Abductive logic has several characteristics that make it particularly relevant to political leaders in certain situations. This is especially true in times of political confusion, social upheaval, economic dislocation, or national trauma. When social conditions change, both surprisingly and negatively, people become confused and disoriented. Events begin to strike them as unpredictable. In terms of their previous certainties as to who they are or what is expected of them, they begin to experience a sense of lostness and anxiety. What they want most often is an explanation that will make sense, restore order in their minds, and give meaningful direction to their actions.
When political leaders are capable of explaining unexpected and dislocating events in a satisfactory manner, people usually place their faith in their leaders. Often people and nations will undergo great hardships and overcome extreme difficulties with dedication and good cheer when they believe in their leaders and believe that they understand the situation. However, when untoward events occur in society that the leaders are unable to explain satisfactorily, faith in them erodes, and the people begin to look for new leaders whose explanations make sense and in whom they can place confidence.
The essence of abduction is that it is a form of logic whose purpose is to generate a plausible hypothesis to explain a strange set of facts or events. Thus it is ideally suited for any political situation in which a large portion of the public believes that events no longer conform to their expectations. Adolf Hitler, perhaps more than any other leader in modern history, understood the potential of this form of logic, and was able to capitalize on it.
Logic, however, and especially abductive logic, is not only an abstract method of science. It is not simply a formula that applies to a specialized or limited set of facts, such as a mathematical formula in physics. Rather, logic is a science of the mind, and it extends into every portion of our mental processes. Any particular form of thinking, logical or otherwise, affects much more of the mind than the formulas of abstract propositions. This is particularly so for the various logical modes of reasoning. Each logical method of reasoning, therefore, has a set of characteristics that affect many other parts of the mind and of the psyche. Many of these characteristics are directly relevant to, and observable in, the political activities of Adolf Hitler. An understanding of these characteristics is essential to understanding Hitler’s success.
Each of the three forms of logic—abduction, deduction, and induction—has characteristics that distinguish it from the other two forms. Some of these characteristics are comparable, by which I mean that each form of logic participates in a particular characteristic either to a greater or lesser extent, or relates to the same characteristic as its complement or its opposite. In addition, abductive logic has several characteristics that are wholly unique to it and have no counterpart in the other forms of logic. In the following I shall discuss those characteristics of abductive logic that are comparable and unique, and that are relevant to the rise of Adolf Hitler. As shall be shown, an understanding of these characteristics explains many of the mysteries of Adolf Hitler’s rise, such as the apparent irrationality of which he is often accused, his opponents’ confusion and inability to respond effectively to Hitler’s theories, and the fatal underestimation of Hitler by both his critics and opponents.
The relevant and important characteristics of abductive logic that I shall be discussing in this chapter arise from the nature of the situation to which abductive logic is applicable. Abduction is the first step in any scientific inquiry. Initially, all scientific inquiry leading to the discovery of new knowledge begins with a set of facts that annoy or irritate the inquirer for the reason that they do not meet his expectations. The facts intrude upon him so as to force his attention upon them in such a way that they “call out” for an explanation. At this point they become a “problem.” The essence of the problem is that the inquirer can think of no general rule applicable to the facts by which the facts can be explained, or from which any conclusion can be drawn. The facts are there—they intrude upon one’s consciousness—but one cannot deduce anything from them. Similarly, one does not have any general rule in mind by which even to test the facts. The “problem” initially consists in the fact that the “facts” facing one make no sense and admit of no generalization. Abduction begins by trying to imagine a cause competent to explain the facts. From this arise both those characteristics of abduction that are comparable to the other forms of logic, as well as abduction’s unique characteristics.
With this initial situation in mind, let us first compare several of the characteristics normally associated with deduction and induction in order to distinguish them from abduction. That done, we will be in a better position to understand the unique characteristics of abduction. This is the only way I know to explain the stunning and surprising effect of the speeches of Adolf Hitler upon the most educated and sophisticated nation in the world.
The level of certainty ascribed to the three forms of logic varies from absolute certainty in the case of deduction; to a variable degree of certainty never rising to one hundred percent, and never going down to zero, in the case of induction; to absolute uncertainty or zero percent certainty in the case of abduction.
Deduction is absolutely certain because deduction describes what “must be”; if the premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily be true. Induction, by contrast, involves probability. It can never reach one hundred percent because no matter how often a given scientific law or rule produces its predicted results, there is always the possibility that the next time it will not occur as predicted. This is because in nature there is always the possibility that a factor may exist relative to a scientific law, which may not have been taken into account.
At the other end of the range of probability, inductive generalizations may reach very low probabilities, yet still be valid. For example, a “risk factor” that x percent of people who have high-fat diets may suffer more frequent heart attacks may be very low in terms of percentages, and yet is still a significant and valid inductive generalization.
Abductive logic, on the other hand, has absolutely no certainty and zero probability attached to it. It is based simply on an assumption that the unexplained facts have an antecedent cause. The abduction is only a hypothesis; in other words, an act of the imagination, as to what that cause may have been. No probability may be attached to the cause in advance; in this respect, it is only a suggestion, a plausible “guess.” The hypothesis, or “guess,” is not arbitrary, for it must meet two logical though minimum requirements in order to constitute a valid abduction. These requirements are: (1) the hypothesized cause must have been competent to have produced, as its effects, the facts one is trying to explain; and (2) the hypothesized cause must explain all of the relevant facts. This does not mean that the hypothesis or guess must be either true or even probable. It is a valid hypothesis if it meets these two tests. This comparative characteristic of abductive logic gives rise to a further characteristic that was extremely important in the rise of Hitler.
Abductive logic, because it occurs at the initial stage of inquiry, is immune from both refutation and normal logical objections. The most improbable cause for the facts under investigation may be the true cause. No inductive argument can have any weight against a hypothesis at the initial stage of presentation because no testing of the hypothesis has yet occurred. While future testing will theoretically prove or disprove the hypothesis, until that testing has occurred, the hypothesis cannot be refuted by inductive logic. Similarly, deductive logic cannot prove a hypothesis wrong. For example, no matter how true one believes the deductive premise “All men are mortal” to be, it is of no avail against the “God-hypothesis” that at least one man, Ezekial, was not mortal, or that God can perform a miracle.
Or, as another example, imagine that the police receive a report that an explosion has occurred at a home in a residential area of the city. When the report is received, the police have no knowledge of why or how the explosion occurred. They will not have any clues as to its cause until they reach the scene. They will, however, assume that the explosion had an antecedent cause. Many hypotheses may flash through their minds: a gas main break, an accident involving a truck carrying hazardous materials, boys playing with a chemistry set, a terrorist attack, a suicide attempt, possession of illegal explosives, a meteor, a bomb, a plane fell out of the sky and fell on the house, and perhaps many others. At the initial stage, as the police are proceeding to the scene, each of these is a valid hypothesis, and each is as likely or probable as the other. None of them can be refuted at this stage by any deductive or inductive argument.
This is a characteristic of abductive logic that proved particularly useful to Hitler. Hitler explained that the successive defeats, humiliations, crises, and traumas that beset the German people were all caused by a Communist-Socialist-Liberal-Pacifist-Jewish conspiracy that aimed to destroy the German nation. Insofar as Hitler’s theory appeared to explain and account for the known facts, it was a logical and valid hypothesis—no matter how improbable or distasteful.
