
Adolf Hitler was a great leader. There I said it. I’m probably not the first to feel that way but I know that my position is certainly an unpopular one. I don’t believe that Hitler was a great person, in fact he was quite possibly the worst person to ever walk this Earth, but I do believe that he possessed most of the qualities apparent in very effective leaders. He was charismatic, assertive, confident, clear, empowering, and focused he was also able to set a goal for his people, rally them behind him, and move forward them forward. This analysis of Hitler must not be taken out of context; the goals that he set for his people (Third Reich, “Final Solution”, a complete Aryan race, etc.) were absolutely horrifying and all those who believe in them should be ashamed, but that does not dismiss the fact that Hitler was able to convince a group of people that a certain way of doing things was best for them and that he could lead them to having a perfect nation. As a lover of history and a history major, I have always held Hitler’s leadership skills in high regard but it was not until I read Kenneth Burke’s “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” that I was able to figure out how to put my respect for his effective leadership into words. Though Burke never explicitly says that Hitler is a great leader, he seems to be impressed by his ability to convince the German people to follow him. This, along with other points that Burke makes about Hitler, such as the fact that he painted himself as a “medicine man” for the German people, and how he was able to focus the German citizens’ hate onto one group in order to rally them together, have helped me to articulate what I mean when I say that Hitler is an effective leader.

One point that impresses me about Hitler, and worries me about the general public, is the how he was able to direct the hate of the masses onto one thing or in Germany’s case, one group of people. This is a common technique seen throughout history in order to rally the masses behind one force: point out the “enemy” to the people, let the hate build, and then tell them what they need to do to in order to accomplish their mission of eradicating the enemy. The American government did this to the American people while pointing to the Japanese as the enemy after Pearl Harbor. Hitler points out this strategy himself in his book, “Mein Kampf”, which is sourced in Burke’s essay, where he goes on to say,

 “…a number of essentially different enemies must always be regarded as one in such a way that in the opinion of the mass of one’s own adherents the war is being waged against one enemy alone. This strengthens the belief in one’s own cause and increases one’s bitterness against the attacker.” (pg. 34-35)

This shows that Hitler, even as a young man, had a fundamental understanding of human psychology and recognized how to amass people together and direct their effort towards defeating another group of people. Seeing as this was a strategy used by other prominent leaders and governments throughout history, it proves that Hitler understood this vital leading strategy and knew how to use it once he got to power.

A fact about Hitler that I have always found interesting is that, even though he ended up becoming one of the most powerful people in the world, he was born into a poor family with no political influence.  I believe this shows that leadership (and manipulation) came naturally to Hitler because he had no example to follow from the time that he was young. Hitler was a master of using his past as a launching point for his political future. While campaigning he would talk about the time that he had spent with common people while he was homeless and he would point back to his service in the German military. As he rose to power he would speak to the German people and a try to relate to them which helped him develop this “medicine man” image that Burke refers to. He acted as though he knew all of the problems that ailed normal, average Germans because he was a normal, average German, and he pointed to the Jews as the “disease” that weakened Germany (in reality what weakened Germany was the economic sanctions put on them by the allied powers after WWI). Because of their ailing economy and low morale, Germans felt a kind of “sickness” within their country and they came to see Hitler as a sort of cure. Burke refers to Hitler in these same medical terms when he gives the warning, “let us try also to discover what kind of ‘medicine’ this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America” (pg. 33).  To be able to be followed, leaders must be able to be related to, and Hitler’s impoverished background made him the perfect bridge between the traditional German elitist class and the common people. Hitler united all white, non-Jewish Germans (the majority of Germans), both rich and poor, against a common enemy and towards a common goal. 

I believe that two main pillars of leadership are goal setting and motivating and though the goals he set were atrocious in morality and the things he motivated people to do were ungodly, Adolf Hitler was, in fact, a proficient goal setter, and one of the single greatest motivators that the world has ever seen. Hitler’s passion, perceived patriotism, and relatability drew the defeated German people to him and, due to his leadership skills that he had attained in his military career and throughout his time in the political field as a fascist, he was able to convince them that he was the right choice to lead the nation. He was not a good person but Hitler was effective in his leadership. Burke wrote his analysis of Hitler as a warning to other countries to look out for a person as controlling and effective as Hitler. The most important lesson to take from Adolf Hitler is that being an effective leader does not make one a good person by default. The two attributes are separate and we as members of society must first look for the goodness in someone before we decide to follow them. We should look for signs that Burke points out. Things like directing the masses against one enemy, acting as though they are the sole solution to the nation or place’s problems, and using things that we hold close to our hearts such as our religions to sway us. We owe it to ourselves and to our civilizations to look past the political prowess of our leaders and delve deeper into their hearts and see what values they truly hold dear. Irresponsibility and desperation allowed for an effective leader and strategist like Hitler to gain power in Germany and I think that I’m in line with Burke’s thinking when I say that we cannot be so desperate as to let someone control us mindlessly.