To call Adolf Hitler a fanatic is by no stretch of the imagination an exaggeration or resort to hyperbole.  Indeed, he readily concedes the validity of that characterization and proudly declares it to be the only way to proceed.
        On 1 May 1923:
         We are National Socialist fanatics, not dancers on the tight-rope of moderation!
         HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 68

         We can achieve something only by fanaticism.  If this fanaticism horrifies the bourgeoisie, so much the better.  Solely by this fanaticism, which refuses any compromise, do we gain our contact with the masses.
         SECRET CONVERSATIONS WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 34

         In a Munich speech on 24 February 1941:
         I look to the future with fanatical confidence.
         MY NEW ORDER  by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 935

         The greatness of every powerful organization as the incorporation of an idea in this world is rooted in the religious fanaticism with which it intolerably enforces itself against everything else, fanatically convinced of its own right.
         MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 486

         Hitler was firmly convinced that national fanaticism should reign supreme.
        In a Munich speech on 12 April 1922:
         We as National Socialists and members of the German Workers party--a Party pledged to work--must be on principle the most fanatical Nationalists.
         MY NEW ORDER  by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 24

         In Munich on 22 September 1928:
         In the first place, our people must be delivered from the hopeless confusion of international convictions, and educated consciously and systematically to fanatical nationalism.
         HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolf Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 39

         In a Munich speech on 1 August 1923:
         Rather we should have too much of faith and love: we need an excess of national fanaticism.
         HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 77

         And in Munich on 21 February 1929:
         The only thing that motivates me is national fanaticism and national egotism which is just as great.
         HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolf Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 64

         The Fuhrer was definitely convinced that only from fanaticism could victory emerge:
         We shall triumph in this undertaking, likewise: because we fight fanatically for our victory, and because we believe in our victory.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 134

         In a Munich speech on 1 May 1923:
         We must learn to make our own this blind faith in the rights of our people, in the necessity of devoting ourselves to the service of these rights; we must make our own the faith that gradually victory must be granted us if only we are fanatical enough.
         MY NEW ORDER  by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 63

         For the greatest changes on this birth would not have been thinkable if their driving force, instead of fanatical, and even hysterical passion, had been only the bourgeois virtues of peace and order.
         MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 636

         Because of his devotion to fanaticism, Hitler had no intention of allowing anyone into the Party who was not a fanatic:
         I took care, by applying appropriate methods, to welcome nobody into it [the party] but truly fanatical Germans, ready to sacrifice their private interests to the interests of the public.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 134

         He wanted thousands of fanatics whom he could send into the streets whenever desired:
         What we needed, and what we need, were and are not a hundred or two hundred daring plotters, but 100,000 and again a 100,000 fanatical fighters for our view of life.  The work has to be done, not in secret conventicles, but in enormous mass demonstrations, and not by dagger and poison or pistol can the way be paved for the movement, but by the conquest of the streets.  We have to drive home to Marxism that the future master of the streets will be National Socialism, exactly as some day it will be the master of the State.
         MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 798

         Because of his Rightist fanaticism any government playing both sides of the Left/Right fence can expect firm opposition from the Nazis.
        In a Munich speech on 1 May 1923:
         We are fanatical in our love for our people, and we are anxious that so-called "national governments" should be conscious of that fact.  We can go as loyally as a dog with those who share our sincerity, but we will pursue with fanatical hatred the man who believes that he can play tricks with this love of ours.  We cannot go with governments who look two ways at once, who squint both towards the Right and towards the Left.  We are straightforward: it must be either love or hate.
         MY NEW ORDER  by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 63

         Even artists must be fanatics.
        In a 1 September 1933 Nuremberg speech:
         Art is a lofty mission that demands fanaticism.
         ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS, by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 47

         Hitler had no hesitation about admitting he was a fanatical anti-Semite:
         From a feeble cosmopolite I turned into a fanatical anti-Semite.
         MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 83

         And in a letter to a doctor on 29 November 1921:
         Though I came from a fairly cosmopolitan family, the school of harsh reality turned me into an anti-Semite within barely a year.
         HITLER'S LETTERS AND NOTES, by Werner Maser, (1973), page 107

         Because Bush does not utilize hyperbolic rhetoric or emotional ravings, because he has not been belabored by situations nearly as stressful or challenging as those confronting the Fuhrer, because he has not had any reason to expose his temper and instability, because he has been able to keep the latter under wraps with relative ease, because he has been able to mask in elusive, distracting, and duplicitous terminology the valid ideological comparisons between himself and Hitler, people understandably consider equating the two to any significant degree is hyperbolic, irresponsible, and inaccurate.  What they fail to realize is that Bush is far more in tune with Hitlerian thought than his spokespersons would ever concede and Hitlerian thought is by no means as far from the minds of millions of Americans as many have been led to believe.

