Warning: Plenty of historically offensive views abound
Fear, Money, and Tranquility
While the Freudian experiment was developing in the early part of the 20th century, challenges were brewing much faster than any mediators could keep up with. In Central Europe, the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles left Germans with a feeling of humiliation. With French reparations leading to bankruptcy, the German government printed money which robbed from the people so they could repay their debts. Rich industrialists were exempted from higher taxes, and so the gravity of leverage and pecking order leaned on the middle and lower classes to scapegoat them. “German currency had become utterly worthless. Purchasing power of salaries and wages was reduced to zero. The life savings of the middle classes and the working classes were wiped out. But something even more important was destroyed: the faith of the people in the economic structure of German society. What good were the standards and practices of such a society, which encouraged savings and investment and solemnly promised a safe return from them and then defaulted? Was this not a fraud upon the people? And was not the democratic Republic, which had surrendered to the enemy and accepted the burden of reparations, to blame for the disaster? Unfortunately for its survival, the Republic did bear a responsibility. The inflation could have been halted by merely balancing the budget a difficult but not impossible feat. Adequate taxation might have achieved this, but the new government did not dare to tax adequately. After all, the cost of the war 164 billion marks—had been met not even in part by direct taxation but 93 billions of it by war loans, 29 billions out of Treasury bills and the rest by increasing the issue of paper money. Instead of drastically raising taxes on those who could pay, the republican government actually reduced them in 1921…From then on, goaded by the big industrialists and landlords, who stood to gain, though the masses of the people were financially ruined, the government deliberately let the mark tumble in order to free the State of its public debts, to escape from paying reparations…Moreover, the destruction of the currency enabled German heavy industry to wipe out its indebtedness by refunding its obligations in worthless marks…The fall of the mark wiped out the war debts and thus left Germany financially unencumbered for a new war.”
Hardship naturally makes people look for drastic solutions and there’s a need to blame. Democracy was supposed to be better than the prior autocracies of prior centuries, but all the wealth vanished nonetheless. The feeling of helplessness led naturally toward leaders who could promise to bring power back to the helpless, with the obvious risk that the new leader could just keep the power for themselves. This was an ongoing problem in the history of humanity. With the introduction of farming, many settlers had to claim land, because the claim was about the work people invested, in the farming activities themselves. They wanted to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but eventually marauders could easily steal the property and this required paying some money for defense. Very easily, warlords could use their skills in battle to enslave workers by charging high enough rents or taxes to keep people from saving money. Saving money was the way out, but until situations that were unpredictable finally arose, like the Black Plague, there was not much a worker could do. The reduced supply of labor after the plague forced landowners to compete for workers by paying higher wages, which finally allowed for savings to be possible. Attempts to bring back feudalism involved punishments by the government and increased taxes, as well as the banning of luxury goods with sumptuary laws to maintain hierarchies and prevent successful commoners from destabilizing social hierarchies and shining a light on how illegitimate their superiority was. The addictive nature of rewards meant that those who consumed at a much higher rate had to prey on workers and force them to give up more and more to their greed and threats. Insurrection, protest, war, and the ability to walk out on strike eventually brought the world to where it was at the end of the autocratic 1800s where trade was flourishing and democratic rights were being fought for. When freedom led to wealth, there was the experience of tranquility that most envied, but rarely achieved by those stuck in the lower rungs of a caste system. That peace could be called “Quiet Luxury” or “Old Money Calm.”
Seven Samurai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XMJY0hYJEw
All the while, there were many fits and starts when people gained portions of freedom. It was not easy to flourish with so many uncertainties that followed it around, especially when slave situations that were familiar, promised security. Even newer scenarios appeared similar to the old ones when people found themselves yet again unable to save or own land. It was then easy to remain with a lord and be trapped once more.
Now we owe no man service but for wage, and the land is ours to till.
We are free to go where the harvest is better.
Once I had land and food, now I have only my hands to sell.
Man has no greater enemy than himself if he is ignorant, and no greater friend than himself if he is wise.
When people were enslaved, the kind of bottled up rage, cruelty, and desire for revenge was ready to be at its maximum. Only fear kept it in check. The Jacquerie Rebellion was a great example.
“I dare not write the horrible deeds that they did to ladies and damsels; among others, they slew a knight and [then] put him on a spit and roasted him at the fire in sight of the lady, his wife and children, and after that the lady was forced and raped by ten or twelve of them, and then they made her eat of her husband, and after made her die an evil death with all her children.” ~ Chronicler Jean Le Bel
In the modern world, any social groups that are able to monopolize products or services, and jack up prices, fees, or taxes, can more or less enslave customers, consumers, clients, patients, etc. Any successful endeavor requires products or services that solve pain points. That comfort becomes addictive. If competitors are unavailable, or they are driven out by many different means, like war, government “emergencies,” unfair trade practices, etc., the market becomes captive. Their standard of living decreases while the owner can demand more consumption if there’s no one to say no. The difficulty is that this can happen in innumerable combinations where groups of people can be labeled as the exploiters, and if enough time passes, the people exploited might turn into the current exploiters in future generations. Emotional leverage appears in the mind of the subject in the form of plans for the future that may go one way or another with different costs and sacrifices that have to be made. The desire for freedom comes from the comparison of the risks involved with the derision and mistreatment that they are likely to suffer when returning to the cage. Those who couldn’t benefit from freedom, or who were too scared of it, would be perfect targets for new unscrupulous leaders who could provide that same comfort. Authoritarian leaders could also speed up the acceptance of their rule by appealing to the emotions of followers and their need for relief.
Like mentioned before, there’s a desire for security competing against the resentment aimed against authoritarian types, but if tyrants are able to deflect that label to enemies, resentment from the followers could be assuaged by the promise to give them a new identity that is infused with superiority along with the comfort of belonging. Obedience has another benefit in that one can temporarily put down the burden of responsibility, that is until they become a scapegoat if the leader gets in trouble. By joining powerful groups, even if in a weak position, it can confer some protection and a reduction in the feeling of being powerless. The 20th century was unfortunately full of manipulators that studied all these forms of leverage and ruthlessly took advantage.
Mein Kampf
To understand a period of the time in the past, like a period piece story, there has to be enough recognizable human emotions to connect people today to the people of the past, but at the same time there’s an alien viewpoint because of the wide gulf in scientific understanding. Many people who have a viewpoint of Hitler it is usually based on WWII movies and documentaries that start when the conflict began in 1939. It’s really important to see the point of view of enemies to learn how they were triggered by circumstances and take note of their over-reactions. A lot of the complaints Hitler had were similar to what Marxists talked about, relating to working conditions, political corruption, and the stress of poverty.
A common theme that threads through the ancient world, the 20th century, and even today, is the feeling of being slighted while occupying a low position. “Those with whom I passed my younger days belonged to the small bourgeois class. It was therefore a world that had very little contact with the world of genuine manual laborers. For, though at first this may appear surprising, the gulf that separates that class—which is by no means economically well-off—from the manual laboring class is often deeper than people think. The reason for this division, which we may almost call enmity, lies in the fear that dominates a social group that has risen only slightly above the level of the manual laborer—a fear that it may fall back into its old condition, or at least be again classed with the laborers. Moreover, there is something repulsive in remembering the cultural indigence of that lower class and their rough manners with one another. Those who are only on the first rung of the social ladder find it unbearable to be forced into contact with the cultural level and standard of living from which they have risen…Ultimately this struggle, which is often hard, destroys all sympathy. Our own fight for existence kills our feeling for the misery of those who have been left behind…From this point of view, fate was kind to me. Circumstances forced me to return to that world of poverty and economic insecurity that my father had raised himself from in his early days. The blinders of a narrow petty bourgeois education were torn from my eyes. Now for the first time, I learned to know men; and I learned to distinguish between empty appearances or brutal manners and the real inner nature of the person.”