This placed Hitler’s critics and opponents in a logically difficult position. In order to refute Hitler’s argument, they had only three logical alternatives: (1) to accept Hitler’s conspiracy and race theory as a valid hypothesis suitable for testing; (2) to present a better explanation; or (3) to put Hitler in power and let him try out his theories in practice.
To Hitler’s opponents and critics, the first alternative was completely unacceptable and impractical for two very obvious reasons. First, to acknowledge Hitler’s theories as valid hypotheses would have been to give Hitler’s “nonsense” legitimacy. His opponents would have had to acknowledge the logical possibility that his theories might be true. To have acknowledged Hitler’s theories as valid hypotheses might have been the best thing to do if it had been possible to quickly prove Hitler’s theories false. However, the only means of proving them false would have been to turn them over to historians, geneticists, sociologists, etc., who might have taken decades (beginning in the 1920s) to arrive at a significant enough consensus to prove Hitler wrong. Meanwhile, his opponents would have dignified Hitler’s hypotheses until that consensus evolved. It might further be noted, as a matter of fact, that by the time Hitler emerged as a significant force in German politics, on September 14, 1930, a large proportion of the students and faculty at German universities was National Socialist.[1] Thus, any effort to submit Hitler’s race theory and historical explanations to the scientific examination of university scholars capable of evaluating them would likely have been disastrous, given the confused and politicized state of German universities at the time.
The second alternative to refute an abductive hypothesis is to present a better hypothesis. The major parties and political leaders presented little in the way of an explanation for the successive crises of Germany. They were progressive, practical, and forward-looking in attempting to solve problems, and not often amenable to making historical digressions in order to explain why or how the problems arose. Only the Communists (and to a lesser extent the Socialists) boldly proclaimed that they had a better explanation than the Nazis, i.e., the Marxist interpretation of history.
This logical situation played right into the hands of Hitler. He constantly insisted that the real threat to Germany was the Communist Party, for it was the only party that had a comprehensive alternative to his explanation. Unfortunately, the Communist explanation was anathema to large parts of the German population. Thus, those parts of the electorate who were confused and looking for a more logical or more acceptable explanation had only Hitler’s explanation as an alternative; for the only two parties whose ideology sought to explain the problems and crises were the Nazis and the Communists.
The third method of refuting Hitler was the method eventually adopted in 1933. That was to put Hitler in power and let him try his theories out in practice. Many political leaders firmly believed that this would be his downfall. The Communists, for example, saw the Social Democrats as their main enemy. The Communists took the position in the 1932 elections that Hitler’s theories were nonsense, and that if he were given power, this would soon become evident. Many other political leaders in Germany also believed that the solution to Hitler was to tame him by putting him in power. Similar logic motivated those political leaders who feared Hitler’s ideas, but believed that the exigencies of power would soon either demonstrate the fallacies of his theories or would force him to abandon them.
The point is that, whatever political motives were involved, both Hitler’s strategy as well as the dilemma faced by his opponents followed a certain logic. Here now is my thesis: Adolf Hitler followed a strategy based upon the logic of abduction, and opponents and critics reacted to that strategy in ways that, though disastrous, followed the logical course Hitler plotted, based upon the characteristics of abductive logic.
Thus, Hitler and the Nazis were often accused of being illogical and irrational precisely because their arguments and theories were irrefutable by the normal arguments of inductive and deductive logic. However, this immunity did not arise from irrationality or illogicality. Rather, it arose from the nature of the logic in which Hitler presented his theories. It is one of the characteristics of abductive logic that a well-formed hypothesis is irrefutable by normal methods of logical arguments, unless enough time is available to prove it wrong by scientific testing or scholarship. Until that testing or scholarly investigation is completed, a properly constructed abductive hypothesis remains a logically valid hypothesis. If a hypothesis or theory presents a cause that is competent to produce the effects it offers to explain, and if there is no better hypothesis or theory to explain the facts, then it cannot be knocked out of the ring—at least not quickly—by normal logical (deductive or inductive) argument.
Every form of logic is subject to manipulation that will enable it to be used for false purposes. In deductive logic, many false forms of syllogisms are apparently valid, but not logically conclusive. Many words have been written on recognizing false arguments based on defective syllogisms. Similarly, inductive arguments can be framed where the inference made in the conclusion is not validly stated in the premises.[2] However, in both deductive and inductive logic, the fault does not lie in the form of the logic, but in a misapplication of it. Both deduction and induction are a means of producing true statements. A proper understanding of the logical principles of each can facilitate the detection of falsely constructed syllogisms and arguments. In other words, both deduction and induction are systems of logic, each of which possesses rules internal to themselves for the determination of the validity of logical statements. However, this is so to such a lesser extent in abductive logic as to become almost negligible. It is for this reason that abductive logic has appeared to be a “scanty” form of logic. As a result, it lends itself much more easily to its being used for mendacious purposes.
One of the most important comparable characteristics of abduction, and one that must be kept in mind throughout all discussions of abductive logic, is its amenability to being used for mendacious purposes, in other words, for lying. Abduction is not only the first stage of inquiry for the scientist to make discoveries that will benefit mankind, but it is also the stock-in trade of the liar, the cheat, the fraud, and the criminal; for the essence of abduction is the invention of explanations. The criminal seeks to invent an alibi for his crime; in other words, a plausible explanation of why he could not have committed it. The liar, the cheat, and the fraud must also constantly invent explanations that will explain away their actions so that the victim will not suspect what is really going on. When a person wants to cheat on his spouse, he or she must constantly invent plausible explanations to explain why he or she did not come home until late, or had to take a “business trip,” or was “tired.”
Thus, abductive logic is not only useful to discover the truth, it is also the same logic used to conceal or disguise the truth. In regard to the perception of facts, abductive logic is not only a method for reading clues that will lead to the truth, it is also a method for creating clues that will mislead. Indian scouts of the Wild West not only knew how to hide their trail, but also how to disguise their trail by leaving false clues that would mislead those attempting to track them. It is just as much part of the skill of a private detective to discern false clues left by a criminal to mislead the police as it is to follow up on correct clues. Abductive logic is, therefore, a two-edged sword. In the case of Adolf Hitler, few will dispute that he was an absolute genius in recognizing the potential use of this characteristic of abductive logic for mendacious purposes.
The potential of abductive logic to be used for mendacious purposes in politics arises out of the two characteristics already discussed: (1) the need of people facing unexpected political or social crises for some explanation of their cause; and (2) the ability to invent a “cause” that one may believe, or that one may know to be untrue, but one that people may accept because it appears plausible. Because abductive hypotheses are immune from the logical tests applicable to other forms of logic (in other words, because there is often a lag time between the assertion of an explanation and the testing of it), a politician can offer politically plausible abductive hypotheses to explain events that may be totally false but nonetheless perfectly valid in logical form.