         As is to be expected, attached to fanaticism is its companion, extremism, which Hitler also expounded with reckless abandon.
        In a Munich speech on 18 September 1922:
        Extremes must be fought by extremes.  Against the infection of materialism, against the Jewish pestilence we must hold aloft a flaming ideal.  And if others speak of the World and Humanity we say the Fatherland--and only the Fatherland!
         MY NEW ORDER  by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 46

         Since our young movement gets its membership material, not from the camp of the indifferent, but chiefly from very extreme views of life,...
         MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 933

         We shall welcome any measures designed for the protection of the Reich.  We shall not, however, welcome measures which equate us with the communists and brand us as extremists.  There is only one form of extremism and that is communism.  If one fights communism, one is not an extremist but merely doing one's national duty.
         SECRET CONVERSATIONS WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 24

         Hitler’s assertion that “Extremes must be fought by extremes” is an almost verbatim precursor of Goldwater’s thundering, applause-generating declaration at the 1964 Republican Convention that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation is no virtue.”  Goldwater’s call to overestimation has been rejuvenated by a call to anti-terrorist excess fueled by an unending and vocal media crusade carefully calculated to keep the American people in a perpetual state of dread and trepidation.  Franklin Roosevelt said at this Inaugural: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  In a bid for re-election, the Bushites have trashed that noble ideal in favor of: The only thing we have to fear is fear that fear will vanish.

         One fear of sane minds during the Nazi era was undoubtedly justified--fear that the Nazis would get their hands on weapons of Mass Destruction.  Had they done so, Hitler left no doubt they would have been employed:
         If, for instance, my beloved scientists had known how to grasp opportunities, they would have presented me by now with the one weapon I needed to implement my will.  As I, if I had their training, most certainly would have been able to present myself with this tool.
         Then would have come my opportunity to test it, rapidly and before the enemy had time to surrender, on a series of towns of graduated size so that one could investigate the concentric circles of effectiveness among varying degrees of population density with scientific thoroughness.
         I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 128

         Hitler appears to be far more concerned with testing a weapon of this magnitude than who he is testing it on, presaging the utilization of new weapons in both Iraq wars by the Bush regimes.

Chapter 28

         Any discussion of compassion at this stage of the narrative becomes all but superfluous since Hitler’s general philosophy is transparent to the extreme, pardon the pun.  Regarding compassion, Hitler related the following incidents, decisions and acts:
         A court is asking me to show clemency to a man who, having made a girl pregnant, drowned her in the Wannsee.  The motive: he acted in fear of the illegitimate child.  I noticed on this occasion that all those who had committed an analogous crime had been pardoned.  Hundreds of cases.  And yet isn't it the filthiest of crimes?  I said to Gurtner: "Criminals of that sort, I shall never pardon a single one of them.  There's no use in suggesting it to me."
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 133

         I have given the coup de grace to the private man, the little man.  I have done away with compassion and all the petty bourgeois virtues, once and for all.  After me, one will think in different categories.
         I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 158

         To catch an offender, shut him up, let him go again, watch over him, catch him again, what's the sense in all that?  Really, the jurists look after the underworld with as much love as owners of shoots taking care of their game during the close season...  A swine will always be a swine.  I reserve my pity for the brave man amongst my compatriots.  It's my duty to protect them against the underworld....
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 132

         A man cannot be heartened by soft measures.  Those that were already too soft, went under.  One or two killed themselves.
         I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 86

         Hitler appears to have about as much ‘compassionate conservatism’ as Governor George W. Bush displayed while presiding over the largest number of executions (151) of almost any governor in American history.

