Disentegrating Miracles into Myths

If one were to trace the trajectory of Hitler's popularity from before 1933-1943, it would look something like a set of gently rolling hills leading to a cliff with a sheer and steep overhang. This set of gently rolling hills represents the gradually augmenting public image of Hitler as “the Führer,” which was constructed on the basis of Weber’s characteristics for charismatic leadership. During the years leading up to World War II, Hitler followed Weber’s standards for a charismatic leader closely, with special attention to the notion that a charismatic leader must claim extraordinary powers and legitimize this claim through performing miracles. With his potent orating skills Hitler spoke of miracles and secured the populations’s “emotional attachment,” to a charismatic leader who “represented the ideal of national community and national greatness, that was leading Germany to greater prosperity.”(Kershaw 152). However, as Kershaw points out, providing tangible evidence of such miracles was never a priority , and “exactly how this wonderland would be brought about was, of course, seldom systematically thought out”(153). Operating within this framework of “miracles,” Hitler was able to disguise the veritable myth of his image and the precarious grounds that the Führer Party acted on while swiftly deceiving and gaining the support of the German population.

While Hitler’s miracle-making image was first sustained by his promotion of the economic miracles that he performed with the Nazi party to rescue Germany from the great depression, militaristic miracles became the focal point of Hitler’s power strategy with the advent of WWII. Hitler used this to save his image as the terrible plight of the war began to make Germans increasingly uncomfortable, promising that “the building up of Germany’s military might would bring the strengthening of defense against outside threat: a policy of ‘peace through strength’” (201). However as violence continued to infiltrate cities of the Reich, the public’s expectation for their leader to make miracles shifted to suspicion that their leader had been maneuvering through myth.

Such suspicions spread throughout the German population quite rapidly, providing for the side of the Hitler popularity tracing that resembles a cliff with a sheer drop. The most interesting feature of this shift to German suspicion is the youth’s involvement. Once a leading group of Hitler supporters, German youth’s were now beginning a movement in opposition of their leader. Kershaw notes the growth of this movement:

“Though the majority of youth continued outwardly to behave in a conformist manner, the growth in numerous big cities of deliberately non-conformist and sometimes actively oppositionist youth groups, delighting in physical as well as verbal attacks on Hitler Youth brigades, wearing ‘western’ clothes, aping English mannerisms, and listening to jazz, showed that Nazism was losing ground among what had been its strongest area of support.”(208)

With earnest passion, this group that once highly regarded Hitler and the miracles he promised actually lead a retrograde in the countrywide support of Nazism and “Führer Leadership.” This youth movement defied the sentiments of those who held on to “the belief in the Führer’s powers to bring about a miracle and achieve final victory in the face of all the odds,” continuing to support Hitler out of “blind faith rooted in self-interest and fear of the future”(210). It seems that as Hitler’s popularity began to rapidly decline with the violence of WWII, the same fear for the future of Germany that was apparent at Weimar’s beginnings, and again at the height of the Great Depression, was on the rise throughout the country.

Rebecca Hartke