Editor, Times-Union:
My seventh-grade English teacher, Ms. Schutz, actively contributes to social conversations here in the Times-Union. She was one of the first teachers I can remember who truly inspired me academically, along with my seventh-grade social studies teacher Keith Reinholt. Many teachers at Warsaw continued those impressions — true childhood heroes within WCHS.
Ms. Schutz’s letter this week resonated with me because I wrote a social science master’s thesis comparing the rise of Hitler to a potential modern iteration of authoritarianism. People often ask how Hitler did it — how was a monster of that caliber not stopped? It was a slow evolution not even Hitler planned. One opportunity led to another, each creating more centralized executive power.
Hitler was a lance corporal in World War I, mentally tortured with the loss. Germany had to give up land mass and pay reparations. He wanted vengeance. After the war, Hitler remained in the army as a professional propagandist specializing in German populism. From 1920 through 1929, he used political rallies to sow grievance against migrants. His war cry was a primal scream of Germany-first rhetoric.
In 1929, the global markets crashed. Hitler capitalized. His unprecedented rallies drew up to 30,000 people in what historians called an evangelical fervor. He positioned himself as the only person who could save Germany from further oppression. Though a seemingly counterintuitive mix, he wrapped German nationalism in a shroud of victimhood and exceptionalism. The German people voted him to power under a spell of revolutionary ecstasy. Then he eliminated the press, the academics, his political foes and normalized it with his supporters. He convinced his followers to believe the untenable dualism that he was their autocrat, so autocracy was okay. They gave up democracy not only willingly, but with deceived shrieks of hegemonic freedom.
Hitler baptized his followers in a constant flow of symbolism and myth, leading chants like “Victory at any price!” A disenfranchised, fearful group is a motivated group. They were willing converts in a bloodlust of in-group bias. A leading advisor within the right-wing Nazi party, Josef Wells, explained that lies must be sold as truth. The Nazis called their enemies socialists and communists and then formed a socialist political party and a communist government.
Hitler knew he couldn’t create a dictatorship by force. He simply needed to compel his followers to beg for his protection against an “other” and rile them into a frenzy he could direct. Megalomaniacs aren’t strong, they are weak. They pry adulation from their supporters and are often surprised when it works. Their unchecked threats are a thin veil. They can be easily stopped. It just takes pulling the curtain back to expose their emptiness. Or we can do nothing and be complicit in their destruction.
Thank you once again, Ms. Schutz, it’s a full-circle moment to see you living what you taught more than four decades ago to a shy middle-school boy.
Joe Klemczewski
Evansville, Ind., via email
WCHS graduate 1987