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Hitler and Abductive Logic

The Strategy of a Tyrant

Ben Novak

Adolf Hitler is the greatest mystery of the 20th century, and the mystery surrounding him consists of two unanswered questions that have baffled biographers and historians. First, how did he ever rise to power? Second, who was he really?
Hitler had the power to mesmerize crowds as the most dynamic orator of the modern age. Yet, his power was not in his ideas, which he collected from the gutter sheets of Vienna, nor was it in his personality; his biographers describe him as an "unperson" and his character as a "void" and a "black hole." What, then, was the source of his power? Was he a medium or a magician with paranormal powers, as many contemporaries thought? Or did he have a secret or method that has not yet been revealed?
Ben Novak spent fourteen years searching for the secret of Hitler's political success and his power as a speaker. Hitler's most astute contemporary observer, Konrad Heiden, who wrote the first objective books on Hitler warning that this man was "the greatest massdisturber in world history," suggested that Hitler's secret lay in his use of "eine eigentiimliche art von Logik,"or a "peculiar form of logic." Beginning with this clue, Novak finds that there is a new form of logic in accordance with Heiden's description and examples that can explain Hitler's phenomenal political success. This new form of logic, called "abduction," was discovered by an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who is rapidly becoming America's most well-known philosopher and logician.
Abduction is a third form of logic, in addition to deduction and induction. Unlike the other forms of logic, abduction is based on instinct and has a power over emotions. Novak argues that Hitler was the first politician to apply the logic of abduction to politics. This book provides the first coherent account of Hitler's youth that ties together all the known facts, clearly showing the genesis of the strangest and most terrible man of the twentieth century while identifying the power he discovered that allowed him to break out into the world in such a terrifying way.

Lexington Books

Pages: 282 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7391-9224-5 • Hardback • May 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-0-7391-9461-4 • Paperback • April 2016 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / Germany, Biography & Autobiography / Military, History / Military / World War I

Hitler and Abductive Logic

The Strategy of a Tyrant

Hardback

Paperback

Summary

Adolf Hitler is the greatest mystery of the 20th century, and the mystery surrounding him consists of two unanswered questions that have baffled biographers and historians. First, how did he ever rise to power? Second, who was he really?
Hitler had the power to mesmerize crowds as the most dynamic orator of the modern age. Yet, his power was not in his ideas, which he collected from the gutter sheets of Vienna, nor was it in his personality; his biographers describe him as an "unperson" and his character as a "void" and a "black hole." What, then, was the source of his power? Was he a medium or a magician with paranormal powers, as many contemporaries thought? Or did he have a secret or method that has not yet been revealed?
Ben Novak spent fourteen years searching for the secret of Hitler's political success and his power as a speaker. Hitler's most astute contemporary observer, Konrad Heiden, who wrote the first objective books on Hitler warning that this man was "the greatest massdisturber in world history," suggested that Hitler's secret lay in his use of "eine eigentiimliche art von Logik,"or a "peculiar form of logic." Beginning with this clue, Novak finds that there is a new form of logic in accordance with Heiden's description and examples that can explain Hitler's phenomenal political success. This new form of logic, called "abduction," was discovered by an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who is rapidly becoming America's most well-known philosopher and logician.
Abduction is a third form of logic, in addition to deduction and induction. Unlike the other forms of logic, abduction is based on instinct and has a power over emotions. Novak argues that Hitler was the first politician to apply the logic of abduction to politics. This book provides the first coherent account of Hitler's youth that ties together all the known facts, clearly showing the genesis of the strangest and most terrible man of the twentieth century while identifying the power he discovered that allowed him to break out into the world in such a terrifying way.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 282 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7391-9224-5 • Hardback • May 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-0-7391-9461-4 • Paperback • April 2016 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / Germany, Biography & Autobiography / Military, History / Military / World War I

Author

Ben Novak is an independent scholar with an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in history, philosophy, and political science from Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Historical Problem of Hitler
Chapter 2: The Third Logic: The Background and Formal Structure of Abduction
Chapter 3: Characteristics of Abduction
Chapter 4: Abductive Logic in Literature
Chapter 5: The Application of Peirce's Abductive Theory to Unraveling the Mystery of Hitler's Youth
Chapter 6: The Genesis of the Fuehrer: The Birth of Hitler's Character
Chapter 7: In That Hour it Began
Chapter 8: Closing Argument: How Did He Do It?

Reviews

Hitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a Tyrant is thought-provoking and extremely creative, exploring aspects and influences of Hitler’s formative years that other biographers and historians have not examined to the same degree of detail. The application of the logic of abduction to Hitler’s mental development is fascinating, and clearly no other author has tried to apply Peirce’s description to Hitler in such a way.

— Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University

Hitler and Abductive Logic is not bedtime reading or any sort of literature for those who, even while learning about catastrophe, expect silver linings to grace the clouds. Nonetheless, it is an immensely powerful work which not only researchers of World War II should read, but anyone who is prepared for an education in how raw power is coveted, worked toward, obtained, and sustained for purposes so horrific that they roam beyond what words can describe.
— San Francisco Review of Books

The amount of literature on Adolf Hitler is astounding. And yet, as Ben Novak demonstrates, historians still have not fully explained how this ill-educated and irrational provincial Austrian actually rose to power in Germany. This work uses the concept of abductive logic both as a means of investigating the mystery of Hitler's rise to power and as a way to understand the mind and character of Hitler. Novak's book, written in an engaging narrative style, offers a compelling argument for a new approach to the mystery of Hitler's rise to power.

— Jackson Spielvogel, Pennsylvania State University

Hitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a Tyrant is thought-provoking and extremely creative, exploring aspects and influences of Hitler’s formative years that other biographers and historians have not examined to the same degree of detail. The application of the logic of abduction to Hitler’s mental development is fascinating, and clearly no other author has tried to apply Peirce’s description to Hitler in such a way.

— Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University

The amount of literature on Adolf Hitler is astounding. And yet, as Ben Novak demonstrates, historians still have not fully explained how this ill-educated and irrational provincial Austrian actually rose to power in Germany. This work uses the concept of abductive logic both as a means of investigating the mystery of Hitler's rise to power and as a way to understand the mind and character of Hitler. Novak's book, written in an engaging narrative style, offers a compelling argument for a new approach to the mystery of Hitler's rise to power.
— Jackson Spielvogel, Pennsylvania State University

Hitler and Abductive Logic

The Strategy of a Tyrant

Ben Novak

Hitler and Abductive Logic

The Strategy of a Tyrant

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