Dumb History of Hitler

After facing much criticism for the confusion surrounding the alliances in World War I, where even soldiers were unsure of who was fighting whom, Europeans created a sequel to the World War series. This time, with a clear villain: Adolf Hitler. His role in World War II took the world by storm—quite literally.

At that time though, Hitler was a surprising choice for the role. He failed his military fitness exam during World War I and his examiners declared him “unsuitable for combat and support duty, too weak and incapable of firing weapons.” So, he enlisted himself as a volunteer and relayed messages on the frontlines. He was awarded the Iron Cross for getting injured twice despite never being involved in combat. 

Nevertheless, one man who never doubted him was Hitler himself. He described himself as "the greatest actor in Europe," and wrote to a friend, "I believe my life is the greatest novel in world history." He could’ve done with a little less confidence.

Adolf, in German, means ‘Noble Wolf’. However, he was anything but noble. And calling him a wolf would be unkind to even the wolves of Wall Street. Hitler is the guy who famously misunderstood the book, “How to win friends and influence people”. He influenced many people to be terrible at being friends with each other.

Now, let me start from the beginning.

Born in Austria and also in 1889, Hitler’s primary schooling was unremarkable. His grades declined significantly in secondary school and never picked up. Hitler peaked way too early in his life. He had little interest in subjects that required rigorous study, which was all of them. He clashed with teachers, was disliked by his peers, and eventually had to repeat a year. And then things got even worse.

“Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized” - Adolf Hitler

After his mother passed away in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna to pursue an art career. Hitler's artistic style was that of a “moderately ambitious amateur,” making his painting impossible to distinguish from “hundreds of thousands” of similar works from the same period. Hence, his application to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was rejected, twice.

During the following years, Hitler, lonely and isolated, realized that other people’s pens were any day mightier than his paintbrush. He read voraciously and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

It is impossible to prove whether Hitler studied Nietzsche; Some believe that Hitler never read Nietzsche, and I believe that he read it but did not understand anything. This happens to most people. Nietzsche was purposefully difficult to read. Anyway, Nietzsche’s complicated ideas were of no use to Hitler. He picked up some catchphrases like “Superman” and the “will to power” and put them to infinite misuse. Alfred Baeumler claimed Nietzsche had prophesied the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany. Sure, Nietzsche was not a kind and nice philosopher who gave out candy to children. But he definitely did not prophecy this. For what it’s worth, Nietzsche wrote letters urging the great powers of Europe to attack Germany before it was too late. Nobody took him seriously and the rest is history, and so is everything I’ve written till now. 

After his unremarkable war antics during World War 1, Hitler was sent on a mission to spy on the German Workers Party on suspicion that they could be communist. But after he spied for a bit, he left the army and joined the Party instead. He had one job! He quickly moved to the top and renamed it Nationalsocialistiche Deutsche ArbeiterPartei. Even the Germans found it difficult to pronounce, so they called it Nazi Party. 

For an out-of-shape man who probably cannot climb a ladder, Hitler did quite well to rise to the rank of a Chancellor in Germany in such a short time. After sucking as a student, artist, soldier, and spy, Hitler picked up a profession where the bar is the lowest - politics. And he sucked at it too. He burnt the German Parliament, killed democracy, and pushed the bar further down. And as a dictator, he decided to suck one last time, this time at a more primordial level - as a human being.

“The masses are more likely to believe a big lie than a little one” - Adolf Hitler

Hitler hated God’s chosen people, the Jews. He hated the most famous jew of all time, Jesus Christ. So Nazis re-wrote the bible by reading between the lines, erasing some of the lines with a rubber, and writing fan fiction. They depicted Jesus as a military-like Aryan hero who fought Jews. You might wonder who is going to believe such absurdity. Well, people- Never underestimate their unparalleled capacity to believe in total nonsense. Even if the country’s literacy rate is over 90 percent.

