Hitler and his God

Evil Unexplained

In the preface to his Hitler biography, Ian Kershaw writes peremptorily: “To call Hitler evil may well be true and morally satisfying. But it explains nothing.” 899 This statement throws some light on the confusion about the meaning of evil in modern Western civilization. Kershaw, an established historian, seems to feel obliged to follow the latest and for a while dominating trend among the historians of his time which leans heavily on the French philosophic school of structuralism, in some of its variants known as functionalism. Structuralism integrates the individual personality into the underlying structures of the historical event, to the point of disappearance of the individual. The interweaving strands of the structure determine the event, including the individuals who are part of it, in the same way as the structures of the human body determines the individual cells and types of cells. The final conclusion is then that there is nothing to explain, that things are what they are.

Philosophical fashions come and go like other fashions, looking much less impressive when left deflated by the wayside than when floating, like colourful balloons, on the air currents of the moment. Carl Gustav Jung’s explanation of Hitler, some sixty years before Kershaw’s, was a very different one. “Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine men. Hitler’s power is not political, it is magic”, he said. According to Jung, Hitler’s secret was that he allowed himself to be moved by his own unconscious. He was like a man who listens intently to whispered suggestions from a mysterious voice and “then acts upon them. In our case, even if occasionally our unconscious does reach us through our dreams, we have too much rationality, too much cerebrum to obey it – but Hitler listens and obeys. The true leader is always led.” 900

Are so many testimonies by honest and intelligent witnesses to be disbelieved because they do not fit within the framework of post factum theories with “too much cerebrum”, or because the current philosophical and religious interpretations of the world have no room for them? “Hitler abandoned himself to forces which pulled him along – forces of dark and destructive violence”, writes Rauschning. “When he still thought that he had the free choice to decide, he already had surrendered to a kind of magic which one might call, on safe grounds and not only as a metaphor, demonic magic. And instead of a man who, while step by step climbing upwards, got rid of the dregs of a dark past and became more free and purified, one saw a being that became more and more possessed, at every step more tied down, subservient, powerless, the prey of forces which held him in their grip and did not let go of him anymore … He chose the easier way; he let himself slide down; he abandoned himself to powers who pulled him into the pit.” 901

Another cultured and close observer of Hitler was the French ambassador André François-Poncet. He titles the last chapter of his ambassadorial memoirs “Hitler, le possédé”, (Hitler, a man possessed). François-Poncet too describes the contrast between the Hitler in the “neutral” mode and the same man when “exalted”. “At the beginning of the conversation it was as if he did not listen or understand; he remained indifferent and as it were amorphous. What one saw was a man absorbed for hours in a strange contemplation … Then, all at once, as if a button had been pushed, he launched into an impetuous speech, speaking at a high pitch, passionately, furiously. His arguments succeeded one another, faster, more numerous, strident, expelled by a raw voice with rolling r’s … He shouted, he thundered as if he were addressing a crowd of thousands. It was the orator who had awoken, the great orator in the Latin tradition, the tribune … And suddenly the flow stopped. Hitler became silent; he seemed exhausted; it looked as if he had emptied his batteries; he fell again in a kind of distraction and became inert.” François-Poncet also writes that people of Hitler’s entourage were talking about his crises “which went from devastating force to the plaintive sighs of a wounded animal … What is certain is that he was not normal. He was a morbid man, almost demented, a personage from Dostoyevsky, one of the ‘possessed’.” 902

Hermann Rauschning also writes, in the controversial last chapter of his Talks with Hitler: “This man was not normal.” To Rauschning also somebody “from Hitler’s closest entourage” had told about his crises. “During the night he awakes with spasms of screaming. He shouts for help. Sitting on the edge of his bed he looks as if he were paralyzed. He is in the grip of a panic which makes him tremble so violently that the bed shakes. He utters confused and incomprehensible words. He gasps for breath as if he were going to choke. The same person narrated to me”, recalls Rauschning, “a scene which I would not believe if it did not come from this source. Hitler was standing in the room, swaying, looking around in bewilderment. ‘It’s him! It’s him! He has come here!’ he groaned. His lips were blue. Sweat dripped from his face. Suddenly he started pronouncing numbers without any meaning, then unrelated words and snippets of sentences … Then he stood still again, his lips moving. He was rubbed dry and given something to drink. But suddenly he yelled: ‘There! There! In the corner! Who stands there?’ He stamped on the floor and raged in the way he uses to. We showed him that there was nothing unusual there and he grew gradually quiet. Afterwards he slept for many hours. And then he was again bearable for some time.” 903

