Adolf Hitler: Historical Evaluation and Discussion

lol

I would have thought that a person coming from humble beginnings, without any higher education, without any connections, taking control of a country and waging war on the entire world would, at the very least, be considered "interesting."

But I guess not. Apparently, if one wants to be interesting, one should have a family and not lose his temper.



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As usual, I agree with wannasee.

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Don't let this become an Interesting Tyrant Awards Festival, guys!

 

I would have thought that a person coming from humble beginnings, without any higher education, without any connections, taking control of a country and waging war on the entire world would, at the very least, be considered "interesting."


Eeeh, not really. Maybe if the government he took over was one that had WON the war, but really, he was just really good at telling people what they wanted to hear.

His ability to wage war rested heavily on that Germany... was really just THAT good at fighting wars. They practically took on the world in WWI too -- they were supporting their allies rather than the other way around.

 

The Democratic *snicker* Republic *chuckle* of the Congo will be hosting this year's Genocides awards, for outstanding achievement in the field of genocide. As usual, Turkey will most likely win Best Genocide Denier; when reached for comment, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "I just can't compete. I'm no Hitler, if he had done those things which he did not." Best Slave Operation is now a competition, with the possibility of Sudan splitting in two.

 

The interesting (and scary) thing about the big lie technique is that Hitler didn't use it to describe himself lying to the German public. He used to to describe how the Jews, Communists and liberals were deceiving the public. The words are there all the same, "the masses will more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie", but in which direction does it point? What if Jews really are subhuman saboteurs trying to undermine the master race, and the people who say that they're human beings who deserve the same rights as everyone else are the evil liars? Who's really lying here?

As Obi-Wan Kenobi puts it, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. We like to think that our universal truths are self-evident, but they're not....it's just one of many ideas swimming around out there.

 

What's really scary, though, is that Nazi ideology was made in England (Galton did coin the term "eugenics", after all, but he was not the first to have the idea.), tempered in America, and exported to Germany. And eugenic thinking still permeates American pop culture and mainstream media.

 

Heres something on the final Solution on who else was betting on the nazis to get rid of the jews other than just the pope.

I am not bashing muslims but this history did happen And I am jewish have alot more anger towards them then the Germans today because the conflict is still happening. Israel was born out of the concentration camps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBFBvceJvIU&feature=related

 

Well, the really weird thing is, until Zionism came around, specifically Lord Balfour promising Palestine to both the Jews and the Arabs (By the way, Balfour was doing this so he'd bring the Jewish banks against the Kaiser. You ask "What Jewish banks?" The ones that exist only in antisemitic conspiracy theories. For the Arabs, well, a Lawrence of Arabia-style uprising. He also promised Palestine to the French, who withdrew their claim at the League of Nations; hilariously, they were even more worried about the Central Powers than the British. Yeah, Balfour couldn't keep track of what parts of the Empire he sold off.), it was generally understood in the Middle East that Christians were the enemy; indeed, many taxes in Muslim countries were only leveled against the uncircumcised, meaning that Jews and Muslims didn't have to pay.

That particular Palestinian leader was a British appointee, so I don't know how much you can say he represents the Palestinians, but I bet it's a nice round figure: In Axis languages, null, zero, and rei.

Of course, you have some weird notions; when we were talking about parallels to Star Wars in history, I mentioned the aforementioned "Aryan Sioux", and you asked if the Sioux were Muslim. Hilarious to both is the history of white people who thought Indians were Jews, going back to Bartolomé de las Casas; Göbbels was even compared to Mormons. (So, the first use of Godwin's law?)

 

My apologies that I have not replied to some previous posts - hopefully I'll find some time to discuss that a bit later. Anyway here is a new topic for discussion:



The Danger of Dehumanizing Adolf Hitler

One thing which i have observed in regards to the general consensus to what Adolf Hitler represents to our species is that he is incredibly dehumanised and disconnected from the collective human race. I think this is not only irresponsible and ignorant of humanity, but it is also incredibly dangerous to disregard Adolf Hitler as a one-dimensional characterature of pure evil. The truth of the matter is that his evil is much more complicated and much more relevant to us than most choose to believe. In reality Hitler, whilst certainly an evil man, was not all that disconnected from the vast majority of humanity as someone might be if their were genuinely mentally insane; rather Hitler was much like the rest of us and, while an incredibly corrupted and vile specimen, was indeed a common human being.

