Hitler: in His Mind
Adolf Hitler was known to be a somewhat of monster, and a villian, which is true in the opinions of quite a few throughout history. What Hitler accomplished is astonishing, he was a brilliant man who knew how manipulate people and their way of thinking. But, what is most intriguing about Hitler is his personality and disturbed mind. Robert G. L. Wiate and his book titled The Psychopathis God: Adolf Hitler discusses Hitler and his personality triats that led to his outrageous ideas and actions.
Waite as a author is able to not create a judgement of Hitler and his and write more about Hitler as a person and why he was the way he was. Hitler had many issues that disturbed his mind, such as, his past and childhood experiences, his enourmous amount of phobias and obsessions that consumed his mind, his sexual experiences and his behavior toward sex, and of course the most well known personal hatred toward Jews. Skipping around a little bit in Waite’s book, in Chapter 3, Waite discussed Hitler’s childhood and family history.
Hitler’s childhood experiences led to his later on in life obsessions and phobias that were to consume his thinking. Waite is able to find the facts about his childhood to help explain how Hitler’s mind became warped into his way of thinking. Hitler’s childhood was full of death and, abandonment and bad habits. These experiences help explain why he became a vegetarian, his fascination with death and suicide as well as his phobia of being alone. All of these personality triats he became known for were due to his childhood experiences and lifestyle. In my opinion, Hitler’s psychological traits were due to his past.
While a boy in Vienna, he was mocked and riduculed. As a child he was strickened with the death of his mother. These types of experiences can create major personality malfunctions later in life. In the first chapter, Waite discusses Hitler’s personality traits and his odd obsessions and daily way of living. One issue that would amaze any reader of Waite’s book is learning about Hitler and his actual ways of thinking rather than just what his factual actions as one of the greatest leaders and manipulator of all time. What is so astonishing is how someone ith such odd obsessions, such as the exact measurements of a body and proportion and positioning of the body, or his obsession with blood and his childish behavior as an adult. Wait’s evidence on Hitler’s manipulating skills is impressive. Waite decribes Hitler as being a man who would use “brotherhood” and shared experiences to convince people that what they were doing to the Jewish population was alright. In my opinion, Hitler’s psychological explanations for his behavoir is simple. He was a man who was set in his ways and when his way of how life should be ran and lived, he created another obsession in his mind to conquer that obstacle.
Unfortunately for Hitler, his past experiences led to his thinking to be irrational and almost manic like. He would use his hatred for his fathers death caused by use of tabacco, as a way to lead a clean life, which in reality is a habit to form, but unfortunately for Hitler, this “clean” way of living, lead to a more toxic and harmful environment for himself. Waite describes Hitler as using his bad memories as a child to fix what he felt was wrong with society, unfortunately for Hitler, his mind went out of control to be controlling, and “perfect”.
As far as Hitler and women, he looked at them as their primary purpose to be looked at like a pet. He is quoted to have said “A woman must be a cute, cuddly, naive little thing—tender, sweet and stupid”, if you read into this statement Hitler made, he expected women to be like trained animals. His sexual experiences were very limited. He was intimate with six different women in his life five of which committed suicide. Hitler had a way of making the women feel inferior and if Adolf was not in their lives then they should not be living their lives at all.
Waite describes his sexual and intimate life in contrast with his lack of a motherly figure throughout his entire life. Hitler felt that women were irrational and not capable of being a leader because of women having more of emotional personalities. Hitler’s sexual behavior toward women and sex in general does indicate that this side of his personality wa disturbed. Since reading Waite’s book about Adolf Hitler and his personality and psychological state, a perspective has been put into place for myself concerning Hitler and his terrible actions later in life. This book, puts into perspective just how disturbed and unstable Hitler really was.
The question that comes to mind is how can such a manic, unstable, psychologically disturbed man, create such a following of people. The only conclusion that comes to my mind is sheer ignornace of Hitler’s capabilities as leader. The people who supported and followed Hitler were people who benefitted from his actions and power. Waite is able to write a book about Hitler that is interesting and informative about Hitler’s psychological standpoint, which helps make you as the reader understand Hitler’s thinking and exactly how much of his decision making was based on his insanity and obsessions that consumed him.
