from http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/nazi/adolf-hitler/ …
Ok, so rotten.com may not be the most reliable of references. Still, I’ve read many times that he abused methamphetamine, and that it was given to his troops so that they could resist the effects of fatigue. Where are people getting this information?
You’re thinking of Rudolf Hess; he flew to Britain and parachuted from his plane in 1941, it was actually before the invasion of Russia. He was under the delusion that he could negotiate a peace with England - he was arrested by the British and the official Nazi party line explaining it was that he had suffered from a nervous breakdown, which probably was the truth. He had no backing or authority from Hitler, and had carried it out entirely on his own.
Unfortunately, Hitler was immune to any realistic appraisal of how bad things were. From A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan:
I think he is referring to Ritter von Greim who was ordered to personally report to Hitler in the bunker in the very last days of the war. On arrival he found that Hitler just wanted to promote him to Field Marshal. As Berlin was surrounded at the time, he had to fly in under as heavy fighter escort as the Luftwaffe could scrape together in the last days, and a number of fighter pilots died so he could receive a promotion that could have been done by radio.
Insane? Well, he did keep Klink in charge of Stalag 13.
My apologies, I misread the first Berlin as Britain:smack:.
Not really pertinent to this discussion except in the most oblique way, but the question does remind me of a scene from the movie The Man in the Glass Booth, from the 70’s I believe, which starred Maximillin Schnell as a man believed to be a successful Jewish business man/concentration camp survivor who is then taken by Israeli forces and tried as actually being one of the heads of the concentration camp, but … well the plot thickens, but the point is that he is evaluated before trial as to whether or not he is sane. The psychiatrist goaded by Schnell’s charqcter declares him to be clinically insane, a paranoid schizophrenic … “Ah!” gloats Schnell’s charaacter, “so you can’t try me!” “Oh, you’ll stand trial.” she answers, “German society at the time was paranoid and schizophrenic; you were sane for the world in which you lived and are responsible for your actions.”
(Not exact quotes, but that was the idea.)
If your society shares your perception of reality, can you really be called insane? After all one man’s madman is another man’s prophet and seer.
That sounds right. You have to wonder what von Griem must have thought at that moment.
Considering the heavy losses among his escort and that he himself was wounded on the flight I am sure he was just overjoyed
Frankly, if Hitler’s actions, aren’t indicative of a mental disorder, then no one’s insane. Seriously, if ordering the systematic torture and killing of over six million people, and starting one of the bloodiest wars this planet has ever seen, means that you’re sane, then carving Aunt Martha up for supper is a perfectly sane action as well.
Remember, Hitler got enraged when he heard his reign referred to as a “Thousand Year Reich” because he wanted it to last forever. Sounds like meglomania to me, at the very least.
And yes, we all can slip over into the kind of madness that gripped Hitler, but we don’t, and that’s what seperates us from the madmen.
OK, take GOM, who believes that Hitler was posessed by a demon.
His idea is pretty far out there but probably can be explained by his background and other beliefs he holds.
His idea seems mad to us but is he insane?
If you believe that the jews are destroying your culture, that too sounds mad to us.( Mind you it wasn’t considered such a mad idea by many, in those days.) It doesn’t necessarily mean you have a mental disorder.
I find the belief in God and the bible pretty silly, should all Christians be committed?
Well, if GOM decides that he’s on a mission from God and has to kill people he believes are demonically possessed, then I’d say he was insane.
Hello Latro,
Some day you won’t find it silly at all. Which reminds me: How much of the Bible have you read?
I think you are all wrong here. This sort of behavior is not unusual for human history. Look at history, where there are countless examples of peoples purposefully and callously starved, cities burned to ash, regions full of people slaughtered, whole ethnic groups enslaved. The fact is, Hitler was probably a little more sane than we were.
You are probably wondering at that.
As an example, I will select from a work of fiction. Terry Pratchet’s Diskworld novels (while humorous) has as a recurring theme the idea of the individual’s view of himself in society. Most people, even criminals, see society, law, and government as real things. However, some of Pratchet’s villains, well, don’t. WHich is what makes them so dangerous. In a sense, they are the same ones, while everyone else is a wee bit self-deluded.
They quite often kill, steal, or take simply because the idea of it pleases them. They have no scruples because they realize that such things as “ethics” are ultimately human inventions. Whether or not you believe Good and Evil are real, as I do, ultimately, most human things exist not because someone made them but because we believe they exist. And if you go out and lose that idea, you are indeed very sane - but you aren’t human anymore.
