, Heroines, Saints, & Exemplars” in which I addressed our tendency to expect too much from the people we hold up as models. I spoke then of the “Great Man” theory of history, traceable for instance to Thomas Carlisle, as in our reading. The sociologist, Herbert Spencer insisted that Carlisle’s position was:
hopelessly primitive, childish, and unscientific . . . [T]he men Carlyle called “great men” were merely products of their social environment. [Y]ou must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown . . . Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.
I took the position in that sermon that only a combination of both the leader and the social environment makes sense when we try to understand history. The role of leaders is not beside the point, but they do live and work in a particular context which impacts on them and their followers. The talents which serve at one time might not be congruent with the needs of another.
I do need to note clearly that, as I am using it, the “Greatness” in “Great” leaders does not refer to their virtue but rather to the magnitude of their impact on the times. Someone very evil could still have a great impact, such as Genghis Khan or Josef Stalin.
[two themes]
There are two themes which have been of interest to me for as long as I can remember, both of which I have mentioned from time to time in sermons I’ve shared with you.
One, charismatic leadership, was the topic of my major paper in theological school. It is the concept, particularly developed by the German sociologist, Max Weber, based on the Biblical term “charisma,” which is translated as “free gift.” The shorthand explanation is that charisma relates to those leaders who, when they say, “Jump!” people immediately respond “How high?” There are people who seem to have what some have considered a divine [or others might say an inborn or instinctive] gift for leading. In truth, some display such leadership from an early age while others seem to hide it [or not develop it] until later in their lives. You know when you are in their presence – there is a spark they seem to radiate, an aura.
The second theme in which I have always been interested is the question of how it was possible that a cultured, liberal nation like Germany submitted to the influence of a radical leader like Adolph Hitler. It seems to make no sense. The novelist Sinclair Lewis, so troubled by what was happening in Germany in the ‘30’s wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” in which he suggested how Fascism might come to America. [We forget there were those on Wall Street and in Congress who preferred Hitler to FDR and made some inquiries among potential leaders of such a move to try to get it started. There actually was a formal congressional investigation of that movement, but it got buried because too many powerful people were involved.]
[Hitler: Ascent]
Those two themes coalesced with my October sermon when I came upon reference to the new biography on Adolph Hitler by Volker Ullrich. Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 was first published in Germany in 2013 and came out in an English translation this year. It has received uniformly enthusiastic reviews, with which I am in full agreement. The challenge of that book is that it is incredibly detailed – it has 758 pages of text and an additional 212 pages of endnotes.
According to one list I found on the internet, there have been, in English, 45 biographies, 45 books directly related to Hitler, 34 books indirectly related to him, and 36 articles. [I suspect this list only scratched the surface – Ullrich mentions the existence of 120,000 studies of Hitler.] And yet, each of the reviews of the Ullrich book, which is to be followed by a second volume, attests to the exceptional quality of his achievement. His book is not limited to a simple chronological nor to a thematic organization. Ullrich combines both and provides a great deal of contextualization, but it remains eminently readable, although somewhat overwhelming in its detail. It feels at time almost like a novel – “Could real people have been so naive? Quick, someone stop him before millions die!”
I was reluctant to commit for the newsletter earlier in the week to delivering this sermon because of the length and complexity of the book and the challenge I knew I would face in reducing all the intricate political maneuvering to a sermon, but I knew I wanted to try. It seemed too important to dodge. So, here it is, with all its flaws.
Ullrich, giving credit to the other major biographers, says at the outset that he decided to take on the challenge because it had been 15 years since the last major effort, and “the wheels of historical research have continued to turn – at an ever greater pace.” His goal was to test some of the assumptions on which there seemed to be some agreement from previous authors, such as that Hitler was very ordinary. How would it then have been possible for him to have had such an enormous impact? At the other extreme, there are those who have painted Hitler as a total monster of mythical proportions. It is Ullrich’s belief that Hitler needed to be demythologized – he was, in fact a human being, albeit a ruthless, immoral one. “Hitler will be ‘normalized,’”[in my book] he says, “although this will not make him seem more ‘normal.’ If anything, he will emerge as even more horrific.”
[biographical facts]
Some of the facts: Adolph Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889, the son of Alois Hitler and his third wife Klara. Alois had been given his 42-year old mother’s maiden name Schicklgruber for much of his life because his mother was not married to his father at the time of his birth. When he was 29, Alois’ uncle filed papers to acknowledge that his brother was Alois’ father, which may or may not have been true, and his last name was henceforth acknowledged to be Hitler. Alois was a customs official in Austria and so theirs was a middle class family. They moved a number of times which had young Adolph changing country schools, where he did well and was a leader, and finally moved into an urban secondary school where he was considered a hick. Adolph failed one year and had to repeat it. Another year he had to retake his exams and was passed only on the agreement that he would change schools. He was sent to live with a foster family 80 kilometers away, and ended up dropping out of school by faking an illness.
