Shailesh Sapkota | Kathmandu | 2020-10-28 | 9:16pm

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American philosopher quotes, “Leaders should not follow the path that may lead somewhere instead they should go where there is no path and leave a trail”. Leadership is an abstract term and can be defined explicitly only. But in general, effective leadership is an art of motivation. It is a position that can influence, guide, and direct the behavior of a certain group of people to accomplish a common goal (Manning & Curtis, 2014). Leader of either public organization or private enterprise, they should have the charisma and essential attributes to provide direction for their followers.

Leaders pave away and create an environment for nation-building. To do so, they formulate their leadership skills in four dimensions such as promoting right national values, being living models, formulating nation development goals, and defining a national vision. Achieving success in the above dimensions require co-operative effort from the powerful people. Leaders chose anyone that can implement and mobilize the vision and strategies. To do so, leaders should put forward their agenda as clearly, effectively, and credibly. Effective leaders develop the national capacity and unite all together to achieve the chosen goals. By bringing changes through a series of phases and minimizing mistakes as one critical mistake can have a devastating impact on the country as well as their position (Gebrekidan, 2009).

An effective leader of a nation should pose developmental and legacy building characteristics. There should three elements quality, justice, and legitimacy on an effective leader in terms of shaping a nation. Quality refers to the leadership skills, competence, and attributes while justice means the feeling of having harmony, peace, and unity among the people. Likewise, legitimacy is must-have essence in a national leader it is obtained through the support of the public. Although it can be achieved by force it will take time for the leaders to sustain their leadership.

From the history of mankind, we can observe the concept of leadership and the evolution of the concept. We have seen many leaders leading the nation with their positive and negative attributes. Leaders make their stand either forcefully or by being elected democratically. Some leaders made history by saving mankind while others neutralized innocents to take power. Among such leaders, there is one such leader that showed humanity the extreme interpretation of power a leader can have in Adolf Hitler.

Background:

Born in 1889, April 20 in Austria world saw the powerful leader of the 20^th century in Adolf Hitler. After the retirement of his father, Alois Hitler migrated to Linz where Adolf Hitler spent his childhood. His childhood shaped his personality later in his life. The atmosphere and family he was growing was dysfunctional. He constantly suffered the violence expressed by his father. He feared his father a lot and no longer could control the domineering characteristics of him. He went to school in his hometown, he was a bright and well behavior student at his primary level but after changing school his study went downstairs and left school with no degree at the age of six. But he was a fabulous artist of his time. Hitler dreamt of himself as an art graduate but his father was against him. After the death of his mother in 1907 he finally decided and applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine arts but was rejected. He moved to Vienna and started painting postcards for a living. He began to develop his perspective and understood society which later assisted him to get his adult personality.  Hitler didn’t like the multi-ethnic composition of Austria’s Habsburg Empire and left Austria for Germany (Hyland & Boduszek, 2011).

Rise to power:

In Germany, he was keen to prove loyalty towards German chancellor and joined the army. In the military, he found his purpose and cause. Germany lost the war at that time and was forced to sign the treaty of Versailles. As a result, Germany lost a huge territory and was forced to bear a large number of reparations. From defeated Germany, Hitler couldn’t face the Versailles humiliation and agreed to join the German Worker’s party because of their nationalist, and anti-Semitic beliefs. Due to his powerful oratory skills, he moved above the rank rapidly. He became a popular figure at the time when Germany suffered hyperinflation. Taking this as a chance, Hitler promised revolution for the German people. According to him, a nation is not an economy rather a gathering of the same races. He prioritized the rights of the white Aryan race and viewed Jews as parasites. Hitler saw his unpopularity during the election when his party Nazi won only 2.6% of the vote. But, after four years of his political dedication, Nazis became the largest party in Germany and won the election with a 37% vote. By overthrowing the then German president Von Hindenburg he took the dictatorial powers and disbanded all the political parties unassociated with the Nazis. After taking full control of the German Army and nation he planned to expand the territory of Germany first to Austria. This idea of dominating the world with one race and expansion of German territory began World War II (Daniel & Sterphone, 2019).

Adolf Hitler: A fascist leader

            Adolf Hitler had the personality as a man with destiny and having an infallible vision. He possessed the vision to restore the glory of Germany. He had the willpower, inspiring self-confidence, and the root understanding of Germany within himself. These qualities were developed in Hitler from his childhood and his empathy towards the normal people. The most harmful drawbacks in Hitler’s personality was his inability to accept criticism. He was a master at public speaking and a propaganda artist. His words could appeal to the subconscious and irrational part of the public that made him a formidable politician of his time. His appearance in public made a crowd full of emotional and overwhelming feelings. The development of mass broadcasting media such as radio, air transportation, mike, and speaker made him able to keep the public constantly aware of his propaganda.  He constantly made German people aware that he was the chosen one to restore Germany into world power (Braunbeck, 1997). During his tenure, he clearly showed his fascism by using his authoritarian ultra-nationalism principle.

Positive attributes of Adolf Hitler’s leadership style:

            After coming into power Hitler showed his authoritarian personality by forming an autocratic government. He suppressed his opponents and took absolute power to lead Germany. Germany at that time had only one party, the Nazis. Autocratic leadership is also called authoritarian leadership because this style characterizes individual control over the power and decisions with little input from the group members. Germany was at the active participant of World War II, so Adolf Hitler included his autocratic personality over the military leadership style. He showed good military leadership for Germany at that time. His ability to remember precise details such as historical information, personal experience, facts, and economic statistics made him a good military leader. His lack of education gave him the ability to read everything presented in front of him. He had also great military understanding because of his knowledge about guns, tanks, weapons, and tactics (Pavlovska & Hrytsiuk, 2018). His military leadership was inspired by his experience as a common soldier in World War I. He had the quality of empathy the soldiers fighting in the front line. As a military leader, he had all the qualities such as strong will power, intelligence, and nerves of steel.  He prepared himself to present without feeling intimidating in front of well-educated technicians, businessmen, and military experts.

