Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini - Psychology of Leadership - Coursework Example

Hitler-Mussolini: Psychology of Leadership Psychology of Leadership means that the thoughts, perceptions and feelings of a leader are to be studied. The leaders whose way of thinking and feeling, I have to study are dictators and how they affected others. Dictators are leaders ruling absolutely and often oppressively. They hold complete autocratic control. The dictators I am referring to are Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Both of them were oppressive to or contemptuously overbearing toward others. Adolf Hitler was the German Chancellor of the Third Reich and Fuhrer. He dominated the world’s destiny for a decade being hailed by a majority of Germans with the fanatical minority worshipping him. He was considered the master of Europe because of the series of decisive victories which also convinced him that he was the greatest military commander of all time because of his infallible intuition. Instead of appealing to the intelligence of his audience, his speech was designed to appeal to the emotion. Benito Mussolini was an Italian politician, the leader of the National Fascist Party and one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He was an Italian dictator from 1922-1943 who founded the Fascist Party and was the editor of Avanti, the party’s organ. Being a socialist made him anti-clerical, antireligious, anti-imperialist, anti-monarchial and believed that to achieve a socialist society, direct action and violence must be achieved (Smyth, 1988) Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria-Hungary. His father, Alois, was the illegitimate son of Marianne Schickel-gruber who was a servant girl who had worked in a Jewish household. He later changed his name to Alois Hitler. Adolf was the son of his father’s third wife, Klara Poelzl Hitler, 23 years his junior. They were six children but only two reached the age of maturity, himself and a younger sister Paula, who died in 1960. Adolf’s adolescence was unusual because it lasted until his death. His intellectual, emotional, artistic and sexual development was not fully developed. He was famous for his temper tantrums. This is one aspect of Hitler’s state of mind. He seemed to have grown-up immaturely. (Waite, 1988) Benito Mussolini was born at Dovia on July 29, 1883. A devoutly Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father raised him. His mother had him baptized into the Roman Catholic and they attended mass on Sundays. His time at a religious boarding house was regarded as punishment by him comparing his experience to hell. He was once dragged by force to church when he refused to go to mass. He became anti-clerical like his father. As a young boy, he became someone who seemed to despise the Catholic Church and its teachings. He took after his father in his religious inclinations. That’s the reason why he treated the Catholic Church, specifically the Pope, harshly when he became a dictator. Mussolini was supportive of those who opposed egalitarianism which is a belief in human quality especially with respect to social, political and economic rights and privileges. It is a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among men. He was also influenced by Friedrich Nietzche’s anti-Christian ideas and negation of God’s existence. He admired such German Philosopher and poet famous for his concept of superman. It stated that the supreme egoist defied God and the masses, despised egalitarianism and democracy, believing in the weakest going to the wall and pushing them if they did not go fast enough. Because of his belief and admiration for Nietzche’s philosophical ideas which are anti-Christian and a negation of God’s existence, I made him a leader who attacked Christianity and the Catholic Church. He openly opposed to the Christian teachings so he wrote anti-Christian articles. If h only absorbed his mother’s examples and teachings, he could have surely grown to be a good Christian abiding by the rules of law so he would not turn-out to be a ruthless leader. The following events in his life will show hour Nietzche’s philosophical ideas and someone who did not believe in God’s existence. While still a young man, he proclaimed himself to be an atheist or someone who denies the existence of God. His audience was shocked many times when he called on God to strike him dead. He was against socialists who were tolerant of religion and also those who had their children baptized. For him there was no God as proven by science and the historical Jesus was ignorant and mad. Religion was considered by him as a disease of the psyche, Christianity was accused by him of promoting resignation and cowardice. For me, this is a very shocking and unbelievable utterances made by him in public. It is quite unacceptable for Christian believers and maybe for non-believers as well. Mussolini attacked Christianity and the Catholic Church vigorously Provocative and blasphemous remarks about the sacred host, Eucharistic bread which is given by the Catholic priest to devotes during the mass and Christ and Mary Magdalene’s love affair. According to him socialists who were Christian and who accepted religious marriage should be expelled from the party. The Catholic Church was denounced by him for its authoritarianism and refusal to allow freedom of thought. La Lotta di Classe, Mussolini’s newspaper had an anti-Christian editorial stance. Mussolini had a change of mind when he badly needed the Catholic Church’s support. The events which follow will prove his clever tactics. To gain the support of the Catholic majority in Italy, he appeased the Catholic Church leaders by allowing