How quickly democracy can be lifted from the fishing, shows, Volker Ullrich in part 2 of his Hitler biography – the dictator as a master of seduction.
Rights populists attack currently, the German culture of remembrance. You want to stop the self-critical dealing with the Nazi period and declare for the interlude in an otherwise glorious German history. An example of this is the Expression of the AfD-Chairman Alexander Gauland, of the Hitler and the Nazis as
“Bird shit in our more than 1000-year history,” verharmloste. Such Statements are history politically dangerous. “Who is such a nice and dyers of geschichtsk suffered runs”, so the Hamburg-based historian and Journalist Volker Ullrich, “must know that he is the very Foundation of the Republic”. Ullrich has now completed his two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler.
Therein, Ullrich declared the “Hitler” to a cautionary example: He could be lifted teaching, how quickly a democracy from the fishing and how thin the ceiling is what separates civilization from barbarism.
The personality of the “leader”
The biographer shows Hitler, the seducer
With his five years ago, presented to the first volume, describes the years up to the outbreak of the Second world war, had Ullrich moved again in the Person of the dictator in the center of the analysis against a long-term Trend of the NS-research. This was last studied increasingly, the structural conditions for the rise and the reign of the national socialists. Ullrich will not let these kinds of issues, but also emphasizes the personal characteristics of Hitler, which made him as a “leader” for a lot of German so attractive: his acting strength, his talents as a mass orator and organizer, as well as his instinct of cleverness, flash adjust quickly to changing political situations.
The driving force behind the Holocaust
In his second volume, now Ullrich is continuing his assessment, especially of Hitler’s role as Supreme war Lord, as well as with the Holocaust, consistently. The murder of the European Jews would not have been possible without the thousands of volunteers is possible, but not without the Person of Hitler. At the radicalisation of Jewish policy up to 1939 the dictator have always held – as a last resort – the issue of action in Hand, Ullrich, and this pattern was repeated in the war time. The biographer shows that the genocide was not only Hitler’s General Declaration of intent on the systematic destruction of the European Jews. Rather, his personal approval was in various cases necessary, to compel the Jews to Wear a badge, or to deport them from the territory of the Reich.
The field Mr as the failed “genius”
In his role as the Supreme war Lord then appeared – from the point of view Ullrich – Hitler’s personal shortcomings. Just be a slope, the own military forces don’t count and the opponent to be underestimated. Much harder, Ullrich, weighed in Hitler’s inclination, as a player put it all on one card.
On the setbacks on the Eastern front, he responded with anger and hatred, outbursts, believed to know everything better, and punished the members of the high command of the Wehrmacht in person: Contrary to previous custom, he gave the location of meetings, no one of the present more, and also to the common lunch and dinner he did not take part for a long time. The self-declared commander hesitated before the professionals: “the fact That he remained the officer of the relay remote,” says his biographer, “had not only to do with his resentment of the military, but also so that he could not face them in the Pose of the superior field, Mr. genius.”
Hitler is no excuse
Hitler on the day of the assumption of office as Reich Chancellor on 30. January 1933
Volker Ullrich, the rich for his knowledge and refreshing-readable representation on numerous archival discoveries, opens with its consideration of the Person of Hitler, however, no door-to-excuse – not for the generals, who wanted to talk after 1945, their share of the moral and military disaster, with the reference to Hitler is small, and not for the Germans par excellence, who wanted to have known, in retrospect, the Holocaust nothing: “So is it true that only a few German-all about the ‘final solution’ did, but only very few knew nothing.”
The historian and Journalist Volker Ullrich, Born in 1943, initiated from 1990 to 2009, the Department of “Political book” in the Hamburg weekly newspaper “die Zeit”. For his journalistic Work, he was awarded the Alfred Kerr prize.
Volker Ullrich Adolf Hitler. The years of destruction 1939-1945. Biography. 894 pages. S. Fischer Verlag.