ABSTRACT
Pinpointing the sources of Adolf Hitler destructive mindset may require a type of thinking uncommon among traditional historians. Hitler, the argument goes, felt a powerful ambivalence toward his father; publicly he spoke of him with respect, but privately he hated him and saw him as a competitor for his mother's love. In one version of the story, after Hitler's father died, a Jewish physician, Eduard Bloch, emerged as a father-substitute in Hitler's mind. Hitler joined in September 1919, as Party Comrade number fifty-five and the seventh member of the executive committee. Hitler's decision to pursue power via the ballot box, following the failed 1923 beer hall putsch, had proved momentous. Hitler's rise to power is best understood as a consequence of events arising in the aftermath of the First World War. General Stroop wanted to give Hitler a present that would please him; what came to mind was the razing of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.
