Elections

Who’s going to win the next election? We won’t know for several months.

The outcome matters a lot, though often in imperceptible, unpredictable and long-range ways.

In Germany, dramatic and traumatic changes came about with Hindenburg’s election in 1932. Paul von Hindenburg, the beloved former field marshal and the second president of the young German Republic, had been persuaded to run for reelection. It was a reassuring choice for the voters. He was conservative and well known, but he was 84 and in poor health. Consequently, his advisors urged him to seek the support of Germany’s strongest party.

Whether we are 25 or 85, it’s usually quite desirable to get all the support we can get. So Hindenburg made a deal with the party— in exchange for their support, he’d take their spokesman into the Chancellery. The party was the German Nationalsozialisten; their spokesman was Adolf Hitler.

Did Hindenburg’s advisors ever take a good look at Hitler? Why weren’t they concerned about his bigoted speeches and his questionable background?

Did they know about his lack of education, his abysmal grades and dropping out of school? He stayed home with his mom, slept until noon and lived off her small pension.

Did they know about his false claim to be a student at the Vienna Academy of Art in order to get an orphan’s pension, even though the Academy had rejected him?

In the Hindenburg advisors’ defense I must admit that Hitler had kept all these unpalatable facts of his past carefully concealed. Today we know that he even had murdered those who knew—it was still the Dark Age before Google.

At the time, Hitler was known solely for his hypnotic speeches and for promising what most people desperately needed—work, bread and security. Germany was deeply in debt, the government had collapsed, and over a third of the population suffered stark unemployment and starvation. The rest is history.

More later this week.

Rosi (Roswitha) McIntosh