Character Analysis - Hitler

The Mind That Killed Millions

How can a man, born in a family of peasant origins, who dreamed of becoming an architect, a decorated yet unrecognized soldier of World War I, rise to unfathomable power and influence; enough so to have allowed him to wage a war responsible for the deaths of nearly sixty million people (Adolf Hitler, 2002)? What sort of a mind and personality must a man possess in order to be accountable for deaths of millions without feeling remorse, to have been able to influence millions into believing irrational propaganda, and to have been admired and despised equally? Many thought provoking questions arise when trying to analyze the mind and personality of Adolf Hitler (hereinafter referred to as Hitler), some of which will hopefully be answered using Sigmund Freud’s (hereinafter referred to as Freud) Psychoanalytic Theory.

Before we analyze the complex aspects of Hitler’s personality, we must first establish which part of Hitler’s personality structure is dominant. According to Freud, there are three aspects of the personality structure; id, ego, and superego. Hitler would perhaps have a more dominant id, which operates in the unconscious according to the pleasure principle; this is indicated by his enactment of many desires that lie within the unconscious, violent motives, irrational wishes, unacceptable sexual desires, immoral urges, and selfish needs. Hitler’s violent motive was to annihilate all Jews and Marxists, which was also his reason for war (Adolf Hitler, 2002). His irrational wish was to have a society void of all races he deemed inferior (Adolf Hitler, 2002).

The manner in which he ordered the execution of millions innocent people, such as by the use of gas chambers, (Adolf Hitler, 2002) was due to his immoral urges. When Hitler gained knowledge of a failed assassination attempt on his life by traitors within, he order the execution of thousands of his men in the most cruelest of manners; slow strangulation, starvation, slow...