This is especially true of the use of “conspiracy theories” for political purposes. Conspiracy theories rest for their success upon the existence of the preconditions for the application of abductive logic. The situation in Weimar Germany was particularly amenable to the propagation of conspiracy theories based on abductive logic. The Nazi syllogism followed this form:
The loss of the war; the Versailles Treaty, involving the loss of German territory, reparations, war crimes trials, and the war guilt clause; the inflation; German disarmament; political instability and economic chaos, are all surprising, unexpected, and inexplicable phenomena that should not have occurred;
But, they are not inexplicable and would be expected if there were a malevolent conspiracy of international Jews, Communists, and Liberals intent on harming the German people.
No one has presented a better explanation of the misfortunes suffered by the German people that can meet the two requirements of the Nazi hypothesis: i.e., (1) describe a cause competent to have caused all these phenomena; and (2) account for all the facts.
Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that such a conspiracy exists.
Konrad Heiden, in the chapter of his work, A History of National Socialism, in which he sets forth his claim that Hitler’s “utterly logical way of thought” was the basis of Hitler’s success, gives the following example. Although the theory of abductive logic was still unknown, existing only in the form of unpublished manuscripts, Heiden was able to catch the essence of it. Heiden begins his example by quoting a lengthy passage from Hitler’s speech of April 12, 1922, in which he sought to describe the international Jewish conspiracy.
The Jews have shown real genius in politics. This capitalistic people . . . has understood how to get the leadership of the Fourth Estate [the Press] into its hands; and by acting both on the Right and on the Left has its apostles in both camps. On the Right the Jew does his best to encourage all the evils there are to such an extent that the man of the people, poor devil, will be exasperated as much as possible.. . . [On the other hand] more and more Jews have wormed their way into our upper class families; and the consequence has been that the ruling class has been alienated from its own people.[3]
The abductions contained in that passage can be seen more clearly if it is expressed in the form of two abductive syllogisms. The first reads as follows:
The leaders of industry are Germans who would ordinarily be expected to care about the workers in their factories as fellow Germans.
But the fact is that industrial leaders do not care about their workers and refuse to give in to even the most reasonable demands of their workers. This is surprising and unexpected.
But, this would not be surprising if the leaders of industry were not Germans, but were Jews, or had been infiltrated by Jews, or were influenced by the Jewish press.
Therefore, it is reasonable to explain the hardheadedness of German capitalists by a conspiracy of Jews acting to deflect them from their true duty.
The second abductive argument contained in the above passage may be stated in the form of the following abductive syllogism:
It would be expected that the ruling families of Germany would be very close to the people and care for the welfare of the people.
But, the ruling families of Germany are alienated from the people. This is surprising and unexpected.
But this would not be surprising if the ruling families were no longer completely German, but had been infiltrated by another non-German people or race.
Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the German ruling classes have become alienated from the people because of Jewish infiltration.
Next in that speech, Heiden quotes Hitler as drawing these two abductive inferences into an inference that combines both the Capitalists and the Communists, Right and Left, in a single conspiracy:
While Moses Cohen, the chairman, stiffens the board of his Company so that they shall be as inflexible, that is to say, as unreasonable as possible concerning the demands of their workpeople (sic), his brother, the Labor Leader, Isaac Cohen, is in the factory yard egging on the masses: “Look at them! They only want to oppress you! Throw off your chains!” And upstairs his brother is helping to forge those chains. The people is to destroy the backbone of its independence, its own trade, so as all the more surely to be fettered in the Jews’ golden bonds of eternal slavery to money.[4]
Thus, for two palpable phenomena, both of which are inexplicable according to the thinking of the average German, Hitler abduced a single cause that he posited as capable of causing, and thus explaining, the facts that most Germans regarded as inexplicable. Hitler took his audience backward from known effects to explain a cause of those effects, which he then simply presented as the cause.
While the passage from Hitler’s speech was not considered by Heiden to be true, Heiden quotes it at length because of its forceful logic to Germans at the time. Heiden presents this passage from Hitler’s speech to demonstrate the following statement about Hitler’s logic with which Heiden had preceded the passage quoted:
Hitler knows one thing very well indeed—he knows his own people. The systematization of error is the stuff of many of his theories. To err is human, and is international in politics; but systemization is German. And this is the germ of truth in his politics. He saw and prophesied most definitely how the Germans would react to certain political facts. He was right where all wisdom failed, and European conventions were outraged.[5]
The chains of reasoning presented in the above abductive syllogisms were not valid according to deductive logic because: (1) the premises were not true, and (2) because the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premises even if they were true. Nor could these syllogisms be true inductively. Testing could prove that the effects to be explained could have been (and were) caused by other factors. Immediately following the passages quoted above, Heiden remarks, “The whole is based upon a large number of demonstrable errors.”[6] Heiden, however, went on to point out the incredible fact that “nevertheless upon all these errors a great and forcefully expressed argument is finally based.”[7]
Heiden goes on to demonstrate how such an argument worked: “The proposition to be proved is the existence of a plot”;[8] however, “the conspiracy can only be recognized by its effects.”[9] In noting this, Heiden grasps the most essential character of abduction. It is a “backward” or retroductive form of logic that reasons from effects back to cause. Heiden was unaware of the theory of abductive logic, and so he ascribes the force of Hitler’s logic to “an ancient trick of sophistry.” But he accurately describes the structure of abductive logic and how Hitler used it for mendacious purposes:
The proposition to be proved is the existence of a plot. By an ancient trick of sophistry, this turns in the course of the argument imperceptibly into a proved assumption. From the antecedent follow most conclusively the individual theorems and practical applications, which really should be themselves proved before being used as evidence: the conspiracy exists, for the Socialist-revolutionary activities of the Jews are only directed towards the destruction of national prosperity; they are only directed towards the destruction of national prosperity because they are the outcome of a Jewish plot; but the plot exists because—.[10]
Heiden immediately comments that “such chains of reasoning are impossible to attack.” Unfortunately, however, Heiden could not accurately identify the reason that they were impossible to attack. Heiden argues that they were immune from refutation “because they are fallacious all around.” This is incorrect. For if every aspect of Hitler’s statements were “fallacious all around,” their fallaciousness would have been obvious, and his argument would have failed. It was not because Hitler’s argument was fallacious that it had great power, for Heiden admits that it was “a great and forcefully expressed argument.” Rather, the strength of Hitler’s argument rested in the form of its logic. Hitler’s argument, presented as a hypothesis, was immune from normal argument.
The key to this is acknowledged by Heiden in the word “demonstrable.” Indeed, Hitler’s argument could be (and later was) demonstrated to be false. But until it was demonstrated to be false, it was a valid hypothesis stated in proper logical form. The falseness lay simply in presenting one possible hypothesis as the only possible hypothesis. Hitler was able to get away with a lie because no one attacked the form of his logic. This would have required the following logical form:
Yes, it is agreed that there are many events which appear to be inexplicable, and which call out for explanation.
But the theory that a Jewish conspiracy is the cause of these effects is not the only possible cause of these effects.
Nor is it the best hypothesis to explain those effects.
Therefore, we should ignore the explanation of a Jewish conspiracy and calmly investigate what appear to be better explanations to explain these effects.
This, of course, would have been a politically inexpedient course to follow in the actual circumstances, for the most forcefully expressed alternative to explain the effects that all agreed existed was the Communist and Marxist explanation. Hitler was able to succeed with his logically correct (though fallacious) argument, because the “next best”—in the sense of most forcefully presented—alternative hypothesis was unacceptable to the largest proportion of German voters, including the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the aristocracy, the nationalists, the liberals, the Catholics, and many other groups.
