Explaining Hitler, and its Quest for Answers

Thirty years after the results of the Russian autopsy of Adolf Hitler's scorched corpse were released, there is still a feeling that Hitler has escaped: that he has eluded explanation. In a new book by Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, ( Random House, 1998. 444 pages; $30.) we are drawn into the world of countless theories and conjectures of what drove Hitler's pursuit for the total annihilation of the Jewish people. Rosenbaum, a writer who has been praised as "one of the few distinctive voices of modern American literary journalism," takes us from Vienna and Munich to London, Paris, and Jerusalem, and from Hitler's home-town in Austria to the bunker that served as his grave, in an excruciatingly detailed journey into the attempts to fathom Hitler's imprint on human history. We are introduced to the theories of some of the greatest Holocaust theologians and historians of our time, such as Emil Fackenheim and H.R. Trevor-Roper, leading us on an exploration of this demonic character's role in stoking the fires of the Holocaust.

Spending more than ten years of his life searching the scant and murky evidence about the life of Hitler, Rosenbaum had to constantly battle the years of previous scholarship on Hitler's life, which basically contended that explaining Hitler is a daunting, if not impossible task. Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew University, the creator of formalized Holocaust Studies and one of the foremost authorities on the Holocaust, proposes that "Hitler is explicable in principle, but that does not mean that he has been explained." Rosenbaum includes Bauer's statement in a selection of quotations at the beginning of the book, as if he is holding this thought over the readers heads' before they embark on the journey into Hitler's life. When asked about the merits in tackling Hitler's elusive make-up, the author cites Bauer who opines that "Hitler is not necessarily inexplicable in theory," admitting that "we could explain Hitler if we had all the information, but it may be too late because there may be too many gaps in the record." Rosenbaum, however, also gives support to Holocaust theologian Emil Fackenheim's point that "all the conventional modes of explanation (psychology and psychoanalysis) may not be adequate to explain Hitler, even if we had all the facts." Hitler, according to Fackenheim, might be placed in a "realm of Radical Evil," a theory where Fackenheim puts Hitler beyond the pale of human nature, where we cannot apply our conventional modes of what constitutes evil.

It is this very idea that Hitler was "off the grid, beyond the continuum in a category of his own," as Rosenbaum presents in his book, that runs in direct contention with the theories attempting to explain Hitler's actions as being rooted in some bad life experience. Rosenbaum relates that the notion of Hitler's unique evil has been coined by the philosopher Berel Lang as a "new chapter in the history of evil;" an evil so far "unprecedented" before Hitler, but, as Rosenbaum puts it, Lang unfortunately has "indicated possibilities in human nature which suggest there's no reason it can't happen again." Even if one accedes to the idea of Hitler's evil as being ultimately unique in the spectrum of human nature, it does not offer much solace to those seeking to point to a single cause of Hitler's drive for the "final solution."

Enter Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter with whom Rosenbaum finds himself "empathizing." Wiesenthal is convinced that if he could confirm the famed "syphilitic Jewish prostitute theory," then, as Rosenbaum quotes from a book about Wiesenthal, he "would be happy" with such an explanation for motivating Hitler's behavior. While Rosenbaum sympathizes with Wiesenthal's desire to "find some explanation," he is unsure if he would be happy with such an explanation as it "almost tends to blame this mythical Jewish prostitute for being the occasion of Hitler and the subsequent genocide."

Along the lines of the Jewish prostitute theory that attempts to explain Hitler's anti-Semitism, are the theories such as one which blames Hitler's mother's Jewish doctor for driving Hitler's hatred of Jews. Rosenbaum devotes an entire chapter to the work of Professor Rudolph Binion and his quest to prove the theory that Klara Hitler, Adolf's mother, was caused needless pain by Dr. Bloch, when he attempted to treat Klara with iodoform, a disinfectant that is caustic when applied to broken skin. Binion contends that the image of the iodoform soaked gauze causing unbearable agony to Hitler's mother "metastasized and festered" in the young Hitler's mind, and the resulting hate came spewing forth in Adolf's speeches that spoke of "the Jewish cancer." While Binion veers away from ascribing the Holocaust to this one incident in Hitler's life by revealing that Hitler himself was partly responsible for the approval of such a treatment, and that he in fact protected Dr. Bloch during WWII, Rosenbaum contends that Binion's take on Dr. Bloch's treatment of Klara Hitler does "lend itself to a blame-the-doctor oversimplification." Rosenbaum describes in the chapter about Binion's theory, that he felt that there was "something emblematic and tragic" about the attempt to outline the precise mathematical units and prices of the gauze used by Dr. Bloch in order to "bring us closer to the elusive spectral figure supposedly lurking in that thicket (of details)."

