Paul Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda (1933-1945)
The most disturbing thing about the elderly German woman I met wasn’t that she admired Hitler. It was that she otherwise seemed perfectly ordinary. Educated. Articulate. Rational. Her devotion was a reminder that authoritarianism doesn’t require irrational people. It requires people who have been persuaded that their leader restores their worth.
In the summer of 1983, on the banks of the Main River near Frankfurt, Germany, I met and spoke briefly with an old woman. The moment was frighteningly memorable. My introduction as Herr Hauptmann (Mister Captain) Adolph apparently sparked her memory and a secret heartfelt desire.
At the time I was commanding a military intelligence company in the U.S. Army’s 5th Corps, which was then arrayed along the key fault line of the Cold War: the heavily armed border between East and West Germany. For reasons that I never understood, she pulled me aside and began speaking in a hushed whisper so that nobody nearby could overhear her. My unfortunate surname — Adolph — had awakened something within her that she felt compelled to share. Her subsequent darkly surreal monologue held me spellbound. Her topic was, “the man, Adolf Hitler, Der Fuehrer.”
For the better part of 10 minutes she spoke lovingly and longingly of the sociopathic narcissist who was responsible for the mass extermination of six million Jews; hundreds of thousands of American and Allied deaths; the subjugation of Poland, Netherlands, France, Belgium and more; multiple millions military and civil losses in Russia; including the utter destruction of the Third Reich by Allied Forces when Hitler refused to admit defeat; and with a final conservative tally of over 4 million German citizens killed or missing.
I was stunned into silence. The old woman appeared normal in all other respects: well-educated and eloquent. She did not appear to be mentally impaired in any other aspect of her behavior. She left me shell-shocked. I spent years mulling over that brief disturbing interlude. I came to understand much later that the old woman was a True Believer, as described in Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic work on the psychology of mass movements. How did this happen? The fascist dictator empowered her with his manifold speeches on “the greatness of the German people.”
Hitler gifted her a positive self-image with his litany of lies, which were ably amplified by his Jew-hating and conspiracy-theory-propagating Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
Between them, they made those among the German populace who saw themselves as maligned and forgotten, feel powerful. Few things are more addictive than power.
She was not alone. Millions of Germans followed Hitler down the rabbit hole and into the dark abyss — leading ultimately to their own annihilation. Der Fuehrer ‘s multiplicity of mortal sins and serial deceptions clearly could not vanquish her life-long and deeply held admiration for one of the most prolific mass murderers in human history.
She and her countrymen were essentially conned.
It is happening again, only this time it is America. When Trump is gone and some degree of normality is recaptured… when corruption is no longer normalized… when the law is once again paramount… only then will some of the MAGA adherents come to the realization that they were being fooled…and some never will.
Hitler’s Nazi Germany was built on mountains of mendacities. His many duplicities ultimately failed to resist American and Allied force-of-arms. Truth can be delayed but seldom denied. However, evasion will be forever more seductive. The old woman unintentionally conveyed a terrible warning.
We ignore it at our peril.
This essay has been updated from prior versions published by Tampa Bay Times, Geostrategy, SOFREP and The Steady State.
Robert Bruce Adolph , a qualified Military Strategist, is a retired senior US Army Special Forces soldier. He holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies & International Affairs and was formally trained as a counterintelligence special agent. Robert also taught university level courses in American Government, US History, and World Politics. Following his retirement from the active military, he joined the UN, subsequently seeing service in Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Indonesia and more, culminating in the role of Chief of the Middle East and North Africa at UN Headquarters in New York. He is the author of “Surviving the United Nations,” now out in a second edition. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
Great piece. Also I reminder that devotion to a leader and ideology goes beyond political expediency. We can work and hope that the Trump fever will break at some point, but we shouldn’t assume it will go after he leaves the scene or election losses. As we see, there is a continuing effort to reverse the gains of the civil rights movement beyond Trump adulation (e.g Supreme Court rulings).
Thank you for sharing your experience. My step-father (who also had a German surname) told a similar story from twenty years earlier when he was an American student in Germany. After a good meal, better beer, and interesting conversation with locals in a rural Bavarian village, things turned to political topics and got uncomfortable. Eventually, the group told him 'We are all Nazis'. Not 'we were". 'Wir sind'. He wanted to believe that they were just having a joke at a young American's expense, but knew that wasn't really the case. Decent seeming people, but admitting they were wrong was harder than continuing to endorse the atrocities. I've thought about this often over the last 10 years of Trumpism, and you've helped confirm that it was not an isolated regional phenomenon. We have difficult work ahead of us.