Hitler brought the worst out of men. Ironically and unfortunately, he also brought the best out of those same men. The biggest crime committed by the highly efficient nazi soldiers was the failure to think. Adolf Eichmann, a German bureaucrat in charge of organizing and scheduling the deportation of Jews to the death camps, acted without any motive as he oversaw the killing of 11 million Jews, other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. He was neither perverted nor sadistic but terrifyingly normal.

“Mr. Chamberlain likes to take weekends in the country; I shall take countries in the weekend!” -Adolf Hitler

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler, green-lighting German annexation of Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia on the condition that Hitler wouldn’t ask for anything else in Europe. Britain giving permission to Germany to annex Czechoslovakia is the most British thing Britain could do. And coming back home after that to declare that he had secured "peace for our time” is perhaps the second most British thing a British Prime Minister could do. And him getting nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the British Parliament for this is only a cherry on the top. 

Swedish politicians suggested that if Chamberlain could be nominated for that, they might as well nominate Hitler too. And so, in 1939—the same year Mahatma Gandhi was nominated—Hitler found his name on the Nobel Peace Prize list. Neither won. But unlike Gandhi, Hitler did snag Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” title in 1938. I am glad that I don’t have to write jokes about politicians. Historically and geographically, Politicians are a joke. 

While Britain was in their usual self-congratulatory mood, Hitler had this to tell his generals, “Our enemies are…not men of action, not masters. They are little worms. I saw them in Munich.”

Anyway, had Hitler won the Nobel Peace Prize, he would have thanked the following people in his acceptance speech:

- Herbert Quandt, the majority shareholder of the BMW Group, for building a concentration subcamp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

- Ferry Porsche, for designing Hitler’s dream project, "The People’s Car," which went on to become the bestselling vehicle in the world, the Volkswagen Beetle.

- Richard Bruhn, one of the founding members of the Audi Group, for exploiting at least 20,000 slave laborers from the Leitmeritz concentration camp in their factory.

- Iconic French fashion designer Coco Chanel, for taking time to work as an intelligence operative for the Nazis.

- Hugo Boss, for designing and producing Nazi uniforms.

I may have forgotten to mention a few, but Hitler’s success would not have been possible without the support of any of these individuals.

Winston Churchill said, “There never was a war more easy to stop than World War II.” He was not entirely wrong. Leaders across the world should have seen Hitler coming. Hitler himself announced his plans a thousand times every time he had a mic. He even wrote a book about it: Mein Kampf.

There were more than 40 assassination plots on Hitler. All of them failed. Even Tom Cruise found this mission impossible in Operation Valkyrie.

“Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong” - Adolf Hitler

When the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker and also in April 1945. With that, Germany lost the World War series 2-0.

“Family is the smallest but most precious unit in the building of a State” - Adolf Hitler

Each of his personal relationships was more problematic than the last, and all of them ended in suicide. When Hitler prevented his niece, Geli Raubal, from marrying a man her parents had approved of, she tragically shot herself with one of his revolvers.

His second Girlfriend, Unity Mitford, begged Hitler not to go to war with her home country, the UK. When he did, she attempted suicide. Once again with one of his revolvers.

Hitler wanted a traditional housewife who cooked and cleaned for him. Brain, his eventual wife was uneducated and disinterested in Hitler’s affairs. Adolf Hitler married Braun in a bunker while Soviet soldiers approached Berlin. Shortly after saying their vows, husband and wife agreed to end their life together. 

When Hitler died, we thought that’d be the end of the Nazis. But like the most resilient of cockroaches, they keep popping up, fueled by their stubborn hate for minorities and knowledge. Neo-nazis are just nazis with an internet connection. It’s easy to spot them. These supremacists think they are better than everyone else and believe minorities are the reason for all their problems. If you spot them, how do you stop them? By deflating their inflated sense of superiority. By making them feel a bit insecure. And how do we do that? Easy, treat them like we treat our women. Next time they say someone’s taking their jobs, tell them it’s because of their clothes. Tell them they are just overreacting. Better yet, mansplain them that they are the problem. Definitely, do not make them presidents and prime ministers. One Hitler was too much Hitler.