Page 219 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

206 Conclusion

and the Nazis’ sadism could not leave any reader in Washington in doubt
that the German leader was capable of pursuing policies that could easily
set europe afire. in fact, the american ambassador, William dodd, found
the Führer so abhorrent that he could not bear to be in his presence.
the diplomats who referred to Hitler as deranged did not claim to be
passing a medical judgment about the Führer’s state of mind. No evidence
suggests that they considered him to be clinically insane, incapable of ra-
tional analysis of political and military issues and therefore unable to make
calculated decisions on them. On the contrary, they realized that he was
a clever and cunning politician who knew very well how to manipulate
people, especially when he addressed mass audiences. the diplomats used
the terms “insane” and “unbalanced” in a colloquial sense to explain his
sudden changes of mood during conversations and public speeches, as well
as his proclivity to take positions that were so extreme and far-fetched—and
often untrue—as to be preposterous. More important, soon after assuming
the office of chancellor, Hitler initiated policies in foreign affairs that struck
most Western diplomats as unprincipled and reckless. in domestic affairs,
he transformed the country from a democracy to a dictatorship whose bru-
tality the diplomats considered shameful and unwarranted.
the question of Hitler’s sanity has attracted considerable attention, with
some arguing that only a madman could have ordered the murder of mil-
lions of innocent civilians and sanctioned the sadism that prevailed in the
ghettos of eastern europe and the concentration camps scattered through
the third reich and the Nazi empire. the weakness of this line of reason-
ing is that it can serve as an excuse for Hitler and for many Germans who
participated in the murders or simply stood by and approved of them. the
most authoritative study of Hitler’s state of mind, written by Fritz redlich,
a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, reached conclusions that pro-
vide helpful guidance for interpreting the diplomats’ depiction of the Füh-
rer’s character. redlich argued that although Hitler suffered from numer-
ous neuroses, some of which could be considered “symptoms of mental
disorder,” on the whole his “personality functioned more than adequately.”
as a leader, he often made calculated decisions—political as well as mili-
tary—against the advice of his subordinates and proved to be right, a major
reason why so many people followed him blindly. and as redlich points
out, hours before he committed suicide, at a time when everything he had
dreamed of was crumbling before his eyes, he managed to compose his po-
litical and personal will, in which he indicated how his belongings were to
be distributed and reiterated his political ideology. the document is “clear