"What fascinates me about Hitler as leader is not so much that part of the
discussion as the other side of the leadership coin -- all the people who
chose to follow him. Harriett."
I recently waded my way through the book Explaining Hitler and what I
discovered there in the description of Hitler's rise to power was that 1)
he murdered and intimidated his opposition in order to get to the lower
rung of leadership; 2) the journalists of the time understood him very
well but they or their organizations were systematically eliminated; 3)
his final takeover of power was part of a deal that misfired among the
power brokers of the time, and finally 4) his popular following was never
very large, but the opposition could never effectively counter him before
it was too late. I would, therefore, join with those who say he had
charisma but was not an example of either a leader or leadership.
(For anyone interested in the phenomenon or history of the time, I highly
recommend the book.)
But there's an additional link to another recent thread that occurs to me,
and that is the connection between behavior followed by Hitler's party
(or, more recently, the Chicago shootings of minorities) and the meaning,
Harriet, that you ascribed to the turtle story, namely, "when logic fails,
they (or you) fall back on passionately held and completely unquestioned
beliefs -- against which there is no logicalargument and it might as well
be 'turtles all the way down.'" In other words, I believe that
intolerance, especially the more extreme variety, is based upon
passionately held and completely unquestioned beliefs...and you often
can't argue with it or address it logically in any way.
I also see the connection here to fear, often unquestioned fear, which
could be part of a brake system to change within organizations. Although
I agree that brakes form a useful service in the change process, it's the
unquestioned part of it that disturbs me and has frustrated me in the
past. I have been challenged with how to raise the awareness and
acceptance of the fear to the surface, even if just within the individual.
I would be interested in others' reactions to these thoughts.
Rebecca S. Bell
DCAC / MRM Training
425/965-6799 (voice)
425/965-6388 (fax)
MS 6M-UC
--"Bell, Rebecca S" <Rebecca.Bell@PSS.Boeing.com>
[Host's Note: In association with Amazon.com, this link...
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006095339X/learningorg
...Rick]
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>