The Comment Factory

In 1983, as the furore over the forged Hitler diaries began to break across the world, numerous religious and public figures were letting their thoughts be known. One of these was the then Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Immanuel Jakobovits, who wrote a letter to The Times. In it he stated:

Whether they [the diaries] are authentic or not is quite immaterial to the outrage of resurrecting the incarnation of evil and his propaganda…

Fast-forward a quarter of a century and another controversy (though no way comparable in size or scope) has greeted Bernie Ecclestone when he commented in an interview that Hitler was a man who ‘could get things done’. These two statements, separated by over twenty-five years, could quite easily be seen to have very little in common apart from the Nazi dictator as their central motivation. However, they demonstrate two things. Firstly, that attitudes towards Hitler have changed considerably since 1983; but also, secondly, that there still exists an unhelpful and counter-productive analytical framework within which we discuss the Third Reich and its creator.

Since his death, Hitler has always held a deep fascination for a diverse range of people. He has generated interest, much of it of a morbid nature, from those involved with history, sociology, eugenics, race, psychoanalysis and countless other disciplines. It is said that only Jesus Christ has more words written about him and Jesus has been around as an object of scholastic study for a considerably longer period

This fascination stems mainly from Hitler being the principle architect and catalyst for the Second World War, the Holocaust and other atrocities which remain unfathomably shocking. Though he had his well-known subordinates, the motivation for the belligerent foreign policy that culminated in the invasion of Poland unquestionably lay with him. The Second World War generates little of the causality debate that confronts scholars of the First. The debate surrounding the continental-wide violence of 14 – 18 is still to some extent contentious, submerged as it was under analysis of power rivalries and complex international and diplomatic relations. No such issue exists for 39 – 45 however. The blame for the events and crimes perpetrated over this six year time span rests firmly on a single individual: Hitler.

All this horror achieved by one man has lead to understanding and depiction of Hitler, similarly to description of the Chief Rabbi, as the ‘incarnation of evil’. Now I would never suggest that such an evaluation needs revision; Hitler is every bit the vile and obnoxious individual that the language portrays, but I think the Rabbi’s comments then and the reaction to Ecclestone’s comments now, drives at a deeper problem: that is too easy to dehumanise Hitler and make him from another world or realm. Hitler in this view is ‘pure evil’ the ‘devil incarnate’, a ‘blood-thirsty monster’. Therefore, true understanding is negated or seen as unnecessary because the inexplicable nature of his crimes remains just that, inexplicable. How are we to comprehend the actions and logic of the devil himself? Using this understanding of Hitler lets us off too easily.

This issue has affected the way in which Nazis, not just Hitler, have been depicted. In some large-scale Hollywood portrayals, Nazis exist in a binary moral universe. In Schindler’s list, Ralph Fiennes’s character Amon Goeth is unendingly evil and brutal towards the prisoners he oversees. It is of course true that Schindler’s List is based on real events and Goeth was a genuine person who ran the Plaszow labour camp in Poland. He was reportedly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Still, the depiction remains problematic. There is little moral complexity to his character; he exists, psychopathically, in a purely evil sense unrelentingly, even to his end at the hangman’s noose.

In 2004, the German/Austrian film Downfall (in German: Der Untergang) was released showing Hitler in the last days of the Berlin bunker as the Third Reich crumbled around him. The main controversy surrounding the film was the depiction of Hitler as a human being. He shouted, got angry and upset, was sad, and sometimes sympathetic – in short, Hitler was portrayed as having human emotions. While still being an obnoxious and horrendous individual, the film went some way into removing Hitler from the unreality of monsters, devils and demons, that is, from the ease of binary depiction.

But the reaction to Ecclestone’s comments, while being as much about the stupidity and insensitivity of the comments taken in their own right, highlight the continuing tradition in some areas to be up in arms and horrified at any notion that Hitler was as biologically human as you or I. Could Hitler ‘get things done’? Is there any historical truth to the assertion? Does it really matter? It is not the accuracy or inaccuracy of the comments that are interesting, but rather, the near universal condemnation of Ecclestone. This was not outright praise or adoration for Hitler, instead a foolish and illogical comparison of past and present politicians. Yet the mistake Ecclestone made was to humanise Hitler, that is, to imbue him with characteristics and traits that portray complexity and a multi-dimensional grey as opposed to the sheer inhumanity of black and white descriptions.

Hitler was pure evil, of that there is little doubt, but such an evaluation should be the start of a commentary and attempted understanding of his character, not simply a start and end point in itself. If he is dismissed as such, we are removing the need to chart back through history. We are bypassing the necessity to analyse and see why he came to embody such evil; why his anger was so entrenched by Versailles; why his views and propaganda were so successful; and how he came to be in a position to express European anti-Semitism so violently. In short, if we dehumanise, we are removing the burden to understand and comprehend, and in doing so, amplifying the possibility of it happening again.