Adolph loved drawing and painting and wanted most to go to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He passed the first set of entrance exams, but did not make the final cut, which he considered one of the great tragedies of his life. Some writers have speculated how different the history of the 20th Century might have been had he been admitted and had an art career rather than a political one. The second tragedy was the death of his mother from cancer. Hitler had enough inheritance from his mother’s estate to move to Vienna where he mostly painted post cards. He lived in men’s hostels and rented rooms. He moved to Munich in 1913, some say partly to evade the Austrian military draft.
At this point he was 25 and had virtually nothing going for him – no career, few friends. The World War started and Hitler joined the army to fight for Germany. [It is not clear that the Germans knew he was actually Austrian when he entered their army.] He did well in the Army, ultimately serving as a courier. He received two medals for bravery, was wounded once and gassed once. He was never promoted from private. His regimental adjutant reported this was because Hitler “lacked leadership qualities.” He was distraught when Germany surrendered and was humiliated. As I trust you remember from history class, Germany really got clobbered by the Treaty of Versailles, being forced to pay reparations for the cost of the war, and to surrender some of its territory.
Hitler had, along the way, acquired heavy anti-Semitism and like many Germans, he blamed the Jews for the loss of the war. The intensity of his hatred for Jews would be hard to explain was it not for a long tradition of anti-Semitism in Germany.
Ridding Germany of its Jews and undoing the impact of the Versailles treaty became driving forces in Hitler’s life.
[after the war]
Hitler tried to remain in the army after the war ended, and his newly discovered ability as a public speaker led him to be assigned to lecture demobilized troops on anti-communism. He was later to claim that he was assigned by the army to attend a meeting of the new German Workers Party on September 12, 1919 as a spy. Ullrich says that the army already knew about the right wing nationalist political party and believes Hitler attended with some of his army buddies of their own volition. There were 41 people at that meeting at a local tavern. It appears that Hitler spoke up and attracted attention. A week later he received a card informing him he was accepted as a member of the party. Hitler wrote:
Such a ridiculously small entity with a couple of members had not yet ossified into an ‘organization’ but rather remained open to each individual finding something to do.
By November, Hitler had become the party’s most popular speaker. Before long, he had forced out the original leaders and had taken charge. The following February, 1920, he spoke to an audience of 2,000. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler declared:
A fire was sparked, from whose embers the sword would necessarily come which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and life to the German nation.
Ullrich declares:
Without Hitler, the rise of National Socialism would have been unthinkable. In his absence the party would have remained one of many ethnic-chauvinist groups on the right of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, the special conditions of the immediate postwar years in both Bavaria and the German Reich were also crucial: without the explosive mixture of economic misery, social instability, and collective traumas, the populist agitator Hitler would never have been able to work his way out of anonymity to become a famous politician. The circumstances at the time played into Hitler’s hands, and he was more skillful and unscrupulous about using them than any of his rivals on the nationalist far right.
[rise to power]
We simply do not have time for me to go into detail about the political machinations of the next 12 years, which included a premature attempt at a military uprising against the government in Munich, which ended up with Hitler in prison for nine months on what should have been a minimum of five years for his conviction on the charge of treason. [The judge gave him great latitude to present his case during the trial.] During his time in prison, Hitler wrote his book Mein Kampf, in which he clearly spelled out his political goals. Ullrich points out several opportunities at which everything which ensued could readily have been prevented, but which far too few people took seriously. There were those who tried to warn about what was happening, but they were ignored.
Twelve years later, after a series of elections in which the Nazi’s did somewhat better, and then less well, through fancy political maneuvering and the naive belief on the part of leaders of some of the other conservative parties that they could keep Hitler under control, Hitler was named the Chancellor of the German government, even though his party was not in the majority, and within months, he had taken total control of the nation. It is a fascinating story and Ullrich tells it well. It is hard to believe and harder to condense.
[how’d he do it?]
How did Hitler accomplish all this?
For one thing, he was an incredibly talented speaker. He knew how to get and hold the attention of the mass audience. He wrote in Mein Kampf:
The receptivity of large masses is very limited. Their capacity to understand things is slight whereas their forgetfulness is great, Given this, effective propaganda must restrict itself to a handful of points, which it repeats as slogans as long as it takes for the dumbest member of the audience to get an idea of what they mean.
Hitler regularly stressed the need to bring Germany to a new era of national greatness, and decried how it had been betrayed and humiliated by its incompetent leaders, and, of course, by the Jews who were not, in his eyes and in the eyes of millions, really a part of the German people – they were taking all the good jobs and controlling the economy.
Hitler was more than a speaker – he was a very talented actor who was able to present a variety of personnas to the audience, depending on what he sensed was needed at the time. He could go from calm to raving in an instant, depending on his reading of the audience.
