Realistically he was just the right person at the right time with the right ideas to make a righteous mess and end and ruin so many lives in a surprisingly short timeframe.
Also worth remembering that Hitler took heavy inspiration from Benito Mussolini, even coming to visit Mussolini early on to take inspiration from him (and later propping up Mussolini once the anti-fascists got too successful) even the Nazi sulute was inspired by Mussolini, who had lifted it from a series of silent films about a Roman hero which those films had likely invented the concept of the “Roman sulute” in one of the earliest examples of Hollywood fiction influencing reality
Hitler himself was unique, so there’s always value to studying what made him that way. Even if the research shows his genes aren’t relevant to his evil, that’s a valuable finding.
Everybody is unique. Unless I’m an historian, I think there’s more harm than good in selecting Hilter of all people as the source for that data.
Like if we want to add context to events in Hitlers life, then this could be useful. But our social discourse isn’t immune to narratives that would seek to blame an individual’s genetics for a social ideology / inevitable historic symptom of runaway global capitalism.
The personality disorders that led Hitler down the path of evil have strong genetic components, so yes there’s value in studying his genes.
Is that anything unique to Hitler?
Realistically he was just the right person at the right time with the right ideas to make a righteous mess and end and ruin so many lives in a surprisingly short timeframe.
Also worth remembering that Hitler took heavy inspiration from Benito Mussolini, even coming to visit Mussolini early on to take inspiration from him (and later propping up Mussolini once the anti-fascists got too successful) even the Nazi sulute was inspired by Mussolini, who had lifted it from a series of silent films about a Roman hero which those films had likely invented the concept of the “Roman sulute” in one of the earliest examples of Hollywood fiction influencing reality
Hitler himself was unique, so there’s always value to studying what made him that way. Even if the research shows his genes aren’t relevant to his evil, that’s a valuable finding.
Everybody is unique. Unless I’m an historian, I think there’s more harm than good in selecting Hilter of all people as the source for that data.
Like if we want to add context to events in Hitlers life, then this could be useful. But our social discourse isn’t immune to narratives that would seek to blame an individual’s genetics for a social ideology / inevitable historic symptom of runaway global capitalism.