Hitler's Life Research Articles

A Corpus‐based Psychodynamic Analysis of Body Boundary Imagery in Hitler's Mein Kampf

ABSTRACTThis study employs a corpus‐based approach to make justifiable psychodynamic interpretations based on the statistical relationships that exist between linguistic variables in written texts. The text examined is Hitler's Mein Kampf (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), which was assessed on the strengths of associations between body boundary imagery, primordial thought language and emotional language. The results largely confirm the research hypotheses identifying the use of body boundary functions as a defense mechanism associated to borderline and narcissistic organization for separating trauma from conscious awareness and for containing a fragile self‐image and body schema. The discussion interprets the language pattern by drawing on various psychoanalytic theories in conjunction with Hitler's biographical notes and Langer's psychohistorical study of Hitler's life (The mind of Adolf Hitler: The secret wartime report. London: Pan, 1973). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Coming to Terms with a Violent Past

Miriam Dobson, Khrushev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returneess, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin. 264 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0801447570. $45.00. Bettina Greiner, Verdrangter Terror: Geschichte und Wahrnehmung sowjetischer Speziallager in Deutschland (Terror Displaced: The History and Perception of Soviet Special Camps in Germany). 525 pp. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010. ISBN-13 978-3868542172. 35.00 [euro]. As recent case studies on the topic of transitional justice have demonstrated, recovery from the experience of mass violence and political terror and coming to terms with the associated past always constitute lengthy and painful processes, often including contradictions as well. (1) Contributing to this developing field of research, the works of Miriam Dobson and Bettina Greiner focus on the history and public perception of the Stalinist camps and their inmates in the USSR and in the Soviet zone of occupation that later became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Both works seek to understand individual perceptions of the camp experience and various attempts of state, societies, and individuals to come to terms with a past characterized by terror and totalitarian dictatorship. After Stalin's death in 1953, hundreds of thousands of Gulag prisoners were released by amnesty. Between 1953 and 1960, the population of the Gulag fell dramatically from 2.5 million to 0.5 million. This exodus included not only victims of the Stalinist purges but also ordinary criminals. In her impressive monograph, Dobson explores the massive departure of prisoners from the Gulag and popular reactions to this process among those to whom the prisoners returned. Presenting the Gulag releases as an event that affected all of society, the book fruitfully combines three different aspects of the problem: the reform policies of Khrushchev and other political leaders; ordinary peoples' perceptions of de-Stalinization and Gulag release; and returnees' perceptions and experiences of life in the postcamp world. Her work accords with a general shift of interest in recent research on the Gulag, which concentrates on the post-Stalinist era and the dilemmas of de-Stalinization. (2) Dobson skillfully combines the different perspectives in her book and shows us the big picture of politics and society coping with the results of Stalinist terror. She thus offers insights into everyday life, social and political tensions, and patterns of exclusion and inclusion in the USSR after Stalin. While Dobson focuses on processes within the USSR, Bettina Greiner investigates the history of Soviet special camps located on the territory of the Soviet zone of occupation and the GDR in the years from 1945 to 1950. Research on the special camps developed in Germany only in the 1990s, when for the first time the Russian archives opened their collections to foreign researchers. By the end of that decade, some primary research and an edition of documents about the special camps had appeared. (3) Greiner's monograph represents a continuation of this trend. In numerical terms, these camps were much smaller than those located in the USSR itself. According to official Soviet accounts, around 160,000 civilian men and women were imprisoned in ten camps, among them prominent resistance fighters like Ulrich Freiherr von Sell (a participant in the plot on Hitler's life of 20 July 1944) and Horst von Einsiedel (a member of the Kreisau Circle, mostly conservative Germans who had opposed Nazism). Most of the prisoners were Germans, while another 35,000 or so were Soviet citizens. Mortality in these camps was extremely high, reaching 35 percent; nearly 43,000 prisoners died from hunger and disease during their prison terms. In her case study, Greiner focuses specifically on Sachsenhausen, which had more than 60,000 prisoners and was thus the biggest special camp in the Soviet zone of occupation. The camp inmates can be divided into two groups. …

Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (review)

