The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersfound himself fighting for Germany, again to be plunged into
despair by the military defeat and the peace terms he was to define as
traitorous. Identifying external "reasons" for this bleak period in
Germany's and his own life characterizes Hitler's rhetoric during
this period. Three themes were to dominate Hitler's speechmaking
before he came to power: (i) the treason of the November criminals;
(2) breaking the rule of the Marxists; and (3) the world domination
of the Jews. The Jew as the focus of his hostility, the "reason" for
Germany's weakness, was increasingly to become the focus of his
mesmerizing rhetoric.
The purpose of this discussion of Langer's study is not to psycho-
logically analyze Hitler but rather to describe the analytic approach
taken in this pioneering study. Langer studied Hitler in the same
way he tried to understand the patients on his psychoanalytic couch.
Without further detailing the life history of Hitler elaborated by
Langer, suffice it so say that Langer integrates in The Mind of Adolf
Hitler a psychobiographic analysis, a psychodynamic profile, and a
depiction of the public man, discriminating between those aspects of
the public persona that are contrived for public consumption and
those that are powerfully psychologically driven to compensate for
the inner void.
Though it is a powerful and persuasive study, Langer acknowl-
edges that it is not clear to him the degree to which decision makers
relied upon his work. He does report that Lord Chalfont of Great
Britain, on meeting him quickly, identified him as the author of the
Hitler study, making it clear that the work had been shared with
U.S. allies.
While the degree of influence of this study upon the conduct of
the war is not clear, as the prototype of the psychodynamically ori-
ented clinically informed assessment of a foreign leader at a distance,
it is of great importance, for it was to become the model of subse-
quent endeavors in support of government policy.
Khrushchev at a Distance
When Nikita Khrushchev burst on the political scene in 1953, his
political persona differed dramatically from that of his predecessor,
Josef Stalin. The CIA convened a conference in 1960 for the specific
purpose of assessing this complicated leader for the Kennedy admin-