The point I wish to make is that Hitler’s opponents often erroneously accused him of being irrational and illogical because his arguments were obviously so fallacious. Heiden recognizes this when he writes, “It will be objected that logic that begins with false premises and leads to false conclusions cannot have much value.”[11] However, Heiden perceived the strangeness of the fact that Hitler was able to triumph despite such objections. Although Heiden could not explain it, since he was unfamiliar with abductive logic, he attempts to describe the phenomenon by a simile. Hitler, he explains, was like a painter working from several palettes of ideas, who constructed a system of thought that
is in itself so complete, so perfect in the congruence of details as none other of its kind. Individual details come from other palettes; their union is the work of a strong head which is not interested in truth, but has evolved a design for a new world. The mind that constructed this system has been victorious with it over facts.[12]
The important fact to explain is why or how an argument that is “fallacious all around” has the power to be “victorious over facts.” The answer is that an argument based on false facts can still be logical in form. This is especially true in the case of abductive logic, which presents itself in the form of a plausible explanation. An explanation may be stated in perfectly logical form and may “fit” the facts perfectly, and yet be false. However, until its falseness is proven, the explanation may stand as a plausible explanation, and may be stated in a perfectly logical form. The strength lies in the form of the logic, not in the truth of the theory.
Abduction, like deduction and induction, can be manipulated for mendacious purposes. However, abduction, whose essence is the generation of explanations, is susceptible to abuse to an extent far beyond anything imaginable in deductive or inductive logic. Adolf Hitler built his appeal, and his success, upon the failure of both his opponents and the public to understand the logical basis of his arguments. He was thus able to use them in politics for deceitful purposes in an extraordinary way.
The next comparable characteristic of abductive logic relevant to Hitler is ampliativity. This characteristic relates to Hitler and to the following chapters in three respects. First, Hitler’s theory of race arises out of and is a logical amplification of Hitler’s abductive logic. Second, the ampliative character of abductive logic is related to Hitler’s ideas of education that he learned from the novels of Karl May. Third, Hitler displayed the ampliative character of abductive logic on many occasions, suggesting that it was part of his character. I shall proceed to define and explain what is meant by the term “ampliative” and address its relation to Hitler in the three ways mentioned.
Abduction is ampliative, which means that at the end of an abductive operation, more information may result than was present at the beginning. Compared with the other forms of logic, deduction is not at all ampliative, whereas induction is sometimes ampliative. In deduction, there is no more information in the conclusion than was present in the premises. Induction sometimes produces more information than was present in its premises; while a successful abduction always produces more information than was present in the premises. Thus, it has been said that “deductions are truth preserving, whereas successful abductions may be said to be truth producing.”[13]
The example frequently offered to explain the ampliative nature of abductive logic is that of the medical doctor diagnosing a patient’s symptoms. When a patient comes to a doctor for a diagnosis, the patient describes his symptoms. These symptoms constitute the premises. The patient says, in effect, “I have symptoms A, B, and C”; and he asks the doctor, “What can you conclude from these?” Without more information coming from outside the premises, the doctor cannot make any conclusion. The doctor can only perform a diagnosis by reading the symptoms to suggest information beyond the facts themselves. The symptoms are only “clues” or “effects” that suggest an antecedent cause. The doctor must therefore range through his expertise to find that disease indicated by the symptoms. The doctor must bring to the diagnosis information not present in the premises, i.e., the mere description of the symptoms. Thus, when a doctor diagnoses a disease indicated by the symptoms, he introduces new knowledge about the cause of the disease and its course of treatment. Josephson and Josephson give the following example:
[A]mpliative reasoning is something done by introducing new vocabulary in the conclusion. For example, when we abduce that the patient has hepatitis because it is the only way to explain the jaundice, we have introduced into the conclusion a new term, “hepatitis,” which is from the vocabulary of diseases and not part of the vocabulary of symptoms. By introducing this term, we make conceptual connections with the typical progress of the disease, and ways to treat it, that were unavailable before. Whereas valid deductive inferences cannot contain terms in their conclusions that do not occur in their premises, abductions can “interpret” the given data in a new vocabulary. Abductions can make the leap from “observation language” to “theory language.”[14]
This characteristic ability of abduction to “interpret” given data and to make a leap from “observation language” to “theory language” is vital to understanding the logical relationship of Hitler’s theories of race to his anti-Semitism. Often these are seen as a “hodge-podge,” and the logical structure that connects them and gives them their power is missed. Therefore, it is necessary to explain the logical structure further by continuing with the example of a medical diagnosis.
A doctor would act non-ampliatively if he merely told the patient the name of his disease, and then advised the patient as to what to do: e.g., telling the client, in the case of hepatitis, for example, to go home and rest; prescribing a certain diet; and ordering the patient to take a daily blood test to monitor the course of the virus until the patient got better. When a doctor does only this, the patient may leave his office knowing exactly what to do, but with no greater understanding of what is going on than when he or she entered. However, the doctor who is familiar with the disease can “amplify” the patient’s knowledge far beyond this. If the patient asks how he got the disease, the doctor can explain that the disease was contracted some weeks prior to the outbreak of symptoms. The doctor may further explain that the virus will remain in the body even after all the symptoms disappear. He might, of course, amplify the patient’s knowledge of the disease by explaining how or from what the disease is usually contracted, or why the virus remains in the body even after the symptoms disappear, etc. The point is that the doctor, from a few symptoms, can amplify the entire course of the disease, providing extensive knowledge from his expertise. It is by this expertise that the doctor “amplifies” the mere recitation of the symptoms into the description of the causes and the course of a disease.
The importance of this aspect of abductive logic to Hitler’s race theory and his Weltanschauung is immense. For Hitler did not only diagnose Germany’s problems by pointing simply to an international conspiracy of Jews, Communists, etc. But also, he developed an entire etiology (defined as the “science or theory of the origins or causes of diseases”[15]) to explain the “disease.” Hitler’s etiology is set forth in the second half of chapter 11 of Mein Kampf.[16] There Hitler describes the Jews as a bodily infection. This section begins: “[T]he best way to know the Jew is to study the road he has taken within the body of other peoples in the course of the centuries.”[17]
In the previous chapter of Mein Kampf, “The Causes of the Collapse” (chapter 10), Hitler describes every “symptom” of the illnesses that beset German society. It is a catalog of every imaginable indication of the presence of a disease. Chapter 11 provides the theory of how the “infection” is contracted; the course of the “disease”; a description of the “symptoms”; an explanation of why and how the “parasite” causes those specific symptoms; and the stages of the disease. Thus, Hitler presented himself not simply as a layman who could speak the obvious, e.g., “You are sick. You have a certain disease.” Rather, he presented himself as a doctor and medical expert who not only could identify the disease, but also could explain everything about the disease.[18]
This ability not only to identify but also to explain placed Hitler in a very different position from other anti-Semites. Other anti-Semites merely pointed to the Jews and blamed them. In other words, they only labeled. Hitler, on the other hand, went far beyond the others in realizing the potential of abduction as the logic of diagnosis. The logic applicable to diagnosis is abductive in nature, because it not only identifies causes, but also explains them in terms of other systems of knowledge. In other words, symptoms invite—”call out for”—theory. Yun Peng and James A. Reggia describe this characteristic of abduction in diagnosis:
A diagnostic problem is a problem in which one is given a set of manifestations (findings, symptoms) and must explain why they are present by using one’s knowledge about the world. . . . [D]iagnostic inference falls naturally into the category of abduction.[19]
Medical diagnosis is the most obvious example of the ampliative characteristic of abduction, and it is the first example given by Peng and Reggia. A good medical diagnostician must go far beyond the knowledge of the patient by calling upon this deeper “knowledge about the world” to explain why the symptoms are present. In his race theory, Hitler recognized this logical necessity and the opportunity provided by the nature of abductive logic.
