Charisma

I spent two days watching a Netflix Documentary entitled "The Dark Charisma of Adolph Hitler: Leading Millions into the Abyss."  It was a riveting documentary of the emergence of a man directly responsible for ultimately the killing of 50 million human beings and the eradication of much of eastern European Jewry of 6 million men, women and children within a span of just over a decade.  The documentary traced Corporal Hitler's experience in World War I, one of the bloodiest wars ever fought, complete with 2 million German war dead including the use of gas and its direct relationship to his extraordinary rise as Chancellor of Germany in 1933.  From an unknown corporal in WWI he led the world ultimately into the total war of WWII.  I have seen many documentaries of WWII but still I could not account for the Mesmer-like hold through oratory this one man held over millions in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland (the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia.) What was there in this man that he could cast a spell over some of the foremost intellectually sophisticated nations in central Europe to ultimately wage total war decimating Europe and the nation he claimed to love? 

German troops under Hitler's direction and with his generals' apprehension instructed the invasion of Austria and were met with flowers instead of bullets.  It was called Blum Krieg or war of flowers.  In the Sudetenland German troops again were met with flowers.  Hundreds of thousands of arms raised in Nazi salute paid homage to this heretofore unremarkable man.  He could speak and he could act making the German people feel worthy again after the loss of WWI and the reparations they had to pay for it.  Germans were humiliated but Hitler made them feel right again.  Add to the WWI reparations the 1929 Great Depression and a leader was needed to fill the vacuum of leadership and the impotence of German democracy.  Hindenburg hated the Bohemian corporal, as he called him, but Germany was devolving into violence and Hitler was the big Nationalist who told the German people what they wanted to hear that they were better than everyone else.   He told them he would lead them out of the abyss.  He told them he knew better than his generals and overruled their hesitation for war.  In the beginning it worked beyond their wildest dreams even marching into Paris until, against his generals' advice, he set his sights on the eastern front, Russia, and endured the Russian devastating winter with clothing not made for it.  Many German soldiers froze or starved to death.  Hitler told the soldiers it was their duty to die for the fatherland and he ordered his soldiers to march east toward Stalingrad where his fortunes changed.  In 1941 the US attacked by Japan declared war on the Axis powers.  D-Day followed with the allied ground invasion of Europe.  This nation with its allies defeated fascism, the greatest threat to mankind ever known and renewed the face of Europe.

Nationalist -- Hitler was a Nationalist.  Trump by his own admission is a Nationalist who tells his generals he knows more than they.  He lies consistently.  His speeches are short on specifics and long on platitudes rich with lies.  Up is down and down is up, black is white because Trump says it is and his followers believe him even in the face of the truth. He they think and as he tells them can be the only one who can pull the nation up from an abyss and has failed to fill hundreds of positions making him nearly a unitary executive.  Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels said:  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Trump calls the press the "enemy of the people" especially when it tells the truth about him.

I thought about the commonality of these two Nationalists.  What did/do they have in common?  Charisma is the binding tie.  Charisma as defined means personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm; a special magnetic charm or appeal.  Both took advantage of a sagging national ego -- Germany of WWI and the US, a nation which heretofore never lost a war now has.  It stalemated in Korea, lost in Vietnam, endured a nation of protest of its foreign policy, was devastatingly attacked on 9/11, went to war in Iraq based on lies, invaded Afghanistan which now reaches the number 17 years as the longest war this nation has ever fought with no end in sight.  Trump talked national pride, America First and verbally attacks many of our NATO allies and NATO itself aligning himself with the examples of dictators he would love to become.  He sees enemies where there are none because he plays to his 38% no matter the hate he spews.  Hate was Hitler's unification message and hate is Trump's secrete weapon used for a base that is sick of losing, thinks the "other" makes us lose and wants its national pride back.  Appeal to ignorant racists long a factor in American politics mix in charisma and it has been the recipe for success.  He did succeed beyond even his wildest dreams.

Russia though, like Hitler, will be Trump's downfall as the media shines a bright light on Trump's massive corruption and Mueller is about to pull the curtain away.  Is Trump our Manchurian candidate in league with Russia?  We had better find out lest there be no one to pull us out of the abyss this time and democracy may be lost to the ages.