Thursday, June 17, 2021

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 11 - Adolf Hitler and the High Mountains


Hitler was an ordinary boy, who was developed into a man who had to experience spiritual records non-stop. His feelings of deterioration and hopelessness began in his youth as an unlucky artist and continued until after the defeat of Germany in World War I. To change for upward direction he was constantly looking for new records.

Hitler was a lone, brave and lucky soldier. He came out unscathed. In many cases, after moving from one place to another a few minutes before a bomb or shell fell there. In one battle between his unit and British and Belgian forces, 2,500 of the unit's 3,000 soldiers were killed. His daring testifies to the constant need for adrenaline and mental highs, which are used not for promotion but for inner purification.

At the same time, Hitler tried to calm his spirit through art. But in confronting his impulses the result was frustration and going beyond extreme values.

In October 1918, following a British gas attack, Hitler suffered from temporary blindness and was sent to a military hospital for treatment. His mental state deteriorated further. Temporary blindness is the most prominent form of vertigo. Hitler entered a state of pure neural terror, which created a clear distortion in the psyche that had long been saturated in the fear of imaginary fall.

Hitler chose, in a combination of necessity and opportunity, the threshold of the realization of the aerial soul. His model was Nietzsche's supreme human ideal. The realization of the model was in all areas of life. When he reached a certain peak, he could not be satisfied with it. He was afraid of falling from it. The fear of falling motivated him to continue as a madman. Hitler became the clear prototype of a man who constantly lived in fear of falling.

Anti-Semitism was a psychological shield against the fear of falling from the heights he was trying to climb. The Jews were shaped in Hitler's mind as a stereotypical concept. He did not know much about them and did not want to know. What he knew was invented mostly through the protocols of the Elders of Zion. Their ancient figure suited to be a victim of the horror of his fall.

The feeling of hatred towards those who were perceived as responsible for the defeat was not unusual among Germans after the war, in which many adopted the view that it was not Germany that lost. The politicians, the traitors, the Marxists and the Jews, were all "November criminals" who caused a defeat. The humiliation of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles was salt on their wounds. Like an entire generation of World War I graduates, Hitler also felt that Germany could not return to its former status without punishing the "traitors''.

Just as one can talk about the fall, one can talk about the energy of the ascent. Every search for power, like the search made by Hitler, finds its logical conclusions in the human struggle against gravity. Hitler was drawn to the ideas of the small, pro-militarist and anti-Semitic national party that preceded the Nazi party. From the moment he joined the party, in 1919, when he was already 30 years old, he began to work hard to ensure its success. He began recruiting new members by posting invitations to party conferences. Gradually, more and more people came to the party gatherings. After discovering his great talent for speech, Hitler, thanks to his charismatic stage personality, became the party's main attraction.

Hitler proposed a method of treating depression for the German people: invent an imaginary weight for him, Jews who might drop the sky on them. Then gradually release them from that weight. This is a psychiatric treatment method. There is a simple psychological transfer here. In its depths, the mind needs a guide. Man stumbles in the first step towards his inner hell and has no power to understand his secrets. A series of images is also required to take him out of his daily routine and fly him to new, aerial districts.

The decision-making process in a person is always a result of how language is used. Hitler's Nazi language took the form of reaching the point of no return. As much as he enthralled the masses, the misuse, excessive and outspoken use of language, led to inappropriate thinking and decisions.

Hitler was the epitome of Germany, by virtue of the "Fuhrer principle". He shaped the Nazi party so that it would respond immediately and fully to his wishes. His moods were also reflected in the day-to-day life of the Nazi state. "The state is me" is a concept that is more true of him than any ruler in history. Therefore the whole period of his reign is a reflection of the diseases, medicines and treatments he received. 

The psychological flight that Hitler adopted for himself was that of a drug addict. He was in constant euphoria and could hallucinate himself as Nietzsche's Superman. Excessive optimism served as a basis for many of the wrong decisions he made. His poor decision-making process was described by his associates, who did not understand the logic behind it, because they knew nothing about his health condition.

Hitler as the image of the ruler, after the transformation to which he was shaped by Nazi propaganda, was portrayed to the German people as the figure of the alpine Aryan warrior, a shepherd  overlooking his flock from the top of the mountain. From the beginning it was a distant figure, in the air of cold and clear peaks, full of lofty ideas. He was portrayed as a mythical magician, who bridged between his loyal hero pilots of the First world War and the common people.

Hitler stayed at his official residence "Berghof" in the Alps more than anywhere else during his entire reign. Had another prime minister in his time established his main residence and headquarters in distant mountains, he would have been portrayed as eccentric. The frequent mention of the place proves that it took over the consciousness of the Nazis. Everyone was fascinated by the place, even though the idea is so absurd that it seems like out of several legends. This place created the Nazi consciousness. It is the epitome of Nazi rule and one of its clear symbols.

In Berghoff, Hitler also convened his crucial military meetings and made his fatal decisions. Among them was probably the decision on the "final solution". Germany looks very clean and picturesque from the top of the mountain. The landscape is an ideal that should be unquestionably implemented elsewhere. From the heights all human beings seem to dwarf. This is the action of vertical arrogance. Whoever contemplates the world from the heights may think that he is an "eagle", a lone hero breathing "pure air" and all those below are like insects.

As partners in the "Berghof Experience", it was easy for German citizens to accept the rumor that "Jews traveled east to labor camps" and not delve into the subject, even if there were many inconsistent facts.

The Nazi army established by Hitler was developed following this line of thought. Many war professions whose field of action are between earth to the sky became his hallmarks. This is a huge intermediate field that has spread everywhere: the Nazi land army relied on parachute operations before faast attacks, the Air Defense Corps became very large and sophisticated and the like.

During the war, Hitler also took under hs command the German Air Force and the aviation industry. The total investment in weapons in the land and sea armies, as in tanks and submarines, was minimal compared to that in the field of aviation.

Some of the most revolutionary aerial weapons of the twentieth century, considered innovative even today, were invented in Nazi Germany. Famous ones include: the ballistic missile, the jet fighter, the cruise missle, the helicopter and the ground-to-air missile.

Under the circumstances Hitler developed the psychological symptoms of the Napoleonic complex. The Napoleon complex has a distinct vertical dimension. It develop in people who feel tiny and helpless in the face of the huge world that threatens them and as a result develop social aggression, which is expressed in a deep desire for control and oppression of others.Those who are dominated by the Napoleonic complex lacks the sense of wholeness. One of its features is photographic  memory and it is only pure facts that delight its soul. Human society is perceived by the owners of the Napoleonic complex as a machine built with perfect logical precision. In such a society there is no sense of naturalness or belonging and there are a huge number of competing souls.

Renowned psychoanalyst Henry Murray analyzed, in 1943, Hitler's personality for the American intelligence. Murray coined the term "Icarus complex" to describe a person with an alpha personality who does not recognize his limitations as a result of mental complexes, which cause an imbalance between his desire to succeed and the ability to achieve goals he has set. Such a person strives for a kind of overcompensation. Because of feelings of inferiority, he formulates grandiose aspirations for future achievement. He often exhibits elitism, driven by hubris and detachment from social reality. The massive ego of some celebrities is a type of such distortion, which can be called a malignant ego. They appear as a supernova star, which explodes after shining brightly for a short time. Politicians may demonstrate the same qualities and in extreme cases they have even reached their status thanks to them. Adolf Hitler is a historical example, for which this diagnosis is literally valid.