Once a simple diagnosis—e.g., the Jews are to blame for everything—is amplified into a larger theory that links and explains many apparently unrelated symptoms into a single theory, and further explains how other apparently independent symptoms are linked to a single, deeper cause, one has a much stronger logical position. This is the characteristic that Heiden noted when he wrote that “such chains of reasoning are impossible to attack at any one point.”[20] An abduction amplified into a theory becomes no less of an hypothesis than before, but extremely difficult to refute logically except by inductive testing. When an amplified abduction is coupled with both structural and probabilistic knowledge, it becomes what Peng and Reggia have called a “high performance diagnostic system.”[21] Adolf Hitler’s racial and anti-Semitic Weltanschauung was false, but as an amplified abduction, it was a very “high performance diagnostic system,” completely logical in form.
In addition to those characteristics comparable to the other two forms of logic (i.e., certainty, refutation, mendaciousness, ampliativity), abduction also has several unique characteristics. Three of these are relevant to Adolf Hitler. The first unique characteristic is that abduction is based upon instinct and sentiment (feeling, emotion) rather than upon abstraction. In the formal logic of deduction and induction, neither instinct nor sentiment has any role. However, abduction is the cultivation of those moments of insight, instinct, intuition, and inspiration in which new ideas, new inventions, and new discoveries occur. Thus abduction brings logic into deeper recesses of the mind whence all scientific discovery proceeds.
The second unique characteristic arises from the first. New ideas seem at first to be almost divinely inspired intuitions and often have a very special quality about them that verges on the supernatural.
This often leads to the third characteristic of abduction, the ability of this logic to have an extraordinary effect upon the belief systems of others, binding minds to an explanation that, although unverified, has a power over the human mind unknown to other forms of logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce could be said to have discovered abductive logic in this way: There are, he noted, often a multitude of possible explanations for any given phenomenon. If mankind had had to stop and test all of the possible hypotheses before coming to the correct or true one, the progress of the human race would have been infinitesimal. What could account, he asked, for the fact that human beings are so often able to bypass all the testing that would be dictated by formal logic, by “guessing” the correct explanation?
For example, he noted that there were “billions” of possible hypotheses to explain the movement of galaxies and stars. If one had to test every possible theory, it might have taken centuries. How is it, he asked, that Copernicus and Kepler could alight on the correct answer without testing all the others? Peirce reasoned that the success of scientists in discovering natural laws could be explained by an affinity of the human mind to nature itself.[22] Peirce came to believe that “[t]he attunement to nature was the key to the advancement of knowledge—as it was for life itself—and he [Peirce] thought that the power to guess nature’s way was one of the great wonders of the universe.”[23]
This “power to guess” the correct explanation did not arise, Peirce’s argument goes, from the formal rules of deductive or inductive logic, but from a third kind of logic that arises from instinct and feeling. Prior to deductive and inductive logic there is a third kind of reasoning, which Peirce describes as follows:
The third kind of reasoning tries to do what il lume naturale, which lit the footsteps of Galileo, can do. It is really an appeal to instinct. Thus reason, for all the frills that it customarily wears, comes down upon its marrow bones to beg the succor of instinct.[24]
Peirce accused logicians of “slumbering through ages of intellectual activity, listlessly disregarding the enginery [sic] of modern thought and never dreaming of applying its lessons to the improvement of logic.”[25] Thus, Peirce insists, the advance of science and human understanding depend upon enlarging the understanding of logic to embrace both instinct and the voice of instinct, our feelings. “Reason,” writes Peirce, “appeals to sentiment in the last resort.”[26] Peirce goes on to say that “if I allow the supremacy of sentiment in human affairs, I do so at the dictation of reason itself.”[27] He argues that as a matter of logic, “human instincts” are “sufficient to guide us in the greatest concerns” without any aid from deductive and inductive logic.[28] This is so because man has a certain faculty of “Insight” which Peirce describes as arising from instinct:
Man has a certain Insight . . . This faculty is at the same time of the general nature of Instinct, resembling the instincts of animals in its so far surpassing the general powers of our reason, and for its directing us as if we were in possession of facts that are entirely beyond the reach of our senses.[29]
This is the essence of abduction: to comprehend facts “that are entirely beyond the reach of our senses.” This ability to reach beyond our senses is based on our instinct, which guides us in all important questions more surely than deduction or induction. “We should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul that is most superficial and fallible—I mean our reason—but upon that department that is deep and sure—which is instinct,”[30] Peirce writes. For abduction is based solely on instinct. “We call that opinion reasonable,” he continues, “whose only support is instinct.”[31]
The significance of instinct in the personality, political ideas, and Weltanschauung of Adolf Hitler is almost too obvious to need mentioning. Hitler’s charisma and political success were often credited by his followers, as well as by critics and opponents, to his political instinct.[32] In his political strategy, Hitler constantly directed his appeal to the instinct of the masses because, he explained, “There instinct is supreme.”[33] He opposed intellectualism because it “removes people from the instinct of nature.”[34] The entire difference between the Aryan and the Jew, he argued, was based solely on a difference in their instincts.[35]
Hitler’s primary characteristic was often said to be his instinct, usually described by his contemporaries as in opposition to his logic. John Gunther, for example, rejected Konrad Heiden’s thesis that Hitler’s strength came from his logic by arguing that Hitler was a man of instinct. Gunther argued as follows:
Heiden says that Hitler’s power is based on intellect, and his intellect on logic. This would seem a dubious interpretation because Hitler’s mind is not ratiocinative in the least; he is a man of passion, of instinct, not of reason.[36]
However correct Gunther may have been in terms of the formal logic of induction and deduction, his objection is not valid in terms of abduction. For, as Peirce has pointed out, instinct is the very basis of abductive logic. To assume with Gunther that Hitler was illogical simply because he appeared to act on instinct, and because he appealed to instinct, is a fundamental error. For instinct is not opposed to, or excluded from, logic, but is a fundamental basis of one part of logic, i.e., abduction.
Similarly, Joachim Fest also saw an opposition between instinct and reason. Fest writes of Hitler: “He grasped what was happening in the world more by instinct than by reason.”[37] But Hitler’s appeal to instinct is not opposed to reason and is entirely proper in one of the three forms of logic. The point here is that instinct and reason are not opposed concepts. To grasp the world by instinct is not opposed by logic or reason, but is of the very essence of that portion of reason known as abductive logic. Fest was incorrect to conclude that Hitler was therefore beyond reason.
