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How could the unspeakable degradation, brutality, and destruction of millions of innocent people by Germany during World War II under the leadership of Adolph Hitler have occurred? How could a culturally advanced and industrial country like Germany become so morally corrupt as to use its very technology to create factories to murder human beings? Even now, we are concerned by the spectre of a rebirth of Nazism. In a recent letter to his successor, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt warns of comradeship federations springing up displaying Nazi insignia, preaching hatred of minorities, and advocating the overthrow of the democratic Bonn Republic. Besides this radical right, there are increasing numbers in the radical left, the “Red Army Faction,” committing repeated acts of terrorism and also dedicated to the destruction of democracy. How could a Hitler arise, and can it happen again are the questions to which Stierlin addresses himself.
Helm Stierlin, one of our most talented psychoanalytic investigators, brings together in this book many of the factors responsible for Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Stierlin does an excellent job reviewing the vast literature on Hitler as well as evaluating their authenticity and commenting on the various psychological theories. Was Hitler's anti-Semitism due to Hitler's father Alois possibly being half-Jewish? Stierlin refutes this argument. Was it due to Dr. Bloch, the Jewish physician who performed a mastectomy on Hitler's mother after she had breast cancer? If so, it was unconscious, since Hitler allowed Dr. Bloch to escape the holocaust. Was Hitler compensating for having only one testicle as Bromberg implies. Yet the Russian autopsy report on which this theory is based has been considered unreliable. Was Hitler a latent homosexual as Brosse implies; was Hitler unable to have normal sex with a woman, was he masochistic and perverted, even being a necrophiliac as Fromm has speculated? Most of the previous writers have attempt