Hitler Analysis

[hommefatal]

"Oh my, I am so sensitive to conflict, I better start a World War...?"

That made me lol so hard. Anyway, I like Hitler, lol

 

[INTJ123]

I'm just gonna guess and say a really f'd up ESTJ, my reasoning is that they make very charismatic leaders which people flock to(and I think they enjoy being leader), they also have that authoritarian view of heirarchy, they are likely to see others as lower according to social status and finances(I've seen one admit to this), this coupled with their hidden agenda for achieving PERFECTION, and their hard work ethic(looong hours of work he did). Also, this might explain his crappy artwork, I think estj are the least artistic types. ESTJs also have can have crazy emotions welled up inside and can explode, this might make him look like an F.

I agree with the op in that he's a T though. I doubt he was INTJ though, who knows maybe he was really f'd up one. Maybe he was just so screwed that he lost himself and everything he projected were just dark shadows.

 

[Eric B]

I've heard the arguments for him being an F, and the one I remember from most recently is something about him not using good strategy (which is the NT's skill set). But isn't it possible for other factors to affect that, such as the other people working with him, or just his own unhealthy state? (Again, Jung is reported to have said that he was untypable).

And with all the stuff about him being F or Fe because he was promoting values, or the passion and emotion, it still seems like that might have been more "shadowy" in his deranged state. Just think about what Fe in the Deceiving or Destructive (7th, 8th) position would be like. In Berens' descriptions: "Under stress, they may be deceived into over-addressing others' concerns..." (Deceiving); "When really stressed, they become convinced others don't appreciate or like them. [And hence, the martyrdom complex people like this often develop] Then they overaccommodate other's needs and feel put upon" (Destructive).

 

[Sniffles]

Concerning Hitler being a poor strategist, I addressed that argument before:

Concerning Hitler being a poor strategist....well that can be said of the entire German high command actually. That was one major pitfall of the German military in both World Wars, they had brilliant taciticans for commanders(like Ludendorf) who were also shitty strategists. I forget who, but one WWI German general admitted he never even read Clausewitz before in his life.

Hitler was quite competent as a commander-in-chief, as he demonstrated earlier in the war. In the dispute concerning how to strike France, Hitler wisely dismissed the General Staff's rehash of the old Schliffen Plan in favor of von Manstein's bold strike through the Ardennes forrest. This was key to the German victory in 1940.

It's generally agreed that his insistence of no retreat before Moscow helped save the German army from complete destruction at the hands of Red Army counter-attacks in 1941. It can even argued that he helped save the German southern flank from complete annihiliation in early 1943 by having it retreat, but with the terrible cost of abandoning the 9th Army at Stalingrad.

So no, I wouldn't say he was a complete dumbass at warfare, but he certainly wasn't "the greatest commander in history" as Nazi prograganda stated.

http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/385269-post112.html

You have to take into account the severe flaws at the heart of German military thinking. Need we forget that Frederick the Great, who's still considered a military genius today, came near close to total defeat in the Seven Years War. The only thing that saved his ass was the sudden death of the Czarina, which knocked Russia out of the war.

 

[Eric B]

Thanks. I think I remember seeing that, but I know more recently, probably on INTPc, someone mentioned in passing the "strategy" thing.
So what you said woud go along with what I said. The entire military was a factor in it as well.

 

[Sniffles]

Well Eric, a really good source I'd recommend is Robert M. Citino's The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich.

Here's what one review of the book states:

"One of these ideas, prevalent in the U.S. Army today, is that Prussia and Germany's military success sprang largely from the efforts of staff officers who studied warfare intellectually and rationally and made it more a science than an art through the development of what is generally called Auftragstaktik. In this view, the general staff laid out the parameters of an operational plan under whose guidelines field officers operated with a maximum flexibility to achieve the larger goals. Citino finds repeated examples of German field commanders working at cross purposes with overall command objectives and sometimes each other. He concludes that it is much more accurate to assume that the German way of war was based on attacking the enemy at the first reasonable moment with scant regard to prior planning. For Citino, Germany's officer corps' operational behavior was governed more by an aggressive offensive ethos than any sort of intellectual and rational planning. Far from being characterized by a perfect balance of staff planning and control and operational flexibility, the German strategy often involved no real coordination of subordinate commanders which, Citino notes, was unthinkable in the days before modern communication technologies. Many of these field commanders violated orders from superiors in order to push more aggressively, as demonstrated by Heinz Guderian in France in 1940, Hermann von Francois in East Prussia in 1914 and Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz in the 1700s. Indeed, Citino states in his conclusion that the current understanding of Auftragstaktik simply was not a component of Germany's military history."