Now that the nature of abductive logic is known, we can begin to understand that Hitler was using a certain form of logic, that his apparent “instinct” was not some inscrutable force within him, but a logical approach that we can now, thanks to the discovery of abduction, analyze and understand.
Charles Sanders Peirce describes the “abductive faculty” as that faculty “whereby we divine the secrets of nature.”[38] It has also been described both as a “sort of divinatory power,”[39] and as “a means of communication between man and his Creator, a ‘Divine privilege’ which must be cultivated.”[40] In “On the Method of Zadig,” Thomas Henry Huxley calls it a form of “prophecy” and of “divination,” which he likens to the powers of a medium or a clairvoyant.[41]
Peirce argues that there “are mysterious agencies in ideas.”[42] Pragmatism, he states, is “nothing else than the logic of abduction.”[43] It is a process whereby one aligns one’s mind with the logic of nature and allows one’s instinct to lead to the correct answer to a problem. One who has such an ability to reach the “divine secrets” and explain them to others is the true thinker who “communes with the Creator.”
Peirce describes the process of the abductive thinker as a process in which the abductive suggestion, arising from our instinct and our mind’s affinity with nature, “comes to us like a flash.” It is “the idea of putting together what we had never dreamed of putting together which flashes the new suggestion before our contemplation.”[44] Thus, the person who is adept at abductive reasoning will oftentimes appear to be possessed of mediumistic powers and of proceeding according to instinct instead of normal logic. One of the most common descriptions of Adolf Hitler is that he possessed some sort of mediumistic power over the masses. Ernst Nolte gives evidence of this view when he writes,
There should be no doubt as to the mediumistic trait in Hitler. He was the medium who communicated to the masses their own deeply buried spirit. It was because of this . . . that a third of the German people loved him long before he became chancellor, long before he was their victorious supreme commander.[45]
The essence of the logic that leads to one appearing to have mediumistic or divine powers is described by Peirce as follows:
A mass of facts is before us. We go through them. We examine them. We find them a confused snarl, an impenetrable jungle. We are unable to hold them in our minds. We endeavor to set them down on paper; but they seem to be so multiplex intricate that we can neither satisfy ourselves that what we have set down represents the facts, nor can we get any clear idea of what it is that we have set down. But suddenly, while we are poring over our digest of the facts and are endeavoring to set them in order, it occurs to us that if we were to assume something to be true that we do not know to be true, these facts would arrange themselves luminously. That is abduction. [46]
The essence of abduction lies in assuming, when one is faced with a confused mass of unexplained and unexpected facts, that there is some cause, some force, which would explain them. Abduction begins by imagining or divining what that cause or force may be. Thus the logic of abduction is very similar to paranormal powers. The power of the medium, the clairvoyant, and the fortune-teller, according to Thomas Henry Huxley, lies precisely in their ability to discern and describe something that is not immediately present to the senses. In other words, it is the ability to divine that there are powers acting in our lives that can be seen only by the medium.
Peirce and Huxley argue that this same ability is attainable by logic and is the province of science. They insist that there is a certain logic whose effects are much like that of the medium, clairvoyant, and fortune-teller, whose entire purpose is to discern and describe forces and powers that are not present to our senses. However, they do not see this as anything “paranormal,” but as a function of a certain type of logic. When people go to a medium or clairvoyant, they expect to be told why apparently inexplicable things are happening to them. The medium may tell them of evil forces or spirits. The person who seeks the aid of the medium is grateful to have the strange occurrences in his or her life explained. Science and medicine perform similar functions. The patient suffering from an illness he does not understand goes to a doctor who explains it. In terms of the logic, these two processes are identical. Each imagines or “divines” a cause sufficient to explain the phenomenon.
Early in his career, Adolf Hitler gave an example of how he imported precisely the same logic into politics. In discussions held with Dietrich Eckart, he was explaining to Eckart how such logic could be brought from science to describe the workings of politics.
“We are on the wrong track,” Hitler exclaimed.
“Astronomers do things differently. Take, for example, an astronomer who has been observing a cluster of stars for a long time—heaven knows how long he has been looking at them. Suddenly he observes, dammit, that something has gone wrong. Previously they were arranged in a certain way, but now they are arranged differently. Some secret force has been exerted on them. So he makes endless calculations, and determines the exact location of a planet which an eye has never seen, but one fine day people discover that it really exists.”[47]
This is a perfect example of abductive logic. It is the imagining of a cause sufficient to explain unexpected phenomena. In this case, Hitler uses the example of an astronomer who can predict the existence of a planet never before observed from the clues given by the motions of other stars or planets. He imagines or “divines” the existence of something of which he has no direct knowledge—in this case a planet no one ever knew was there. Though even the most powerful telescope cannot see such a planet, the astronomer can insist, based solely upon an operation of his mind, that such a planet does exist.
However, Hitler did not stop there. He insisted that the same logic could be applied to history and politics. He goes on with the discussion:
“Well, what do historians do? They explain the regular movements of society by appealing to the society itself, the behavior of its prominent politicians. It does not occur to them that there may somewhere be a secret force which exerts its influence on everything and directs everything. Well, this force has existed since the beginning of history.”[48]
This is precisely the form of the medium, the clairvoyant, the conspiracy theorist, and the scientific discoverer—it is the divining of active forces that cannot be seen. Its essence is abduction. Hitler’s conclusion was to identify the hidden forces acting in German history: “You know its name—the Jew.”[49] Although this is considered a totally unacceptable identification of causality today, the important point is that Hitler was clearly familiar with this form of logic, and the form of logic he used was similar in form to the powers of a medium or a clairvoyant.
He insisted, like Marx, that he had peered into the forces of history and was able to explain them—as well as to explain how these invisible forces were affecting the present. He based his political future on his abductive ability, similar to that of a medium, to predict the future based on his special knowledge of the activities of these unseen forces in history. “I have never told you” he claimed in 1922, “that such and such things may come true, but always that they will come, because they must come and it cannot be otherwise. And what we foresaw has now come to pass.”[50]
Most scholars who have examined Hitler’s writings and speeches have only observed the substance of the speeches, i.e., the contents. However, they have failed to note the form, i.e., the logic in which and by which that substance was communicated. Hitler was always careful to present himself as the seer who divined the causes, or as the scientist who explained them, or as the doctor who diagnosed them. He claimed the power or skill to see forces that were not obvious and to divine both the ways of nature and of history.
The third unique—and perhaps most important—characteristic of abduction is the strange power it has over the minds of ordinary people by which it forces them not only to accept a hypothetical explanation and act upon it, but also to follow through in acting out all the inferences of the hypothesis. Abductive logic has the capacity to impose a “straitjacket of logic with which man can force himself almost as violently as he is forced by some outside power.”[51] This is a very strange power to be associated with a form of logic. Generally, people seem to be detached from the other forms of logic; they are able to walk away from the strictest deduction, or to ignore the most inductively well-proven fact of science (as, for example, the number of people who still smoke despite the uncontroverted evidence about its harmful effects).