Reviewed by: Heinrich Himmler: Biographie Thomas Adam Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, by Peter Longerich. Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2008. 1035 pp. €39.95. The Nazi dictatorship continues to attract the attention of an audience ranging from university students to a general public that regularly tunes in to the History Channel for information about Hitler's Germany and World War II. And while social and cultural historians produced impressive studies of the inner functioning of the Nazi state, biographies about Hitler and other leading Nazis seem to dominate the German history sections in bookstores and libraries. And these biographies become longer and longer. Ian Kershaw's two-volume Hitler biography of 2122 pages is now joined by Peter Longerich's Himmler biography with 1035 pages. There is no doubt that both biographies are of superb quality and eloquence. However, both books offer less of a biography of their subjects and more of a structural account of the times their subjects dominated. Longerich divides his book into six chapters. The first chapter focuses on Himmler's childhood and youth, and the remaining five chapters follow his rise and fall as leader of the SS in the Third Reich. The author describes Himmler as a very shy and socially awkward teenager and young adult whose [End Page 198] life was dominated by an authoritarian father figure (whom he never challenged), extremely conservative attitudes with regards to women (which were quite similar to Hitler's views on womanhood), and a general lack of sexual experience until he turned 27. Himmler's attempts to gain control over his body and his (sexual) desires resulted in latent physical pain and psychosomatic symptoms he battled throughout his entire life. Himmler's personal attitudes towards sexuality (and fear of homosexuality) and the competition with Ernst Röhm for power and influence shaped his policies with regards to the membership in his SS. He was deeply concerned that the overtly masculine image of the Nazi movement provided fertile soil for homosexuality. He, therefore, insisted that his SS were not to become an organization of individual men who glorified a cult of manhood and comradeship but an association of family fathers who were married to Aryan wives and produced plenty of offspring. This "family-oriented" SS was of course also envisioned as a counter-image to the SA which, in Himmler's eyes, seemed, at least until summer 1934, to provide a safe haven for homosexuals. After Röhm's death, Himmler took charge of the inner security of Hitler's dictatorship. The control over the police, the Gestapo, the SS, the SA, and the concentration camp system provided powerful and unlimited tools for the persecution and annihilation of political enemies. Himmler created an aura of terror and intimidation that provided, according to Longerich, a solid basis for the stability of the system. Longerich downplayed the role of denunciations and the voluntary cooperation of the German population in favor of an outdated model of the Nazi dictatorship in which the Gestapo appears to be all powerful. If the Gestapo and SS were in fact as powerful as Longerich suggests, it seems rather curious that they were unable to detect the preparations for Georg Elser's attempt at Hitler's life in 1939 and Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg's plot against Hitler in 1944. Elser's and Stauffenberg's assassination attempts made Himmler simply look incompetent and the Gestapo blind. Even though Longerich points to a few instances such as Himmler's decision to begin an extramarital relationship and his encouragement to his men to have children out of wedlock, in which Himmler's private life overlapped and influenced his political life, this book presents more of a history of the SS than of Himmler the individual. Beginning with the second chapter, Longerich focused on the inner workings of the SS and its leadership. We still learn about Himmler, however, that he acted as a teacher and educator who interfered repeatedly with the private lives of his SS men. He wanted to be absolutely sure that his men were straight, married, free of debt (and thus not tempted by corruption), healthy, and completely dependent on him. Himmler preferred to "save" individuals who...

The figure of the soldier as resister: German film and the difficult legacy of Claus Schenck Graf von Stauffenberg

This year, Bryan Singer's film Valkyrie (2008) was screened in cinemas around the world. This article sets out to show that, while Valkyrie provides a very uncomplicated heroicization of the German resistance figure Stauffenberg, German films from the 1950s onwards situate their representations within a richer and more complex discursive framework. This was necessary, the article argues, because the legacy of Stauffenberg in post-war West Germany was a controversial one; not everyone saw him as a hero, and even today the value of his attempt on Hitler's life remains to a degree contested. Yet while German films often engaged with and sought to negotiate the problems attendant on Stauffenberg's legacy, in some respects they chose to ignore them: thus it was only with Jo Baier's film Stauffenberg of 2004 that Stauffenberg's response to anti-Semitism was significantly addressed.

