The People's Hitler
It is one of the paradoxes
of modern biography that Adolf Hitler, who came frighteningly close to
establishing his Thousand Year Reich, has seldom been taken seriously as a
political leader. In Hitler's own day, Churchill called him a "guttersniper";
Brecht parodied him in the character of Arturo Ui, a buffoonish thug
implausibly thrust into power; and Neville Chamberlain--well, enough said about
Mr. Chamberlain. Afraid of being branded revisionists, Hitler's biographers
have been largely reluctant to acknowledge his political talents. Thus have
they given us Hitler as "psychopathic god" and "unprincipled opportunist," but
never as "statesman"--a title that, even in the age of the Kissingers and the
Pinochets, has lost little of its luster.
But, as
the historian John Lukacs underscores in his study The Hitler of
History , the Nazi dictator was not simply the century's most murderous
tyrant; he was one of its most brilliant politicians. Lukacs, a distinguished
historian of modern Europe, has reflected perceptively in previous books on the
Nazi leader's hypnotic allure. In The Hitler of History , Lukacs adopts a
more historiographical approach, examining, comparing, and correcting the
interpretations of Hitler's biographers. Lukacs' courtly prose can mask the
bold scope of his ambitions: Besides critiquing Hitler biographies, Lukacs is
also advancing his own reading of Hitler.
Hitler, says Lukacs, was a peculiarly modern demagogue.
More than any of his peers, including Mussolini, he created an electrifying
fusion of aggressive nationalism and populist rhetoric. An early practitioner
of McLuhanesque politics who was "extraordinarily aware of his pictorial
image," Hitler "understood the popular effect of the cult of the 'star' " on
his fans, the ordinary Germans who admired and even loved him. ("If only the
Führer knew!"--the cry of many ordinary Germans who felt betrayed by the Nazi
regime--suggests the depth of their affection.)
Often
dismissed as a poor military strategist intoxicated by quixotic ambitions,
Hitler was in fact extremely adept at sizing up his opponents' weaknesses and
understood acutely the "supreme importance of land power" with the
"motorization of military movement." As a result, he succeeded, in less than a
decade, in making himself the ruler of Europe from the gates of Moscow to the
English Channel. Indeed, until his obsessive vision of cleansing Europe of the
Jews and conquering Soviet Russia overcame his pragmatic instincts, Hitler did
not make a wrong move. His victories emboldened him and his National Socialist
followers to visit untold misery upon their victims. As Lukacs writes, he "left
a more indelible mark upon the century than any other dictator, a Lenin or a
Stalin or a Mao."
Much of the writing about Hitler falls into the
category of "Hitlerology," a form of insipid voyeurism similar to that
surrounding Kennedy or, perhaps closer to the point, Jack the Ripper. The
details about Hitler's personality titillate, but they rarely edify, even
though Hitler's fanatical devotion to his mother does provide a rather chilling
rebuttal to a faith in family values.
Lukacs
does not himself always resist the temptation of Hitlerology. He tells of
Hitler's love of romantic poetry and "creamy Viennese cakes"--the only
exceptions, apparently, to his unyielding asceticism--and speculates, in
ponderous footnotes studded with citations from Kierkegaard, on the theological
nature of evil. (A Catholic writer, Lukacs whitewashes the record of the church
as "the least compromised and ... sometimes even inspiring" of institutions. If
so, why has the church subsequently apologized for its cozying up to Hitler?)
For the most part, though, Lukacs concentrates on the disturbing specter that
has come to haunt Hitler scholarship--Hitler's "admirers and defenders, open
and hidden." The most notorious Hitler apologist is the British Holocaust
revisionist David Irving, who has worked tirelessly to exculpate the Führer
while lashing out at his adversaries. As Lukacs observes, Irving has not
scrupled to invent "evidence" that Stalin planned to attack Germany before
Hitler's invasion and that "Hitler again and again ordered the 'Jewish problem'
set aside until the war was won."
