In 1938, Time Magazine made Adolf Hitler their Man of the Year. Since then, they have taken much abuse because of it. I have often heard people mock Time because of their lack of judgment. Yet, I have never read the actual magazine. I assumed they simply praised Hitler at the time.
So I was intrigued when I was checking out Amazon Singles and came across the chance to learn more about it, here: Amazon.com: Adolph Hitler: TIME Person of the Year 1938 (Singles Classic). In the blurb for the magazine, it states:
Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had been pursuing for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.
All these events were shocking to nations which had defeated Germany on the battlefield only 20 years before, but nothing so terrified the world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events which during late summer and early autumn threatened a world war over Czechoslovakia. When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe’s defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a “hands-off” promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938’s Man of the Year.
Nowhere in there is Time praising Hitler for his goodness or wisdom or any such nonsense. They highlight his ruthlessness and his terrifying actions. Even his stealing of Austria and his bloodless (for the time) destruction of Czechoslovakia. However horrible Hitler was and remains, he was the most significant political leader in 1938. And that significance led to him being chosen Man of the Year.
Ironically he would have been chosen Man of the Year for 1941 too, says Time, if not for another man. That man, Joseph Stalin, was chosen Man of the Year then. Another horrible person.
Both Hitler and Stalin caused monumental suffering and death with their actions, some of it well before World War II. You can argue that such men don’t deserve to be Man of the Year. But that’s not how Time goes about choosing who gets the title. They continue to do pick people, however odious, even naming Trump Man of the Year after winning his first election. (That they put him in a chair turning seems to echo a picture Time had of Hitler at the time, which is possibly coincidental. Possibly.)
If you want to learn more about this, check out the links. Better still, if you want to read a good history book that ties Hitler and Stalin together, read Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin.
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