The rise of Hitler, marked significantly by the publication of Mein Kampf, can easily be attributed as one of the main causes of WWII, as his radical Nazi ideology and ultra-nationalist rhetoric are some of the biggest causes for Germany’s rearmament and expansionist policies. It all started today, nearly a century ago with the publishing of his manifesto, “Mein Kampf.” on July 18, 1925.
This was barely half a decade after the end of WWI when the nation of Germany was still reeling from the effects of that conflict. As early as then, people were already concerned about the risks of another war, as seen by the letter correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, two of Germany’s greatest intellectuals.
How Mein Kampf Sparked the “Why War” Letters
After the publishing of Mein Kampf, in a decade, Hitler would go from a political outcast to becoming the leader of Germany. His aggressive war rhetoric and ultra-nationalism troubled intellectuals like Freud and Einstein who began a letter correspondence, talking about the nature of the war and the psychological implications behind it.
In a series of letters, Freud explained how people can be pushed to war and what are the thought process behind it. However, while the letters were intellectual, seeking to educate the other. But there is an underlying fear behind it as they feared the possibility of war shortly and how destructive it is.
WWI was far from a distant memory and the horrors of war were particularly bad in Germany who struggled through years of starvation, political unrest, and defeat. All of these left an idea that Germany must restore its military power to reclaim its rightful place in the world order. At least that is what many nationalists wanted for Germany.
You begin with the relations between Might and Right, and this is assuredly the proper starting-point for our enquiry. But, for the term “might”, I would substitute a tougher and more telling word: “violence”. In right and violence, we have today an obvious antinomy. It is easy to prove that one has evolved from the other…
Conflicts of interest between man and man are resolved, in principle, by recourse to violence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man cannot claim exclusion; nevertheless, men are also prone to conflicts of opinion, touching, on occasion, the loftiest peaks of abstract thought, which seem to call for settlement by quite another method. This refinement is, however, a late development.
To start with, brute force was the factor which, in small communities, decided points of ownership and the question of which man’s will was to prevail. Very soon physical force was implemented, then replaced, by the use of various adjuncts; he proved the victor whose weapon was the better or handled the more skillfully.
-Sigmund Freud, Psychologist
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