Naturally people go through periods of lack and tranquility depending on their fortunes. If they manage to get out of the bottom caste, their concerns for the downtrodden decrease as their interest in consumption-rewards increase. Yet, the fear is always in the background. One could always be forced to return to the pit of resentment. Hitler was reflecting on this in Sigmund Freud’s backyard in Vienna. “I don’t know which is worse: to ignore social distress, as do the majority of those who have been favored by fortune and those who have risen in the social scale through their own routine labor, or the equally arrogant and often tactlessness displayed by people who make a fad of being charitable and who claim to ‘feel for the people.’ In any case, such people sin more than they can imagine. Consequently, and to their own astonishment, they find that the ‘social conscience’ on which they pride themselves never produces any results; rather, it often causes resentment. And then they talk of the ingratitude of the people.”
Hitler was comparing the old system of living on a farm compared to the city, and needless to say, he wasn’t enamored with the city and how easy life could go into a downward spiral towards homelessness. “I soon found out that some kind of work was always available. But I also learned that it could just as quickly and easily be lost. The uncertainty of earning my daily livelihood soon became the darkest feature of this new life…Here the element of insecurity in earning one’s daily bread was the bitterest aspect of the whole social-economic system itself…When the last of [the general laborer’s] money is gone and his union stops paying due to prolonged unemployment, then comes the real distress. He now walks the streets, hungry. Often he pawns or sells the last of his belongings. His clothes become shabby. And with the increasing poverty of his outward appearance, he descends to a lower social level—mixing with a class of people that poison his mind, in addition to his physical suffering. He then has nowhere to sleep, and if that happens in winter—which is very often the case—he is in dire straits. Finally he gets work. But the old story repeats itself. For a second time, the same thing happens. Then a third time—by now, probably much worse. Little by little, he becomes indifferent to this permanent insecurity. Finally he gets used to the repetition…Thus even a man who is normally hard-working grows careless in his whole attitude towards life. Gradually he becomes a tool in the hands of unscrupulous people, who exploit him for the sake of their own advantage. He has been so frequently unemployed, through no fault of his own, that he now doesn’t care if the strike in which he joins is for securing his economic rights, or aimed at the destruction of the State, the social order, or even culture in general. He dislikes going on strike, yet he joins it anyway, out of sheer indifference.”
Thom Yorke – Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain): https://youtu.be/I03xFqbxUp8?si=b5yFbfYwnMS4nql1
At some point Hitler looked at capital, which for most people is just the economizing of money for hard times. Being able to save was always the important factor for common people. That temptation for spending during the good times was a danger for so many. Without savings there’s no ownership and it’s hard to feel like you are directing your life. The short-term mind also wants to find distraction because trauma and suffering get built up in the body and for most people they just use the addictive mind to numb the pain, which makes economizing impossible. “One thing stood out clearly before my eyes: It was the sudden changes from work to idleness, and vice versa, that mattered. The constant fluctuations in earnings and spending finally destroyed the sense of thrift for many people, and also the habit of controlling spending in an intelligent way. One’s body gradually adapts to eating well in good times and going hungry in bad…Indeed, hunger destroys one’s sense of normal spending in good times, when one is again employed. The reason for this is that the suffering that the unemployed worker has to endure must be psychologically compensated for by a persistent mental mirage in which he imagines himself eating well once again. And this dream turns into such an obsession that it becomes a morbid impulse to toss off all self-restraint when work and wages come again. Therefore, the moment new work is found, he loses control and begins spending like there’s no tomorrow. This upsets even the small weekly budget, because spending becomes irrational. When such a thing first happens, earnings will last for perhaps five days instead of seven. Later on, they last for only three days. If the habit persists, earnings will last for scarcely a day. And finally they will disappear in a night…Often there are wife and children at home. And in many cases, it happens that they, too, are affected by such a way of life—especially if the husband is good to them and wants to do the best he can for them, and loves them in his own way. Then the week’s earnings are spent within two or three days. The family eats and drinks together as long as the money lasts, but at the end of the week they go hungry. Then the wife wanders around the neighborhood, borrows a little, and runs up small debts with the shopkeepers in an effort to reach the end of the week. Their midday meal is meager, and often nonexistent. They wait for the coming payday, talking and making plans; and while they are hungry, they dream of the happiness to come.”
Now, the reasonable response would be to prioritize economizing, but many people, including Hitler wanted to tip the scales against the environment, and that blame goes to the people who are better off, which in some cases it is true that it’s due to corruption, but some of them are economizing properly. “At first I was disgusted and indignant. Later, I came to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune, and to understand the profound causes of it. They were the unhappy victims of bad conditions…[The fortunate] have mindlessly allowed these things to go on, without caring and even without suspecting that, sooner or later, destiny will take its vengeance—unless it is appeased in time…Those who emerged from all this misfortune and misery, from this filth and outward degradation, were not human beings as such, but rather the deplorable results of deplorable laws.”
There are many theories about Hitler’s personality, including being a psychopath, sociopath, etc., but what can be seen in his book is a Jungian Feeling Extraversion (Fe) and Sensing Introversion (Si). This doesn’t mean that all ISFJ’s or ESFJ’s are psycho-dictators, but the pathological element in these cognitive functions, whether it’s narcissism or psychopathy, is the ruthlessness in how he wanted to apply “solutions” to Europe’s problems. “First: Create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities. Second: Combine this feeling with a ruthless determination to prune away all incurable tumors.”
The sense of having an individual or private life, which is similar to Feeling Introversion (Fi), seems to be absent in Hitler’s worldview, or Weltanschauung, or it appears weak in the shadow with personal preferences being pushed on the population that violates their boundaries without an ounce of a private life remaining. Healthy Feeling Extroverts facilitate harmony, but in pathological situations, as can be seen with the fact that many ENFJ’s like to go into politics, and others think Hitler was an INFJ, is the attitude that one must harmonize with the person criticizing, or one is to face social surgery. For Hitler, narcissistic pride was a convenient way to have most people self-monitor to his liking, because their personal sense of guilt and fault had to be overcome by something more powerful and compensating, even if inauthentic and superhuman. Others who didn’t fall in line had to be dealt with by force. “During my struggle for existence in Vienna, I clearly perceived that the aim of all social activity must never be merely charitable relief, which is ridiculous and useless. Rather, it must be a means of finding a way to eliminate the fundamental deficiencies in our economic and cultural life deficiencies that necessarily bring about the degradation of the individual, or at least lead him towards such degradation…This uncertainty is grounded exclusively in the sense of guilt that each individual feels for having permitted this tragedy of degradation. That feeling paralyzes every effort at making a firm decision to act. Because they vacillate, these people are timid and half-hearted in putting into effect even the measures that are indispensable for self-preservation…When the individual is no longer burdened by his own sense of guilt, then and only then will he have that inner strength and outer force to ruthlessly cut out the parasite growth, and to root out the weeds.”
What Germany was hungry for was a sense of national pride to feel special, and Hitler was able to seize upon their emotional wounds with a re-education, which harkened back to his own preferences for a good life in agrarian values, but there were a lot of his own inventions as well. “This [national pride] must always be confined to general ideas in a large perspective. These ought to be deeply engraved, by constant repetition if necessary, on the memories and feelings of the people…The question of ‘nationalizing’ a people is first and foremost one of establishing healthy social conditions that will furnish the grounds necessary for the education of the individual. For only when family upbringing and school education have imparted to the individual cultural and economic knowledge and, above all, a sense of the political greatness of his own country—only then will it be possible for him to feel proud of being a citizen. I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect something, I must at least have some knowledge of it.”
