Psychology and Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler is one of the most despicable characters in world history. He is remembered as one of the world‟s most ruthless tyrants. He not only established the Nazi Party, he is personally responsible for the many wrongs conducted by members of that party. Among the most shocking of those wrongs was the Holocaust, the Nazi death camps and the brutal torture and human experimentation which occurred, and the ultimate death of some fifty million people1. Despite those facts, Hitler was also one of the world‟s greatest leaders. He was also one of the most feared men of all time. The As Ian Kershaw has emphasized, we are a long way even today from coming to an agreement on some of the most fundamental problems of interpreting and explaining Hitler and the Nazism that he perpetuated2. Numerous psychological aspects of Hitler‟s life, however, can be tentatively used to explain the power that he held over people. One of the most obvious of these is the status that he held as a very young child and that he continued to hold as a young adult. Hitler was coddled when he should have been shaken into reality and that coddling provided just the environment that Hitler needed to incubate his idea of himself as a superior being. His life of leisure, a life financed not by his own hard work but rather an inheritance, allowed him to dwell almost exclusively on counterproductive political concepts. Hitler‟s wrongs were many. He lashed out against not just Jews but also gypsies, the mentally or physically disabled and everyone else that his warped perception of the world and
1
The Economist . “No end of lessons.(the lessons of World War II after 50 years are still confusing and painful)”. The Economist, Vol. 335, 6 May 1995, pp 21(3).
2
Ker