Hitler

>His government was constantly in chaos, with officials having no idea what he wanted them to do, and nobody was entirely clear who was actually in charge of what. He procrastinated wildly when asked to make difficult decisions, and would often end up relying on gut feeling, leaving even close allies in the dark about his plans.

>There’s a bit of an argument about whether this was a deliberate ploy to get his own way, or whether he was just really, really bad at being in charge of stuff. Some believe it was a cunning tactic to sow division and chaos—and it’s undeniable that he was very effective at that. But when you look at his personal habits, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it was just a natural result of putting a workshy narcissist in charge of a country.

>He was incredibly lazy. According to his aide he wouldn’t get out of bed until after 11 a.m., and wouldn’t do much before lunch other than read what the newspapers had to say about him.

>He was obsessed with the media and celebrity, and often seems to have viewed himself through that lens. He once described himself as “the greatest” and wrote to a friend, “I believe my life is the greatest novel in world history.” In many of his personal habits he came across as strange or even childish—he would have regular naps during the day, he would bite his fingernails at the dinner table, and he had a remarkably sweet tooth.

>He was deeply insecure about his own lack of knowledge, preferring to either ignore information that contradicted his preconceptions, or to lash out at the expertise of others. He hated being laughed at, but enjoyed it when other people were the butt of the joke (he would perform mocking impressions of people he disliked). But he also craved the approval of those he disdained, and his mood would quickly improve if a newspaper wrote something complimentary about him.

>Little of this was especially secret or unknown at the time. It’s why so many people failed to take him seriously until it was too late, dismissing him as merely a “half-mad rascal” or a “man with a beery vocal organ.” In a sense, they weren’t wrong. In another, much more important sense, they were as wrong as it’s possible to get.

>Hitler’s personal failings didn’t stop him having an uncanny instinct for political rhetoric that would gain mass appeal, and it turns out you don’t actually need to have a particularly competent or functional government to do terrible things.