"Evil" Leaders
Adolf Hitler
"Think a thousand times before taking a decision... but after after taking a decision never turn back even if you get a thousand difficulties!!"
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
"If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower."
"I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses."
The man who is universally regarded as the most evil person in history is not well understood. Such a result can only be the nature of such a dramatically important figure. Regardless, if one were to look closely at Hitler's mannerisms as a human being and not as a dictator, we can see that he is clearly an INFJ.
Like other figures on my list, Hitler was born in a small town, the town of Branau-am-Inn in Austria in 1889.
His father was strict and a drunkard, and showed similar traits to Hitler that he would develop later in life, such as holding militaristic traditions in high regard. Hitler had many arguments with his father, which he recounts in his part autobiography, part rambling political essay
Mein Kampf. When his father died, Adolf was natually upset, but he was much more upset when his mother Klara who he was very close to died. Had his mother not died when Hitler was at such a young and impressionable age, it is likely many of the negative traits he later displayed in all their ugliness to the world would never have surfaced.
Adolf was a sickly child, and had several older brothers and sisters, most of whom died from illness when Adolf was still young.
From memory, Hitler's father Alois wanted him to get a job in the Austrian bureaucracy, but Hitler was insistent on becoming an artist (a painter, in fact. Many of his paintings can be seen today. He was pretty good, except his drawing of faces was miserable).
Hitler's application to the Vienna Art Academy was, however, rejected, and the poor Adolf sold postcards with his paintings on them to make a living before war broke out in 1914.
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Upon the breakout of the First World War in 1914, Hitler rushed into Bavaria to join the Imperial German Army. He was utterly infatuated by Germany and German culture and despised the Hapsburg monarchy in Austria where he was born. Drinking with his friends in beer halls, he always sung "Deutschland uber Alles" instead of "Heil dir im Siegerkranz"; he was not a huge fan of the German monarchy either.
Hitler served as a runner, delivering notes between front line posts in France - a very dangerous task. For his bravery he was awarded, I believe, two Iron Crosses, and obviously took this gift from Germany very seriously. During the war he was injured by an artillery shell and by chlorine gas - a large number of theories, mostly unsubstantiated, have emerged regarding Hitler's WW1 experiences. One I think had it that Hitler's testicle was removed by a Jewish doctor (that one is obviously a joke). Needless to say the gas left an impression on him as a dangerous weapon.
Adolf was shattered by the defeat of Germany in 1918. His inferior extroverted perceiving function, Se, did not allow him to understand properly that Germany was losing and probably had little chance of winning the war in the first place. He began to grow more resentful of society and soon, he picked up on (not invented!) the common myth at the time that Jews in Germany had somehow (it was never really explained, being just a way to blame someone for their military incompetence) "stabbed in the back" German soldiers.
Soon after the war, Hitler was employed by the German government - now a very free and democratic Republic - to spy on radical groups. His distaste for communists and communism grew here, but he soon left the state when he found Anton Drexler's
German Worker's Party. Hitler joined as member number 7 after a fiery speech against Bavarian unification against Austria was noticed by Drexler. Hitler soon began rallying larger and larger rallies up to 2000 people, when Drexler decided to merge the party with another minor party. Hitler was furious and threatened to resign if he wasn't made leader. Drexler, realizing the party was nothing without Hitler, accepted.
A few years later in 1925 the party, now renamed the NSDAP
(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) or Nazi Party for short, with the Aryan symbol of a swastika on a white disk over a red flag as its emblem, began under Hitler an attempt to seize power via a march similar to Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922. The plan was never going to work: Hitler's party simply did not have enough popular and military support for it to become a reality. The "Beer Hall Putch" was a failure, its leaders arrested and Hitler thrown into jail, where Hitler after a passionate speech in favour of German nationalism was given a very easy sentence, and comfortable conditions in jail. He wrote Mein Kampf there and prepared to win power democratically upon his release.
Above: The Putschists March
*****
After being released from prison Hitler was one goal: to win over the hearts and minds of the German people by any means necessary. His mini-cabinet in waiting consisting of Joeseph Goebbels (ENFJ) Heinrich Himmler (ISFJ) and Hermann Goering (ESTP) were to be - especially Goebbels - his instruments of success.
With Goebbels' smart slogans like "Hitler uber Deutschland" (made while Hitler was famous for travelling in a plane when no other politician did) the support of the NSDAP steadily grew, election by election, until it reached a massive breakthrough after the Great Depression of 1929. The depression made millions of people unemployed, and most of these people - who did not care or agree with Hitler's racist and militaristic policies - saw in him an opportunity for work.
