astrophobe:

I’ve been thinking very intently about that Humanizing Hitler garbage recently, and ”Hitler has never had his humanity stripped from him; in fact, he is [presented as] the epitome of humanity” is a superb sentence.

Another issue is that the Humanize Hitler trope almost exclusively humanizes Hitler using Nazi propaganda. These posts always feature Hitler’s love for animals, his vegetarianism, the humble simplicity of his lifestyle, his fondness for small children. The latter is a 100% total fabrication that exists exclusively in late-1930s Nazi propaganda. The others were, although perhaps true predilections of Hitler’s, also mostly manufactured by him in the interest of cultivating a useful image.

The idea that he loved nature is particularly important. The most baffling contradiction in the first generation of fascism is its attempt to harness hypermodern technology to achieve pre-industrial ends. One central facet of Nazi ideology was the ultra-conservative idealization of a rural, pastoral, preindustrial mode of Teutonic life. But the Nazi tools for winding back the clock were tremendously technological, from the cutting edge instruments of war to grossly disproportionate nouveau riche architecture. Had Hitler run Germany for many more decades, he would have transformed the landscape into a hyper-industrial hellscape in an attempt to reinvent pre-industrial Germany. To distract people from this truth, it was very important that he present himself as a man who loves nature and animals. The perception that the Fuehrer personally adored these simple preindustrial pleasures soothed concerns about Germany’s frantic industrialization.

Whenever you see a photoset of Hitler doing something nice in a pleasant place, like holding a child’s hand and walking in the forest, you should expect that the picture was taken under the supervision of Goebbels. We have these pictures today because, as soon as his photographer snapped it, Goebbels shipped that photo to the newspaper editors so they could print it and help bolster Hitler’s image. Reblogging these photos in 2015 may be the only way for you to lend your hand to the propaganda machine of the Third Reich.

(Source: platypusumwelt, via nonangelic-deactivated20180605)