Hitler
Psychological Analysis &
Reconstruction

Part I

The world has come to know Adolph Hitler for his insatiable greed for
power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack-of feeling, his contempt
for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints. In the
course of relatively few years he has contrived to usurp such tremendous
power that a few veiled threats, accusations or insinuations were
sufficient to make the world tremble. In open defiance of treaties he
occupied huge territories and conquered millions of people without even
firing a shot. When the world became tired of being frightened and
concluded that it was all a bluff, he initiated the most brutal and
devastating war in history - a war which, for a time, threatened the
complete destruction of our civilization. Human life and human suffering
seem to leave this individual completely untouched as he plunges along the
course he believes he was predestined to take.

Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amusement. Many
people refused to take him seriously on the grounds that "he could not
possibly last." As one action after another met with amazing success and
the measure of the man became more obvious, this amusement was transformed
into incredulousness. To most people it seemed inconceivable that such
things could actually happen in our modern civilization. Hitler, the
leader of these activities, became generally regarded as a madman, if not
inhuman. Such a conclusion, concerning the nature of our enemy, may be
satisfactory from the point of view of the man in the street. It gives him
a feeling of satisfaction to pigeon-hole an incomprehensible individual in
one category or another. Having classified him in this way, he feels that
the problem is completely solved. All we need to do is to eliminate the
madman from the scene of activities, replace him with a sane individual,
and the world will again return to a normal and peaceful state of affairs.

This naive view, however, is wholly inadequate for those who are
delegated to conduct the war against Germany or for those who will be
delegated to deal with the situation when the war is over. They cannot
content themselves with simply regarding Hitler as a personal devil and
condemning him to an Eternal Hell in order that the remainder of the world
may live in peace and quiet. They will realize that the madness of the
part of wholly the actions of a single individual but that a reciprocal
relationship exists between the Fuehrer and the people and that the
madness of the one stimulates and flows into the other and vice versa. It
was not only Hitler, the madman, who created German madness, but German
madness which created Hitler. Having created him as its spokesman and
leader, it has been carried along by his momentum, perhaps far beyond the
point where it was originally prepared to go. Nevertheless, it continues
to follow his lead in spite of the fact that it must be obvious to all
intelligent people now that his path leads to inevitable destruction.

From a scientific point of view, therefore, we are forced to consider
Hitler, the Fuehrer, not as a personal devil, wicked as his actions and
philosophy may be, but as the expression of a state of mind existing in
millions of people, not only in Germany but, to a smaller degree, in all
civilized countries. To remove Hitler may be a necessary first step, but
it would not be the cure. It would be analogous to curing an ulcer without
treating the underlying disease. If similar eruptions are to be prevented
in the future, we cannot content ourselves with simply removing the overt
manifestations of the disease. On the contratry, we must ferret out and
seek to correct the underlying factors which produced the unwelcome
phenomenon. We must discover the psychological streams which nourish this
destructtve state of mind in order that we may divert them into channels
which will permit a further evolution of our form of civilization.

The present study is concerned wholly with Adolph Hitler and the social
forces which impinged upon him in the course of his development and
produced the man we know. One may question the wisdom of studying the
psychology of a single individual if the present war represents a
rebellion by a nation against our civilization. To understand the one does
not tell us anything about the millions of others. In a sense this is
perfectly true. In the process of growing up we are all faced with highly
individual experiences and exposed to varying social influences. The
result is that when we mature no two of us are identical from a
psychological point of view. In the present instance, however, we are
concerned not so much with distinct individuals as with a whole cultural
group. The members of this group have been exposed to social influences,
family patterns, methods of training and education, opportunities for
development, etc., which are fairly homogeneous within a given culture or
strata of a culture. The result is that the members of a given culture
tend to act, think and feel more or less alike, at least in contrast to
the members of a different cultural group. This justifies, to some extent,
our speaking of a general cultural character. On the other hand, if a
large section of a given culture rebells against the traditional pattern
then we must assume that new social influences have been introducod which
tend to produce a type of character which cannot thrive in the old
cultural environment.

