Lukacs on Hitler as Antichrist

Several weeks ago I shared a longish passage from the late John Lukacs’s 1997 study The Hitler of History in which Lukacs warns against thinking of or describing Hitler as insane or mad. Doing so, he argues, absolves Hitler from responsibility for his actions. Likewise with thinking of Hitler as demonic.

I finally finished The Hitler of History today. It’s excellent, and I highly recommend it if you’d like a deep dive into some of the history of the study of Hitler. But a passage in the final chapter—indeed, in the very last pages—jumped out at me. In concluding the book, Lukacs returns to his warnings against the folly of ascribing madness or demonic power to Hitler but notes that there is one spiritual parallel that can, in some circumstances, be appropriately applied—and not only to Hitler, but to other populist leaders in the age of mass politics, a point he makes clear in this chilling footnote:

In this respect we ought to, again, reject the “demonization” of Hitler, or the temptation to attribute to him the qualities of being “diabolical” or “satanic.” To the contrary, we can see elements in his career that bear an uncanny reminder of what St. John of the Apocalypse predicted as the Antichrist. The Antichrist will not be horrid and devilish, incarnating some kind of frightful monster—hence recognizable immediately. He will not seem to be anti-Christian. He will be smiling, generous, popular, an idol, adored by masses of people because of the sunny prosperity he seems to have brought, a false father (or husband) to his people. Save for a small minority, Christians will believe in him and follow him. Like the Jews at the time of the First Coming, Christians at the time of the Antichrist—that is, before the Second Coming—will divide. Before the end of the world the superficial Christians will follow the Antichrist, and only a small minority will recognize his awful portents. Well, Hitler did not bring about the end of the world, but there was a time—not yet the time of the mass murders but the time of the Third Reich in the 1930s—when some of St. John’s prophecies about the Antichrist accorded with this appearance and this appeal. And it may not be unreasonable to imagine that in the coming age of the masses he was but the first of Antichrist-like popular figures.

Let the reader understand.