Why Hitler Was More Evil Than You Think

Hitler choose to kill more Jews than win the war. Why?

| “At some point I think, with the development of killing centers, the Nazis felt that they had the means and opportunity to realize the vision of a Jew-free Europe now rather than wait until after Germany had won the war.” - Historian Elizabeth White.

We can all agree that Hitler was a top-tier psychopath. Systematically exterminating a group of innocent people is not something someone normal would do - or is it?

In this post, I want to explore what can lead someone to become a psychopath, and what we can do to prevent others (or us) from doing the same.

There are two reasons that I believe cause someone to become a psychopath:

1. Suffering
2. High levels of negative emotion when someone responds to stress

Let's dive into suffering. The Great Buddha said that life is suffering. Christ had to suffer in order to redeem for humanity's sins. Inevitably, the order will become chaos. There are just some things you cannot control in a life that end up falling apart.

Let's examine all of the things that went bad in Hitler's Life:

1. Father was emotionally harsh.
2. His younger brother, Edmund, died early on in his life.
3. Tried to apply to a fine arts academy and got rejected twice.
4. Had one testicle.
5. Poor and homeless in his 20's with no family to support him.

As we can see, any of us in this situation would see life as a dark and gloomy world that only gives us suffering and pain. If we so no hope, no opportunities left for us, I believe we would default to three options: live a life of despair, choose suicide, or inflict harm on others to make them feel our pain.

Deep down, we all want to be understood.

But the problem is, Hitler wasn't understood.

Imagine if Hitler had led a stable life. Even if he was poor, imagine if the country had set up a program that gives homeless people the minimum requirements necessary to have a stable life. Stable shelter, stable security, and stable food. Imagine if his brother had not died and offered him support. Hitler would not have had the same amount of negative emotions that he had in response to stress.

I think that we should be careful how we choose to respond to tragedies that happen in our lives and most importantly how we treat other people. If we choose to not bear our cross and be responsible for our lives, and not give up on hope, we go down a dark path of despair and suffering. We can also cause chaos indirectly by inflicting pain on other people even if we do not see it ourselves.

The first thing we can do to combat evil is to act in a truthful manner and be supportive of others.