Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

382 DER FUEHRERthe friendly advice to pay more attention to such things in the future, asthey are important. He supposes that Hitler is possessed by a frenzy formunicipal building and gewgaws. Perhaps it does not dawn on him untilyears later that Hitler was questioning him on military matters.The consumption of human beings in large quantities is Hitler's realprivate pleasure. A penchant for using and abusing people made Hitlerthe archetype of politician who uses men only as a means to an end,whether the end be business, war, or even what he calls love. From thiscruel, ultimately useless wallowing in human material, unsatisfactoryboth for himself and others, he gathers again and again the plaintiveconviction that he is the un-happiest of all men. And assuredly he isunhappy, for what torments him and causes him to torment others is inthe last analysis his fear of men, acquired in his youth and neverovercome. He cannot meet his fellow man naturally, on an equal level;he can only do him violence, or himself suffer violence — and here wehave touched his secret wound, from which probably most of hisinadequacies arise. This is the source of his concealment, his vagueness;his nature is always faced with the terroristic command: do not betrayyourself. It was this part of his nature that taught him his profoundcontempt of men; and this is his secret that must not be betrayed. Hencethe vagueness of presentation in his speeches, hence his avoidance offacts and arguments. It is the same fear of providing a window intohimself that makes him so careful to keep any specimen of hishandwriting away from the public. With this — obviously unconscious— resistance, he shelters and protects a nature which feels that, exposedto the light of public scrutiny, it must wither in shame. It is the sameresistance which makes him try to appear so abnormally virtuous in hisrelations with women. In this connection many false conjectures havebeen circulated.For a time he was accused of homosexual tendencies; such accusations,in view of his friendship with Rohm and the composition of theS.A., were natural but false. However, we can sense that here, too, in hisconvulsive, exaggerated way, he is hiding something. Here we shalldeal with this subject only as much as is necessary to cast a little morelight on the contradiction between the private individual and the publicpicture.