Hitler in Hell by van Creveld Martin

Author:van Creveld, Martin [van Creveld, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

16. My Private Life

Can a leader such as I was have a private life? In theory, the answer is yes. After all, my body and physical needs were no different from those of other people. Like everyone else, I also had my preferences in day-to-day life; what to eat, what kind of ambience to surround myself with, what to do during my leisure hours, and the like.

One might think that all this was no one’s business but mine. But that was by no means the case. It only took a surprisingly short time after I took power for a large market for consumer goods, such as busts, postcards, porcelain, and embroidered articles with my image on them, to emerge. That forced me to pass a special law (“The Law for the Protection of National Symbols”) to regulate them and to make sure they would not be used in an inappropriate manner. But there was more. If I publicly expressed my approval or disapproval of this or that, countless people followed my example and/or tried to profit from doing so. That even applied to the kind of mustache I grew! At one point someone floated the (false) rumor that my favorite flower was the Edelweiss. No sooner had the news spread than the Edelweiss, with a little help from Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, became the favorite flower of half the nation. The same happened with clothing, music, and everything else you could think of. The opposite was also true. If I fell ill, then the consequences not just for me but for the German nation could be very serious, especially if the fact became widely known.

My long experience in politics made me well aware of all this even before January 1933. Such being the case, perhaps my greatest problem was to make sure that my image as a man of the people would stay intact. Others too have found out how difficult that is. Before I became Chancellor, out of every ten men I met, nine belonged to the people and one to the elite. From that point on it was the other way around. Moreover, high society has its customs. At the risk of my being looked down upon as a boor, I had to respect them, antiquated and ridiculous as many of them were and are. Just imagine me wearing a cummerbund!

Some leaders have sought to solve these problems by having themselves filmed while they engaged in various popular activities. Think of Mussolini fencing or riding horses, Fidel Castro playing basketball, Reagan riding a horse at Quantico or on his ranch in California, or Vladimir Putin riding a motorcycle, fishing, and throwing opponents in judo. I, alas, did not have the physique to do as they did. I did, of course, attend the Berlin Olympics as my position demanded. And I was proud of our team which, on this occasion, garnered more medals than any other. However, my interest in sports has always been limited.

Most of the time I had to use other methods.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.