| Abstract: | This essay discusses the question: is Napoleon Bonaparte in any significant sense the predecessor of Adolf Hitler? Is this simile a good heuristic device for bringing out hidden qualities or dimensions which we would not otherwise perceive in Napoleon? Or, at the end of the day, was Hannah Arendt right in explicitly repudiating the notion that Napoleon was comparable to Hitler? And the essay concludes that for a host of reasons—structure, politics, ideology, personality, posterity—she is correct. It argues that the simile should be withdrawn from serious conversation. |