When this happens it may be extremely helpful to understand the nature
of the social forces which influenced the development of individual
members of the group. These may serve as clues to an understanding of the
group as a whole inasmuch as we can then investigate the frequency and
intensity of these same forces in the group as a whole and draw deductions
concerning their effect upon its individual members. If the individual
being studied happens to be the Ieader of the group, we can expect to find
the pertinent factors in an exaggerated form which would tend to make them
stand out in sharper relief than would be the case if we studied an
average member of the group. Under these circumstances, the action of the
forces may be more easily isolated and subjected to detailed study in
relation to the personality as whole as well as to the culture in general.
The problem of our study should be, then, not only whether Hitler is mad
or not, but what influences in his development have made him what he is.

If we scan the tremendous quantities of material and information which
have been accumulated on Hitler, we find little which is helpful in
explaining why he is what he is. One can, of course, make general
statements as many authors have done and say, for example, that his five
years in Vienna were so frustrating that he hated the whole social order
and is now taking his revenge for the injustices he suffered. Such
explanations sound very plausible at first glance but we would also want
to know why, as a young man, he was unwilling to work when he had the
opportunity and what happened to transform the lazy Vienna beggar into the
energetic politician who never seemed to tire from rushing from one
meeting to another and was able to work thousands of listeners into a
state of frenzy.

We would also like to know something about the origins of his peculiar
working habits at the present time, his firm belief in his mission, and so
on. No matter how long we study the available material we can find no
rational explanation of his present conduct. The material is descriptive
and tells us a great deal about how he behaves under varying
circumstances, what he thinks and feels shout various subjects, but it
does not tell us why. To be sure, he himself sometimes offers explanations
for his conduct but it is obvious that these are either built on flimsy
rational foundations or else they serve to push the problem further back
into his past. On this level we are in exactly the same position in which
we find ourselves when a neurotic patient first comes for help.

In the case of an individual neurotic patient, however, we can ask for
a great deal more first-hand information which gradually enables us to
trace the development of his irrational attitudes or behavioral patterns
to earlier experiences or influences in his life history and the effects
of these on his later behavior. In most cases the patient will have
forgotten these earlier experiences but nevertheless he still uses them as
premises in his present conduct. As soon as we are able to understand the
premises underlying his conduct, then his irrational behavior becomes
comprehensible to us.

The same finding would probably hold in Hitler's case except that here
we do not have the opportunity of obtaining the additional first-hand
information which would enable us to trace the history of his views and
behavioral patterns to their early origins in order to discover the
premises on which he is operating. Hitler's early life, when his
fundamental attitudes were undoubtedly formed, is a closely guarded
secret, particularly as far as he himself is concerned. He has been
extremely careful and has told us exceedingly little about this period of
his life and even that is open to serious questioning. A few fragments
have, however, been, unearthed which are helpful in reconstructing his
past life and the experiences and influences which have determined his
adult character. Nevertheless, in themselves, they would be wholly
inadequate for our purposes.

Fortunately, there are other sources of information. One of them is
Hitler himself. In every utterance a speaker or writer unknowingly tells
us a great deal about himself of which he is entirely unaware. The
subjects he chooses for elaboration frequently reveal unconscious factors
which make these seem more important to him than many other aspects which
would be just as appropriate to the occasion. Furthermore, the method of
treatment, together with the attitudes expressed towards certain topics,
usually reflect conscious processes which are symbolically related to his
own problems. The examples he chooses for purposes of illustration almost
always contain elements from his own earlier experiences which were
instrumental in cultivating the view he is expounding. The figures of
speech he employs reflect unconscious conflicts and linkages and the
incidence of particular types or topics can almost be used as a measure of
his preoccupation with problems related to them. A number of experimental
techniques have been worked out which bear witness to the validity of
these methods of gathering information about the mental life, conscious
and unconscious, of an individual in addition to the findings of
psychoanalysts and psychiatrists.

