Language:
English
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
32 (2004) 148-172
Keywords:
Hitler, Adolf,
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Surveys psychohistorical attempts to reveal what turned Hitler into a monster and, in particular, what made him a rabid antisemite with genocidal inclinations. Most psychohistorical accounts of Hitler are shaped in the mold of an Oedipal complex and focus on his early traumas. There are three possible types of trauma that psychohistorians invoke as constitutive of Hitler's transformation from an innocuous child into an adult monster: an original or core trauma (father's violence, mother's alleged excessive care), a secondary trauma related to a genital defect, and a concluding trauma related to his mother's death and resentment against her Jewish doctor. However shaky these theories are (none of them has serious factual support and they strikingly ignore social, cultural, and other factors), the psychohistorical approach deserves to be defended. Disagrees with those who claim that studies of Hitler's childhood and attempts to reconstruct his early development are obscene, because they humanize him; maintains that historical study needs to approach Hitler as a human being.
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