One of the so-called tumors that Hitler wanted to excise was targeted directly at the left-wing influence in the Social Democratic Party and how they prevented national pride from arising. He respected left-wing politics in how it listened to the concerns of unions which were in part legitimate, but political parties always need support to maintain power in government and corruption can easily sneak in. There’s often a desire with political parties of all stripes to always have fresh complaints to run elections on, so problems can’t really be solved to the point of satisfaction, for fear that support would dwindle and party officials would have to find a new job. Hitler also was disappointed by the industrial classes who let ruthless short-term greed blinker them to the political consequences. “Millions of workers surely began with hostility to the Social Democratic Party; but their defenses were repeatedly attacked, and finally they had to surrender. But this outcome was due to the stupidity of the bourgeois parties, who opposed every social demand put forth by the working class. Bourgeois leaders’ tactics included: a short-sighted refusal to make an effort towards improving labor conditions; a refusal to adopt accident insurance for factory workers; a refusal to forbid child labor; and a refusal to consider protective measures for women workers, especially pregnant ones. These leaders were thankful for every opportunity that they could exploit for forcing the masses into their net. Our bourgeois parties can never repair the damage that resulted from these mistakes. They sowed the seeds of hatred when they opposed all efforts at social reform. And thus they gave, at least, apparent grounds to justify the Social Democrats’ claim that they, alone, stood up for the interests of the working class…As long as there are employers who lack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play, it is not only the right but also the duty of their employees—who are, after all, an integral part of our people—to protect the public interest from individual greed and irrationality. To safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health…Both are seriously menaced by dishonorable employers, who are unaware of their duty as members of a national community. Their personal greed or ruthlessness sows the seeds of future trouble.”
Similar to arguments of the working class, Hitler viewed workers at a disadvantage in the power differential with employers and so sided with working people and the need to strike from time to time. He understood leverage. “One must not say that the individual worker is always free to escape from the consequences of a perceived or actual injustice by an employer in other words, that he is free to leave. No! That argument is only a ruse to distract from the question at hand. Is it, or is it not, in the interests of the nation to remove the causes of social unrest? If it is, then the fight must be carried on with the only weapons that might prevail. But the individual worker is never in a position to stand up against the power of the big employer. The question here is not one that concerns the victory of that which is right. If this were the guiding principle, then the conflict would never have arisen. Rather, it is a question of who is stronger. If the case were otherwise, justice alone would solve the dispute in an honorable way or, more precisely, such matters would not have come to dispute at all…No. If unsocial and unjust treatment of men provokes resistance, then, until legislative action is taken to alleviate the situation, the stronger party can simply impose its will. Therefore it is evident that if the individual worker is to have any chance at all of winning, he must join together with his fellow workers and present a united front to the individual employer. For his part, the employer incorporates in his own person the collective strength of the vested interests in the industrial or commercial undertaking that he manages.”
Far-left agitators were always looking for Marxist world revolution and so there could never be any compromise with any social structure. It all has to be razed to the ground so that a new system could start over. “Within a few decades, the trade union movement was transformed, by the expert hand of Social Democracy, from an instrument that was originally created for the defense of human rights into one for the destruction of the national economic structure. Working-class interests were never respected, even for a moment. In politics, the application of economic blackmail is always possible if the one side is sufficiently unscrupulous and the other sufficiently docile…By the turn of the century, the trade union movement had already ceased to serve its original function. Year after year, it fell more and more under the political control of the Social Democrats, until finally it became a battering ram in the class struggle. The plan was to shatter, by means of constantly repeated blows, the economic foundation of a carefully constructed system. Once this was achieved, the destruction of the state would soon follow, because it was already deprived of its economic foundations…Social-Democratic attention to the real interests of the working-classes steadily decreased, until the cunning leaders saw that it would serve their immediate political interests if the demands of the masses remained unheeded; there was a danger that, if they became content, the masses could no longer be used as mere passive material in the political struggle…The bourgeois camp was indignant over the bad faith of the Social Democratic tactics; but they did nothing to draw the practical conclusion and organize a counter attack from the bourgeois side. The fear that the Social Democrats might truly raise the working-classes out of misery should have induced the bourgeois parties to make the most strenuous efforts in this direction—thus snatching the most important weapon from the hands of the class-warfare leaders.”
Vienna Anti-Semitism
At first Hitler focused on Marxism as a psychological disease, but his experience in Vienna influenced his outlook from then forward towards ever more distortion, as if the world was symbolized in the microcosm by Vienna. The city provided the scapegoat he was looking for in the form of anti-Semitic propaganda in pamphlets and the paper the Deutsche Volksblatt. “I hadn’t the slightest idea that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism. Then I came to Vienna…Although Vienna then had about 200,000 Jews among its population of 2 million, I didn’t notice them…I saw in the Jew only a man of a different religion. Therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I opposed the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered the anti-Semitic press in Vienna to be unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events that happened in the Middle Ages came to mind, and I felt that they should not be repeated. Generally speaking, these anti-Semitic newspapers did not have a good reputation—though at the time, I didn’t understand why—and so I regarded them more as the products of jealousy and envy rather than the expression of a sincere, though perhaps mistaken, outlook…There were very few Jews in Linz. Over the centuries, the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance, and were so much like other people that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I didn’t then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that I saw no other distinguishing feature but the strange religion. I believed that they were persecuted on account of their faith, and my aversion at hearing such remarks nearly grew into a feeling of abhorrence.”
By taking in political views that included hatreds towards different cultures and races Hitler was getting closer to merging a group of people together with a political view. “One thing that got on my nerves was the disgusting manner in which the big newspapers cultivated admiration for France. One really had to feel ashamed of being a German when confronted by those saccharine hymns of praise for ‘the great cultural nation.’ This wretched Francophilia more than once made me throw away one of those ‘world newspapers.’ On such occasions, I often turned to the Volksblatt, which was much smaller in size but which treated such subjects more decently. I disagreed with its sharp anti-Semitic tone; but I found, again and again, that its arguments gave me grounds for serious thought…Anyhow, it was as a result of such readings that I came to know the man and the movement that determined Vienna’s fate. These were Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Socialist Movement…During my first few weeks [in Vienna], my eyes and my mind were unable to cope with the onrush of new ideas and values. Not until I gradually became accustomed to my surroundings, and the confused picture began to grow clearer, did I gain a more discriminating view of my new world. It was then that I came upon the Jewish question…My ideas about anti-Semitism also changed in the course of time, and this was my most difficult transformation…It cost me a great internal struggle, and it was only after a long battle between reason and sentiment that the former emerged victorious. Two years later, sentiment rallied to the side of reason and became its faithful guardian and advisor…Knowledge of the Jews is the only key whereby one may understand the inner nature, and therefore the real aims, of Social Democracy…The man who comes to know this race succeeds in removing a veil from his eyes, one that shows the aims and meaning of this party in a false light. And then, out of the fog and mist of socialist phrases, rises the grinning figure of Marxism.”