Then, too, we have our practical experience in studying patients whose
difficulties were not unlike those we find in Hitler. Our knowledge of the
origins of these difficulties may often be used to evaluate conflicting
information, check deductions concerning what probably happened, or to
fill in gaps where no information is available. It may be possible with
the help of all these sources of information to reconstruct the
outstanding events in his early life which have determined his present
behavior and character structure. Our study must, however, of necessity be
speculative and inconclusive. It may tell us a great deal about the mental
processes of our subject but it cannot be as comprehensive or conclusive
as the findings of a direct study conducted with the cooperatlon of the
individual. Nevertheless, the situation is such that even an indirect
study of this kind is warranted.

Freud's earliest and greatest contribution to psychiatry in particular
and to an understanding of human conduct in general was his discovery of
the importance of the first years of a child's life in shaping his future
character. It is during these early years, when the child's
acquaintanceship with the world is still meagre and his capacities are
still immature, that the'chances of misinterpreting the nature of the
world about him are the greatest. The mind of the child is inadequate for
understanding the demands which a complex culture makes upon him or the
host of confusing experiences to which he is exposed. In consequence, as
has been shown over and over again, a child during his early years
frequently misinterprets what is going on about him and builds his
personality structure on false premises. Even Hitler concedes that this
finding is true, for he says in MEIN KAMPF:

"There is a boy, let us say, of three. This is the age at which a
child becomes conscious of his first impressions. In many intelligent
people, traces of these early memories are found even in old age."

Under these circumstances, it will be well for us to inquire into the
nature of Hitier's earliest environment and the impressions which he
probably formed during this period. Our factual information on this phase
of his life is practically nil. In MEIN KAMPF Hitler tries to create the
impression that his home was rather peaceful and quiet, his "father a
faithful civil servant, the mother devoting herself to the cares of the
household and looking after her children with eternally the same loving
care." It would seem that if this is a true representation of the home
environment there would be no reason for his concealing it so
scrupulously.

This is the only passage in a book of a thousand pages in which he even
intimates that there were other children for his mother to take care of.
No brother and no sister are mentioned in any other connection and even to
his associate he has never admitted that there were other chidren besides
his half-sister, Angela. Very little more is said about his mother, either
in writing or  speaking. This concealment in itself would make us
suspicious about the truth of the statement quoted above. We become even
more suspicious when we find that not a single patient manifesting
Hitler's character traits has grown up in such a well-ordered and peaceful
home environment.

If we read on in MEIN KAMPF we find that Hitler gives us a description
of a child's life in a lower-class family. He says:

"Among the five children there is a boy, let us say, of three... When
the parents fight almost daily, their brutality leaves nothing to the
imagination; then the results of such visual education must slowly but
inevitably become apparent to the little one. Those who are not familiar
with such conditions can hardly imagine the results, especially when the
mutual differences express themselves in the form of brutal attacks on
the part of the father towards the mother or to assaults due to
drunkenness. The poor little boy at the age of six, senses things which
would make even a grown-up person shudder. The other things the little
fellow hears at home do not tend to further his respect for his
surroundings."

In view of the fact that we now know that where were five children in
the Hitler home and that his father liked to spend his spare time in the
village tavern where he sometimes drank so heavily that he had to be
brought horn by his wife or children, we begin to suspect that in this
passage Hitler is, in all probability, describing conditions in his own
home as a child.

