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How is it possible to write an essay on two such diametrically opposite people—one the most ruthless dictator and destroyer of men in history and the other the greatest pacifist leader of all time, one who believed in violence and the other who believed in peace? In my youth I saw one as the symbol of all antithetical values; the other became for me, as a young university student, the embodiment of the highest spirituality. How can Hitler, who seemed to revere brutality, be compared with Gandhi, the advocate of ahimsa?a How can the sadomasochistic monster who legalized the outcast status of Jews and eventually destroyed six million of them be compared to the saintly man who worked to redeem “the untouchables” and reintegrate them into Indian life and society?
If the intention was to write a moral essay on the epitome of evil in comparison to a paragon of saintliness, then the extremity of the contrast might be helpful. But this essay will focus on the similarities between Hitler and Gandhi and show differences as opposite sides of a common root. This does not mean I intend to equate the two men. One is clearly a monster and the other virtually a Christ-figure. But the parallels are too striking to go unnoticed and they reveal both the creative and destructive sides of a political pattern with direct roots in the socialization of these leaders in the family.
The last point requires clarification and amplification. There are a number of studies of the interaction between the psychic needs of those who are led and the psychohistory of a leader. Several of these focus on Hitler in particular.b Psychobiographical studiesc can be differentiated from psychocultural studiesd that analyze the psychohistory of the culture using institutional patterns in education, structural