         Hitler and Bush have an affinity for harsh punishments and cold leadership, but Hitler was so bold as to make comments Bush could never utter while leading any humane society worthy of the name, despite his personal preferences, predilections, and sentiments:
         Just look at the institutions for the wayward, for the insane, for incurable epileptics, kept in handsomely furnished buildings resembling hotels and palaces, with central heating and hot and cold running water, surrounded by the most splendid gardens.  That's where these people are cared for and cherished.  Dozens of saintly nurses look after them, to make sure that their sick lives are preserved, to make sure that they will be a burden to others for the longest possible time.  Meanwhile, outside, hale and hearty men and women, who can and want to be productive, stand idle, unable to obtain work and not knowing where to turn for even the most meager nourishment for themselves and their poor children.  Even the prisons and penitentiaries are day nurseries for criminality and subhumanity.  Once, it was even suggested in the Reichstag that musical performances, lectures, and movies be brought to the prisons, to entertain the convicts.  And on the outside, hundreds of thousands--and soon it will be millions --of decent workers are starving, without pay, without work, without prospects, innocent--but without films and concerts!
         HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 40

         No wonder the insane, incurable epileptics and others with similar afflictions were killed by the Nazis.  What else could be expected when the leader implies their sustenance is a needless waste of money and refers to rendering them assistance as merely preserving their sick lives, as if hospitals and related institutions per se were a waste of time and funds.  When providing support to those who have major physical or mental problems through no fault of their own is depicted as “a burden to others for the longest possible time,” the die is cast, the path is clear, the methods are prescribed.
          Seeking to exculpate this odious conception of fellow human beings simply won’t pass muster except in the minds of people like Bush and Hitler, who either pay lip service to alleged concerns for improving the lives of the hale and hearty poor and unemployed seeking “to be productive” or studiously avoid being candid about how they really feel.

 Chapter 29

         Although physical suppression of one’s opponents is the area in which Hitler and Bush most diverge, as was stipulated at the outset, one would be remiss were their repressive similarities to be overlooked entirely.  For example, both employ imprisonment without counsel or formal charges being leveled and concentration camps, although Guantanamo and camps in Iraq are not as horrific as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, etc.  What is of greatest concern in this regard is what the future portends were the Bushites to continue in power and the al Qaeda/”terrorist” threat to exacerbate.
        With respect to concentration camps Hitler said at the annual Party Congress on 11 September 1935:
         For this reason we will attack such elements [irresponsible egotists or unthinking fools] from now on with brutal ruthlessness and--if good intentions fail--will not shrink from using concentration camps to make them conform with and adapt to the national interest as a whole.
         HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 694

         If you wish to prevent a revolution by anticipation, the first thing you must do, as soon as a situation becomes critical, is to kill off the whole anti-social rabble; and you can do this only if you have already gathered them safely together in a concentration camp.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 570

         Hitler had no reservations about the utilization of state terror :
         Unless you are prepared to be pitiless, you will get nowhere.  Our opponents are not prepared for it, not because they are humane or anything of that sort, but because they are too weak.  Dominion is never founded on humanity, but, regarded from the narrow civilian angle, on crime.  Terrorism is absolutely indispensable in every case of the founding of a new power.
         THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION, by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 281

         Nor did he have any hesitation about using torture:
         Anybody who is such a poltroon that he can't bear the thought of someone near-by having to suffer pain had better join a sewing-circle, but not my party comrades.
         THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION, by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 84

         If you are appalled [at the will to power inherent in all things], gentlemen, address your complaints to nature or to God, not to me.  Even the good, gentle, loving Christians acknowledge this law of nature and showed their love for their enemies and the enemies of society by the stakes they lit for them, by the intervention of the most ingenious torture instruments.--Only that they normally burned and tortured the wrong people.--You cannot deny this law.
         I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 87

         In the case of Seefeld I told Gurtner that if the fellow had really committed 36 murders, it was essential to find out how he had done so.  (At that moment only 12 had been proved against him.).  Gurtner was very hesitant, so I suggested that he should allow the Gestapo to try their hand, adding that nothing would happen to the fellow, that at the most he would get a good hiding, that had I myself received in one fell swoop all the thrashings I deserved (and had had) in my life, I should be dead!  The net result was that the blackguard confessed to 107 murders, of which Gurtner would have remained in ignorance but for the Gestapo.  According to his confession he had employed unique methods of his own.  I quote this example to prove that there are cases in which severity is essential.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 640

         They that cross me, will die.  They will be tortured to death.--This, too, is necessary.  Even for their own sake.  For some will want to choose that way.  That is their freedom.  To be martyrs.  It is also their sin, their stupidity.  Freedom is sin....  And yet, take away this freedom to obey or to rebel--you are left with nothing but that democratic, liberal, flabby dough, the breeding ground of the Jewish leaven.  Marxism, cynicism, lechery, and boredom.
         I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 54