If we accept the hypothesis that Hitler is actually talking about his
own home when he describes conditions in the average lower-class family,
we can obtain further information concerning the nature of his home
environment. We read:

"...things end badly indeed when the man from the very start goes his
own way and the wife, for the sake of the children stands up against
him. Quarreling and nagging set in, and in the same measure in which the
husband becomes estranged from his wife, he becomes familiar with
alcohol.....When he finally comes home... drunk and brutal, but always
without a last cent or penny, then God have mercy on the scenes which
follow. I witnessed all of this personally in hundreds of scenes and at
the beginning with both disgust and indignation." (MK, 38)

When we remember the few friends that Hitler has made in the course of
his life, and not a single intimate friend, one wonders where he had the
opportunity of observing these scenes personally, hundreds of times, if it
was not in his own home. And then he continues:

"The other things the little fellow hears at home do not tend to
further his respect for his surroundings. Not a single good shred is
left for humanity, not a single institution is left unattacked; starting
with the teacher, up to the head of the State, be it religion, or
morality as such, be it the State or society, no matter which,
everything is pulled down in the nastiest manner into the filth of a
depraved mentality." (MK, 43)

All of this agrees with information obtained from other sources whose
veracity might otherwise be open to question. With this as corroborating
evidence, however, it seems safe to assume that the above passages are a
fairly accurate picture of the Hitler household and we may surmise that
these scenes did arouse disgust and indignation in him at a very early
age.

These feelings were aggravated by the fact that when his father was
sober he tried to create an entirely different impression. At such times
he stood very much on his dignity and prided himself on his position in
the civil serviceo Even after he had retired from this service he always
insisted on wearing his uniform when he appeared in public. He was
scrupulous about his appearance and strode down the viliage street in his
most dignified manner. When he spoke to his neighbors or acquaintances he
did so in a very condescending manner and always demanded that they use
his full title when they addressed him. If one of them happened to omit a
part of it, he would call attention to their omission. He carried this to
the point where, so informants tell us, he became a source of amusement to
the other villagers and their children. At home, he demanded that the
children address him as Herr Vater instead of using one of the intimate
abbreviations or nicknames that children commonly do.

Father's lnfluence on Hitler's character.

We know from our study of many cases that the character of father is
one of the major factors determining the character of the child during
infancy, particularly that of a boy. In cases in which the father is a
fairly well-integrated individual and presents a consistent pattern of
behavior which the small boy can respect, he becomes a model which the
child strives to emulate. The image the child has of his father becomes
the cornerstone of his later character-structure and with its help he is
able to integrate his own behavior along socially accepted lines. The
importance of this first step in character development can scarcely be
over-estimated. It is almost a prerequisite for a stable, secure and
well-integrated personality in later life.

In Hitler' s case, as in almost all other neurotics of his type, this
step was not feasible. Instead of presenting an image of a consistent,
harmonious, socially-adjusted and admirable individual which the child can
use as a guide and model, the father shows himself to be a mass of
contradictions. At times he plays the role of "a faithful civil servant"
who respects his position and the society he serves, and demands that all
others do likewise. At such times he is the soul of dignity, propriety,
sternness and justice. To the outside world he tries to appear as a pillar
of society whom all should respect and obey. At home, on the other hand,
particularly after he had been drinking, he appears the exact opposite. He
is brutal, unjust and inconsiderate. He has no respect for anybody or
anything. The world is all wrong and an unfit place in which to live. At
such times he also plays the part of the bully and whips his wife and
children who are unable to defend themselves. Even the dog comes in for
his share of his sadistic display.

Under such circumstances the child becomes confused and is unable to
identify himself with a clear-cut pattern which he can use as a guide for
his own adjustment. Not only is this a severe handicap in itself but in
addition the child is given a distorted picture of the world around him
and the nature of the people in it. The home, during these years, is his
world and he judges the outside world in terms of it. The result is that
the whole world appears as extremely dangerous, uncertain and unjust as a
place in which to live and the child's impulse is to avoid it as far as
possible because he feels unable to cope with it. He feels insecure,
particularly since he can never predict beforehand how his father will
behave when he comes home in the evening or what to expect from him. The
person who should give him love, support and a feeling of security now
fills him with anxiety, uneasiness and uncertainty.

