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Politics and psychoanalysis: the sources of Hitler's political behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

A. S. Cohan
A. S. Cohan
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster
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Extract

Since the end of World War II social commentators have attempted to explain why Germany was so susceptible to Nazi rule. One sociologist has argued that the social structure that existed in Germany at the end of the First World War made it likely that Germany would take a totalitarian rather than a democratic road to modernity. Others have argued that the breakdown of the stratification system permitted the Nazis to prey upon the fears of the newly atomized individuals who joined in the mass movement. Still other studies have focused either on the whole country or on the different regions to explore in detail how the Nazi movement grew and which elements of the population were most prone to join it. These works have ranged from descriptive case studies to more analytic, but conflicting, voting studies. But the analyses of the mass represent only one half of the equation which may explain why the Nazis came to power and, perhaps more significantly, why they managed to retain the loyalty of the populace even when it was apparent that Germany would lose the war that the Nazis initiated. The other part of the equation is Adolf Hitler whose “ability not only to win over the majority of the German people, but to lead them so completely astray, has no precedent in history”. No other revolutionary mass movement, neither bolshevism in Russia nor communism in China, has been so much the product of its leader as was national socialism in Germany.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1975 , pp. 160 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1975

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References

page 160 note 1 See Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

page 160 note 2 The two major works are Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, first published 1951; and Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (New York, 1959)Google Scholar.

page 160 note 3 See, for example, Allen, W. S., The Nazi Seizure of Power (London, 1966)Google Scholar and Pridham, Geoffrey, Hitler's Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923–1933 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 160 note 4 See Pollock, James K., ‘An Areal Study of the German Electorate, 1930–1933’, American Political Science Review, xxxviii (1944), pp. 89–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heberle, Rudolf, From Democracy to Nazism (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1945)Google Scholar; O'Lessker, Karl, ‘Who Voted for Hitler? A New Look at the Class Basis of Nazism’, American Journal of Sociology, lxxiv (1968-1969), pp. 63–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schnaiberg, Allan, ‘A Critique of Karl O'Lessker's “Who Voted for Hitler?”’, American Journal of Sociology, lxxiv (1968-1969), pp. 732–5Google Scholar; and Shively, W. Phillips, ‘Voting Stability and the Nature of Party Attachments in the Weimar Republic’, American Political Science Review, lxvi (1972), pp. 1203–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 160 note 5 Maser, Werner, Hitler, translated by Peter and Betty Moss (London, 1973), p. 258Google Scholar.

page 160 note page 161 note 1 Heiden, Konrad, Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power, translated by Ralph Mannheim (London, 1967)Google Scholar, first published 1944.

page 161 note 2 See Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970), first published 1962. See particularly pp. 35–42Google Scholar. See also Lidz, Theodore, The Person (New York, 1968), pp. 344–345Google Scholar.

page 161 note 3 Heiden, op. cit., pp. 34–35.

page 161 note 4 Ibid. p. 300.

page 162 note page 160 note 1 Bullock, Allan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London, 1962)Google Scholar, first published 1952; Shirer, William, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; and Heiden, op. cit.

page 162 note 2. Fest, Joachim C., Hitler, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Maser, Werner, op. cit.; Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler (London, 1974)Google Scholar. See also three articles by Waite, R. G. L.: ‘Afterword’ in The Mind of Adolf Hitler; ‘Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings: A Problem in History and Psychologysis’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, i (1971), pp. 229–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hitler's, ‘Adolf Anti-Semitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis’, in Wolman, Benjamin(ed.), The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History (New York, 1973), pp. 192–230Google Scholar.

page 162 note 3 See Lasswell, Harold, Psychopathology and Politics (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, first published 1930.

page 162 note 4 Edinger, Lewis has been particularly associated with this effort. See, for example, his very readable Kurt Schumacher: A Study in Personality and Political Behaviour (Stanford, 1965)Google Scholar.

page 162 note 5 Erikson, Erik H., Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York, 1958)Google Scholar.

page 163 note page 160 note 1 Coles, Robert, Erik H. Erikson: The Growth of his Work (London, 1973), p. 77Google Scholar.

page 163 note 2 See particularly Erikson, Erik H., Childhood and Society (London, 1965)Google Scholar, first published 1950 as well as Young Man Luther, op. at.

