San Diego school teacher praises Hitler for his "leadership qualities"
A Carmel Valley Middle School student told his father, Dr. Roy David “Hey dad, my teacher has a picture of Hitler on the wall.” This comment stunned Dr. David. And he asked his 12-year-old son to send him a picture. He described the image thus:
“And there's Adolf Hitler, a big, portrait-size picture of Hitler. And right next to Hitler is Gandhi and Martin Luther King and JFK. And each one of these people has some kind of inspirational quote written underneath them”
He sent the teacher an email asking for an explanation. But he received no reply. His son pursued the matter. And asked his teacher why she had a picture of Hitler on her classroom wall. The teacher replied,
“Hitler may have done some bad things but he had strong leadership qualities.”
Any reasonable person with a shred of humanity would instinctively understand there is nothing to celebrate about infamous mass murderers. This teacher, however, lacks that fundamental decency - and sees nothing wrong in inflicting a common pro-Hitler apologist trope on her class.
Late to the party — the picture had been up since the beginning of the semester — the school’s principal offered a verbose and flaccid, boilerplate apology.
This school principal needs to tour the classrooms more frequently. The school also has 20+ non-teaching administrators on staff. They should get more hands-on as well.
But back to the teacher.
The “yes, but” defense of Hitler is commonplace among the usual suspects. I once had a German-born neighbor who was a young girl during the Third Reich. After a glass of wine, she would say that Hitler was not all bad and had been led astray by the evil influence of some members of his circle.
In this, she is no different from current conservatives who, through revision of history curriculums, whitewash the country’s legacy so 7-graders, like Dr. David’s son, do not have to be upset that America has some despicable skeletons in its closet. Unlike post-war Germany, which faced its demons and is a better country for it.
What is this teacher's rationale? I doubt she was a girl in 1930/40s Germany. So whence her admiration of a monster? World War II has many outstanding leaders to celebrate. And this teacher does so with pictures of FDR and Churchill. Why does she feel the need to include their unconscionable enemy?
Is this teacher even right that Hitler had leadership qualities?
The answer is “no”.
Hitler's life is a three-part tale of evil. Childhood and WWI. The ascent to power. And the exercise of power.
The first part we can ignore. In the second part, he had a dream. Not a dream of inclusion and opportunity for society’s marginalized. Quite the opposite. He told Germans to judge people, not by the content of their character, but by the color of their religion.
His initial run at toppling the German government — the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch — failed. Hitler received a one-year prison sentence. And he used his time off to write the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), one of the most influential books few people have read. He was released in 1924 into a Germany of peace and prosperity and made little mark until the economy collapsed in 1929.
To his good fortune and Germany’s bad luck, Hitler was charismatic and a compelling orator with a love of violence and violent men. America has one of those — but neither exhibit any leadership skills. They both rely on audacity and bullying. This works because good people cannot believe bad people can be that evil. And because it gives the racists of the base permission to hate those they are already predisposed to hate. In 1930s Germany, that was the Jews. (NB. I do not say that Trump is Hitler. Only that they read the same playbook.)
Once in power, the dictator uses a skill set antithetical to good government. He keeps his subordinates warring with each other to prevent alternative power blocs. Paranoia becomes the coin of the realm and mistrust prohibits cohesion. It is an effective strategy to keep control. But it is not good leadership and it has little staying power - just ask Hussein, Mussolini, and Amin.
Hitler also got lucky. He could pursue Germany's goal of Lebensraum (living space) because his European neighbors were appeasers with no stomach for another continental conflict less than 20 years after the devastation of The Great War.
But the war did come. And with it, Hitler’s revealed his total lack of leadership abilities. You could argue, ironically, that ex-Corporal Schicklgruber was the Allies' most helpful General. Under his ‘leadership’ the Nazis repeatedly failed.
During the Batte of Britain, Hitler shifted the Luftwaffe's almost successful destruction of the RAF to devastating but militarily pointless bombings of civilians.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on America. (NB. I am not saying he would have avoided war with ‘Democracy’s Arsenal’ — but his declaration made it inevitable.)
He invaded Russia — guaranteeing he would lose the war.
He failed to equip Germany’s military for the cold of a Soviet winter. Thousands of German troops froze and starved to death — in the end, over 1,000,000 Axis troops were killed or wounded.
He compounded his error by refusing to let German soldiers retreat and regroup. And as a result, 100,000 troops of the German 6th Army were trapped and surrendered after the battle of Stalingrad.
He threw money away on an abortive attempt to build aircraft carriers. And his four massively expensive battleships were either sunk or holed up in port.
He focused on building a few costly, quality tanks while cheap, mass-produced vehicles proved the winning strategy.
He waited too long to send his Panzers to Normandy after D-Day — making it easier for the allies to establish a foothold.
Had Hitler possessed leadership qualities, he would have stuck to the pact with the Soviets and divided up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe with them. He could have consolidated his power in France and kept attacking Great Britain with U-boat blockades and airstrikes against RAF targets.
Western Europe would have been secure. Spain was pro-Nazi neutral, Switzerland was neutral, and Italy was an ally. Germany could have consolidated its presence in North Africa. An invasion of Europe, under those circumstances, would have been substantially more difficult.
There are many other items on Hitler’s list of shite decisions. But this is enough to show a sociopath from Germany’s outer boroughs lacked what it takes to lead an organization. Much less bring it to prosperity.
Further, any idea that Hitler was a great leader is foolish in the face of Germany’s reality in 1945. The allies had bombed the country to its foundation. It was bankrupt and exiled from the international community. And it is largely due to Truman and Marshall's leadership that the benighted country could reconstruct itself from the ashes of complete defeat.
Coincidentally, had Dr. David’s son been born when Hitler came to power he would have been the same age as he is now when Hitler’s failure was fully realized.