By many accounts, Adolf Hitler was a nice man. I have read many books about Hitler and watched many documentaries about him, including first-hand accounts of him as a private person. His personal secretaries and servants, his subordinates, people who visited him—many of them talked about what a nice person he was. He was nice to children and animals. He was a good conversationalist. He donated money to people in need. He paid his underlings well. He was, by most accounts, in his private life, the epitome of a nice person.
Why do people so often assume that if a person is “nice,” he (it’s usually a he) cannot also be a monster? “But his mother loved him!” No proof that the person was or is not a monster.
Similarly, many people assume that a human monster must have been obviously evil to discerning people. Simply not so. I have personally known people, mostly men, maybe only men, who were both—nice people AND monsters. Oh, the stories I could tell. How do I know they were also monsters? I had the misfortune of “being there” when their monster sides came out.
I knew and even worked with a pastor who was a pedophile. Even after he went to prison, many people continued to praise him as a great Christian leader. “He led so many young men into the ministry,” and “he led so many people to the Lord.” And “He was such a colorful conversationalist and really cared about people.” But he had a very dark side that was well-hidden from the vast majority of people who knew him.
Narcissists and abusers are often very adept at fooling people. Think of Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. Graham never fully recovered from his betrayal by Nixon. He had Graham fooled. After Graham listened to the “White House Tapes” he grieved with tears over how he was taken in by Nixon.
So don’t look at a personality; look at the person’s actions. The pastor I referred to before was extremely furtive and secretive about his out-of-town travels. When someone finally called him to account, he abused them, even to the point of lying about them and excommunicating them. And yet his secret trips were a clear warning sign of something wrong.
By most accounts of people who knew Hitler personally, he was a nice person.
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