Laurence Rees - Hitler’s Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss

Copyright 2012 by Laurence Rees

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United Kingdom as The Charisma of Adolf Hitler by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, a division of the Random House Group Limited, London, in 2012.

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rees, Laurence, [date]
Hitlers charisma : leading millions into the abyss / Laurence Rees.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-90813-1
1. Hitler, Adolf, 18891945Psychology. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 18891945Public opinion.
3. Hitler, Adolf, 18891945Influence. 4. Charisma (Personality trait)Germany
History20th century. 5. HatePolitical aspectsGermanyHistory20th century.
6. Self-confidencePolitical aspectsGermanyHistory20th century.
7. National socialismHistory. 8. GermanyPolitics and government19331945.
9. GermanySocial conditions19331945. I. Title.
DD247.H5R386 2013 943.086092dc23 [B] 2012033948

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v3.1

To the memory of my mother and father

Margaret Julia Rees (19271977)
and
Alan William Rees (19241973)

My whole life can be summed up as this ceaseless effort of mine to persuade other people.

ADOLF HITLER

That such a man could go so far toward realizing his ambitions andabove allcould find millions of willing tools and helpers; that is a phenomenon the world will ponder for centuries to come.

KONRAD HEIDEN

My parents had very firm views about Adolf Hitler. Having both experienced the warwith my fathers brother killed on the Atlantic convoysthey thought Hitler was the embodiment of all evil. But even as a child I can remember thinking if Hitler was the Devil in human form how did he get so many people to do his bidding? In a way, thats a question I have been thinking about ever since, and one that I attempt to answer in this work.

Adolf Hitler was, at first sight, the most unlikely leader of a sophisticated state at the heart of Europe. He was incapable of normal human friendships, unable to debate intellectually, filled with hatred and prejudice, bereft of any real capacity to love, and lonely. Yet he played the most important part in three of the most devastating decisions ever taken: the decision to invade Poland that led to the Second World War, the decision to invade the Soviet Union, and the decision to murder the Jews.

But Hitler did not create all this horror on his own, and alongside his many personal inadequacies he undoubtedly possessed great powers of persuasion. My whole life, he said memorably in 1942, can be summed up as this ceaseless effort of mine to persuade other people. And Ive met many people who lived through this period who confirmed that judgement. When pressed on the reason why they found such a strange figure so persuasive they pointed to a myriad of factors, like the circumstances of the time, their fears, their hopes and so on. But many also described simply the powerful sense of attraction they felt for Hitlersomething that a number of people ascribed to his charisma.

nasty people can possess it just as much as nice ones. The original meaning also implies that charisma is an absolute quality that existsor does not existin a particular individual. But Adolf Hitlers charismatic appeal was not universal. It was present only in the space between him and the emotions of his audience. Two people could meet Hitler at the same time and one might find him charismatic and the other might think he was a fool.

Our modern understanding of the concept of charisma begins with the work of the German social theorist Max Weber, who famously wrote about charismatic leadership at the turn of the last century. Even though he was writing long before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, his work is still full of relevance for anyone interested in the study of Nazism in general and Hitler in particular. Crucially, what Weber did was to examine charismatic leadership as a particular type of rulerather than a personal quality that a pop star can possess as much as a politician. For Weber, the charismatic leader must possess a strong missionary element and is almost a quasi-religious figure. Followers of such a leader are looking for more than just lower taxes or better health care, but seek broader, almost spiritual, goals of redemption and salvation. The charismatic leader cannot exist easily within normal bureaucratic structures and is driven forward by a sense of personal destiny. Hitler, in these terms, is the archetypal charismatic leader.

In particular, I think it is hard to underestimate the importance of understanding that charisma is created in an interaction between individuals. And in this context my ability to meet and question people who lived through this extraordinary period has been of enormous benefit. In writing this book Ive been fortunate to have access to a unique primary sourcethe hundreds of interviews with eyewitnesses and perpetrators conducted for my work as a historical filmmaker over the last twenty years. Only a small fraction of this material has ever been published before, and so the vast majority of the testimony that is quoted in this book appears here in print for the first time.

I was hugely privileged to be able to travel the world and meet these peoplefrom those who worked closely with Hitler to those who committed murders in pursuit of his aims, from those who suffered at his hands to those who finally helped destroy him. I was also lucky, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to be one of the first to travel into the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and record open and honest interviews about Nazism with people who had lived behind the Iron Curtain. What they said was often both shocking and surprising.

Ive also benefited from the lengthy discussions Ive held with many of the worlds greatest academic historiansmaterial I gathered for my educational website )

Ive also learnt a great deal from studying reel upon reel of archive footage from the periodparticularly footage of Hitlers speeches. I had thought, when I started my work on Nazism twenty years ago, that the charisma of Hitler might somehow be visible in the footage. However, it soon became clearat least for methat Hitler is decidedly uncharismatic on film today. But, of course, this is precisely the point. I felt nothing because I am not a person of that timea person, moreover, already predisposed to accept Hitlers charismatic appeal. I was not hungry; humiliated after the loss of a war; unemployed; frightened of widespread violence on the streets; feeling betrayed by the broken promises of the democratic system I lived in; terrified of my savings vanishing in a bank crash; and wanting to be told that all of this mess was the fault of someone else.