Since the mid-'80s, a subtler but arguably more insidious
form of revisionism has come from such reputable German scholars as Ernest
Nolte and the late Andreas Hillgruber, both leading participants in the
Historikerstreit , a quarrel among German historians over the uniqueness
and meaning of the Holocaust. While rebuking Hitler for declaring war against
the Western democracies, Nolte offered an implicit justification of the
Holocaust as an anxious, reactive measure sparked by "the previous practices
and exterminations by the Russian Revolution." For Nolte, Stalin was the
original sinner. Hillgruber added his own provocative twist by proclaiming that
German historians were obliged to "identify" with the German soldiers on the
Eastern front who were protecting Germany from Bolshevism. The thrust of such
interpretations, as Lukacs argues, was to rehabilitate Hitler as a German
patriot and anti-Communist.
Although
Lukacs has some--in my view, rather too much--compassion for Nolte's and
Hillgruber's "bitterness against [the] anti-nationalist consensus among German
historians," he concludes that "their explanations amounted to a kind of
relativization" to the point of "defending Hitler." And yet, that shrewd
critique of revisionism notwithstanding, Lukacs' own corrections to Hitler
history are idiosyncratic and often wrong. For instance, we are told that
"foreign policy was secondary [to German unity] in Hitler's intentions,"
although Hitler saw these aims as inseparable--invoking, in Mein Kampf ,
Germany's need for "living space" ( lebensraum ) and her "moral right to
acquire foreign land and soil." Indeed, as the self-proclaimed imperial savior
of an Aryan Europe weakened by Jews and socialism, he exalted the quest for
lebensraum as a struggle to the death. No less questionable is Lukacs'
claim that Hitler, for all his hatred of the inferior races, was not a
biological racist. Lukacs gleans this insight from a solitary remark by Hitler,
in 1945, to the effect that "from the genetic point of view there is no such
thing as the Jewish race." If Hitler was less a biological racist than an
extreme nationalist, as Lukacs asserts, this was a distinction without a
difference to the millions of Germans instructed in such particulars of Social
Darwinist "science" as how to tell a Jewish skull from an Aryan one.
Why would Lukacs underplay Hitler the racist?
Because he is more intent upon painting Hitler as a populist--a creature of the
baleful age that wrested authority from responsible elites and enshrined
popular sovereignty. Lukacs, who came of age in Hungary while Hitler was in
power, has long described himself as a "reactionary"--not a Gingrichian
rightist but a partisan of the patrician mores of pre-World War I Europe.
Because Hitler took to the streets and disregarded the niceties of bourgeois
politics, Lukacs considers him an anti-bourgeois "revolutionary" and a friend
of the proletariat. While Lukacs is right to point out that Hitler "was
contemptuous of [the bourgeoisie's] caution, of their thrift, ... of their
desire for safety," Hitler did not crush their political parties and send them
in droves to labor camps--this fate he reserved for the organized working
class. Nor did Hitler try to abolish capitalism, as Lukacs suggests, although,
like his adversary Roosevelt, he did expand state supervision of private
industry. Despite his penchant for revolutionary rhetoric, his inspired use of
modern techniques of collective mobilization, and his willingness to strike up
a tactical alliance with Stalin, Hitler remained a committed foe of what he
called "Jew-Bolshevism," and indeed, of all leveling ideologies.
Lukacs often writes as
though Hitler, or rather Hitlerism, triumphed in the war. That's because, for
Lukacs, the horror of Hitlerism is simply an expression of the horror of modern
collectivism. "In one sense Hitler's vision survived him," notes Lukacs.
"During the twentieth century the compound of nationalism with socialism has
become the nearly universal practice for all states ... [w]hether they call
themselves socialist or not. ... We are all national socialists now." Does this
mean that the difference between, say, Swedish social democracy and Nazi state
capitalism is less significant than the similarities? Or between Afrikaner
white supremacism and post-apartheid multiracial democracy? Lukacs would not,
of course, go that far. But in using Hitler to illustrate the threat of power
passing into the hands of the masses, he ignores an important distinction
between mass societies: those ruled by charismatic dictators, unchecked by
popular representation; and those governed by democratic institutions. With
some exceptions, we are all democrats now. Perverse as this may sound, Hitler
is one reason why.
