Hitler's sanity

[Verbose]

Goebbels was a throughtly nasty little man, also insane.
He was Hitler's poodle, answering his every whim.
The very thought of a world without National Socialism was horrific to him.
He was a short, un-aryan, spindly little man with a limp, and no honours to his name, with a serious need to overcompensate.
He was sick enough to invite his wife and seven children into the Reichsbunker in the last days, poison each of his seven childrenb as they slept with cyanide, then he shot his wife and himself, as a suicude pact between the parents.

Here's a curious observation regarding Goebbels.
Never mind the sanity bit (how do you define normal anyway)...

But out of that truly sorry lot Goebbels is the only one who came out of it with the recognition of actually having had real balls.

Kristallnacht 1938. Foreign reporters from all over the world are incensed. Goebbels calls a pressconference and cool as ice pre-empts their critical questions by attacking them instead, "explaining" and justifying the regeimes motives. Reporters who attended did write critical article but they were impressed as hell over the nerve and poise of Goebbels to just defy the world like that.

Ernst Jünger, Über-veteran of WWI and literary prodigy, refused the honour of becoming the official Great Writer of Nazi Germany. He was simply disgusted by the Nazi leadership as too uncouth and un-aristocratic for his tastes. Excpetion: Goebbels. Jünger recognised him as a brave man, one he could personally respect.

British-American bombing campaigns later in the war: Reaction of the Nazi leadership — to go into hiding. The cities of Germany were burning and being flattened, and they retreated into never-never land of wishful thinking. Hitler most of all. Exception: Goebbels, who won at least some grudging adimiration from the German public as the only guy in the leadership with the guts to visit bombed-out areas, talk to the man in the street, and be confronted with their misery and anger, as well as the realisation that this was also an effect of the war the Nazis had started.

I'm not saying that Goebbels wasn't a throughly nasty man, with the most odious and criminal political convictions imgainable. It's just that twisted as he was, he did in fact possess the virtue of courage. There's been an awful lot of propaganda obscuring what these very real, and dangerous, people were in fact like.

 

[Verbose]

People like Heinrich Himmler, the prince of terror, who was a functionary, a beaurocrat, while being a tool for terror, and mass murder, possibly then one who has the most to answer to in terms of Genocide, I would consider insane. Sociopathic, delusional, and takiing utmost pleasure in his job.

The utmost tribute to Himmler's insanity would be what happened in the dying days of the Reich; Himmler thought that the Western Allies would actually want to negotiate with him. He was so delusional that he thought that Eisenhower would not only negotiate with him, but also allow him to set up a new government, with him in a priminant position.
Himmler actually rote a formal letter to Eisenhower, formally requesting as job as chief of security in the post-Nazi government.
One of his underlings also recorded that in the very last days of the Reich, he asked one of them "When I meet Eisenhower, should I shake his hand, or do the Nazi salute?"

He was also delusional in the sense that he honestly believed there was an insanely powerful Jewish World Conspiray. He had thoughts about trying to make a deal with them as well. That was at least part of his rationale for allowing some Jews to be rescued out of the KZ by the Red Cross towards the end of the war — as a bit of leverage with the Conspiracy.

As for taking pleasure in his job, he was recorded as almost fainting the first and only time he witnessed an execution, getting blood and brains splattered over his boots.
In his case ideological conviction seems to have won out over the pleasure-pain principle. Which is certainly messed up.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Exception: Goebbels, who won at least some grudging adimiration from the German public as the only guy in the leadership with the guts to visit bombed-out areas, talk to the man in the street, and be confronted with their misery and anger, as well as the realisation that this was also an effect of the war the Nazis had started.

I think it took considerably greater guts when Goering did the same.