Hitler Among the Germans

Rudolph Binion's work Hitler Among the Germans is a fascinating and frustrating study of the psychological forces at work in the development of the personality and leadership of the Nazi dictator. This study will provide a critical review of Binion's book, including consideration of how the author's arguments draw on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. The argument of the study will be that Binion has written a work which opens up new and interesting avenues of inquiry, but it should be read with a very skeptical eye because of the author's apparent obsessions with certain areas of research which seem questionable.

There is no doubt that the ideas of Freud play a major role in Binion's ideas, although in the only extended section in which Binion openly draws from Freud, the author draws a contrast between Hitler and the subject of Freud's study. However, underlying the entire book is the Freudian concept of oral fixation, the stage of development at which Binion believes Hitler was stalled. Specifically, one area on which Binion spends an inordinate, if not obsessive, amount of time is the role of Hitler's relationship with his mother (and especially breastfeeding and her breast cancer) in Hitler's development as man and leader. Perhaps the reader's resistance to or rejection of some of Binion's arguments is due to the feeling that any "psychological portrait" of Hitler and his Nazi reign of terror is somehow an excuse or alleviating explanation for his behavior. Perhaps Binion is

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alysis of a man who was dead thirty years before he started writing, and especially when that analysis is based on data which is not always verifiable, and which is sometimes preposterous. However, nowhere does Binion demonstrate anything resembling humility or caution in his conclusions and interpretations. The primary point of Binion's book is the connection between Hitler's childhood traumas and his adult need to conquer the world and destroy the Jews. More specifically, the author seems to be saying that Hitler's mother's problems---especially her breast cancer and other ailments, and her problems with breastfeeding the little dictator-to-be---somehow translated one by one into Hitler's adult activities, both consciously and unconsciously. If this sounds hard to follow at best, it is with good reason. Here Binion attempts to connect Hitler's mother Klara's iodoform poisoning with the success of a particular military assault. The poisoning leaves the victim with a great thirst and an inability to drink. Binion writes: Hitler . . . speculated whether his Ardennes offensive . . . had not caught the Allies off guard because they were sure he was dead already "or at all odds am down with cancer somewhere and can't live any mor

Category: People - H