The problem with obsession is that once you pay attention to something for a long time you begin to see it everywhere, like seeing other cars that are just like your newly bought vehicle. Hitler also seemed to forget his experiences of being down and out and the plight of those confronted with homelessness and degradation. The Jewish experience has been well documented, including discrimination of all kinds. “Once, while passing through the inner city, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a long caftan and wearing black hair-locks. My first thought was: Is this also a Jew? They certainly didn’t have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange face and examined it feature by feature, the more that my first question became a new question: Is this also a German? As soon as I began to investigate the matter and observe the Jews, Vienna then appeared to me in a different light. Wherever I went, I saw Jews. And the more I saw of them, the more strikingly and clearly they stood out as a different people from the other citizens. Especially the inner city and the districts north of the Danube, swarmed with a people who, even in outer appearance, had no similarity to the Germans…Cleanliness, whether moral or otherwise, has its own peculiar meaning for these people. That they were not water-lovers was obvious upon first glance, and unfortunately, often also when not looking at them at all. The odor of those people in caftans often made me sick to my stomach…Beyond that, there were the unkempt clothes and the generally ignoble appearance. All these details were certainly not attractive. But the truly revolting feature was that, beneath their unclean exterior, one suddenly perceived the moral rot of this ‘chosen people.'”
For Hitler, documentation wasn’t enough, so he needed more things to observe, unfortunately, what criticisms he could apply could vary well be applicable to many ethnicities, but in this hostile Vienna atmosphere, his accusatory gaze was always directed in the same angle. “For the first time in my life, I bought some anti-Semitic pamphlets for a few cents. But unfortunately they all began by assuming that the reader had at least some degree of knowledge about the Jewish question, or was at least familiar with it. Moreover, the tone of most of these pamphlets made me skeptical once again, both because they were partly superficial and because their ‘proofs’ were incredibly unscientific…Whatever doubts I may still have had at that point were finally removed by the activities of a certain section of the Jews themselves. There was a great movement among them, well-represented in Vienna, and which strongly confirmed the national character of Jewry: this was Zionism…From outward appearances, it seemed as if only part of the Jews championed this movement, while the great majority disapproved of or even repudiated it. But a close examination showed that those appearances were deliberately misleading. They emerged from a fog of theories that were produced for reasons of expediency, if not outright deception. The so-called liberal Jews did not reject the Zionists as if non-Jews, but only as brother Jews with an impractical or even dangerous way of promoting Jewry. There was no real conflict in their inner nature. This fictitious conflict between the Zionists and the liberal Jews soon disgusted me; it was thoroughly false, and in direct contradiction to the moral dignity and immaculate character on which that people had always prided itself.”
By focusing in a distorted way on Jewish people involved in nefarious activities, such as prostitution, distribution of pornography, media bias, etc., any other Jewish examples that didn’t fit that narrative, including other ethnicities involved in these activities, were ignored with the help of confirmation bias. Even further, his Social Darwinism conflated beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes as being one with biological nature. “What soon gave me cause for serious thought, with a slowly rising insight, were the activities of the Jews in certain fields of life. Was there any shady undertaking, any form of nastiness—especially in cultural life—in which at least one Jew did not participate? In my eyes, the charge against Jewry became a grave one the moment I discovered their activities in the press, art, literature, and the theater. All protests to the contrary were now essentially futile. One needed only to look at the posters announcing the monstrous productions of the cinema and theater, and study the names of the authors who were so highly praised there, in order to become permanently unwavering…Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected—one worse than the Black Death. And in what mighty doses this poison was manufactured and distributed! Naturally, the lower the moral and intellectual level of such artists, the more inexhaustible their fecundity. Sometimes it happened that these fellows, acting like a sewage pump, would spew their filth directly in the face of humanity. We must recall that there is no limit to the number of such people. One must realize that, for every Goethe, nature may bring into existence 10,000 despoilers, who act as germ-carriers of the worst sort, poisoning human souls…It was a terrible thought—and yet it couldn’t be avoided, that most of the Jews seemed particularly destined by nature to play this shameful role.”
As much as Hitler disliked modern art, he focused on the effect newspapers and political bias had on the Vienna public. The usual culprit in politics was lying by omission, which all engage in, including the Nazi propaganda that Hitler supported in his destructive future. “I now saw the liberal press in a different light. Its dignified tone in replying to its opponents’ attacks, and its dead silence on other issues, now became clear to me as part of a cunning and despicable way of deceiving the reader. Its brilliant theatrical criticisms always praised the Jewish authors, whereas its negative criticism was reserved exclusively for the Germans. The gentle pinpricks against Wilhelm II showed the persistency of its policy, as did its systematic praise of French culture and civilization. The subject matter of the short story was trashy and often indecent. The entire language of this press had the accent of a foreign people. The general tone was so openly derogatory to the Germans that it must have been intentional.”
Max (2002) – Hitler! C’mon! I’ll buy you a glass of lemonade: https://clip.cafe/max-2002/hitler-come-on-ill-buy-a-glass-of-lemonade/
As you would expect, Hitler was confrontational and wanted to test his opinions with others so he could uncover symptoms of Marxist Jewish infection. “In my relations with my fellow workers, I was often astonished at how easily and often they changed their opinions on the same questions sometimes within a few days, and sometimes even within a few hours. I found it difficult to understand how men who were reasonable as individuals suddenly lost this ability as soon as they acted as a mass. This phenomenon often tempted me to despair. I argued with them for hours, and when I succeeded in bringing them to what I considered a reasonable way of thinking, I celebrated my success. But the next day, I found that it was all in vain. It was disgusting to have to begin all over again. Like an eternal pendulum, they would swing back to their absurd opinions…All this was understandable. They were dissatisfied with their lot and cursed the fate that hit them so hard. They hated their employers, whom they looked upon as the heartless administrators of their cruel destiny. They often used abusive language against public officials, whom they accused of being completely unsympathetic to the situation of working people. They conducted public protests against the cost of living, and paraded through the streets in defense of their claims…All this, at least, could be reasonably explained. But impossible to explain was the boundless hatred against their fellow citizen—how they disparaged their own nation, mocked its greatness, reviled its history, and dragged the names of its most illustrious men through the gutter. This hostility towards their own kind, their own native land and home, was as irrational as it was incomprehensible. It was deeply unnatural.”
Adolf was incrementally putting himself in the place as savior of the German people by pointing out all the controls that were hobbling their potential, and of course, what most angers any human is when they notice that their potential is being sabotaged in some way. “I gradually discovered that the Social Democratic press was predominantly controlled by Jews. But I didn’t attach special importance to this circumstance because the same state of affairs existed in the other newspapers. But there was one striking fact: not a single newspaper connected to the Jews could be called ‘national’—as I understood the term…I grabbed all the Social Democratic pamphlets I could find, and checked the names of their authors: Jews. I noted the names of all the leaders; most of them were also members of ‘the chosen people.’ It didn’t matter if they were representatives in the Reichsrat or trade union secretaries, organizational heads or street agitators. Everywhere it was always the same sinister picture. I’ll never forget the list of names: Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, and others.”
Debating extended to the people Hitler was now stalking and accusing. He associated Marxist gaslighting to Jewish people and failed to notice Jews who weren’t Marxists, or the tactics of progressives who weren’t Jewish. “It was simple enough, at that time, to try to show them the absurdity of their teaching. Within my small circle, I talked to them until my throat ached and my voice grew hoarse. I believed that I could finally convince them of the danger inherent in Marxist foolishness. But I only achieved the contrary result. It seemed that the more they understood the destructiveness of Social-Democratic doctrine and its consequences, the more firmly they clung to it…The more I debated with them, the more familiar I became with their argumentative tactics. At the outset they counted upon the stupidity of their opponents; but when they got so tied up that they couldn’t find a way out, they played the trick of acting as innocent simpletons. Should that fail, in spite of their tricks of logic, they acted as if they couldn’t understand the counter arguments, and jumped away to another topic of discussion. They stated truisms and platitudes; and if you accepted these, they applied them to other matters of an essentially different nature. If you pointed this out, they escaped again and avoided any precise statement. Whenever one tried to get a firm grip on one of these apostles, one’s hand grasped only a jelly like slimer—that slipped through the fingers, and then recombined into a solid mass a moment later…But if you really struck a blow on one of these adversaries and, due to the audience present, he had to concede the point, a surprise was in store for you the following day. The Jew would be utterly oblivious to what had happened the day before. He would start once again by repeating his former absurdities, as if nothing had happened. If you became indignant and reminded him of yesterday’s defeat, he feigned astonishment, and couldn’t remember a thing—except that on the day before, he was proven correct…I realized that they use language for the purpose of disguising or veiling their thought, so that their real aim cannot be discovered by what they say, but rather only by reading between the lines. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan, I became an outright anti-Semite.”
