The Romanticisation of Hitler in Pakistan

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of Ger­many? What great per­son­al­i­ties do you relate to the coun­try? As a Ger­man vis­it­ing Pak­istan I got con­front­ed with so many pos­i­tive com­ments about Adolf Hitler that I more and more felt the urge to clar­i­fy why this ‘roman­ti­ci­sa­tion’ of Hitler is absolute­ly unac­cept­able or even offen­sive to a Ger­man.

First of all it might be cru­cial to recall some basic facts about World War II as well as about Germany’s and espe­cial­ly Hitler’s role dur­ing that time and about the Holo­caust since some of the pos­i­tive per­cep­tions of Hitler cer­tain­ly derive from igno­rance of his­tor­i­cal facts.

As com­mon­ly known, WW2 start­ed on 1st Sep­tem­ber 1939 with the Ger­man inva­sion of Poland, led by Ger­man dic­ta­tor Adolf Hitler. Hitler had become chan­cel­lor of Ger­many in 1933 after his Nazi par­ty had become the largest elect­ed par­ty in the Ger­man Reich­stag. Gain­ing pow­er in the peri­od after WW1 where Ger­many had to deal with severe restric­tions imposed by main­ly France and Britain and suf­fer­ing from the Great Depres­sion in 1929, Hitler got pub­lic sup­port espe­cial­ly by what some might call “suc­cess­ful­ly deal­ing” with these chal­lenges. How­ev­er, his aggres­sive for­eign pol­i­cy of expand­ing ter­ri­to­ry for the Ger­man peo­ple even­tu­al­ly result­ed in the Sec­ond World War. From around 1933 on, Hitler turned Ger­many into a sin­gle-par­ty dic­ta­tor­ship based on the total­i­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy of Nation­al Social­ism, based on a con­cept of ene­my per­son­i­fied by Jew­ish peo­ple and result­ing in the sys­tem­at­ic mass mur­der of approx­i­mate­ly six mil­lion Jews, known as Holo­caust. The geno­cide took place in stages, start­ing from laws grad­u­al­ly exclud­ing Jews from soci­ety, fol­lowed by slave labor in so-called “con­cen­tra­tion camps” to the deten­tion in ghet­tos before being trans­port­ed to “exter­mi­na­tion camps” where Jew­ish men, women and chil­dren were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly killed in gas cham­bers. In this con­text it is impor­tant to remem­ber that while there sure­ly has been resis­tance among the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion against Hitler’s poli­cies of mass mur­der, there has also been con­sid­er­able sup­port or at least silent accep­tance of the geno­cide, be it because of con­vic­tion of Hitler’s ide­ol­o­gy or because of fear of the con­se­quences in case of non-com­pli­ance.

Today, polit­i­cal cul­ture in Ger­many is still large­ly influ­enced by this his­tor­i­cal guilt, being a nation respon­si­ble for one of the largest and most cru­el geno­cides in his­to­ry. The last gen­er­a­tion wit­ness­ing and being involved in WW2 has by now near­ly passed away, but the guilt for the mass mur­der keeps on being passed on. The Ger­man edu­ca­tion sys­tem and school cur­ricu­lum play a deci­sive role in this way of deal­ing with the past, ensur­ing a cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ty of remem­ber­ing our “Ger­man guilt”. This is not to say that today there is no polit­i­cal right exist­ing in Ger­many. There cer­tain­ly is. For exam­ple, the NPD, a sort of fol­low-up par­ty of Hitler’s for­mer NSDAP and known for its xeno­pho­bic pro­gram, is not for­bid­den in Ger­many and gets some sup­port among lim­it­ed parts of the pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, as I men­tioned before, in the “main­stream” Ger­man soci­ety, espe­cial­ly sup­port for Hitler as a per­son­al­i­ty, stand­ing in the first place as ini­tia­tor of the Holo­caust, is usu­al­ly absolute­ly unac­cept­able. It is part of our polit­i­cal cul­ture to be extra-cau­tious when it comes to rais­ing right-wing activ­i­ties in soci­ety and it seems like we have a spe­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty to take care of that. And our Euro­pean neigh­bors still bring it up. When dur­ing the finan­cial crises in Europe, Ger­many under Merkel was espe­cial­ly strict in deal­ing with the nation­al debts crises in Greece, pro­test­ers in Greece com­pared Merkel with Hitler. It is a thought-ter­mi­nat­ing cliché when­ev­er Ger­man politi­cians are being strict on an issue, rather sel­dom relat­ed to actu­al xeno­pho­bic poli­cies. With­out going much into detail here, you can also see that in terms of Germany’s polit­i­cal rela­tions with Israel and how it is always a dif­fi­cult issue for a Ger­man politi­cian to crit­i­cize Israeli poli­cies.

