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A Psychological Analysis of Hitler

 


I am looking at a paper presenting a psycho-historical view of Hitler and Nazism written by a woman of whom I know nothing at all -- by Amelia Clark, a student at the University of Mary Washington working on her Masters Degree. 

This is well-trodden ground. I'll just pick one nugget in Clark's discussion that seems of interest. There is no evidence, she writes, "that he had any anti-Semitic feelings before he left Linz or even that he had any during his first years in Vienna." 

Such references to Linz, an Austrian city straddling the Danube between Vienna and Salzburg. and the place where Hitler was a boy. Clark's phrase "before he left Linz" reminds me of Auden's poem, September 1, 1939. "Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offense, from Luther until now, that has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, what huge imago made...." 

Clark is saying (and Auden might well agree, if I understand his poem correctly) that nothing really germane to the outbreak of World War II actually occurred at Linz. Clark points us instead to Hitler's time in Vienna.  

In that great city, Hitler learned a perverse lesson from his failure as an artist. He failed in his efforts to be admitted to an art school, yet decided simply to ignore the fact of his failures and to continue his artistic "studies" rather than getting any bread-and-butter job. This made of him a street person and, in effect, a beggar. He seems to have learned: failures are best not admitted -- they can simply be denied and one can take that denial as truth. So he fancies himself art student, facts notwithstanding.

In later years, he would fancy that the central powers could not have lost the "Great War," though they plainly did. Hence the "stabbed in the back" theory, conspiratorial thinking with Jews at its heart. 

Not a bad theme, Ms Clark. 

When he failed to be admitted into the art school in Vienna, he left his more successfulfriend and lived in squalor on the Viennese streets. Even when he was desperate formoney, he failed to even make attempts at getting a job.

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