Concerning Hitler as a Great Man, Andukar offers this:
A great man must achieve more than what is normal. To ask whether Hitler did that is almost absurd because the answer is so obvious. Hitler took a country in turmoil, unified it, and proceeded to use it as a military machine. There were some dissenters, true, but to unify the country to the extent which he did alone is beyond normal. Incredible, however, are his military success, and almost complete takeover of Europe. As well, although it may be unsettling to consider it such, his concentration camps were definitely beyond normal especially as far as efficiency is concerned. To say better, however, would be highly difficult.
Wow. Where to begin?
Hitler was more than just a failed artist, he was a bad artist.
Hitler was more than just a bad writer with a mediocre mind, he was a failed writer with a tepid mind, lacking the faculty allowing for smooth turn of phrase as well as the ideas to justify his ever picking up a pen as well as the ability to recognize and understand either his own mediocrity in his chosen field of endeavor or the vain self-indulgence which drove him to the field in the first place.
Hitler was more than just a bad leader, he ruined his country, reducing it to rubbish at the cost of the lives of a generation of young men, succeeding only in having its wealthy history and beautiful cities razed to the ground; in addition to this, he "achieved" the permanent stigma and quiet, suppressed sense of national shame that most Germans currently bear today as his lasting legacy. (Andukar claims, oddly, that Hitler restored the nation's national "pride". Perhaps what he meant is that Hitler spurred the nation into a deadly, quasi-spiritual hubris, leaving it weak and vulnerable and damned. Hitler did make a contribution to Russian national pride, of course; that picture of the Russian waving his nation's flag over the Reichstag is an image no Russian nor German will ever forget.)
Theodor Adorno says there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. Perhaps this belongs on Hitler's resume as well.
Hitler unified nothing. Unification implies a bringing together; the liquidation of national dissent by terrorism is something else entirely. Dissent is, however, very much necessary in the running of a country. Perhaps Germany would have been more than a smoking pile of broken buildings, perhaps it would not have lost an entire generation of young men, if Hitler hadn't felt the need to silence the voice of dissent.
The "semi-legitimate means" of seizing power to which Andukar refers include, obviously, countless murders and betrayals. Hitler was tried and convicted of treason by his own country for his Beer Hall shenanigans; no word as to whether or not this conviction was "semi-legitimate" as well. Also of note in Andukar's write-up is his description of Hitler's installation of German fascism as "democratic".
Hitler was certainly an opportunist, if that's what Andukar means by "Great Man". He took advantage of the death of Gustav Stresemann, the Great Depression, the burning of the Reichstag (for which he may well have been responsible), fear of communism, and the senility of Paul von Hindenburg to wrest power away from the people who were capable of wielding it responsibly. Basically, he got and held the job without having the skills to fulfill his duties, by lies, terrorism, treachery, et al. "Great"? I think not.
Hitler's whiny sensitivity and volatile emotional disposition contributed to what was, admittedly, a knack for harnessing nationalistic fervor. This was his single outstanding gift.
Oh man. Couple more things, regarding that paragraph I pasted to open with. Was the German role in the Second World War not a state of turmoil? Can you give credit to Hitler for the "military success"(!) of Germany in the war? He lost. And why not replace the accomplishment of the "near-takeover of Europe" with the complete reality: the undoing of the seemingly irreversible, brilliant toil of Bismark, namely, the breakup and ruin of the now-decimated German state. Why anyone would insist on leaving WWII out of a remembrance of the impact of Hitler is beyond me.
Hitler failed in everything he ever tried to do, except in the momentary, ill-conceived establishment of a fascistic system—and even that was doomed to be short-lived for all his pathetic arrogance and recklessness. And was it a sense of his own greatness and indomitability that lead him to take his own life upon being confronted with the reality of his own lofty failure, or was it shame, fear, and one final betrayal and abandonment of the German people?
Go here: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/index.htm