Has anyone else read Mein Kampf?

[ScribbleScribe]

I am re-reading it right now and I am having difficulty trying to find people to discuss it with without the fear of them being like "OMG! NAZI!"

Uhm, no. Not going to turn me into a Nazi. I just want to discuss it.

Obviously it's a political text. It has a lot of hate-speech in it. Interesting autobiographical narratives that are probably more than a bit slanted. Nontheless, I find it interesting.

Yes I know this book has been a favorite of a few school-shooters. Yes I know the author has killed a lot of people.

Why is it then, such a crime to find it interesting?

Anyway, what do you think of this book?

[Patito de Hule]

Incredibly boring. I don't intend to reread.

If you're a real masochist, try Wealth of Nations and Capital.

[PeterL]

I started it, but it was amazingly boring, but that might have been the fault of the translator.

I have read parts of Das Kapital, and that is as boring.

[Emil Miller]

Alright, but it's worth remembering that they weren't written for literature geeks
and all of them had a more profound effect the mass of people than almost any book that was.

[KCurtis]

I am re-reading it right now and I am having difficulty trying to find people to discuss it with without the fear of them being like "OMG! NAZI!"

Uhm, no. Not going to turn me into a Nazi. I just want to discuss it.

Obviously it's a political text. It has a lot of hate-speech in it. Interesting autobiographical narratives that are probably more than a bit slanted. Nontheless, I find it interesting.

Yes I know this book has been a favorite of a few school-shooters. Yes I know the author has killed a lot of people.

Why is it then, such a crime to find it interesting?

Anyway, what do you think of this book?

It's not a crime to read it, not in this country. I'm sure my grandfather has read it, he was a Nazi sympathizer :banghead::sad: and was interned for two years while living in Canada in the 1940's. He used to give pro Nazi speeches. I knew none of this until after he died, I was just a kid.
If you find it interesting it's probably because it is an important piece of history.

[Lokasenna]

To follow the general trend, my objections to it are on literary grounds: it is really horribly written. The fact that the ethos is presents is monstrous does not help, but as a text I'm more inclined to criticise the presentation.

[ScribbleScribe]

I have mein kampf in an audio format so when I can't sleep, I turn on my ipod and listen to it until I feel tired.

[PrinceMyshkin]

As a Jew who has read widely about the Shoa (Holocaust) I have a superstitious dread of even holding or touching that book, as if something filthy would rub off on me.

[Charles Darnay]

I have mein kampf in an audio format so when I can't sleep, I turn on my ipod and listen to it until I feel tired.

That's strange, and slightly disturbing.

I will admit that it is difficult for me to look at this book objectively, but in my effort to do so, I find the writing pure garbage, particularly when compared with transcripts of his later speeches. Politics aside, he had a good sense of rhetoric that just does not come through in this book.

[KCurtis]

As a Jew who has read widely about the Shoa (Holocaust) I have a superstitious dread of even holding or touching that book, as if something filthy would rub off on me.

I don't blame you, I would too. I have even felt guilt concerning my grandfather, who I loved. And that's probably why-because I did love him, but I was only 9.

[ScribbleScribe]

That's strange, and slightly disturbing.

I will admit that it is difficult for me to look at this book objectively, but in my effort to do so, I find the writing pure garbage, particularly when compared with transcripts of his later speeches. Politics aside, he had a good sense of rhetoric that just does not come through in this book.


I wonder why it doesn't come through. Maybe he was a better speaker than writer. But they are both language, so kind of confusing this would be bad.

Maybe it was really editorialized or he wrote it before his speaking skills were developed. I don't know.

[ScribbleScribe]

People say the bible is boring but its one of the most analyzed texts in history. So, yeah, not all literature is interesting I guss.

[Emil Miller]

That's strange, and slightly disturbing.

I will admit that it is difficult for me to look at this book objectively, but in my effort to do so, I find the writing pure garbage, particularly when compared with transcripts of his later speeches. Politics aside, he had a good sense of rhetoric that just does not come through in this book.

This is probably because the book was written in 1924 when he was in prison and unable to use his "good sense of rhetoric," until he became chancellor in 1933.

[BienvenuJDC]

People say the bible is boring but its one of the most analyzed texts in history. So, yeah, not all literature is interesting I guss.

Perspective...I find most of the Bible quite interesting.

[ScribbleScribe]

Perspective...I find most of the Bible quite interesting.

Actually, as do I. Religion minor here.

[BienvenuJDC]

Actually, as do I. Religion minor here.

I've had the equivalent of a minor in Bible. And I've been a preacher for quite a number of years. Any favorite parts?

[ScribbleScribe]

Actually I've read only bits and pieces so I can't say what is my favorite part.

[BienvenuJDC]

Actually I've read only bits and pieces so I can't say what is my favorite part.

I'm always available to discuss or give thoughts on any parts of it. Feel free to message me.

[Emil Miller]

From Mein Kampf to the Bible in two pages. Is this a record?

[stlukesguild]

People say the bible is boring but its one of the most analyzed texts in history. So, yeah, not all literature is interesting I guss.

And some people find Shakespeare "boring". Many, many years ago I was assigned a research essay on the rise of the Nazis and read Mein Kampf as part of the research. It was horribly written and painfully repetitive as well as its obvious moral lapses.

[ScribbleScribe]

Maybe its easier to digest in audio form. The guy reading it has a german accent.

[cafolini]

I studied it when in my 30's. Everything that Hitler was to become is there. A terrible lunatic. I don't blame any Jew for being scared of even touching it.

[Darcy88]

Was Hitler really much of a rhetorician? I used to be a ww2 buff so I took in quite a few hours of his speeches. The man had a powerful presence, he was a stick of dynamite that kept on exploding. Add to that the euphoric energy of the mob and I understand how he could come to wield such influence over the German people. But if you compare his rhetoric to the speeches in say Thucydides, it wasn't all that impressive.

[Charles Darnay]

Was Hitler really much of a rhetorician? I used to be a ww2 buff so I took in quite a few hours of his speeches. The man had a powerful presence, he was a stick of dynamite that kept on exploding. Add to that the euphoric energy of the mob and I understand how he could come to wield such influence over the German people. But if you compare his rhetoric to the speeches in say Thucydides, it wasn't all that impressive.

I agree, but he knew how to give people what they wanted.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I've always been interested in reading Mien Kumpf (I've always thought the title was dirty sounding, though that's not why I want to read it). After reading this thread, I've changed my mind.

[Charles Darnay]

I've always been interested in reading Mien Kumpf (I've always thought the title was dirty sounding, though that's not why I want to read it). After reading this thread, I've changed my mind.

It really is not worth it outside of the historical value.

[Desolation]

Did Hitler actually write his own speeches?

The sections I read of Mein Kampf came off as the words of a blathering idiot - a far cry from the brilliant speaker that people make him out to be.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think the power of his speeches was largely derived from how he spoke, not what he spoke. I doubt someone speaking in a boring monotone could've achieved any kind of success as Hitler did. Hell, he more likely would've been labeled a nut.

Maybe that's the key to liking Mien Kumpf--just hear the narrator as a screaming, dynamic man with messy oiled hair.

[cafolini]

Did Hitler actually write his own speeches?

The sections I read of Mein Kampf came off as the words of a blathering idiot - a far cry from the brilliant speaker that people make him out to be.

Agree rotundly. Short of retarded. But the germans were very mentally ill and ready for him.
That's why at the end, we needed the Nuremberg trials. Germany was very ill.

[stlukesguild]

And yet these same "mentally ill" Germans also produced a wealth of the leading figures in art, music, literature, the theater, film, and philosophy:

Thomas Mann
Hermann Hesse
Robert Walser
Franz Kafka
Ranier Maria Rilke
Gottfried Benn
Bertolt Brecht
Stefan George
Klaus Mann
Richard Strauss
Alban Berg
Arnold Schoenberg
Erich Korngold
Anton Webern
Paul Hindemith
Otto Klemperer
Wilhelm Furtwangler
Herbert von Karajan
Kurt Weill
Othmar Schoeck
Marlene Dietrich
Greta Garbo
F.W. Murnau
Max Reinhardt
Leni Riefenstahl
Conrad Veidt
Robert Weine
Walter Gropius
Mies van der Rohe
Theodor Adorno
Walter Benjamin
Martin Buber
Martin Heidegger
Paul Klee
Max Beckmann
E.L. Kirchner
Otto Dix
George Grosz
max Ernst
John Heartfield
Erich Heckel
Emil Nolde
Kurt Schwitters
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Fritz Lang
Adolf Loos
Ernst Lubitsch
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Peter Lorre
Billy Wilder

[Darcy88]

Did anyone propose that the German people are as a whole "mentally ill?" I must have missed it.

[stlukesguild]

"...the germans were very mentally ill and ready for him...".

[Darcy88]

Ahh I see. I did miss it. I want to say how nationalistic and antisemitic they were but the same could be said of many nations of the time.

[Emil Miller]

Was Hitler really much of a rhetorician? I used to be a ww2 buff so I took in quite a few hours of his speeches. The man had a powerful presence, he was a stick of dynamite that kept on exploding. Add to that the euphoric energy of the mob and I understand how he could come to wield such influence over the German people. But if you compare his rhetoric to the speeches in say Thucydides, it wasn't all that impressive.

Thucydides was primarily a historian and not the leader of what became the most powerful nation in the world. It is doubtful that his speeches would have had the same effect on millions of people in the same way that Hitler's did.
Here's British historian Ian Kershaw's view :

Hitler understood the indispensable role rhetoric played in his quest for power. While brooding in a minimum security cell in Landsberg in 1924 for leading a failed coup de’tat -- the “beer hall putsch” -- Hitler told a friend, “When
I resume work it will be necessary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve power through an armed coup, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. Sooner or later we
shall have a majority, and after that -- Germany!” He would gain power through the ballot box.

“Hitler was no tyrant imposed on Germany. Though he never received majority support in free elections [according to Jäckel no political party in the Wiemar Republic ever had] he was legally appointed to power and became, between 1933 and 1940, arguably the most popular head of state in the world. It has been suggested that at the peak of his popularity nine Germans in ten were ‘Hitler supporters,’ ‘Fuhrer Believers.
Among his early “fans” was Winston Churchill who, in 1936, called Hitler the “greatest German of the age. He has restored Germany’s honor.” A year later Churchill described Hitler’s achievements as “among the most remarkable
in the whole history of the world” and “I’ve always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us to our rightful position among nations.”

Hitler as Speech Writer:
Hitler once declared, “everything I have accomplished I owe to persuasion.” He knew rhetoric was the key to his success. According to Kershaw, “when it came to preparing his speeches, which he composed himself, he would
withdraw into his room and could work deep into the night several evenings running, occupying three secretaries taking dictation straight into the typewriters before carefully correcting the drafts.” Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, notes, “Hitler spoke very proudly of the fact that he corrected his speeches three, four, five times.”

[mal4mac]

Obviously no one is saying that *all* the German people were mad... just the ones that helped Hitler get into power (i.e., a majority, or a large minority...)

Isn't being anti-semitic a form of mental illness? Holding someone not to be human simply because of their race certainly sounds nuts to me!

P.S. Heidegger was nuts in this way, and others on StLuke's list had inclinations to this kind of madness (Karajan...) Then again ... who ever said artists had to be sane? Then again... don't philosopher have to be sane, by definition?

[Alexander III]

[QUOTE=mal4mac;1118116

Isn't being anti-semitic a form of mental illness? Holding someone not to be human simply because of their race certainly sounds nuts to me!
[/QUOTE]

Well according to what you said damn near all the humans who ever lived were mentally Ill. Considering the prevalance on racism and genocide in history.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

But there's a difference between being near-retarded, as cafolini called Hitler and implied about the whole of WWII era Germany, and Being insane, or various other forms of mental illness. One can be insane and intelligent (at least in certain ways/matters) at the same time. So what you will about Hitler, but he was nor a stupid man. Evil, insane, unstable, hateful? Of course. But dumb? No.

[Alexander III]

But there's a difference between being near-retarded, as cafolini called Hitler and implied about the whole of WWII era Germany, and Being insane, or various other forms of mental illness. One can be insane and intelligent (at least in certain ways/matters) at the same time. So what you will about Hitler, but he was nor a stupid man. Evil, insane, unstable, hateful? Of course. But dumb? No.

I don't think anyone called Hitler stupid. Because lets face it, if a stupid man can rise from a working class failed artist/soldier - and become one of the most powerfull men in europe - well all of us by contrast must be very very very very stupid.

As for the insane thing, yes, but he was no more insane than the majority of his contempories if you see what was going on in europe at the time. Sadly I think we can only call him the tragic product of his times.

[mal4mac]

... Evil, insane, unstable, hateful? Of course. But dumb? No.

Well he ended up dead in a bunker through his own madness & incompetency... that looks pretty dumb. Given that so many tyrants end badly, choosing to be a tyrant looks pretty dumb ... just look at Sadam, Gadafi, et. al., more recently.

If you study, and appreciate, the thoughts of philosophers like Socrates and Diogenes then just seeking power, in any context, can look like a pretty dumb choice. You might have a brutish kind of intelligence that helps you get to the top of the rubbish heap, but still be overall dumb.

[Darcy88]

Thucydides was primarily a historian and not the leader of what became the most powerful nation in the world. It is doubtful that his speeches would have had the same effect on millions of people in the same way that Hitler's did.
Here's British historian Ian Kershaw's view :

Hitler understood the indispensable role rhetoric played in his quest for power. While brooding in a minimum security cell in Landsberg in 1924 for leading a failed coup de’tat -- the “beer hall putsch” -- Hitler told a friend, “When
I resume work it will be necessary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve power through an armed coup, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. Sooner or later we
shall have a majority, and after that -- Germany!” He would gain power through the ballot box.

“Though he never received majority support in free elections [according to Jäckel no political party in the Wiemar Republic ever had] he was legally appointed to power and became, between 1933 and 1940, arguably the most popular head of state in the world. It has been suggested that at the peak of his popularity nine Germans in ten were ‘Hitler supporters,’ ‘Fuhrer Believers.
Among his early “fans” was Winston Churchill who, in 1936, called Hitler the “greatest German of the age. He has restored Germany’s honor.” A year later Churchill described Hitler’s achievements as “among the most remarkable
in the whole history of the world” and “I’ve always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us to our rightful position among nations.”

Hitler as Speech Writer:
Hitler once declared, “everything I have accomplished I owe to persuasion.” He knew rhetoric was the key to his success. According to Kershaw, “when it came to preparing his speeches, which he composed himself, he would
withdraw into his room and could work deep into the night several evenings running, occupying three secretaries taking dictation straight into the typewriters before carefully correcting the drafts.” Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, notes, “Hitler spoke very proudly of the fact that he corrected his speeches three, four, five times.”

That still doesn't mean was a great rhetorician. Cicero was one of the leading men of a powerful state and his speeches make Hitler's look like drunken babble. Next to Caesar Hitler stacks up nearly as bad. Hitler seemed to have embodied some strain of passion that was present among the common German people of his time. That's what he was - the common man amplified. He wasn't possessed of an intellectually imposing mind. Even the mediocre Obama surpasses him in that respect. He accomplished historically major things, rose to the fore in Germany and then the world and shook civilization like a massive quake. But it was a broken and desperate Germany he took over, and aside from the early dazzling successes of the blitz-krieg, his tenure as leader in the end turned out to be a catastrophic failure.



Hitler was no tyrant imposed on Germany.

That statement is just egregiously incorrect and absurd. Hitler had the communist and social democratic parties expelled. He became absolute tyrant. Before he outlawed rival parties he had armed brown shirts stationed outside their offices. Their leaders he sent to concentration camps long before war even broke out. That statement is like arguing that Caesar wasn't a tyrant, nor was Augustus.

[Desolation]

I don't think anyone called Hitler stupid. Because lets face it, if a stupid man can rise from a working class failed artist/soldier - and become one of the most powerfull men in europe - well all of us by contrast must be very very very very stupid.

I did.

Only a very stupid and very weak man would seek that much power to begin with.

[cafolini]

And yet these same "mentally ill" Germans also produced a wealth of the leading figures in art, music, literature, the theater, film, and philosophy:

Thomas Mann
Hermann Hesse
Robert Walser
Franz Kafka
Ranier Maria Rilke
Gottfried Benn
Bertolt Brecht
Stefan George
Klaus Mann
Richard Strauss
Alban Berg
Arnold Schoenberg
Erich Korngold
Anton Webern
Paul Hindemith
Otto Klemperer
Wilhelm Furtwangler
Herbert von Karajan
Kurt Weill
Othmar Schoeck
Marlene Dietrich
Greta Garbo
F.W. Murnau
Max Reinhardt
Leni Riefenstahl
Conrad Veidt
Robert Weine
Walter Gropius
Mies van der Rohe
Theodor Adorno
Walter Benjamin
Martin Buber
Martin Heidegger
Paul Klee
Max Beckmann
E.L. Kirchner
Otto Dix
George Grosz
max Ernst
John Heartfield
Erich Heckel
Emil Nolde
Kurt Schwitters
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Fritz Lang
Adolf Loos
Ernst Lubitsch
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Peter Lorre
Billy Wilder

What does that have to do with the Reich? Some did but so by virtue of being there. Most were supressed. What is your purpose in associating them with the obvious German insanity.
What saved Germany from the Reich's insanity, the allies or these persons, the Nuremberg trials or anything else?
Would the assassination of Hitler have stopped the insanity? I don't think so. There were hundreds of others to take over and make it end up where it ended.

[cafolini]

I did.

Only a very stupid and very weak man would seek that much power to begin with.

Without doubt. And there were many many others among the Nazi's that would have done it. Obviously Himler as an example.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE]That still doesn't mean was a great rhetorician. Cicero was one of the leading men of a powerful state and his speeches make Hitler's look like drunken babble. Next to Caesar Hitler stacks up nearly as bad. Hitler seemed to have embodied some strain of passion that was present among the common German people of his time. That's what he was - the common man amplified. He wasn't possessed of an intellectually imposing mind. Even the mediocre Obama surpasses him in that respect. He accomplished historically major things, rose to the fore in Germany and then the world and shook civilization like a massive quake. But it was a broken and desperate Germany he took over, and aside from the early dazzling successes of the blitz-krieg, his tenure as leader in the end turned out to be a catastrophic failure.