Hitler's Face: The Biography of an Image (review)

Reviewed by: Hitler's Face: The Biography of an Image Richard T. Gray (bio) Claudia Schmölders . Hitler's Face: The Biography of an Image. Trans. Adrian Daub. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2006. 226 pp. ISBN 0-812-23902-4, $36.50. There is likely no face as widely disseminated, as universally recognized throughout the entire world, and as bitterly scorned as that of Adolf Hitler. How can we explain the uncanny fascination of this countenance, at once distinctly individual and yet peculiarly amorphous? Surely in the postwar decades the allure of Hitler's visage is related to the wish to give a face to evil incarnate; for Hitler has become indistinguishable from the egregious crimes against humanity committed on his orders and in his name. And yet, as Claudia Schmölders convincingly demonstrates, an uncanny seductiveness and almost perverse appeal emanated from Hitler's face long before he came to symbolize the atrocities of the Holocaust. Is this reflex connected with that tension between the mundane and the horrid that Hannah Arendt so felicitously—and frighteningly—termed the "banality of evil"? Was Hitler's face, as some contemporary witnesses claimed, simply a featureless void that invited its viewers to fill it in with random meanings? Or did Hitler's countenance, demeanor, and—perhaps most importantly—voice actually exude that haunting charisma so often attributed to him? Or must, ultimately, the seduction and enthralling fascination of Hitler's image and person be attributed to one of the most successful advertising and media campaigns the world has ever known? These are some of the questions Claudia Schmölders attempts to address in her provocative and illuminating study Hitler's Face. As Schmölders's subtitle indicates, this work is conceived as the "biography of an image." In this regard it departs from the methodology of traditional biography by concentrating not on the facts and the evidence revealing its subject's life experiences and personal development, but by focusing instead on the images that document—and oftentimes construct—particular phases of that life. In other words, what Schmölders presents is not just [End Page 753] another history of the person Adolf Hitler, but rather a history of his imagistic representation in painting, photograph, and print-media reproduction. In this sense the more common relationship between biographical data and pictorial illustration has been reversed: here it is not the pictures that illustrate the life, but rather the life that, as it were, illustrates the pictures. It is in keeping with this aim that Schmölders assembles and analyzes over fifty depictions of Hitler, ranging in type from the family album snapshot, to propaganda photos in the service of a constructed image, to hagiographic portraits of the political leader, through finally to caricatures of the demagogue. Schmölders's argument is that the history of Hitler's imagistic representation tells a story that supplements in important ways the tales told by more traditional biographers about Hitler's life. The subtitle of Schmölders's original German text, which was published in 2000, "eine physiognomische Biographie" (a physiognomic biography), says more about the specificity of her project than does the less descriptive English subtitle. For what is unique about Schmölders's take on Hitler iconography is the fact that she embeds it in a wider discursive context that, while not peculiar to Germany alone, experienced an unusual blossoming in German speaking Europe during the years between the First and the Second World Wars. This context is the obsession with physiognomy, the interpretation of human character, faculties, and potential based on readings of external facial features. Reaching back to the immensely popular and widely disseminated writings on physiognomy of the Swiss Pastor Johann Caspar Lavater, published in the final decades of the eighteenth century, this intellectual-historical movement came to a head in the years of the Weimar Republic in Germany, which saw the publication of innumerable works that sought to marry empirical science with physiognomic interpretation. Schmölders is absolutely correct to emphasize the significance of this cultural backdrop as a determining factor for the mystique surrounding images of Hitler's face. Her thesis is that a series of intellectual and cultural...

Deborah Hayden, Pox: genius, madness, and the mystery of syphilis, New York, Basic Books, 2003, pp. xx, 379, illus., £20.00, US$27.50 (hardback 0-465-02881-0).

