Adolf Hitler In Machiavelli's The Prince

The famous manual “The Prince” by Machiavelli remains to this day, the main book to go to for the advice on how to be a good politician. This book contains 26 chapters describing the often crafty, cunning and corrupt methods by which a prince can obtain and maintain political power. It was written in 1413 and Adolf Hitler may well have been one of these politicians to chart the advice of Machiavelli, particularly around the time of the Second World War as he led many people between 1939 and 1945. Hitler followed Machiavellian principles through the advice points on punishments, deceit and fear control.

This means that a leader must have no mercy and punish hard to keep their people in line. This philosophy applies quite a lot to Hitler, for example, Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). On the night of November 9, 1938, violence and hatred against Jews broke out across the German Reich and thousands of Jews were captured and killed. The morning after the massacres, 30,000 German Jewish men were arrested for the "crime" of being Jewish and sent to concentration camps, which was a harsh punishment. De Nacht der langen Messer (The night of the long knives) is another example and was a purge that took place in Germany in which Nazi soldiers carried out numerous political homicides on 77 leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party. The night of the long knives (often called operation hummingbird) was carried out swiftly and harshly to “punish” the politicians for being conservative anti-Nazi. A last definite point is that Hitler used gaseous euthanasia to quickly and cheaply execute the Jews he held in his concentration camps. People were put into the gassing chambers and then killed with carbon monoxide. An estimated 120,000 people were killed (punished) through the Nazi "Euthanasia" engagements. All these points truly prove the fact that Hitler did follow the political philosophies of Machiavelli in this