Leadership and Critical Thinking

ADOLPH HITLER

Adolph Hitler was born at the gasthof Zum Pommer, in Austria – Hungary, on 20 April 1889. His father, Alois Hitler, was a customs official. His mother, Klara Pölzl, was Alois’ third wife. Hitler had a troubled childhood, as his father was violent to him and violent towards his mother. Hitler himself said that, as a boy, he was often beaten by his father. Years later, he told his secretary: “I then resolved never again to cry when my father whipped me. A few days later I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end.”

Hitler’s family moved house often. The young Hitler was a good student in elementary school. But in the sixth grade, his first year of high school, he failed and had to repeat the grade. His teacher said that he had “no desire to work.” Hitler later said that his educational slump was a rebellion against his father, who wanted the boy to follow him in career as a customs official; he wanted to become a painter instead. This explanation is further supported by Hitler’s later description of himself as a misunderstood artist. At age 16, Hitler dropped out of high school without a diploma.

There were rumors that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish and that his grandmother, became pregnant while working as a servant in a Jewish household. The implications of these rumors were politically explosive for the proponent of a racist and anti-Semitic ideology. From 1905 Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan’s pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Hitler claimed that Jews were enemies of the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria’s crisis. He also identified certain forms of Socialism and Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his anti-Semitism with anti – Marxism. Later, blaming Germany’s military defeat in World War I on the 1918 revolutions, he considered Jews the culprits of Imperial Germany’s downfall and subsequent economic problems as well.

Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander), ending the war as a Gefreiter (equivalent at the time to a lance corporal in the British and American armies). He was a runner, the most dangerous job on the Western front, and was often exposed to enemy fire. He participated in a number of major battles. Biographer John Keegan has said that this experience drove Hitler to become aloof and withdrawn for the remaining years of war. Hitler was twice decorated for bravery.

After World War I, Hitler remained in the army and returned to Munich. Hitler wasappointed as a police spy of an Intelligence Commando of the Reichswehr, to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate a small party, the German Workers’ Party (DAP). During his inspection of the party, Hitler was impressed with founder Anton Drexler’s anti- Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas, which favored a strong active government, a “non-Jewish” version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society. Drexler was impressed with Hitler’s oratory skills and invited him to join as the party’s 55th member. He was also made the seventh member of the executive committee.

Years later, he claimed to be the party’s seventh overall member, but it has been established that this claim is false. Here Hitler also met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler’s mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors’ continued encouragement began participating full time in the party’s activities. On 29 July 1921, Adolph Hitler was introduced as Fuhrer of the National Socialist Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used. The political turning point for Hitler came when the Great Depression hit Germany in 1930.

In 1932, Hitler intended to run against the aging President Paul Von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913, he still had not acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office. In February, however, the state government of Brunswick, in which the Nazi Party participated, appointed Hitler to a minor administrative post and also made him a citizen on 25 February 1932. In those days, the states conferred citizenship, so this automatically made Hitler a citizen of Germany and thus eligible to run for president. On the morning of 30January 1933, in Hindenburg’s office, Adolph Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony. Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled attempts by his opponents to gain a majority in parliament.

Finally, on 14 July, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany. President Paul Von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Rather than holding new presidential elections, Hitler’s cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency dormant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Hitler as leader and chancellor. As head of state, Hitler now became supreme commander of the armed forces. Having
secured supreme political power, Hitler went on to gain public support by convincing most Germans he was their savior from the economic depression, communism, the “Judeo-Bolsheviks” and the Versailles treaty, along with other “undesirable” minorities.

One of the foundations of Hitler’s social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. It was based on the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau, a French count, eugenics, a pseudoscience that advocated racial purity, and social Darwinism. Applied to human beings,“survival of the fittest” was interpreted as requiring racial purity and killing off “life unworthy of life.” The first victims were children with physical and development disabilities. After a public outcry, Hitler made a show of ending this program, but the killings in fact continued. During the final days of the war in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress Eva Braun. Less than 40 hours later, the two committed suicide.

When I speak about Hitler, I find that people try to avoid the topic, especially those who live in Europe. I can understand because of the holocaust, the war, and the atrocities which were caused by Hitler. And for some people, the cruelty of Hitler left a trauma because they were there when this tragedy happened and it has stayed in their memory until now. This tragedy is the most terrible that ever happened in the world. When I reflect deeply on Hitler, there are some points that I want to underline. Yes, Hitler was the worst leader who ever lived in this world, but it does not mean that he had not qualities of a good leader. How can I say this? If we look deeper into the personality of Hitler, we can see that Hitler was a gifted orator; he was a man of vision and his vision was clear, but what made it bad was that he used his ability for the wrong purposes. He delivered speeches to affect people in fulfilling his ambition. He created a vision that impressed people, but actually there was something hidden behind that vision which people did not know.

The second thing that I want to underline is the childhood of Hitler. I am sure that this period had a great influence in the individuality of Hitler. When he was a child, his father treated him badly, he treated the boy as a soldier, and so whenever he made mistakes, his father punished him physically. For me it is really something because I believe that how parents treat us when a child has a great influence on our character and
our individuality. And so it happened with Hitler. We can see clearly when he had the role as the leader and the chancellor of Germany: he treated his people militarily.

