Hittler and Stalin - Parallel Lives

Hitler saw himself as called on by divine intervention to rescue the German people from the humiliation of defeat, and to restore the country to its rightful historic position, as a “master race,” and to certify it for the future, by creating a new Germanic empire in Eastern Europe. Stalin saw his mission as ending the centuries-old backwardness of Russia, turning a peasant society into a modern industrialized country, and during that same time enforcing the first socialist state in the world. Neither task could be carried out without a vast number of human sacrifices, but on the stage of world history on which they were merely actors the cost of these intense sacrifices never counted. It would be justified and they would be forgiven by their forerunners, provided they would be successful.

The process by which these convictions took possession of their minds remains a mystery. “Narcissism is a concept originally formulated by Freud in relation to early infancy, but one which i...