PETER LOEWENBERG
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ever been before, and on the eve of the harvest there was a truly over–
whelming sensation of fear and anxiety." A psychodynamic understanding
of guilt, anxiety, and the defense mechanisms of projection and displace–
ment is what is missing from Lefebvre's analysis, and this would explain
why the peasants had this great fear of retribution just as they were
planning to seize, or already had seized, the manor houses, burned the
records, abused and intimidated the lord of the manor into either fleeing
or signing over his seigneurial rights. The peasants feared that the
"brigands" as agents of the nobility would do to them what they were
about to do to the aristocrats: burn, pillage, steal, drive out, and seize
for themselves.
Adolf Hitler was a charismatic leader, not merely in the colloquial
sense of having a persuasive style and a devoted following, as might be
said of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, or a rock star. We may
use the term "charismatic authority" for Hitler in its precise Weberian
meaning, as a personal authority which :
. knows only inner determination and inner restraint. The holder
of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obe–
dience and a following by virtue of his mission.
Hitler communicated power, certainty, control, an easy explanation
for how Germany arrived at its current predicament and an action-ori–
ented program for the future. He offered security, a sense of community
(Volksgerneil1SchaJt),
comradeship, and the promise of national strength and
order in place of impotence and chaos. He appealed to all the psychic
needs of those Germans who felt desperate hopelessness and futile rage at
an abstract economic system and a humiliating peace. As Martin Broszat
put it:
Given the impression of resoluteness which he conveyed, Hitler knew
how to articulate and, as it were, to celebrate what his listeners half–
consciously desired and fclt . He voiced what they secretly thought and
wanted, reinforced their still unsure longings and prejudices, and
thereby created for them deeply satisfying self-awareness and the
feeling of being privy to a new truth and certainty . Such leadership
and oratory did not require a refined intellectual discrimination or a
calm, mature individuality and personality, but . .. a psychological
and mental disposition which was itself so infected by the mood of
crisis and panic of the time that it instinctively sounded the correct
note.