Whether we like Hitler's style of speaking or not, it is universally admitted among the major historians of the period that he was a great orator within the medium of the German language. As for his not having an intellectually imposing mind, that depends on what is meant by 'intellectually imposing' and you will find that Third Reich experts like Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, William Schirer, Ian Kershaw etc. etc. would, in any case, take issue with you on Hitler's intellectual capabilities.


That statement is just egregiously incorrect and absurd. Hitler had the communist and social democratic parties expelled. He became absolute tyrant. Before he outlawed rival parties he had armed brown shirts stationed outside their offices. Their leaders he sent to concentration camps long before war even broke out. That statement is like arguing that Caesar wasn't a tyrant, nor was Augustus.

Hitler was able to dispense with the opposition parties because of the Enabling Act of 1933 that the Reichstag voted in favour of by a two thirds majority. It effectively gave Hitler the right to rule without recourse to the other parties that were then abolished. If Professor Kershaw, one of the foremost historians of the period, is prepared to say that Hitler wasn't a tyrant who was imposed on Germany, I think his expertise will stand comparison with your own.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like politicians who find it necessary to wear military uniform most of the time, and I certainly wouldn't vote for them, but it's important to maintain objectivity when discussing any historical period and there has been a lot of nonsense talked about the Third Reich.

[Patito de Hule]

Associating racism with mental illness in this way just doesn't work.

I am currently reading The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Rule (1872) by James S. Pike. It is one of the most racist pieces of literature I have ever read other than some Neo-Nazi stuff one of my cousins used to send me. But one must understand that the author, Pike, is just a man of his age. He was an abolitionist from Massachusetts from the 1840's. He worked on the Tribune under Horace Greeley. After the war, he went to South Carolina. (A carpetbagger and a journalist). He was disappointed at all the corruption of the Grant Administration and was one of the Northern Republicans who bolted in 1872. When you know this and realize that this book, while purporting to be history is really a political tract, anti-Grant and pro-Greeley, you get a different view of the book as "literature." His racism was the current "common sense" that Blacks generally just weren't ready for political responsibility.

Likewise, when you understand where Hitler was coming from and the circumstance under which Mein Kampf was written and that it was "required reading" for millions, then it is interesting. This in spite of the fact that the message and style are inherently boring. Hitler was mad, not because he was racist, but because he was obsessed with racism and with the loss of WWI and the injustices of the Treaty of Versaille. It is interesting because of the "accomplishments" of the author.

[Patito de Hule]

Hitler was not a man of letters; he was a natural, golden-tongued orator.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I don't think anyone called Hitler stupid.
I refer you to:

Agree rotundly. Short of retarded.




What does that have to do with the Reich? Some did but so by virtue of being there. Most were supressed. What is your purpose in associating them with the obvious German insanity.
What saved Germany from the Reich's insanity, the allies or these persons, the Nuremberg trials or anything else?
Would the assassination of Hitler have stopped the insanity? I don't think so. There were hundreds of others to take over and make it end up where it ended.

You said all Germans of the time were mentally ill. StLukes listed a number of Germans who were quite brilliant. Where did that trip you up, exactly?

[Emil Miller]

Hitler was not a man of letters; he was a natural, golden-tongued orator.

Well, the German language doesn't lend itself to being 'golden tongued'. However, Hitler's 'Hochdeutsch' was brilliantly used to express his contempt for those who had remained in power since 1918 and had by their timidity reduced parts of Germany to starvation levels.

[Desolation]

You said all Germans of the time were mentally ill. StLukes listed a number of Germans who were quite brilliant. Where did that trip you up, exactly?

I could easily mistaken, but I doubt he meant that literally every single German at that time was crazy. Rather, that the general zeitgeist in Germany resembled mental illness.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I could easily mistaken, but I doubt he meant that literally every single German at that time was crazy. Rather, that the general zeitgeist in Germany resembled mental illness.

With cafolini, it's hard to tell when he's being exaggeratory.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118154]

Whether we like Hitler's style of speaking or not, it is universally admitted among the major historians of the period that he was a great orator within the medium of the German language. As for his not having an intellectually imposing mind, that depends on what is meant by 'intellectually imposing' and you will find that Third Reich experts like Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, William Schirer, Ian Kershaw etc. etc. would, in any case, take issue with you on Hitler's intellectual capabilities.



Hitler was able to dispense with the opposition parties because of the Enabling Act of 1933 that the Reichstag voted in favour of by a two thirds majority. It effectively gave Hitler the right to rule without recourse to the other parties that were then abolished. If Professor Kershaw, one of the foremost historians of the period, is prepared to say that Hitler wasn't a tyrant who was imposed on Germany, I think his expertise will stand comparison with your own.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like politicians who find it necessary to wear military uniform most of the time, and I certainly wouldn't vote for them, but it's important to maintain objectivity when discussing any historical period and there has been a lot of nonsense talked about the Third Reich.

Hitler eliminated any opposition from the social democrats and the communist party by arresting their chief members prior to the vote for the enabling act. He received the support of the Centre Party by promising to allow its continued existence and also by intimidating them by the presence of armed brown shirts at the negotiations. Hardly a democratic victory. No different than Julius Caesar wrapping the Roman senate around his finger by the threat of his legions. Civil liberties - gone. Democracy - gone. Not a tyrant? Really.

And I don't really think there has been "a lot of nonsense talked about the third reich." Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, the whole rotten lot were as evil and as dastardly as their infamy indicates. If you believe otherwise then put yourself in the shoes of one of the countless Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and free-thinkers whose last moments saw them marched into a gas-chamber.

[MANICHAEAN]

It was mentioned that Winston Churchill originally looked favourably upon Hitler. But in the end he summed it up in his inimitable style as follows:

"After the end of the First World War, there opened up in the life of the German people a tremendous void. And after a pause, there strode into this void, a maniac of ferocious genius; the repository and self-expression of the most virulent hatred, that has ever corroded the human breast - Corporal Hitler."

[cafolini]

Associating racism with mental illness in this way just doesn't work.

I am currently reading The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Rule (1872) by James S. Pike. It is one of the most racist pieces of literature I have ever read other than some Neo-Nazi stuff one of my cousins used to send me. But one must understand that the author, Pike, is just a man of his age. He was an abolitionist from Massachusetts from the 1840's. He worked on the Tribune under Horace Greeley. After the war, he went to South Carolina. (A carpetbagger and a journalist). He was disappointed at all the corruption of the Grant Administration and was one of the Northern Republicans who bolted in 1872. When you know this and realize that this book, while purporting to be history is really a political tract, anti-Grant and pro-Greeley, you get a different view of the book as "literature." His racism was the current "common sense" that Blacks generally just weren't ready for political responsibility.

Likewise, when you understand where Hitler was coming from and the circumstance under which Mein Kampf was written and that it was "required reading" for millions, then it is interesting. This in spite of the fact that the message and style are inherently boring. Hitler was mad, not because he was racist, but because he was obsessed with racism and with the loss of WWI and the injustices of the Treaty of Versaille. It is interesting because of the "accomplishments" of the author.

Germany had also been very ill in WWI. Weimar had deteriorated long before the early 1900's. Of course Hitler was no just racist. He was like a magnet to any mental illness that could be had for free.
How coul you compare Grant or Greeley and that easily disputed racism you call "common sense" with the galactic propositions, flatulences and petulances inside the Reich?
Every German was disatisfied with the Treaty of Versailles. But they looked for it and they ended up with it.

[Patito de Hule]

Germany had also been very ill in WWI. Weimar had deteriorated long before the early 1900's. Of course Hitler was no just racist. He was like a magnet to any mental illness that could be had for free.
How coul you compare Grant or Greeley and that easily disputed racism you call "common sense" with the galactic propositions, flatulences and petulances inside the Reich?
Every German was disatisfied with the Treaty of Versailles. But they looked for it and they ended up with it.

Sorry you're offended, but I'll stand by what I said, and by my comparison of the racism of James Pike to that of Hitler. James Pike was racist, but he wasn't mad. To repeat from my earlier post:

"Hitler was mad, not because he was racist, but because he was obsessed with racism and with the loss of WWI and the injustices of the Treaty of Versaille."

I should, however, clarify my sentence following that statement. "It Mein Kampf] is interesting because of the "accomplishments" of the author."

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118182]

Hitler eliminated any opposition from the social democrats and the communist party by arresting their chief members prior to the vote for the enabling act. He received the support of the Centre Party by promising to allow its continued existence and also by intimidating them by the presence of armed brown shirts at the negotiations. Hardly a democratic victory. No different than Julius Caesar wrapping the Roman senate around his finger by the threat of his legions. Civil liberties - gone. Democracy - gone. Not a tyrant? Really.

And I don't really think there has been "a lot of nonsense talked about the third reich." Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, the whole rotten lot were as evil and as dastardly as their infamy indicates. If you believe otherwise then put yourself in the shoes of one of the countless Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and free-thinkers whose last moments saw them marched into a gas-chamber.

You have misinterpreted what Prof. Kershaw has written, he didn't say that Hitler wasn't a tyrant but that he was not imposed on Germany. It's ridiculous to say that he could have done it without the support of the population at large regardless of those minorities that disagreed with his policies. In fact, after he'd eliminated the other parties, his popularity soared as his government started to put its programme into effect.
I suspect that you don't know very much about Germany from personal experience but I have spoken to people who were alive at the time and whose description of events is at variance with those who were not even born and who rely solely on what they choose to read about it.
As for democracy, Hitler introduced the plebiscite which meant that he went to the people for approval of policies that had a direct bearing on the running of the country.

The articles of the "Plebiscite Law" were brief and clear:

The Reich government may ask the people whether or not it approves of a measure planned by or taken by the government. This may also apply to a law.
A measure submitted to plebiscite will be considered as established when it receives a simple majority of the votes. This will apply as well to a law modifying the Constitution.
If the people approves the measure in question, it will be applied in conformity with article III of the Law for Overcoming the Distress of the People and the Reich.
The Reich Interior Ministry is authorized to take all legal and administrative measures necessary to carry out this law.

Berlin, July 14, 1933.

Hitler, Frick

The electoral pledge given by Hitler that day was not vain rhetoric. One national referendum followed another: in 1933, in 1934, in 1936, and in 1938, not to mention the Saar plebiscite of 1935, which was held under international supervision.

The ballot was secret, and the voter was not constrained. No one could have prevented a German from voting no if he wished. And, in fact, a certain number did vote no in every plebiscite. Millions of others could just as easily have done the same. However, the percentage of "No" votes remained remarkably low - usually under ten percent. In the Saar region, where the plebiscite of January 1935 was supervised from start to finish by the Allies, the result was the same as in the rest of the Reich: more than 90 percent voted "Yes" to unification with Hitler's Germany! Hitler had no fear of such secret ballot plebiscites because the German people invariably supported him.

Was a Hitler a tyrant? As it turned out, the answer is yes, but it's all to easy to say so now. Being wise after the event isn't exactly the pinnacle of intellectual attainment.

[JuniperWoolf]

I don't think anyone called Hitler stupid.


I did.

I agree. He reigned for what, just over ten years, decided he wanted to take over the world, got his *** kicked and killed himself. He fed his people, sure, by stealing. In less than a decade he managed to become one of the most hated people in human history while simultaneously staining his nation's reputation forever. Yeah, great job. Maybe he was good at rallying starving, desperate thugs (quite the challenge, I'm sure) but he was a crap leader.

[Patito de Hule]

A thread about Mein Kampf was bound to degenerate into a thread about Hitler. To use a cliche, Hitler yanks a lot of chains. While he was a great orator and able to say a lot of things that people wanted to hear, he was a poor writer and the book is a rant mostly written while he was incarcerated. It is incredibly boring and gives very little insight into the Third Reich. It does give some little insight into Hitler's state of mind after the putsch and before the rise of Naziism.

I made the comparison earlier to James S. Pike's The Prostrate State, which Cafolini found offensive but which I stand by regardless. I would also make a comparison to Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, the 1905 second book of his best-selling Trilogy of Desire. Dixon, as a child, idolized his uncle who was a Klan chief. The novel glorified the Klan and, along with D. W. Griffith's 1915 Hollywood spectacular The Birth of a Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Nation-Lillian-Gish/dp/6305130949/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1330177698&sr=1-1) (which you can watch on You Tube, as I did, or buy the DVD, as I also did). The book and the movie were co-responsible for the revival of the Klan in 1915 and throughout the 20's.

I'm not saying that Mein Kampf rivived Naziism. It perhaps helped resuscitate it as it struck a responsive chord with people who were anti-Semitic and overwhelmed with the conditions after the Great War. It was the worst war since the seventeenth century Thirty Years War which was still in the hearts and minds of the German People. I read Mein Kampf several years ago and I read The Klansman recently for the same reason--hoping to gain an insight into the mind of the author and the minds of the people who acted upon it. The former was a colorless jeremiad; the latter was an interesting romantic novel which I enjoyed, even though I was disgusted with the message of the author with regards to the Klan.

[cafolini]

A thread about Mein Kampf was bound to degenerate into a thread about Hitler. To use a cliche, Hitler yanks a lot of chains. While he was a great orator and able to say a lot of things that people wanted to hear, he was a poor writer and the book is a rant mostly written while he was incarcerated. It is incredibly boring and gives very little insight into the Third Reich. It does give some little insight into Hitler's state of mind after the putsch and before the rise of Naziism.

I made the comparison earlier to James S. Pike's The Prostrate State, which Cafolini found offensive but which I stand by regardless. I would also make a comparison to Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, the 1905 second book of his best-selling Trilogy of Desire. Dixon, as a child, idolized his uncle who was a Klan chief. The novel glorified the Klan and, along with D. W. Griffith's 1915 Hollywood spectacular The Birth of a Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Nation-Lillian-Gish/dp/6305130949/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1330177698&sr=1-1) (which you can watch on You Tube, as I did, or buy the DVD, as I also did). The book and the movie were co-responsible for the revival of the Klan in 1915 and throughout the 20's.

I'm not saying that Mein Kampf rivived Naziism. It perhaps helped resuscitate it as it struck a responsive chord with people who were anti-Semitic and overwhelmed with the conditions after the Great War. It was the worst war since the seventeenth century Thirty Years War which was still in the hearts and minds of the German People. I read Mein Kampf several years ago and I read The Klansman recently for the same reason--hoping to gain an insight into the mind of the author and the minds of the people who acted upon it. The former was a colorless jeremiad; the latter was an interesting romantic novel which I enjoyed, even though I was disgusted with the message of the author with regards to the Klan.

This appears to me as your most ridiculous message. Just at the very beginning there is enough for an impossible discussion. How can you say "a thread about Mein Kampf was bound to degenerate into a thread about Hitler?" Ridiculous. Hitler was one of the grand degenerates of history, and Mein Kampf was his product. How could Mein Kampf not be degenerate in the first place? Etc., etc., etc. Case closed for you. I feel like a judge from Nuremberg.

[JBI]

I agree. He reigned for what, just over ten years, decided he wanted to take over the world, got his *** kicked and killed himself. He fed his people, sure, by stealing. In less than a decade he managed to become one of the most hated people in human history while simultaneously staining his nation's reputation forever. Yeah, great job. Maybe he was good at rallying starving, desperate thugs (quite the challenge, I'm sure) but he was a crap leader.

Well, you do not give him enough credit. What would you make of Napoleon then? Also crap? What of Caesar, also crap?

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending the guy, but he wasn't as stupid and useless and you make him seem. He was, however, as others have discussed, an awful author.

[Patito de Hule]

This appears to me as your most ridiculous message. Just at the very beginning there is enough for an impossible discussion. How can you say "a thread about Mein Kampf was bound to degenerate into a thread about Hitler?" Ridiculous. Hitler was one of the grand degenerates of history, and Mein Kampf was his product. How could Mein Kampf not be degenerate in the first place? Etc., etc., etc. Case closed for you. I feel like a judge from Nuremberg.

This is a literature forum and a general literature subforum. The question was about reading Mein Kampf, presumably as literature. Your comments are ad hominem and add nothing whatever to any discussion on either Hitler or his book.

Have you read Mein Kampf? The OP asks whether anyone would be willing to discuss the book.

[Patito de Hule]

Wikipedia has this to say about Mein Kampf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Antisemitism)


The book is significant in our time because a retrospective review of the text reveals the crystallisation of Hitler's decision to completely exterminate the Jewish presence in Europe.

I agree. This is really an egg-head's way of stating why I read the book. Did I come away with a better understanding of Hitler's anti-Semitism? I'm not sure that I did. I may have lacked the proper predisposition or the intelligence to do so.

Further down, the Wikipedia quotes Mussolini on the subject and better reflects my thoughts on reading the book.


Italian Fascist dictator and Nazi ally, Benito Mussolini, was also critical of the book, saying that the book was "a boring tome that I have never been able to read" and remarked that Hitler's beliefs, as expressed in the book, were "little more than commonplace clichés."

Precisely my feelings after a long masochistic exercise in reading.

[stlukesguild]

Obviously no one is saying that *all* the German people were mad... just the ones that helped Hitler get into power (i.e., a majority, or a large minority...)

Isn't being anti-semitic a form of mental illness? Holding someone not to be human simply because of their race certainly sounds nuts to me!

What is often forgotten, in relation to the rise of the Third Reich, is just what life was like in Germany after WWI. It is easy to point at an enemy (or former enemy) nation and suggest that somehow they were different... mad... insane... and such a leader could never attain power here... and yet we have had our Dick Cheney (among others) who merely failed to convince quite as many. But when one considers the abject poverty rampant in Germany after WWI, the manner in which the German nation was humiliated by the French who occupied their industrial states and seized all the factories and machinery, the riots and violence on the streets and lack of ability of the government to control the situation... well then certainly anyone who was able to not only turn this situation around, but build Germany into an economic and military powerhouse would surely be recognized as something akin to a messiah by many.

[stlukesguild]

What saved Germany from the Reich's insanity, the allies or these persons, the Nuremberg trials or anything else?

