10 LAWS OF TYRANNY: Adolf Hitler from Germany
Hieronymus Bosch. The Last Judgment (fragment), 1495–1505 / Art design: Olena Burdeina (FA_Photo) via Photoshop
He dreamed of becoming an artist but became the most ruthless dictator of the past century, orchestrated the genocide of the Jewish people, and started World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions. This is Adolf Hitler.
10 RULES OF HITLER’S RULE
I did not come into this world to make people better but to exploit their weaknesses
Adolf Hitler
RULE 1. BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN CHOSENNESS
The most notorious German dictator, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), was born in the small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn in April 1889. He did well in the monastery school and sang in the church choir. In 1900, he was admitted to a technical school in Linz, where his passion for drawing first emerged. Young Adolf decided he would become an artist.
In 1907, he went to Vienna to apply to the Academy of Fine Arts but failed in the second round. Nevertheless, the rector noted Hitler’s talent and advised him to pursue architecture instead. The following year, Adolf attempted to enter the Academy again — with even greater «success»: he was eliminated in the first round. He then tried to earn money by selling watercolor landscapes of Vienna as illustrated postcards…
And how could such a failure, crushed by circumstances, rise to lead civilized Germany and turn it into a mindless herd? This required an unshakable belief in his own uniqueness.
Hitler found that belief during World War I (holding the rank of corporal, he served as a dispatch runner at headquarters)… After being wounded and recovering, he ended up in Munich, where he was shocked by the anti-war sentiments among German civilians. Hitler primarily blamed the Jews for this.
In August 1918, he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, an honor rarely given to infantrymen.
The peace imposed on Germany after the war left him bitter and enraged — it seemed humiliating. Suddenly, Adolf decided that he knew how to save his people — and, along the way, conquer the world.
RULE 2. SHOW THAT YOU ARE THE PEOPLE
By the end of 1930, the number of unemployed in Germany had doubled, reaching three million (Hitler blamed the economic downturn on the Jews), and by 1932, unemployment had risen to nearly 30% of the working-age population.
Two major shocks — hyperinflation in 1923 and the Great Depression of 1929 (following the stock market crash in the U.S.) — had driven the country into a dead end. People lost faith in democracy and the rationality of capitalism. That’s when Hitler appeared, right on cue, with his ideas of national rebirth, the renewal of Germany, a new man, a new Jerusalem…
All Nazi ceremonies were modeled after religious rituals. Hitler, a Catholic, understood well the power and appeal of the sacred. This was his genius — he made the people believe he was one of them, and for them, he became a messiah.
The Nazi Party, which had barely garnered 2.8% of the vote in the 1928 parliamentary elections, received 37% of the electorate’s support in 1932 with its radical slogans.
RULE 3. TAKE CONTROL OF THE COUNTRY
On February 3, 1933, at a meeting with his admirals and generals, Hitler announced the ultimate goal of foreign policy: «the conquest of living space in the East and its ruthless Germanization».
On February 27, the German Reichstag caught fire. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was blamed for the arson. That very day, President Hindenburg issued the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended many civil liberties — personal freedom, freedom of assembly, speech, and the press…
Hitler was becoming the holder of dictatorial powers. Historians consider this decree one of the key steps in the creation of the Nazi state in Germany. They also propose the theory that the Nazis themselves may have been involved in starting the fire…
RULE 4. GET RID OF OTHER PARTIES
Under Hitler’s leadership, the Nazi Party became the largest party in the German Reichstag, elected through democratic means. He was appointed Chancellor in 1933, and after the party’s election victory, the Reichstag (parliament) passed the Enabling Act in March of that year. This act transferred all legislative power to Adolf Hitler.
The law granted the Cabinet the right to pass laws without the Reichstag’s involvement for four years. Its official title was «Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich.»
By the end of June, the other parties had been so intimidated by Hitler that they longed only for dissolution. And on July 14, 1933, it was officially declared that there was only one legal political party in Germany — Hitler’s Nazi Party.
President Hindenburg died in August 1934, and Hitler immediately merged the offices of Chancellor and President into a single dictatorship, calling himself the Führer («leader») of the new German Reich.
The Weimar Republic ceased to exist, and the Third Reich emerged — a one-party dictatorship based on the ideology of National Socialism: totalitarian and autocratic. Hitler set the goal of destroying Germany’s Jews and establishing a New Order — the rebirth of the nation.
RULE 5. CREATE YOUR OWN «HOLY SCRIPTURE»
How did Hitler become a writer? He simply took and wrote Mein Kampf (German for My Struggle). It’s known that he didn’t use a typewriter or write by hand — while in prison, he dictated the text to Rudolf Hess.
