Word: hitlers
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Unfortunately, as Bullock writes, "the process by which these convictions took possession of their minds remains a mystery." He generally avoids psychohistory, but observes matter-of-factly that both Hitler and Stalin were paranoid and insensitive to humanity -- that is, unable to accept that other people were as real as they. Both were, in fact, incapable of normal relationships. One word Bullock does not use is "monster," because he sees horror in the fact that they were human...
...source of Hitler's political success was his oratory. He began as no more than an idle, self-deluded, uneducated young man who liked World War I army life because it gave him a sense of purpose. In 1919 that suddenly changed when he discovered, as he said, "I could make a good speech." He turned out to be a bold, sharp political tactician as well, but it was his hypnosis of the masses that made him the Fuhrer, the unchallenged leader...
Stalin -- rough, conspiratorial, despising authority -- was a natural Marxist revolutionary. While studying at a Russian Orthodox seminary in his native Georgia, he became a convert to Marx and never changed course. His career contrasted with Hitler's because his movement already had a leader, Lenin. Unlike Hitler's public portrayal of himself as a man of destiny, Stalin's style was stealthy, behind the scenes...
Both despots believed utterly in themselves and were indifferent to the ^ suffering and destruction they caused to achieve their ends. Hard as it is to realize it, Bullock writes, "the key to understanding both Stalin and Hitler is . . . that they were entirely serious about their historic roles." In private they were boring and boorish. The mistake their political enemies and would-be partners repeatedly made was to underestimate the men and the extremes to which they would...
...Hitler had nothing like the domestic program of development and collectivization Stalin rammed through at the cost of millions of lives. He was really interested only in foreign conquests, and one in particular: an Aryan empire in Eastern Europe. Hitler was driven by a slogan-ridden ideology that he formed as a youth, reading cheap pamphlets in Vienna, and never changed. He had, Bullock finds, no capacity whatever for critical thinking. He believed the German "master race" had three enemies: Slavs, Marxists and Jews...