Negative attributes of Adolf Hitler’s leadership style:

His ability to remember specific details also backfired him throughout his tenure as leader of Germany. His power to remember every detail and briefing presented by his officer made them liable to build sequence from their past message to present the message inline. If any deviations in briefing occurred Hitler took it as deception. Hitler’s assumptions to not trust anyone except him took away the major attribute of effective leadership. The essence to allow subordinates to make decisions based on their knowledge and experience from the battlefield. His distrust for his commanding officers was based upon the betrayal he experienced while coming into power. He thought that he alone can lead others his over-confidence began to view himself as a great military leader. The commanders didn’t know the planning and were not allow for any type of input. Though, his military strategy was good but was not enough to lead the World War II that differ completely from the war he fought. His principle of “no retreat policy” was the wrong strategy, often his army established a defense line rather than continuing expansion. Another negative attribute of his leadership skills was the overestimation of his willpower. When he faced difficulties he often procrastinated to resolve the issue. His ill-tempered and changing mood made him think alone without discussing anything with anyone. His approach to decision-making went illogical and well-thought-out manner. The logical approach of decision making involves developing alternatives, gathering facts, comparing advantages and disadvantages, and selecting the best alternatives. Hitler’s approach was opposite to that of the above quality, once he was comfortable and convinced he would call in his sub-ordinates and presented his decisions. It was impossible to change the decisions, no one could challenge the decisions made by Hitler. Not only that, his standpoint against the Jews and making a world full of White- Aryan made it his leadership worst for mankind.

Conflict resolution and management:

            The leadership style possessed by Adolf Hitler made him self-centric, and overconfident. He didn’t listen to any of his sub-ordinates and made each decision through his willpower. Whenever the conflict occurred he took it on his own without listening to others. In November 1942, the soviet launched an offensive against Germany troops. The then army chief of the German army tried to convince Hitler to withdraw the troops to overcome the offensive. But, Hitler didn’t listen to the army chief and decided to hold their ground. This affected the Sixth division of the German army and faced huge casualties. The expansion from Austria to Czechoslovakia and USSR made Hitler powerful enough to dominate the world but his lack of conflict management ability made German back to their beginning and lost World War II.

Effectiveness Analysis:

            Adolf Hitler’s leadership style made him the most dreadful man of his time. His authoritarian leadership style made him over-confident of his willpower. He didn’t like others to intervene in his life. For German people, his style of leadership was needed at that time. He promised Germany to overcome the economic situation as well as make them one of the powerful nations to dominate the world. His leadership was effective for Germany and his followers at that time. But his dream of ethical cleansing and overconfident made him struggle with his power to dominate the world. His autocratic leadership style was not effective for him to land the outcome he wanted. Also, his violence and exaggeration of innocent Jews made the world against him. Autocratic leadership style can have an effect for a limited time but in the long run, it doesn’t work. We can see various examples of failed autocratic leadership in Joesph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussian, etc. So, we can conclude that in the 21^st century where the literacy of the public is high the autocratic leadership is not effective.

References

Braunbeck, P. A. (1997, March). Graduation Requirements of ACSC. A Military Leadership Analysis of Adolf Hitler, 1-10. Retrieved June 7, 2020, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8060/d978da4b5a9a7290ab59d76d7a7423b83de6.pdf?_ga=2.250802703.821974690.1591420601-210292605.1591420601

Daniel, R., & Sterphone, J. (2019, May). Rise of Hitler. Shame, Anti-Semitism, and Hitler’s Rise to Power in Germany, 1-5. Retrieved June 07, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332780424_Shame_Anti-Semitism_and_Hitler’s_Rise_to_Power_in_Germany

Gebrekidan, D. A. (2009, May). 10th International Academy of African Business and Development. Leadership Crises and Nation Building in a Politically Turbulent Environment — The Case of Eritrea, 1-5. Retrieved June 6, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308749342_Leadership_Crises_and_Nation_Building_in_a_Politically_Turbulent_Environment_–_The_Case_of_Eritrea

Hyland, P., & Boduszek, D. (2011, January). Psychology, Society, & Education . A psycho-historical analysis of Adolf Hitler: The role of personality, psychopathology, and development, 4(2), 58-63. Retrieved June 7, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263077121_A_psycho-historical_analysis_of_Adolf_Hitler_The_role_of_personality_psychopathology_and_development

Leonard, D. (2010, March). ASQ Quality Management Division Conference. The Characteristics of Quality Leadership, 1-10. Retrieved June 7, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273141772_The_Characteristics_of_Quality_Leadership

Manning, G., & Curtis, K. (2014). The art of leadership,. New York: McGraw Hill. Retrieved 2020

Pavlovska, S., & Hrytsiuk, V. (2018, December). Codrul Cosminului. Some Aspects of Organisation of the Military-Political Leadership of Ideological Work in the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany During the Second World War, 303-322. Retrieved June 07, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330686862_Some_Aspects_of_Organisation_of_the_Military-Political_Leadership_of_Ideological_Work_in_the_Armed_Forces_of_Nazi_Germany_During_the_Second_World_War

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