A Power Hungry Man

By Meghan Fickes

During class discussion about Night, by Elie Wiesel, an interesting point was brought up about Hitler’s power by one of my classmates. This idea of how Hitler was able to obtain and wipe out million of people without hesitating made me want to look deeper into his childhood, for that might be the cause of such hate. Please take time to comment below regarding your thoughts about this topic.

Question: How did Adolf Hitler become power-hungry?

As the Socratic Seminar unfolded about Hitler’s reign and marginalization of the Jews, and interesting idea came to mind– how did Adolf Hitler’s childhood experiences contribute to the power-hungry man he became? Hitler was in absolute power of the Nazi party, and pursued genocide for anyone not described as his “perfect” race. Despite the massive amounts of injustice, years past before any rightful group dissolved Hitler’s power. Hitler was so powerful and hungry that anyone, even his appointees fell beneath him. What incidents in this man’s childhood gave him a personality that could conquer and divide a whole continent?

As I looked deeper into this question, Hitler’s father played a large role in his development. As a young boy, Adolf wanted to become an artist, and pursued art school, yet his father oppressed this idea. Rejection is the most brutal of human conditioning and young Adolf underwent the metamorphosis into the monster of our historical lore by his rejection from art school.

After failing as an artist, Hitler decided to seek power to intimidate those who doubted him. Hitler wanted a great deal of political power, not for the sake of having such power, but because he needed it to carry out his plans. A great deal of power was needed to eliminate all parties but his own, to militarize the country, to pursue certain policies which were unpopular. Adolf Hitler was so convinced that he alone had the answers and knew what was best he insisted on being the absolute leader, and no one could stop his plans.


Nazi Rally 1934

So again reader, I ask you to please comment with your ideas to this question:

How do you think Adolf Hitler became power-hungry?