In her pathography, Deborah Hayden, an independent American scholar, proposes an intriguing thesis, that syphilis, a disease known as the “Great Imitator” of diseases and thus frequently misdiagnosed, is a secret, unacknowledged subtext in history. Employing retrospective diagnosis, Hayden suggests that many prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical figures suffered from syphilis. She then suggests that this disease might have accentuated existing abilities, talents or predilections, and so might help to explain the productions or actions of a number of composers, writers, artists, philosophers, politicians and dictators. Beginning with an overview of the impact of the disease on Western Europe from the period of Columbus' adventures in the New World, the discussion centres on biographical analyses of fifteen possible syphilitics: famous, or infamous, nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures. According to Hayden, among the possible contenders are Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Charles Baudelaire, Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd (one of only two women discussed in the book), Gustave Flaubert, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Adolf Hitler. Hayden draws the parallel between the effects on the brain of the later stages of syphilis and the condition of manic-depression, which has been linked in some quarters with artistic creativity. In doing so, Hayden displays an engaging writing style and a flair for rendering complex symptoms intelligible to the lay (non-medical) reader. She explains that as late-stage neurosyphilis develops, periods of depression and pain can be replaced with episodes of creative euphoria and heightened perception, which, she insists, must surely have had some influence on people's work or actions. The reader is left to infer from Hayden's description that the syphilis bacterium, affecting the central nervous system and inducing the illusion of great light, is an important factor to be considered in the circumstances surrounding Beethoven's composition of ‘Ode to joy’, or van Gogh's paintings such as ‘Crows over the wheatfield’. In her final case study, Hayden provides an interesting analysis of the possible role syphilis might have played in Hitler's life. Hayden proposes that Hitler's anti-semitism was possibly heightened by his personal experience of syphilis, being a disease that, as she points out, Hitler closely identified with the Jews in Mein Kampf. Yet for the medical historian the book throws into sharp relief the problem of evidence, and raises questions over the validity of retrospective diagnosis in historical inquiry. Her description of how stigmatizing the disease has been during the five hundred years it has been prevalent in Europe, and the difficulties surrounding its accurate diagnosis, ultimately serve to undermine her thesis. As she admits, “The reader looking for proof in the contentious cases will find none.” In some cases, for instance in her chapter on Beethoven, Hayden is forced to acknowledge that “As much as we might like proof for a diagnosis of syphilis, there is none”. Yet, as subsequent chapters show, Hayden does not allow a lack of evidence to spoil a good story. Concluding her fifty-page chapter on Hitler, Hayden states, “There is no definitive proof that Adolf Hitler had syphilis, any more than there is undeniable evidence that he did not.” The thesis is an interesting one, but the foundations of proof that Hayden provides are shaky. The argument is built on a structure of circumstantial evidence and conjecture that historians will find flimsy. In order to be a helpful addition to medical history such a discussion requires much more evidence than Hayden is able to provide. Without this evidence we are in danger of proving Cecil Graham's charge, in Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, that “history is merely gossip”.

Hitler's penicillin.

During the Second World War, the Germans and their Axis partners could only produce relatively small amounts of penicillin, certainly never enough to meet their military needs; as a result, they had to rely upon the far less effective sulfonamides. One physician who put penicillin to effective use was Hitler's doctor, Theodore Morell. Morell treated the Führer with penicillin on a number of occasions, most notably following the failed assassination attempt in July 1944. Some of this penicillin appears to have been captured from, or inadvertently supplied by, the Allies, raising the intriguing possibility that Allied penicillin saved Hitler's life.

Male Emotions/Relationships and Violence: A Case Study

In this article, a theory of the emotional/relational origins of male violence is outlined, and illustrated by episodes in Hitler's life. Drawing on earlier work on aggression and violence, it is proposed that three conditions lead to rage and violence: (i) no affectional attachments, (ii) a single overarching obsession, and (iii) the complete repression of shame. Only to the extent that all three of these conditions are fully met is destructive violence likely. Although women in whom these three conditions were present would be as likely as men to commit violent acts, men qualify much more frequently and fully than women. Key features of the theory are illustrated by applying it to details in biographies of Hitler. This case suggests a way in which emotions unite leaders and led, leading to collective violence. Finally, a method that would provide a preliminary test of the theory is suggested.

Adolf Hitler: a biographical companion

This A-Z biographical sourcebook provides information about the life and times of Adolf Hitler, along with insight into the political movement and world conflict he created. The Hitler regime warns us of the destruction that ensues when a perverted ideology and a cult of leadership are combined with a polity where power is divorced from morality. This illustrated A-Z biographical companion provides easily accessible information about the key events in Hitler's life, his most important collaborators and opponents, his domestic and foreign policies, the use of propaganda and the forging of the Hitler cult, racial persecution and the Holocaust, and Hitler as a war leader. Adolf Hitler also includes an introduction, a chronology, maps, primary source documents, a general bibliography, and index. 344 A-Z entries 46 illustrations, chronology, and bibliography

The paradox of duality: Adolf Hitler and the concept of military surprise

The First World War was a major event in Adolf Hitler's life. 'To me', he wrote in a famous passage six years after the conflict, 'those hours seem like a release from the painful feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time'.1 Hitler may have been influenced by the romantic nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose Also sprach Zarathustra was sold to thousands of German soldiers off to war in 1914.2 What is certain is that for Hitler at the end of that conflict the 'romance of battle had been replaced by horror.. .and the exuberant joy was stifled by mortal fear'.3

Plots Against Hitler's Life - Peter Hoffmann: The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945. Translated from the German by Richard Barry. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1977. Pp. 847. $19.95.)