Tell me really what the Nuremberg Trials achieved? Little more than some semblance of vengeance robbed as justice. We got rid of all those German generals who repeatedly humiliated us in battle in order to make sure we'd never have to face them again. We forcibly kidnapped as many scientists (especially experts in the fields of physics, jet engines, rockets, and nuclear physics) to employ within our own military and space programs. We wiped out the few high architects of the Holocaust that we could lay our hands on. At the same time, the major power-brokers behind the war such as Alfred Krupp were left untouched.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118241]

You have misinterpreted what Prof. Kershaw has written, he didn't say that Hitler wasn't a tyrant but that he was not imposed on Germany. It's ridiculous to say that he could have done it without the support of the population at large regardless of those minorities that disagreed with his policies. In fact, after he'd eliminated the other parties, his popularity soared as his government started to put its programme into effect.
I suspect that you don't know very much about Germany from personal experience but I have spoken to people who were alive at the time and whose description of events is at variance with those who were not even born and who rely solely on what they choose to read about it.
As for democracy, Hitler introduced the plebiscite which meant that he went to the people for approval of policies that had a direct bearing on the running of the country.

The articles of the "Plebiscite Law" were brief and clear:

The Reich government may ask the people whether or not it approves of a measure planned by or taken by the government. This may also apply to a law.
A measure submitted to plebiscite will be considered as established when it receives a simple majority of the votes. This will apply as well to a law modifying the Constitution.
If the people approves the measure in question, it will be applied in conformity with article III of the Law for Overcoming the Distress of the People and the Reich.
The Reich Interior Ministry is authorized to take all legal and administrative measures necessary to carry out this law.

Berlin, July 14, 1933.

Hitler, Frick

The electoral pledge given by Hitler that day was not vain rhetoric. One national referendum followed another: in 1933, in 1934, in 1936, and in 1938, not to mention the Saar plebiscite of 1935, which was held under international supervision.

The ballot was secret, and the voter was not constrained. No one could have prevented a German from voting no if he wished. And, in fact, a certain number did vote no in every plebiscite. Millions of others could just as easily have done the same. However, the percentage of "No" votes remained remarkably low - usually under ten percent. In the Saar region, where the plebiscite of January 1935 was supervised from start to finish by the Allies, the result was the same as in the rest of the Reich: more than 90 percent voted "Yes" to unification with Hitler's Germany! Hitler had no fear of such secret ballot plebiscites because the German people invariably supported him.

Was a Hitler a tyrant? As it turned out, the answer is yes, but it's all to easy to say so now. Being wise after the event isn't exactly the pinnacle of intellectual attainment.

So he consulted with the people but enacted his own policies regardless of whether they received majority support? That's like a rapist asking a woman for intercourse before forcing himself on her. You don't seem to have much of an idea of how totalitarian regimes operate. They silence oppposition by force and by threat of force. These Hitler did masterfully. If it wasn't a death sentence to write or publish or speak or act against the Nazi party I'm sure his "support" would have been far below what it was. There can be no form of democracy in a nation where opposition parties have been expelled and concentration camps built to hold until their grim deaths any who stand against the regime. You also seem to forget that Hitler had no scruples about lying. He lied and lied and lied throughout his speeches in a degree and manner so incerdible it puts other lying politicians to shame. He said whatever he needed to say to sway the people. He was like an even more morally abject version of Sarah Palin. Your revisionist history is at odds with Hitler's own actions and words. You seem to be arguing that Hitler's 90 percent support was the result of genuine popular love and approval more than it can be attributed to the success of his bold and relentless campaign of propoganda and intimidation.

[Patito de Hule]

This is a literature forum and a general literature subforum. The question was about reading Mein Kampf, presumably as literature. Your comments are ad hominem and add nothing whatever to any discussion on either Hitler or his book.

Have you read Mein Kampf? The OP asks whether anyone would be willing to discuss the book.

Well, I thought this was a moderated literature forum. Anyone interested in Mein Kampf here?

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118383]

So he consulted with the people but enacted his own policies regardless of whether they received majority support? That's like a rapist asking a woman for intercourse before forcing himself on her. You don't seem to have much of an idea of how totalitarian regimes operate. They silence opposition by force and by threat of force. These Hitler did masterfully. If it wasn't a death sentence to write or publish or speak or act against the Nazi party I'm sure his "support" would have been far below what it was. There can be no form of democracy in a nation where opposition parties have been expelled and concentration camps built to hold until their grim deaths any who stand against the regime. You also seem to forget that Hitler had no scruples about lying. He lied and lied and lied throughout his speeches in a degree and manner so incredible it puts other lying politicians to shame. He said whatever he needed to say to sway the people. He was like an even more morally abject version of Sarah Palin. Your revisionist history is at odds with Hitler's own actions and words. You seem to be arguing that Hitler's 90 percent support was the result of genuine popular love and approval more than it can be attributed to the success of his bold and relentless campaign of propoganda and intimidation.

One of the reasons I went to work in Germany was because I had read a good deal about Hitler in books such as Professor Alan Bullock's 'Hitler-A Study in Tyranny', William Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', and 'Berlin Diary', etc. etc. and I wanted to find out for myself how they corresponded to the view of people who had actually lived through the period.
The people I spoke to said that they didn't feel intimidated and that they would not have voted for Hitler if they had thought that they would be. They were ordinary people who worked with me and in a bar and a restaurant that I used regularly close to where was living in Nuremberg and also others whom I met in Munich, which I visited often. My employer and my landlady both said that life in Germany prior to Hitler was unbearable under the democratic parties that had governed Germany for 14 years before Hitler came to power. The men I spoke to had mostly served in the war and still said that life under Hitler was better than before. This is the difference between the selective reading of books and the real thing. It is obvious that Hitler had massive support in Germany and the numerous newsreels that illustrate it do not show people who are being intimidated into supporting the regime. I do not think that Hitler lied more than politicians do generally. I speak German and those speeches that I have heard, despite all the theatrical hand waving, are not as violent or deceitful as non German speakers might be led to imagine. Your ludicrous comparison of Hitler with Sarah Palin is simply another example of misunderstanding the political and social reality of the period.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, I thought this was a moderated literature forum. Anyone interested in Mein Kampf here?

It seems the opinion by many members here has been made apparent: it sucks. You can't force people to discuss what you want them to, especially if the majority finds the subject, in this case Mein Kumpf, a boring subject.

[JBI]

What saved Germany from the Reich's insanity, the allies or these persons, the Nuremberg trials or anything else?

Tell me really what the Nuremberg Trials achieved? Little more than some semblance of vengeance robbed as justice. We got rid of all those German generals who repeatedly humiliated us in battle in order to make sure we'd never have to face them again. We forcibly kidnapped as many scientists (especially experts in the fields of physics, jet engines, rockets, and nuclear physics) to employ within our own military and space programs. We wiped out the few high architects of the Holocaust that we could lay our hands on. At the same time, the major power-brokers behind the war such as Alfred Krupp were left untouched.

Meh, just look at the rhetoric too. We are still thinking of Jews within Nazi understandings. The major difficulty of such a discourse of nazism is the creation of the Jew. As historians would note, Jew and race are two different things; you could, for instance, be a German Jew who was proudly a German, and loathed by your French neighbor for such a reason. Likewise you could be a Moroccan and still consider yourself a Jew without issues of identity.

What world war 2 really hammered home was this idea of the Jew somehow as something completely outside local society. Sure, it started before then, and its echoes are still heard in various discourses, but any historian would be sure to note Jews fought on both sides of World War 1, proudly and in fair numbers. The idea of a Jewish race seems cemented by the idea of a desire to destroy such a "race". The same concept eventually lead to a Jewish exodus from many traditional centres of the world - the idea of a separate, particular race is very much a product of the hate that people felt slightly before, and especially during and after Hitler.

Take our world for instance, how much of our critical understanding of the world is rooted within that same understanding of "race." We don't, for instance hear the same talks about Arab Jews as we do Arab Christians and the general category of "Arab" itself within a discourse - how do we rationalize that within our own terms of legacy.

If anything, the Racial crap that Hitler built his career of hatred upon has the same stickiness in our world, and created the reality of the terms it imagined. We talk of Jewish race, of United Jewish whatever, but we fail to realize how that is playing in the same rhetoric as Hitler, except as a form of appropriation.

If you want to talk Jewish race, I am forced to remind posters to at least question the idea of Race itself. Granted certain cultures make a bigger deal than others about it (making one select one of a few options on a census, for instance) yet in terms of Jews - you have Ethiopian Jews, Chinese Jews, Uzbek Jews (who are a subbranch of Buchari Jews), you have Moroccan Jews, Egyptian Jews, Turkish Jews, German Jews, Russian Jews, etc. etc. etc. If one thinks they look the same, practice the same customs, speak the same languages, or enjoy the same things then they are surely mistaken.

Yet somehow, there is a weird sort of affinity in perception because of the perpetual otherness created by the rhetoric of anti-semitism, and of Racialism.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118425]

One of the reasons I went to work in Germany was because I had read a good deal about Hitler in books such as Professor Alan Bullock's 'Hitler-A Study in Tyranny', William Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', and 'Berlin Diary', etc. etc. and I wanted to find out for myself how they corresponded to the view of people who had actually lived through the period.
The people I spoke to said that they didn't feel intimidated and that they would not have voted for Hitler if they had thought that they would be. They were ordinary people who worked with me and in a bar and a restaurant that I used regularly close to where was living in Nuremberg and also others whom I met in Munich, which I visited often. My employer and my landlady both said that life in Germany prior to Hitler was unbearable under the democratic parties that had governed Germany for 14 years before Hitler came to power. The men I spoke to had mostly served in the war and still said that life under Hitler was better than before. This is the difference between the selective reading of books and the real thing. It is obvious that Hitler had massive support in Germany and the numerous newsreels that illustrate it do not show people who are being intimidated into supporting the regime. I do not think that Hitler lied more than politicians do generally. I speak German and those speeches that I have heard, despite all the theatrical hand waving, are not as violent or deceitful as non German speakers might be led to imagine. Your ludicrous comparison of Hitler with Sarah Palin is simply another example of misunderstanding the political and social reality of the period.

It is a ludicrous comparison because I doubt Palin would set out to eliminate entire races of people. Life under Hitler was good? Was it good for the German people when their towns were being shelled and bombed to smithereens as a result of Hitler's insanely ridiculous aggressive waging of war? Was it good for the millions confined to concentration camps, for the millions put to the gas? Do I really have to go dig up his speeches talking about Jewish conspiracies to wipe out the "Aryan" race? Maybe you simply get off on going against political correctness and have decided to take on the greatest challenge possible, that of whitewashing National Socialism. You say he was a smart man, that he was good for Germany, that the people loved him. Even if that is in some small way possibly true his military aggression and racial genocide mark him down as one of the most degraded and repulsive human specimens to ever befoul all of history. Anyone who can look at the man's words and deeds and not come to the conclusion that he suffered from a plethora of psychological disturbances, from narcissistic personality disorder to bipolar disorder to sociopathy, is regarding the man with coloured lenses, plain and simple.

Your anecdotes of people saying they did not feel intimidated do not remove from the towering stacks of evidence the plain fact that Hitler had a massive armed police force, concentration camps across Europe, total control over the presses, a downright Spartan like totalitarian system of psychological training beginning in childhood, in addition to a host of other means of manipulation at his disposal.

I'm half German. I have relatives there and here who lived under Naziism. I haven't talked to them at length about it, but from their own mouths they were not big fans of Adolf Hitler.

[JuniperWoolf]

Well, you do not give him enough credit. What would you make of Napoleon then? Also crap? What of Caesar, also crap?

They accomplished much, much more while simultaneously improving their nation and it's reputation. The Naopleonic Code changed the entire world for the better. I'm not sure if you're talking about Julius or Augustus Caesar but both made significant contributions in several fields, philosophy being an obvious one. Also, they lasted much longer and after they died there were still people who loved them as opposed to 99.99bar% of all people worldwide hating them with all of their hearts. There are certain things which make a great leader, and Hitler failed on all fronts except expansion, and even that was just a serious strategic blunder, as he later learned. I think the problem is that he was so impressively, invasively bad that people confuse it with greatness.


Well, I thought this was a moderated literature forum. Anyone interested in Mein Kampf here?

No.

[mal4mac]

This is a literature forum and a general literature subforum. The question was about reading Mein Kampf, presumably as literature.

It's not literature, it's garbage.

Anyone want to read their garbage?

Actually, there's probably more enlightenment there... is there really so much fat in Soya Milk?!

[kiki1982]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118498]

It is a ludicrous comparison because I doubt Palin would set out to eliminate entire races of people. Life under Hitler was good? Was it good for the German people when their towns were being shelled and bombed to smithereens as a result of Hitler's insanely ridiculous aggressive waging of war? Was it good for the millions confined to concentration camps, for the millions put to the gas? Do I really have to go dig up his speeches talking about Jewish conspiracies to wipe out the "Aryan" race? Maybe you simply get off on going against political correctness and have decided to take on the greatest challenge possible, that of whitewashing National Socialism. You say he was a smart man, that he was good for Germany, that the people loved him. Even if that is in some small way possibly true his military aggression and racial genocide mark him down as one of the most degraded and repulsive human specimens to ever befoul all of history. Anyone who can look at the man's words and deeds and not come to the conclusion that he suffered from a plethora of psychological disturbances, from narcissistic personality disorder to bipolar disorder to sociopathy, is regarding the man with coloured lenses, plain and simple.

Your anecdotes of people saying they did not feel intimidated do not remove from the towering stacks of evidence the plain fact that Hitler had a massive armed police force, concentration camps across Europe, total control over the presses, a downright Spartan like totalitarian system of psychological training beginning in childhood, in addition to a host of other means of manipulation at his disposal.

I'm half German. I have relatives there and here who lived under Naziism. I haven't talked to them at length about it, but from their own mouths they were not big fans of Adolf Hitler.

I felt the need to put a different perspective on the matter.

I do not condone National Socialism and do not approve of it, but it is necessary to see it from another viewpoint. And I need to agree with Emil Miller on this point. Astounding as it may seem, it is true.

It is not because you particular relatives did not like Hitler that the greatest part of German civilians could not be completely taken in by him and the great big shows he put on. In fact I would contend the opposite, that there were very few who were smart enough to see through it (like there are very few who see through the war on terror these days) and that there were even fewer who tried to do anything against it.

I suppose it was the naïvety of the vast majority of people (as that is still the case today) and the overall economic situation which caused the whole thing.
The Treaty of Versailles, now widely considered amongst historians to be one of the causes of WWII and National Socialism, made sure that Germany was unable to benefit from the gay twenties and thus sank into deeper recession than even America. There were places in Germany where unemployment got to 30%! To put this in perspective, we are now getting edgy when things come to 15%... There was no wellfare system unlike now and people would just die of hunger because there were no jobs available. Think Greece right now times two probably. After WWI buying a loaf of bread in Berlin could cost you a piano. And the allied, instead of helping the poor people who had not asked for this war, left them to die in the streets of Berlin. Mainly down to the French (Pétin if I am not mistaken) who held a rather conservative view of warfare...
So Germany spent the booming twenties paying compensation to other countries and not investing in its own economy so that the already vast levels of unemployment before the recession did not go down, an effect of WWI which solved itself in places like the UK through government investment partly, but which could of course not be solved in Germany because the German government had to spend all its money on compensation to countries like the UK while the latter was living it up on champagne so to say. You can see why the first thing Hitler did when he got to power was to stop those payments and behold, the Wirtschaftswunder. Not a miracle in itself, rather a New Deal à la Roosevelt, but one that certainly caught on.
And then there were vast amounts of Jewish shop owners, bankers etc. They were rich, they were still rich in the thirties, and they kept themselves to themselves so they were an ideal target.

By the time Hitler got to power in 1933, people were sick of no pleasure and so he gave it to them, with good effect... The old Roman tactics of bread and games distracted most naive people from the real stuff that was going on.

Videos in the museum of the Nürnberg rally grounds show two women, friends, now in their 80s, but back then teenagers telling of a story they heard about a Jewish man who was lifted from his bed and at least severely beaten (if not shipped off or battered to death). They said, at the time, they wondered whether, I quote, 'the Führer did not know about this. Surely he cannot have approved this.' They said they were now ashamed of their own naïvety, but at the time, they were indoctrinated by the system, their school the Hitler Mädel (Hitler youth, but for girls) and did not think about Hitler in a bad way (Führer cult). They also said they knew nothing about democracy when they got out of school at 18 and they said about the deportation of the Jews, I quote again, that 'they thought they were going to a place all together, and that surely can't [have] be[en] a bad thing.' After the war and indeed during it, when they learned about things like Auschwitz they found it hard to believe they said and felt quite disheartened by having been so naïve. Hardly surprising though, as even the Americans refused to believe that Jews were being killed in a industrial manner from the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto at the time of the uprising there. They only really believed it when they saw piles of real, human and dead bodies in the camps they liberated. What chance did normal citizens have in believing that something like this was at all possible? Sure, we would believe it now and if in Hungary the same were close to happening, everyone would put a stop to it, but we know it is possible, abck then in the 1940s it was unprecedented and so intensely evil that it is almost inconceivable.

A man, displaying army positions they had to practice for a parade, ironically with an umbrella said that it was hard not to be pulled along by the enthusiasm of other boys. He said that they were permanently prepared for war and the idea of dying for the honour of Germany.

I think it would have been very hard to disagree with that regime if you had been living in a place where everyone was hungry before, without a job. As Emil Miller said, times were sh*t before uncle Adolph...
Forced Arianisation of shops will have added a lot of money to the system as well. Think about it. A shop like that one that burned down in London, bed shop. How much money is it worth? Let's say 500,000 pounds. If that had been a Jewish family's, they would have had to sell it to an Arian for maybe a quarter (at best, in the beginning), so for 125,000. If they refused after a while it was confiscated and literally given to an Arian. That is just pure profit. No loans from the bank, instant business and the money flows straight into the system because the owner can employ people with it or buy things with it which benefits other people in turn.

The people in Coventry were an unfortunate first case of carpet bombing, but why, pray, were the people and not least the wonderful city of Dresden to be subjected to a perfected version of it? Yes, a lot of people died in Coventry, but was it necessary to make even more people die in Dresden? Those people who died over there did not ask for this war to happen and asked even less to die in a pretty unstrategic bombing just for revenge.