Hitler fused biological race and culture into an incoherent intellectual hodge-podge of being Jewish, Marxist, ironically capitalist as well, Zionist, spreader of venereal disease, and those who were guilty of being intellectual hijackers. Yet these anecdotes were enough for him to claim that he was a force of nature and could read nature’s commands. In a way, it was his personal pagan religion so when he invoked “God,” it was in the end not a Christian one. “The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of nature, substituting for it the eternal privilege of force and energy, numerical mass and dead weight. Thus it denies the individual value of the human personality, and impugns the idea that nationhood and race have primary significance. In doing so, it takes away the very foundations of human existence and culture…If this doctrine were ever accepted as the foundation of the universe, it would lead to the disappearance of all conceivable order. Adopting such a law would provoke chaos in the structure of the greatest organism that we know—and the inhabitants of this earth would vanish…If the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, were to triumph over the people of this world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind. And this planet will once again follow its orbit through the ether devoid of humanity, just as it did millions of years ago…Eternal Nature inevitably avenges those who violate her commands. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: In defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
His scapegoating projected his own personal preferences onto others with an attitude that everyone should agree with his version of happiness. “The fact was that 90 percent of all the filthy literature, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy had to be charged to the account of a people who formed scarcely one percent of the nation. This fact could not be denied. It was there, and had to be admitted…The function of the so-called liberal press was to dig a grave for the German people and the German Reich. We need not mention the lying papers of the Marxist press; for them, lying is as much a vital necessity as the mouse is to a cat. Their sole task is to break the national backbone of the people, thus preparing the nation to become the slaves of international capital and its masters, the Jews.”
For Hitler, prostitution, the oldest profession, was also blamed on the Jews, and again behavior is attributed to biology. “Particularly in large cities, syphilis has steadily increased, and tuberculosis has steadily reaped its harvest of death in almost every part of the country…The only correct course is to attack the disease in its causes rather than its symptoms. The cause lies mainly in the prostitution of love. Even if it didn’t directly bring about this frightful plague, it would still be deeply harmful to the people; the moral havoc resulting from this degeneracy would be sufficient to bring about the destruction of the nation, slowly but surely…This Judaizing of our spiritual life and [monetizing] of our mating instinct will sooner or later ruin our future offspring. The vigorous children of a natural, emotional bond will be replaced by miserable specimens of financial expediency. Economic considerations are more and more becoming the basis and sole prerequisite for marriage. And love must then find its outlet somewhere else…Here we have before us the results of those reproductive habits that, on the one hand, are determined by social pressure and, on the other, by financial considerations. The one leads to inherited weaknesses, and the other to poisoning of the blood. Just consider how every department store Jewess is viewed as an eligible mate for our royalty—and indeed, it shows. All this leads to absolute degeneration…It can’t be denied that our urban populations are tending more and more toward a prostituted love life, and are thus becoming more and more contaminated by the scourge of syphilis. It simply is true. The most visible effects of this mass contamination can be seen, on the one hand, in our insane asylums and, on the other, unfortunately, in our children. They are the sad product of this steadily growing contamination of our sexual life; in their sicknesses, the children reveal the vices of their parents.”
Hitler’s urgency immediately went into an arms race with a fear of what would happen to Germany if they didn’t change course, which he could see would animate enough Germans, some of who would easily succumb to any fear mongering. Those who could follow Social Darwinism the more closely would be considered the fittest. Psychological woundedness, mental illness, bad upbringing could not be reasoned with but instead had to be treated as a constitutional pathogen where all people would degenerate completely outside of their control, like an inexorable biological ticking time bomb. “Which nation will be the first to take the initiative in mastering this plague, and which nations will succumb to it? This is the crux of the whole situation. Here again we see the touchstone of racial value: the race that cannot withstand the test will simply die out, making room for healthier, tougher, or more resistant races. Because this question primarily concerns future generations, it is one of those cases where, with terrible justification, the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, unto the tenth generation—a truism, but one that applies only to a desecration of blood and race…The sin against blood and race is the original sin in this world. It brings an end to every nation that commits it.”
To preserve any race, Hitler wanted the government to monitor marriage and families to optimize stock like a farmer breeding selectively. He was railing against any perceived selfishness as the blasphemy of imitating God, but could he see he was making that mistake himself? “The first prerequisite to be fulfilled before the state can claim a moral right to fight against all these things is the facilitation of earlier marriages for the coming generations. Whatever way we view it, late marriages have the sanction of a custom that is, and will remain, a disgrace to humanity. It’s a cursed institution, ill-suited to a being who likes to regard himself as in the ‘image’ of God…Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, and cannot be removed simply by moralistic lectures, good intentions, etc. Its restriction and final elimination presupposes the removal of a whole series of contributory circumstances. The first remedy must always be to establish such conditions as will make early marriages possible, especially for young men—women are, after all, only passive subjects in this matter…Marriage is not an end in itself, but must serve a higher goal, which is to increase and maintain the species and race. This is its only meaning and purpose.”
Like modern politicians that prescribe tax credits for easing the burden of raising a family, Hitler also wanted the German government to do the same. “Another reason why early marriages are impossible is our absurd method of regulating the scale of salaries, which pays far too little attention to the problem of family support.” He didn’t neglect to comment about health standards either, and he looked at intellectual nerds as lacking in enough physical exercise to be courageous and healthy, as well as viewed exercise as something that protects oneself from being a sexual predator. “…A healthy mind can exist only in a healthy body…Training of the body was criminally neglected, and the one-sided training of ‘the mind’ was regarded as a sufficient guarantee for the nation’s greatness. This mistake showed its effects sooner than anticipated. It’s no accident that Bolshevik teaching flourishes in those regions whose population has been degenerated by hunger: in central Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr Valley. In all these districts there is a marked absence of any serious resistance, even by the so-called intellectual classes, against this Jewish disease. And the simple reason is that the intellectual classes are themselves physically degenerate—not through privation, but through education. The exclusive intellectualism of education among our upper classes makes them incapable of defending themselves, let alone making their way in life. In nearly every case, physical weakness is the forerunner of personal cowardice…Those youth whose constitutions have been trained and hardened by sports and gymnastics are less prone to sexual indulgence than those stay-at-homes who have been fed exclusively with intellectual fare. A sensible system of education must bear this in mind. We must not forget that a healthy young man will have different expectations from a woman than those of a weakling who has been prematurely corrupted.”
By taking care of the body, in Hitler’s view, the individual is conferring collective pride by providing an example and being a good specimen for the government, through the contribution of higher quality biological matter for posterity. “Thus, in every branch of our education, the daily curriculum must occupy a boy’s free time in useful development of his physical powers. He has no right in those years to loaf about, becoming a nuisance in public streets and cinemas. But when his day’s work is done, he should harden his young body so that he will not become soft later in life. To prepare for this, and to carry it out, should be the function of our educational system, and not exclusively to pump in so-called wisdom. Our school system must also rid itself of the notion that bodily training is best left to the individual himself. There is no such thing as freedom to sin against posterity, and thus against the race…Theater, art, literature, the cinema, the press, and advertisements, all must remove the stains of our rotting world and be placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modem eroticism, as well as from all unmanly and prudish hypocrisy. In all these things, the aim and the method must be determined by thoughtful consideration for the preservation of our national well-being in body and soul. The right to personal freedom falls behind the duty of maintaining the race.”