In this book, Hitler divided people into categories — higher and lower types. At the top, according to him, was the German — fair-skinned, with blond hair and blue eyes. Hitler called this type Aryan, claiming it was the superior race. Jews and Slavic peoples were classified as inferior…
When Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, it sold poorly. But after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, sales reached the millions. It became customary to give the book as a gift to newlyweds, high school graduates, and so on. Hitler earned a considerable sum from its sales — not every writer can boast of that.
There were even some true admirers of his «masterpiece».
The 700-page treatise by Hitler, begun in 1924 while he was imprisoned after the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich and first published several years later, is so unreadable that, despite its widespread distribution during the Third Reich, it is unlikely that most Germans ever opened the book. It is filled with pompous, difficult-to-understand statements, historical trivia, and tangled ideological threads.
Both neo-Nazis and serious historians alike tend to avoid it
These words belong to Sally McGrane, a journalist based in Berlin. Her article was published in June 2014 in the American weekly The New Yorker.
RULE 6. FIND AND DESTROY THE ENEMY
To defeat the enemy, you must first point them out to your people. And constantly remind them about this enemy through all means of propaganda. In fact, this is what Mein Kampf was written for. Then — destroy that enemy by all possible means and methods. This is exactly where war came in handy for Hitler. And the Holocaust.
RULE 7. CHOOSE YOUR SYMBOLISM
The swastika of Nazi Germany became a symbol of «belonging to the Aryans», a symbol of the German people’s national pride. At the same time, it is a symbol of absolute evil. In present-day Germany, displaying the swastika and other Nazi symbols is a criminal offense. A similar ban is in place in a number of European countries. Yet it was first used more than 5,000 years ago. In Sanskrit, svastika means «happiness» «well-being».
RULE 8. CREATE YOUR UNIQUE IMAGE
When analyzing the reasons that brought Hitler to the head of state and led Germany to disaster, we must consider all the components: the economic crisis, the political crisis, the loss of trust in the authorities, the people’s dashed hopes, the humiliation from defeat in World War I… But there was also another factor — the brand called Hitler.
In the 1920s, Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, not only documented the Führer’s rise but also significantly helped him craft a recognizable image. In his photos, the far-right leader always appeared confident and appealing. Hoffmann «edited» gestures, taught him how to pose, and chose his wardrobe, favoring stylishly tailored suits and ties.
To complete his image, Hitler hired another specialist — former circus performer and mystic Erik Jan Hanussen. In the early 1930s, after studying the bumps on Hitler’s skull and examining his palms, Hanussen told the Führer that he would undoubtedly rise to the top of power. Hanussen also trained the future leader in the art of public speaking, dramatic gestures, and the skill of holding pauses — everything that makes a strong impression on an audience.
As a result, Hitler meticulously prepared for public appearances and, during his speeches, tamed his audience. At the end of his address, he would exit abruptly — to leave them no time to recover or start asking questions.
RULE 9. YOUR TEAM IS HALF OF YOUR SUCCESS
As the saying goes, a king is made by his court. Hitler understood this well, and in his inner circle — among those who became the elite of the Nazi regime — were people much like himself, with similar complexes of inadequacy, imperfection, and so on. Himmler had poor eyesight, Goebbels had a lifelong limp… Many of them did not originally belong to the ruling elite but were determined to get there at any cost, each fighting their sense of inferiority in their own way.
To consolidate his power, Hitler used intimidation and fear. He created the SS, the Gestapo, and concentration camps, where Jews — as well as any opponents of the regime — were sent.
The genius of Nazi propaganda was Goebbels. His methods of turning ordinary people into zombies are still effective to this day.
The Russians are not a people in the commonly accepted sense of the word but a rabble displaying distinctly animalistic traits. This can be said with full justification of both the civilian population and the army
Joseph Goebbels, 1942
RULE 10. BECOME AN IDOL FOR THE INSIGNIFICANT
From a psychological perspective, Hitler’s success lay in turning the people into a crowd and tuning that crowd to his frequency. He clearly understood that each of his listeners was afraid of their fears, suffered from loneliness, and saw themselves as a worthless little person burdened with countless problems. And suddenly, next to them — there were others just like them, many of them, and now together they were a force.
Hitler grasped the mood of the crowd and learned to control its emotions. He shared the desperate energy of a cornered rat hungry for revenge.
The Führer promised to take the burden of solving all problems upon himself, and then there would be order in the country — all that was needed was to destroy those who stood in the way…
THE END OF THE DICTATOR
Hitler didn’t manage to live to a happy and carefree old age. Since January 1945, he had been in the bunker. On January 30, he made his last radio address, urging people to fight to the end, to the «final victory». In March, the last known footage of him alive was recorded.
On April 29, 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun, and the next day took his own life — together with her. Did he believe that this was what happiness looked like? And did he make his people happy?
10 LAWS OF TYRANNY: António de Salazar from Portugal
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