No other form of logic has the power over men’s minds that abductive logic has. This is all the more remarkable because abduction is only the first stage of scientific inquiry, and its goal is only to provide hypotheses for subsequent testing. However, the nature of the human mind—outside the laboratory—has such a need for explanation, and such a need to make the world rational, that improvised hypotheses are readily accepted.
In describing the course of an abductive inquiry and the process by which abduction works in the mind, Charles Sanders Peirce first outlines this effect upon the mind. “Every inquiry,” whether scientific, practical, or political, Peirce notes, “takes its rise in the observation . . . of some surprising phenomenon, some experience which either disappoints an expectation, or breaks in upon some habit of expectation.”[52] For a scientist, this may be a strange development in a bacteria culture or an unexpected result of an experiment. For the average citizen, it may be the unexpected loss of a war, the surprising disappearance of the value of money, the unexpectedly harsh terms of a treaty, or the collapse of the economic system. Facing a strange phenomenon, one begins to wonder what might have caused it.
“The inquiry begins,” writes Peirce, “with pondering the phenomena in all their aspects, in the search for some point of view whence the wonder shall be resolved.”[53] During this stage, one invites the imagination to roam, trying to dream up any explanation that could possibly account for the facts as they are. Finally, the mind imagines one. “At length a conjecture arises,” Peirce goes on, that furnishes a “possible Explanation.”[54] Such an “Explanation” has an immediate effect upon the mind. Even though it may as yet be unproven, it has “resolved” the mystery. One suddenly has a basis on which to restore rationality to experience. Thus, Peirce records, “On account of this Explanation, the inquirer is led to regard his conjecture, or hypothesis, with favor.”[55] However, the mental effect of the hypothesis does not end there. Once an “Explanation” is offered, it can have a whole range of mental effects. Peirce describes this range of acceptance and mental response:
[T]his acceptance ranges, in different cases,—and reasonably so,—from a mere expression of it in the interrogative mood, as a question meriting attention and reply, up through all appraisals of Plausibility, to uncontrolled inclination to believe.[56] (Emphasis added.)
Thus, the suggestion of a hypothesis is not necessarily a scientifically neutral statement. The effect upon receiving of such an Explanation, even before it is proved, may be as strong as an “uncontrolled inclination to believe.” One need only recall the many descriptions of the effect of Adolf Hitler’s speeches on crowds to understand the importance of this characteristic of abductive logic. However, let us return to Peirce for the explanation of why this phenomenon occurs in relation to abductive logic. Keeping in mind the stages of the inquiry quoted above, Peirce goes on to describe the mental effect caused by the reception of an Explanation:
The whole series of mental performances between the notice of the wonderful phenomenon and the acceptance of the hypothesis, during which the usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between its teeth and to have us at its mercy—the search for pertinent circumstances and the laying hold of them, sometimes without our cognizance, the scrutiny of them, the dark laboring, the bursting out of the startling conjecture, the remarking of its smooth fitting to the anomaly, as it is turned back and forth like a key in a lock, and the final estimation of its Plausibility—I reckon on the First Stage of Inquiry [Abduction].[57]
Peirce here has certainly said a great deal. Imagine one of Adolf Hitler’s audiences coming to his speech in order to hear what he has to say. For an hour he drills into the crowd the strangeness and inexplicability of all of the events of Germany’s trauma. Then he begins to offer an “Explanation.” The crowd’s “usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between its teeth”; they are at the mercy of their urgent desire to understand. The speaker begins to explain how all these traumas happened. The individuals in the crowd begin to follow his argument. He offers a “startling conjecture” and explains how it “smoothly fits” the problem. He turns it “back and forth like a key in a lock.” Each individual in the crowd can see that it “fits” the facts. They make a “final estimate of Plausibility.” They conclude that his Explanation precisely explains the strange events that have befallen the country. Peirce’s words exactly fit how we imagine the crowd’s experience at the point “where conjecture mounts the high peaks of Plausibility,—and is really most worthy of confidence.”[58] The individuals in the crowd find themselves “surrendering” to the logic of the Explanation. Peirce describes this effect:
Now the surrender that we make in retroduction [abduction] is a surrender to the insistence of an idea. The hypothesis, as the Frenchman says, c’est plus fort que moi [“is stronger than me”]. It is irresistible, it is imperative. We must throw open the gates and admit it, at least for the time being.[59]
Under the force of this surrender, the individuals in the crowd leave the speech in a state of wonder. Phenomena that have puzzled them for months, perhaps years, have suddenly received an explanation. They have waited so long for an explanation, and now one has been given. They want to accept it. They are ecstatic.
This is how abduction can have an effect on the mind that is so different from deduction or induction. One must recall that abduction only arises out of, and is applicable to, a state of “dissatisfaction,” when one must face a set of facts that “call out” for explanation. It arises only when one is “penetrated with a sense of unsatisfaction of his present state of knowledge.”[60] Then one casts about for an explanation. When a plausible explanation is given, one gives a sigh of relief, and embraces it with enthusiasm. It restores order and rationality to a world that had been so puzzling. The individual who sees the plausibility of the hypothesis “says to himself, HAH!”[61] He has found it.
When Hitler entered politics in 1919, he did not begin his career by offering anything new. “There was nothing new, different, original or distinctive about the ideas he was peddling in the Munich beerhalls,” writes Kershaw. “They were common currency among the various völkisch groups and sects and had already been advanced in all their essentials by the pre-war Pan-Germans.”[62] The Nazi ideology concocted by Hitler seemed to be no more than an “amalgam of prejudices, phobias, and utopian social expectations rather than a coherent set of intellectual propositions.”[63] It was comprised of a strange set of ideas consisting of “integral nationalism, anti-Marxist ‘national socialism,’ social Darwinism, racism, biological anti-semitism, eugenics, [and] elitism.”[64]
All of these were familiar to the German public, and each had its own limited plausibility. But many of these ideas were mutually contradictory, and they had never before been combined in a single political program. Yet, somehow, this strange and contradictory amalgam became the “granite” foundation for one of the most dynamic movements in modern European political history.
What held these ideas together? It was Hitler’s genius to find the means to combine all of these ideas in a way that they had never been combined before. What Hitler did, writes Ian Kershaw, was to present “unoriginal ideas in an original way.”[65] The secret lay in how he combined the ideas. “Others could say the same thing but make no impression at all. It was less what he said than how he said it that counted.”[66] Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl describes Hitler’s unoriginality, as well as his originality, this way: “Hitler was not so much a distiller of genius as a bartender of genius. He took all the ingredients the German people offered him and mixed them together through his private alchemy into a cocktail they wanted to drink.”[67]
The fact is, writes Alan Bullock, that Hitler “had hit upon a conception of how political power was to be secured and exercised which, when fully developed, was to open the way for a political career without parallel in history.”[68] Hitler’s secret is described by Kershaw: “He consciously learnt how to make an impression through his speaking.”[69]
Many make the mistake of believing that Hitler’s success grew out of some unique and indefinable element of his personality. But Hitler was able to succeed precisely because his secret of success could be—and was—taught to his followers. The Party produced an impressive list of speakers who carried the same message during the years Hitler was under a ban on public speaking. The Nazis were one of the few parties that established schools for training speakers in which they taught Hitler’s methods. Prior to the 1930 election, in which Hitler made his breakthrough, the Nazis held 34,000 rallies. Hitler could speak at few of these, but the method employed and the effect produced were the same. At the 1933 Victory Party Day, held just a few months after becoming chancellor, Hitler gave a remarkable speech in which he explained to his opponents the secret of his success. Norman H. Baynes introduces that speech as follows:
In his closing speech at the Parteitag in Nuremberg in September 1933, Hitler said that the lines on which the National Socialist Party had been built up had been determined after long and careful thought. . . . Such thought had been neglected by his opponents. [But] now after the victory of the Party, he could now speak freely of things which he had previously said only to Party members.[70]
Hitler then commenced the substance of that speech with a lecture on logic, which can be recognized today, thanks to Peirce, as abductive logic. “In Nature there are no such things as chance happenings,” Hitler begins. “Every development runs its course in accordance with the laws of cause and effect.” This is the fundamental basis of abduction and—Hitler is explaining—the fundamental basis of his success.