I would not say that life was a breeze under Nazism, but it wasn't all that hard if you leave bombings to one side. Bombings were not on little villages and were not duting the 30s, but Nazism penetrated the whole thing, also little villages. I lived in a small village called Wiltingen in Rheinland-Pfalz which has now a population of 2,000. Back then less, no doubt and it contained a Jewish population of one family. They had a shop (as Jews do) with collonial goods. A few of them evidently escaped to South-Africa, but the eldest generation stayed and had to sell the shop and eventually died in Auschwitz. In my small market town (essentially that is what it is) now, the population steadily decreased. I am quite confident that the people were not malicious, only people do not care about the system, because people are only interested in their own lives (only look at the Daily Mail headlines about Polish people sometimes). If their lives are good or adequate (and that was evidently the case, at least in the beginning), then sod the rest.

The Third Reich was much more intricate and clever than you presume. By the time anyone knew what was going on, Hitler had secured power through emergency status after the Reichstag burned down and he blamed the commis for it.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118565]

I felt the need to put a different perspective on the matter.

I do not condone National Socialism and do not approve of it, but it is necessary to see it from another viewpoint. And I need to agree with Emil Miller on this point. Astounding as it may seem, it is true.

It is not because you particular relatives did not like Hitler that the greatest part of German civilians could not be completely taken in by him and the great big shows he put on. In fact I would contend the opposite, that there were very few who were smart enough to see through it (like there are very few who see through the war on terror these days) and that there were even fewer who tried to do anything against it.

I suppose it was the naïvety of the vast majority of people (as that is still the case today) and the overall economic situation which caused the whole thing.
The Treaty of Versailles, now widely considered amongst historians to be one of the causes of WWII and National Socialism, made sure that Germany was unable to benefit from the gay twenties and thus sank into deeper recession than even America. There were places in Germany where unemployment got to 30%! To put this in perspective, we are now getting edgy when things come to 15%... There was no wellfare system unlike now and people would just die of hunger because there were no jobs available. Think Greece right now times two probably. After WWI buying a loaf of bread in Berlin could cost you a piano. And the allied, instead of helping the poor people who had not asked for this war, left them to die in the streets of Berlin. Mainly down to the French (Pétin if I am not mistaken) who held a rather conservative view of warfare...
So Germany spent the booming twenties paying compensation to other countries and not investing in its own economy so that the already vast levels of unemployment before the recession did not go down, an effect of WWI which solved itself in places like the UK through government investment partly, but which could of course not be solved in Germany because the German government had to spend all its money on compensation to countries like the UK while the latter was living it up on champagne so to say. You can see why the first thing Hitler did when he got to power was to stop those payments and behold, the Wirtschaftswunder. Not a miracle in itself, rather a New Deal à la Roosevelt, but one that certainly caught on.
And then there were vast amounts of Jewish shop owners, bankers etc. They were rich, they were still rich in the thirties, and they kept themselves to themselves so they were an ideal target.

By the time Hitler got to power in 1933, people were sick of no pleasure and so he gave it to them, with good effect... The old Roman tactics of bread and games distracted most naive people from the real stuff that was going on.

Videos in the museum of the Nürnberg rally grounds show two women, friends, now in their 80s, but back then teenagers telling of a story they heard about a Jewish man who was lifted from his bed and at least severely beaten (if not shipped off or battered to death). They said, at the time, they wondered whether, I quote, 'the Führer did not know about this. Surely he cannot have approved this.' They said they were now ashamed of their own naïvety, but at the time, they were indoctrinated by the system, their school the Hitler Mädel (Hitler youth, but for girls) and did not think about Hitler in a bad way (Führer cult). They also said they knew nothing about democracy when they got out of school at 18 and they said about the deportation of the Jews, I quote again, that 'they thought they were going to a place all together, and that surely can't [have] be[en] a bad thing.' After the war and indeed during it, when they learned about things like Auschwitz they found it hard to believe they said and felt quite disheartened by having been so naïve. Hardly surprising though, as even the Americans refused to believe that Jews were being killed in a industrial manner from the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto at the time of the uprising there. They only really believed it when they saw piles of real, human and dead bodies in the camps they liberated. What chance did normal citizens have in believing that something like this was at all possible? Sure, we would believe it now and if in Hungary the same were close to happening, everyone would put a stop to it, but we know it is possible, abck then in the 1940s it was unprecedented and so intensely evil that it is almost inconceivable.

A man, displaying army positions they had to practice for a parade, ironically with an umbrella said that it was hard not to be pulled along by the enthusiasm of other boys. He said that they were permanently prepared for war and the idea of dying for the honour of Germany.

I think it would have been very hard to disagree with that regime if you had been living in a place where everyone was hungry before, without a job. As Emil Miller said, times were sh*t before uncle Adolph...
Forced Arianisation of shops will have added a lot of money to the system as well. Think about it. A shop like that one that burned down in London, bed shop. How much money is it worth? Let's say 500,000 pounds. If that had been a Jewish family's, they would have had to sell it to an Arian for maybe a quarter (at best, in the beginning), so for 125,000. If they refused after a while it was confiscated and literally given to an Arian. That is just pure profit. No loans from the bank, instant business and the money flows straight into the system because the owner can employ people with it or buy things with it which benefits other people in turn.

The people in Coventry were an unfortunate first case of carpet bombing, but why, pray, were the people and not least the wonderful city of Dresden to be subjected to a perfected version of it? Yes, a lot of people died in Coventry, but was it necessary to make even more people die in Dresden? Those people who died over there did not ask for this war to happen and asked even less to die in a pretty unstrategic bombing just for revenge.

I would not say that life was a breeze under Nazism, but it wasn't all that hard if you leave bombings to one side. Bombings were not on little villages and were not duting the 30s, but Nazism penetrated the whole thing, also little villages. I lived in a small village called Wiltingen in Rheinland-Pfalz which has now a population of 2,000. Back then less, no doubt and it contained a Jewish population of one family. They had a shop (as Jews do) with collonial goods. A few of them evidently escaped to South-Africa, but the eldest generation stayed and had to sell the shop and eventually died in Auschwitz. In my small market town (essentially that is what it is) now, the population steadily decreased. I am quite confident that the people were not malicious, only people do not care about the system, because people are only interested in their own lives (only look at the Daily Mail headlines about Polish people sometimes). If their lives are good or adequate (and that was evidently the case, at least in the beginning), then sod the rest.

The Third Reich was much more intricate and clever than you presume. By the time anyone knew what was going on, Hitler had secured power through emergency status after the Reichstag burned down and he blamed the commis for it.

In making a final assessment of Hitler as a man and leader its all well and good to take these things you say into consideration. He brought Germany back from the economic and spiritual brink. But up to 9 million Germans died in the war he played a very, very large part in bringing about. 6 million Jews were murdered on his watch and under his orders. By the time he ignominiously took his own life Soviet tanks were entering Berlin. Half his country wound up being occupied for the next 40 odd years. He only achieved his short success because he had absolutely no scruples about doing anything it took to accomplish his sickly grandiose and inhumane ends. The people loved him because he lied to them and he manipulated them in ways wholly unconcerned with truth or honour or goodness, by any definition of those words.There was no international Jewish conspiracy to eliminate the "Aryan" race. Hitler was the aggressor. He wanted war from the very beginning. He had plans of genocide stinking in his venomous heart from the beginning. He was a maniac, a subhuman sociopath. Germany needed a strong man, not a strong man with maniacally homicidal and suicidal intentions.

Two main points to disprove the notion that he was a genius. One, he let the British Expeditionary Force escape from the beaches of Dunkirk, ordering his commanders on the ground to halt. He leaves a free Britain in his rear and then sets off to take out Russia, believing in his grandiosity that he can outdo Napoleon. Two, his interpretation of Nietzsche is a boy's interpretation, one lacking any understanding of the nuances of the philosopher's thought. Nietzsche was one of the greatest thinkers Germany has ever produced and Adolf Hitler was the clear apotheosis of all that Nietzsche despised in Germany.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118498]

It is a ludicrous comparison because I doubt Palin would set out to eliminate entire races of people. Life under Hitler was good? Was it good for the German people when their towns were being shelled and bombed to smithereens as a result of Hitler's insanely ridiculous aggressive waging of war? Was it good for the millions confined to concentration camps, for the millions put to the gas? Do I really have to go dig up his speeches talking about Jewish conspiracies to wipe out the "Aryan" race? Maybe you simply get off on going against political correctness and have decided to take on the greatest challenge possible, that of whitewashing National Socialism. You say he was a smart man, that he was good for Germany, that the people loved him. Even if that is in some small way possibly true his military aggression and racial genocide mark him down as one of the most degraded and repulsive human specimens to ever befoul all of history. Anyone who can look at the man's words and deeds and not come to the conclusion that he suffered from a plethora of psychological disturbances, from narcissistic personality disorder to bipolar disorder to sociopathy, is regarding the man with coloured lenses, plain and simple.

Your anecdotes of people saying they did not feel intimidated do not remove from the towering stacks of evidence the plain fact that Hitler had a massive armed police force, concentration camps across Europe, total control over the presses, a downright Spartan like totalitarian system of psychological training beginning in childhood, in addition to a host of other means of manipulation at his disposal.

I'm half German. I have relatives there and here who lived under Naziism. I haven't talked to them at length about it, but from their own mouths they were not big fans of Adolf Hitler.

Once again you are misrepresenting the situation and just because I don't take your black and white view of the events under discussion doesn't in any way represent whitewashing National Socialism. If quoting acknowledged experts on the subject and testimony from those who were alive at the time constitutes whitewashing in your view, it shows an ignorance unworthy of reply.
However, to put the record straight here's an extract from Professor Ian Kershaw writing for the German Magazine Spiegel International.

Much suggests, in fact, that between the death of Hindenburg in August 1934 and the expansion into Austria and the Sudetenland four years later Hitler was indeed successful in gaining the backing of the vast majority of the German people, something of immeasurable importance for the disastrous course of German policy ahead. Apart perhaps from the immediate aftermath of the astonishing victory in France in summer 1940, Hitler's popularity was never higher than at the height of his foreign-policy successes in 1938

So yes, Hitler did have the backing of the vast majority of the German people.

That Hitler had rid Germany of mass unemployment and rescued the country from the depths of the depression was seen by many Germans long after the war as a major achievement, whatever disasters had later followed. Good living conditions and full employment were among the positive attributes of Hitler recorded in opinion surveys in the American occupied zone in the late 1940s, while a sample of young Germans in north Germany around a decade later thought Hitler had done much good in abolishing unemployment. As late as the 1970s, Ruhr workers still had positive memories of the peacetime years of the Third Reich, which they associated with full employment and the pleasures of excursions with the Nazi leisure organization, "Kraft durch Freude," or Strength Through Joy.

This bears out my own enquiries into what many Germans felt about life under Hitler before WW11.


By this time, August 1939, all sections of the regime, and the masses who had been so jubilant at Hitler's every "success," had ensured that their fate was tied to the decisions of the Führer. So it would remain down to 1945. In the wartime years, as seemingly glorious victory gave way to mounting, inexorable calamity, as defeat on defeat inevitably eroded the charismatic basis of his leadership, and as it became plain that he was leading Germany into the abyss, the fateful bonds with Hitler that had been sealed in the "good years" of the 1930s ensured that there was now no way back. The German people, having supported Hitler's triumphs, were now condemned to suffer the catastrophe into which he had led them.

So you see, Professor Kershaw doesn't in any way exonerate Hitler from the terrible consequence of the Nazi regime. In fact he goes into considerable detail regarding the repression of those who disagreed with the regime as do others that I have quoted. It's just that they maintain an objective stance in presenting their findings rather than resort to hysterical ranting. If as you say, you have German relatives who grew up under National Socialism, they must be pretty ancient because the Third Reich lasted from 1933 until 1945. So anyone born in 1933 would have been 12 years old by the time the regime ended. I doubt that they would have much to say, particularly at this late stage, but in the event of them having survived to a very old age, they wouldn't have any personal experience of how terrible life was in Germany before Hitler came to power.
My own enquiries were carried out over thirty years ago and those I spoke to are almost certainly dead.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118565]

Once again you are misrepresenting the situation and just because I don't take your black and white view of the events under discussion doesn't in any way represent whitewashing National Socialism. If quoting acknowledged experts on the subject and testimony from those who were alive at the time constitutes whitewashing in your view, it shows an ignorance unworthy of reply.
However, to put the record straight here's an extract from Professor Ian Kershaw writing for the German Magazine Spiegel International.

Much suggests, in fact, that between the death of Hindenburg in August 1934 and the expansion into Austria and the Sudetenland four years later Hitler was indeed successful in gaining the backing of the vast majority of the German people, something of immeasurable importance for the disastrous course of German policy ahead. Apart perhaps from the immediate aftermath of the astonishing victory in France in summer 1940, Hitler's popularity was never higher than at the height of his foreign-policy successes in 1938

So yes, Hitler did have the backing of the vast majority of the German people.

That Hitler had rid Germany of mass unemployment and rescued the country from the depths of the depression was seen by many Germans long after the war as a major achievement, whatever disasters had later followed. Good living conditions and full employment were among the positive attributes of Hitler recorded in opinion surveys in the American occupied zone in the late 1940s, while a sample of young Germans in north Germany around a decade later thought Hitler had done much good in abolishing unemployment. As late as the 1970s, Ruhr workers still had positive memories of the peacetime years of the Third Reich, which they associated with full employment and the pleasures of excursions with the Nazi leisure organization, "Kraft durch Freude," or Strength Through Joy.

This bears out my own enquiries into what many Germans felt about life under Hitler before WW11.


By this time, August 1939, all sections of the regime, and the masses who had been so jubilant at Hitler's every "success," had ensured that their fate was tied to the decisions of the Führer. So it would remain down to 1945. In the wartime years, as seemingly glorious victory gave way to mounting, inexorable calamity, as defeat on defeat inevitably eroded the charismatic basis of his leadership, and as it became plain that he was leading Germany into the abyss, the fateful bonds with Hitler that had been sealed in the "good years" of the 1930s ensured that there was now no way back. The German people, having supported Hitler's triumphs, were now condemned to suffer the catastrophe into which he had led them.

So you see, Professor Kershaw doesn't in any way exonerate Hitler from the terrible consequence of the Nazi regime. In fact he goes into considerable detail regarding the repression of those who disagreed with the regime as do others that I have quoted. It's just that they maintain an objective stance in presenting their findings rather than resort to hysterical ranting. If as you say, you have German relatives who grew up under National Socialism, they must be pretty ancient because the Third Reich lasted from 1933 until 1945. So anyone born in 1933 would have been 12 years old by the time the regime ended. I doubt that they would have much to say, particularly at this late stage, but in the event of them having survived to a very old age, they wouldn't have any personal experience of how terrible life was in Germany before Hitler came to power.
My own enquiries were carried out over thirty years ago and those I spoke to are almost certainly dead.

I'm not hysterically ranting. The man carried out the wholesale liquidation of 6 million innocent souls. He sent nearly 9 million of his own country men to their graves. The people supported him because he lied to them and manipulated them. He took propaganda to never before seen extremes. Some of his speeches are downright psychotic. If any man ever warranted categorical condemnation that man is he.

[Darcy88]

If according to you my posts constitute "hysterical ranting," how I ask you would you characterize all this? -


"If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!"


And here is one thing that perhaps distinguishes us from you [Austrians] as far as our programme is concerned, although it is very much in the spirit of things: our attitude to the Jewish problem.

For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don't think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.


"So, we are now going to have a total solution to the Jewish question. The programme is clear. It reads: total separation, total segregation! What does this mean? It does not only mean the total exclusion of the Jews from the German economic system... It means much more! No German can be expected to live under the same roof as Jews. The Jews must be chased out of our houses and our residential districts and made to live in rows or blocks of houses where they can keep to themselves and come into contact with Germans as little as possible. They must be clearly identified.... And when we compel the rich Jews to provide for the `poor' of their race, which will certainly be necessary, they will all sink together into a pit of criminality. As this happens, we will be faced with the harsh necessity of eradicating the Jewish underworld, just as we root out criminals from our own orderly state: with fire and sword. The result will be the certain and absolute end of Jewry in Germany; its complete annihilation!

- Adolf Hitler

[kiki1982]

Yes, and? The Third Reich should be understood, not condemned.

They have been condemning it for 60 years now, and still they don't see the same happening and unfolding in other places. Begs the question why it is remembered. That is why it is more interesting to look at it in a neutral light than to condemn it. Think of Russia now, think of Zimbabwe and of Venezuela with its mad dictator.Fortunately those 'presidents' are not planning on invading the rest and that's probably why we are not doing anything, but the people will have to pay for it in generations to come. That is where condeming brings you.

It is not condoning it, it is looking at it in the way people used to look at it. One does not cure or ease schizophrenia by condeming it, but by looking at it. Not by assessing how many people are killed. We don't condemn hunger do we or flu?

They say though that Mein Kampf is not interesting and rather boring. I wouldn't know, maybe I should try to read some excerpts, but I gather it is still forbidden where I live, so not for me then...

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118728]

I'm not hysterically ranting. The man carried out the wholesale liquidation of 6 million innocent souls. He sent nearly 9 million of his own country men to their graves. The people supported him because he lied to them and manipulated them. He took propaganda to never before seen extremes. Some of his speeches are downright psychotic. If any man ever warranted categorical condemnation that man is he.

You are simply reiterating what historians of the period have already written, except that they tell the whole story and don't balk at telling the truth when certain unpalatable facts have to be included.

[Darcy88]

Yes, and? The Third Reich should be understood, not condemned.

They have been condemning it for 60 years now, and still they don't see the same happening and unfolding in other places. Begs the question why it is remembered. That is why it is more interesting to look at it in a neutral light than to condemn it. Think of Russia now, think of Zimbabwe and of Venezuela with its mad dictator.Fortunately those 'presidents' are not planning on invading the rest and that's probably why we are not doing anything, but the people will have to pay for it in generations to come. That is where condeming brings you.

It is not condoning it, it is looking at it in the way people used to look at it. One does not cure or ease schizophrenia by condeming it, but by looking at it. Not by assessing how many people are killed. We don't condemn hunger do we or flu?

They say though that Mein Kampf is not interesting and rather boring. I wouldn't know, maybe I should try to read some excerpts, but I gather it is still forbidden where I live, so not for me then...

Go back to 1945 and tell one of the millions of bereaved mothers of fallen wehrmacht soldiers that they must remain neutral, they must not condemn. Go back and walk alongside one of the millions of Jews being led into gas chambers and convince them they must remain neutral, they must not condemn.

