“Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs That Drove The Third Reich” by Richard Weikart

“Since it is so difficult to pinpoint exactly what Hitler’s religion was, it might seem his religion was historically inconsequential. However, hopefully this study of Hitler’s religion sheds light on a number of important issues. First, his anti-Christianity obviously shaped the persecution of the Christian churches during the Third Reich. Second, his religious hypocrisy helped explain his ability to appeal to a broad constituency. Third, his trust that his God would reward his efforts and willpower, together with his sense divine mission, imbued him with hope, even in hopeless circumstances. This helps us understand why he was so optimistic until the very end, when it should have been obvious much earlier that the game was up. Finally, and most importantly, his religion did not provide him with any transcendent morality. Whatever Hitler’s stance on other religious issues, his morality was entirely of this world, derived from his understanding of the workings of nature. In my view, this was the most pernicious element of his religion. Hitler followed what he considered the dictates of nature by stealing, killing and destroying. Ultimately, however, he perished, because his God could not give him life (1, pp. 279-280). 

1. Richard Weikart. Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs That Drove The Third Reich. Regnery History, Salem Media Group, 300 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC. 

“Hitler’s Last Witness, The Memoirs of Hitler’s Bodyguard, Rochus Misch, reports Hitler felt His Military Orders Were Being Misunderstood.

So from then On, He Had His Orders Transcribed by Stenographers, which Proved, Says Misch, et al, That Hitler Had a “Photographic Memory” (1, p. 96).

Comment: And, Perhaps, a High-Functioning Split Personality.

1. Rochus Misch. Co-authored by Michael Stehle, Professor Jörrn Precht, Ralph Giordano, Regina Carstensen, and Dr. Sandra Zarrinbal. London, Frontline Books 2017. 

“HITLER: Ascent 1889-1939” by Volker Ullrich: Hitler’s “internal contradictions”

“The main reason it is so difficult to decipher ‘the riddle of Hitler’ is the fact that his personality contained so many astonishing contrasts and contradictions. As early as 1936, Konrad Heiden described Hitler’s ‘dual nature.’ Like a medium, Heiden argued, the human being Adolf Hitler channelled and created, through a monstrous act of will, the phenomenon Adolph Hitler: ‘In moments of repose, the latter lies curled up and hidden within the former, only to emerge in moments of intensity to conceal the former behind its larger-than-life puppets mask.’ For Heiden, this split personality is what made it so difficult to reach reliable conclusions about Hitler.

“More than one of Hitler’s acquaintances confirmed this impression. Otto Dietrich pointed to Hitler’s ‘uncanny dual nature,’ arguing that the Führer’s internal contradictions were so intense that they became ‘the dominant characteristic of his entire being.’ On the one hand, Dietrich asserted, Hitler possessed extraordinary capabilities and gifts. On the other, and partially in conjunction with his fanatical anti-Semitism, he could be intellectually primitive and boorish. In Hitler’s breast, Dietrich wrote, ‘respectable sensibilities and ice-cold heartlessness, love and horrific cruelty lived side by side.’ ” (1, p.381)

Comment: Hitler may have had a form of dissociative identity disorder.

1.Volker Ullrich. Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939. Trans. From the German by Jefferson Chase. New York, Vintage Books, 2016. 

 “ROOSEVELT’S SECRET WAR: FDR and WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE” by Joseph E. Persico (1) Foreword:

“…Few leaders have been better suited by nature and temperament for the anomalies of secret warfare than FDR. ‘You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does,’ he once confessed. ‘I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help me win the war’…His style of leadership bears out this admission. FDR compartmentalized information, misled associates, manipulated people, conducted intrigues, used private lines of communication, scattered responsibility, duplicated assignments, provoked rivalries, held all the cards while showing few…His behavior, which fascinated, puzzled, amazed and occasionally repelled people, parallels many of the qualities of an espionage chief… 'So you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.’

“Still, the President took almost childish delight in subterfuge for its own sake…He deliberately concealed the processes of his mind. His vice president Henry Wallace concluded that the only certainty in dealing with the man was the uncertainty of ‘what went on in FDR’s head’… His inscrutable nature found full play when America went to war. The man with the instincts of spy master now had a war in which to indulge his attraction to the clandestine” (1, xii).

Comment: Compartmentalization (into hidden alternate personality states) is the essence of multiple personality, but it may be an asset, not a mental disorder, in a high-functioning person.

1. Joseph E. Persico. Roosevelt’s Secret War (FDR and World War II Espionage). New York, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2002. 

“Leadership” by Doris Kearns Goodwin Highlights How FDR’s Multiple Talents Rescued Fellow Polio Patients and Fellow Americans

“The leader must be ready and able to meet the challenges presented by the times. And no leader was more prepared to diagnose the national malady correctly and assert himself as ‘a vital human need’ than ‘old Doc Roosevelt,’ as he had been affectionally called at Warm Springs, where he had directly engaged with his fellow polio patients as architect, developer, program director, head counselor, therapy director, and spiritual adviser, ‘all rolled into one’…

    ‘Doc’ Roosevelt was ready to minister with frankness, near-mystical confidence, and an unshakable resolve to take whatever actions were necessary to transfuse the nation. He was prepared to administer a sustained, reanimating jolt of new leadership to his paralyzed and despondent nation. After all, in a searing and personal way, he had been through all this before.

   “One week before the March 4, 1933, inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the journalist Agnes Meyer had entered into her diary, ‘the world literally rocking beneath our feet.’ Following three years of precipitous decline, the ‘vital organs’ of the financial system, the nation’s banks, were shutting down. The economic system of the nation had entered a physical and spiritual state akin to death throes.” (1, p. 274).

Comment: I don’t know who became more aware of FDR’s multiple sides, FDR, his family and friends, the public, or historians.

1. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Leadership in Turbulent Times. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2019. 

“FDR” by Jean Edward Smith: President Roosevelt Had a Compartmentalized Mind, Possibly Like That of a High-Functioning Person With Dissociative Identity

“Frances Perkins, FDR’s long-serving secretary of labor, said Roosevelt was ‘the most complicated human being I have ever known.’ He kept major decisions in his own hands, played his cards close to his chest, and enjoyed the consternation of his opponents when his maneuvers were revealed. ‘I’m a juggler,’ Roosevelt told Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. ‘I never let my right hand know what my left hand is doing’ ” (1, p. xi).

Comment: His mind was compartmentalized, possibly like the normal, creative mind of a high-functioning person with dissociative identity.

1. Jean Edward Smith. FDR. New York, Random House, 2007.

2. Wikipedia. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt