At the very outset a contemplation of Hitler's significance is faced by an intricate interweaving of separate questions such as the psychological character and philosophic place of his personality, the function of war, the play of historic, economic, and political forces, and so on. He stood in such an intimate relation with his age that valuable lessons may be drawn from its study.
What was Hitler? We all know about the rapid and remarkable progress of this ex-corporal in a Bavarian regiment to the citadel of continental power, but what was his psychological and philosophical significance? It would be a mistake to regard him as an arrogant if ignorant man who, by starting the Nazi party at Munich, merely sought to complete the logical chain and conclude the chauvinistic work initiated by his predecessors and contemplated by the unteachable Army High Command. He sought to achieve something tremendously larger, something of which the mere expansion of Germany was but a part, although a most important part.
Instrumental puppets of Destiny like him are pushed forward at the appointed time on the stage of historical events, allowed to play their parts, and then are doomed to disappear. Hence although Hitler gained the temporary empire that he sought, spread from the Arctic to the Aegean seas as it was, it fell rapidly from his grasp when the inevitable karmic reaction came into play. When the tides of karma turned against him, he met first with frustration and then with failure. And the destruction of effete forms does not take so long a time as the construction of new ones. Therefore we could confidently have looked forward to an early end of that chaotic period. The doom of the terror-filled Nazi regime was preordained. The other agencies that were to complete this historical drama were being groomed for the dramatic epilogue.
Because the thoughts of millions of people were concentrated against him; because thought is a potent power which tends sooner or later to objectify itself; because all these millions were thinking destructively and antagonistically against him; because such a tremendous volume of intensely one-pointed thought has never before been known in world history; because all this power, which clutched him and his people like an octopus, was bound to materialize eventually; a complete defeat for Hitler's military and civilian armies and a complete collapse of Hitler himself were inevitable, even though his crooked cross had been bombastically carried right through the entire continent of Europe. Those who knew the occult powers of thought and the inner workings of karma knew also that nothing was surer than the nemesis which would fall inexorably upon this barbarous man and his gang, for their vast violation of moral laws. He sowed and therefore unfailingly reaped the worst destiny which any man of the twentieth century has yet made. Even during his lifetime his own arrogance turned eventually to anxiety and that again to despair. And when his pilgrimage to perdition was at an end with his career, he had to undergo a preliminary purgation in the only hell that there is, the hell of the awful dream of forcibly receiving the suppressed hatreds of his victims, the terrible post-death nightmare of re-witnessing their agonized experiences from their standpoint. It were a dozen times better for Hitler and his misguided helpmates to have died early than to have lived long. For the evil destiny they made for themselves during those extra years of life will be nothing more than so much extra suffering they will have to endure.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 3 : Their Presence in The World > # 205
