I was riding in the passenger seat of the car yesterday with my father and offhandedly remarked, "I really like Hitler," which I immediately corrected to, "I mean I really like learning about Hilter." And I do. From an early age, I became morbidly fascinated by the Holocaust, the concentrations camps, and the mass conductor of it all. I laughingly blamed it on my parents taking me to the Holocaust Memorial museum in DC when I was 6. (I could probably talk this out Freudian-style, but I digress).
In any case, I will go on to talk about the compelling manner in which Hitler addressed the masses.
Like Danielle, it gives me the chills. Not just the guttural German or the arms stuck out in 45 degree angles, but the fact that his voice demands that you listen to him. To add onto this, the crowd is absolutely captivated. Faces light up in jubilation. Yes! they say, Yes! This is what we've been waiting for! And in some way I cannot help but be reminded of the faces of people on Election Night in Chicago.
Flags waving, faces stretched into wide grins, surely we look less uniform, but the similarities are there. I'm not saying that Obama is akin to Hitler, but both share an uncanny power over the people, a power to inspire hope (I've never associated that word with Hitler before) in their people. For that matter, while our disillusionment with the government over the war in Iraq etc. was significantly less than that in pre-Nazi Germany, Obama and Hitler both seized the idea of "Yes We Can!"
Completely aside from this, I just realized that while Hitler championed eugenics and the creation of an Aryan super-race, he himself had dark hair. Oh, the irony.
Hi MLC,
ReplyDeleteI liked the post--its OK to meditate even further on this sense of HOPE and about the same sense of a national nightmare also ending that large swathes of both countries felt at the time-- chance to return to good values, etc, etc... It is interesting to talk to people who actually heard him speak--he was apparently a brilliant orator.