For most of human history, there have been people just like Hitler. They were not even odd at the time. The Assyrians were a whole nation of such people, who believed in a social order inside their group, but none that needed to be respected outside.
Right conclusion, wrong reasons. For me, though, there will always be evil and good.
[semi-hijack]Indeed, Hitler may well have been influenced by Demons. yet are not all men and women tempted? He chose to take up that chalice and drink. Is it really so hard to believe, given the utter Hell this world can be alone?[/semi-hijack]
I realize my use of the word "human may cause some confusion. I meant in two senses in that last post.
Human as the idea of someone who is reasonably decent.
Human as in the racial sense of humanity.
We should probably define insanity first. Are all people who kill insane? Are all people who order the deaths of thousands or millions insane?
Was Truman insane when he gave the go ahead to drop both A bombs or was Churchill and Truman insane when they ok’d the firebombing of Dresdin?
We may agree with the reasons for their descisions and differ with his but that does not make him insane. It makes his world view twisted and scary but it doesn’t necessarily arise from a mental disorder. Now, had he claimed he was Killing Jews because voices or Aliens or his dogs told him it was his mission then yes, I’d agree with you.
By declaring him insane you remove his guilt because then he has no responsibility for his actions. I think the man was quite sane and knew what he was doing. Also I doubt a madman would be followed as long as he was. He could rationalize what he was doing to others in a way that if it fit their world view people would not question him.
He had no magical powers, he did not hypnotise his followers. he used reason adn came off as a reasoning person with strong views and not a raving lunatic. When he became unstable in the end (those last days in the Bunker) they recognized it and those that could, fled.
bandit, just because Hitler wasn’t the first to practice genocide doesn’t mean that he was sane. I’d say that anyone who takes enjoyment out of deliberately slaughtering innocent folks is insane. After all, various nerouses have existed throughout human history and that doesn’t make people who suffer from those diseases sane. To claim that Hitler was sane because his actions aren’t that different from those others have done in the past is missing the point of what mental illness really is: Actions which deviate from generally acceptible human behaviour that are harmful to either themselves or others.
kingpengvin, in no way do I believe that Hitler’s insanity absolves him for his actions. A rabid dog might not be able to help the fact that it’s disease causes it to go on a biting spree, but we don’t stand around saying, “Oh, the poor thing, leave it alone, it can’t help it that it’s attacking people.” No we go out and kill it. It doesn’t matter that the dog, which might have been the friendliest little pup in the world before it got infected, can’t help what’s it doing, we kill it in order to protect ourselves. And we tell ourselves, “That really wasn’t Fluffy biting people, that was rabies biting people.” when it really was Fluffy biting people. We tell ourselves it wasn’t Fluffy to protect ourselves from the knowledge that the beloved family pet could turn into a ravenous killer.
Hitler definately knew what he was doing, but that doesn’t make him sane. As anyone who has suffered from mental illness will tell you, quite often you know what you’re doing, the problem is that others don’t understand what you’re doing, and you don’t understand that what you’re doing is insane.
Actually, smiling bandit seems to have a point here. I’m no historian, but Mongolia under Ghengis Khan and the Roman Empire are only two examples of societies that considered genocide a viable method of projecting political power (one of my anthropology professors described Aztecs as “Nazis with feather headdresses”). It seems that Hitler would have fit right into the biblical Age of Judges.
But it does absolve him.
An insane person can not help what they are doing. They, like “Fluffy”, act out due to the disease. It is not their fault and untreated it can not be helped. We don’t blame “Fluffy” because she was rabid. Likewise you can’t blame Hitler if he was indeed insane.
It is comfortable to say that his behaviour is due to insanity because if he was sane (I see no real evidence that shows he displayed any signs of true mental illness) then that means we are all capable of being Hitlers given the right circumstances and by choice as opposed to by some outside illness.
I was under the impression that a number of generals who were cashiered at least for a while due to their “defeatist” attitudes. And if you fire everyone who disagrees with you, only you are to blame for having an incomplete picture
Although IIRC, Hitler was a fanatic for knowing all the latest details of what units were where and how they were equipped, though how he drew conclusions from that data is anyones guess.
Moses went on a mission from God that called for the slaughter women, children and babies and the taking of young girls as slaves.
Was Moses mad for having a divine mission that called for horrible atrocities?