Wittgenstein and Hitler

fiction
edward w Pritchard

The Doctor sipped and enjoyed his cognac. He was very self satisfied at the moment. For although he was a skilled surgeon, and WWI gave him ample opportunity to practice his specialty; he was most happy when he got to use his real love, philosophy, especially if the Philosopher used was a good German.

Earlier today the Doctor had used his Hegelian learning while doing his rounds at the hospital, and he now sat in the doctor's lounge and enjoyed a bottle of captured French Cognac. The French certainly couldn't fight like the Germans, but no one in the world could argue their skill with grapes and vapors.

The Doctor had been called because an Austrian soldier had been talking of suicide. The soldier was wounded and in the hospital, but that wasn't the reason he was threatening suicide. It was a perpetual case of angst, in the Kierkegaardian sense, thought the Doctor. The head surgeon was called because this particular soldier, Ludwig Wittgenstein, had a Father, who was prewar the richest man in Vienna, and probably Europe. It wouldn't be seemly for the wealthy young man to commit suicide, and the Doctor thought in an amused way to himself, letting the Cognac direct his thoughts, no rich young man should be allowed to commit suicide when he was needed to die fighting for his country against the French and the British in the trenches.

The doctor had been a Hegelian in his youth and had spent many happy hours studying and thinking in the dialectic, conceptualized by Socrates and Plato, but perfected by Hegel. Simply put, although Hegel used different terms, any problem, [thesis], has an opposite, [antithesis] that contradicts, and when the two are pitted against each other, leads to an better evolved new [synthesis]. Accordingly, when the doctor was confronted with Wittgenstein who could see no reason to live, suffering as Nietzsche would say from loss of will, and worse, wanting to give his millions away to the poor, a polar opposite was needed to bring about an evolution in his attitude, so the doctor paired him with his other problem patient Adolph Schicklgruber, or as the soldier preferred to be called Adolph Hitler.

Hitler was a fine and exceptionally brave and devoted soldier throughout WW1, but he suffered the doctor thought from delusions of grandeur, always talking non-stop against the Jews who he blamed for everything and also berating anyone who was not a jingoistic German. The doctor had to smile, because to the doctor, Schicklgruber was hardly a Prussian sounding name, and he knew for a fact the soldier Hitler was not German but like Wittgenstein, Austrian. He knew both their nationalities because in their personnel files he noted both attended grammar school together near Vienna, the confused rich Jewish boy, and the poor but proud rebel who wanted to reunite the Germanic peoples.

Hitler had been outraged that any German, or Austrian soldier would consider suicide, when the doctor asked him to talk to and help his fellow soldier. Hitler had agreed reluctantly after the doctor skillfully debated with Hitler about patriotism, duty, and the Volk among Germanics, and in the end Hitler agreed to talk with Wittgenstein, overlooking the fact Wittgenstein was a Jew, and when Hitler remembered him as his classmate, overlooking as Hitler said of Wittgenstein, that the boy couldn't be trusted in Grammar school.

Wittgenstein agreed to talk to Hitler who he vaguely remembered. The doctor observed their three meetings. Both were of course wounded, but things went well. Hitler was glad to have someone to talk to about music, opera and Richard Wagner, and Hitler's certainty about everything seemed to have a beneficial effect on Wittgenstein's attitude. Wittgenstein, who was a technician of language, and very brilliant in grammar also gave Hitler a few suggestions on how to be a more effective public speaker by the use of cadence and rhythm in his sentences.

The doctor heard years later, that Wittgenstein had written a very short, odd book, in the trenches, later in WW1, that he claimed to be the definitive and final word in philosophy. How German, thought the doctor. As for Hitler, although the Doctor died in 1928, he had heard of Hitler's work with the National Socialist Worker's Party, [Nazi's] and of course the Doctor had read of Hitler's arrest in the beer hall putsch, and in spite of that arrest, the doctor was proud that he had put the two men together, although if the Doctor had lived into the 1930's he might have changed his opinion of the meeting he arranged.

But up until the time of his death, the Doctor was proud of his role in arranging a meeting in a hospital in WW1 between two low ranking Austrian soldiers destined to someday change history.

A fanciful meeting, imagined by your author that would give Wittgenstein the will to live and then later pursue his attacks on traditional philosophy and a meeting that would help Hitler perfect his public speaking skills that were later used skillfully to convince both Germans and Austrians of many non-conventional things.

Such are the what if's of history. Why if something or someone is managing the flow of events can't they act to keep people like Mr. Schicklgruber from becoming mature in his plans and purposes?