With such theories almost creating images of Hitlers that would, as Rosenbaum describes them, not "recognize each other well enough to say 'Heil' if they came face to face in Hell," the author searches to free ourselves of espousing evidence of a questionable and highly contested nature in explaining Hitler. When asked if there could have been someone else other than Hitler, Rosenbaum mentions Milton Himmelfarb's 1984 article in Commentary, entitled No Hitler, No Holocaust, as having great influence on him to embark on a project of this nature. The article impressed upon Rosenbaum the idea that the anti-Semitic machinery could have existed in a Germany without Hitler, but that the "decision to exterminate was Hitler's own personal will; Hitler's own personal responsibility." The author veers from the school of thought ascribing to a "party of inevitability": the contention that if it weren't Hitler, it would have been someone else. One can only shudder at how close attempts came to assassinating Hitler, if in fact the "final solution" fed off the depravity of the mind of a single human.

Considering that Hitler could not have accomplished what he did without his henchman, one is found questioning the extent of "evil" among the masses. On this quandary, Rosenbaum refutes Hannah Arendt's suprisingly respected notion of the "banality of evil": the idea that there is nothing deeply rooted in the actions of many of Hitler's confidants. Rosenbaum cites the trial of Nazi criminal Eichmann, which was covered by Hannah Arendt. She felt comfortable accepting Eichmann's defense that he was a "poor schnook clerk" and was "just following orders." As reprehensible as Eichmann's claim of innocence was, Arendt still chose to develop her concept of "banal" evil: a notion that Rosenbaum does not buy into.

When asked whether he had any idea where the project would go as he plodded through the scattered evidence of a disputed past, Rosenbaum responded that by talking face to face with some of the greatest thinkers and authorities on Hitler's life, he had hoped that his conversations would bear the fruit of being "revealing and illuminating" and relate to him "something more than what could be found just in their written works." Rosenbaum felt "gratified" in hearing them "talk about these questions in ways that they hadn't written about them." While Rosenbaum understands the concerns of Claude Lanzmann, the creator of the acclaimed Shoah documentary, that an attempt at explanation could lead to some degree of exoneration on the part of Hitler, the author parts from Lanzmann's idea that such study is to be considered "obscene."

Lanzmann's strong opinion against such inquiry could stem from his fear of what the cover of "Explaining Hitler" could stimulate in people's minds: the baby pictures of Hitler serving to force the memory of an extermination Hitler into one of a frighteningly cute baby. It is this baby picture that Rosenbaum claims clarifies the questions that haven't been answered; it is not to nauseate people into thinking of Hitler as a fellow of the human race, but the baby picture serves as a basis from which to launch Rosenbaum's quest to bridge the "abyss" between an "obviously innocent child" and the "guy who became, perhaps, the greatest figure of evil in memory."

Referring to the fantasy Police Gazette series: "Hitler Alive in Argentina!," Rosenbaum urges that Adolf Hitler "didn't escape to South America; it's important that he not escape responsibility," even when the author might have to accede that Hitler will ultimately escape satisfactory explanation. We are offered an unprecedented and original probe into the make-up of a man who lacerated the heart of the Jewish nation, presented in a work of meticulous fact-finding and profound inquiry. While the trees around the Nazi death camps grow thick and concealing, Rosenbaum leaves us with an important marker along the charred landscape of the Holocaust, reinforcing the conviction to Never Forgive, Never Forget.

The author of the book, Ron Rosenbaum, a graduate of Yale University in English literature, has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and has written eight cover stories for the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of a novel and three collections of Essays and Journalism. He currently contributes to the New York Times Sunday Magazine, writes a cultural affairs column for the New York Observer, and teaches a course on literary journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.