I just watched, on C-Span, an hour-long discussion between writer Ron Rosenbaum and novelist Martin Amis on the meaning of, or "explanation" of, Hitler. It was an engrossing hour, as one might expect, but I confess an abiding ignorance. I detected the same in both Rosenbaum and Amis.
I'm not sure Hitler can ever be "explained." Amis came close in describing Der FΓΌhrer as a "barely literate tramp" who failed at everything but "getting death up and running" β and as a unique mass murderer, in that Stalin's Ukrainian Terror of 1932-33, for instance, was understandable in terms of political ideology, whereas Hitler's Final Solution was, and remains, inexplicable as a whole. I think that's a fair comparative analysis; brutally pragmatic, but fair. Unfortunately, it leaves the phenomenon of Hitler impenetrable.
To some, the larger phenomenon of Nazism seems straightforward enough, which has always mystified me. I recall once having drinks with a professor friend β a Europeanist β and after discussing the political mechanics, so to speak, behind the rise of National Socialism, I remarked that its familiar narratives (to be found in Bullock, Taylor, Kershaw et al) failed to explain, to me, just how the hell Hitler pulled it off; how, that is, he managed to plunge one the world's greatest and most refined cultures into the basest of depravities. My friend responded, "What do you mean? It's all right there, one can trace it step by step."
True enough, yet in Hitlerism there was something β again, to me β that transcended the historically comprehensible. I hesitate to call it metaphysical, but still β¦
An hour later, I can no more "explain" Hitler than Rosenbaum or Amis could.