According to Ullrich, seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Hitler’s former Finance Minister pointed to what he called Hitler’s “bottomless mendacity” as one of his strongest characteristics. Von Krosigk said, “In my opinion, he was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth.”
Hitler was well ahead of his time in using then modern media to spread his message. His rallies were enormous and carefully staged for maximum impact. He always arrived late, to have people anxious to see him; he utilized dramatic lighting effects, had propaganda films prepared by Leni Reifenstahl, probably Germany’s most talented film director at the time. Hitler hated flying, but he set up political speaking tours that had him booked in city after city in a single day, which demanded air travel. There was no one more skilled than Hitler in dealing with hecklers at his rallies.
Hitler, of course, did not believe in democratic government. He was convinced, and was able to convince his audiences, that only a strong man like him had the ability to solve Germany’s problems, to return it to its former greatness. He was very vague about how he was going to accomplish this, but insisted the people simply needed to trust him. He stressed the need to restore law and order n the streets at the same time that his private army was wreaking havoc and generating fear.
His opponents tried to belittle him, to talk about how he resembled an oaf, a clown, how people could not take him seriously, but, of course, many people took him very seriously because he appealed to their fears and prejudices: he derived great energy by tapping into their hate. Some questioned Hitler’s narcissism, his apparent lack of self-control, his sanity, but those who followed him could not have cared less.
[“presence”]
Dorothy Thompson, the wife of Sinclair Lewis, had an opportunity to interview Hitler in 1931. She wrote:
I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than 50 seconds, I was quite sure that I was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog. He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man. A lock of lank hair falls over an insignificant and slightly retreating forehead. The back head is shallow. The face is broad in the cheek bones. The nose is large but badly shaped and without character. His movements are awkward, almost undignified and most un-martial.
And yet [she said]. He is not without a certain charm . . . The soft, almost feminine charm of the Austrian! . . . The eyes alone are notable. Dark gray and hyperthyroid – they have the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics, and hysterics . . .
[She reported] The interview was difficult because one cannot carry on a conversation with Adolf Hitler. He speaks always as though he was addressing a mass meeting. In personal intercourse he is shy, almost embarrassed. In every question he seeks for a theme that will set him off. Then his eyes focus in some far corner of the room; a hysterical note creeps into his voice which rises sometimes almost to a scream. He gives the impression of a man in a trance.
This was not an unusual reaction to meeting the man in person. This is what caused far too many people, political opponents and foreign diplomats, to fail to take Hitler and his plans seriously and to realize what they were up against.
Ullrich points out:
After the Nazification of parties and associations, the unification of the offices of president and chancellor, and the self-subordination of the Reichswehr to their new commander-in-chief, Hitler had personally concentrated more power than any German ruler in history. “Responsible to no one and unable to be replaced, his position is comparable only with that of the crowned heads of state of the absolute monarchies of the past” read [a report from socialist exiles] in July-August 1934 . . . Nazi Germany had no institutions that could have developed into a counterweight to Hitler’s stranglehold on power . . .
“Fundamental to National Socialism and its system of rule,” argued the historian Karl-Deitrich Bracher, “was the fact that from the beginning to its extreme end, it stood and fell with this one man.”
Hitler was a brilliant planner and had remarkable insight into the weaknesses of others so he could manipulate them. He was convinced that he knew more than Germany’s generals about making war and refused to heed their warnings. And he was often right about what he [and Germany] could get away with.
He was able to take possession of Austria, without a shot being fired. And to take back the Sudeten territory, and then all of Czechoslovakia, in spite of his pledges and treaties not to do so, again without the firing of a shot. He was convinced that neither England nor France would have the courage to stand up to him, and up to that point, he was right..
All the time while Hitler was engaging in expanding Germany’s territory on the way to his clear goal of ruling all of Europe, he was, as we know, increasing the attacks on the Jews in Germany, trying to get them to leave the country. [There was a problem in that they were forced to surrender almost all of their assets so they barely afford to emigrate.] We do not generally acknowledge that Hitler was somewhat surprised that the other nations would not permit mass immigration of Jews. The United States, Great Britain, France, and others turned a blind eye to what was happening to Jews in Germany and greatly restricted the numbers permitted to relocate within their borders. The “Final Solution” did not begin within the time frame of Ullrich’s volume one which concluded:
When he unleashed world war at the start of September 1939 and when it became apparent that, despite Germany’s lightning-quick early triumphs, the conflict was turning into a military catastrophe, the myth surrounding the Fuhrer would begin to decay, at first slowly and then faster and faster.
[like a novel]
As I said earlier, Ullrich’s brilliant history of Hitler’s Ascent reads almost like a novel. If we did not know better, we would say it was impossible that one man could gain so much power in such a short period of time in such a sophisticated, cultured nation. It is the improbability of such an ascent, its unbelievability, that makes Ullrich’s book so important.
I refer you to the words of Edmund Burke, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”