“But,” he goes on, his opponents had not thought abductively: “Since it is the effect which is principally seen and felt, men are content to concern themselves only with the effect. The unwillingness to seek and discover causes is deeply seated.” Hitler thus explains that it was his and his party’s unique concern with the logic connecting effects back to causes that was the secret of their success. He and the Nazi Party had been successful because they had thought backward to uncover causes.
Hitler explains this by offering the classic abductive diagnostic model: “The only way to permanently cure diseased conditions is to disclose their causes,” he says. This was both the secret of his Weltanschauung and the secret of the Party’s success. “Only so,” he exclaims, “does the riddle lose its mystery.” Only with this understanding, he goes on, are “the individual happenings . . . made up of 100,000 apparent ‘chances’ . . . at length revealed.”[71]
This speech is remarkable in that in it Hitler explicitly credits his success to his and his party’s ability to give an amplified explanation of the traumas that the German people had undergone since the end of the war. He explains to his opponents that he had diagnosed the symptoms more successfully than they. He had presented himself as a doctor possessed of special knowledge who could cure the nation’s ills. He alone had thought backward from the symptoms to the causes and had inculcated that method of thinking into his party. His opponents could now observe with what success his efforts had been crowned. This was the meaning that became the motif of many of his later speeches: “To be German is to be logical”[72] he insisted, and “to be logical” was the essence of his Weltanschauung:
We wish to raise once more the value of our people . . . we want to free this fundamental value. . . . We wish that this value. . . should be raised to its highest potency through the way in which it is administered. This administration must be modelled (sic) on the law of logic.[73]
After he assumed power, Hitler was free to explain the “eigentumliche Art von Logik”[74] with which he had so mystified his opponents and critics. He had invented explanations, amplified them into a comprehensive worldview, and mendaciously presented them to the German nation. Though the substance was false, he had mastered a strange form of logic that brought him immense power.
See Frederic Lilge, The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German University (New York: Macmillan, 1948), passim; Joachim Fest, “Professor NSDAP: The Intellectuals and the Third Reich,” in The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Pantheon, 1970), 249–262; Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1965), passim; Mosse, The Crisis, passim; Horst von Maltitz, “The Educators, The Students,” in The Evolution of Hitler’s Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 420–442.
See, for example, Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric (New York: Wadsworth, 1995); Irving Copi and Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan, 1994); and Robert Fogelin and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Understanding Arguments (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991). See also a very simple and fun work in logic and the detection of false syllogisms in Ray Perkins, Logic and Mr. Limbaugh (Chicago: Open Court, 1995).
Heiden, A History, 65.
Ibid., 66.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 67.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid., 70. (Emphasis added.)
Josephson and Josephson, Abductive Inference, 13.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Hitler, Mein Kampf, 308–329.
Ibid., 308.
John Gunther described this medical approach as the standard framework of Hitler’s speeches: ”His technique was something like this: He suggested to the German people first that they were sick, second that he alone could make them well. His argument was passionate and direct. ‘You are humiliated. You are degraded. Germany is a sick nation. Admit it. Concede the extent of your misery. . . .’” Inside Europe, Again Completely Revised War Edition (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 31.
Peng and Reggia, Abductive, 5.
Heiden, A History, 67.
Peng and Reggia, Abductive, 13.
“. . . our success in discovering natural laws is explained by our affinity with nature.” (Nathan Houser, explaining the development of Peirce’s thought in the introduction of EP2, xx).
Ibid. (Emphasis added.)
Peirce, “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life,” EP2, 32.
Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 1 of The Peirce Edition Project, ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 125. Hereafter cited as EP, followed by the volume number and page. For example, this citation would appear as EP1, 125.
Peirce, “Philosophy in the Conduct of Life,” EP2, 32.
Ibid.
Ibid., 33. (Emphasis in original.)
Peirce, “The Nature of Meaning,” EP2, 217.
Peirce, “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life,” EP2, 40.
Peirce, “The Nature of Meaning,” EP2, 218.
“The Legend of the Instinct Man,” Heiden, A History, 61.
“Speech of November 8, 1938,” in vol. IV of The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, ed. Norman H. Baynes, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), 1551.
Hitler, Mein Kampf, 244.
Ibid., 296–301.
Gunther, Inside, 14.
Fest, Hitler, 44.
Peirce, “What Makes a Reasoning Sound?” EP2, 244.
Nathan Houser, introduction to EP2, xxxi.
Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok, “You Know My Method: A Juxtaposition of Charles S. Peirce and Sherlock Holmes,” in The Sign of Three, ed. Eco and Sebeok, 11–54, at 17.
Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Method of Zadig,” in Science and Culture and Other Essays, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1890), 135–155.
Peirce, “Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction,” EP2, 532, n. 12.
Peirce, “The Nature of Meaning,” EP2, 224.
Peirce, “Pragmatism and the Logic of Abduction,” EP2, 227.
Ibid.
Ibid., 531–532, fn. 12.
Dietrich Eckart, Der Bolshewismus von Moses bei Lenin (Munich, 1924), 5–6. As found in Payne, Life and Death, 140.
Ibid.
Quoted in Heiden, A History, 64–65.
“Logic as a Trick” in Heiden, Eine Biographie, 79.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd enlarged ed. (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 470.
Peirce, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” EP2, 440–441.
Ibid., 441.
Peirce explains that what he means by a “possible Explanation” is “a syllogism exhibiting the surprising fact as necessarily consequent upon the circumstances of its occurrence together with the truth of the credible conjecture as premises.” Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Peirce, “The First Rule of Logic,” EP2, 66.
Ibid., 48.
Peirce, “An Essay toward Reasoning in Security and Uberty,” EP2, 467.
Kershaw, Hubris, 133.
Ibid., 134
Ibid.
Ibid., 133.
Ibid.
Ernst Hanfstaengl, The Missing Years, trans. Brian Connell (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), 269; Unheard Witness (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1957), 283.
Bullock, Hitler: A Study, 56.
Kershaw, Hubris, 133.
“Speech of September 4, 1933,” in Baynes, The Speeches, 462.
Ibid.
“Speech of July 18, 1937,” Ibid., 587.
Ibid., 189. This speech was printed in Volkischer Beobachter, September 18, 1930.
Heiden, Eine Biographie, 111.