MYTH TO MURDER: Unpacking the Nazi Mind
‘The Nazi Mind’ by Laurence Rees is no chronological account of how Hitler came to power or of the breakdown of the Third Reich into barbarism, but a psychological account of the psychic organisation of Nazism, its legends, victims; and it lays bare the Nazi spectacle.
The book opens on a question that is rarely posed: why did the typical Germans, many of them educated and cultured, fall for a movement that was as violent and as blatantly racist? The author does not give a single answer, but a line of uncomfortable truths.
Among them is the following: ‘The Nazis did not create anti-semitism, but inherited it’. Rees proves that the Jews were blamed for all the offences, including the Russian Revolution, and the failure of Germany in the First World War. The “stab-in-the-back” myth was not an invention of the propagandists, but a psychological salve, writes the author.
“Germans needed someone to blame for their defeat, and Jews were convenient,” Rees writes.
The writer comments that the Germans didn’t first of all vote for an anti-semitic party, but voted for nationalism, revenge, and economic relief, which, with the passage of time, turned into a monster that soon engulfed entire Europe and parts of the world.
The writer also refers to Konrad Heiden and a few others, who were against Hitler. But even this resistance was temporary, as most of the intellectuals kept quiet, and most of them became part of the Nazi bandwagon, while some of them even cheered for the Nazis.
One of the strengths of ‘The Nazi Mind’ is that it does not idealise the resistance of these few intellectuals who opposed the rise of Hitler and Nazism.
Laurence Rees does not author history but attempts to question it, stating that the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Paul Joseph Goebbels, ensured Ernst Junger was glorified and Erich Maria Remarque was censored under the Nazi regime.
Describing Hitler’s ascension, Rees writes that Hitler was accepted into the German Workers Party as member 555 but insisted he be listed as number 7. Why? “Appearance - Hitler was aware of theatre more than any playwright,” writes the author.
Significantly, Hitler refused to let Otto Dickel, the founder of the fascist Volkisch Work Community, argue with him, not due to tactics but from fear. “Hitler could not argue. He could only perform,” says the author.
The failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch is detailed at length in the book. Hitler was shot, surrounded, and apparently poised to take his own life with a gunshot -- only to be stopped by one of the Nazi sympathiser’s wife.
Following the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was not punished, and the courts allowed him to go free. Rees estimates that had justice at that time been administered, history would have taken a different turn.
In the 1920s, Germany was facing joblessness and an ailing economy. Hitler’s pseudo-Darwinist, anti-communist, and anti-semitic message found fertile ground among jobless youngsters and unemployed people. Yet Hitler mustered only 2.6 per cent of the vote during the 1928 election. However, his luck changed with the Wall Street debacle.
The ‘Youth Indoctrination’ chapter is profoundly disturbing. Rees discloses how Hitler’s tactics were aimed at the amygdala - the fear centre of the brain - not just to demand obedience, but to create emotional loyalty.
The Hitler Youth and League of German Girls weren’t informal after-school clubs, but were more like psychological laboratories, designed to re-mould identity and eliminate dissent. Nazi Germany banned the novel ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque, as they liked to romanticised Ernst Junger’s picture of war better.
Rees is strongest when laying bare contradictions in Nazi Germany, saying that Himmler didn’t hire thugs, but hired educated ones. And half of Germany’s doctors came over to the regime. The writer has provided all the graphic details while writing about the Sterilisation Law of 1935, and the ‘euthanasia’ campaigns against the disabled.
Further, the war veteran Field Marshal Hindenburg also did not do anything to prevent Hitler. Although Hinderburg dubbed Hitler a ‘postmaster’, but gave him uncontrolled authority. “The German elite thought that they could tame Hitler through parliament -- they were mistaken,” informs Raees.
The writer has named the appointment of Papen a turning point in European history, who removed the ban on Nazi Stormtroopers, who then unleashed the violence on an unthinkable scale.
Interestingly, Laurence Rees says that Nazis had divided Jews into two groups -- “assimilated” and “Zionists”, and held the ‘assimilated’ Jews to be more dangerous than the former and murdered thousands of them. The book also reveals how the Nazis had adopted the American laws of segregation, as the Southern American states did not prefer black people. He writes that “Hitler didn’t originate racism, but compiled it.”
The writer also quotes a 2015 study that had shown that children who grew up under the Nazi regime remain more anti-semitic than those born earlier or later.
Rees insists that the peak of the Nazi regime was the 1936 Berlin Olympics -- an event the world had never witnessed with Aryan superiority on full display. It was Jesse Owens, however, who took the script away from the Nazis, winning four gold medals. Jesse Owens was a Negro athlete who, in Raees’s opinion, stood taller than Hitler and his ideology.
In July 1932, the Nazis exterminated democracy and employed the democratic method to eliminate the institutions of the people. February 3, 1933, has been a vital date for Germany, which has been recorded in the history books as one of the most determining moments. This was the day that Hitler appointed his army generals, who were headed by Kurt Von Hammerstein-Equord. Hitler had plans for expansion in the east, and also made racial cleansing clear to his generals.
And when Hitler instructed his army commanders to open up the eastern front, they were not on-board with the idea, but nobody had the guts to inform Hitler that going to the east would be a catastrophe for both the populace and the German economy.
Austria surrendered without resistance, and Hitler was welcomed with cheers. There was no foreign intervention when Austria was defeated. The fall of Vienna brought Czechoslovakia tumbling down like a house of cards before Hitler’s forces, who actually ‘presented’ the Sudetenland to the Nazis. Rees also calls it a surprise surrender to Hitler, one which only encouraged him.
Meanwhile, the German economy had stabilised, and the common man did not desire any war but to keep progressing in the direction of industrialism upwards.
“The common man desired peace; however, Hitler cared not. He desired revenge, territory, and revisionism of history,” argues Rees.
The psychological shame to the Nazi psyche was the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler wished to nullify it piece by piece. The downfall of Danzig provided a precise recipe to the Nazis for humiliating the West and shredding the treaty into pieces.
For the Nazis, though, capturing Poland was different. The writer does not hesitate to present the cruel realities in his manuscript. In Poland, the Einsatzgruppen, usually made up of highly educated young men, perpetrated atrocities with icy efficiency.
One of the highest Nazi officials, Blaskowitz, tried to raise an alarm about the atrocities carried out in Poland. He wrote down the atrocities and presented them to his commanding officers; however, nobody listened. The author says that Blaskowitz was not anti-Hitler. He simply had a conscience, but it was not enough to deliver the innocent common masses from the Nazi fury.
For the Third Reich, France was a risk, which Hitler was willing to take. Hitler took the plunge, and it paid off. With the French collapse, the Nazis swept in.
Fascinatingly, Laurence Rees notes that it was not the Nazis who massacred the Jews in Lithuania initially, but the locals killed them due to the hatred that had seeped into Lithuanians against the Jews, such was the success of Goebbels’ propaganda
But why was the brutality so successfully implemented on such a mass scale? Raees maps out three explanations for the barbarism: alcohol, greed, and loyalty to one’s group.
“The Nazis didn’t bring on the Holocaust, but made it easier and faster,” writes Rees.
Daanish Bin Nabi holds a Master’s degree in International Relations, specialising in Peace and Conflict Studies. He currently works as Chief Sub Editor at IANS Newswire.
The author is based in New Delhi
