A Man of Many Faces

Upon reading The Hitler Myth, I found the chapter entitled Fuhrer without Sin to be most intriguing. This is probably because the last thing that anyone would think of when thinking of Adolf Hitler is that he could possibly be conceived as "without sin." What was weird was that in a lot of the past literature of the course, we've read about how Hitler thinks of himself as so far above the masses. He's always looked down upon the working class, decided he was better than them. However, in the Myth, we read about how he acted as a true representative of the "common man," cutting down people of the upper-classes, the high and mighty, for the good of his people (92). This was clearly why the people of the masses did not realize that Hitler saw himself as so much better than them; they saw him with an amazing morality. This ideal is almost laughable now, knowing the outcome of the Hitler 'movement' and its powerful reign, but at the time he seemed to be so for the people, more than any Chancellor ever before him, and it was clearly all an act. Hitler was someone that would now be called two-faced because of his real feelings about the masses, and how he acted toward the higher people. But however two-faced that may be, it was also incredibly genius. He knew exactly which buttons to push in which people in order to gain a strong and steady following.

As we saw in Triumph of the Will, he relied a lot on talk of German Unity. The Nazi ideology seemed less about antisemitism (if at all) and more about the strength and patriotism of the country. He knew the reaction would be more in his favor that way, and so he used that to his advantage. It's interesting to see the way in which he gained followers, because it almost seems reasonable to follow him after watching the moving and realizing all of his strategies.