Plots Against Hitler's Life - Peter Hoffmann: The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945. Translated from the German by Richard Barry. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1977. Pp. 847. $19.95.) - Volume 39 Issue 3

Theologian in the Third Reich: The Case of Gerhard Kittel

Is it possible, or even desirable, to place the Nazi era in human perspective? The recent appearance of Joachim Fest's massive Hitler biography has reopened this important issue: Golo Mann, in a review of the book seems to reply in the negative. Noting the peril of studying Hitler's life too closely, he writes, 'The longer one devotes oneself to a hero, with his origins, his motivations, his psychology, the more one is tempted to understand, from which, as we know, it is only a step to forgiveness and then to admiration.' The other alternative, unfortunately, is to divorce the Nazi leaders from their daily lives, which is the first step toward placing them in a separate world, a world of crazed monsters and insane deeds. This results in too comfortable an

Resistance to Tyranny: Treason, Right or Duty?

ON MAY 3, 1951, Otto Ernst Remer, second chairman of the Socialist Reich party, publicly denounced the organizers of the attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944, as betrayers of their country and in the pay of Germany's enemies. You can rest assured, he told a gathering of about one thousand of his followers in Braunschweig, some day these traitors will be made to render account before a German court. Less than a year later Remer himself was on trial for having insulted the resisters of the twentieth of July and slandered the memory of those who had perished in the unsuccessful uprising. On March 15, 1952, Remer was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to three months' imprisonment.1 The legal proceedings against Remer attracted considerable attention all over Germany. There were probably many who shared the sentiments expressed by the Neo-Nazi. Others welcomed the chance of once and for all clearing the good name and patriotic motives of the resisters. Since the accused tried to defend himself by arguing for the truth of the allegations in question, the prosecution devoted most of its attention to the legal and moral justification of resistance to the Nazi regime. One Catholic and two Protestant theologians as well as two historians were called to the witness stand to give expert testimony on the problem of the right of resistance to tyranny. As a result the trial assumed the character of a scholarly debate with prosecution and defense vying with each other in display of erudition and philosophical sophistication. The court in its verdict accepted the opinion of the prosecutor that the Third Reich represented a state devoid of justice (Unrechtsstaat), but it refused to deny the Nazi regime all lawful status. The Third Reich in suppressing all political opposition and persecuting and exterminating millions of Jews had been clearly unjust, yet this did not decide the question of its constitutional legality. 2 Thus, in effect, the court rejected the prosecutor's contention that resistance to Hitler's Unrechtsstaat could not possibly have been illegal and that everyone in Germany had been entitled to self-defense against a state daily committing ten thousands of murders.3 The resisters were cleared of Remer's accusation of high treason on narrower grounds. The decisive question, declared the verdict, was the motives and intentions of the conspirators. For section 88 of the Criminal Code (1944 version) stated specifically: Treason within the meaning of this paragraph is committed by him who, with the aim of jeopardizing the well-being of the Reich, permits the passing of secrets of state to another person. In a formal sense the plotters had committeed high treason by taking up contact with Germany's enemies. Yet, this had been done not in order to harm

Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

This book covers the whole of Hitler's life, from his obscure beginnings through his advance to supreme absolute power and then his final decline and suicide in the bunker as Russian shells fell around him. Bullock divides the narrative into three main sections. The first deals with Hitler's early life, his rise to party leader in the years following the First World War, and his gaining of the Chancellorship in 1933. The second part describes how he consolidated his position and extended his power once he was in office. The third and final part is about his actions in the Second World War.

Hitler, the man—notes for a case history.

Hitler's father, Alois, was born the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. In his fortieth year, he changed his name to Hitler, the maiden name of his mother-in-law. Adolf was Alois' fifth child, the third of his own mother (Alois' third wife) but the first to live more than two years. Hitler's personality structure, though falling within the normal range, may now be described as of the paranoid type with delusions of persecution and of grandeur. This stems from a sado-masochistic split in his personality. Integral with these alternating and opposed elements in his personality are his fear of infection, the identification of the Jews as the source of that infection, and some derangement of the sexual function which makes his relations to the opposite sex abnormal in nature. The drama and tragedy of Hitler's life are the projection onto the world of his own inner conflicts and his attempts to solve them. The split in Hitler's personality seems clearly to be due to his identification both with his mother, whom he passionately loved, and with his father, whom he hated and feared. His dominant, aggressive, brutal activities arouse the violent protest of the other side of his nature; nightmares and sleepless nights result. But fear is assuaged by the fiction of the demands of Fate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)