Could the Internet Have Stopped Hitler?

Hitler and the Internet

Let me explain. I'm not a scholar of the Nazism or of the Third Reich, but I do know enough to appreciate that it had a very distinct trajectory consisting of several eras. The first was young Adolph Hitler, like many other disgruntled WWI veterans, finding himself in a Germany that seemed to be falling apart under the weight of Versailles payments, war loss guilt, an economic depression, Weimer excesses, and a growing internal threat from the Communist Party. He eventually drifted to an extremist group, the National Socialists, where he found not only like-minded individuals, but also a gift for leadership. Eventually, but prematurely, in 1923, these Nazis led by Hitler attempted a bungled coup d'etat, during which Hitler was arrested and imprisoned.

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This is the period, in which Hitler and Brown Shirts looked like bunglers and buffoons, that I think Le Clezio is talking about. So, had the Internet existed and videos of the Beer Hall Putsch been posted on YouTube, would there have been sufficient ridicule to drive Hitler and his gang out of public life forever?

I don't think so. On the contrary, I think just the opposite is true. Even at that young age, Hitler was apparently already a mesmerizing speaker (at least to the German mind). Imagine what he could have done with a popular blog, a constant stream of laudatory YouTube videos, a multi-media website devoted to Mein Kampf, and a vast e-mail list. In fact, I would argue that Hitler would have been more successful in the 1920s, the Nazis attracting new members and donors not just in Bavaria but throughout Europe and even from the American Bund (which otherwise didn't happen for another decade).

But the 1930s, I think, are a very different matter. A little story: As it happens, I was born in a little Bavarian town (at least it was then; now it's a tech business center) called Furstenfeldbruck. My father was a U.S. Air Force officer (and, as I've written before, a spy) and we lived in Munich.

Keep in mind that this was 1954, and Munich looked like a city with more parking lots than people – all of those vacant areas being where the rubble of the bombed city had been bulldozed away. And what I remember is that years later, my mother told me that she used to look out the kitchen window at all of the men waiting at the bus stop each morning and wonder: How many of them were Nazis?