With this back­ground in mind, imag­ine – as a Ger­man – get­ting involved in a dis­cus­sion with some­body telling you that Hitler, after all, was not that bad and that he at least was a great leader. Or imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in which some­body tells you frankly that he or she admires Hitler. This is exact­ly what I expe­ri­enced on a lot of occa­sions in Pak­istan and it cer­tain­ly shocked me every time anew, espe­cial­ly since I most­ly got in con­tact with rather edu­cat­ed peo­ple dur­ing my stay in Pak­istan. I got extreme­ly dis­turbed each time I saw a face lit­er­al­ly light­ing up when I said that I am from Ger­many and the first thing the oth­er one replied was some­thing like “Ger­many, the coun­try Hitler ruled!” – Some­times fol­lowed by anoth­er pos­i­tive remark. Also in social media like face­book I came across sev­er­al pos­i­tive remarks and com­ments about Hitler among (young) Pak­ista­nis. Fur­ther­more, I found Hitler’s “My Strug­gle”, which is not freely avail­able in Ger­many, every­where in book­shops or even people’s homes in Pak­istan.

So after all, what are the actu­al rea­sons for Hitler’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Pak­istan? Not being able to assess the phe­nom­e­non as a whole, I will at least men­tion the most com­mon rea­sons that I came across. First of all, igno­rance of Hitler’s actions apart from his “lead­er­ship skills” and eco­nom­ic reforms cer­tain­ly con­tribute to his roman­ti­ci­sa­tion. ‘I doubt that most [Pak­ista­nis] like Hitler, since most Pak­ista­nis have no clue about Hitler.’ – That’s what I recent­ly read in a blog and I am sure it applies to a cer­tain extend. I also assume that edu­ca­tion on WW2 and Hitler in Pak­istani (pub­lic) schools is rather lim­it­ed in this con­text.
Relat­ed to that, anoth­er rea­son is that many Pak­ista­nis sim­ply fore­ground oth­er “achieve­ments” of Hitler, rather neglect­ing the geno­cide. Hitler is con­sid­ered a great leader who led Ger­many out of its eco­nom­ic crises, who built up the Ger­man eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture and who cre­at­ed jobs. Pak­ista­nis often tend to praise Hitler’s lead­er­ship skills, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the mil­i­tary he was lead­ing, cer­tain­ly trac­ing back to the Pak­istani population’s wide-spread sup­port for its own mil­i­tary. More impor­tant­ly, Hitler and his bat­tle against Britain in WW2 is said to have con­tributed to India’s and Pakistan’s inde­pen­dence from British colo­nial rule since Britain had no longer the resources to con­trol British India while at high war with Ger­many.
Anoth­er cen­tral rea­son for sup­port for Hitler among Pak­ista­nis is the preva­lence of anti-Semi­tism in the coun­try, which one can encounter through­out the Islam­ic world. This main­ly reflects the stance of Pak­istani Mus­lims in the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, and the view that Hitler was fight­ing Jews, which are often gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered ene­mies of Mus­lims around the world and specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, as those who deprive Mus­lims of their land. Still, it should be not­ed that a clear stance in the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict in favor of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple can­not auto­mat­i­cal­ly be equat­ed with sup­port for Hitler’s anti-Semit­ic ide­ol­o­gy or sup­port for the Holo­caust.

