The Nature of the Hero in Mass Dictatorships

Abstract

The heroic figures of Bolshevism, Fascism and National Socialism have acquired, in retrospect, a strange invisibility. Portraits of Lenin and Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler would to this day be recognized by educated adults over most of the developed world. Their bravura portraits have the same familiarity as the bombastic architecture of triumph—Milan Railway Station, the pinnacled skyscrapers of Moscow or the ceremonial designs of Albert Speer. There is an enormous historical literature, both specialist and general, dealing with the so-called “leader cults,” which extensively debates whether these cults actually expressed “charismatic” authority of the sort identified by Max Weber, or conveniently filled the power vacuum that emerged after the First World War, acting as a symbolic or imaginative representation of political power (see e.g. Plamper 2012). Yet, despite the recognition that the “branding” of mass dictatorships (like “branding” in the commercial world) often depended directly on “human interest,” and the extensive attention given to the political symbolism of the different regimes, the ways in which these dictatorships identified and celebrated heroism are less familiar (Heller 2008, p. 3).¹ With historical distance, people may dimly remember “the Soviet boy who betrayed his father to the authorities,” but by no means everyone can recall that his name was Pavlik Morozov, let alone say what the father himself was supposed to have done. Those who are vaguely aware that the “Horst Wessel Lied” was the National Socialist anthem are unlikely to have much idea who Horst Wessel was.² And so on.

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