Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "Addressing the "Madman Druggy Hitler" narrative & Nazi Drugs" video.

  1. Megalomania is a form of madness, so in this respect Hitler was insane. That does not mean that he was completely irrational, as he had a reasonable grasp of economics and the deficiencies that Germany suffered from. However, his overall thinking and philosophy was flawed, as was that of Stalin, Napoleon, Louis XIV, and many others who suffered from megalomania. The fact that so many "rational" people like Halder and von Papen followed Hitler or allowed him to have power shows that he was not raving mad (like the Joker), at least until late 1944. And many of these same people later tried to disavow their actions and use Hitler as a scapegoat. Which begs the question, if, as they say, they knowingly followed someone they thought (ex post facto) was insane, what does that say about their level of sanity? By the fall of 1944 Hitler was believing his own propaganda, and starting to ignore reality to live in his own world. It was around this time that he probably could be called "mad". Then again, this is something that has happened to many dictators or wannabe dictators who are in the process of losing. It is likely we all have minor versions of this wired into us. How many times when a picnic is planned and it turns into a rainy day do we keep looking for the weather to clear, getting elated at every lighter patch of sky appears? Or how many gamblers keep betting on the next hand hoping for a big win? It doesn't make you insane, per se. It is only when carried to the extreme, when you cannot accept reality at all, that it could be called a form of insanity. But, it must be remembered, this took place long after the events for which Hitler's sanity is initially called into question. With regards to the drug us, I don't think Hitler really began using the cocktail of medications until later in the war, after the war was already lost. So again, people like Halder can't really use this as a defense to say why they lost the war.
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  2.  @kenhoganson9481  I would still think he was a megalomaniac. One must remember that Hitler was trying to impose his will by force and coercion. He was not interested in anyone else's position if it was contradictory to his. One need only look at his vision for the new Berlin (Germania) and images he had made of himself as a crusading paladin to see his desire to be an emperor. And the fact that at the very end he ordered Speer and the Army commanders to destroy all industrial infrastructure in Germany when it was obvious that the war is lost speaks of a child with the mindset that, if they can't have it, nobody will. In his final testament, he said, “Everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me, no one has told me the truth. The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS has left me in the lurch. The German people have not fought heroically. It deserves to perish,” ... It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people". Given all of this, I would say he was megalomaniacal. I believe others have commented that Hitler's delegation of power was more a cynical attempt to divide and conquer elements within the Nazi party that could oppose him than trusting others. By creating conflicting organizations and interests within his administration, he ensured that everyone was too busy fighting everyone else for dominance to form any sort of opposition to his position as Fuhrer. It also fit with his pseudo-Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest".
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