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Hell doesn’t seem all that hellish from your description. There’s no daily disembowelment or annual immolation?
… and Vox. With Nickleback playing over the PA system.
My understanding was that Hitler as a young man, had Jewish friends, and only became a ferocious antisemite in the aftermath of Germany’s losing WWII, and suffering through an economic collapse. In such circumstances people tend to look for scapegoats. Does the book argue that those experiences explain his antisemitism?
One of my worries is that if our huge and growing debt causes an economic collapse, the scapegoats will be big business, Wall St. and ‘the Jews.’
Linkin Park. And Korn.
Yes, this appears to be a “kinder, gentler, Hell”. Hitler is silent on whether things used to be different in Dante’s day.
This is from the prologue, and is about one quarter of the entire description of Hell. This benign Hell is simply a plot device to enable reflection upon Hitler’s life and career, informed by events since 1945. Denizens of Hell seem to be confined in small groups, isolated from other groups. Hence there is no opportunity to compare notes with Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the rest of the crowd, although he does comment upon them in the conclusion.
According to the narrative in the book, it was in Vienna, in the years after his arrival in 1908 and prior to the Great War, that Hitler came to his anti-Semite, anti-democratic, and German nationalistic (opposed to the multi-cultural Austro-Hungarian Empire) views. This is consistent with Mein Kampf, where he writes that he had never thought much about these issues before being personally exposed to them in cosmopolitan Vienna.
The fictional Hitler writes that being down and out in Vienna formed his view of economics and the condition of the working class, “I also learned that being a simple worker in a harshly competitive capitalist world is no fun.”
You didn’t see mine? I said Nickelback on the PA system. And every Christmas they put Jose Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad on a loop.
It’s not unique to the author. Some (myself included) believe that Hell is more exile than torture. The torment comes from within, having to live with the knowledge that God wants nothing to do with you.
AFAIK, the idea that sinners are sadistically tortured comes more from Dante than from the Bible.
Too soon
Right on time.
Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington has died aged 41
If I’m not mistaken, Jesus discusses hellfire and eternal torment for sinners. Or was that Paul?
At 300 baud.
It’s tragic. Or something.
I’m sad he’s dead, but not that he won’t make any more “music.”
I never heard of the dude but “but not that he won’t make any more “music” is stone cold hearted
Looks like an intriguing read. Thanks for the review.
John,
From the point of view of a deeper understanding of Hitler, it is a viable plot device. However, theologically in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, Hell has a particular function. If recognition of sin and punishment for it are nowhere to be found in this book, then the author runs the risk of appearing brazen and amoral. If the author doesn’t care about that he can run & rerun the historical analysis as long as he likes. For this reason, even though the book may be a technical success, I think it would be an artistic failure.
Regards,
Jim
Thanks, John Walker.
Harry Shearer (a writer for Spinal Tap among other things) had an NPR show called “Le Show”. One of the recurring bits was “Nixon in Heaven” which described Nixon in the afterlife.
Sample bit ( from memory)
Nixon: There they go again, praising the Big Guy.
HR Haldeman: Well he deserves praise, doesn’t he?
Nixon: Uh, of course He does. Of course He deserves praise. But uh, does he deserve ALL the praise? Can’t someone else have a little praise now and then?
Nixon in Heaven is funny in a way Nixon in Hell could never be. Brilliant.
And it allows you to edit Wikipedia pages, but always removes your edits.
Isn’t the “Black Internetz” just another name for Twitter?
The key to understanding Hitler is will – as in “triumph of the will.” He understood himself as personally embodying the destiny of the German nation and the Aryan race, and only through his will would Germany find that destiny. One reason he launched the war, despite his generals’ (and especially Donitz’s) protests that they were not ready for it, was that he was aware of his own mortality (he was aware of plots against himself and assumed he would eventually meet his end in an assassination), and since he alone possessed the requisite will to do what was necessary for Germany to fulfill its destiny, he had move to quickly.
Only two outcomes were thinkable for Hitler: Either victory or annihilation. He had nothing but contempt for those of his generals (like von Paulus) who surrendered rather than committed suicide. They were not “all in” on the war like he was, in a cosmic sense. Closest to his thinking were the Goebbels family, who not only committed suicide, but poisoned their own children on the grounds that a world without National Socialism was not a world that could be lived in.
The book seems to imagine Hitler in hell as something akin to the German generals after the war: Rehashing the war and strategy with old comrades and even old enemies. Hitler had nothing but contempt for such a future because in his mind it was cowardly: Someone who could imagine this future did not have the requisite will to triumph in the first place. The only thinkable future was victory, and the only bearable alternative was annihilation.
According to Siegried Knappe in his book Soldat, the commander of the Berlin garrison shortly before the end invited Hitler to don a helmet and die fighting in the streets at the side of his soldiers. Hitler rejected the idea on the grounds that he would not die in the streets like a dog, and furthermore because the fate he most feared would be to be wounded and/or captured, to then be paraded in the streets of Moscow in a cage. If his will could not triumph, Hitler would express that will negatively in annihilation, to the point of having his corpse destroyed after he died.
Imagine on dying that Hitler discovers that he is not annihilated, but in fact lives on in a metaphysical prison far more profound than any Moscow cage. The mere fact of his own existence would be torture to him, as it would be continuing proof of the failure of his will, the one thing unbearable to him. Eva Braun would be no consolation to him, as her existence would be further proof of that failure, since he tried to annihilate her as well. The last thing imaginable for him in such a circumstance is sitting around, smoking a pipe and discussing his failures. I think he would rage away at God and the world, like he did in the bunker, but for eternity.
I seem to remember , from my scant Presbyterian upbringing, that hell was being separated from and eternally denied access to God.
History never repeats itself exactly. There will be other scapegoats.
I look forward to O.J. Simpson In Hell.
If you read his incredibly creepy book, If I Did It, you’ve gotten all the preview you’d ever want.
“Hell” is a plot device the author’s using, and apparently he does so effectively. I’d have rolled my eyes the minute I read about a scaly red creature poking Hitler with a pitchfork.
Where someone picks up the phone at random intervals….
Heh. You’ll have no idea how large the Darknet and Dark Web are until you begin to peel the .onion.