Comparing Hugo Chavez to Adolf Hitler is a thought so absurdly wrong it hurts my brain.

[PeterL]

delete

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118730]

You are simply reiterating what historians of the period have already written, except that they tell the whole story and don't balk at telling the truth when certain unpalatable facts have to be included.

I've admitted that Hitler accomplished some good things for Germany. But he also carried out a campaign of genocide on a staggering scale. He also brought his country to calamitous crushing defeat. Some of his speeches are truly psychotic. In the final calculation these consideration outweigh the positives and outright condemnation is the only reasonable conclusion.

Even the Dalai Lama said somewhere that if he had access to a time-machine he'd go back and shoot Hitler dead. Enough said.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE]Not even the worst of the worst is completely without redeeming characteristics. Hitler was loved by Eva, and some of his associates liked him well enough. But one should balance that against him going to war against most of Europe. That war resulted in maybe 20 million dead and the devastation of Europe. I won't claim that he was the biggest mass murderer of history; Mao and Stalin beat him. While he was inpower the world had pain, and the source of the pain was Hilter.

Not only Eva Braun but also Unity Mitford the English Lord Redesdale's daughter, who committed suicide because Hitler spurned her. His niece Geli Raubel also comitted suicide, when she was living with Hitler, after an argument with him.

[Darcy88]

The absolute revulsion with which Hitler is almost universally regarded to this day is a damn good and necessary thing because it adds a buffer against a recurrence of the horror and destruction that he willfully wrought.

Emil, the fact that we've gone this far and you've yet to admit that Hitler was evil or sick or degenerate but instead keep harping on about relatively minor silver linings is not a good sign. I'm going on the assumption that you disapprove of the man overall but its just an assumption, you're offered nothing in the way of confirmation or reassurance.

[kiki1982]

Go back to 1945 and tell one of the millions of bereaved mothers of fallen wehrmacht soldiers that they must remain neutral, they must not condemn. Go back and walk alongside one of the millions of Jews being led into gas chambers and convince them they must remain neutral, they must not condemn.

Comparing Hugo Chavez to Adolf Hitler is a thought so absurdly wrong it hurts my brain.

Tell that to one of the 10,000s of bereaved mothers who march weekly (?) in Chile (?) or one of those mothers still living who lost her son in the South-Americas.

Or one of those people involved in the Russian forced labour camps AFTER WWII. They will be glad you learned something from your condemnation tout court.

That hurts my brain.

People are too afraid to understand something, lest they should be called Nazist or at least negationist. It is that that should be condemned.

[Darcy88]

Tell that to one of the 10,000s of bereaved mothers who march weekly (?) in Chile (?) or one of those mothers still living who lost her son in the South-Americas.

Or one of those people involved in the Russian forced labour camps AFTER WWII. They will be glad you learned something from your condemnation tout court.

That hurts my brain.

People are too afraid to understand something, lest they should be called Nazist or at least negationist. It is that that should be condemned.

I condemn Stalin too. And no cataclysm even remotely comparable to the holocaust has befallen South America since the conquistadors. The Columbian civil war was a war, not a mass extermination of million after million. Chavez is not a mass murderer by any stretch of the imagination, nor could the grossly reprobate Pinochet be credibly likened to Adolf Hitler.

If you can't condemn the men directly responsible for the holocaust you can't condemn anyone for anything. A racist dictator could come to power in the United States and carry out the mass extermination of millions of African Americans and according to your stance condemnation would be misguided. Ludicrous.

[MystyrMystyry]

Hitler was Austrian and initially saw Germany as a means to an end. To him Germans were inferior and would easily swallow his nonsense, but he also needed the Prussian military. It's sort of paralleled with Stalin (Georgian not Russian), and Napoleon (Corsican). The public actually liked them when the going was good, but by the time the going got bad it was too late. Stalin just became yet another psychpathic Tsar, and Napoleon decided to crown himself Emperor - they'd just gotten rid of the last of their crazy kings and now they were going to have to tolerate a new whackjob.

Fortunately he met his Waterloo soon after

[Darcy88]

In digging up dirt on Hitler I just now read a few passages of Mein Kampf. It doesn't seem as horribly written as some here have suggested. It is tedious though and rather littered with errors. There is no such thing as the "Aryan race." Laughable it is when he goes on at length about how the Jews never had a culture of their own, that they were culturally parasitic. The second pillar of western culture is the Judeo-Christian, that's the JUDEO-Christian. The ****ing bible is 60 percent old testament.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yes, and? The Third Reich should be understood, not condemned.
Why can't you do both? It would seem to me the best condemnation would come from a full understanding of whatever is being condemned.

[Alexander III]

[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1118728]

I'm not hysterically ranting. The man carried out the wholesale liquidation of 6 million innocent souls. He sent nearly 9 million of his own country men to their graves. The people supported him because he lied to them and manipulated them. He took propaganda to never before seen extremes. Some of his speeches are downright psychotic. If any man ever warranted categorical condemnation that man is he.

All of what you say is true, but what you fail to aknowlege and that which Emill and kiki have been trying very hard to point out, is:

Where you as you are now, but instead a german in 1938 , what you would have most likley been saying is "Hitler is the best thing that has happened to germany since the unification in 1871".

Yes Hitler was psychotic, but you cannot refute his intelligence on the account that he was a genius of propaganda, not only did he easily dupe the ignorant working men, he also duped all the people like you, the clever boys and the clever men, were just as duped and manipulated as the ignorant.

So I see a big irony in calling hitler stupid, because his work wpuld have tricked you easily too, and that is the problem. We are not learning from history. By thinking of hitler as stupid, and not recognising his enorous intelligence in certain fields, we close a blind eye to the future. We believe another Hitler cant ever take power because im clever, we fail to realize that yes we are clever but men like Hitler are more clever than us, more clever than a very small minority of people, which most likley does not accpount for us. By remembering this and learning this from history we are more prepared to protect our future - by contiouning to think Hitler as stupid we just make ourselves pray to the next one who will have you cheering his name and not seeing beyond his illusion.

Your view is to simple, you try to ignore the problem instead of awknolaging it.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=Darcy88;1118730]

All of what you say is true, but what you fail to aknowlege and that which Emill and kiki have been trying very hard to point out, is:

Where you aas you are now, but instead a german in 1938 , what you would have most likley been saying is "Hitler is the best thing that has happened to germany since the unification in 1871".

Yes Hitler was psychotic, but you cannot refute his intelligence on the account that he was a genius of propaganda, not only did he easily dupe the ignorant working men, he also duped all the people like you, the clever boys and the clever men, were just as duped and manipulated as the ignorant.


That is a very interesting thought that has never before occurred to me, and I admit that as a German at that time I very well might have been thinking that. But I never called Hitler stupid. I call him evil and psychotic and repellently degenerate, but not stupid. As a politician he was a genius, as a tactician I'm not sure either way. His early blitzkrieg victories would have inflamed Alexander the Great with a sense of burning rivalry, but his decision to not finish off the British on the beach at Dunkirk is one of the greatest military blunders in all history, whatever his motivations.

We should keep in mind though that Nietzsche and some others who witnessed the earliest manifestations of the mind-set that would later become National Socialism had nothing but vitriolic contempt for its principles and its adherents.

[Emil Miller]

The absolute revulsion with which Hitler is almost universally regarded to this day is a damn good and necessary thing because it adds a buffer against a recurrence of the horror and destruction that he willfully wrought.

Emil, the fact that we've gone this far and you've yet to admit that Hitler was evil or sick or degenerate but instead keep harping on about relatively minor silver linings is not a good sign. I'm going on the assumption that you disapprove of the man overall but its just an assumption, you're offered nothing in the way of confirmation or reassurance.

It may not be a good sign but it shows that my interest in the subject is more thorough than your own. This thread was ostensibly about Mein Kampf but ,inevitably, it went off topic to the man himself. The reason being that despite all the obvious things we know he was responsible for, there are others that tend to get overlooked in the blanket condemnation. Hitler's childhood was traumatic and this, added to the defeat of Germany in WW1, may have been the reason for his behaviour but, either way, his arrival on the political scene is of massive importance in historical terms. My interest in German history certainly predates that of the Third Reich although its proximity to our times obviously gives people a chance to examine it more thoroughly than would otherwise be the case. In doing so, and without diminishing in any way the terrible things that occurred under his rule, it is obvious that everything about him should be considered and not just the mass murder and war. No matter how terrible a man he was and despite the propaganda build up, he remains one of the most interesting historical figures who will be studied and disputed for centuries to come.

Here's what George Orwell wrote about him during the WW11:

"I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler...The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him...It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. ...He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds...One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to."
"He has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all 'progressive' thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to find a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do..... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people, 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them, 'I offer you struggle, danger, and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."

Couple this with the fulsome praise from Churchill during the 1930s that I have mentioned and the fact that Hitler was named Time Magazine's 'Man of the Year' in 1938, and it's plain to see that there was more to Hitler than one might expect.

[Darcy88]

It may not be a good sign but it shows that my interest in the subject is more thorough than your own. This thread was ostensibly about Mein Kampf but ,inevitably, it went off topic to the man himself. The reason being that despite all the obvious things we know he was responsible for, there are others that tend to get overlooked in the blanket condemnation. Hitler's childhood was traumatic and this, added to the defeat of Germany in WW1, may have been the reason for his behaviour but, either way, his arrival on the political scene is of massive importance in historical terms. My interest in German history certainly predates that of the Third Reich although its proximity to our times obviously gives people a chance to examine it more thoroughly than would otherwise be the case. In doing so, and without diminishing in any way the terrible things that occurred under his rule, it is obvious that everything about him should be considered and not just the mass murder and war. No matter how terrible a man he was and despite the propaganda build up, he remains one of the most interesting historical figures who will be studied and disputed for centuries to come.

Here's what George Orwell wrote about him during the WW11:

"I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler...The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him...It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. ...He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds...One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to."
"He has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all 'progressive' thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to find a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do..... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people, 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them, 'I offer you struggle, danger, and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."

Couple this with the fulsome praise from Churchill during the 1930s that I have mentioned and the fact that Hitler was named Time Magazine's 'Man of the Year' in 1938, and it's plain to see that there was more to Hitler than one might expect.

Orwell wrote that in 1940. He did not know then the full scale of the holocaust. Hitler hadn't even invaded France or the low countries when that quote was written. His vision had yet to be implemented. Very misleading to include that quote here.

A man picks up a hitchhiker in the pouring rain. The hitchhiker has a long way to go, hours and hours. The hitchhiker is glad to be out of the cold and rain, in the comfort of the warm car, with pleasant music playing lowly on the stereo. The driver is very nice, stops at a diner and buys the hitchhiker a nice big dinner, talks and jokes. As they near the hitchhiker's destination the driver pulls into a dirt road, drags the hitchhiker out of the car, brutally sodomizes him before cutting his throat. Get it?

[Emil Miller]

Orwell wrote that in 1940. He did not know then the full scale of the holocaust. Hitler hadn't even invaded France or the low countries when that quote was written. His vision had yet to be implemented. Very misleading to include that quote here.

A man picks up a hitchhiker in the pouring rain. The hitchhiker has a long way to go, hours and hours. The hitchhiker is glad to be out of the cold and rain, in the comfort of the warm car, with pleasant music playing lowly on the stereo. The driver is very nice, stops at a diner and buys the hitchhiker a nice big dinner, talks and jokes. As they near the hitchhiker's destination the driver pulls into a dirt road, drags the hitchhiker out of the car, brutally sodomizes him before cutting his throat. Get it?

Orwell had fought against Franco's forces in the Spanish civil war so he certainly knew what fascism was about. So the article is not reliant on what later transpired.

You are simply transcribing what you have already said in a rather childish way that adds nothing to this discussion. So let me make it clear: I have said that I don't like politicians who find it necessary to wear military uniform and I wouldn't vote for them. I have said that Hitler was a tyrant. I have said that he was responsible for the things that you have mentioned. Nonetheless, Hitler is one of the most important figures in modern history, as is obvious by the numerous books that have been written and are still being written about him.
Nothing you or anybody else says can alter that fact.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm sure Orwell's opinion of Hitler changed when his atrocities came to light. And it was a bit misleading to not give the date of the Orwell quote. A lot happened in WW2 after 1940 (even before the holocaust was revealed) that likely made him question those thoughts.

[Darcy88]

Orwell had fought against Franco's forces in the Spanish civil war so he certainly knew what fascism was about. So the article is not reliant on what later transpired.

You are simply transcribing what you have already said in a rather childish way that adds nothing to this discussion. So let me make it clear: I have said that I don't like politicians who find it necessary to wear military uniform and I wouldn't vote for them. I have said that Hitler was a tyrant. I have said that he was responsible for the things that you have mentioned. Nonetheless, Hitler is one of the most important figures in modern history, as is obvious by the numerous books that have been written and are still being written about him.
Nothing you or anybody else says can alter that fact.

Then it sounds like we are finally in agreement. Except Franco never liquidated six million innocents or invaded most of continental Europe. Orwell's opinion was expressed prior to the happening of Hitler's most significant deeds.

[Darcy88]

I'm sure Orwell's opinion of Hitler changed when his atrocities came to light. And it was a bit misleading to not give the date of the Orwell quote. A lot happened in WW2 after 1940 (even before the holocaust was revealed) that likely made him question those thoughts.

Not only was the quote from 1940, it was from the March of that year, a couple of months before Hitler ended the "phony" war by unleashing his forces on France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

[stlukesguild]

All of what you say is true, but what you fail to aknowlege and that which Emill and kiki have been trying very hard to point out, is:

Where you as you are now, but instead a german in 1938 , what you would have most likley been saying is "Hitler is the best thing that has happened to germany since the unification in 1871".

Yes Hitler was psychotic, but you cannot refute his intelligence on the account that he was a genius of propaganda, not only did he easily dupe the ignorant working men, he also duped all the people like you, the clever boys and the clever men, were just as duped and manipulated as the ignorant.

So I see a big irony in calling hitler stupid, because his work wpuld have tricked you easily too, and that is the problem. We are not learning from history. By thinking of hitler as stupid, and not recognising his enorous intelligence in certain fields, we close a blind eye to the future. We believe another Hitler cant ever take power because im clever, we fail to realize that yes we are clever but men like Hitler are more clever than us, more clever than a very small minority of people, which most likley does not accpount for us. By remembering this and learning this from history we are more prepared to protect our future - by contiouning to think Hitler as stupid we just make ourselves pray to the next one who will have you cheering his name and not seeing beyond his illusion.

Your view is to simple, you try to ignore the problem instead of awknolaging it.

BINGO!!!

That is what any number of us have tried to say. Instead of painting Hitler as an ignorant bumpkin and an idiot and the German people as "mentally" and "spiritually ill" we need to learn from the experience. We need to recognize that those with poor... evil "evil" intentions are not inherently stupid. We need to recognize that there were reasons that the population of a modern educated Western nation... a nation/culture that had given the world Mozart and Bach and Goethe and Beckmann and Murnau and Rilke and Freud and Nietzsche... could support Hitler... and continue to follow him blindly until it was too late. We need to recognize that it CAN happen again... and it can happen here. We also need to recognize that while other dictators may not have had Hitler's level of "success" this is not due to a lack of trying.

[kiki1982]

I condemn Stalin too. And no cataclysm even remotely comparable to the holocaust has befallen South America since the conquistadors. The Columbian civil war was a war, not a mass extermination of million after million. Chavez is not a mass murderer by any stretch of the imagination, nor could the grossly reprobate Pinochet be credibly likened to Adolf Hitler.

If you can't condemn the men directly responsible for the holocaust you can't condemn anyone for anything. A racist dictator could come to power in the United States and carry out the mass extermination of millions of African Americans and according to your stance condemnation would be misguided. Ludicrous.

Blind condemnation, as we are discussing here no doubt, is nothing more than hysterical ranting. It does not contribute anything and is, frankly, on the level of Hitler's speeches: far too long, difficult and devoid of any logical thought to be ever considered anything beyond mesmerising.

All of those countriss I named were dictatorships which were not condemned at the time, despite the cries for help from civilians. They were even condoned by the vast majority. Hitler was a dictator (that is his most important accomplishment, leaving aside the obvious remainder of what he did wrong.

I am quite confident that the world would not be interested when the USA would decide to murder a certain class of people after a long and creeping process of totalitarianism. Just as no-one batted an eyelid when Tutsies and Hutus were killing each other in Africa and when the disaster was unfolding in Syria now.

Why? Because the epitomy of evil statemanship is condemned, but not understood, and of course every time we get 'surprised'. How is it possible.

Dictatorships and genocides work the same everywhere, yet it is because we only condemn them and then turn away that we get taken in time and time again. And yes, the Jews were 4 million of them and Pinochet's victims only maybe a few 100,000 (?) and how does that make a difference to anyone who has lost their brother, father, uncle, nephew, son or whatever? It is not a genocide, no, it is killing people you think who are dangerous. Jews were regarded to be dangerous...
It is because we do not recognise the signs that we leave people to get on with it. Things have never gone beyond the Nürnberg trials and that's it. It was a short-lived revenge from the victor.

They say (although I don't know whether that is true) that Hitler was so megalomaneous that he let the British escape so that he had a (better) chance of a peace treaty with Great-Britain. They say he had great respect for the British and in fact wished to have a great big empire. Killing them off in Dunkirk would not have made them very happy... Of course the British refused and so he bombed them in an attempt to force them to their knees, but they did not succumb unfortunately.

Anyone know that is true or not?


Why can't you do both? It would seem to me the best condemnation would come from a full understanding of whatever is being condemned.

Sorry, I should have said 'merely condemned'. Of course it is evil, but it should not be condemned and period. Which is what we have been doing for the last 60 years, with all the results we know.

And thank you, Alexander. That was a very handsome rephrasal. :)

[stlukesguild]

Then it sounds like we are finally in agreement. Except Franco never liquidated six million innocents or invaded most of continental Europe. Orwell's opinion was expressed prior to the happening of Hitler's most significant deeds.

Franco lacked the wherewithal to even think about implementing such. Even so, Franco ordered the bombing of Guernica by German bombers, leveling 75% of the city. During the Spanish Civil War his supporters executed some 50,000 with another 15,000 - 25,000 summarily executed immediately following Franco's victory... and some estimated 200,000 in the years after that. The numbers may be different... but the intention and the willingness to kill any and all who question, or oppose, or represent a threat was the same.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Sorry, I should have said 'merely condemned'. Of course it is evil, but it should not be condemned and period. Which is what we have been doing for the last 60 years, with all the results we know.



