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ABSTRACT: The ideas put forward by Hitler resonated with many Germans. Hitler was exquisitely tuned in to his own political fantasies--and was able to share his fantasies with others. Hitler's fantasies--conveyed by the words he spoke, resonated with many Germans. The German people were moved by the fantasies that moved Hitler.
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Joachim Fest (1973):
Were it not for the congruence between the personal and the social-pathological situation, Hitler could never have wielded such hypnotic power over his fellow-citizens. He could not have bewitched the masses if he had shared their secret emotions and incorporated all their psychoses into his own psyche. When he spoke, the masses met, hailed and idolized themselves. An exchange of pathologies took place.
Ronald Aronson (1983):
What is most remarkable about (Nazism) is that it became enough of a mass outlook for a movement, and then a society as a whole to be organized around it. In power, the Nazis were able to reshape reality until it conformed to the distorted fantasy.
In achieving his position, wasn't Hitler giving voice to the malignancy, the irrationality of the social forces that brought him to power? It distorts the course of events to describe the locus of the Final Solution as being Hitler. Among Nazis, there was general agreement about the "Jewish Problem:" how could it be solved?
"The chorus is the author."
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