Hitler’s Error of Memory: Symptom or Propaganda Ploy?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to use the psychoanalytic understanding of parapraxes to explore the meaning of apparent errors of memory made by Adolf Hitler in speeches ‘prophesying’ the destruction of European Jews. Because historians have suggested the likelihood that these errors were deliberate, the concept of intentional parapraxes is explored and utilized. Whether deliberate or not Hitler’s errors, it is argued, were a product of a psychological conflict between the wish to take public credit for the mass murder of Jews and the need to keep these crimes secret.