THE MANY HITLERS

OF 100 BIOGRAPHIES OF THE NAZI DICTATOR, WHOSE INTERPRETATION IS CORRECT?

Author: By David Patton

Date: SUNDAY, December 14, 1997

Page: H1

Section: Books

Historian John Lukacs's latest book, ``The Hitler of History,'' reflects this resurgent interest in the Nazis. Rather than add to the more than 100 biographies of the Nazi dictator, Lukacs instead seeks to cull from recent scholarship a more nuanced view of the real Adolf Hitler. ``The Hitler of History'' is therefore in part a ``history of the histories'' that takes stock of what Lukacs approvingly sees as historians' efforts to understand Hitler's true place in the 20th century, rather than merely to ``demonize'' the Fuhrer.

Lukacs, an independent historian, begins by briefly reviewing the leading biographies and the debates they sparked. While his historiography is less detailed than that of Ian Kershaw in ``The Nazi Dictatorship,'' Lukacs nonetheless has usefully summarized the important debates on Hitler. He covers the early ``opportunist vs. ideologue'' debate: Was Hitler following a blueprint as put forth in ``Mein Kampf,'' or did he instead respond in an ad hoc way as events unfolded? Lukacs also reviews the disagreement between those ``intentionalists'' who view Hitler as the towering figure in Nazi Germany and the ``functionalists'' who see in Hitler a ``weak'' dictator restricted by the bureaucracy of a chaotically organized Third Reich. Lukacs then turns to the Historikerstreit (or ``Historians' Quarrel'') of the 1980s, in which conservative historians in Germany asserted that Hitler's National Socialism could only be understood as a response to Soviet Communism and the terror of Joseph Stalin. Lukacs himself believes that Hitler was the master of the Reich because of his modern political program, which brought success at home and abroad. In short, the ``Hitler of Lukacs'' is to a surprising extent a popular, forward-looking leader.

Lukacs does not seriously address literature that looks beyond Hitler for explanations of National Socialism. His focus on Hitler the man has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it allows Lukacs to ignore a ``rehabilitator'' such as David Irving, who has attempted to exculpate the dictator by claiming that Joseph Goebbels, rather than Hitler, was the mastermind in Nazi Germany. Moreover, Lukacs's focus on the person of the Fuhrer means that he avoids interpretations that see National Socialism as a mere reaction to Stalinism. This is fortunate. Regrettably, his Hitler-centered approach leads him to dismiss out of hand past insights on the role of class conflict in Hitler's rise to power.

Even though a preoccupation with the Fuhrer sheds only partial light on the phenomenon of National Socialism, Lukacs revisits some interesting historiographical questions. For example, was Hitler a reactionary or a revolutionary? Those who believe that Hitler was reactionary often point to his romantic vision of blond, rosy-cheeked German peasants settling throughout Eastern Europe. Lukacs takes the contrary position by arguing that Hitler's real goal, more revolutionary than reactionary, was to create a technologically advanced nation-state that would win the support of industrial workers as well as the middle classes. Lukacs claims that by combining two recent ideas, that of nationalism and that of socialism, Hitler found a thoroughly modern formula to mobilize the masses. For Lukacs, Hitler was a ``popular revolutionary'' in the age of democracy.

Lukacs's recognition that Hitler's National Socialism was both popular and modern is on the mark in light of the genuine admiration that the Germans (and many onlookers abroad) showed for Hitler's achievements in the 1930s. But when Lukacs concludes that all of us today are national socialists, he goes too far. If national socialism means nothing more than the mobilization of national feelings for state economic intervention in the name of the people, then why does Lukacs consider Hitler -- rather than Mussolini, say, or even Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- to be the genius who recognized the revolutionary appeal of this equation? Second, and more unsettling, by suggesting a continuity between Hitler's National Socialism and the present-day democratic fusion of nationalism and socialism, Lukacs appears to play down the central role of racism in Hitler's ideology. As Lukacs himself recognizes earlier in the book, Hitler hated the Jews above all else.

In another chapter, Lukacs assesses Hitler's statesmanship: Were his actions guided by an overarching philosophy or by more practical considerations? Lukacs believes that Hitler possessed much strategic talent that was independent of his obsessions. He correctly notes that Hitler's prewar statesmanship often did not flow exclusively from his ideological yearning for a vast German empire in Eastern Europe, a goal that Hitler had proclaimed much earlier in ``Mein Kampf.'' But Lukacs goes further and provocatively suggests that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 may have been intended primarily to force Great Britain out of the war rather than to grab land for German settlements in the East.

If Hitler was a gifted statesman, then why did he gamble away those gains he had won by diplomacy in the 1930s and by conquest in 1940? A skilled statesman such as Bismarck knew how to stop once he was ahead. Lukacs explains Hitler's lapses by asserting that the Fuhrer had himself changed by 1938. According to Lukacs, he had become so convinced that he might soon die that he began to pursue his goals more impatiently. His recklessness hastened the end for the dictator.

Such speculation is both the strength and weakness of ``The Hitler of History.'' Readers should expect lively, provocative, and sometimes outright quirky interpretations rather than a detailed historiography. Some of Lukacs's suggestions -- for instance, that Hitler's ideology crystallized in postwar Munich rather than in prewar Vienna -- are both plausible and original. Others are unconvincing and problematic, such as the speculation that if Hitler had died on the Eastern Front in late 1944, then he might have come to symbolize heroic German resistance against the Russians. By late 1944, much too much had already happened for this to have been possible.