Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss

by Laurence Rees Narrated by Michael Jayston

Overview

Fueled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma.



Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveals the role his supposed "charisma" played in his success. Here is a fascinating social, psychological, and historical investigation into the formation of a personality whose determination and vision would at the outset convince a small group of like-minded political and social outcasts but would eventually win over an entire nation and plunge the rest of the world into a cataclysm unlike any that had ever been seen before. Hitler's Charisma is a natural culmination of twenty years of writing and research on the Third Reich and a remarkable examination of the man and the mind at the heart of it all.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A searching study that addresses the question, not why so many Germans and Austrians accommodated Adolf Hitler, but why they so ardently embraced him. Fresh from the news that the Nazi labor- and death-camp system was much more widespread and widely known than hitherto thought, British historian Rees (World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, 2009, etc.) examines Hitler's career through a Max Weber–ian perspective of charisma, noting that Hitler promised not just decent wages and orderly streets, but "broader, almost spiritual, goals of redemption and salvation." In the end--and Rees is rightly emphatic about this--Hitler was, like any politician, willing to compromise on almost any front except his central program: the extermination of the Jews. Apologists explain away German and Austrian acquiescence to this program, but Hitler made no effort to disguise his intentions; it was his ability to sell it with impassioned speeches and to cow his opponents with popularly supported terror that won the day for him, at least for a while. Rees looks into several questions and punctures a few myths along the way: Hitler was no slouch in battle, no mere "paper-hanger," but was a brave and selfless soldier on the World War I front (and commended with an Iron Cross by his Jewish commander), if given to "haranguing those around him about any subject that took his fancy." He was able to gather followers among religious Germans by professing Christianity, much as he despised it. He rose to power at a time when Germans were begging for an authoritarian figure to solve their economic woes, and though he had a propaganda chief, he himself was one of the best propagandists in history. So how did Hitler convince his generals to invade Russia and his subjects to ignore the genocide around them? This readable, fascinating book, a worthy addition to the vast literature surrounding Hitler, has plausible answers.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172844973
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Hitler's Charisma

Leading Millions into the Abyss

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By Laurence Rees

Pantheon

Copyright © 2013 Laurence Rees
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780307377296

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Introduction
 
My parents had very firm views about Adolf Hitler. Having both experienced the war—with my father’s brother killed on the Atlantic convoys—they thought Hitler was the embodiment of all evil. But even as a child I can remember thinking if Hitler was the Devil in human form how did he get so many people to do his bidding? In a way, that’s a question I have been thinking about ever since, and one that I attempt to answer in this work.
 
Adolf Hitler was, at first sight, the most unlikely leader of a sophisticated state at the heart of Europe. He was incap­able of normal human friendships, unable to debate intellectually, filled with hatred and prejudice, bereft of any real capacity to love, and ‘lonely’. He was, undoubtedly, ‘as a human figure, lament­able.’ Yet he played the most important part in three of the most devastating decisions ever taken: the decision to invade Poland that led to the Second World War, the decision to invade the Soviet Union, and the decision to murder the Jews.
 
But Hitler did not create all this horror on his own, and alongside his many personal inadequacies he undoubtedly possessed great powers of persuasion. ‘My whole life,’ he said memorably in 1942, ‘can be summed up as this ceaseless effort of mine to persuade other people.’ And I’ve met many people who lived through this period who confirmed that judgement. When pressed on the reason why they found such a strange figure so persuasive they pointed to a myriad of factors, like the circumstances of the time, their fears, their hopes and so on. But many also described simply the powerful sense of attraction they felt for Hitler—something that a number of people ascribed to his ‘charisma’.
 
But what exactly is ‘charisma’? The word has Greek roots meaning a grace or favour divinely bestowed, but charisma, as we use the term today, is not a ‘divine’ gift but ‘value neutral’—nasty people can possess it just as much as nice ones. The original meaning also implies that charisma is an absolute quality that exists—or does not exist—in a particular individual. But Adolf Hitler’s charismatic appeal was not universal. It was present only in the space between him and the emotions of his audience. Two people could meet Hitler at the same time and one might find him charismatic and the other might think he was a fool.
 