         As to whether or not the death penalty should be applied, the views of Hitler and Bush are disquietingly similar not only in regard to its necessity but in lack of concern for ensuring the guilty rather than the innocent pay the price.  When it comes to degree of application, both vastly exceeded their peers.  Hitler as a national leader, Bush as a governor.  Hitler’s view of executions and the inadvertent killing of an innocent person all but foreshadowed what Bush said on national television during a debate with Gore:
         Bismarck was perfectly right when he said that any human society which suppressed the death penalty, the ultimate expression of human defense against the a-social, merely from fear of a possible error of justice, was simply destroying itself.  However one lives, whatever one does or undertakes, one is invariably exposed to the danger of making mistakes.  And so, what, indeed, would become of the individual and of the community, if those in whom authority was vested were paralyzed by fear of a possible error, and refused to take the decisions that were called for?
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 483

         Hitler was in no way ambiguous regarding his attitude toward treason and degrees of culpability involving same.
         ...and every traitor must be executed regardless of the amount of damage he has done.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 518

         In the Third Reich no traitor shall commit treason and escape with his life.  It is the least we can do for those who have left their homes and wives to do battle at the front.  In such matters I am merciless....
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 640

         In Detmold on 15 January 1936:
         It is completely futile for anyone in Germany to attempt to change this regime.  Whoever would attempt it nonetheless can rest assured that he will be dashed to pieces like glass.
         HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 739

         I pondered for some time over the best thing to do if an army started to retreat without orders and could not be brought to make a stand; and the conclusion I reached was that summary executions by shooting would be the only remedy.  But it is not the little infantryman who should be shot, the poor, wretched little devil who bears the brunt of war, the pangs of hunger, and the plague of fleas.  The man to shoot is the commander of the unit in retreat, regardless of who he may be.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 418

         On first blush the latter appears to be just and reasonable, but how many generals actually suffered a fate of this nature, despite the fact that Nazi generals throughout Europe and Africa were conducting retreats in the latter stages of WWII.

         If the slightest attempt at a riot were to break out at this moment anywhere in the whole Reich, I'd take immediate measures against it.  Here's what I'd do: (a) on the same day, all the leaders of the opposition, including the leaders of the Catholic party, would be arrested and executed; (b) all the occupants of the concentration camps would be shot within three days; (c) all the criminals on our lists--and it would make little difference whether they were in prison or at liberty--would be shot within the same period.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 409

         At least Hitler makes no attempt to hide the obvious fact that he is a merciless, cold-blooded, premeditated butcher with about as much concern for justice and humanity as your average contract killer.  And to think “our” president is even remotely ideologically aligned with this odious, abhorrent mentality!  Considering the possibilities in the coming election of November 2004 is enough foster maladies.

         Yet, despite all the manifest failings, deceptions, injustices, and horrors associated with the Nazi philosophy, Hitler did not hesitate to provide justifications for his actions in a manner resembling a teenager defending his slaying of someone because he needed that person’s car for a date that evening and work tomorrow:
         How often have I heard the objection: with your brutal methods, you will achieve nothing!  With any other methods I would certainly have achieved nothing.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 609

         If I am reproached for acting brutally, I can tell you that in politics decisions on power stand or fall, reach historic heights--or fail to do so--only if they are implemented by purely German and brutal methods.
         SECRET CONVERSATIONS WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 54

         ... I am certainly not a brutal man by nature, and consequently it is cold reason that guides my actions.  I have risked my own life a thousand times, and I owe my preservation simply to my good fortune.  I say, therefore, that sentiment must play no part in these matters; we must apply a rule of iron and admit of no exceptions.  This may often pain me personally, and that it may well lead to errors which one will later regretfully acknowledge.  But any other course of action is out of the question.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 639

         Nature is cruel, therefore we, too, may be cruel.
         THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION, by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 137

         One thing cannot be denied, and that is the fact that even if we committed criminal acts, we acted in good faith and were motivated by ardent love for our country.
         THE HITLER TRIAL IN MUNICH, Volume 3, 1976, page 138

         Apparently Hitler is not aware of the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

         The most impertinent are always those who are treated with the greatest respect [by others].  In their eyes [the eyes of others], consideration is a sign of weakness or stupidity.  I'd rather be regarded as a brute than as an idiot.
         HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 204

         With respect to his last sentence, he earned both characterizations as far as humanity is concerned.  Time will tell if George W. Bush fares any better.

Go to Chapter 30