Robert G.L. Waite - The Psychopathic God

Robert G. L. Waite

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ROBERTG

Boston Public LibraryBoston, MA 02116

THE PSYCHOPATHIC GOD

Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:

I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.

W. H. Auden,September i, 1939"

The circumstances in which the cover portrait was painted were remarkable. Richter had beeninvited in 1941 to do a portrait of Reich Marshal Hermann Goring. When he learned that a visitfrom Hitler was expected, it was arranged for him to sketch the Fiihrer, with the proviso that hedo so from a well-concealed hiding place. Richter was unimpressed with Hitlers face until someone mentioned the word Jew. When Hitler heard that word, Richter later recalled, his face wasimmediately transformed into something at once demonic and defensive, a haunting look whichRichter quickly sketched and later that night, put down in oils. He labeled it A German Worker"and hung it in a shed where it survived the war. Richter had also painted Field Marshal vonSchlielfen, Chancellor Stresemann and President of the Reichstag Lobe, but he considered theHitler portrait to be his masterpiece. The art critic of Die Zeit called it the only really authentic-portrait of Hitler... perhaps the most important historical portrait that any German artist hasever had the opportunity to paint.

FOR ANNE

And for Geoffrey and Peter

FOREWORD

To the Da Capo Edition

During THE YEARS since The Psychopathic God was first published in1977, historians of the Third Reich have raised a challenging question aboutthe importance of its Fuhrer. Structuralist historians have argued that Hitlerreally didnt run the Nazi show that major decisions were made and executed, not by a so-called Fuhrer, but by the internal dynamics of impersonal party, governmental, and military structures. Indeed one influentialGerman historian has concluded that Hitler was actually a weak dictator whoacquiesced to forces he could not control.

This recent research in institutional history has made valuable contributions to our knowledge of how the Nazi government actually functioned. Yet,in my view, it does not displace Adolf Hitler as the dominating force of theThird Reich.

Nor can it respond adequately to some of the most intriguing questions ofall history: How could this peculiar person, at once so terrible and banal,evoke such enthusiastic support from the German people? What was he reallylike, this little man with the Charlie Chaplin moustache, who bestrode Europelike a colossus and established one of the most vicious and certainly the mostpopular tyrannies the world has ever known?

This book was written in an effort to respond to these questions, todiscover the warped person within the murderous dictator, and to suggestways in which Hitlers psychopathology contributed to his rise to power, affected his public policy, and propelled his downfall.

The text has not been substantially altered and the pagination remainsthe same as in the original edition. Any modifications that I have made in myconclusions about Hitler in the fifteen years since this book was first publishedwill be incorporated in the work I am now completing, Kaiser and Fuhrer: AComparative Study of Personality and Politics.

R.G.L.W.

Williamstown and TemagamiJuly 1992

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2018 with funding fromKahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/psychopathicgodaOOwait_O

PREFACETHE SEARCH FOR HITLER xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix

CHAPTER 1

The Image and the Man 3

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 5PERSONAL QUALITIES 8

Childishness 8Humorlessness and Rigidity 1.3Feelings of Unworthiness 16FEARS AND OBSESSIONS 17

Time As an Enemy 17

Death and Decapitation Motifs 18

Blood 22

Cleanliness and Purity 25Food and Drink 25Wolves 26

HITLER AS RELIGIOUS LEADER 27A MAN OF CONTRASTS 33

Creation and Destruction 33Honesty and Duplicity 35Realism and Fantasy 36Courage and Cowardice 38Other Personal Dualities 39HITLER AND WOMEN 48

CHAPTER 2

The Intellectual World of Adolf Hitler 55

hitlers reading 59

Vll

HITLER AND THE ARTS 63

Hitler As Creative Artist 64Taste in Art 66Literary Imagination 69IDEOLOGY 74

Struggle: The Father of All Things 76Lebensraum 78The Concept of the Fiihrer 79Racial Theory and Volksgememschnft 83Terror and Propaganda 87

THE GENESIS OF HITLER S POLITICAL IDEAS go

Mentors in Vienna: Lueger, Lanz von Liebenfels,List, and Fritsch 90Hitler and Wagner 99Wagners Racial and Political Ideas 103Chamberlain, Drexler, and Eckart 113Protocols of the Elders of Zion 118Other Influences 121

CHAPTER 3

A JEWISH GRANDFATHER? 126

THE FATHER: ALOIS (SCHICKELGRUBER) HITLER 131THE MOTHER : KLARA POLZL HITLER 138

adoLfs Infancy and boyhood 144

Oral Stage 145Anal Stage 148

THE CASE OF THE MISSING TESTICLE IgOHITLERS PRIMAL SCENE TRAUMA l62LATER CHILDHOOD 168