ABSTRACT
Adolf Hitler probably never read Max Weber. The subtitle ‘a sociological study’ attached to ‘the three ideal-types of legitimate domination’ when it appeared in a Berlin periodical in 1922 was scarcely calculated to catch the nascent Führer’s eye. Yet much of Hitler’s career reads as extended commentary on Weber’s analysis of charismatic leadership, as if the eventual master of the Greater German Reich had transformed Weber’s sketch into a kind of dictatorial playbook. Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s precursor as dictator and, alongside Genghis Khan, his longstanding role model, likewise showed notable acumen in creating and exploiting, through what Weber described as ‘the power of the spirit and of the spoken word’, the role of national saviour. 1 And both dictators founded movements and presided over regimes that asserted monopoly ownership of the national cults.
