Hitler Before the Führer

New York Times ^

[pawdoggie]

The problem with imagining a Post-WWI Germany without a Hitler is that a charismatic German "Fuehrer" would surely have emerged from the chaos of the Weimar Republic. This Fuehrer might have been a Moscow-oriented Communist, a Monarchist, a proto-Nazi or an authoritarian military type, but (whatever else he was) he would surely have been bad news for Europe and the world. This alternate Fuehrer would not have suffered from Hitler's peculiar Sado-Masochism and megalomania, which caused him to disregard reflexively the best and brightest of his military, scientific, political and economic advisers.

[aristeides]

I agree that the Weimar Republic was headed for some kind of authoritarian state. I don't agree that such a state would have had to be headed by some kind of charismatic Fuehrer figure. I can easily imagine a military dictatorship headed by a thoroughly uncharismatic type like Schleicher.

[thatdewd]

If the young Hitler's would be instructors at Vienna's High Arts Academy had realized his talents lay in being a gifted architect, history might have taken a turn for the better.

Quite possibly, but it was during his time in Vienna that he was introduced to and became obsessed with the mystical teachings of the occultists who would later form organizations such as the Thule Society and Germanic Order. Two groups that produced the men who later formed the nazi heirarchy. Those beliefs had already taken root in Germanic Europe well before World War I and even the Kaiser ocassionaly spouted off about Aryans and the "master race", something else historians tend to avoid mentioning. It is unfortunate Hitler didn't find a patron or receive more encouragement from his teachers, for it would be a lot nicer to just remember him as a footnote in some forgotten art-history book or architectural digest.

[driftless]

As someone who is an admitted philistine, I find the tenuous connection the film critic is trying to make between modern art lovers and classicists unsettling. I think that modern art is garbage created by frauds as artistically untalented as Hitler. I've read plenty of books about Hitler, but I've never heard of this Roth character. I don't know if there was a Roth-type character in Hitler's past. Hitler's life was strange enough without having to invent things which may not have occurred. But if modern art could get crushed like Nazism, that would be two great evils eliminated.

[thatdewd]

The Thule society as well as some other roots of Nazism such as Neitzche (sp?) heavily favored and promoted homosexuality and the followers of these included many homosexuals. It is well known that the SA and SS officers were notorious pederasts.

Rohm and the SA were especially nasty. The SS later began to purge itself of these types after they squelched the SA and discovered just how depraved Rohm and others in the SA had become in that regard. There's no telling how many just "went in the closet", so to speak. S&M, homosexuality, and nazism aren't sterotypically linked together by accident.

[thatdewd]

Too bad they didn't have a chill pill.

They were eventually given one, but obviously late. A good example of why Deputy Barney Fifes's words of wisdom should always be observed: "Nip it in the Bud!, nip it in the bud!".

[D-fendr]

The Swastika and the Nazis:
A study on the origins of the adoption of the swastika by Adolf Hitler as a symbol of the Nazi movement

[pepsionice]

The interesting thing is if the nitwits in Yugoslavia had never killed Crown Prince Ferdanan (and his lovely wife)...WW I would never have happened...and Hitler would have been a simple housepainter in Austria. Everything is dependent on these Yugoslaiva dimwits who thought they were doing the world a favor. Hitler was destined to be just a plain housepainter after his entry was turned down at the Vienna High Arts Academy. His dad was the towns train station manager and was not of any statue to help the son. Life would be quiet different today under a slightly different scenario.

[First Amendment]

Regarding the SS purging of Rohm and many leaders of the SA (the Night of the Long Knives)- it was publicly pretending to be purging depravity, but according to "The Pink Swastika" by Lively (I mentioned earlier in this thread) it was a power struggle between the SA and the SS. Many of the leaders who weren't killed were just as depraved and perverted as some of the ones who were. Many political opponents -leaders of other political parties were killed that night.
The Nazis often publicly denounced homosexuality/perversion but it was essentially a publicity ploy. There was also division among the homosexual elements, the "butches" and the "femmes". Hitler surrounded himself with homosexuals, before and after the purge.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

What about Hitler's neice Geli? She was a child when she began this horrible affair with him and then he had her killed!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1582340080/103-3443868-6694245?vi=glance

Few people know of the affair Adolf Hitler had with his niece, Geli Raubal. The couple shared a strangely intense, passionate relationship, but it was always dogged by Hitler's intolerance, his chauvinistic attitude to womanhood and his possessive jealousy.

In 1931, aged 23, Geli Raubal was found dead in the Munich flat she shared with Hitler, his revolver on the floor and an unfinished letter on the table. Hitler was shattered by his niece's death, and for the rest of his life couldn't speak...

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Here is the direct link to the Pink Swastika, the book

http://www.abidingtruth.com/pinkswastika/book.html

[Pagey]

'Hitler Before the Führer'

Hmmm,the similarities to Hillary Rotten Clinton from 1969 to 2004,(8),(12) surely will be astronomical.

[thatdewd]

What about Hitler's neice Geli?

