Today is the birth anniversary of the loftiest of tyrants in the history of mankind. The civilised world largely paints him as the most repulsive creature ever to have existed. The bone-chilling vocabularies such as The Holocaust, concentration camp, gas chamber and the supposed Aryan race are complemented with incalculable loss and damage of properties and resources--and are all associated with the one name Adolf Hitler.
Why was it so important to recall an abominable personality such as Hitler in his reportedly 130th birthday? Is it anyhow necessary to recall the tyrant to have introduced real hell on earth? And why we repeatedly fail to forget him for that matter? Answers are simple and straight--as ethical moral beings we are surely to condemn many of his actions, simultaneously the need to recall him is as significant to stop history from repeating itself.
This writer had the opportunity to visit the Dachau concentration camp some 23 kilometres away from Munich in October 2013. As much as he was shaken strolling inside the well preserved camp premises, he was evenly astonished to come across hundreds of German school children visiting the dark location aided by their teachers.
Failing to conceal my unmanageable curiosity, I walked straight to one of their teachers and asked about the reason for their visit. Her reply was delivered with blunt Prussian precision, "we want our children to know the true history of their past, draw lessons and therefore refrain from enacting the same." This is how the German kids are taught history today.
Respect, admiration or whatever commendable expression I could think of, I left her alone with her juvenile subjects in silence. The Nazi era is also remembered in Germany but with a much farsighted purpose to learn from the bitter lessons of the past. However, coming back to Hitler's birthday, the tyrant with far too many noticeable and also disclosed skeletons in the cupboard yet remains a hot potato among several far right and democratic political fractions in Germany and mainland Europe.
Many millions of Germans of today may disagree with my personal reading of Hitler, but in the tumultuous and uncertain days of the early thirties he was the need of the time. If not all, much of the millions of German commoners under the failing Weimer Republic found a political saviour in him. From January 30th of 1933 until the capitulation of Poland in September of 1939, economically and militarily, Germany was a transformed nation. What followed next is a separate discourse.
Reflecting back, Hitler's war otherwise the Second World War had changed the entire world order in a dramatic fashion. The old school imperialism and empire had collapsed soon after the defeat of Nazi Germany; the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western Capitalist nations commenced. Germany was divided into two and remained in that state for over four decades. The Nazi ideology based on the theory of discrimination and extreme populism was and still remains banned throughout much of the world.
The trillion dollar questions here--is the world a much safer place minus a Hitler? Have genocides, acts of ethnic cleansing and authoritarian rule been wiped out? And what would have been the world's fate without a Hitler in the 20th century?
Arguments, debates and intellectual discourses may follow for days, weeks and months to years. Surprisingly however, the world has witnessed a sequence of oppressive regimes in the likes of the Nazi era to have erupted in several countries ranging from South America, Africa, East Europe, and Middle East to as far as Southeast Asia.
The man to have been born this day dreamt of a Nazi empire in the likes of a typical imperialist, but the dictators to have followed his footsteps in the Post - World War Two era purely focused to consolidate power and stretch their individual rule in respective countries. Actually the past Nazi regime was reintroduced in many countries later with a flimsy veil under comical titles such as 'benevolent dictatorship 'and 'Proletariat dictatorship'--not too different from the creed of National Socialist German Workers' Party--aka the Nazi party just with different jargons coupled with cleverer and complex meanings.
Up until Germany ran out of luck in the war, the Nazi rule was also considered as benevolent one-man-show by most Germans. Unemployment rate in Germany fell to an all time low and development peaked. Bizarrely enough, Hitler's economy was a mixed economy combining a free market with central planning. Historian Richard Overy described it as being 'somewhere in between the command economy of the former Soviet Union and the capitalist system of the United States.' Perhaps god enabled Hitler only to understand and implement such a queer and complex economic mechanism.
Whatever, registered dates of birth cannot be permanently wiped out and especially of Adolf Hitler. Since Lucifer, Satan, devil or Iblis's birth dates are not found to be officially registered anywhere so the almighty god compensated the mankind by sending Hitler on April 20 of 1889.
Hitler, as learnt from factual data, dreamt of becoming an artist. Even though judged as a mediocre according to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the past century--the world could have easily averted unprecedented deaths and disasters--had he been an artist. (I personally request the academy to think twice before turning down below-the-standard candidates. One rejected candidate was enough to have changed the entire world in the last century. And not once Hitler was rejected by the fine arts academy twice.
Nevertheless, 20th April should be remembered at least for the sake of analysing facts and the surrounding reality in the making of Adolf Hitler. Rather fascinatingly, reality of the 21st century is a lot different but Hitler's ultra populism political dogma has strongly resurfaced in some major countries including North America.
Today's inconspicuous Hitler-like-leaders do not build concentration camps, they manipulate immigration rules. They brand ethnic minorities as 'terrorist' and 'extremist'. For them skullcaps and hijabs easily serve the purpose of the Star of David symbol.
They launch undue military strikes in the name of restoring 'discipline and establishing democracy' in far away Muslim countries. Though active in vocal protests, they deliberately remain stock-still to take actions against genocide and oppressing of ethnic minorities. These leaders reign with impunity by occupying the chairs of the UN's Security Council and are accountable to none. And they all condemn Hitler for all the right reasons.
In all probability, if Hitler had been born another 50 years later he would have acted much worse and Joseph Goebbels's propaganda job would have been extremely challenging to defend and promote him. However, remembering Hitler on this inauspicious day should not be celebrated by cutting cakes and cracking champagne bottles, but to sincerely ask ourselves--how he continues to captivate us with his dark charisma. Why his sinister doctrine of racial prejudice and megalomania traits are so clearly noticeable among some major world leaders?
After all, he is not Lucifer. The writer is editor-in-charge, editorial section, The Daily Observer