At times Hitler’s ire against Jews would branch out to the mentally ill and handicapped. He accepted their abuse as a necessary evil. “The demand that defective people be prevented from producing defective offspring is one that’s based on the most reasonable grounds, and its proper fulfillment is the most humane act of mankind. Unhappy and undeserved suffering of millions will be spared, with the result that there will be a gradual improvement in national health. A determination to act in this way will at the same time provide an obstacle against the further spread of venereal disease. It would then be a case, where necessary, of mercilessly isolating all incurables—a barbaric measure for those unfortunates, but a blessing for the present generation and for posterity. The temporary pain experienced in this century can and will spare millennia from suffering.”
Analytical Psychology: The French School: https://rumble.com/v4pemmz-analytical-psychology-the-french-school.html
In Hitler’s ideal world, there’s really not much time to rest despite using the word “happiness.” There’s a constant narcissistic pressure to prove oneself as still being fit, which would naturally make people walk on eggshells all the time with unhealthy hypervigilance. He rails against egoism, but supports allegiance to the super-ego. All happiness has to be a social happiness under the tyranny of the group. “The ultimate cause of such a [degeneration] is the fact that the people forgot that all culture depends on [humans], and not the reverse. In other words, to preserve a certain culture, the [human] that creates it must be preserved. But this preservation is bound up with the inexorable law of necessity, and with the right of victory of the best and strongest. He who would live must fight. And he who doesn’t wish to fight in this world of permanent struggle has no right to live…Loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness forever. It degrades men for all time. And the consequences can never be removed…Just at the time when the idealistic attitude threatens to disappear, we notice a weakening of the force that founds and maintains the community, and is thereby a necessary precondition of culture. As soon as egoism begins to prevail among a people, the bonds of social order break down; and man, by seeking his own personal happiness, falls out of heaven and right into hell. Yes: Posterity will forget those who pursued only their own interests; but it will praise those heroes who have renounced their own happiness…Whoever ignores or misjudges the laws of race deprives himself of the happiness that belongs to him. He places an obstacle in the victorious path of the superior race and, by doing so, interferes with a precondition of all human progress.”
Munich
The contradictions about the definition of happiness enters the picture when Hitler reminisces about his experience in Munich. He paradoxically enjoys harmony, but yet desires a constant proof of fitness and validity through struggle and conflict, or he has to be the one with the solemn duty to socially engineer everyone else. If Hitler visited your house, god forbid you be part of a mixed marriage or he be introduced to handicapped children and family members. “…Almost from the very first moment of my sojourn there, I came to love that city more than any other place I had known. A German city! How different from Vienna! It was with a feeling of disgust that I recalled that Babylon of races. I enjoyed the spoken language; the Munich idiom recalled the days of my youth, especially when I spoke with those who had come to Munich from Lower Bavaria. There were a thousand or more things that I truly loved, or came to love, during the course of my stay. But what attracted me most was the marvelous marriage of native folk-energy with the fine artistic spirit of the city—that unique harmony from the Hofbrauhaus to the Odeon, from the Oktoberfest to the Pinakothek, and so on. Today I am more attached to this city than any other; it will remain inseparably connected to the development of my own career. My feelings of inner happiness and satisfaction with the place can be attributed to the charm of the Residence of the Wittelsbachs; it has attracted probably everyone who is blessed with a feeling for beauty, as well as a calculating mind…I wanted to enjoy the happiness of living and working in the land from which the movement that I had always longed for would be launched: namely, the union of my beloved homeland with our common fatherland, the German Reich…There are many who may not understand how such a yearning can be so strong. But I appeal especially to two groups of people. The first includes all those who are still denied the happiness I have spoken of; and the second embraces those who once enjoyed that happiness but had it cruelly torn from them. I turn to all those who have been torn from their motherland, who have to struggle for the preservation of their sacred language, and who are persecuted and harried because of their loyalty and love for the homeland. To such people I address my words, and I know: they will understand me! It’s an eternal heartache; and there’s no place for joy and contentment until the doors of the paternal home are thrown open, and all those of kindred blood find peace and tranquility in their common Reich.”
A pattern found with disastrous dictators is how well they are able to hide their self-interest amongst all this “social feeling” and “harmony.” They always seem to land themselves in positions where they can take more than they give and that display of power and consumption makes followers believe they will one day partake in the same. It leads to irrational arguments, because they dare not say they desire to be thieves and murderers. There’s always a deflection to fool the victims that are increasingly surrounded. Thomas Mann said about the Nazis that they wanted “to break the primacy of reason and to re-establish in triumph, in their primitive vital law, the forces of darkness and abysmal depths, the instinctive and the irrational.” As the allure of becoming a crony took over Germany, there was pressure to conform and each person in the power chain was tested as to how much leverage they could venture. Those tests were threats against individuals and their ability to earn money for their families and overt threats against their body and person. For some people, even a minor loss of status appeared as a survival threat, and they caved easily.
In They Thought They Were Free, interviews of Germans who survived the war talked about leverage and how a certain section of the population had to be weak enough to be enlisted into a new extreme movement, and this one interview I chose of a chemical engineer, and his fateful choice, provided much perspective. “I was employed in a defense plant (a war plant, of course, but they were always called defense plants). That was the year of the National Defense Law, the law of ‘total conscription.’ Under the law I was required to take the oath of fidelity. I said I would not; I opposed it in conscience. I was given twenty-four hours to ‘think it over.’ In those twenty-four hours I lost the world…You see, refusal would have meant the loss of my job, of course, not prison or anything like that. (Later on, the penalty was worse, but this was only 1935.) But losing my job would have meant that I could not get another. Wherever I went I should be asked why I left the job I had, and, when I said why, I should certainly have been refused employment. Nobody would hire a ‘Bolshevik.’ Of course I was not a Bolshevik, but you understand what I mean…What I tried to think of was the people to whom I might be of some help later on, if things got worse (as I believed they would). I had a wide friendship in scientific and academic circles, including many Jews, and ‘Aryans,’ too, who might be in trouble. If I took the oath and held my job, I might be of help, somehow, as things went on…You must not forget that you are an American. I mean that, really. Americans have never known anything like this experience in its entirety, all the way to the end. That is the point…There I was, in 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who, with all his advantages in birth, in education, and in position, rules (or might easily rule) in any country. If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or, indeed, would never have come to power in the first place. The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared, and each one of these hundreds of thousands was, like me, a man of great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world was lost.”
Escape to England
By the approaching Anschluss, to annex Austria, the Freud group resisted flight for as long as possible. This coordinated power-grab motivated by the above described animus, which went beyond nationalism into empire, seemed too aggressive to be real. Technology made weapons of war even more devastating than in the Great War. “Freud presented his desire to stay on in Vienna in terms of political assessments. He felt that the Austrian Nazis were incapable of the ruthlessness and organization of their German counterparts. The good old Viennese Schlamperei (careless ineptitude) would mark the majority of the Austrian Nazis, he felt sure. This opinion was not proved to be unrealistic until after the spring of 1935, an interlude when international criticism greeted Hitler’s introduction of conscription in Germany. But, as the Führer became more and more assertive, Freud realized both that the Austrians would make fine partners for the German Nazis, and that Mussolini, who first embarked on his campaign in Abyssinia and then intervened to support Franco in Spain, was quite prepared to hand Austria over to Hitler. He wrote to Jones in March 1937:
The political situation seems to be becoming ever more somber. There is probably no holding up the Nazi invasion, with its baleful consequences for psychoanalysis as well as the rest. My only hope is that I shall not live to see it. It is a similar situation to that in 1681 when the Turks were besieging Vienna…If our town falls the Prussian barbarians will flood over Europe. Unfortunately the only protector we have had hitherto, Mussolini, seems now to be giving Germany a free hand. I should like to live in England like Ernst and travel to Rome as you are doing.
