I remarked that if Hitler’s Voice continued to be always right, we were in for a very interesting period. This was five months before Hitler swallowed the whole of Czechoslovakia, and eleven months before he launched the Second World War by assaulting Poland.
Dr. Jung gravely answered: “Yes, it seems that the German people are now convinced they have found their Messiah. In a way the position of the Germans is remarkably like that of the Jews of old.
“Since their defeat in the World War the Germans have awaited a Messiah, a Savior. That is characteristic of people with an inferiority complex. The Jews got their inferiority complex from geographical and political factors. They lived in a part of the world which was a parade ground for conquerors from both sides, and after their return from their first exile to Babylon, when they were threatened with extinction by the Romans, they invented the solacing idea of a Messiah who was going to bring all the Jews together into a nation once more and save them.
“The Germans got their inferiority complex from comparable causes. They came up out of the Danube Valley too late, and founded the beginnings of their nation long after the French and English were well on their way to nationhood. They were too late for the scramble for colonies and for the foundation of empire. Then when they did get together and made a unified nation, they looked around them and saw the British, the French, and others with rich colonies and all the equipment of grown-up nations and they became jealous, resentful, like a younger brother whose older brothers have taken the lion’s share of the inheritance.
“So the Germans slept through the division of the world into colonial empires and thus they got their inferiority complex which made them want to fight the World War; and of course when they lost it their feeling of inferiority grew even worse and developed a desire for a Messiah, and so they have their Hitler. If he is not their true Messiah, he is like one of the Old Testament prophets; his mission is to unite his people and lead them to the Promised Land. This explains why the Nazis have to combat every other form of religion besides their own idolatrous brand. I have no doubt but that the campaign against the Catholic and Protestant churches will be pursued with relentless and unremitting vigor, for the very sound reason, from the Nazi point of view, that they wish to substitute the new faith of Hitlerism.”
I asked Dr. Jung: “Do you consider it possible that Hitlerism might become for Germany a permanent religion for the future, like Mohammedanism for the Moslems?”
“I think it is highly possible,” Dr. Jung replied. “Hitler’s ‘religion’ is the nearest to Mohammedanism, realistic, earthy, promising the maximum of rewards in this life, but with a Moslem-like Valhalla into which worthy Germans may enter and continue to enjoy themselves. Like Mohammedanism, it teaches the virtue of the sword. Hitler’s first idea is to make his people powerful because the spirit of the Aryan German deserves to be supported by might, by muscle and steel. It is not a spiritual religion in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term. But remember that in the early days of Christianity it was the church which made the claim to total power, both spiritual and temporal. Today the church no longer makes this claim, but the claim has been taken over by the totalitarian states which demand not only temporal but spiritual power.
“Incidentally it occurs to me that the religious character of Hitlerism is also emphasized by the fact that the German communities throughout the world far from the political power of Berlin, have adopted Hitlerism. Look at South America.”
Dr. Jung said he had closely observed Hitler at his meeting with Mussolini in Berlin. “I was only a few yards away from the two men and could study them well. In comparison with Mussolini, Hitler made upon me the impression of a sort of scaffolding of wood covered with cloth, an automaton with a mask, like a robot or a mask of a robot. During the whole performance he never laughed; it was as though he were in a bad humor, sulking. He showed no human sign.
“His expression was that of an inhumanly single-minded purposiveness, with no sense of humor. He seemed as if he might be a double of a real person, and that Hitler the man might perhaps be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so hiding in order not to disturb the mechanism.