three of his children to receive communion. He married Rachele in a religious marriage ceremony although they already had a civil wedding 10 years earlier. A concordat or treaty, the La teran Pact, was signed by him with the Roman Catholic Church granting Vatican City independent statehood placing it under church law rather than Italian law. Italy’s state religion was then the Catholic religion. The church had authority over marriage again. Secondary schools taught Catholicism, birth control and free masonry were banned, subsidies were received by the clergy from the state with tax exemption. Mussolini was praised by Pope Pius XI and the official Catholic newspaper announced that “Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy. After the conciliation, Mussolini then claimed that the church was subordinate to the state. He also referred to Catholicism as a minor sect and confiscated more issues of its newspapers. He was also excommunicated from the church. In 1932, he publicly reconciled with Pope Pius XI but took care so no photo of them showing him honoring the pope would be published in the newspapers. He aimed to persuade the Catholics that Fascism was Catholic and that he was a believer spending some of his time praying. The Pope then referred to him as a man sent by providence. His party ordered pronouns referring to him to be capitalized like those referring to God. So we can conclude that he uses the Catholic Church and its followers to his advantage and damped them again when he didn’t have any need for them as being implied by the event which would follow. His anti-clericalism was again asserted by Mussolini in 1938. He was an outright disbeliever. He once said that Islam was more effective as a religion than Christianity and that the papacy must be rooted out for being a malignant tumor in the body of Italy. When he lost his power in 1943, he spoke more about God and the obligations of conscience. Then he was convinced of Pope Pius XI’s statement that he was sent by God to redeem society. According to Rachele, his widow, he remained irreligious till the later years of his life. He was given a Catholic Funeral in 1957 (Benito). Now I’ll touch on Hitler’s life and the reason why he became so cruel and why he hated the Jews so much. The practice of child rearing when Hitler was young had a very negative effect on him till his adulthood. While he was young, ministers and doctors believed that children were born with the devil in them. Such beliefs were written in their child rearing books. Beat the devil out of them is an idiomatic expression but the Germans and others European Countries literally believed such saying so they beat their children until they were unconscious. Hitler regularly experiences such cruelty. To avoid such beating as punishment, children had to be obedient and obey all authority figures and adults. Hitler was not freed from beatings when his father died. Since the school teachers knew that he no longer had a father, they took over beating him just for the sake of keeping him disciplined. Most of the Germans and eastern European children experienced such harsh discipline. To feel angry or to rebel towards their parents or adults were not allowed for children those days. Those beatings were for their own good so they should do the same when they have their children so the devil couldn’t make them Undisciplined. So Hitler grew up with such anger and hatred which he inflicted as punishment to the Jews. As a result of such inappropriate child rearing, adults lacked empathy or they did not know how to be sympathetic. The ordinary Germans were given permission to kill, beat, torture and Jew, Gypsy, homosexual or child born with birth defects – so called feeble minded German children. For Hitler Jesus was a man to fight the Jews. Since he was a Roman Catholic, he should have known that Jesus was both a pacifist and a Jew so he would not fight his own kind. Hitler’s thoughts were like hallucinations of persons addicted to the drug LSD which was found the year he started the Holocaust. So it can be concluded that he wasn’t in his right mind when he did such cruelty because he was high on drugs (What were the origins). . For Hitler, Germany must have people with no other ethnic groups allowed to be citizens. The Jews could do the same of not allowing them to have other citizens than their kind but for Hitler they could not stay in Germany. The German Jews had their own state-within-a-state in Germany for years. They had their own language (Yiddish), their own flag, the flag of Israel at present, their own anthem which is Israel’s national anthem now. Hitler didn’t want them to have their own nation on German soil and also to assimilate into the German culture. He didn’t like them to dominate German culture with their liberal ideas, modern art and architecture and their progressive ideas. After becoming the Fuhrer when the president died, a race and resettlement office was set-up so the German Jews could go to Palestine which was under British rule having strict immigration policy of keeping the Jews out. Those who could migrate to Israel were just the Young Jews with agricultural or blue-collar skills. Hitler sneaked professional Jews into Palestine allowing them to take their wealth with them. Hitler wanted a pure German race so he didn’t want the Jews to have sex with the Germans. The Jews must leave their country so they would have a pure German people and German culture. There were also mass killings of Jews in Poland. When the Germans occupied the Poles territories, they gave permission to the Poles to do as they please with the Jews. So they were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Poles. The