In 1933 he was appointed chancellor by the old general Hindenburg, who was dying, and later in 1933 the Nazis finally managed to secure a majority in the Reichstag ... almost. With vague promises Hitler secured the support of conservative and reactionary parties, and passed the Enabling act, made under the pretense of protecting Germany from a non-existent communist threat after a fire in the parliament had been started a few months earlier. Soon the Nazis swept away or transformed every aspect of German life, including education, military, politics and social freedoms which were vastly restricted.
[video=youtube;5tGKfIJwrh4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tGKfIJwrh4[/video]
Above: Hitler's first speech as Chancellor. Do you see the INFJ in him?
Two important things happened in 1934. Firstly, the Night of the Long Knives, where Hitler purged the Nazi party of its more radical, left wing element, the SA, which he feared as only a paranoid dictator really could as a threat to his own power. Secondly Hindenburg, who was still President of Germany, died. Hitler held a totally pre-determined election where the offices of Chancellor and President would be merged into a new office, "Fuhrer und Reichskanzler", which was, of course, to be taken up by him.
In 1935, the Saar territory occupied by France after WW1 was retaken with minimal and wimpy protests from the French government.
In 1936, the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland was also taken by Hitler. With again, minimal protest from Britain and France.
Around this time Germany had been totally transformed. New discriminatory laws against Jews were in place. It was illegal to be a member of a party other than the Nazi party, and a Nazi, pro-German militarist curriculum was thoroughly enfored in the education system.
However, millions of people were also now in work, even if it was only simple labour, as Hitler took credit for his predecessors' construction projects such as the Autobahn which is still used today. This, along with annual, huge, propagandistic Nuremburg rallies made Hitler more and more popular over time, although he probably never had the support of a majority of Germans until 1940 when France was defeated.
(Other Hitler creations which survive to this day include the Volkswagen, or "People's Car")
Hitler began to transform into the dictator we would see later in the war. He spent more time and state funds on the military than anything else, and before long, the military was a huge, modern creation with many motorised vehicles and modern aircraft. Genius army organisers like Guderian would help Germany win battles in the years to come. When the 100,000 man limit imposed by the Treaty of Versailles was broken, nobody said a word.
Hitler was much liked by most of Europe and in the USA as a modern reformer - back in those days, the negative connotations of dictators hadn't really emerged (Hitler would certainly assist with that). His rapid expansion of the military was however viewed with alarm in the governments of the UK and France.
In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. Italian troops had earlier stopped a German annexation attempt, but this time Mussolini was Hitler's ally, not rival, and did nothing to stop the move. In a referendum 98 or so % or Austrians voted to become a part of Germany.
Later that year Hitler decided to radically change his foreign policy. No longer would Germany meekly expand, but Hitler knew a war was coming and wanted to get as close as possible to the war with as much territory as possible. So, he started agitating the German minority in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and soon a meeting in Munich was called between France, Italy, Britain and Germany. After a period of tension, the leaders agreed to secede the Sudetenland to Germany and Hitler got his way while Chamberlain promised "peace in our time." It was not a prediction that was to hold up.
In March 1939, the German army was over 2 million men strong and had thousands of modern tanks and aircraft. Hitler decided to swallow up the rest of Czechoslovakia which he described as a "spear" sticking into Germany by supporting a nationalist uprising in Slovakia while moving into the rest of the country. Official protests were lodged by Britain and France but again they did nothing. Hitler's empire was never to grow larger in peacetime again.
Finally the Allies had had enough. They decided in mid 1939 to guarantee the independence of Poland and thus secure it against any future attack. Hitler thought the Allies were bluffing, and made territorial demands to Poland in August, demanding the German-majority city of Danzig (Gdansk in Polish) and a rail corridor from the enclave of East Prussia to the rest of Germany. Poland steadfastly and bravely refused.
Meanwhile Hitler performed his greatest diplomatic stroke of genius by signing a "pact with the Devil" ie. the Stalin-ruled Soviet Union and dividing Poland and other states between them.
Hitler thought the Allies wouldn't risk a Second World War, but his call on the weakness of the Allied will was wrong, and after refusing to withdraw after the invasion began on September 1st, Britain declared war. Two days later France followed suit. The reaction was shock and surprise in the Nazi cabinet and in the German public. Ribbentrop, the "arrogant poseur and fool" (his own mother's words!) who was serving as the foreign minister at the time, had assured Hitler that the Allies would never go to war over Danzig. When news of the declaration of war reached Berlin, Hitler exclaimed angrily "What now??" to Ribbentrop.
Here is Chamberlain's declaration of war speech. I found it quite sad. Someone noticed how tired he sounds.
Neville Chamberlain's (ISFJ) Declaration of War Speech
[video=youtube;rtJ_zbz1NyY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtJ_zbz1NyY[/video]
more to come soon...