So, why shouldn't we condemn Hitler for causing the Holocaust, exactly? I'm just unclear, here. I understand that Hitler, nor the German people, were stupid because of what happen. But why should understanding preclude condemnation? That just seems silly.

[Alexander III]

So, why shouldn't we condemn Hitler for causing the Holocaust, exactly? I'm just unclear, here. I understand that Hitler, nor the German people, were stupid because of what happen. But why should understanding preclude condemnation? That just seems silly.

No we should condemn, but condemn with respect. By condemning hitler and making him ridicoulous we close our eyes, but by condeminging him with respect, by aproching him with respect, we learn and we try to understand and see how this supposed isolated incident in history, is not so very isolated in history but rather frequent. The men with the same passions of Hitler are far to common and popular and succesfull in history, to treat them as if they were "unique" or "stupid" and choosing to mark them off as "psychotic and mentaly unstanble" instead of the very bitter truth they they are very human, all too human in fact. Ecce homo.

[Emil Miller]

We need to recognize that it CAN happen again... and it can happen here.

Yes it can, and that is the reason why it's silly to treat Hitler as the guarantor of it not happening again.
I was disappointed in the film shown below for several reasons but not because of its central premise. Anyone who thinks that the US or any other major country is immune to the possibility of a dictatorship on the scale of that of Nazi Germany has learned nothing from the recent past.

http://youtu.be/yfA3TdLoOIk

[Darcy88]

Blind condemnation, as we are discussing here no doubt, is nothing more than hysterical ranting. It does not contribute anything and is, frankly, on the level of Hitler's speeches: far too long, difficult and devoid of any logical thought to be ever considered anything beyond mesmerising.

I am quite confident that the world would not be interested when the USA would decide to murder a certain class of people after a long and creeping process of totalitarianism. Just as no-one batted an eyelid when Tutsies and Hutus were killing each other in Africa and when the disaster was unfolding in Syria now.

Why? Because the epitomy of evil statemanship is condemned, but not understood, and of course every time we get 'surprised'. How is it possible.


I am not blindly condemning. I've heard many of Hitler's speeches. I've studied the man's acts. The informed conclusion I have come to is that he was an evil and by turns psychotic individual. Is that incorrect according to you?

Your logic is pitiful. You argue that Hitler shouldn't be condemned by referencing other dictators who you for some reason assume I do not condemn. Likening my morally and historically based posts to Hitler's mad war and genocide affirming speeches is insulting and ridiculous.

And I would hardly characterize Hitler as "magnanimous," but yes, he apparently hoped that by sparing the British army annihilation he might persuade England to come to terms. It was still a tactical blunder of significant consequence that for me calls into question his supposed military genius.

[MystyrMystyry]

A military opportunist you mean - easy conquests gave him access to new vantage points, Czechoslovakia for small arms and Holland's docks for the u-boats for example. Fighting a war on two fronts immediately puts him in the category of military idiot.

The thing with his particular brand of anti-semitism it was present in worker targeted newspapers from the previous century. Mein Kampf simply codified it, and his election to chancellor enabled him to legitimise it. As the war progressed he became increasingly depraved - first the concentration camps to gas chambers, demanding the gold fillings of his victims (and apparently tinning their meat and that of dead soldiers to send to the hungry front lines)

Actually Mein Kampf is really a collection of essays as semi-literate as those papers, but in published book form made him appear smart. Mostly it was luck - a little knowledge of military history, a little of basic politics, some of mass-psychology, a few fawning key figures and generals, and it all comes together at the right time, right place.

There were a dozen assassination attempts on him (perhaps more) that all failed by pure chance - and going back further he was gassed in WWI and could have easily been killed, and later someone allowed his release from prison. All causes and effects.

I saw a doco once - early on the American government commissioned a psychological assessment on him to see what they were dealing with, and it came back: 'Messianic complex, needs to be shown to be losing before the shell shatters and he destroys himself.'

[kiki1982]

So, why shouldn't we condemn Hitler for causing the Holocaust, exactly? I'm just unclear, here. I understand that Hitler, nor the German people, were stupid because of what happen. But why should understanding preclude condemnation? That just seems silly.

It has never gone beyond condemnation and popular society (apart from the historians) has not dealt with the embarrassment of having been taken in. About the Holocaust - again, the American military did not believe the reports, only when they really saw it and when it was way too late-, but also about all the rest. The world was hypnotised by this one man. As Emil said, 'man of the year' by Time (?), Chamberlain mistakenly believed he was going to reach a diplomatic agreement, Churchill praised him. If that was not enough the British were lied to by Stalin all the way through the war (so again, they did not learn from the master). I supose, though, that they did not want to upset the Russians lest they should leave the war and abandon them to be overrun.
That embarrassment has never been dealt with, not by the Germans (because they were the ones who got fooled first), but also not by the rest of the world.
That is where condemnation and only condemnation brings you.


I am not blindly condemning. I've heard many of Hitler's speeches. I've studied the man's acts. The informed conclusion I have come to is that he was an evil and by turns psychotic individual. Is that incorrect according to you?

Your logic is pitiful. You argue that Hitler shouldn't be condemned by referencing other dictators who you for some reason assume I do not condemn. Likening my morally and historically based posts to Hitler's mad war and genocide affirming speeches is insulting and ridiculous.

And I would hardly characterize Hitler as "magnanimous," but yes, he apparently hoped that by sparing the British army annihilation he might persuade England to come to terms. It was still a tactical blunder of significant consequence that for me calls into question his supposed military genius.

My logic is not pitiful. Look at what Emil said earlier.

Yes, letting the British escape was a blunder from your point of view, but if he was trying to make one big empire (which he was of course going to dominate), then surely it wasn't. It is your logic which is warped, not mine. I am trying to look at it in a different position than from where I am now. What we know happened after is irrelevant to the motivation for what happened then, because people did not know what was going to happen.

Hitler and the Third Reich were far more than 6 million dead + a lot of dead soldiers on both sides.
And, come to think of it, not all those 6 million came from Germany, you know. Was it Hungary that exterminated 80% of its Jewish population or Slowakia? I am part of a country which hid them all, or at least worked very slowly so the process did not go so well, so Belgium came off with a mere 40%, I think, but Eastern Europe was quite zealous and they're becoming zealous again.

[Darcy88]

My logic is not pitiful. Look at what Emil said earlier.

Yes, letting the British escape was a blunder from your point of view, but if he was trying to make one big empire (which he was of course going to dominate), then surely it wasn't.

I don't understand. If you were trying to make one big empire then eliminating a good chunk of one of your chief enemy's armed forces when they are totally helpless on a beach is a no-brainer.


It is your logic which is warped, not mine. I am trying to look at it in a different position than from where I am now. What we know happened after is irrelevant to the motivation for what happened then, because people did not know what was going to happen.


Do you think I am blaming the German people? Another poster called them mentally ill. I didn't. I admitted that if I was a German at the time it was possible I might have been a Hitler supporter. A Hitler could have arisen and in some instances has in spirit arisen in countries around the world.


Hitler and the Third Reich were far more than 6 million dead + a lot of dead soldiers on both sides.
And, come to think of it, not all those 6 million came from Germany, you know. Was it Hungary that exterminated 80% of its Jewish population or Slowakia? I am part of a country which hid them all, or at least worked very slowly so the process did not go so well, so Belgium came off with a mere 40%, I think, but Eastern Europe was quite zealous and they're becoming zealous again.

The overwhelming majority of the 6 million slain Jews did not come from Germany. The plans and orders for their execution did however. This leads me to condemn the Nazi regime, the men who bear responsibility for the great atrocities. I don't blame the German people. You have to be able to condemn a man like Hitler. That doesn't mean you go ahead and condemn the millions of Germans who bought his lies and followed him without knowing where we was truly leading them.

[cafolini]

I don't understand. If you were trying to make one big empire then eliminating a good chunk of one of your chief enemy's armed forces when they are totally helpless on a beach is a no-brainer.



Do you think I am blaming the German people? Another poster called them mentally ill. I didn't. I admitted that if I was a German at the time it was possible I might have been a Hitler supporter. A Hitler could have arisen and in some instances has in spirit arisen in countries around the world.



The overwhelming majority of the 6 million slain Jews did not come from Germany. The plans and orders for their execution did however. This leads me to condemn the Nazi regime, the men who bear responsibility for the great atrocities. I don't blame the German people. You have to be able to condemn a man like Hitler. That doesn't mean you go ahead and condemn the millions of Germans who bought his lies and followed him without knowing where we was truly leading them.

The German people knew very well where Hitler and Co. were leading them and most were Nazi's voluntarily long before they were formally organized. Hitler was merely the political author of the insanity the people wanted to hear. If there is any doubt about the responsibility of the people of insane Weimar, you may try to imagine doing the same thing with the people of the United States of America. You wouldn't last a week. Don't play with it. Don't gamble with it. This is indeed the land of the free and the home of the brave, and that is cast in bronce (so to speak), coming from the fathers of America and what has always been demonstrated as our flag was still there and will remain there. Case closed.

[Darcy88]

The German people knew very well where Hitler and Co. were leading them and most were Nazi's voluntarily long before they were formally organized. Hitler was merely the political author of the insanity the people wanted to hear. If there is any doubt about the responsibility of the people of insane Weimar, you may try to imagine doing the same thing with the people of the United States of America. You wouldn't last a week. Don't play with it. Don't gamble with it. This is indeed the land of the free and the home of the brave, and that is cast in bronce (so to speak), coming from the fathers of America and what has always been demonstrated as our flag was still there and will remain there. Case closed.

In the thirties they had Madison Square Gardens or some other massive New York stadium filled to the rafters with enthusiastic people for a Nazi rally. Swastika's everywhere.

It could happen in the states. If the economy took an extreme pernicious plummet anything could happen. Half your country is outright delusional politically anyway. Its not that great a leap to envision it happening there. Your kind of complacent attitude is the real fear to consider.

[cafolini]

In the thirties they had Madison Square Gardens or some other massive New York stadium filled to the rafters with enthusiastic people for a Nazi rally. Swastika's everywhere.

It could happen in the states. If the economy took an extreme pernicious plummet anything could happen. Half your country is outright delusional politically anyway. Its not that great a leap to envision it happening there. Your kind of complacent attitude is the real fear to consider.

America will never fight against free speech and ignorance. It is obvious that inside the United States we have lots of people that can't read it properly with historical information and sense. There occurs no consequent fear in that regard. All consequent fears in America and what we will protect it from with our lives, if necessary, come from the insanity of crazy cultures that could attack anytime. We will keep improving military technology and training to deal with it. And no military will ever rule the civilian authorities in America. It's in the open. Free speech? Yes. Disinformation about what can happen from the momentary and crazy arguments from people who are getting a generous chance to see who we are? Never. Don't gamble on it. Not a chance is feasible.
"I'll not take any option away from the table."
"Those who see the waning of American influence, don't know what they are talking about." Obama, during the latest State of the Union speech.
Make no mistake: "justice will be done."

[Alexander III]

In the thirties they had Madison Square Gardens or some other massive New York stadium filled to the rafters with enthusiastic people for a Nazi rally. Swastika's everywhere.

It could happen in the states. If the economy took an extreme pernicious plummet anything could happen. Half your country is outright delusional politically anyway. Its not that great a leap to envision it happening there. Your kind of complacent attitude is the real fear to consider.

The fact that you actualy repplied to Califoni is a very very sad thing for this thread. In future it is best to smile and nod your head when Califoni posts.

[cafolini]

The fact that you actualy repplied to Califoni is a very very sad thing for this thread. In future it is best to smile and nod your head when Califoni posts.

I agree. What else could you actually do and make some sense. Applause!!

[Darcy88]

America will never fight against free speech and ignorance. It is obvious that inside the United States we have lots of people that can't read it properly with historical information and sense. There occurs no consequent fear in that regard. All consequent fears in America and what we will protect it from with our lives, if necessary, come from the insanity of crazy cultures that could attack anytime. We will keep improving military technology and training to deal with it. And no military will ever rule the civilian authorities in America. It's in the open. Free speech? Yes. Disinformation about what can happen from the momentary and crazy arguments from people who are getting a generous chance to see who we are? Never. Don't gamble on it. Not a chance is feasible.
"I'll not take any option away from the table."
"Those who see the waning of American influence, don't know what they are talking about." Obama, during the latest State of the Union speech.
Make no mistake: "justice will be done."

Well, you need to check out the Pentagon memorandum laying out a plan for complete military policing and governance in the event of widespread social disorder or otherwise greatly disrupted deviation from the status quo. America is no different than other countries. If revolution ever became imperative you guys would either have to woo the military or perish by their tanks and guns. After Katrina you had Blackwater mercenaries patrolling the streets of New Orleans with automatic rifles. There was a plot in the thirties supported by Henry Ford and others to impose a fascist dictatorship. Most of the information in the United States is under the dominion of but a small handful of corporations. You can only get elected in America by kow-towing before the corporate establishment. Canada is not so different. Don't be naive Caf man, it can happen anywhere.

[Darcy88]

The fact that you actualy repplied to Califoni is a very very sad thing for this thread. In future it is best to smile and nod your head when Califoni posts.

I like Cafolini. Even if many of his posts are undecipherable and possibly nonsense he makes me smile.

[cafolini]

I like Cafolini. Even if many of his posts are undecipherable and possibly nonsense he makes me smile.

Glad to be of service.

[Darcy88]

Glad to be of service.

And regarding this? -


Well, you need to check out the Pentagon memorandum laying out a plan for complete military policing and governance in the event of widespread social disorder or otherwise greatly disrupted deviation from the status quo. America is no different than other countries. If revolution ever became imperative you guys would either have to woo the military or perish by their tanks and guns. After Katrina you had Blackwater mercenaries patrolling the streets of New Orleans with automatic rifles. There was a plot in the thirties supported by Henry Ford and others to impose a fascist dictatorship. Most of the information in the United States is under the dominion of but a small handful of corporations. You can only get elected in America by kow-towing before the corporate establishment. Canada is not so different. Don't be naive Caf man, it can happen anywhere.

Or this? -


THE AMERICAN LIBERTY LEAGUE

Although it was savaged in the press as a silly "cocktail putsch" at the time, the actions of the American Liberty League came as close as the United States has come to overthrowing the elected President in a coup d'etat. After the extent of his New Deal plans to end the Great Depression became known, many of the wealthy industrialists in the country considered President Franklin Roosevelt at the minimum a "traitor to his class" and a pawn of "Jewish Communism". They formed the American Liberty League, no gathering of crackpots, but a roll-call of the most powerful American capitalists, a list which reminds me of the credits before a PBS show...including J.P. Morgan, the DuPonts, Andrew Mellon, the Rockefellers, E.F. Hutton, and Joseph Pew of Sunoco. The value of the Liberty League, according to one estimate, was 37 billion dollars...in 1938 dollars! (Archer 1973, 31) At the time, DuPont and Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors were in control of the powerful anti-labor National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) With the help of Joseph Pews, NAM subsidized the Sentinels of the Republic, the first industrial group to declare "the New Deal is Communist" and to openly decry the "Jewish threat". (Seldes 1943, 80, 97)

During July of 1933, two men claiming to be representing the American Legion (of which we'll hear more later) came to Major General Smedley D. Butler, looking for a man to help rally the members of the "bonus army", a group of disgruntled World War I veterans estimated at 500,000 men. These men stated that they were planning to combine the American Legion, the Bonus Army and the Veterans of Foreign Wars into a new group based on the Croix de Feu, a powerful Fascist veterans organization in France. Just a few years before, the Bonus Army had been dispersed from Washington by Douglas MacArthur. The plan of the Liberty League was to descend upon Washington with this "army" and install Butler in a position as the Director of National Security, essentially making him an "assistant President" to "help" President Roosevelt. In reality, Roosevelt would have been a mere puppet. (Archer 1973, 24-25; Seldes 1947, 210) Although it was censored from published versions of later Congressional testimony, they indicated that the DuPonts were willing to finance weaponry for the entire army. (Archer 1973, 161)

When he realized what the men wanted, Butler was aghast. He called on James Van Zandt, the head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in concern. Van Zandt was also approached by representatives of the Liberty League and quickly rebuffed them. Butler wanted to go to Congress and the press, but needed evidence, so he continued to meet with the men from the Liberty League, while an editor friend assigned reporter Paul French of the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post to investigate. Butler drew more names and information from the men, and thinking that he was nearly ready to "come around", they offered him $18000 in cash on 24 September 1933. The meetings continued for another year, until French broke the story on 20 November 1934. (Archer 1973, 139, 178)

When questioned by Congress, Van Zandt corroborated the plot, along with Douglas MacArthur, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and the former Commander of the American Legion, Hanford MacNider, who were also approached by agents of the Liberty League. (Archer 1973, 176)

Nearly unknown today, Smedley D. Butler is a real hero in many respects. He turned down money and power in the service of his country, and also continued to speak candidly about his career in the Marines. He went on the radio to continue the attack against the Liberty League and groups like it, and staged a speaking tour in 1935. He wrote a book, War Is a Racket, in which he made the following statement: "I spent 33 years [in the Marines] and during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." (Archer 1973, 209, 219; Seldes 1947, 212)

Butler refused an attempt to draft him for a run against Roosevelt in 1936, but Butler did succeed in getting Congress to pass a bonus bill for the World War I veterans over Roosevelt's veto. (Archer 1973, 227) Thus rather than lead them into treason, he gave the "Bonus Army" the just due it had been demanding since 1919.

