Hitler was a vain and violent man who had absolutely no conscience, no sense of good or evil other than the barbarous rule that his own success was the sole good, his own failure the sole evil. In the vast contours of this century's history, this would-be world dictator will be seen for what he was and it will then find no other words with which to conclude its judgement than that Hitler was a criminal lunatic, a pathological and paranoic creature whose own insanity showed up the general craziness of his people and of his own groups who followed him in other lands. This is a true judgement of Hitler the man, but there was also Hitler, the instrument of destiny.
We can read the cryptic signs of these historic events aright when we read in him the half-conscious karmic agent who broke the decaying foundations of an ageing structure, who hastened the final dissolution of a shallow period which was governed by refined hypocrisies and self-deceptions and materialistic jealousies. Hitler had his part to play in the universal drama, albeit a very wicked one. But this does not for one moment mean, however, that we are to welcome Hitler's birth or to regard him as other than he was--the wickedest of all human beings, the most sinful of all sinners, the most vindictive of his contemporaries, the most barbarous of human creatures, the most devilish of all the enemies of truth and culture. Let there be no misunderstanding about this man who made murder a method of propaganda and oppression a method of government. If history has a place for Hitler, it can be only in her annals of brutality without parallel, falsehood on a gargantuan scale, and aggressiveness raised to the degree of utter bestiality. He has amply illustrated Emerson's saying that all history resolves itself easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons, even though his stoutness was devoted to an evil cause and his earnestness to an aggressive aim. This said, we must finish by curling our lips in disgust.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth > Chapter 3 : Laws and Patterns of Experience > # 425