page 163 note 3. Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit. p. 254,

page 163 note 4 Erikson, Childhood and Society, op. cit. p. 394.

page 163 note 5 Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (London, 1970), p. 210Google Scholar

page 163 note 6 In addition to the works by Erikson cited above, see Theodore Lidz, The Person, op. cit., and de Levita, David J., The Concept of Identity, translated by Ian Finlay (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

page 163 note 7 Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit. p. 134.

page 164 note 1 Shirer, op. cit. p. 10.

page 164 note 2 Maser, op. cit. p. 49.

page 164 note 3 Fest, op. cit. pp. 45–46.

page 164 note 4 Bullock, op. cit. p. 24.

page 164 note 5 Waite, ‘Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism …,’, op. cit. p. 232

page 165 note 1 Waite, ‘Adolf Hitler Js Guilt Feelings …,’ , op. cit. p. 232.

page 165 note 2 Maser, op. cit. pp. 11–14.

page 165 note 3 Langer, op. cit. p. 141.

page 165 note 4 Ibid. p. 143. 5. Waite, ‘Afterword’, op. cit. p. 239.

page 166 note 1 Langer, op. cit. p. 141.

page 166 note 2 Ibid. p. 153.

page 166 note 3 Waite, ‘Afterword’, op. cit. p. 229.

page 166 note 4 Bullock, op, cit. pp. 26–27.

page 166 note 5 Fest, opt. p. 18.

page 166 note 6 Maser, op. cit. pp. 31–32.

page 167 note 1 Ibid. p. 39.

page 167 note 2 Fest, op. cit. p. 20.

page 167 note 3 Maser, op. cit, p. 41.

page 167 note 4 For a description of Hitler's architectural interests see Albert Speer, op. cit.

page 167 note 5 Hitler, op. cit. pp. 21–22.

page 167 note 6 Maser, op. cit. pp. 42–43.

page 167 note 7 Fest, opt. p0 771.

page 168 note 1 Hitler, opt. p. 21.

page 168 note 2 Fest op. cit. p. 30.

page 168 note 1 Ibid. p. 39.

page 168 note 2 Ibid. p. 41.

page 168 note 3 Maser, op. cit. pp. 70–75 and Fest, op. cit. p. 59.

page 168 note 4 Fest, op. cit. p. 79.

page 169 note 1 Waite, ‘Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings ….’, op. cit. p. 229.

page 169 note 2 Ibid. p. 234.

page 169 note 3 Ibid. p. 234, n. 25.

page 169 note 4 Heiden, op. cit. pp. 303–9. 5. Maser, op. cit. p. 224.

page 170 note 1 Waite, ‘Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings …’, op. cit. p. 229.

page 170 note 2 Ibid. p. 234.

page 170 note 3 Ibid. p. 234, n. 25.

page 170 note 4 Heiden, op. cit. pp. 303–9. 5. Maser, op. cit. p. 224.

page 171 note 1 Waite, ‘Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings …’, op. cit. p. 239.

page 171 note 2 Bullock, opt. p. 195.

page 171 note 3 Shirer, op. cit. pp. 307–8.

page 171 note 4 Fest, op. cit. p. 603, 5. Shirer, op. cit. p. 876.

page 172 note 1 Erikson, Childhood and Society, op. cit, pp. 320–1.

page 172 note 2 Bullock, op. cit. p. 375.

page 172 note 3 Ibid, p. 380.

page 173 note 1 See Fest's Interpolation II, pp. 373–84.

page 173 note 2 Fest, op. cit. p. 376.

page 173 note 3 Maser, op. cit, p. 254.

page 173 note 4 Fest, op. cit. p. 381.

page 173 note 5 Ibid. p. 381.

page 173 note 6 Ibid. p. 383.

page 173 note 7 Ibid.

page 174 note 1 Although each of the biographies, old and new, discusses Hitler's ‘method’ of leadership, perhaps the best work which deals with this aspect of his career is Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis, 1967)Google Scholar.

page 174 note 2 Fest, op. cit. p. 609.

page 174 note 3 Ibid. p. 612.

page 174 note 4 Maser, op. cit. p. 244.

page 174 note 5 Ibid. pp. 209–32.

page 175 note 1 Fest, op. cit, p. 759.