Baby Hitler. Who would have thought that this sweet little
boy would grow up to kill millions of people?
Adolf Hitler had a
dream. In his demented utopia, almost everyone was tall, blond haired, and blue
eyed-no one was Jewish. However, some of the Jews were just that-tall, with
blond hair, and blue eyes. He should have known that fact too, because his first crush was a Jewish lady called Stefanie Isak (her surname has clear Jewish origins and Hitler thought she was Jewish at the time), and she had those idealized features. Hitler, by
contrast, was a short man with brown hair, the very thing he was trying to
exterminate. To make matters worse, he had an inkling that he wasn't full
Aryan himself, because his lawyer Hans Frank discovered that his paternal grandfather
was Jewish, though Hitler vehemently fought against this fact. A recent DNA test of
39 of his descendants, however, substantiates Frank's claim considerably, because it shows that they, and consequently Hitler, had a chromosome called haplogroup E1b1b1, which is found in the Berbers of
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, as well as Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. Yes, the most racist man on
earth, at the time (he's been replaced I would say), was both Jewish and
African. Or to put it more bluntly, his own worst nightmare.
Hitler having a snack with his Jewish lady, Eva Braun.
To add irony
into the mixture, there's a distinct possibility he married a Jew. In the series Dead Famous, the son of a former American Army intelligence officer who
claimed to have taken Eva Braun's possessions when he raided Hitler's Alpine
residence in Berghof, Bavaria, gave scientist Mark Evans what he claims is Eva
Braun's hairbrush. A hair sample from the hairbrush was taken by forensic
scientists who sequenced her DNA, and it showed that whoever owned the brush,
had Ashkenazi decent, or haplogroup N1b1. So, if it really is Eva Braun's
hairbrush, then she was Jewish. Her two descendants, however, refused to
give a sample of their DNA so it can be compared with the hair sample for
accuracy.
Is it
possible to be Jewish in Nazi Germany and not even know it? Absolutely! During
the 19th century (and even earlier), in order to raise their civic status, obtain a position, purchase land, ennoblement, and to simply have more basic human rights, many Jews converted to Catholicism. So it's
highly possible that a German person has Jewish ancestry, and doesn't even know
it. It's also possible that a lot of Nazis had Jewish ancestry, and didn't even know it. Hitler certainly wasn't aware that he was of Jewish extraction prior to his rise
because of an illegitimate birth, and Eva Braun had no idea whatsoever, we assume (the Jewish DNA from the hairbrush comes from the maternal line, and yes her mother, Hilda Braun, was a Catholic). This, of course,
makes the war and his philosophy even more tragically ironic and hypocritical.
The most apolitical woman in history, Eva Braun. She was neither for nor against the Third Reich and the atrocities that were being committed on their behalf. Perhaps this fact alone alludes to the possibility that she knew she was Jewish.
But what if Eva Braun knew that she was Jewish? Would she have hid her ancestry because she was in love with a mass murderer who was exterminating her people? Would it have been his immense power that attracted her? Or would she have fallen in love with the life he provided for her because she had expensive taste, especially for dresses? Certainly, it seems like all these factors would have come into play. One would loath to think, that if she knew she was Jewish, she was protecting her own skin by being romantically involved with Hitler, himself. I mean, that's as selfish as you get. But it ultimately makes sense that she was besotted by the mustache baring terrorist, because a lot of women were, for some odd reason that completely escapes me. Maybe it's because of the dapper way he dressed himself...like your average tyrant. Perhaps it's attraction to the criminal type ("Oh baby, murder someone again!"). One thing's for sure, her family had an aversion to Hitler in the beginning, so perhaps they drove her into his arms. And perhaps she really did love him, because she attempted suicide "twice," but I'll reserve that topic for another blog (that deserves a thorough examination).
It is not the twinges of gout that make a man kill himself, it is mental suffering that leads to despair; our worst sorrows are of our own making - Jean Jacques Rousseau
Of course, when it comes to Hitler, with so much partiality for what seems to be Jewish women, you wonder why would he be interested in exterminating the entire Jewish race since he likes them so much. The first and most accurate thought that comes to mind is that he's a psychopath. I suppose it could be the typical criminal response..."I had a bad childhood, and they caused it." They all had bad childhoods, and all have had scapegoats-someone, a group of people, or even an entire race to blame for their personal problems, whether or not they were a contributing factor. In his childhood, Hitler's father tied him to a tree and whipped him with chains, but he wasn't antisemitic as a young man, so whether or not that's a direct contributing factor is doubtful. It's to be expected, however, that it cultivated a certain level of anger and violence in him. Perhaps it was his rejection from the Vienna Academy of Arts by a Jewish professor, that was the tipping point that led to his antisemitism. It couldn't have helped that Vienna was a hotbed of racism at the time, and that the bohemian artist was struggling to survive in
Post World War I Germany (resentment much?).
But as Rousseau opines in the quote above, it's not external factors that causes our sorrows, it's internal factors. And since we all suffer, placing blame on an entire race is irrational, fruitless, counterproductive, not to mention wrong and evil.
Is there ever a point when blaming other people for our problems is appropriate? Since we are happy the instant we choose to be, I'd have to say the answer is no. And Rousseau would have said as much himself, because, as his quote states, unhappiness is also a choice, we create it. Of course there are exceptions, we can't be entirely immune to everything, but if Jewish psychiatrist and author of Man's Search for Meaning, Victor E. Frankel, can choose to be happy in a concentration camp, nothing is stopping the rest of mankind from choosing that route in their lives. That's the beauty of free will...no one can take your happiness away unless you give it to them. In other words, Hitler really couldn't blame anyone but himself for his own misfortunes; certainly he couldn't blame the entire Jewish race, who he blamed for everything under the sky, even the inevitable defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945. Yet, as we see here, he could have inadvertently loved Jewish people too, and was most likely Jewish himself. So if there is a lesson to learn from Hitler's DNA analysis, it's that we have to be careful about scapegoating people, who knows what we share in common with them.
Blogs and News:
Hitler was crazy alright, and here are some examples:
www.businessinsider.com/4-of-the-weirdest-things-the-nazis-ever-did-2015-7
Antisemitism on the rise in Germany because of what's happening in Gaza.
http://news.yahoo.com/merkel-vows-fight-anti-semitism-germany-112430114.html
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