H-Net Reviews

 

[Little Linguist]

Anyway, back at the ranch: You can't compare how Hitler was 'at work' with how Hitler was personally. At work, the guy MIGHT have been an iNtJ or an eNtJ, but in his free time he was definitely an iNFj.

Now cut the crap, you know I'm right.

 

[entropie]

what jörk did bring upo that thread again ?

 

[mortabunt]

Hittler was INTJ.
He was quiet and trusted few (I).
He came up with a new kind of warefare (N),
He was logical and cold (T).
He was tidy and structured (J).

 

[skylights]

i don't get all the angst over his type.

whatever he was, he held a view that most of us today find completely unacceptable. it's not like him being a certain type makes people of that type any more likely to commit the atrocities performed hitler and those under his command.

also important to note that hitler did not do what he did alone. nor could he. he was aided by people of all types.

 

[Electrical flOw]

I think Hitler was an ENFP 7w8 who has gone wrong (read 7w8 detailed description)

Type 7 - The Adventurer - PersonalityCafe
An Overview of the Seven and it's Wings - PersonalityCafe


YouTube - Best Hitler Speech

 

[Sniffles]

Hitler was more a 4 IMO, possibly a 4w3.

 

[Electrical flOw]

I suggested the combination ENFP 7w8 because it is produce a strong Te user and can be artistic in the same time.
Also Hitler was enthusiastic and rebellious, which fit type 7.
I cant see Hitler as an ENFP, with other than this combination.

 

[skylights]

apparently the "official" listing of hitler by the MBTI company is as ENFJ, but the more i read, the less he seems like a J.

all i know is that i would like to go back in time and give little kid hitler a hug so that all this third reich shit wouldn't have had to happen.

though, arguably, none of us would exist as we are if it weren't for hitler.

time is a strange beast.

 

[Chloe]

apparently the "official" listing of hitler by the MBTI company is as ENFJ, but the more i read, the less he seems like a J.

maybe ENFJ coounterphobic 6, 6 can look P-like even when J

though, arguably, none of us would exist as we are if it weren't for hitler

you think "if i wasn't in that coffee place 2 years ago, March 3th at 6:15, i wouldnt run into my friend Mike, who wouldnt 2 hours later introduce me to Jennifer, ....my life would be so different now if I was somewhere else on that day and time, who knows what i've missed " - I think like this all the time hehe

 

[Chloe]

I suggested the combination ENFP 7w8 because it is produce a strong Te user and can be artistic in the same time.
Also Hitler was enthusiastic and rebellious, which fit type 7.
I cant see Hitler as an ENFP, with other than this combination.

this is so ridiculous,lol...... Except if you think hitler did all that for FUN....

 

[skylights]

have just spend a long time reading about hitler... it's incredible how many emotions can be raised surrounding this one person.

from everything i'm reading, i'm all for ENFx.

in terms of whether he was a P or a J, i'm not sure. superficially, it seems that he was messy about some things, and anal about others. he seemed to make some decisions well enough but also didn't really trust his generals, which could throw things off either way. he also started taking amephetamines at some point, which would mean he would probably appear J regardless of what he was.

function-wise, i see a lot of what i think is Ni. hitler referred to himself a few times as sometimes being a prophet, and tapped into the symbols and mythologies of the time and culture. (though if i'm any indicator, a Ne dom can utilize that kind of thing frequently too.) he talked about his "big mission" and refused to marry because that wouldn't allow him to fulfill it as well. one of his first "realizations" regarding jewish people was when he was watching an orthodox man for the first time, and - well, here's the quote: "I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?" it sounds very Ni-contemplative to me. but was he an ENFJ, or an ENFP with strong Ni? not sure.