His search for a competent guide.

As a child Hitler must have felt this lack very keenly for throughout
his later life we find him searching for a strong masculine figure whom he
can respect and emulate. The men with whom he had contact during his
childhood evidently could not fill the role of guide to his complete
satisfaction. There is some evidence that he attempted to regard some of
his teachers in this way but whether it was the influence of his father's
ranting or shortcomings in the teachers themselves, his attempts always
miscarried. Later he attempted to find great men in history who could fill
this need. Caesar, Napoleon and Frederick the Great are only a few of the
many to whom he became attached. Although such, historic figures serve
important role of this kind in the life of almost every child, they are in
themselves inadequate. Unless a fairly solid foundation already exists in
the mind of the child these heroes never become flesh and blood people
inasmuch as the relationship is one-sided and lacks reciprocation. The
same is also true of the political figures with which Hitler sought to
identify himself during the Vienna period. For a time Schoenerer and
Lueger became his heroes and although they were instrumental in forming
some of his political beliefs and channeling his feelings, they were still
too far removed from him to play the role of permanent guides and models.

During his career in the army we have an excellent example of Hitler's
willingness to submit to the leadership of strong males who were willing
to guide him and protect him. Throughout his army life there is not a
shred of evidence to show that Hitler was anything but the model soldier
as far as submissivehess and obedience are concerned. From a psychological
point of view his life in the army was a kind of substitute for the home
life he had always wanted but could never find, and he fulfilled his
duties willingly and faithfully. He liked it so well that after he was
wounded, in 1916, he wrote to his commanding officer and requested that he
be called back to front duty before his leave had expired.

After the close of the war he stayed in the army and continued to be
docile to his officers. He was willing to do anything they asked, even to
the point of spying on his own   comrades and then condemning them to
death. When his officers singled him out to do special propaganda work
because they believed he had a talent for speaking, he was overjoyed. This
was the beginning of his political career, and here too we can find many
manifestations of his search for a leader. In the beginning he may well
have thought of himself as the "drummer-boy" who was heralding the coming
of the great leader. Certain it is that during the early years of his
career he was very submissive to a succession of important men to whom he
looked for guidance - von Kahr, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, to name only a
few.

It is true that in the end he turned upon them one after another and
treated them in a despicable fashion, but usually this change came after
he discovered their personal shortcomings and inadequacies. As in many
neurotic people of Hitler's type who have a deep craving for guidance from
an older man, their requirements grow with the years. By the time they
reach maturity they are looking for, and can only submit to, a person who
is perfect in every respect -literally a super-man. The result is that
they are always trying to come in contact with new persons of high status
in the hope that each one, in turn, will prove to be the ideal.

No sooner do they discover a single weakness or shortcoming than they
depose him from the pedestal on which they have placed him. They then
treat their fallen heroes badly for having failed to live up to their
expectations. And so Hitler has spent his life looking for a competent
guide but always ends up with the discovery that the person he has chosen
falls short of his requirements and is fundamentally no more capable than
himself. That this tendency is a carry-over from his early childhood is
evidenced by the fact that throughout these years he always laid great
stress on addressing these persons by their full titles. Shades of his
father's training during his early childhood!

It may be of interest to note at this time that of all the titles that
Hitler might have chosen for himself he is content with the simple one of
"Fuehrer". To him this title is the greatest of them all. He has spent his
life searching for a person worthy of the role but was unable to find one
until he discovered himself. His goal is now to fulfill this role to
millions of other people in a way in which he had hoped some person might
do for him. The fact that the German people have submitted so readily to
his leadership would indicate that a great many Germans were in a similar
state of mind as Hitler himself and were not only willing, but anxious, to
submit to anybody who could prove to them that he was competent to fill
the role. There is some sociological evidence that this is probably so and
that its origins lie in the structure of the German family and the dual
role played by the father within the home as contrasted with the outside
world. The duality, on the average is, of course, not nearly as marked as
we have shown   it to be in Hitler's case, but it may be this very
fact which qualified him to identify the need and express it in terms
which the others could understand and accept.