We all have the potential for evil and good, and in the case of Hitler he certainly chose the evil path (certainly to the extreme). However in reality this is the point of the argument - Adolf Hitler also had the potential to be a good human being and it is in this fact that Adolf Hitler should be a representation of the worst of every human. Instead however he is dehumanized which does not address who he truly was. This is why I find the typical narrow opinion that "he was a psychopath" to disregard what Hitler was through the disconnecting of him to ones self (since most people are not psychopaths). I certainly agree that the argument that he was a psychopath has relavence (especially in the later years of the war), and I agree with the sentiment, however Hitler was much more complicated than a simple one-dimensional depiction. It is clear that he as an individual was actually much more human (in fact many of his reactions to things were very human) and that it is in this way that he was rather connected to the collective humanity. He was really a product of the extremist radicalism which the Germans themselves believed justified given the Treaty of Versillies - obviously not the genocide, but rather the radical nationalistic sentiment. After all the Third Riech was really a result of a nations sentiment rather than being propelled souly by one man - Hitler was merely someone established within a seat of power which unfortunately allowed him to wield a terrifying power.

While a mentally insane person is disconnected somewhat from the collective human race (not saying they aren't human, but rather just that they represent something which is removed from our typical potential) Adolf Hitler, in my opinion, should be representative of the potential in each human being. By dehumanizing him we fail to learn the key lessons from his existence - that each and every one of us, given a certain situation, has the potential to be as evil as Hitler. If we do not understand this we have failed to learn from his existence and there is a potential more individuals could reach his level of evil. So, in a way, we are all Adolf Hitler just as Adolf Hitler is all of us - each and every one of us has the potential to be as unbelievably evil as he was.

This does not justify his actions - the genocide, enslavement and degradation (and all evils perpetrated against people) of innocent (or any human being for that matter) people is unjustifiable in any case - and he rightfully deserves, as all evil people do, to be regarded with distain by the rest of humanity. I do believe however that we can't disconnect ourselves from Hitler or any other human being and in such a way dehumanize them - to do this is to not understand what evil is and from where it is derived. Hitler, especially in his case, is an ever present reminder - a warning - of the potential of every person and the evil each one of us has the potential of degenerating into.

This is a view which I know many historians and holocaust survivors have reiterated - to forget and not a

 

Meh, if we judge the people of history by our modern standards pretty much everyone was "evil".

 

Yeah. My view of Hitler was that he was motivated by pride. Pride in his country, pride in the military. When Germany lost World War I, he (and many others) simply couldn't stomach it, and blamed the pro-democracy movement as well as the socialists for stirring up trouble on the home front and "stabbing" the military in the back. In reality, the German government knew it had lost the war and decided to give power to the liberals so they could take the blame instead. In any case, Hitler and his fellow Nazis cooked up a conspiracy theory that the Jews and Communists were traitors who brought down Germany from within....they also believed that liberal democracy was a Jewish plot and that America was controlled by Jewish puppeteers. A free society is morally decrepit and erodes the strength of the state, obviously a sinister Jewish lie meant to undermine the nation. Of course you can see where this all led. I don't necessarily see this as "humanizing" Hitler so much as the fact that humans are capable of some incredibly sick and twisted things. Hitler is human in that what he did was based on a human tendency, and that this tendency is shared with other members of our race.

 

Add to that, he also suffered abuse at the hands of his Father which, although it isn't the greatest excuse for becoming the Monster he became, it gives us insight into one of the many factors which made him into who he was.

Who knows what would have happened had he been raised better (aside from the fact that he may have even become a great artist had he not been rejected from Art School, Twice).

 

There have been and are far more evil men in the world. You see, Hitler shares the sadly all too common human trait of allowing hatred and prejudice to overrule his compassion and sense of decency. Like other bastards past and present, he was kind and compassionate to his friends but saw his opponents and enemies as subhuman. His position of power allowed him to codify that dehumanisation into a policy of oppression first, then cleansing. After all, if they're not human, then you don't have to be humane. The crucial difference was that he never stooped to do the deeds himself. What does that make him? Why is Hitler the most 'evil man in history' and not the savage in Africa who cuts off a woman's [censored] and rapes her, the Serbian who shoots the Bosnian farmer in the back of the head, the Turk who machine guns down Armenians, the US Cavalry officer shooting at a crowd of unarmed indians cowering under an American flag, the Catholic running through the Hugenot with a sword, the Crusader hacking off a surrendered Saracen's head?

Mankind's history is shock full of such people, and I'd argue that it's societies that allow these actions to happen, not just leaders. To place the blame for such an undertaking as the holocaust at the feet of just one man just seems silly, just as it would be to start calling Bush a murderer for the thousands killed by soldiers following his orders in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years.

To look at it from another perspective though, how is killing someone because you hate them any worse than killing someone accidently or because they're in your way? How do we live in a world where killing 100,000 people with a single bomb isn't the most heinous act of all time?