Treat this as a guide, though feel free to write on something else of interest:
Why does Kershaw insist these two events are so important in Hitler's development? Can we imagine different paths Hitler might have taken amidst these heady moments of change? What legacy do these events leave for Hitler, Germany, and the world?
The First World War was the first time in Hitler's life where he took concrete action to act on the beliefs he'd spent the first two decades of his life forming. As a narrative, it is easy to see Hitler's trajectory from an idealistic soldier who felt betrayed by the government's failure to a 'beerhall agitator' and NSDAP party leader during the power vacuum. WWI and the resulting revolution were not the background of his life during this period, they were his life, and his causes. If Hitler had not joined the army during the nationalist furor and had remained a watercolor painter, it is easy to speculate he could have been among the first to perish in the wartime famine.
ReplyDeleteIf he had been lucky enough to survive, his hatred of the Bolshevik and Marxist movements might have been just as strong. Kershaw has (convincingly) detailed a portrait of an anti-Marxist Hitler when he was a painter, so his convictions would have only gotten stronger with the proof of their failure during the revolution. However, without access to the ‘training‘ he received in the Reichswehr and the opportunities he gained as a ‘mob-orator’ for the NSDAP because of it, it is hard to imagine a poor artist and self-proclaimed intellectual garnering much interest or channeling people’s misery into political power.
Rather than this ‘could-be’ world where the war and revolution took a background to Hitler’s day-to-day life, Hitler was immersed in the realities of WWI and caught up in the ideological and very real struggle of the revolution and the organization of the NSDAP that resulted from it.
-Ben Olk
PS-Jeremey, I could not find the button to create a new post, but this is my response, not my comment on yours.
Ben-
ReplyDeleteI sent you an invite to your nyu address- if that is not working, do send me an email, and I'll invite the email address you send me.