You know, it just occurred to me that Hitler and Mark Twain are almost diametrically opposite to each other. To wit:
Twain: champion of racial justice
Hitler: racist goon
Twain: ardent pacifist
Hitler: believed Germany must constantly be at war
Twain: happiest sitting on a riverboat, as he did in his youth.
Hitler: happiest sitting in a trench, as he did in his youth.
Twain: distrusted people who didn’t drink or smoke because he felt life should be enjoyed
Hitler: didn’t drink or smoke, notorious ascetic
Twain: wrote fun books that inspire laughter
Hitler: wrote a turgid book that inspires nausea
Twain: witty
Hitler: humorless
Also, think of Twain’s “A lie can go halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on” vs. Hitler’s ideas about the “Big lie” and whatnot. Ostensibly they had the same ideas about truth and falsehood, but Twain bemoaned the gullibility of the public, while Hitler reveled in it.
Additionally, both are iconic figures, in part because of their distinctive dress and sartorial styles. Twain had a white suit, Hitler had his brownshirt uniform. Twain had a shock of white hair and a big mustache, Hitler had a greasy bang and a toothbrush mustache.
Mark Twain: Often made of the German language.
My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.
“That Awful German Language,” Appendix D of A Tramp Abroad
Hitler: Spoke German and felt you should too, or else.
Twain: Liked Jews
It’s a marvelous race–by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose.
Letter to Joseph Twichell, 10/23/1897
Hitler: Did not like Jews.
Twain: Thought nationalism was rather silly.
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Hitler: Hollered quite loudly and rarely knew what he was talking about.
Twain: Wrote a fable called The Mysterious Stranger about a man in Austria who turns about to be Satan.
Hitler: A man from Austia who many claim to be connected with Satan.
but they have some things very similar
Twain: Wrote a book about cowboys called “roughing it”.
Hitler: As a small boy loved the cowboy stories by Karl May
Twain: Did not like the french.
A dead Frenchman has many good qualities, many things to recommend him; many attractions–even innocencies. Why cannot we have more of these?
Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883
Hitler: Did not like the French. Created many dead Frenchman.
“Once the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you see of him until he emerges from the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
– “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (Hard to believe, but true.)
A verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it’s all together. It’s downright inhuman to split it up. But that’s just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between those two limits they just shovel in German.
–Mark Twain, speech, New York, 1900
I’ve thought of another simularity:
Twain went nearly bankrupt investing in scientific hoaxes (inventions).
Hitler prepetuated the biggest scientific hoax of all time.
(Pure Aryans and the Aryan race)
Hitler invaded other countries.
Twain invaded other counties.
I always find it mildly disconcerting that a man who is so closely associated with Missouri has his name plastered all over western New York. You can’t drive along the Southern Tier of the state without seeing all sorts of signs proclaiming this town or that village to be “Home of Mark Twain”.
Of course, Twain travelled extensively and was a man of the world, but I always think of him on the banks of the Mississippi, not the Gennessee.
Twain lived in a lot of places. He had a summer home in (I think) Elmira, N.Y. I think he wrote “Huckleberry Finn” there, in fact. He lived for a long time in Hartford, Connecticut literally next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe. You can still visit both their houses. (And that’s the reason it’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, not a Missouri one.
Funny, I always have to think twice before I remember that Twain was a Southerner. 'Round these parts, he’s generally considered to be a native San Franciscan, his actual birthplace be damned.
Cal and Nimune, I know that Twain lived in a lot of places (I said so in my first post). Maybe I wasn’t completely clear. To me he’s the guy from Hannibal, MO, riding a barge down the Mighty Mississip. And it’s jarring to me when I see the “Mark Twain Motel” in freakin’ Horseheads, NY.
Sorta like seeing pictures of Babe Ruth in his Boston Braves uniform. There’s that little moment of huh?!
Anyway, this only serves to confirm my original contention that Hitler invaded other countries and Mark Twain invaded other counties.