Anna was too emotionally invested in Vienna with all the work her group achieved. It would take actual encounters with Nazis to change her mind. “Marianne and Ernst Kris, Grete and Edward Bibring, Willi Hoffer and his wife, Hedwig, all of whom later worked with Anna Freud in England, and Editha and Richard Sterba, and Jenny and Robert Waelder stayed on in Vienna as long as they could. Ernst Kris became Anna Freud’s consultant on questions of scholarship—he supplied her with all her bibliographic references, and worked with her on organizing and clarifying her manuscripts—and Robert Waelder became her chief theoretical ambassador, undertaking a mission to England in 1935 for a scientific debate with the Kleinians…Anna Freud’s reactions were considerably less detached than those of her eighty-year-old father. She said again and again that she did not want to leave Vienna, to leave her house in the country, all that she had helped to build up at the Institute. She told Ernest Jones that only one thing could induce her to emigrate: ‘the idea that my father might be subject to any indignities like a house search, etc.'”
As the dream that new rulers will be lenient in different ways becomes slowly disillusioned then the discomfort of staying begins to outweigh the efforts needed to uproot and escape. Newly minted Nazis were not yet used to complete shamelessness, dehumanization, and cruelty so they needed to gradually ramp it up to see how much they could get away with, which provided just enough time for some stragglers to realize how little opportunity they had to escape. “Adolf Hitler summoned the Austrian chancellor, Schuschnigg, to Berchtesgaden in February. In the quiet resort town where Sigmund Freud had vacationed peacefully with his family and completed his The Interpretation of Dreams, Schuschnigg received the Führer’s ultimatum. One month later the Germans marched unopposed over the northern border. The Austrian chancellor felt he had no choice but to resign; he saw his defeat coming and preferred not to be a party to it. When Vienna was occupied on March 12, Freud, who had lived on a fantasy that the barbarians would be stopped at the city’s gates, wrote in his daily log a summary of the story: “Finis Austriae.’ The end of Austria was the beginning of an agonizing period. Martin Freud’s office was broken into the next day, the thirteenth, by a gang of Viennese ruffians, little imitation Nazis, who wanted an occasion for strutting about and whatever money he had. While Martin was trying to handle this crisis, and Anna Freud was on her way to join him, Berggasee 19 was visited by another group, a unit under a more disciplined leader, who simply relieved the senior Freuds of some six thousand schillings and departed. Martha Freud won her children’s respect by calmly and shrewdly treating the raiders as though they were decent guests who deserved her usual hospitality. They were so disconcerted by her behavior and by Freud’s entry with (as Ernest Jones recalled) ‘blazing eyes that any Old Testament prophet might have envied,’ they took the cash and departed without thoroughly searching the apartment.”
The scramble began to organize all the precious things to transport for the long voyage as well as verifications of all the past favors that could be counted on for repayment. “Ernest Jones journeyed to Vienna from London, and Princess Marie Bonaparte from Paris. Jones took on the task of persuading Freud to leave Vienna, and then went home to negotiate permission for him and his family to live in England. The Princess visited the Berggasse every day to provide her protective royal presence and to help the Freuds prepare to leave. A house telephone connected the Freud apartment to Dorothy Burlingham’s apartment one floor above, and whenever trouble threatened, Dorothy called the American Embassy, where the ambassador to France, William Bullitt, had insisted that the consul general, Mr. Wiley, be on call. Bullitt, a former patient of Freud’s who had earlier collaborated with Freud on a study of Woodrow Wilson, also set in motion the complicated negotiations that guaranteed the Freuds their safety and eventually their exit permit. For once, Freud’s frailty served him well. Because he could not leave his apartment, he missed meeting the thugs who attacked another elderly Herr Freud after mistaking him for the famous Jewish professor.”
Psychoanalysis had to capitulate to the Weltanschauung of the Nazis making it not a therapy but a neurosis, so they needed a new city to migrate to, to allow for ideas to develop authentically. “The board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society had met on March 13 and taken two decisions: that all the members should flee the country as soon as possible, and that the future headquarters of the Society would be wherever Sigmund Freud was. Jones later reported Freud’s comment: ‘After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus, Rabbi Jochanan ben Sakkai asked for permission to open a school at Jabneh for the study of the Torah. We are going to do the same. We are, after all, used to persecution by our history, tradition and some of us by personal experience.’ The non-Jewish members of the Vienna Society either joined their Jewish colleagues in exile, as Richard and Editha Sterba did, or went into a kind of internal emigration, as August Aichhorn did. The Vienna Society did not, like the German Society, continue in non-Jewish hands and under Nazi regulation. Freud’s true followers preferred Exodus—and so gave the parable of Moses and Monotheism the historical particularity he had anticipated for it.”
Despite some of the naïveté, there were already accounts of internment camps like Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald before the Anschluss, so there was a fear that one could end up in camps like those. “On March 22, the Nazis paid the Berggasse apartment another visit, to complete their search. Martin Freud remembered two scenes from that day vividly.”
The first was the view I had from the window of Anna being driven off in an open car escorted by four heavily armed S.S. men. Her situation was perilous; but far from showing fear, or even much interest, she sat in the car as a woman might sit in a taxi on her way to enjoy a shopping expedition…The second scene, quite as clearly outlined, is of mother, highly indignant with an S.S. man who, on his way through a passage, paused at a large cupboard, pulled upon its doors and began roughly dragging out her piles of beautifully laundered linen all efficiently arranged in the way dear to her housewifely heart, each package held together by colored ribbons…Without showing the slightest fear, mother joined the fellow and in highly indignant tones told him precisely what she thought of his shocking behavior in a lady’s house, and ordered him to stop at once.
There was always a testing of boundaries and shame when in conflict with Nazis that provided some protection for future escape, but it was clear that things could clamp down permanently to the new tyranny at any moment. “Martha Freud’s self-possession once again produced the desired result—the searcher withdrew. Anna Freud’s manner also saved her, but the result was delayed enough to unnerve her father completely. Freud did not know that his daughter and his son Martin, anticipating that they would be picked up for questioning, had visited Max Schur, Freud’s physician, and requested from him sufficient amounts of Veronal to be able to choose suicide over torture or internment camps. Schur was also asked to pledge himself to care for their father as long as possible. They shared their father’s defiance—but they chose to interpret it in their own fashion: Anna had asked Freud, soon after the Nazi invasion, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we all killed ourselves?’ To this her father had replied, ‘Why? Because they would like us to?’ She had taken his meaning, but she had no intention of being tortured…The Gestapo took Anna Freud in at noon to question her about the psychoanalytic publishing house. She was left waiting in a corridor. Realizing that if she languished in that corridor she might simply be taken away at closing time to disappear, she managed to get herself transferred to a room where some prisoners were being questioned. The Gestapo men were trying to track a group—probably quite imaginary—of Jewish terrorists. When she was questioned about her organization, Anna Freud gave her captors a description of the International Psychoanalytic Association’s scientific activities, which seemed to them innocuous enough. By seven o’clock in the evening, she returned home…Jones reported what he had been told: ‘When she returned at seven o’clock that evening, [Freud’s emotions] were no longer to be restrained.’ Among themselves, the family and friends could express their amazement when Sigmund Freud—so stoical, so controlled—wept and declared that he wanted them all to flee Vienna at once.”
