I'm not all that interested in Hitler or the latest theories about Hitler's mindset, but the idea that Hitler would have done a whole lot less evil had he not loved art and considered himself an artistic genius is an interesting one. Not because of what it says about Hitler but because of what it says about artists.

In my opinion, people have underestimated the notion that Hitler considered himself an artist, in fact, an artistic genius, and that much can be deduced from this self-image, this overheated artist's ego. However, this has hardly played a role in the research to date. That's the starting point, from my perspective, because it can help us gain a better understanding of Hitler as a person, as well as his system of power. Hitler's deluded view of himself as a genius is based on the confused system of thought emerging in the late 19th century, which centered on the idea that a genius -- a strong personality who outshone everything else -- could do anything and could do anything he pleased.

Many artists certainly do feel themselves to be higher beings compared to the dull and ignorant mass of humanity. It's basically the same unchecked egomania as behind Plato's analogy of the cave, only even more groundless. Rainer Maria Rilke described the feeling quite eloquently in "Vorgefühl", here in English translation by Jessie Lemont:

PRESAGING

I am like a flag unfurled in space,
I scent the oncoming winds and must bend with them,
While the things beneath are not yet stirring,
While the doors close gently and there is silence in the chimneys
And the windows do not yet tremble and the dust is still heavy---

Then I feel the storm and am vibrant like the sea
And expand and withdraw into myself
And thrust myself forth and am alone in the great storm.

Once you see yourself that way, the leap to considering yourself above the rules of morality which bind non-artists is not a big one. Chesterton also wrote about this eloquently, though from the perspective of an outsider who sees that it is a bunch of nonsense.

There were some who seemed to hold that any artistic experiment, however anarchical or abnormal, or manifestly and even medically insane, had a mysterious right of its own to override any social custom or convenience, any common-sense or ordinary civic dignity. The artistic experiment had this right because it was an artistic experiment; not even because the art was artistic; still less because the experiment was successful. Even the worst play must take precedence of the best law. If the artists had wanted to have real blood in their murders, as some other artists used real mud on their landscapes, one can only suppose that these critics would have agreed to sacrifice a few human lives to the thrill of realism. If the actor-manager were working on the old lavish scale, he might be encouraged to turn the theatre into an amphitheatre. He might make a feature of real lions, which would be expensive; and real Christians, who would be rare.

Anyhow, the theory of the thing seemed to be that supreme spiritual authority in this world belongs to art, or rather, to anybody who chooses to say that he is attempting something new in art. I was never able to accept this highly modern and credulous conception; because I am unable to imagine any human being accepting any authority that he has not originally reached by reason. And I cannot conceive what reason there could possibly be for accepting the authority of artists; not to mention bad artists.

I don't think we can ever return to the pre-Romantic days when artists were not treated like priests or demigods, but if we could it surely would make the world a better place. People who consider themselves geniuses and therefore above all human law are not something we need more of, even if very very few of them reach Hitlerian levels of power.