HOMELESS HITLER TO HEIL HITLER!

If you tried to locate Adolf Hitler in 1909 (imagine that you have the required technology), you would see a grubby, rather starved-looking young man painting postcards in the streets of Vienna. Try locating Hitler in 1939 and you wouldn’t be able to, because he was super busy gassing people and ruling Germany.

So, Hitler enthusiastically instigated the Holocaust, killed millions, forced the world into a bloody war and yet Hitler was no mythical monster but a mortal. A guy, who has often been described as “boring” and that, is where the intrigue lies.

Here’s a quote from A. N. Wilson who wrote a biography on Hitler: “We like to distance ourselves from anything to do with him because he was an essentially evil character.” So who knows, if we stop mythologizing him maybe we could even find a thing or two in common with him.....

(You must be like "What are you talking about?")

To illustrate this point, let me narrate a story about a father and a son.

The father Mr. X is an intimidating fellow who has a successful career in the customs office. He wants his son Y to follow his footsteps and excel. Y deliberately flunks his education and tells his dad that what his heart yearns for is to study fine arts. “Why that’s preposterous!” Mr. X screams.

Yes folks, it was kind of obvious from the beginning that I was talking about Hitler and his dad, and you probably related to the son Y’s situation even if you didn’t want to. You probably even went through something similar.

And that people, is my point, the ordinariness of Hitler- the King of Doom.

Coming back to his story, the next important event was the World War 1. It was year 1914 and Hitler signed up along with millions of others. I’ve often been puzzled by the enthusiasm. Why would anyone be enthusiastic about war?

To take a lighter example which does not involve nine million deaths, you could think about a brand-new social media site, Instagram 2.0. You and your friends get super excited and everyone is getting on board.

But why so excited? Why are you even signing up?

Because it’s new, it’s something you haven’t done before, it’s what everyone else is doing, it could make you look cool, it could potentially make you popular, but most importantly, at the very heart of the matter, it gives you something to do……I’m going to repeat that, it gives you something to do.

And hence to a homeless artist roaming around without a proper meal or shelter, fighting for his country was meaning, purpose, anchor and stability all rolled into one, like it was to many others who signed up.

And ironically, this is exactly what Hitler himself meant to the starved, emaciated masses of Germany when they came out of World War 1. He gave them Instagram 2.0 (in a manner of speaking) at a time when they could not even access Gmail.

He had an explanation and a scapegoat for their present condition. He had a vision for their future condition after eliminating the said goat. That’s all it really was. That and his persuasive public speaking skills which helped him climb up the political ladders and obviously we cannot eliminate a little luck from the equation.

Note that I said persuasive speaking, not black magic and hypnotism. So, if it was not black magic and hypnotism, what is the reason the crowd was swayed so easily?

That’s what we shall look at in the last installment of this series, Part 3, and we shall look at it through the lens of Hannah Arendt, who had some really famous and some really scandalous (aren’t they the same really) things to say about the Nazi regime and how it became possible to impose it on the masses.

Do like, share and subscribe (or is it follow?) if this was fun and educational for you. See you next time!