Hitlerites Stifle Sense of Being Inferior by Assault on the Jews

Adolf Hitler has made the Jew the scapegoat in his program to bolster up the ego of Germany, declared Dr. Abraham A. Brill, lecturer on psychoanalysis and psychosexual sciences at Columbia University, and dean of American Freudians, when asked to analyze the psychological background of the present condition in Germany. The existing regime, as interpreted by Dr. Brill, is the result of the desire on the part of the German people to rehabilitate themselves in their eyes.

“When an individual is in distress, when he is made to, or feels inferior, it is only natural,” explained the chief interpreter of Freud to America, “that he should try and enhance himself in some way. The easiest way for him to do so, is to compare himself with someone whom he believes to be inferior—some one lower than himself. It is that mental mechanism which restores his value in his own eyes.

“To the German people, who felt because of the Versailles Treaty, a deep resentment, Hitlerism is bringing them an outlet for their own misery. They are now venting their sadistic impulses on the Jews. And, in doing so,” explained Dr. Brill, “they are absolving themselves in their own eyes from a sense of inferiority. They are now as great, in their own belief, as they once were. Instead of having a feeling of inferiority for having lost the war, they can still feel superior by dominating over someone else. They may now measure themselves to advantage. They have labelled the Jew as “inferior” and they have bolstered themselves up by comparison.”

JEWS PSYCHOLOGIC SCAPEGOATS

Commenting on Hitler’s propaganda which stresses the fact that because of the Jews, the Germans had been humiliated at the hands of the Allies, Dr. Brill illustrated his point. “The Germans are being told they did not lose the World War—they were betrayed by the Jews—although they have been the losers they were not at fault. He selected the Jews,” continued Dr. Brill, “because they represent the smallest defenseless minority in Germany. It was simple enough to choose them to bear the brunt of German humiliation and transfer their hatred of the victors to the Jews.”

Leading up to his discussion of the present activities of the Hitler regime as developing from a feeling of inferiority, Dr. Brill went back over the events which paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power.

“Germany,” he stated, “has been known in history to be a rather aggressive cultural race. Before the outbreak of the World War it had become one of the leading cultural races on the continent. Then came the war. It was badly beaten. It had waged a bitter battle in which millions of people were killed. The proud aggressive race became a worm in the dust. The nation suffered humiliation at the hands of the Allies. Starvation and suffering and striving to pay war damages caused a bitter feeling of resentment to develop. It added more flame to the fire of hatred which burned in indignation as those who remembered their former glory suffered.”

ALL SEEK COMPENSATIONS

Analyzing the reason why the German people have blindly followed every pronouncement made by Hitler, Dr. Brill said that the Chancellor had sensed in them the need for the ideals which they had cherished and had lost in the period of post-war confusion and he appealed to the remembered glory of the past. The desire of the German people to reinstate themselves in their former positions, he declared, has led to the persecution of the Jews.

Describing the desire of an individual or a nation for the feeling of superiority, Dr. Brill maintained that at all times one finds everywhere this effort to assert one’s superiority at the expense of labelling another inferior.

“No nation, or race, will admit that it is inferior to its neighbor,” he declared. “The Greeks called every foreigner a barbarian. ‘Deutschland Ueber Alles’ illustrates the max-