Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

The future president of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany captured the dual nature of the Nazi movement. On the one hand, Heuss found, it inhabited a world of strong emotions and passions. These were evident in the Führer cult, the pseudo-religious faith followers invested in one man and his world view, and the mass psychosis triggered by his public appearances. On the other hand, though, there was the bureaucratic apparatus, the strongly organised, highly efficient party machinery aimed solely at acquiring political power. “Rationalistic power calculations coexist side by side with unbridled emotions,” wrote Heuss, who identified the same contradiction in Hitler himself. Hitler was, on the one hand, a “master of emotional ecstasy combining the techniques of the trained mass psychologist and someone inspired by the primeval passion that comes from the exuberance of mass emotion.” On the other hand, Heuss regarded Hitler simply as “a politician who wants power.” Heuss saw Hitler’s pledges to respect the law for what they were—tactical manoeuvres to achieve that goal: Today legality means being formed or confirmed by the will of the majority. The man who mocks democracy subjects himself, vowing legality, to its methods and its very idea. In so doing, he suggests to his followers that this is not the result of a change of heart, but the manifestation of a period of adjustment, an attempt to win time that requires patience. The goal is to gain the majority of votes tomo...