For those interested in this sort of thing like myself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_of_Adolf_Hitler
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, published in 1972 by Basic Books, is based on a World War II report bypsychoanalyst Walter C. Langer which probed the psychology of Adolf Hitler from the available information. The original report was prepared for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted in late 1943 or early 1944; [1] it is officially entitled "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend". The report is one of two psychoanalytic reports prepared for the OSS during the war in an attempt to assess Hitler's personality; the other is "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler" by the psychologist Henry A. Murray who also contributed to Langer's report. The report eventually became 1000 pages long.
The book contains not only a version of Langer's original report but also a foreword by his brother, the historian William L. Langer who was Chief of Research and Analysis at the OSS during the war, an introduction by Langer himself, and an afterword by the psychoanalytic historian Robert G.L. Waite. [2] [3]
The report is famous for its amazingly accurate predictions about Hitler's future conduct:
1. As the war turns against him, his rages will intensify and become more frequent, and his public appearances will become less and less, because he's unable to face a critical audience. [4]
2. There might be an assassination attempt on him by the German aristocratic officer corps, because of his superhuman self-confidence in his military judgment. [4]
3. There will be no surrender, capitulation, or peace negotiations. The course he will follow, will almost certainly be the sureties road to immortality, and that at the same time, reaches the greatest vengeance on a world he despises. [4]
4. From what we know of his psychology, the most likely possibility is that he will commit suicide. It's probably true he has an enormous fear of death, but being a psychopath he would undoubtedly screw himself up into the superman character, and perform the deed. [4].
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Purposes and Effects [ edit ]
The Langer report was ostensibly an objective analysis of the mind of Adolf Hitler and related aspects of his life and society, based on written material, interviews, psychoanalytic theory and clinical experience. The first words of the OSS report are: "This study is not propagandistic in any sense of the term. It represents an attempt to screen the wealth of contradictory, conflicting and unreliable material concerning Hitler into strata which wll be helpful to the policy-makers and those who wish to frame a counter-propaganda." The preface further asserts that despite the 'extremely scant and spotty' material for a psychological analysis, one was possible due to their informants knowing Hitler well and their descriptions agreeing relatively well with each other, combined with the writers' own 'clinical experience in dealing with individuals of a similar type'. [21] Ernst Hanfstaengl has been noted as likely the main informant, a Harvard-educated German businessman who was an intimate of Adolf Hitler, who was interviewed for several weeks once returned to the US. [7]
Others, however, have suggested that the analysis was intended to be useful for propaganda and 'psychological warfare'. Respected historian and authority on the OSS, Bradley F Smith [1], states that Langer's report was known in the OSS as the “spiced-up” version, and that the idea originally came from Fred Oechsner the chief of the London station of the OSS's Morale Operations Branch. [7] [22]
In a review of The Mind of Adolf Hitler for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Martin Waugh concluded that Langer's work is important "because of its value to the historian; because it was a 'first' for this country's intelligence services; and because of the official recognition of psychoanalysis the assignment implied." [23] Historian Gatzke agrees that the original document is of historical interest, but not more due to the unreliability of its descriptions of the evidence and of its interpretations. [13] Regarding the earlier Murray report which fed into the Langer report, psychiatrist Michael Stone states "There's a whole lot of what we would now think of as psychobabble...", including discredited psychoanalytic theories and psychiatric labels used in different ways to today. [24] The dust jacket of the 1972 publication states: "What effect did this astounding secret document have on Allied war policy? That is not yet known. But in the words of Robert G.L. Waite, the distinguished historian [who wrote the afterword], Dr. Langer’s The Mind of Adolf Hitler is, in itself, “fascinating…a significant and suggestive interpretation which no serious student of Hitler will ignore.”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
Historians and biographers note some difficulty in identifying Adolf Hitler's political views. His writings and methods were often adapted to need and circumstance, although there were some steady themes, including antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-parliamentarianism, German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an "Aryan race" and an extreme form of German nationalism. Hitler personally claimed he was fighting against Jewish Marxism.
His views were more or less formed during three periods:
- His years as a poverty-stricken young man in Vienna and Munich prior to World War I, during which he turned to nationalist-oriented political pamphlets and antisemitic newspapers out of distrust for mainstream newspapers and political parties.
- The closing months of World War I when Germany lost the war; Hitler is said to have developed his extreme nationalism during this time, desiring to "save" Germany from both external and internal "enemies" who, in his view, betrayed it.
The 1920s, during which his early political career began and he wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but did not acquire German citizenship until almost seven years later; thereby allowing him to run for public office...
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