worst dictatorships and the greatest inequalities in South America are under Catholic administration. Examples of them are Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. The Vatican was the first“state” to recognize Hitler’s third Reich (2000). Dictators’ behavior has the potential of catastrophes for a whole nation like those of Ahmadinejad, Idi Amin etc. Not all psychopaths or mentally ill persons are within the walls of psychiatric hospitals and penal institutions, there were a few of them who were clever enough to be part of mankind’s history thus creating catastrophes. These misfits rule an insane ideology or belief system surrounded with mad people, devoted followers and blink killers who do not know what it means to be feeling like a human being. Doctors began to educate people on the disturbing category of human beings called psychopaths in the nineteenth century. History proves that they have always been with us. A mad leader can be such about an ideology, religion or cult like Hitler symbolizing Nazism, Stalin degraded communism and Khomeini actualized political Islam. Megalomania or mania for great or grandiose performance is a common character for any dictator like Hitler as Fuhrer, Nero who had exalted himself to a god and Stalin, the father of Russians. They used their intelligence in the service of their immoral drives as belief, aggression, and power. Lofty words and emotional speech, despite lack of genuine content, became an easy thing for a fairly intelligent psychopath. They can imitate emotional expressions suggestive of some higher emotions such as compassion, sympathy, sociability, patriotism, and morality even if they could hardly fool an intellectual observer because since there is little if no authenticity to their words. They are distinguished from sane leaders through their fraudulent but emotional speeches. A dictator would never abandon the idea that he is above all considering himself as God’s handpicked leader. Fear is used as their guiding principle and policies like silencing individuals or groups in a population. Being widespread in all dictatorial systems, fear is a powerful motivator to enforce tolerance, obedience, and to make people submit to authority. Fear from god or state is always present in all totalitarian, religious or cult systems such as in Italy under Mussolini, Nazi Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and Iran under Islamic regime. The threat of punishment, torture and being killed is widely dispersed enough to cause fear. Though a psychopath has no real affection, he can inspire affection through some fanatical degree in others. He just adapts to any situation having no genuine human qualities. Psychopaths have no genuine human qualities. Psychopaths have no human feelings, no feelings of guilt on remorse no matter what happens. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were both dictators but there is a big difference with regard to their psychopathic inclinations. For me, Hitler’s cruelty was so much thinking that the Jews were deprived of all civil rights, publicly humiliated and murdered in an attempt to eliminate the entire Jewish people. He also sentenced thousands of children to death although he loved them. Because of his ambition he initiated the so-called blood purge of June 30, 1934 when he ordered the murder of Captain Ernst Rohm, SA (Storm Troopers) leader and 150 SA leaders. He hated the Jews so much so he even devised a plan to get rid of them in Germany so he was able to bring the German Jews to Poland. Hitler gave permission to the Poles to do whatever they want with the Jews so the Poles slaughtered them. During Hitler’s term approximately 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany upon Hitler’s order. The Jews were marked for total annihilation. Hitler hated them so much because of the fanatic Nazi belief that they were the carriers of a genetic in heritance that mortally threatened German and Christian values. That’s why Hitler did not want the Jews to mingle and to have sex with the Germans. He wanted a pure German nation. For him total destruction of all the Jews wherever they were would be the effective solution. For Mussolini, he was not as evil as Hitler. His political ambition and his childhood hatred for the Catholic religion were the reasons why he despised Catholicism. There were times when he had good terms with the Pope but then it was really for the sake of rising to power to achieve his leadership ambition. What he did and the words he uttered against Jesus, the Catholic Church and its teachings and the way he treated the Popes shocked the Catholic world but then he didn’t initiate mass killings of people or what is termed as massacre as what Hitler had done. For me, their being dictators proved that they were psychopaths who were not in their right state of mind during the time they carried on their evil deeds. For Hitler, the multitude of people he ordered killed while it was irreverence for the church in the case of Mussolini. References Waite, R (1988). Adolf Hitler, Collier’s Encyclopedia, (Volume 12, 158-161). Macmillan Educational Company. Smyth, H.M. (1988). Benito Mussolini, Collier’s Encyclopedia, (Volume 17, 103). Macmillan Educational Company. Rashidian, J., (2010). A look into the Psychology of Dictators, Butterflies and Wheels. Retrieved fromhttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/a-look-into-the-psychology-of-dictators/ Abelard.org. (2000). The psychology and development of Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber. Retrieved from http://www.abelard.org/hitler/hitler.php Benito Mussolini. Wikipedia.org. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini Read More