HITLER AND STALIN’S UTOPIAN DREAMS
Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin both cast long shadows over the 20th century. One, the leader of Nazi Germany, hoped to create a vast new empire underpinned by his racist beliefs; the other wanted to build the first communist state in the fledgling Soviet Union. But despite the differing nature of their goals, the two men were motivated by the same overarching passion: the desire to create what they believed was a utopia here on Earth. Unlike other dictators, many of whom resemble Mafia bosses, these two each thought that they had uncovered the secret of existence.
Yet as individual personalities, Hitler and Stalin could scarcely have been further apart. Over the last 30 years, in the course of writing various history books and making many historical documentaries, I’ve met a number of people who knew the dictators personally. And their recollections confirm that it was most certainly not the same thing to walk into a meeting with Stalin as to walk into one with Hitler.
Hitler, unlike Stalin, was the archetypical ‘charismatic’ leader. Such leaders rely primarily on the power of their own personalities to justify their office, don’t fit well into bureaucratic structures and project an almost ‘missionary’ aura. Ulrich de Maiziere, a general staff officer who attended meetings with Hitler in the last part of the Second World War, witnessed the dictator’s supposed charismatic allure firsthand. He saw “men who came to tell [Hitler] it could not go on any longer – and even said that to him. And then he talked for an hour, and then they went and said: ‘I want to give it another try’... He had an enormously strong will, you know, and he had powers of persuasion that could gloss over any rational arguments.”
Personal magnetism
Karl Boehm-Tettelbach, a Luftwaffe adjutant at
