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Germany is an experienced myth maker. She believes in a metaphysical uniqueness which destines her either to be supreme or to vanish. The German people have always been divided against themselves, one part aspiring to spiritual, the other to military supremacy. The author's main aim is to analyze the common symbols that make all Germans one people and one danger. This analysis is done with such outstanding clarity and with such admirable methodology, that a detailed review is indicated.
Adolph Hitler's childhood, for instance, is one representative expression of German attitudes and symbols. Like a primitive medicine man, Hitler knows how to exploit his hysteria and how to represent with it something which lives in every German listener and reader. It is the tune, not the man, which the author analyzes.
The striking use of parental images in Mein Kampf constitutes a neurotic confession and at the same time a shrewd and seductive propaganda. It is significant that the German father essentially lacks a true inner authority, an authority which stems only from an integration of cultural ideal and educational method. The German (and Hitler's) father suffers from an eternally bad conscience for having sacrificed genius for mammon. The parallel split between individualistic rebellion and obedient citizenship is a strong factor in the political immaturity of the German. Hitler's person and his very personal development fits a universal latent conflict so well, that a crisis in the life of the German nation made it acceptable as a representative position. Hitler represents an adolescent who never gave in. He is a glorified older brother. Into this fits his ambivalent attitude towards his mother. He is always a lonely man, fighting and pleasing superhuman mother-figures.
The German geographical situation explains the vacillation of German character between suggestibility and defensive stubbornness. The German people are open to suggestion and foreign influence, ag