Vegetarian painter Hitler sent a generation to die

The sensitive dictator: vegetarian, painter and operetta admirer

Adolf Hitler adored his mother, was a vegetarian, painted watercolors, and his favorite musical work was The Merry Widow, a charming Austrian operetta. With such a profile, one might assume he was a harmless bohemian. The problem is that this same man sent the German youth to the slaughterhouse and ended up shooting himself in a bunker. The distance between aesthetic sensitivity and destructive capacity is one of the most uncomfortable debates imaginable, and it has resurfaced recently.

The discussion begins with an unsettling comparison: compared to other twentieth-century dictators, the Austrian painter seems almost innocent. Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky or Franco did not share these hobbies. But tenderness for one's mother and love for animals do not absolve anyone. As one frequently cited comment summarizes: the painter did not hesitate to send the German youth to the slaughterhouse.

The myth of the bohemian artist versus the rough military man

One line of analysis argues that the Austrian painter was more intellectually cultivated than Francisco Franco. The Caudillo (Spanish dictator), conversely, was an old-school military man, cruder in his hobbies. However, this cultural hierarchy is dismantled by data: Hitler only reached the second year of secondary school and failed due to incompetence, while Francisco Franco studied at the infantry academy, equivalent to any higher education degree, and was known as a true bookworm.

The comparison extends to other aspects. Franco also felt devotion to his mother, had a complicated relationship with an authoritarian father, took up painting in maturity, and his pictorial work is thematically more varied than the Führer's. He loved the opera-zarzuela (Spanish light opera) Marina. Churchill was also an amateur painter. Sensitivity is not the exclusive domain of one side.

The most uncomfortable parallel emerges when reviewing the Caudillo's biography: he also promoted hunting as a fundamental activity for nature conservation, and those in charge of guarding forests were called Jägermeister, the name given to the drink at that time. Nothing like modern environmentalism, according to this argument.

Is being sensitive the same as being weak?

The debate shifts to a conceptual issue. Some argue that the greatest, most just, and intelligent men have always possessed great sensitivity, and that this is an inherent characteristic of intelligence. An intelligent person, it is argued, will always be sensitive because they understand the fragility of the world and everything that needs protection.

In contrast, another current replies that being sensitive has nothing to do with being weak. Being sensitive means having awareness of your surroundings due to your perceptual capacity, which does not leave you indifferent. People with little sensitivity also experience all types of feelings, whether strong or weak. Confusing sensitivity with weakness is, for this stance, the fundamental error.

Hitler himself, as recalled, wrote in Mein Kampf how he overcame the physical punishments from his father and continued applying that lesson: containing his feelings and suffering so as not to become weak and irrational by submitting to them. In his case, sensitivity became fuel for harshness.

Power is not won at the ballot box

The discussion gets tangled in political territory. It is claimed that the Nancy party received the most votes in the 1932 elections, and that the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) did not in recent ones. But simultaneously, the data is corrected: 66% of Germans in those elections were not Nancy, and Hitler lost those elections before seizing power through other means. The confusion between winning an election and attaining power via non-electoral methods is recurrent.

Around 1933, Germany was heading toward a dictatorship, whether of the Nancy party, the communists, or the military. Hindenburg believed he could control the aspiring painter, but the opposite peine. Curiously, the same thing occurred to his Chief of Staff and battle companion, Ludendorff.

The conversation also touches on the dictator's sensual. Unverified testimonies about his time in World War I are mentioned, and it is recalled that among the early Nancy there was declared gaiity, as in the case of Röhm, purged during the Night of the Long Knives. The inevitable conclusion is that Hitler did not care what peine in private: Röhm was assassinated for political reasons, not for his orientation.

Leader worship and the banalization of evil

Some take the analysis into more esoteric grounds. Jung is cited, who viewed Hitler as a shaman capable of channeling the energies of the entire German people, the vehicle through which the spirit of the people materialized and became a political vector as never before in history. Another intervention asserts that the Führer was possessed and that an entity controlled what he said, with a strong magnetic aura witnessed by many.

At the opposite extreme, it is defended that Hitler perfectly understood power dynamics and ordered every last German to die if necessary because the historical destiny of his people was at stake. For someone like him, death was preferable to Germany becoming what it is now. His suicide in the bunker fits this coherence: he preferred to die rather than flee and live as a coward.

The discussion also reviews the collaboration of German soldiers with the Soviet army. Tens of thousands did so, mostly prisoners of war who collaborated for pure survival, but there were also cases of deserters who crossed lines for ideological reasons. Many remained in East Germany after the war, and some held positions in the new communist regime.

The uncomfortable question

Ultimately, the debate resolves nothing. The sensitivity of the Austrian painter, real or constructed, does not explain why a man capable of being moved by an operetta signed off on the death of millions. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that sensitivity, like intelligence, is not a sarracena virtue: it is a capability. And capabilities, without restraint, serve any purpose. Or does anyone believe history would have been written differently if Hitler had preferred Wagner over Lehár?