There is evidence that the only person in the world at the present time
who might challenge Hitler in the role of leader is Roosevelt. Informants
are agreed that he fears neither Churchill nor Stalin. He feels that they
are sufficiently like himself so th at he can understand their psychology
and defeat them at the game. Roosevelt, however, seems to be an enigma
him. How a man can lead a nation of 150,000,000 people and keep them in
line without a great deal of name-calling, shouting, abusing and
threatening is a mystery to him. He is unable to understand how a man can
be the leader of a large group and still act like a gentleman. The result
is that he secretly admires Roosevelt to a considerable degree, regardless
of what he publicly says about him. Underneath he probably fears him
inasmuch as he is unable to predict his actions.

Hitler's mother and her influence.

Hitler's father, however, was only a part of his early environment.
There was also his mother who, from all reports, was a very decent type of
woman. Hitler has written very little and said nothing about her publicly.
Informants tell us, however, that she was an extremely conscientitious and
hard-working individual whose life centered around her home and children.
She was an exemplary housekeeper and there was never a spot or speck of
dust to be found in the house - everything was very neat and orderly. She
was a very devout Catholic and the trials and tribulations that fell upon
her home she accepted with Christian resignation. Even her last illness,
which extended over many months and caused her great pain, she endured
without a single complaint. We may assume that she had to put up with much
from her irrascible husband and it may be that at at times she did have to
stand up against him for the welfare of her children. But all of this she
probably accepted in the same spirit of abnegation. To her own children
she was always extremely affectionate and generous although there is some
reason to suppose that she was mean at times to her two step-children.

In any event, every scrap of evidence indicates that there was an
extremely strong attachment between herself and Adolph. As previously
pointed out, this was due in part to the fact that she had lost two, or
possibly three, children before Adolph was born. Since he, too, was frail
as a child it is natural that a woman of her type should do everything
within her power to guard against another recurrence of her earlier
experiences. The result was that she catered to his whims, even to the
point of spoiling him, and that she was over-protective in her attitude
towards him. We may assume that during the first five-years of Adolph's
life, he was the apple of his mother's eye and that she lavished affection
on  him. In view of her husband's conduct and the fact that he was
twenty-three years her senior and far from having a loving disposition, we
may suppose that much of the affection that normally would have gone to
him also found its way to Adolph.

The result was a strong libidinal attachment between mother and son. It
is almost certain that Adolph had temper tantrums during this time but
that these were not of a serious nature. Their immediatel purpose was to
get his own way with his mother and he undoubtedly succeeded in achieving
this end. They were a technique by which he could dominate her whenever he
wished, either out of fear that she would lose his love or out of fear
that if he continued he might become like his father. There is reason to
suppose that she frequently condoned behavior of which the father would
have disapproved and may have become a partner in forbidden activities
during the father's absence. Life with his mother during these early years
must have been a veritable paradise for Adolph except for the fact that
his father would intrude and disrupt the happy relationship. Even when his
father did not make a scene or lift his whip, he would demand attention
from his wife which prevented her participation in pleasurable activities.

It was natural, under these circumstances, that Adolph should resent
the intrusion into his Paradise and this undoubtedly aggravated the
feelings of uncertainty and fear which his father's conduct aroused in
him.

As he became older and the libidinal attachment to his mother became
stronger, both the resentment and fear undoubtedly increased. Infantile
sexual feelings were probably quite prominent in this relationship as well
as fantasies of a childish nature. This is the Oedipus complex mentioned
by psychologists and psychiatrists who have written about Hitler's
personality. The great amount of affection lavished upon him by his mother
and the undesirable character of his father served to develop this complex
to an extraordinary degree. The more he hated his father the more
dependent he became upon the affection and love of his mother, and the
more he loved his mother the more afraid he became of his father's
vengeance should his secret be discovered. Under these circumstances,
little boys frequently fantasy about ways and means of ridding the
environment of the intruder. There is reason to suppose that this also
happened in Hitler's early life.

