by Cary Dowalt

Created on: August 29, 2007

Hitler's foreign policy was a bizarre idealogical hybrid which has deep roots in a mutated and exaggerated form of German Romanticism and a peculiar form of German xenophobia. Hitler apparently conceived of his domestic and foreign policies as being in the best interest of the German people but that would only be the case if the German people wanted to star in an opera by a second-rate composer whose only outcome could be a national Gotterdamerung. For the average German, Hitler's accession to supreme power in Germany was an unmitigated disaster the dimensions of which can only be appreciated in retrospect.

Hitler's poisonous mix of socialistic economic controls and nationalistic and, at times, atavistic symbolism was fascist and not nationalistic in its intent. Hitler had formulated a sophisticated theory political control that derived from a strange admixture of Jungian psychology and the production values of grand opera. After Hitler ascended to power the systematic production of ideologically charged propaganda under Goebbels became a task of fundamental importance to the regime. Hitler quickly seized control of all important media outlets and the propaganda effort went into overdrive bombarding the German people virtually twenty four hours day with Goebbels's creations. The effect of these propaganda efforts was to create a docile and manipulable populace who had no means of critiquing or even understanding the import of Government policies.

Having thus consolidated power Hitler then commenced upon the grand projects of his foreign policy goals as had been laid out in "Mein Kampf". In "Mein Kampf", Hitler expatiated on the need to grab territory in the east to create "lebensraum" (living room) for the German people and Hitler put forward the concept of turning Russia into Germany's "India". It was under the color of these mad ideas that Hitler plunged Germany into a global war that Germany could not hope to win which lead to a national apocalypse.

It is interesting to speculate on how Hitler would have been remembered if he been deposed in a coup d'etat in 1938 after the "anschluss" of Austria. At that point, Hitler's brilliant political manipulation of other Western leaders had lead to the successful repudiation of the hated Versailles Treaty and the rebuilding of the German economy. If Hitler's rule had ended at that point he might be remembered as a modern-day Frederick the Great who restored German honor not as one of history's great monsters. As late as 1938 Hitler's regime could be argued to have a positive impact on the German Nation. After that point, however, that argument becomes progressively weaker.

A true Nationalist could be said to be a leader who fights for the honor and rights of his nation in the international arena but does so with the ultimate intent of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of his people. Hitler was not a leader int his mold. Hitler's perverted romantic conception of history and national destiny, tinctured by crackpot sociological and racialist theories, turned the German people into the merest of props in his own internal psychodrama.

Learn more about this author, Cary Dowalt.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.