How German was Hitler?

Nowhere in German history is the question of continuity more significant or difficult than with the Nazi regime. Some, to be sure, find Hitler a unique and terrible aberration – the expression not of the course of German history, but of exceptional circumstances and malignant genius. Many others, however, see in Hitler the quintessential manifestation of the German problem. Certainly no regime could demonstrate more clearly aggression abroad and totalitarianism at home.

Like most historical phenomena, Hitler's regime did have many elements of continuity with the past. The links seem particularly clear in foreign policy. In his general geopolitical analysis, Hitler was similar in many respects not only to annexationists like Ludendorff, but also to Bethmann-Hollweg and Rathenau. All were concerned with what they saw as Germany's precarious position in the coming world of superstates. Hitler's writings and conversations reveal his continual reflecting on Germany's historic predicament and the various solutions to it. In Mein Kampf, as well as in later writings, Hitler analyzed with exceptional acuteness the traditional Great German and Little German options – their advantages, costs, and preconditions. These geopolitical ideas stayed with him throughout the twistings and turnings of a meteoric career, and had changed remarkably little when he dictated his Testament in 1945. His historic mission, as he saw it, was to resolve that German geopolitical problem, regardless of the cost to other nations or to his own generation of Germans.