Influences determining his attitude towards love, women,
marriage.

Two other factors entered into the situation which served to accentuate
the conflict still further. One of these was the birth of a baby brother
when he was five years of age. This introduced a new rival onto the scene
and undoubtedly deprived him of some of his mother's affection and
attention, particularly since the new child was also rather sickly. We may
suppose that the newcomer in the family also became the victim of Adolph's
animosity and that he fantasied about  getting rid of him as he had
earlier contemplated getting rid of his father. There is nothing abnormal
in this except the intensity of the emotions involved.

The other factor which served to intensify these feelings was the fact
that as a child he must have discovered his parents during intercourse. An
examination of the data makes this conclusion most inescapable and from
our knowledge of his father's character and past history it is not at all
improbable. It would seem that his feelings on this occasion were very
mixed. On the one hand, he was indignant at his father for what he
considered to be a brutal assault upon his mother. On the other hand, he
was indignant with his mother because she submitted so willingly to the
father, and he was indignant with himself because he was powerless to
intervene. Later, as we shall see, there was an hysterical re-living of
this experience which played an important part in shaping his future
destinies.

Being a spectator to this early scene had many repercussions. One of
the most important of these was the fact that he felt that his mother had
betrayed him in submitting to his father, a feeling which became
accentuated still further when his baby brother was born. He lost much of
his respect for the female sex and while in Vienna, Hanisch reports, he
frequently spoke at length on the topic of love and marriage and that "he
had very austere ideas about  relations between men and women". Even
at that time he maintained that if men only wanted to they could adopt a
strictly moral way of living. "He often said it was the woman's fault if a
man went astray" and "He used to lecture us about this, saying every woman
can be had." In other words, he regarded woman as the seducer and
responsible for man's downfall and he condemned them for their disloyalty.

These attitudes are probably the outcome of his early experiences with
his mother who first seduced him into a love relationship and then
betrayed him by giving herself to his father. Nevertheless, he still
continued to believe in an idealistic form of love and marriage which
would be possible if a loyal woman could be found. As we know, Hitler
never gave himself into the hands of a woman again with the possible
exception of his niece, Geli Raubal, which also ended in disaster. Outside
of that single exception he has lived a loveless life. His distrust of
both men and women is so deep that in all his history there is no record
of a really intimate and lasting friendship.

The outcome of these early experiences was probably a feeling of being
very much alone in a hostile world. He hated his father, distrusted his
mother, and despised himself for his weakness. The immature child finds
such a state of mind almost unendurable for any length of time and in
order to gain peace and security in his environmlnt these feelings are
gradually repressed from his memory.

This is a normal procedure which happens in the case of every child at
a relatively early age. This process of repression enables the child to
reestablish a more or less friendly relationship with his parents without
the interference of disturbing memories and emotions. The early conflicts,
however, are not solved or destroyed by such a process and we must expect
to find manifestations of them later on. When the early repression has
been fairly adequate these conflicts lie dormant until adolescence when,
due to the process of maturation, they are reawakened. In some cases they
reappear in very much their original form, while in others they are
expressed in a camouflaged or symbolic form.

In Hitler's case, however, the conflicting emotions and sentiments were
so strong that they could not be held a latent state during this time.
Quite early in his school career we find his conflicts appearing again in
a symbolic form. Unfortunately, the symbols he unconsciously chose to
express his own inner conflicts were such that they have seriously
affected the future of the world. And yet these symbols fit his peculiar
situation so perfectly that it was almost inevitable that they would be
chosen as vehicles of expression.

Psychological
Analysis Part II

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of Contents Page

Document compiled by Dr S D Stein
Text Scanning by The Nizkor Project
Last update
12/10/98
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Stein

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