I would say it was no one person, but an amalgam - the “International Jew”, who was behind both his Capitalist and his Communist enemies.
Maybe so, but the OP seemed to be asking for individuals.
True, but I don’t think he really had any single particular bugbear.
One imagines he would have despised someone like Louise Nathaniel von Rothschild, scion of Jewish financiers and from Vienna to boot - where Hitler picked up most of his Anti-Semitism; “In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I had previously scarcely known the names: Marxism and Jewry.” Rothschild was lucky to escape Nazi clutches, though his possessions did not.
Absolutely. My point is that there is as far as I know no singular focus of his hate, analogous to today’s use of Hitler, that was the single absolute nadir of evil (to him).
Certainly he would have hated Rothschild, just as he would have hated Rosa Luxemburg, and many, many others. To him though they were not simply hateful as individuals, but also because they were eminations and tools of a particular type - the ‘international Jew’.
It just seems strange to me that a man who so poisoned his own mind into hating so many - including by the end the German people who had ‘failed him’ - that he hadn’t assigned himself a personal nemesis, some sort of arch-enemy who embodied everything he hated in one man (or woman, such as in Luxemburg’s case).
Then again maybe his narcissism prevented him from having giving someone the honour of being known as his number 1 hate figure, rather than thinking of his enemies as an amorphous mass. Frankly not understanding his mind at all is somewhat comforting.
Yeah, Karl Marx was his big hate figure, and what he considered the root of all of Germany’s troubles, even more than any brit.
You’ll recall that Hitler started out while still drawing Army pay as a police spy, assigned to monitor the early Nazi meetings. He saw an opening and took over. If his boss had assigned him to spy on the Communists, would he have glommed onto them instead?
In which case he’d never rise so high, since the right-wing keepers of the old order like Von Pappen gave him his position, something they’d never do for a Communist. A Communist-besotted Hitler might have gone as far as he could in Germany, but Stalin had a habit of ordering foreign members of the Comintern to Moscow then having them shot.
Too bad the police didn’t send him to spy on a suspicious lawn bowling club. He’d be remembered as the greatest lawn bowler, but all his teammates would have to add that he was a real asshole about it.
No. Absolutely not. Hitler was not a mere opportunist hungry for power. He did have an ideology, one that fit well with the ideology of the pre-existing proto-Nazi movement (although, of course, Hitler eventually remade Nazi ideology to fit his own prejudices even better), but also one to which Communism was absolute anathema.
Hitler was a rabid German nationalist and anti-semite. He did not fake that to ingratiate himself into the Nazi party, it was who he was. By contrast, Communism was (and is) internationalist, looking forward to the eventual melding of all nations into a worldwide Communist utopia. It was and is, as a matter of principle, welcoming to Jews (founded by a Jew, even) and, indeed, to people of all races. Hitler may not have hated Communism’s tendency to use totalitarian methods, or even, particularly, its economic doctrines and ideals, but its strong commitments to anti-nationalism and anti-racism were the complete opposite of everything he stood for.
In fact, a large part of why he hated Jews so much was that he saw them as internationalists by their nature, dedicated to breaking down the boundaries of the nation state which he loved so much. From the Nazi perspective, as a people without a state of their own, Jews (whether their economic sympathies lay with capitalism or Communism) would inevitably be internationalists, and thus enemies of the German (or, indeed, any other) state and nation, dedicated to breaking down its boundaries. (Of course only a Nazi or other rabid nationalist would take that to be a bad thing!)
So basically, if we have to name an individual, it would be Marx historically (and perhaps his father Alois personally), but really, it was “Das Juden!”
And OF COURSE that’s who the villians would be in his Ark of the Covenant movie!
Except that it would contain the evil demon Y–H who could only be defeated by the Aryan Hero who brandished the Grail and the Spear.
Of the general things I recall having read or heard about Hitler, was the assumption that this man wasn’t really fond of many people who even were closely associated with him.
For example, it’s well known that he saw Mussolini as a loser, and he generally didn’t like Franco too much-and it’s also known that he was well aware of Goehring doing dirty stuff behind Hitler’s back.
(looting literally everything he found on his way).
Of the very few people he was known to admire, was Karl Doenitz (who was appointed as his ‘succesor’) , maybe Rommell (prior trying to plan his assasination) and maybe his German sheppherd dog.
So, this question is more probably like ‘who did Hitler actually LIKE?’, rather than who Hitler didn’t like.
Try googling ‘Hitler’s 50th birthday ceremonies’, and then, guess who was Hitler’s No 1 on his ‘Like’ list…Hint: it surey wasn’t Churchill…
You know, that’s a good point - finding people Hitler genuinely liked and admired is just as tricky…
From a personal view I’d say his mother was probably the only person he felt actual human connection too, unlike his bullying and humourless father his mother doted on him having lost 4 children in infancy. He seems to have also liked his mate August Kubizek who wasn’t interested in politics, but even as late as 1944 Hitler sent his mum a birthday gift.
Artistically he loved Wagner, as a proponent of great Teutonic heroism. Politically Georg Ritter von Schönerer would have his admiration as a proponent of pan-German nationalism (wiki notes that the ‘heil’ greeting and title of ‘fuhrer’ were originally his). Mayor of Vienna Karl Lueger for his anti-Semitism; Hitler writes in Mein Kampf he sees him “as the greatest German mayor of all times”
General-wise I suspect he admired Model - ‘Hitler’s fireman’ more than Rommel, as well as mindless loyalists like Schörner.
There’s probably some really obvious ones I’m forgetting.
He may not have respected Mussolini, but he was amazingly loyal to him, and supported him long after he had ceased to be of any real use to the Germans.