What drove Hitler to act in such a monumentally murderous way?

My Theory on Hitler’s behavior, I am so fascinated when it comes to human behavior and why some of the most notorious dictators become so vicious to their own people. Now in no way am I condoning or supporting one’s behavior as my theory is just a theory. However, I thought this was a good new outlook and perspective of an individual’s behavior that changed history and left a big mark for generations to remember. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party perpetrated one of history's most evil deeds by instigating World War II and the Holocaust, which led to tens of millions of lives lost or irreparably damaged. What drove Hitler to act in such a monumentally murderous way? Let’s take a step back and look at the early years of Hitler’s life.

Personally, I can see that Hitler had a very hard life at a very young age. His parents' families are both of a poor peasant background. His father, Alois, regarded as strict and distant, becomes a customs official and expects Adolf to follow a career into the civil service. Hitler’s mother, Klara, is of a more compassionate nature, adoring and indulging her son. So, keep that in mind. Hitler was in fact a victim of physical abuse during his childhood by his father. Adolf's mother tried to protect her son from regular beatings. Historians have uncovered Hitler’s Sisters Diary which contained heavy daunting evidence showing the dysfunctional nature of the future Führer's family. An entry on Paula Hitler’s diary stating

"Fearing that the father could no longer control himself in his unbridled rage, she [Adolf's mother] decides to put an end to the beating.”

"She goes up to the attic, covers Adolf who is lying on the floor, but cannot deflect the father's final blow. Without a sound she absorbs it."

Any Dysfunctional Family Like this one, is a perfect example of how any individual can basically go off the “deep end” so to speak. Sadly, things get worse for him. Now everyone knows you take after your parents one way or another. His father Alois wasn’t a great father figure. When his father died, Adolf was only 13 years of age. Adolf sadly needed to fill the void and become the man of the house to help support his mother and family. However, Hitler took after his father. Paula Hitler wrote in her diary stating how dysfunctional her brother was. He was very strict with Paula and slapped her around. But she justified it in a starry-eyed way, because she believed it was for the good of her education. Needless to say this is where things started to built up when it came to his behavior and mental illness.

In his teens he became increasingly reclusive, resentful and emotionally unstable. Pathological narcissism develops as a compensatory defense against these painful wounds and inferiority feelings. There is no question that Hitler's personality exuded pathological narcissism. In 1907 Hitler moves to Vienna with the aim of attending the Vienna Academy of Art, but his application is rejected. His disappointment is compounded by his failure to also get into the Vienna School of Architecture due to his inability to provide a school leaving certificate. Another Failure to the future Führer. Without any means of money, Hitler struggles to survive in Vienna, living in a men’s hostel. He sells postcards which he’s drawn, of famous sights, and undertakes a series of menial jobs, to earn money. During this period of poverty, Hitler engages in much political activity, attending meetings, absorbing political newspapers and literature.

The adult Hitler was a "counteractive type," by which he meant a person primarily motivated by resentment and revenge in response to prior narcissistic wounding and profound feelings of inferiority. There is no question that Hitler's personality exuded pathological narcissism and may have met modern diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. Hitler's ravenous hunger for power has been written many times showing how much he craved for power and authority. In Hitler's case, he chose to pursue power through politics. But what differentiates the power-hungry politician from someone like Hitler craving world domination? Or from those conscientious politicians who, having attained some modicum of power, primarily use it for good rather than evil? The truth is, we all, whether consciously or unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly, seek some measure of power and control in life. To assert our will in the world and to influence what happens to us and others. However, Hitler, like so many victims of physical abuse during childhood, may have experienced an extraordinary sense of helplessness and powerlessness as a boy, stemming mainly from his poor relationship with his exceedingly domineering and controlling father. It is frequently this terrifying feeling of total helplessness and powerlessness in childhood that drives what Nietzsche called this exceptional "will to power" later in life.

Hitler evidently suffered also from severe anxiety. How much of Hitler's destructive behavior, before and after rising to power, was an obsessive-compulsive defense mechanism against his painful anxiety? One pathological attempt to exert absolute control over the environment and one's self can be seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD is, by definition, an anxiety disorder, and can be understood psychologically as an ultimately losing battle for power and control over the inescapable reality of existential anxiety. Existential anxiety stems from the inevitabilities or givens in life that we are unable to control or overpower, such as insecurity, aloneness, meaninglessness, suffering, sickness and mortality. From being confronted by those terrifying aspects of existence against which we are utterly powerless and cannot control. It is known now that Hitler suffered not only from chronic anxiety, but also insomnia and related somatic symptoms like what we today might call irritable bowel syndrome. Once in power, he maintained a very close relationship with his personal physician, who helped manage the Fuehrer's anxiety symptoms with numerous medications, many of which were highly unorthodox, and are said to have included both sedating barbiturates and stimulating amphetamine on which Hitler came to depend.

Hitler has many weaknesses, there is a large feminine component in his constitution. As a child he was frail and sickly, emotionally dependent on his mother. He never did any manual work, never engaged in athletics, was turned down as a forever unfit for conscription in the Austrian army. Afraid of his father, his behavior was outwardly submissive, and later he was annoyingly subservient to his superior officers. Four years in the army, has never rode above the rank of a corporal. At the end he broke down with a war neurosis, hysterical blindness. Even in all his glory, he suffered from frequent emotional collapses in which he yelled and wept. He has nightmares from a bad conscience; and he has long spells when energy, confidence and the power of decision abandon him. Sexually he is a full-fledged masochist.

Admiration of pure noble German blood, contempt of Jews. Hitler has always praised the superior qualities of pure, unmixed, and uncorrupted German blood. He admires the aristocracy. Concurrently he has never ceased expressing his contempt of the lower classes and his aversion to admixtures of the blood of other races, of Jewish blood especially; and yet Hitler’s own origins are not noble or beyond reproach. Hitler comes from illiterate peasant stock derived from a mixture of races, no pure Germans among them. His father was illegitimate, was married three times, and is said to have been conspicuous for sexual promiscuity. Hitler’s mother was a domestic servant. It is said that Hitler’s fathers’ father was in fact a Jew, and it is certain that his godfather was a Jew; and that one of his sisters managed a restaurant for Jewish students in Vienna and another was, for a time, the mistress of a Jew.

Hitler’s appearance, when he had a long beard during his outcast days in Vienna, it was said to be very Jewish.

Of these facts he is evidently ashamed. Unlike napoleon, he was rejected all his relations. As a partial explanation of his complex about impurity of blood it may be said that as a boy of twelve, Hitler was caught engaging in some sexual experiment with a little girl; and later he seems to have developed a syphilophoia, with a diffuse fear of contamination of blood through contact with women.

It’s best to say that Hitler had no luck when it came to his life. He, if anything was, on some level, successful letting the world know how much he tried to dominate his country and the people around it. Again, in no way I am supporting his behavior or condoning the criminal acts of this individuals murderous power stroll. There is so much more that I’d love to share with my readers but for now this will be my first piece to this series of human behavior in history. If you liked this, please comment down below I’d love to know what you thought of this theory of mine.

Thank you for reading!