on one hand, he had very obvious personal morals (Fi), but on the other, he was excellent at working a crowd and was easily able to tap into public enthusiasm. (Fe)

maybe ENFJ coounterphobic 6, 6 can look P-like even when J

i was thinking about 6 too. especially when i read about him not trusting his closest guards, many of whom would sacrifice their lives for him at the drop of a hat. not that they were saints, but i think he was overly suspicious.

the thing that most makes me think not ENFP of everything i've read is this, from hitler's best friend when he was a teenager:

The most outstanding trait in my friend’s character was, as I had experienced myself, the unparalleled consistency in everything that he had said and did. There was in his nature something firm, inflexible, immovable, obstinately rigid, which manifested itself in his profound seriousness and was at the bottom of all his other characteristics. Adolf simply could not change his mind or his nature.

it kind of goes against everything ENFP is.

you think "if i wasn't in that coffee place 2 years ago, March 3th at 6:15, i wouldnt run into my friend Mike, who wouldnt 2 hours later introduce me to Jennifer, ....my life would be so different now if I was somewhere else on that day and time, who knows what i've missed " - I think like this all the time hehe

haha i know!! though i'm more prone to "omg what if i had done something different, [this good thing] wouldn't have happened", and then ponder endlessly about the implications of that... until something shiny crosses my field of vision, of course.

reading all this stuff about hitler though, he really was an extra-ordinary person. imagine if he had devoted himself to peace or global unification, instead of national socialism. or if they had just let him into fucking art school. i think he would have made an excellent motivational speaker, but no, had to go the world dictator route...

 

[Sniffles]

"When I go to Obersalzberg, I'm not drawn there merely by the beauty of the landscape. I feel myself far from petty things, and my imagination is stimulated. When I study a problem elsewhere, I see it less clearly; I'm submerged by the details. By night, at the Berghof, I often remain for hours with my eyes open, contemplating from my bed the mountains lit up by the Moon. It's at such moments that brightness enters my mind."
--Adolf Hitler, cited in Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-Creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, And Stalin, pg. 50

 

[Sniffles]

"Bear in mind that my mind works like a calculating machine. Each person who makes a presentation to me introduces into this calculating machine a small wheel of information. There forms a certain picture, or a number on each wheel. I press a button and there flashes into my mind the sum of all this information."
--inbid pg. 26

So we have Hitler describing his own thinking processes.

 

[Sniffles]

Another piece I posted here before:

"We have seen that maturity came to Hitler relatively late - a condition that led Heer to write that throughout his life there remained something incomplete in his personality...it might even be argued that this astonishing man, with all his talents and self-discipline, never really achieved maturity - by which I mean the existence of that deep-seated private judgement whereby a person comes to terms with the relationship of himself and his circumstances (a recognition that is not necessarily identical with his view of his destiny, or with a sense of that resignation which comes with age....Peter Kleist, one of Ribbentrop's satellites, wrote in his memoirs: "I had the oppurtunity to study his face carefully. It has amazed me because of the multiplicity of expressions it contained...Photography, by selecting only a single moment out of context, could show only one aspect, thereby giving a false impression of the duplicity or multiplicity of being which lay behind this image." He added: "I tried to find some explanation for the hypnotic effect of those eyes without arriving at any explanation."...

...Schramm's remarks about the ambivalence of Hitler's expressions: "The friend of women, children and animals - this was one face of Hitler neither acted nor feigned, but entirely geniune. There was, however, a second face which he did not show to his table companions, though it was no less geniune."

One element in his character was that of the artist. He was a talented draftsman and painter, and a potential architect...A bohemian Hitler was, as Speer often remarked, very evident in his working habits - untill about 1942 he rose late, ate late, and frittered away many hours. Speer commented, "I have often asked myself often: when did he really work?" (This when he was the most powerful dictator in the world)....

...Hitler was a desperate man, while at the same time, he was a visionary of a new, heroic, pagan, and scientific world. He was an unhappy child and an unhappy adolescent, spurred by shame and resentment, surely after 1918...He was also a strong man; and a fundamental source of his strength was hatred. Yet his hatreds did not coagulate untill he was thirty years old. Before that he remained a boy; at thirty, he became a man suffused with vengence. And what is vengence but the idea of causing suffering in order to heal one's own suffering? The German word for vengence is "Rache". There are few more threatening guttural words in the German language."

--John Lukacs, the Hitler of History, pg. 68, 69-70, 71, 72