With their candidate soundly defeated, the American Liberty League collapsed after the election of 1936. (Archer 1973, 229) This was the end of the true Fascist uprising in the United States. Many groups continued, as we shall see, but they were never able to muster great monetary or logistical support from industrialists again, as they had in Germany, Japan and Italy. As a political force, anti-Semitism didn't work, as the Jews were already integrated into American society, unlike in Europe; racial hatred in America was more successfully directed against blacks, a lesson the German American Bund and other American Fascists learned (fortunately) too late. After the collapse of the Liberty and the assassination of Huey Long, the contest for control of the American government moved from brute unconstitutional force to political oratory. (Ward 1935, 56)

[stlukesguild]

The German people knew very well where Hitler and Co. were leading them and most were Nazi's voluntarily long before they were formally organized. Hitler was merely the political author of the insanity the people wanted to hear. If there is any doubt about the responsibility of the people of insane Weimar, you may try to imagine doing the same thing with the people of the United States of America. You wouldn't last a week. Don't play with it. Don't gamble with it. This is indeed the land of the free and the home of the brave, and that is cast in bronce (so to speak), coming from the fathers of America and what has always been demonstrated as our flag was still there and will remain there. Case closed.

America will never fight against free speech and ignorance. It is obvious that inside the United States we have lots of people that can't read it properly with historical information and sense. There occurs no consequent fear in that regard. All consequent fears in America and what we will protect it from with our lives, if necessary, come from the insanity of crazy cultures that could attack anytime. We will keep improving military technology and training to deal with it. And no military will ever rule the civilian authorities in America. It's in the open. Free speech? Yes. Disinformation about what can happen from the momentary and crazy arguments from people who are getting a generous chance to see who we are? Never. Don't gamble on it. Not a chance is feasible.
"I'll not take any option away from the table."
"Those who see the waning of American influence, don't know what they are talking about." Obama, during the latest State of the Union speech.
Make no mistake: "justice will be done."

I'm not certain if cafolini actually believes the nonsense he spouts... or if it is actually intended as satire. Either way it makes for some comic reading.

[Emil Miller]

Here's something for Cafolini to think about.

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/3043/92806131.png

[Darcy88]

Here's something for Cafolini to think about.

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/3043/92806131.png

Here is an image of a pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939.

http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/00/00872.jpg

[kiki1982]

I don't understand. If you were trying to make one big empire then eliminating a good chunk of one of your chief enemy's armed forces when they are totally helpless on a beach is a no-brainer.

No it is not a no-brainer. It seems a no-brainer, but it is not. If you, as the enemy do not really want to be the enemy, but you are pushed into that camp then killing off your advesary's troops is the last thing you have to do if you want a genuine peace treaty. If you adhere to the thesis that Hitler did not want to fight Britain, but Britain came to the rescue of Belgium as a guarantor for their neutrality, then Germany was pushed in the opposite camp from Britain. I suppose, if you do adhere to that thesis, that Hitler was planning the same as with Stalin: divide the continent amongst them (as Germany and Russia did with Poland). He violated that afterwards of course, and thus he would probably have done with Britain too, but do you think killing them all off in Dunkirk would have moved the British to a treaty? I tell you, the proud people from across the Channel would not have done so. Far from. They would not have succumbed to the Nazis if they were on their knees. They knew they were in a good position, only money was lacking, and they were going to fight Germany until the end. At the time they were also dealing with Stalin on the other side to get to a war on two fronts and had been doing this way before the war started.

Hitler was the one who did not see what was going and that was his weakness, not his tactical blunder as you call it. He was trying to appease his enemy (if enemies they were from his point of view), not kill him off.

Beside of which, if he did not kill them off he was saddled with 100s of thousands of POWs. How was that going to benefit him?

If there was any tactical blunder it must have been the British who did not consider the idea of having to retreat and getting stuck at the Channel. They would better have stayed on their island and fought the Germans that way. Instead of running off to the continent pretty much unprepared, certainly not for a retreat. What if Hitler had killed them all off? Did we have to wait for the Americans, which the British had to beg for assistance, even after Pearl Harbor? They were going to fight Japan, not Germany (they were not concerned). As long as Britiain had soldiers, they were fine.

I tell you when Germany made a tactical blunder: the Battle of Britain. That was a tactical blunder. They vastly underestimated the power of Britain in the air and although Germany's planes were technologically better, they were so damn slow in building them that the British had soon the upper hand. That is a tactical blunder of the greatest magnitude. The British on the other hand had over-estimated the Luftwaffe and found to their surprise that their enemy was a bit stuck for planes...


The overwhelming majority of the 6 million slain Jews did not come from Germany. The plans and orders for their execution did however. This leads me to condemn the Nazi regime, the men who bear responsibility for the great atrocities. I don't blame the German people. You have to be able to condemn a man like Hitler. That doesn't mean you go ahead and condemn the millions of Germans who bought his lies and followed him without knowing where we was truly leading them.

But the Third Reich is not only the Endlösung! That is only a short episode in the whole period. And that Endlösung did not even come from Hitler alone, but from the system. You think he thought it all up himself?

I would say that most Germans at the time did not consider life too bad, and as Emil Miller says, the vast majority was probably better off, certainly through the scheme Kraft durch Freude. Does that make Hitler evil then? The killing people side of him is definitely, but making life better for most Germans is not, or is that also evil nowadays?

As I said, Hitler is not a person who only murdered a few people as a killer is, he also did something to German society (whether all for the better is the question; I have the impression that Germans still carry scars from that period) and it was not all bad, albeit maybe somewhat 'empty'.

[Darcy88]

No it is not a no-brainer. It seems a no-brainer, but it is not. If you, as the enemy do not really want to be the enemy, but you are pushed into that camp then killing off your advesary's troops is the last thing you have to do if you want a genuine peace treaty. If you adhere to the thesis that Hitler did not want to fight Britain, but Britain came to the rescue of Belgium as a guarantor for their neutrality, then Germany was pushed in the opposite camp from Britain. I suppose, if you do adhere to that thesis, that Hitler was planning the same as with Stalin: divide the continent amongst them (as Germany and Russia did with Poland). He violated that afterwards of course, and thus he would probably have done with Britain too, but do you think killing them all off in Dunkirk would have moved the British to a treaty? I tell you, the proud people from across the Channel would not have done so. Far from. They would not have succumbed to the Nazis if they were on their knees. They knew they were in a good position, only money was lacking, and they were going to fight Germany until the end. At the time they were also dealing with Stalin on the other side to get to a war on two fronts and had been doing this way before the war started.

It didn't work did it? And since Britain soldiered on anyway, if Hitler had killed or imprisoned all those troops he would have had a better chance bringing Britain to terms afterwards. And POWs mattered nothing to Hitler. Another sign of his military ineptitude was his insistence on keeping large numbers of troops busy watching over Jews while they were desperately needed on the fronts.






But the Third Reich is not only the Endlösung! That is only a short episode in the whole period. And that Endlösung did not even come from Hitler alone, but from the system. You think he thought it all up himself?


That just makes me sick, to hear that coming from a German who is probably not Jewish. The final solution was not the result of a system, it was the direct result of the actions of a few men, largely those of Hitler and Himmler. If you had no Hitler or Himmler then other men may, MAY, have arisen to take their place and commit the same atrocities anyway, but those men would be just as evil and worthy of condemnation as Hitler and Himmler.



I would say that most Germans at the time did not consider life too bad, and as Emil Miller says, the vast majority was probably better off, certainly through the scheme Kraft durch Freude. Does that make Hitler evil then? The killing people side of him is definitely, but making life better for most Germans is not, or is that also evil nowadays?

So you don't think Hitler was evil? Are you a Nazi sympathizer or just an old fashioned contrarian? You missed my hitchhiker metaphor I take it. He turned their economy around but also murdered in cold blood six million innocent people and lead his country to disastrous defeat. Was he evil you ask? What if a serial killer were a good employee and did volunteer service in his community in the time he's not cutting off people's heads. Is that man only part evil as well or can I be so bold as to proclaim him as a person - EVIL?


As I said, Hitler is not a person who only murdered a few people as a killer is, he also did something to German society (whether all for the better is the question; I have the impression that Germans still carry scars from that period) and it was not all bad, albeit maybe somewhat 'empty'.

You're right, it wasn't only a few people. It was 6 million, and then millions and millions more who perished in the wars he himself was instrumental if not directly responsible for bringing about.

Emil and Kiki, you two need to give your heads a shake. Even if one removes from Hitler's record of deeds the holocaust and world war 2, the two most significant items on his resume, even without them the man must still be regarded as despicable and worthy of contempt. In approving of the rest of his tenure you are endorsing fascism. Hitler killed democracy in Germany, killed civil liberties, killed that institution essential to freedom in the modern world - the free press. From his rocketing rise to power to his ignominious downfall the man was a disaster for life and for freedom. Evil? I think so.

[kiki1982]

oo, splitting posts, that's where it gets serious :D.


It didn't work did it? And since Britain soldiered on anyway, if Hitler had killed or imprisoned all those troops he would have had a better chance bringing Britain to terms afterwards. And POWs mattered nothing to Hitler. Another sign of his military ineptitude was his insistence on keeping large numbers of troops busy watching over Jews while they were desperately needed on the fronts.

Do you actually read what you write? Firstly you say that POWs mattered little and then you say that he was stupid because he employed great amounts of troops guarding Jews. Not actually because they topped them up with other Jews (which were despised by their fellow inmates) and forced labour people (like that Demianyuk they recently convicted).
POWs cost a lot because they have to be properly maintained (Convention of Geneva - he did not always adhere to it, but POWs you don't want to mess with) and they are dangerous, certainly in vast numbers because they are soldiers. Soldiers who get bored is no good... They try to escape and mre important would maybe try to start a guerilla war... Hence they are more high maintenance than hungry Jews you want to murder anyway. So 100s of thousands of troops captured in Dunkirk you have to take with you every time you are retreating is not really a good idea. Killing them is not really an option, at least not where people could see it (in contrast to the Russians who killed the Polish army elite in an obsure wood somewhere and only admitted it after the war to Churchill).


That just makes me sick, to hear that coming from a German who is probably not Jewish. The final solution was not the result of a system, it was the direct result of the actions of a few men, largely those of Hitler and Himmler. If you had no Hitler or Himmler then other men may, MAY, have arisen to take their place and commit the same atrocities anyway, but those men would be just as evil and worthy of condemnation as Hitler and Himmler.

Excuse me? I would say that at least all the regulars on this forum know that I am BELGIAN that's why I mentioned it earlier. Ever heard of migration and prejudice? It seems that someone has anti-German ideas here.

You think such an inconceivable idea of killing peope in an industrial manner is the product of one mind? Let me tell you that they experimented first with shooting them, but that didn't work because soldiers became traumatised. Then they started experimenting with gas and finally landed with Zyklon B. Auschwitz was firstly a test site. Other experimental sites were Chelmno where they tried CO2 in trucks. Drivers came back traumatised beause of the screaming and were considered mad by other Germans. (true, same two women on the video)

In fact, the design for Auschwitz, from beds to barracks was the idea of another man who escaped (was it Hess or maybe another). An initial descign was commissioned and they decided to put their prisoners up in three-storey beds. Then someone else said, 'But why not 4 high, then the amount of barracks can be reduced and more can fit into one?' So it became four high.

The Endlösung was decided at a congress, not in one mind. The anti-semitic idea it sprang from had been far longer acceptable in Europe and in Germany more to the point here that it became what it became in Auschwitz and the rest (not to forget Sobibor, Dachau, etc.). It was a systematic acceptability of anti-semitism that made industrial killing of people because they were deemed 'Jews' or 'Jehova's witnesses' or 'Roma' (who were worse off than Jews even) just a matter of course.

If it had been the idea of one man only, he would not have got far. He would just have been a serial killer and that is all.


So you don't think Hitler was evil? Are you a Nazi sympathizer or just an old fashioned contrarian? You missed my hitchhiker metaphor I take it. He turned their economy around but also murdered in cold blood six million innocent people and lead his country to disastrous defeat. Was he evil you ask? What if a serial killer were a good employee and did volunteer service in his community in the time he's not cutting off people's heads. Is that man only part evil as well or can I be so bold as to proclaim him as a person - EVIL?

I am sorry? If I were to be really factual and cold I'd say something about te balance between all the people who were better off and those who were killed, but that would be inappropriate so I will take it back although I would stress the fact that the truth is grey.

However, I would not call a serial killer evil, no, because that is not the whole of him. It is maybe difficult to understand for you that nothing is white or black, but always different shades of grey. He expressed hatred for certain classes of people, and so did half the continent (forgot about Vichy did we, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands [they're still ashamed about it], Franco, even in the UK although those got beaten up in the East End, in Belgium too though that never caught on, Austria which welcomed Germany with open arms, and I could still go on a while, Sweden if I am not mistaken). It was a fashionable thing. Whatever the sick system produced under his presiding is of little consequence; Had he been in the UK, he would have been beaten up, put in prison, Mein Kampf would never have been published and he would have died a nobody. But he was somewhere else...


You're right, it wasn't only a few people. It was 6 million, and then millions and millions more who perished in the wars he himself was instrumental if not directly responsible for bringing about.

I'll tell you what, do we have to consider Gavrillo Prinzip as an evil man because he shot the heir to the throne of Ausstro-Hungary so that the whole lot went bang and the world was at war before it could say 'go'? Surely he was an evil man, because he was responsible. No, my friend, he was someone with his own agenda who did not know the consequences of his deed.
I think you will find that most wars are devised by the military only. It is not because Hitler was the Chancelor and President all in one that he devised most wars. The Russians were as much to blame in this, in fact, because they agreed to divide Poland up, which started the whole thing off in the first place. That was not even a war, that was a show. Once the thing went bang the British realised there was no stopping him and so they went for it.

Carpet bombing and the Blitz Krieg you can't call his ideas only. They were military ideas (quite brilliant in their own way, admittedly). he was not intelligent enough to think that, he was only a corporal (a rank you reach by experience only), for God's sake, what did he know of warfare? His military bloody well did. (excluding Goering and that was Hitler's mistake)

[Darcy88]

oo, splitting posts, that's where it gets serious :D.



Do you actually read what you write? Firstly you say that POWs mattered little and then you say that he was stupid because he employed great amounts of troops guarding Jews. Not actually because they topped them up with other Jews (which were despised by their fellow inmates) and forced labour people (like that Demianyuk they recently convicted).
POWs cost a lot because they have to be properly maintained (Convention of Geneva - he did not always adhere to it, but POWs you don't want to mess with) and they are dangerous, certainly in vast numbers because they are soldiers. Soldiers who get bored is no good... They try to escape and mre important would maybe try to start a guerilla war... Hence they are more high maintenance than hungry Jews you want to murder anyway. So 100s of thousands of troops captured in Dunkirk you have to take with you every time you are retreating is not really a good idea. Killing them is not really an option, at least not where people could see it (in contrast to the Russians who killed the Polish army elite in an obsure wood somewhere and only admitted it after the war to Churchill).

Come on. The logistical headache caused by having to deal with hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war is nothing compared to the consequences of having to face them in the field of battle. Nothing. And we know Hitler didn't mind having any number of prisoners because he set up concentration camps like a mole making mole hills. Millions of non-combatants did he confine. The British troops would not have been that tremendous of an addition. And the positives of taking them out of action vastly outweigh the negatives of keeping them captive.




Excuse me? I would say that at least all the regulars on this forum know that I am BELGIAN that's why I mentioned it earlier. Ever heard of migration and prejudice? It seems that someone has anti-German ideas here.


I apologize. It says you are in Germany so I just wrongfully assumed you were from there. I'm not really anti-German. I'm half German myself. In the Euro 2012 thread I yesterday posted that I'm rooting for Germany. Sometimes I admit that I am wary of Germany. Maybe its irrational, especially considering that world war 1 was not solely her fault, but sometimes I feel a certain apprehension at their economic and industrial power.


You think such an inconceivable idea of killing peope in an industrial manner is the product of one mind? Let me tell you that they experimented first with shooting them, but that didn't work because soldiers became traumatised. Then they started experimenting with gas and finally landed with Zyklon B. Auschwitz was firstly a test site. Other experimental sites were Chelmno where they tried CO2 in trucks. Drivers came back traumatised beause of the screaming and were considered mad by other Germans. (true, same two women on the video)

In fact, the design for Auschwitz, from beds to barracks was the idea of another man who escaped (was it Hess or maybe another). An initial descign was commissioned and they decided to put their prisoners up in three-storey beds. Then someone else said, 'But why not 4 high, then the amount of barracks can be reduced and more can fit into one?' So it became four high.

The Endlösung was decided at a congress, not in one mind. The anti-semitic idea it sprang from had been far longer acceptable in Europe and in Germany more to the point here that it became what it became in Auschwitz and the rest (not to forget Sobibor, Dachau, etc.). It was a systematic acceptability of anti-semitism that made industrial killing of people because they were deemed 'Jews' or 'Jehova's witnesses' or 'Roma' (who were worse off than Jews even) just a matter of course.

If it had been the idea of one man only, he would not have got far. He would just have been a serial killer and that is all.


So the sentences handed out at Nuremburg were unjust then? Whatever you believe the fact remains that the Nazi regime, the men in charge, Hitler and Himmler and the rest, were directly responsible for the holocaust. There is no way around the veracity of this charge. The plan originated at the top. We are not talking about anti-semitic German soldiers committing scattered war crimes on an individual or small-group level. We are talking about the Chancellor and his inner-circle orchestrating a vast and complex process of racial extermination. Seriously. Open your eyes to this.




I am sorry? If I were to be really factual and cold I'd say something about te balance between all the people who were better off and those who were killed, but that would be inappropriate so I will take it back although I would stress the fact that the truth is grey.

However, I would not call a serial killer evil, no, because that is not the whole of him. It is maybe difficult to understand for you that nothing is white or black, but always different shades of grey. He expressed hatred for certain classes of people, and so did half the continent (forgot about Vichy did we, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands [they're still ashamed about it], Franco, even in the UK although those got beaten up in the East End, in Belgium too though that never caught on, Austria which welcomed Germany with open arms, and I could still go on a while, Sweden if I am not mistaken). It was a fashionable thing. Whatever the sick system produced under his presiding is of little consequence; Had he been in the UK, he would have been beaten up, put in prison, Mein Kampf would never have been published and he would have died a nobody. But he was somewhere else...

A man orders the deaths of six million people after subverting freedom and democracy and plunging civilization into bloody chaos, that man is evil. There is such a thing as evil. Whatever the causes, the results were clear.



I think you will find that most wars are devised by the military only. It is not because Hitler was the Chancelor and President all in one that he devised most wars. The Russians were as much to blame in this, in fact, because they agreed to divide Poland up, which started the whole thing off in the first place. That was not even a war, that was a show. Once the thing went bang the British realised there was no stopping him and so they went for it.