Our modern understanding of the concept of ‘charisma’ begins with the work of the German social theorist Max Weber, who famously wrote about ‘charismatic leadership’ at the turn of the last century. Even though he was writing long before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, his work is still full of relevance for anyone interested in the study of Nazism in general and Hitler in particular. Crucially, what Weber did was to examine ‘charismatic leadership’ as a particular type of rule—rather than a personal quality that a pop star can possess as much as a politician. For Weber, the ‘charismatic’ leader must possess a strong ‘missionary’ element and is almost a quasi-religious figure. Followers of such a leader are looking for more than just lower taxes or better health care, but seek broader, almost spiritual, goals of redemption and salvation. The charismatic leader cannot exist easily within normal bureaucratic structures and is driven forward by a sense of personal destiny. Hitler, in these terms, is the archetypal ‘charismatic leader’.
 
In particular, I think it is hard to underestimate the importance of understanding that charisma is created in an interaction between individuals. And in this context my ability to meet and question people who lived through this extraordinary period has been of enormous benefit. In writing this book I’ve been fortunate to have access to a unique primary source—the hundreds of interviews with eyewitnesses and perpetrators conducted for my work as a historical filmmaker over the last 20 years. Only a small fraction of this material has ever been published before, and so the vast majority of the testimony that is quoted in this book appears here in print for the first time.
 
I was hugely privileged to be able to travel the world and meet these people—from those who worked closely with Hitler to those who committed murders in pursuit of his aims, from those who suffered at his hands to those who finally helped destroy him. I was also lucky, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to be one of the first to travel into the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and record open and honest interviews about Nazism with people who had lived behind the Iron Curtain. What they said was often both shocking and surprising.
 
I’ve also benefited from the lengthy discussions I’ve held with many of the world’s greatest academic historians—material I gathered for my educational website WW2History.com—as well as studying information from archival and other more traditional research sources. But it was meeting and questioning people who met Hitler and who lived under his rule that offered me the greatest clues into the nature of his appeal. (One must treat eyewitness testimony with considerable care and I’ve written elsewhere of the many tests and safeguards we used when gathering this material.)
 
I’ve also learnt a great deal from studying reel upon reel of archive footage from the period—particularly footage of Hitler’s speeches. I had thought, when I started my work on Nazism 20 years ago, that the ‘charisma’ of Hitler might somehow be visible in the footage. However, it soon became clear—at least for me—that Hitler is decidedly uncharismatic on film today. But, of course, this is precisely the point. I felt nothing because I am not a person of that time; a person, moreover, already predisposed to accept Hitler’s charismatic appeal. I was not hungry; humiliated after the loss of a war; unemployed; frightened of widespread violence on the streets; feeling betrayed by the broken promises of the democratic system I lived in; terrified of my savings vanishing in a bank crash; and wanting to be told that all of this mess was the fault of someone else.
 
It’s also important to state emphatically that people who accept the ‘charisma’ of a leader are most definitely not ‘hypnotized’. They know exactly what is going on and remain completely responsible for their actions. The fact that someone chooses to follow a charismatic leader cannot subsequently be used as an alibi or excuse.
 
Yet Hitler was not, it has to be said, only a leader with charisma. He also used threat, murder and terror to get his way, and I attempt to show how these aspects fitted into the history of his rise to power and his subsequent rule. There were certainly some people who carried out Hitler’s desires only out of fear, just as there were others who never found Hitler charismatic at all.
 
Finally, whilst this work is entirely about Hitler, I do believe that it has relevance today. The desire to be led by a strong personality in a crisis, the craving for our existence to have some kind of purpose, the quasi worship of ‘heroes’ and ‘celebrities’, the longing for salvation and redemption: none of this has changed in the world since the death of Hitler in April 1945.
 
Human beings are social animals. We want to belong. Life, otherwise, can be a very cold experience indeed. And only by understanding how those who seek power try to influence us, and how we often actively participate in our own manipulation, can we finally understand the dangers we face if we leave rationality and skepticism aside and, instead, put our faith in a leader with charisma.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Hitler's Charisma by Laurence Rees Copyright © 2013 by Laurence Rees. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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