That was defintely one twisted relationship. Old onesy's incestuous partnering was clearly not the action of a well-balanced person, especially if it was excercised as mentioned on the page you linked. I pulled the following Hitler quote from one of the reviews. A psychoanalyst would have a field day with this one:

"I never feel tired when my storm troopers and soldiers march past me and I stand at this salute. I never move. My arm is like granite, rigid and unbending. But Goering can't stand it.... He is flabby. But I am hard."

....no comment...(snicker)

[I_Love_My_Husband]

The whole neice thing is awful and I didn't know about it till just a few years ago.

And also her own mother (Geli's mother) as far as I know was complicit in it IIRC and basically, again IIRC and IMHO, gave her daughter to Hitler!

Ew!

[weegee]

Make no mistake: the 30-year-old Hitler imagined by the film is a thoroughly disagreeable creep. As he skulks through the movie, radiating a clenched, clammy phosphorescence, he could be described (in therapeutic terms) as a humorless, obsessive-compulsive rageaholic with zero tolerance for frustration. He is the sort of killjoy who, when attending a social gathering, would be deemed intriguing for the first 20 minutes but quickly would wear out his welcome with his haranguing intensity, rigid certitude and lack of social grace.

Sounds like Brother Theodore (a man who ironically died the same week as Ed Big Daddy Roth and Joey Ramone).

Brother Theodore fled Hitler's Germany and reportedly got assistance entering America from Albert Einstein. He recorded dark spoken word "rants" in the 1950s and continued performing up to the end. He found new fame from repeated appearances on David Letterman's show.

[weegee]

The debates between Rothman and Hitler culminate with the movie's conceptual coup, in which Hitler comes up with the iconography of National Socialism, including the swastika, and proudly presents it to Rothman, who is impressed enough to proclaim that Hitler has made his crucial breakthrough. It's a novel idea: Nazism as the art project of a failed painter. Because that iconography has yet to be attached to a political and social movement, Max sees it only as a fantastically inventive work of kitsch, a grand theme park of the imagination that today might be labeled Hitlerworld.

The swastika was a good luck sign until Hitler appropriated it. It would be comparable to Radical Islamists using the Smiley Face to identify their movement (Religion of Peace TM).

There are those in recent years who have sought to "take back" the swastika.

Avagara Review: Can the Swastika be Re-sanctified?

Gentle Swastika by Man Woman

[weegee]

...and eventually, as we all should know, leads one of the most homicidal performance art pieces ever, which probably ground up Max as well.

There was someone (a professor or writer) who tried to appraise the destruction of the WTC towers as a phenomenal performance art piece and then he tried to defend his statement by saying that he in no way supported the action but could distance himself from the horror and look at it detatched. Postmodernism and postmodernists' lack of "black and white"/"good and evil" ended that day although they've fallen back into their old habits.

[Al Simmons]

My dear fellow, as my SERBIAN ancestors' ghosts bid me to tell you, those were SERBS who lit those matches by killing Ferdinand....SERBS, whose fate was to pour themselves into the futile project known as Yugoslavia, which ultimately became their downfall in 1941, and in 1945, and in 1991,.....

Thank GOD I am an American........

[thatdewd]

Regarding the SS purging of Rohm and many leaders of the SA (the Night of the Long Knives)- it was publicly pretending to be purging depravity, but according to "The Pink Swastika" by Lively (I mentioned earlier in this thread) it was a power struggle between the SA and the SS.

It was definitely the result of a power struggle between Rohm and the prudish Himmler, and it wasn't easy for Himmler to overcome Adolf's protective and tolerating opinion of Rohm. That in itself has to make one wonder, because Hitler knew how extremely depraved the pervert Rohm had become, and protected him anyway. Himmler had to convince him that Rohm posed a direct political threat to his leadership before Adolf would let Himmler make his move on the SA. Himmler was so uptight about certain things that he could be a poster child for 'repressed tendencies', if you know what I mean. No doubt many of his people were like Rohm's, but they were smart enough to hide it from Heinrich, who was very image concious. He may have been the only straight one there, but still twisted in a thousand other ways.

[Al Simmons]

While we are at this topic, how about the historically recorded psychotherapy of Hitler when he went blind from mustard gas in WWI? The stupid doctor used a hypnotic trance in which he convinced Hitler that he was some sort of a demi-God, sent by Providence once every few centuries to redeem the German people - a superman, if you will.

Of course, the idea was to help Hitler to regain his sight...but in Mein Kamph, Hitler describes the experience of regaining his sight as having the "scales fall from my eyes" - an obvious Pauline reference there...

and what of the good doctor?

well, both the good doctor and his biographer, who wrote about patient "A.H.'s" treatment in a book published shortly prior to the Nazis' rise to power, met quick and mysterious deaths shortly after the presumed "Patient A.H." assumed supreme power.....

of course, many rational people have described psychothrapy for years in basically the same terms as y'all are discussing "occultic teachings".....especially the variety invented by that fellow Freund....

Trivia question: The founders of what three major world religions arguably did so in order to legitimize their own misogynistic lusts after the fairer sex?

A: Muhammed

Joseph Smith

Sigmund Freund

I am sure I've missed a few.

A hint to the wise: if your guru is a bit too preoccupied with behavior that the common morality sees as obscene, his inspiration is of gonadic, rather than God-based, origin.

Now y'all have learned something you did not know.

Good Night.