April 20 : A dark birthday, but hard to ignore

Today is the birth anniversary of perhaps the loftiest of tyrants in the history of mankind.

The civilised world largely paints him as the most repulsive creature ever to have existed. The bone-chilling vocabularies such as ‘Holocaust’, ‘Concentration Camp’, ‘Gas Chamber’ and the supposed Aryan race are complemented with incalculable loss of lives and damage of properties and resources - and are all associated with one unforgettable name - Adolf Hitler.

Why was it so important to recall an abominable personality such as Hitler in his reportedly 136th birthday? Is it at all essential to recall the dictator to have introduced manifest hell on earth? And why we repeatedly fail to forget him for that matter? Answers are simple and straight - as ethical moral beings we are surely to condemn many of his actions, simultaneously the need to recall him is as significant to stop history from repeating itself.

However, this writer had the opportunity to visit the Dachau concentration camp some 23 kilometres away from Munich in October 2013. As much as he was shaken strolling inside the well preserved camp premises, he was evenly astonished to come across hundreds of German school children visiting the dark location aided by their teachers.

Failing to conceal my uncontrollable curiosity, I walked straight to one of their teachers and asked about the reason for their visit. Her reply was delivered with blunt Prussian precision, "we want our children to know the true history of their past, draw lessons and therefore refrain from enacting the same."

This is how German kids are taught history, so to refrain from repeating blunders and unwarranted bloodshed.

Respect, admiration or whatever expression I could think of, I left her alone with her juvenile subjects in silence. The Nazi era is also remembered in Germany, but with a much farsighted purpose to learn from the bitter lessons of the past. However, coming back to Hitler's birthday, the tormenter with far too many noticeable and also disclosed skeletons in the cupboard yet remains a hot potato among several far right and democratic political fractions in Germany and mainland Europe.

Most Germans of today may disagree with my personal reading of Hitler, but in the tumultuous and uncertain days of the early thirties he was the need of the time. He assumed office with a public mandate.

If not all, most millions of Germans under the failing Weimer Republic found a political saviour in him. From January 30th of 1933 until the capitulation of Poland in September of 1939, economically and militarily, Germany was a transformed nation. What followed next is a separate discourse.

Reflecting back, Hitler's war otherwise the Second World War had changed the entire world order in a dramatic fashion. The old school imperialism and empire had collapsed soon after the defeat of Nazi Germany; the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western Capitalist nations commenced. Germany was divided into two and remained in that state for over four decades. The Nazi ideology based on the theory of discrimination and extreme populism was and still remains banned throughout much of the world.

The billion dollar questions here - is the world a much safer place minus a Hitler? Have genocides, acts of ethnic cleansing and authoritarian rule been wiped out? And what would have been the world's fate without a Hitler in the 20th century?

Arguments, debates and intellectual discourses may follow for days, weeks and months to decades.

Surprisingly, the world continues to witness a sequence of oppressive regimes in the likes of the Nazi era to have erupted in several countries stretching from South America, Africa, East Europe and Middle East to as far as Asia.

The man to have been born this day dreamt of a Nazi empire in the likes of a typical imperialist, but the dictators to have followed his footsteps in the Post - World War Two era purely focused to consolidate power and stretch their individual rule in respective countries. Actually the past Nazi regime was re-introduced in many countries later with a flimsy veil under comical titles such as 'benevolent dictatorship’ and 'Proletariat dictatorship' - not too different from the creed of National Socialist German Workers' Party aka the Nazi party - just with different jargons coupled with attractive marketing meanings.

Let us not forget, up until Germany ran out of luck in the war, the Nazi rule was also considered as a benevolent one-man-show by most Germans. Unemployment rate in Germany fell to an all-time low and development peaked. Bizarrely enough, Hitler's economy was a mixed economy combining a free market with central planning.

Famed historian Richard Overy described it as 'somewhere in between the command economy of the former Soviet Union and the capitalist system of the United States.' Perhaps god enabled Hitler only to understand and implement such a queer and complex economic mechanism.

Whatever, registered dates of birth cannot be permanently wiped out and especially of Adolf Hitler. Since Lucifer, Satan, devil or Iblis's birth dates are not found to be officially registered anywhere so the almighty god compensated the mankind with a date by sending Hitler on April 20 of 1889.

Hitler, as learnt from factual data, dreamt of becoming an artist. Even though judged as a mediocre according to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in the last century - the world would have surely averted unprecedented deaths and disasters - had he succeeded being an artist of sorts. (I personally request the academy to think twice before turning ‘Down Below-Standard Candidates’ by drawing lessons from his rejections, and one rejected candidate was enough to have changed the entire world in the last century. Not once, but Hitler was rejected by the Vienna Fine Arts Academy twice.

Nevertheless, 20th April should be remembered at least for the sake of analysing facts and the surrounding reality in the making of Adolf Hitler. Rather fascinatingly, reality of the 21st century is a lot different but Hitler's ultra-populism political dogma has strongly resurfaced in some major countries including North America.

Today's inconspicuous Hitler-like-leaders do not build concentration camps, they manipulate immigration rules. They brand ethnic minorities as 'terrorist' and 'extremist'. They announce disruptive trade & tariff wars. They foment geo-political tensions by forming alliances, coalitions and so-called co-operations. And for them, skullcaps and hijabs are now the targets instead of the Star of David symbol.

They launch so-called ‘Strategic Military Strikes’ in the name of combatting terrorism, restoring 'discipline and establishing democracy' in Muslim countries. Though active in vocal protests, they deliberately remain stock-still to take actions against genocide and oppressing of ethnic minorities. These leaders reign with impunity by occupying the chairs of the UN's Security Council and are accountable to none. And they all collectively condemn Adolf Hitler for all wrong-doings history has ever registered.

Let me share a fascinating personal reading of Hitler by none other than the 35th US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In a personal diary that he maintained during his visit to Germany after the war in 1945, JFK wrote “Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived…He had in him the stuff of which legends are made”. Believed to be his only diary was sold at an auction in 2017.

In all probabilities, had Hitler been born another 50 years later he would have acted much worse and Mr Goebbels's propaganda job would have been innovative and ubiquitous to promote his boss via the social media, tweeting and drone shows across the world.

However, remembering Hitler on this rather inauspicious or an ill-starred day should not be celebrated by cutting cakes and cracking champagne bottles, but to sincerely ask ourselves - how he continues to romance and captivate powerful politicians with his dark charisma. Why his sinister doctrine of racial prejudice and megalomania traits are so clearly noticeable among some world leaders?

After all, for this writer, Hitler is not Lucifer while falls a little short to Mephistopheles. Hell was perhaps just a mind frame for him. But then again, “Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell” ― Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe.

The writer is In-charge, editorial and On-line sections, Daily Observer