Hitlerism

The reign of Adolf Hitler belongs to the darkest periods in the history of Germany. He alone is responsible for the death of millions of people all over Europe and elsewhere. It comes with little surprise that his name now symbolizes barbarism.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was not a man of many talents. He failed as a painter. Even in the army he rose only to the rank of corporal. But like no one else, Hitler could guess the mood of his countrymen who, after the debacle of 1918, felt Europe had betrayed them. In 1933, in a democratic election, his party garnered the largest number of votes. The terror and world war that ensued were of his own making but the fact remains that until the last months of his life, Hitler ruled the hearts and minds of millions of Germans.

Long before Hitler assumed power in Germany, “Hitlerism” became an established word. As early as in 1930, a Time correspondent quoted a British nationalist as saying: “The force of Youth at work in Europe is called Fascism in Italy and Hitlerism in Germany!” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides this definition of the eponym, repeated by other sources as well: “The fascist program, ideas, and methods of Hitler and the Nazis.”

At the roots of Hitlerism lay the fears and animosities that had lingered among Germans for years. “Hitlerism fed and grew fat on defeated Germany's monumental inferiority complex,” wrote Time Magazine in 1933, attacking “Handsome Adolf” for his “antiSemitism and ranting speeches.” Because Nazism had replaced religion in Germany, Christians believed that “it is the prime concern of government to defeat Hitler, but it is the business of the church to help defeat Hitlerism,” as Rev. Fred Robert Tiffany told the New York Times in August 1944.

Despite the fall of Adolf Hitler in May 1945, “Hitlerism” has remained present in the English language. Due to its negative connotations, the eponym has been widely used to denounce political opponents as authoritarian or chauvinistic. During the 1964 Presidential Campaign, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater was attacked by Rev. Martin Luther King who said that “we can see dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign.” Even more controversial was the writer Richard Bernstein, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, who compared Hitlerism to Zionism.

Adolf Hitler dominated the lives of his subjects. There was the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization grouping children and teenagers. There were millions of Hitlerites who deeply believed that their fuhrer would finally restore the country to its right place among world powers. Finally, there was Hitlerism, the one and only ideology acceptable in Nazi Germany.