The novelist Joseph Roth wrote in his diary: “People have not yet understood, not even today, that National Socialism is not a political but an infernal movement. It cannot change its intentions because from the first only one intention was instilled into it according to the unfathomable will of the Eternal: the intention to destroy. The man [i.e. Hitler] is one of the hundred thousand tails of Satan, the scourges of God. Every word from his mouth is spoken by the tongue of Lucifer personally. That the metaphysical thinkers have not yet understood this, even today, but remain caught, imprisoned, limited, confined and incarcerated within the cheap traditional concepts of a rationalistically politicizing world, this is abundant proof of a Christian un-Christian tepidity. A Christian who does not feel the Devil can hardly understand God.” 904

In November 1941 the German troops advanced up to less than 50 kilometres from Moscow, the suburbs of which some of them could see through their binoculars, but temperatures of minus 30° Celsius and a complete breakdown of the maintenance of the troops brought the advance to a standstill. Moscow would never be taken. This failure, together with Hitler’s baffling declaration of war with the United States of America, on 11 December, marked the turning point of the war in Europe. A frustrated Hitler blamed the turn of events on his generals, accusing them of a lack of faith – Glaube – in Nazism and its Führer, and took upon himself the responsibility of supreme commander of the German armed forces. The official communiqué by which the people were informed of this decision mentioned “the will and sense of responsibility, together with an inner vocation, which had induced the statesman Adolf Hitler to be his own warlord”, and the intention of Hitler “to reserve for himself all essential military decisions” in which he would “follow his intuitions”.

Thomas Mann, in exile in the USA, used the communiqué immediately for one of his radio broadcasts to Germany. He said about Hitler: “The monster, torn apart by his evil doings, went to Berchtesgaden to recuperate and there, in the reinvigorating mountain air, soon recovered the faith in his mission; he was quickly cured from his madness. Time and again the communiqué mentions his intuitions, his inner voices, his secret invocations; his neurologists have not been able to prevent this. Something equally romantic has not been seen since the Maid of Orléans …” 905 This polemic outburst was not solely the fruit of Mann’s imagination, for even in those days Hitler’s sudden withdrawals to his villa “Berghof” on the Obersalzberg and his reliance on his intuition and inner inspirations were known to many.

There is no doubt that Hitler’s decisions, at least at the most important moments, were dictated by what commentators call his “intuition”, “voice” or “voices”, “sixth sense”, or “inspiration”, depending on their view of things. He himself said to Rauschning: “No matter what you do: if it is not ripe, you won’t be able to do it. That’s what I, as an artist, know very well. And I know it also as a statesman. [If something is not ripe] the only thing one can do is remain patient, postpone, reconsider, postpone again. That goes then on working in the subconscious. It matures. Sometimes it fades away. If I don’t have the inner, unmistakable certitude ‘this is the solution, this is how it should be’, I don’t act. Even when the whole Party shouts at me ‘do something!’ I do nothing. I wait, whatever happens. But when the voice speaks, then I know ‘this is it, it is time to act’.” 906

Walter Langer gathered the following information from his sources: “Although Hitler tries to present himself as a very decisive individual who never hesitates when he is confronted by a difficult situation, he is usually far from it. It is at just these times that his procrastination becomes most marked. At such times it is almost impossible to get him to take action on anything. He stays very much by himself and is frequently almost inaccessible to his immediate staff. He often becomes depressed, is in bad humour, talks little, and prefers to read a book, look at movies, or play with architectural models. According to the Dutch report his hesitation to act is not due to divergent views among his advisers. At such time he seldom pays very much attention to them and prefers not to discuss the matter …

“On some occasions he has been known to leave Berlin without a word and go to Berchtesgaden, where he spends his time walking in the mountains entirely by himself … It is during these periods of inactivity that Hitler is waiting for his ‘inner voice’ to guide him. He does not think the problem through in a normal way but waits until the solution is presented to him … As soon as he has the solution to a problem his mood changes very radically. He is again the Führer … ‘He is very cheerful, jokes all the time and does not give anybody an opportunity to speak, while he himself makes fun of everybody.’ This mood lasts throughout the period when necessary work has to be done. As soon as the requisite orders have been given to put the plan into execution, however, Hitler seems to lose interest in it. He becomes perfectly calm, occupies himself with other matters, and sleeps unusually long hours.” 907

Once the voice had been heard and the decision taken, it was unalterable and nobody could change, influence or even question it. This applied to particular decisions as well as to the inspiration at the origin of Hitler’s “mission”. “It seems to me that Hitler’s plans and aims never changed.” (Speer) “One cannot overlook the remarkable degree of consistency between Hitler’s declared aims in the 1920s and the course of Nazi policy after 1933.” (Geoffrey Stoakes) “From the very start of his political activity … he could alter only the variations on the central themes but could not change the basic messages.” (Stanley Gonen) Hanfstängl writes about “the extraordinary tenacity of his ideas”, J.P. Stern about his “unusual consistency of purpose”, and Kershaw about “his idées fixes which, in the principal points, remained unchanged up to his death in 1945”.