Lukacs on how not to talk about Hitler
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Hitler in conference with senior commanders of the Eastern Front, March 1943
From the late John Lukacs’s 1997 historiographical study The Hitler of History, which I quote from at length because it is so good:
I must devote a few lines to a grave misunderstanding that has affected historians less than it has people at large. This is the popular view that Hitler was mad. By asserting—and thinking—that he was mad, we have failed twice. We have brushed the problem of Hitler under the rug. If he was mad, then the entire Hitler period was nothing but an episode of madness; it is irrelevant to us, and we need not think about it further. At the same time, this defining of Hitler as “mad” relieves him of all responsibility—especially in this century, where a certification of mental illness voids a conviction by law. But Hitler was not mad; he was responsible for what he did and said and thought. And apart from the moral argument, there is sufficient proof (accumulated by researchers, historians, and biographers, including medical records) that with all due consideration to the imprecise and fluctuating frontiers between mental illness and sanity, he was a normal human being.
This brings me to the adjective (and argument) of “evil.” (Again, there are people who are interested in Hitler because they are interested in evil: the Jack the Ripper syndrome, if not worse.) Yes, there was plenty of evil in Hitler’s expressed wishes, thoughts, statements, and decisions. (I emphasize expressed, since that is what evidence properly allows us to consider.) But keep in mind that evil as well as good is part of human nature. Our inclinations to evil (whether they mature into acts or not) are reprehensible but also normal. To deny that human condition leads to the assertion that Hitler was abnormal; and the simplistic affixing of the “abnormal” label to Hitler relieves him, again, of responsibility—indeed, categorically so.
It is not only that he had very considerable intellectual talents. He was also courageous, self-assured, on many occasions steadfast, loyal to his friends and to those working for him, self-disciplined, and modest in his physical wants. What this suggests ought not to be misconstrued, mistaken, or misread. It does not mean: lo and behold! Hitler was only 50 percent bad. Human nature is not like that. A half-truth is worse than a lie, because a half-truth is not a 50 percent truth; it is a 100 percent truth and a 100 percent untruth mixed together. In mathematics, with its rigidly fixed and immobile numbers, 100 plus 100 makes 200; in human life 100 plus 10 makes another kind of 100. Life is not constant; it is full of black 100s and white 100s, warm 100s and cold 100s, 100s that are growing and 100s that are shrinking. This is true not only of the cells of our bodies but of all human attributes, including mental ones. In sum, God gave Hitler many talents and strengths; and that is exactly why he was responsible for misusing them.
This is exactly right. I have cautioned my students for years against thinking of or describing Hitler—or other figures like him—as insane or monstrous. Lukacs lays out the best case against this line of attack—if Hitler was mad then his evil is merely pathological and it is pointless to investigate, much less criticize it. This attempt to condemn Hitler ends by exonerating him. Furthermore, treating Hitler as in some way morally exceptional ends the same way.
If I can dare gloss what Lukacs has to say here, an additional danger is that calling Hitler mad or a monster lets us off the hook. The temptation to call Hitler mad, to label him a monster, places him in a separate category from ourselves—which I think is often the root of the temptation. Hitler is, to our consciences, less scary as a monster, because there is a universe of separation between us and him. He believed and said X, did Y, killed Z millions of people; we never could, never would, cannot even understand it. We thank the Lord that we are not as other men, even as this dictator.
And suddenly we are guilty of the sin of pride.
It is uncomfortable in the extreme to consider that we are capable, under the right circumstances, given the right temptations, and presented with the right choices, of doing the things Hitler and the members of his regime, from its most ideologically committed leadership right on down to ordinary men in the ranks, were capable of doing—and did. It’s easy to deny this, but it’s important not to.
Lukacs died two years ago aged 95. I’ve written in appreciation of him here before. The Hitler of History is excellent so far, if you’re into historiography as much as I am, but let me recommend Lukacs’s book The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler to you if you’d like something a little more approachable to read. It’s excellent.