A last aspect that can be men­tioned in this dis­cus­sion are the par­al­lels that – as some peo­ple argue – can be found between Fas­cism and (rad­i­cal) Islamism, some­times referred to with the term “Islam­o­fas­cism”, relat­ing mod­ern Islamist (or Jihadist) move­ments to the Euro­pean fas­cist move­ments. While the term itself is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, it draws atten­tion to some com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics. Fas­cism is usu­al­ly char­ac­ter­ized by an exclu­sive, total­i­tar­i­an and repres­sive ide­ol­o­gy glo­ri­fy­ing the nation-state and con­sid­er­ing state and soci­ety as one with no con­trol of pow­er. There is one cen­ter of pow­er per­son­i­fied by a strong leader who mobi­lizes the pop­u­la­tion around his ide­ol­o­gy. While Islamist or Jihadist move­ments are nor­mal­ly not focused on a nation-state, they may share with Fas­cism its will­ing­ness to deploy vio­lence and its focus on mil­i­tan­cy, even lead­ing up to (glob­al) war. They both rely on an ide­ol­o­gy mak­ing a strict divi­sion between those eli­gi­ble to the ide­ol­o­gy and those who are not. To con­trol soci­ety they despise art and lit­er­a­ture, mean­while offer­ing wel­fare ser­vices, and they espe­cial­ly tar­get the youth for recruit­ment. Anoth­er com­mon fea­ture, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of the Fas­cist Nazi Regime, cer­tain­ly is the preva­lent anti-Semi­tism. How­ev­er, crit­ics say that the term sug­gests a his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate and sim­plis­tic rela­tion, espe­cial­ly since used by for­mer US pres­i­dent George W. Bush, often not dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between var­i­ous Islamist mil­i­tant move­ments and a ten­den­cy to equate Islam in gen­er­al with Fas­cism. One should note that tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic soci­ety is based on clan and trib­al com­mu­ni­ties and local loy­al­ties with frag­ment­ed pow­er struc­tures, tra­di­tion­al­ly con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing, which can­not even be relat­ed to the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of West­ern indus­tri­al state fas­cism. Fur­ther­more, the term is often used by (Amer­i­can) right-wing (neo-) con­ser­v­a­tives pro­pa­gan­diz­ing against Islam, one exam­ple being con­ser­v­a­tive writer and activist David Horowitz who in 2007 launched a series of lec­tures and protests on col­lege cam­pus­es under the title “Islam­o­fas­cism Aware­ness Week”.

With­out being able here to exam­ine the whole his­tor­i­cal back­ground of any rela­tion between Fascis­tic Ide­ol­o­gy or more specif­i­cal­ly, the Nazi Regime, and (rad­i­cal) Islamist move­ments, I will at least give one exam­ple of a rather ear­ly Islam­ic move­ment that is said to be inspired by Fas­cism to some extent: the Khak­sar move­ment found­ed by Alla­ma Mashriqi. Khak­sar was a move­ment based in Lahore, at that time British India, estab­lished in 1931 with the aim of lib­er­at­ing India from the rule of the British Empire. Under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of Khak­sar were named as jus­tice, equal­i­ty, peace, broth­er­hood and uni­ty to mankind, regard­less of race, caste or reli­gion. How­ev­er, among its 24 prin­ci­ples one can also find “Must obey orders of his/her appoint­ed supe­ri­or under all cir­cum­stances with­out hes­i­ta­tion.”, “Become the rul­ing pow­er and keep the total suprema­cy of Islam in mind.” and “Parade in mil­i­tary style and adopt mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline.”, reveal­ing a rather mil­i­tant ide­ol­o­gy. Point 9 of its Four­teen Point Decree fur­ther­more states: “Khak­sar has as his objec­tive author­i­ty over the entire world and attain­ment of col­lec­tive and polit­i­cal suprema­cy of his nation through piety and vir­tu­ous deeds.” Oth­er sources even claim that Mashriqi pro­mot­ed glob­al Jihad with his move­ment. Alla­ma Mashriqi is also said to have met Hitler in 1926 and that they both inspired each oth­er.

Dis­cussing or men­tion­ing a cou­ple of pos­si­ble rea­sons and expla­na­tions for sup­port for Hitler in Pak­istan, I will once again come back to the main point I was try­ing to make here, name­ly why it is so dis­turb­ing for a Ger­man to hear pos­i­tive com­ments about Hitler. For most Ger­mans, Hitler and his actions is not some­thing that you can make up your mind about, that you can devel­op an opin­ion about, that you can look at from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and then argue that from a cer­tain point of view, it has not been that bad or it has been jus­ti­fi­able. And I per­son­al­ly think that this is right because there is sim­ply no excuse. Noth­ing jus­ti­fies geno­cide or com­pen­sates for it, not the ‘bad’ or dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion Ger­many found itself in after WW1, nor the cre­ation of jobs or any kind of eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, and cer­tain­ly not great lead­er­ship skills. Still, tak­ing Pak­istan as an exam­ple, I even­tu­al­ly find it impor­tant to reveal, dis­cuss and be aware of the under­ly­ing caus­es root­ed in soci­ety and its his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ences that actu­al­ly explain, but in my opin­ion not entire­ly jus­ti­fy, why peo­ple think that way.

This arti­cle is of course to a large extend based on my per­son­al sub­jec­tive per­cep­tions and is only refer­ring to (my expe­ri­ences in) Pak­istan. I came across sim­i­lar pos­i­tive opin­ions about Hitler in Moroc­co though and heard from oth­er Ger­mans mak­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences in sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries.