Carl Jung on Adolph Hitler
Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 1889–1890)
There is no question but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man.
As somebody commented about him at the last Nürnberg party congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been seen in this world. His body does not suggest strength.
The outstanding characteristic of his physiognomy is its dreamy look.
I was especially struck by that when I saw pictures taken of him in the Czechoslovakian crisis; there was in his eyes the look of a seer.
This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler’s is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable, and unreasonable. … So you see, Hitler is a medicine man, a spiritual vessel, a demi-deity or, even better, a myth.
During an interview with H. R. Knickerbocker, first published in Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan (January 1939).
No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps. A nation has no honour, it has no word to keep. … Hitler is himself the nation.
That incidentally is why Hitler always has to talk so loud, even in private conversation — because he is speaking with 78 million voices. ~Carl Jung; During an interview with H. R. Knickerbocker (1939).
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters (Bollingen Series XCVII)
Kusnacht, 8 June C G. came in, the old C. G., smiling, welcoming, with both arms outstretched.
He looked at us and said to Eleanor [Bertine] , “You have not changed.”
And to me, “But you have changed.” I said, “There has been a world cataclysm since I last saw you.”
He himself is very little changed.
Older, yes, face a little thinner, with harder lines and planes, throwing the width and height of the head into greater prominence.
Hair a little thinner, softly wispy around his head.
He spoke of it, calling it his “feathers.”
“Yes, my head is growing feathers. But the barber won’t cut it.”
I said, “Is it the same barber whom Zosimos tells of?”
But he evidently did not hear all I said, for he replied, “No, it is not the same one. We have one who lives just across the road.”
We spoke of how glad we had been to get his letters from time to time, which had kept us in touch.
He said it had been very strange during the war in Switzerland, that little island of peace, how, in spite of the constant threat of invasion, he had not been really uneasy (putting his hand on his abdomen),
that he had always had a sense they would be left uninterferred with.
He told of their great anxiety in 1939 over the Hitler-Stalin pact, which made it look as if they would be swallowed up without doubt.
He said he had had a dream at that time:
He found himself in a castle, all the walls and buildings of which were made of trinitrotoluene (dynamite).
Hitler came in and was treated as divine.
Hitler stood on a mound as for a review.
C. G. was placed on a corresponding mound.
Then the parade ground began to fill with buffalo or yak steers, which crowded
into the enclosed space from one end.
The herd was filled with nervous tension and moved about restlessly.
Then he saw that one cow was alone, apparently sick.
Hitler was concerned about this cow and asked C. G. what he thought of it.
C. G. said, “It is obviously very sick.”
At this point, Cossacks rode in at the back and began to drive the herd off He awoke and felt, “It is all right.”
He emphasized that Hitler was treated as divine.
Consequently, he felt, we had to view him like that, that Hitler is not to be taken primarily as a human man, but as an instrument of ‘divine’ forces, as Judas, or, still better, as the Antichrist must be.
That the castle was built of trinitrotoluene meant that it would blow up and be destroyed because of its own explosive quality.
The herds of cattle are the instincts, the primitive, pre-human forces let loose in the German unconscious.
They are not even domestic cattle, but buffalo or yaks, very primitive indeed.
They are all male, as is the Nazi ideology: all the values of relationship, of the person or individual, are completely repressed; the feminine element is sick unto death, and so we get the sick cow.
Hitler turns to C. G. for advice, but he limits his comment to the diagnosis,
“The cow is very sick.
At this, as though the recognition of the ailment released something the Cossacks burst in.
Even before that, the herd had been disturbed and nervous as indeed the male animal is if separated too long or too completely from its complement, the female.
The Cossacks are, of course, Russians.
C. G. said he deduced from that that Russia-more barbaric than Germany, but also more directly primitive, and therefore of sounder instinct-would break in andcause the overthrow of Germany. ~Esther Harding, Conversations with Jung, Pages 12-13