The third thing is that there are people who had a big influence on the personality ofHitler. Here Hitler was inspired by Anton Drexler and Dietrich Eckart who gave a new point of view. Anton Drexler, for example, impressed Hitler because of his anti-Semitic nationalist, anti- capitalist, and anti- Marxist ideas.

So let us collect the three things that I underlined and let us focus on those things. First is the abuse of the gifts and the qualities of a good leader. Second is the childhood. And third is the influence of people on the individual. To have a gift is a real blessing, especially if we are leaders and we are gifted with speech; excel at communicating, at creating relationship with people, and so on. But if we abuse those gifts just as Hitler did, it can be dangerous and spell disaster for people and the organization or the institution which we lead. People have sometimes the tendency to fulfill their ambitions and to enrich themselves, their families or their group without thinking what will happen to the organization or the institution in the future. They use their abilities to convince people that what they are doing is for the good of the organization or the institution, but it is just the opposite. We have to be aware of this thing because it may happen to us in a subtle way, and it is the common foe of human beings. What have we do is to evaluate things and to reflect on our vision and motivation from time to time.

Our childhood plays also an important role in the development of our behavior and our individuality, and it depends on how our parents to teach us about values, on who is our neighbor. I think that this is basic before we go to the school. There are some events in our childhood which also influence our personality and decision-making, either pleasant or painful events can cause a trauma.

We can see in Hitler’s case, how he was treated as a child by his father, and then later he imitated that behavior of being cruel when he led the country. It is not easy to overcome our childhood trauma and it needs years to do so. But what can we do is to share our trauma with somebody whom we trust, in order to help us, to diminish our burden so that at least the trauma will not affect us in making decisions or in leading the
organization or the institution.

To have support from others is important for a leader. But again it depends on the people who support us. Are they inspiring us to do good things or not? Are they having courage to say “no” to our decision when it is wrong, or the say always “yes” to delight us? We have to know what kinds of people surround us; it is not because that he or she is our friend, relative that has a special meaning for us. No, we have to choose people who have well motivated to support us, who are able to challenge us in improving the organization or the institution.

In the biography of Hitler, I read that there were people who gave their support to Hitler. I guess that those people gave support to Hitler because they were afraid, they wanted to satisfy Hitler, they were blinded by the speeches of Hitler, and they did not dare say “no” to Hitler. This mentality still exists today, and there are many motivations why people do so, like hoping to be promoted to a higher position when they say “yes” to every decision of the leader, or they want to receive a higher salary, or maybe they are stressful by their leader and have no choice, and so on. Here we have to think on two sides when we face this kind of problem. First, we have to reflect on ourselves whether we extort our workers physically or mentally, whether we treat our workers as human being or machine. Secondly, we have to think of our workers also, to know better their
motivations, their capabilities, their weaknesses, what they do not like. And if it is necessary we have to transform them in order to be good workers, by giving them some responsibilities, organizing seminars, and so on. It is not an easy task to be a good leader; we have to open our eyes wide to the needs of the organization or the institution. We have to be aware and careful with our skills and our talents so that we do not use them for our own purpose. We have to take care of those who are working with us, to know what their motivations are, to know their backgrounds, and to know them better.

Conclusion
If somebody asks me, can I learn something from Hitler? I will answer “yes”. As for me, I can learn something not only from good people, from successful events, from nice experiences and from good examples, but also from bad leaders, from events that resulted in disasters. Because learning from bad things, first, we know what the harsh reality was and we can be aware of it; second, those things enable us to make decisions and leading an organization or an institution under difficult circumstances. In learning from the bad things, we have to be careful because it is possible also that we are blinded by those bad things. We should have a good foundation in our life so that we will not accept uncritically what we read, hear, learn.

I feel pity when I read the biography of Hitler. How such a great man could turn to evil. Hitler was a great man for me, not because of the holocaust nor that his ambition caused a world war, but because this man had the ability to move people by his inspiring speeches, and his ability in convincing people which I believe are good qualities of a leader. Unfortunately he used those gifts and his talents in the wrong way. It makes me reflect on the gifts and talents that I have; do I use them to create good things or bad things? Do I use them for the needs of my neighbor or myself? What values do I cherish to improve life in order not to become like Hitler?

Before I end this paper, I want you to know that, honestly I did not read the whole biography because the book is very thick and has more than a thousand pages while my time was limited. So if there are some mistakes, I want to apologize and I am open to critique and correction, in order to help me in improving and building my life, my work and my personality.

Bibliography
• Kershaw, Ian. (2008). Hitler.
• DVD. Der Untergang.
• DVD. Hitler, the rise of evil.
• DVD. Schindler’s list.
• Wikipedia on Hitler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler
• Biography of Hitler. www.secondworldwar.co.uk/ahitler.html
• Declercq, Guido. 16 January 2008. Leadership conference.