The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe:
“One century ago, Adolf Hitler was fighting in the Great War. He was a good soldier — he would be promoted to the rank of corporal, be wounded two times, and be awarded six medals. And with him during the war he had the writings of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
“The image of Hitler reading Schopenhauer is startling, as one popular depiction of Hitler is of a semi-literate, semi-sane outlier who somehow lucked and manipulated his way to power in Germany. Certainly after the devastation of World War Two and the horrors of the Holocaust, it’s tempting to think that those who caused them must be close to crazy and to dismiss the possibility that educated people could be responsible.
“But if we are going to fully understand the causes of National Socialism and other horrors, we have to consider an unsettling possibility: Maybe those who commit them, like Hitler and his accomplices, can be highly intelligent, well educated, and think of themselves as noble idealists …” [Read more here.]
Previous column in The Good Life series: On Greek Debts and Doing What’s Moral.
This was excellent. It is so important to get to the root of what made Hitler tick. I always said Hitler did not sprout out of concrete like a weed. He is the end result of German philosophic thought. He took those bad ideas seriously.
Thanks, Scherie.