s******r
发帖数: 5309 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: sgrastar (Theodore), 信区: Military
标 题: Re: 疮破vs希特勒
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Sep 28 21:01:55 2016, 美东)
凑巧NYT发表了一篇关于Ullrich的希特勒新传记的书评。在这篇书评里只字未提Trump
的名字，但如果你把作者总结的希特勒的性格特征里的希特勒换成疮破，一点都不会有
违和感。即使本人一直认为疮破是个彻头彻尾的法西斯，这样的相似依然让人不寒而栗。
• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself
” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich
calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and
penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his
capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores
Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths
and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze
and exploit situations.”
• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity”
that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the
latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A
former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful
that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth”
and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of
lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”
• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds
readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his
audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of
moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle
classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular
elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his
speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-
conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich
writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of
hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and
resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore
law and order.
• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising
“to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was
typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age
for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in
hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only
decline and decay.”
• Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and
reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted
larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases”
consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the
future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery,
arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not
the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,”
Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator
among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the
masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled
down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very
last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
• Hitler’s rise was not inevitable, in Mr. Ullrich’s opinion. There
were numerous points at which his ascent might have been derailed, he
contends; even as late as January 1933, “it would have been eminently
possible to prevent his nomination as Reich chancellor.” He benefited from
a “constellation of crises that he was able to exploit cleverly and
unscrupulously” — in addition to economic woes and unemployment, there was
an “erosion of the political center” and a growing resentment of the
elites. The unwillingness of Germany’s political parties to compromise had
contributed to a perception of government dysfunction, Mr. Ullrich suggests,
and the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed “a man of iron
” who could shake things up. “Why not give the National Socialists a
chance?” a prominent banker said of the Nazis. “They seem pretty gutsy to
me.”
• Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of
domestic adversaries who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity,
and by foreign statesmen who believed they could control his aggression.
Early on, revulsion at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes,
led some critics to underestimate the man and his popularity, while others
dismissed him as a celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s
entertainment.” Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion
that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would
neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and “fence Hitler in.” “As
far as Hitler’s long-term wishes were concerned,” Mr. Ullrich observes, “
his conservative coalition partners believed either that he was not serious
or that they could exert a moderating influence on him. In any case, they
were severely mistaken.”
• Hitler, it became obvious, could not be tamed — he needed only five
months to consolidate absolute power after becoming chancellor. “Non-
National Socialist German states” were brought into line, Mr. Ullrich
writes, “with pressure from the party grass roots combining effectively
with pseudo-legal measures ordered by the Reich government.” Many Germans
jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of
improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others
from speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press
was banned or suppressed and books deemed “un-German” were burned. By
March 1933, Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, “that his
government was going to do away with all norms of separation of powers and
the rule of law.”
• Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not
only become, in Mr. Ullrich’s words, “a mouthpiece of the cultural
pessimism” growing in right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also
the avatar of what Thomas Mann identified as a turning away from reason and
the fundamental principles of a civil society — namely, “liberty, equality
, education, optimism and belief in progress.” |
|
