Evening star., 1933-10-29
The Roots of Hitlerism
movements success Partial execution
Of his promises, between his elevation

movements success. Partial execution
OF his promises, between MS elcVaIlOl
to the chancellorship and the elections
of March 5, increased his following SO
per cent, giving him A per cent OF
the electorate. II would now be Q fairly
safe wager that II q straw vote could
be held in Germany. it would show
of three-fourths of the adult popula-
ton, and that not 10 per cent of the
electorate would support movement
to restore democracy IL any FORM The
special election Of November IL will not
serve as fair test, for it Is predicted
that only one ticket, that Of the Ma
tional Socialists, will be presented to
the voters.
One question that seeh1s to be agi-
tating many minds is whether German
FaSciSm Is HitlerS or not. It Is i'm
portant to have an answer to 1t because
as Mr.. Calvin Hoover has pointed out
in his Germany Enters the Third
Reich" there Is now as strong tend
ency outside of Germany to think Hitler
an administrative genius, like Mussolini
or Lenin, as there was a while back
to consider him contemplate mounte-
and satisfactory answer One must read
Hitler's own story of his Kampf (now
published in translation as MY Strug-
gle"), and then retell 1t all, In the
light of events, as neither he nor any
OF his admirers could possibly see it.
Hitler Passionately Sincere.
Adolf Hitler is and always has been
cCinn ota1u cinrorp uo ic uinlorl
or malevolent person, and while he
Is probably the victim Of an Unsuitable
appetite for applause and power, it
seems likely that he is as incapable of
realizing it as he is of appreciating that
has no sense OF humor and he is SOL
emnly convinced that his life is dedi-
Gated to the austere and even ascetic
pursuit OF an objective which when
achieved will be the salvation of his
OF humanity at large. His temperament
is that Of an extremely sensitive, i'm
pressionable artist. He has gone
strong impressions from his environ
ment, translating them instantly into
urges and then cropping helplessly for
IllOlllllS VI years AOI d JuStlllCdJlOll dllO
naturalization of his feelings.
1t seems very doubtful that he has
ever been able. without the aid OF
others. to follow a train Of logical
thought through to conclusion. He
has always groped until he met some
one who could rationalize his impress
sions and urges for him, and he has
then been unable to determine whether
the justification was through logic OF
sophistry. But he has delghtedly pro-
claimed each such rationalized sentt-
ment as the fruit Of heavy thinking
and has stuck to 1t unwaveringly.
Adolf Hitler was born and raised in
Braunau, on the Austrian bank of the
German frontier River Inn. He was
born into family that considered It
self German, at time when the CEN
trifugal force in Austria was growing,
when every member of each racial and
linguistic group regarded all the other
groups as blights upon an otherwise
fair landscape, and when the Hapsburg
princes were enraging all by their
polyglot attentions to each in turn.
Just across the river from Braunau was
a land, growing in strength and unity
Of purpose, where no racial minorities
the satisfaction Of the
where nothing was spoken but
German. To have been born on the
wrong side of the Inn seemed terrible
to the young Hitler. 1t was
like being Jones, but having to ex-
plain that one did not belong in the
big Jones house, but was one Of the
poor and disreputable collateral Joneses
from the slums.
Environment Had Its Effects.
1t was in this environment that Hit
Ter got the strong boyish impression
that there was no human privilege SO
high as that of being a real German,
bound to all other Germans by political
as well as racial and linguistic ties, and
that there is no greater misfortune
than that of being a German in any
other political environment. The boy
by this idea would naturally
feel that the foremost duty Of the Ger
man fatherland was TO bring all Of its
children back into the
fold of the elect; and that whenever
they became too numerous for comfort
within existing boundaries (and there
could not be too many Germans) 1t
would become the F'atherland's duty to
clear adjacent territories Of their in
'erior deni7ens 50 that the one great
race could expand and still remain a
as well as racial unit
1t was in this way that the embryo
Of Hitler's "nationalism" was conceived,
and it is easy to see how every other
doctrine that the Nazis now proclaim.
and every policy of the third Reich. is
a perfectly natural outgrowth OF these
boyish impressions as others have ra-
tionalized them. In Vienna he gained
other impressions as an adolescent
youth, and these were grated forever
upon his scheme of things. He found
that the German element in the ancient
capital of the holy Roman Empire did
not wholly dominate its life and
thought, and that the Hapsburg court
was not as exclusively and arrogantly
German as 1t had right to be. The
Jews made up tenth Of Vienna's pop
ulation and, he thought, took a dis
proportionately large part IN its intel
lectual and artistic life. Czechs and
other Slavs came and went at court
and in all the government Offices they
seemed to approach these strongholds
CT their conquerors with no more def
erence than a full-blooded German.
Hatred for Jews and Slavs.
Neither Jews nor Slavs showed any
indeed, to be ashamed Of
their origin, or any ambition to be
like Germans or to be thought like
them. Young Hitler promptly conceived
q bitter hatred against both these races.
Upon these adolescent impressions. are
based Hitler's beliefs that Germany
should have been launched upon a cam
paign of territorial conquest against
Poland and Russia long before the
World War, and that when the faith
erland now needs room for expansion
the movement should be eastward and
neither westward nor overseas.
There is no other feature of German
nationalism that Is not an incidental
upon these profound OBJ
servations of a poor Austrian boy in a
and not too friendly city.
The man who first rationalized these
notions for the young Hitler was Georg
Schoenerer, the leader of the Austrian
German movement in those days,
and, while Hitler still Acknowledges the
debt, he still deplores the fact that
Schoenerer was philosopher and not