Abstract
Why was Hitler so evil? How did he gain power in such a well-educated, civilized country? Why did so many leading scholars in Germany support Hitler’s policies? These questions have perplexed and haunted humanity since the Nazi era. Myriads of historians, social scientists, journalists, psychologists, and psychiatrists have tried to provide answers. However, even after all this thoughtful reflection by multitudes of scholars, none of the explanations have proved completely satisfying. Hitler’s evil still eludes our comprehension, and the reasons he committed such atrocities—with the complicity of many fellow Germans—are still shrouded in mystery. In 1998 the journalist Ron Rosenbaum dedicated an entire book, Explaining Hitler, to charting the many attempts by scholars to explain Hitler and his evil deeds. He concluded that we certainly have not yet explained Hitler’s evil, and maybe we will never be able to explain it.1
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Notes
Ron Rosenbaum., Explaining Hitler (New York: Random House, 1998).
Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 7
One major exception is Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
My views on this have been influenced and stimulated by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
A few scholars have suggested that Hitler and the Nazis embraced a consistent ethic: Koonz, Nazi Conscience; Peter Haas, Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988).
Peter Haas does astutely identify the Nazi ethic with social Darwinism: “Science and the Determination of the Good,” in Ethics after the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses, ed. John Roth (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1999), 49–89
Richard J. Evans, Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin, 2006), 259
Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhutung zur Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ 1890–1943 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1987), 151
Joachim Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Helen and Kurf Wolff, 1974), 205–210
Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 2 vols. (New York: Norton, 1998–2000), 2
Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin, 2004), 34–35
Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)
Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 277–78
Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs (Hamburg: Berg, 1987), 15
Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus, 7th ed. (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1993) 13–15
Gerhard Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, vol. 1: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1–6
Wolfgang Wippermann, Der consequente Wahn. Ideologie und Politik Adolf Hitlers (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1989), 179
Robert Gellately and Nathan Stolzfus, “Social Outsiders and the Construction of the Community of the People,” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stolzfus (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4
Neil Gregor, How to Read Hitler (New York: Norton, 2005), 40
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992), 23
Stig Förster and Myriam Gessler, “The Ultimate Horror: Reflections on Total War and Genocide,” in A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1951–1945, ed. Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, and Bernd Greiner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 67
Hans Staudinger, The Inner Nazi: A Critical Analysis of Mein Kampf (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 78–79
Werner Maser, Adolf Hitler: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit (Munich: Bechtle, 1971), 168
Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 102
Jost Herrn and, Old Dreams of a New Reich: Volkish Utopias and National Socialism, trans. Paul Levesque (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 63
Gilmer Blackburn, Education in the Third Reich: Race and History in Nazi Textbooks (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 21–22
Edward Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 58
Hans-Günter Zmarzlik, “Der Sozialdarwinismus in Deutschland als geschichtliches Problem,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963): 246–273.
John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York: Vintage, 1997), 120–127
Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf trans. Ralph Man heim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 287–289.
Adolf Hitler, “Hitler vor Bauarbeitern in Berchtesgaden über nationalsozialistische Wirtschaftspolitik am 20. Mai 1937,” in “Es spricht der Führer”: 7 exemplarische Hitler-Reden, ed. Hildegard von Kotze and Helmut Krausnick (Gütersloh: Sigbert Mohn Verlag, 1966), 220–221.
Peter Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse: Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007)
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2 vols, in 1 (London, 1871; reprint. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 1: 98.
George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: G rosset and Dunlap, 1966), xxvi
George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985)
Koonz, Nazi Conscience, 1–2, 254–255; see also Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2001), 317
Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung. Some scholars emphasizing the importance of ideology are Gregor, How to Read Hitler; Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000)
Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and thejews, vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)
Alexander Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003)
Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler. For an excellent discussion of Haeckel’s views on evolutionary ethics, see Jürgen Sandmann, Der Bruch mit der humanitären Tradition. Die Biologisierung der Ethik bei Ernst Haeckel und anderen Darwinisten seiner Zeit (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1990).
Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (London: MacDonald, 1971).
Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen Gab: Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, 3rd ed. (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1994).
Ludwig Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie: Eine Untersuchung über den Einfluss der Deszendenztheorie auf die Lehre von der politischen Entwicklung der Volker (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1903), 266.
Ludwig Woltmann and Hans K. E. Buhmann, “Naturwissenschaft und Politik,” Politischanthropologische Revue 1 (1902): 1.
Ernst Rüdin, review of Ludwig Woltmann, Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien, in Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie 1 (1904): 309
Ludwig Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie, in Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie 2 (1905): 609–19
Ludwig Woltmann, Die Germanen in Frankreich, in Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie 4 (1907): 234–238.
Eugen Fischer, “Sozialanthropologie,” in Handwörterbuch der Naturwissenschaften (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1912–1913), 9: 177
Niels Lösch, Rasse als Konstrukt: Leben und Werk Eugen Fischers (Frankfurt: Lang, 1997), 103.
Ludwig Sohemann, Die Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften: Studien zur Geschichte des Rassengedankens, vol. 3: Die Rassenfragen im Schrifttum der Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1943), xi
Ludwig Sohemann, Lebensfahrten eines Deutschen (Leipzig: Erich Matthes, 1925), 295–297
Ludwig Woltmann, Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien (Leipzig: Thüringische Verlagsanstalt, 1905)
Otto Reche, “Ludwig Woltmann,” in Ludwig Woltmann, Werke, vol. 1: Politische Anthropologie, ed. Otto Reche (Leipzig: Justus Dörner, 1936), 7–8.
Rainer Hering, Konstruierte Nation: Der Alldeutsche Verband 1890 bis 1939 (Hamburg: Christians, 2003), 482.
Fritz Lenz, Die Rasse als Wertprinzip, Zur Erneuerung der Ethik (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1933), 6–7.
Rudolf von Sebottendorff, Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundliches aus der Frühzeit der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (Munich: Deukula Verlag, 1933), 184–186.
Paul Weindling, “The Medical Publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann and the Racialising of German Medicine, 1890–1945,” in Die ‘rechte Nation’ und ihr Verleger. Politik und Popularisierung im J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1890–1979, ed. Sigrid Stöckel (Berlin: Lehmanns, 2002), 169.
Klaus-Dieter Thomann, “Dienst am Deutschtum—der medizinische Verlag J. F. Lehmanns und der Nationalsozialismus,” in Medizin im “Dritten Reich,” ed. Johanna Bleker and Norbert Jachertz, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, 1993), 54–69.
Some examples are Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1: 87; Christopher Browning with contributions by Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 10
Peter Longerich, The Unwritten Order: Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2003), 38
Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (New York: Modern Library, 2003), xii
David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 94
Robert Edwin Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978), 22
Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), 5
Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996), 9.
Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
On the connection between anti-Semitism and social Darwinism, see Richard Weikart, “The Impact of Social Darwinism on Anti-Semitic Ideology in Germany and Austria, 1860–1945,” in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Evolution, ed. Geoffrey Cantor and Mark Swetlitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 93–115.
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Weikart, R. (2009). Introduction. In: Hitler’s Ethic. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623989_1
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