In desperate moves that refugees go through, one appreciates how lovely a peaceful society is where family and friends can gather freely and enjoy the fruits of their labor. They were in a different world now. “When it began to seem likely that they would be able to escape, Anna Freud also turned her attention to how she might rescue her own work and her own house. Dorothy Burlingham, still weak and convalescing, decided to move temporarily to Switzerland, where she could spend her money freely to help fleeing Viennese and also arrange with Anna Freud for the evacuation of their common property. The friends hoped to be able eventually to find in England both a way to re-create their Jackson Nursery and a replacement cottage. Dorothy negotiated for the furniture—rustic, peasant pieces in painted wood—to be shipped to America for storage until the world again became a place in which vacation cottages were thinkable. The Jackson Nursery equipment was packed and sent, with help from the Princess, to England. The Viennese cots, the little tables and chairs, the feeding experiment trays, and the wooden Montessori toys were unpacked in 1940 to furnish the Hampstead War Nursery [in England]…After Ernest Jones was successful in getting English entry and work permits for the Freud family and a group of followers, Anna Freud spent her days making Kafkaesque visits to government offices and trying to obtain exit visas and tax clearances. Minna Bernays’s permit came through first, and on May 5 Dorothy Burlingham, returning briefly from Switzerland, escorted her—nearly blind and very weak—to London. Martin and Mathilde and their families also left safely in May. ‘Our clan is melting down,’ Freud wrote to Minna.”
Many of the Freuds survived all those bureaucratic obstacles and challenges to escape in the nick of time. One’s well-being is always preserved by the company one keeps. “On June 4, Sigmund, Martha, and Anna Freud, with Josefine Stross accompanying them to act as physician, set out for their next tasks. Their train to freedom took them first to Paris, where Princess Marie Bonaparte, her husband, Prince George, and Ernst Freud received them. The Princess gave Freud two important items she had ingeniously smuggled out of Vienna: a receipt for a stash of gold money that she had shipped to Greece and thence to London, and one of his favorite antiquities, a statuette of Athena. After a day’s rest, the Freuds went on to London. ‘The one day in your house in Paris restored our good mood and sense of dignity,’ Freud wrote to his friend; ‘after being surrounded by love for twelve hours we left proud and rich under the protection of Athena…Marie Bonaparte’s loyalty and generosity were apparent throughout the Freud’s last days in Vienna. When the Gestapo had taken Anna Freud in on March 22, the Princess had even tried to get them to arrest her too. But, as Martin noted, ‘the Gestapo in Austria had not then enough courage, if it may be called courage, to risk trouble by arresting one with a royal passport.'” Anna recalled the importance of the ability to acknowledge one’s emotions and the strength it provided her at this dark time. “‘I cannot tell you how often I think of a sentence you spoke to me once,’ she had written to Lou back in 1932, ‘that it does not matter what fate one has if one only really lives it.'”
Purity and Death
When the Holocaust went into overdrive, there was still much ignorance, denial and word of mouth rumors that kept some of the danger a mystery, and they could only assess the magnitude of what happened in hindsight after liberation. With dictatorships, documentation only appears when it has to, and plans for murder are always covered in layers of concealment and distraction, but any cursory readings of Hitler’s writing implied extermination, with comments about excising incurable tumors, for example, and historians would have to admit that there were plenty of warnings, including from Hitler’s own Reichstag speech. The need for purity and to purify social structures leads always to escalation and the splitting of hairs. Only total eradication would satisfy an unyielding preference in human discourse and endeavors. “Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
Not all of Freud’s family was able to escape and they had to face their cruel and lonely fate. “To be sure, Freud saw the danger that threatened his sisters, but he could not imagine that the Nazis would try to exterminate old people without activities or resources. He believed, as did every one around him, that the anti-Semitic persecutions targeted first of all active Jews who had fortunes or exercised professions. In short, he was convinced that his sisters could emigrate a little later, after the disciples and the other members of the family. Besides, the taxes required to get them out were so exorbitant that he did not have the means to finance their departure, especially given that the British authorities required that exiles be able to meet their own needs once settled in Great Britain.”
Freud’s sisters “were deported to the ghetto of Theresienstadt (Terezin), where Adolfine died of malnutrition on September 29, 1942. As for the other three sisters, they were transported to extermination camps from which they never returned: Maria and Paula to Maly Trostinec on September 23, 1942, Rosa Graf to Treblinka either on September 29, 1942, or on March 1, 1943…On July 27, 1946, Samuel Rajzman, a native of Warsaw, gave the following testimony before the Nuremberg tribunal concerning Obersturmbannführer Kurt Franz, the commander in charge of the camp:
“MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Witness, will you please tell how Kurt Franz killed a woman who claimed to be the sister of Sigmund Freud. Do you remember this incident?
RAJZMAN: A train arrived from Vienna. I was standing on the platform when the passengers left the cars. An elderly woman came up to Kurt Franz, took out a document, and said that she was the sister of Sigmund Freud. She begged him to give her light work in an office. Franz read this document through very seriously and said that there must be a mistake here; he led her up to the train schedule and said that in 2 hours a train would leave again for Vienna. She should leave all her documents and valuables and then go to a bathhouse; after the bath she would have her documents and a ticket to Vienna. Of course, the woman went to the bathhouse and never returned.”
Sigmund Freud and his sisters: https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/jewishbiographies/sigmundfreudandhissisters.html
Nuremberg Trial Vol. 8: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-27-46.asp
Kurt Franz – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Franz#Further_torment_of_prisoners
Nazi Commandant of Treblinka who killed babies by kicking them & used Jews as punching bag – Kurt Franz: https://youtu.be/rCacJIsL388?si=NyrwgF_8-9crN-aG
Interview with Treblinka Trial Prosecutor Alfred Spiess & Treblinka Commander Kurt Franz: https://youtu.be/rWb7Wvvks_o?si=B6BAP38YwGI_1NLe
If Hitler had his way, his plans for utopia or dystopia would have remodeled the world and returned humanity back to a Neo-feudal system of slave labor, Social Darwinism to replace traditional religions, secret police waging war internally and externally, to destroy any dissenters, and eugenics programs to prune anyone who didn’t conform to the standards of a “master race.” The death toll would be never-ending. Other forms of purity have already wreaked havoc in the 20th century, such as Communist desires for a purely equal class, where “Professor Mark Kramer from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University [who] edited ‘The Black Book. [suggested] that ‘the total number (of people) who died unnatural deaths under communist regimes…(is) upward of 80 million.'”
The Climate Scam is Over… – Dr. Robert Malone: https://www.malone.news/p/the-climate-scam-is-over
Naomi Wolf: Transhuman Tech Oligarchs Are Planning For A World Without Workers – The War Room: https://rumble.com/v6qcdps-naomi-wolf-transhuman-tech-oligarchs-are-planning-for-a-world-without-worke.html
It’s what’s not talked about in these purifying projects that is the most concerning. The warning and lesson for modern readers is to look at future social engineering projects and examine if they are based on a purification animus from one group of people that is trying to gain power and wealth at the expense of another group that is powerless.
Anna Freud: A Biography – Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780300140231/
The Essential Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler, Thomas Dalton: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781732353268/
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 – Milton Mayer: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780226525839/
Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 – Rodney Howard Hilton, John Severs: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415316149/
What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis – Laurence Kahn: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781032294537/
History and Memory Vol. 9, No. 1/2, Passing into History: Nazism and the Holocaust beyond Memory — In Honor of Saul Friedlander on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Fall 1997), pp. 147-161
Freud: In His Time and Ours – Élisabeth Roudinesco: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780674659568/
100 Years of Communism: Death and Deprivation – Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/commentary/100-years-communism-death-deprivation