Hitler the buffoon

In an interview with documentary maker Laurence Rees, Steven Bates says Rees has made it his life's work to interview former Nazis in an attempt to uncover "what they saw in a figure we have always viewed as slightly absurd as well as frightful."

It seems to me that Hitler only looks absurd in retrospect. And that after decades of parodies like Springtime for Hitler, Hogan's Heroes and other pop culture artifacts. Nazi Germany and Hitler himself easily lend themselves to caricature: The mustache, the Nazi drag, the goose-stepping, the swastika, the veneration of the blond "Aryan" look.

Hitler wasn't just a buffoon in need of an extreme makeover. What looks ridiculous now from the comfortable distance of more than 60 years are just the outward trappings. The parades and rallies, maybe even the good-looking blonde women, may have attracted some to join the party, but most people joined and carried out Nazi policies because they believed in what they were doing.

The world moves faster these days. We're already making fun of Osama bin Laden. And to us Westerners there is much that is absurd: The 72 virgins, the dream of restoring the medieval caliphate, the multiple wives and the beard. And then there's Saddam Hussein. Once you've seen a man in his underwear, it's hard to take him seriously. Add in his novels, the flowery "mother of all battles" rhetoric and his (again) distinctive mustache and you can see how Saddam parodies have provided late night TV with a rich source of material.

Yet, as Norm Geras points out, these absurd-to-our-eyes trappings have not discouraged their followers.

It's possible there are political leaders of such manifest intelligence, dignity and other admirable qualities that they couldn't possibly appear as absurd - buffoons - within any framework of belief. I'm not sure. However, given what we know about how much systems of human belief have accommodated that is utterly preposterous (in light of available evidence, that sort of thing), there seems no great obstacle in the way of absorbing the fact that a figure of absurd appearance within one framework of belief should appear within another as someone to be followed, even worshipped. Belief systems that can clothe absurdities in the garb of unquestionable truth will surely have no more difficulty in presenting otherwise laughable figures as the representatives or incarnations of that truth.

One doesn't need to refer to the past, or to one of the most atrocious episodes in the historical record, to see this. Consider how many people there are worldwide right now looking towards a would-be religious leader who on any basis of testable knowledge appears grotesque - looking to him as a heroic, inspiring figure. And for all those who are his followers or supporters, there are others who are excusers, since between things of definite colour there will always be shades of accommodation and indulgence. On a lesser scale, we have today in this country a politician possessing many of the qualities of a buffoon - to speak only of those - and there were enough people willing to campaign and vote for this man at the last general election to secure him a seat in parliament at the expense of a better, non-buffoon, candidate. There were even, at the time, voices from the centre-left telling us that his victory was something to be celebrated.

Maybe it's an Anglospheric thing, this tendency to ridicule our enemies. I don't think it's wrong, necessarily; they deserve ridicule. But it may mislead people into believing such people are harmless or not worth bothering about.

On the other hand, it sure beats the tendency to romanticize vicious thugs and murderers.