The German high military command thought Hitler was insane for ordering the invasion of France. Hitler bears much responsibility for world war 2.

[JuniperWoolf]

I would say that most Germans at the time did not consider life too bad, and as Emil Miller says, the vast majority was probably better off, certainly through the scheme Kraft durch Freude. Does that make Hitler evil then? The killing people side of him is definitely, but making life better for most Germans is not, or is that also evil nowadays?

...By killing and stealing. If a thief kills one family to feed his own, does that make him admirable?

[KCurtis]

...By killing and stealing. If a thief kills one family to feed his own, does that make him admirable?

Excellent point. I hope everyone knows the answer to that one. Yes, Hitler was evil-it does not matter if he did anything good for the German people. Not one bit.

[Darcy88]

Excellent point. I hope everyone knows the answer to that one. Yes, Hitler was evil-it does not matter if he did anything good for the German people. Not one bit.

He enslaved the German people by cancelling elections and eliminating civil liberties and turning Germany into a police state. He sent them off to die in unnecessary wars. If good was done then at what cost? Liberty is worth much if not everything.

[stlukesguild]

No it is not a no-brainer. It seems a no-brainer, but it is not. If you, as the enemy do not really want to be the enemy, but you are pushed into that camp then killing off your advesary's troops is the last thing you have to do if you want a genuine peace treaty. If you adhere to the thesis that Hitler did not want to fight Britain, but Britain came to the rescue of Belgium as a guarantor for their neutrality, then Germany was pushed in the opposite camp from Britain. I suppose, if you do adhere to that thesis, that Hitler was planning the same as with Stalin: divide the continent amongst them (as Germany and Russia did with Poland). He violated that afterwards of course, and thus he would probably have done with Britain too, but do you think killing them all off in Dunkirk would have moved the British to a treaty? I tell you, the proud people from across the Channel would not have done so. Far from. They would not have succumbed to the Nazis if they were on their knees.

Interesting theory... but not backed up by history. There have been several theories as to the cause of delay in taking the British army prisoner at Dunkirk. One theory, strongly supported, was that Göering was anxious for the Lüftwaffe to have a share in the glory of the defeat as it had been the Panzer armor divisions that had rolled through Holland, Belgium, and were now on the way to victory over the French and British. Unfortunately the Lüftwaffe was delayed, and the effect of their bombs and bullets on the sandy beaches were not as effective as hoped.

As Wikipedia states, "In one of the most widely-debated decisions of the war, the Germans halted their advance on Dunkirk. Contrary to popular belief, what became known as "the Halt Order" did not originate with Adolf Hitler." One possible reason given was that the Germans wished to consolidate their forces facing the combined French and British forces in preparation for for a southward advance against the remaining French forces. Another possibility was that there were intentions of discussing a "conditional surrender".

He (Hitler) was trying to appease his enemy (if enemies they were from his point of view), not kill him off.

There is no historical proof of such an idea. Again, the most plausible notion is that the Germans wanted to consolidate their forces focused upon stopping a flight of the French to the south. The French, and not the British, were the far more important target in Hitler's mind as a result of their humiliation and continued pillage of Germany after WWI. The French, at the time, also had the world's largest standing army, not the British.

Beside of which, if he did not kill them off he was saddled with 100s of thousands of POWs. How was that going to benefit him?

That's simply naive. Even as it was, the Germans took some 40,000 British prisoners. Every prisoner in one less soldier in the enemy's ranks.

If there was any tactical blunder it must have been the British who did not consider the idea of having to retreat and getting stuck at the Channel. They would better have stayed on their island and fought the Germans that way. Instead of running off to the continent pretty much unprepared, certainly not for a retreat.

The tactical error was upon both the British and the French high-command who assumed that the war would be something of a repeat of WWI... a long, drawn-out battle in the trenches. The French, in preparation had built the Maginot Line. The German generals, however, took an unexpected tactic: the Blitzkrieg... a rapid armor advance with the aid of air support and disruption of communication lines and escape routes that skirted the French Maginot line by going through Belgium and Holland. Probably not even the German commanders thought that the tactic would prove as effective as it was, nor that the French and British opposition would crumble as rapidly as they did. The vastly inferior Polish forces had held out longer in the face of the combined invasion of the Germans and Russians.

What if Hitler had killed them all off?

Had the Germans taken the English armies at Dunkirk they still faced the reality of crossing the English Channel in the face of the greatest naval force in the world.

I tell you when Germany made a tactical blunder: the Battle of Britain. That was a tactical blunder. They vastly underestimated the power of Britain in the air and although Germany's planes were technologically better, they were so damn slow in building them that the British had soon the upper hand.

Not exactly. The Battle of Britain as mounted by the German generals was part of the best route toward dealing with England. Rather than mounting an invasion that they were unprepared for, they intended to pound Britain into starvation. They daily hit the British factories, ports, and airstrips with bombers while the German bomber escort fighters sought to divert the British fighters. The British fought admirably, in spite of inferior equipment for the simple reason that they were fighting in defense of their home. The British also had the advantage of radar that gave them advance warning of when and where German attacks were taking place.

The tactical error came when Hitler rescinded Directive no. 17:

Hitler's No. 17 Directive, issued 1 August 1940 on the conduct of war against England specifically prohibited Luftwaffe from conducting terror raids on its own initiative, and reserved the right of ordering terror attacks as means of reprisal for the Führer himself:

The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets which have weak defensive forces... The most thorough study of the target concerned, that is vital points of the target, is a pre-requisite for success. It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population.

The Luftwaffe offensive against Britain had included numerous raids on major ports since August, but Hitler had issued a directive London was not to be bombed save on his sole instruction. However, on the afternoon of 15 August, Hauptmann Walter Rubensdörffer leading Erprobungsgruppe 210 mistakenly bombed the Croydon airfield on the outskirts of London instead of the intended target, RAF Kenley; this was followed on the night of 23/24 August by the accidental bombing of Harrow.

Churchill responded with an August 25 raid upon Berlin intended to show the German population that contrary to boasts of Hermann Göering, that the British could strike at the heart of the German capitol. 81 bombers of Bombers Command were sent to raid (ostensibly) industrial and commercial targets in Berlin yet a great many bombs fell across the city, causing some casualties amongst the civilian population as well as damage to residential areas. In retaliation Hitler withdrew his directive, and orders were given to target London with terror bombing daily. This bombing resulted in a strengthening of the resolve of the British populace and gave the British factories and airstrips time time to rebuild.

The reality is that the tactic of daily bombing of the British industrial and military sites and especially the sea ports, combined with the continual destruction of ships headed to England by the German submarine forces had been highly effective, and had they continued on this route, the British almost certainly would have been forced into coming to terms with the Germans.

But the Third Reich is not only the Endlösung! That is only a short episode in the whole period. And that Endlösung did not even come from Hitler alone, but from the system. You think he thought it all up himself?

Now I will say that I am not one who buys into the notion that Hitler was stupid or ignorant. Nor will I deny that his rein had a positive impact upon the lives of some individuals. The same can be said of Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot. However, as an American of German heritage I have no qualms whatsoever about calling Hitler "evil". He has the blood on his hands of not only millions of Jews... but also millions of Germans, Poles, Russians, etc... Where Hitler goes beyond a dictator such as Napoleon is in his genocide of millions of innocent citizens that he considered "inferior": the mentally retarded, homosexuals, the elderly, the physically handicapped, the Jews, Poles, Russians, Slavs... etc... This genocide... the systematic and mechanized execution of countless innocent human beings in concentration camps, mass graves, and slave labor camps goes far beyond the deaths caused as a result of warfare... and eventually these continued efforts to rapidly execute as many Jews as possible during the waning days of the war took precedent even over supplying the German military with needed equipment.

Ironically, where many Russians initially looked upon the invading German forces as saving them from the horrors imposed by Stalin, the treatment of the Russians by the invading Germans resulted in their increased resolve to stand together against the invaders.

[stlukesguild]

However, I would not call a serial killer evil, no, because that is not the whole of him. It is maybe difficult to understand for you that nothing is white or black, but always different shades of grey.

That's just politically correct nonsense. A concentration camp commander can line up thousands of women and children and order that they be gunned down in cold blood... but he is not evil because he's nice to his dog and takes his mistress out to a fine meal afterwards?

[Darcy88]

Probably not even the German commanders thought that the tactic would prove as effective as it was, nor that the French and British opposition would crumble as rapidly as they did. The vastly inferior Polish forces had held out longer in the face of the combined invasion of the Germans and Russians.


Apparently the German generals thought Hitler had gone mad when they were ordered to invade France. So unnerved were they that they planned to march on Berlin and depose the fuhrer, only they were unable to secure the participation of a certain man occupying a strategically vital military post and so had to call it off. This could be a load of bologna, since I did read it in a book of interviews of German generals, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were accurate.

Another interesting thing I read in that book was that during the so called "phony" 8 month phase of the war, after the invasion of Poland but prior to the invasion of France and the low countries, that the Germans were outnumbered by the allies in troop and tank divisions two to one along the German border. The generals said they couldn't believe that the allies were not invading and that if they had they would have had a pretty easy path straight to Berlin.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

However, I would not call a serial killer evil, no, because that is not the whole of him. It is maybe difficult to understand for you that nothing is white or black, but always different shades of grey.

That's just politically correct nonsense. A concentration camp commander can line up thousands of women and children and order that they be gunned down in cold blood... but he is not evil because he's nice to his dog and takes his mistress out to a fine meal afterwards?

:lol: Things may always be in shades of gray, but then one must concede there are darker shades and lighter shades. Anyone who think Hitler isn't at the darkest end of the spectrum is simply deluded. He was evil. Serial killers are evil. Hell, people who torture animals are evil. I don't see what's wrong with thinking that. It seems perfectly reasonable.

[Darcy88]

:lol: Things may always be in shades of gray, but then one must concede there are darker shades and lighter shades. Anyone who think Hitler isn't at the darkest end of the spectrum is simply deluded. He was evil. Serial killers are evil. Hell, people who torture animals are evil. I don't see what's wrong with thinking that. It seems perfectly reasonable.

The other poster is arguing not only that everything is not black and white and there is in fact grey, they are arguing that there is no black and white, there is only grey.

[Mr.lucifer]

Evil people are usually more complex than comic villains, but they are still evil. The only way a serial killer can be considered evil is only they were very insane. Then thee would be more like dogs with rabies.

[cafolini]

The German people knew very well where Hitler and Co. were leading them and most were Nazi's voluntarily long before they were formally organized. Hitler was merely the political author of the insanity the people wanted to hear. If there is any doubt about the responsibility of the people of insane Weimar, you may try to imagine doing the same thing with the people of the United States of America. You wouldn't last a week. Don't play with it. Don't gamble with it. This is indeed the land of the free and the home of the brave, and that is cast in bronce (so to speak), coming from the fathers of America and what has always been demonstrated as our flag was still there and will remain there. Case closed.

America will never fight against free speech and ignorance. It is obvious that inside the United States we have lots of people that can't read it properly with historical information and sense. There occurs no consequent fear in that regard. All consequent fears in America and what we will protect it from with our lives, if necessary, come from the insanity of crazy cultures that could attack anytime. We will keep improving military technology and training to deal with it. And no military will ever rule the civilian authorities in America. It's in the open. Free speech? Yes. Disinformation about what can happen from the momentary and crazy arguments from people who are getting a generous chance to see who we are? Never. Don't gamble on it. Not a chance is feasible.
"I'll not take any option away from the table."
"Those who see the waning of American influence, don't know what they are talking about." Obama, during the latest State of the Union speech.
Make no mistake: "justice will be done."

I'm not certain if cafolini actually believes the nonsense he spouts... or if it is actually intended as satire. Either way it makes for some comic reading.

As much as you know about many subjects, your coments about this particular one are far more comical than the totality of what I wrote in Linet.
So long as you think of my stuff as belief or disbelief, you will no get a chance to grasp it. You do not understand how the United States of America functions.

[cafolini]

Here is an image of a pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939.

http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/00/00872.jpg

The fact that in America we can allow this and not worry much about it is pricisely the greatness of America. We don't mind their expression. They have, must, and will always submit to freedom after all.

[Darcy88]

The fact that in America we can allow this and not worry much about it is pricisely the greatness of America. We don't mind their expression. They have, must, and will always submit to freedom after all.

.....

Never mind. Too political.

[KCurtis]

He enslaved the German people by cancelling elections and eliminating civil liberties and turning Germany into a police state. He sent them off to die in unnecessary wars. If good was done then at what cost? Liberty is worth much if not everything.

Agreed

[KCurtis]

.....

Never mind. Too political.

I think we did worry about it. So did Canada-when my grandfather was interned for giving pro-Nazi speeches it was because Canada minded- and should have.

[kiki1982]

The other poster is arguing not only that everything is not black and white and there is in fact grey, they are arguing that there is no black and white, there is only grey.

Oh, come on, everything has a cause and an effect. so many things have been written about this man and so many psychological assessments made that you can call him strange, twisted, psychopathic, narcissistic and a whole score of other things, but evil? What is evil?

Was Robbespierre evil because he wanted to kill all aristocrats (had he had his way and not been killed by his own beloved giullotine there would at least have been a few ten thousand people less on earth).
Were the very first Americans evil for practically killing the whle Indian population because of their fetish with slaves? Were the slave traders evil because they considered blacks as cargo (similar to the Nazis in fact). Ok so they were not setting out to kill them all, but they definitely made life unbearable for them and knew it full well. When they had discovered the blacks, they confiscated Indian lands and locked them up in reserves... hmmm


Interesting theory... but not backed up by history. There have been several theories as to the cause of delay in taking the British army prisoner at Dunkirk. One theory, strongly supported, was that Göering was anxious for the Lüftwaffe to have a share in the glory of the defeat as it had been the Panzer armor divisions that had rolled through Holland, Belgium, and were now on the way to victory over the French and British. Unfortunately the Lüftwaffe was delayed, and the effect of their bombs and bullets on the sandy beaches were not as effective as hoped.

As Wikipedia states, "In one of the most widely-debated decisions of the war, the Germans halted their advance on Dunkirk. Contrary to popular belief, what became known as "the Halt Order" did not originate with Adolf Hitler." One possible reason given was that the Germans wished to consolidate their forces facing the combined French and British forces in preparation for for a southward advance against the remaining French forces. Another possibility was that there were intentions of discussing a "conditional surrender".

Well, conglommerate the two then.

I suppose that's contamination from living with an Englishman.


That's simply naive. Even as it was, the Germans took some 40,000 British prisoners. Every prisoner in one less soldier in the enemy's ranks.

Not naïve. The more people you have to schlepp with you, the more difficult it is, logistically for a start.


Not exactly. The Battle of Britain as mounted by the German generals was part of the best route toward dealing with England. Rather than mounting an invasion that they were unprepared for, they intended to pound Britain into starvation. They daily hit the British factories, ports, and airstrips with bombers while the German bomber escort fighters sought to divert the British fighters. The British fought admirably, in spite of inferior equipment for the simple reason that they were fighting in defense of their home. The British also had the advantage of radar that gave them advance warning of when and where German attacks were taking place.

The Maginot line was part of that yes, however, German intelligence documents of the time show that (I believe) they estimated the actual Airforce as about half its size. That's a major problem. To add to that, they were extremely slow in building their planes (about 2 weeks I think before they rolled out of the factory) while the British could do two days. So, you shoot them down and they're back in the air. For every German plane that goes down and is lost there are an etra 7 before the German one on its own can be replaced. Not very clever in a war situation, wouldn't you say? On top of this, the German planes were more difficult to get out of so there was a higher chance of German airmen dying than there was for British.
British planes were also much much cheaper and they were easy to repair, which made the RAF much more agile than the Luftwaffe despite the latter having much better technology.

And yes they were fighting for their home, but surely that cannot have made the planes roll out of the factory can it. That's romantic nonsense to me.


The tactical error came when Hitler rescinded Directive no. 17.

Hitler's No. 17 Directive, issued 1 August 1940 on the conduct of war against England specifically prohibited Luftwaffe from conducting terror raids on its own initiative, and reserved the right of ordering terror attacks as means of reprisal for the Führer himself:

The Luftwaffe offensive against Britain had included numerous raids on major ports since August, but Hitler had issued a directive London was not to be bombed save on his sole instruction. However, on the afternoon of 15 August, Hauptmann Walter Rubensdörffer leading Erprobungsgruppe 210 mistakenly bombed the Croydon airfield on the outskirts of London instead of the intended target, RAF Kenley; this was followed on the night of 23/24 August by the accidental bombing of Harrow...

I have been told that Germany wanted to avoid any of the excesses from WWI where they burned, raped and beat just because they liked it or because they got drunk. Such things happened in my hometown where civilians were caught in crossfire between two German regiments who had been drinking and who thought that the other was the enemy. For the same thing they were subjected to reprisals.

I don't know whether that is true, but it is a fact that at least in Belgium the German troops were pretty well-behaved apart from the fact that they were soldiers, of course. I have been told by a relative that 'they sang so nicely when on patroll, in different voices as well.' :rolleyes:


Now I will say that I am not one who buys into the notion that Hitler was stupid or ignorant. Nor will I deny that his rein had a positive impact upon the lives of some individuals. The same can be said of Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot. However, as an American of German heritage I have no qualms whatsoever about calling Hitler "evil". He has the blood on his hands of not only millions of Jews... but also millions of Germans, Poles, Russians, etc... Where Hitler goes beyond a dictator such as Napoleon is in his genocide of millions of innocent citizens that he considered "inferior": the mentally retarded, homosexuals, the elderly, the physically handicapped, the Jews, Poles, Russians, Slavs... etc... This genocide... the systematic and mechanized execution of countless innocent human beings in concentration camps, mass graves, and slave labor camps goes far beyond the deaths caused as a result of warfare... and eventually these continued efforts to rapidly execute as many Jews as possible during the waning days of the war took precedent even over supplying the German military with needed equipment.

It has been argued by at least one historian that the genocide was not an aim from the beginning. Hitler had earlier requested Goering deal with 'the Jewish Question' who then asked someone else. However, there are indications that they meant to assemble them and then ship them off to an area, pretty much like the Indian reserves in America where they would leave them to themselves and be rid of them. To this effect they chased them over the border with the Sowiet Union when they were occupying Poland. There is discussion about where they were actually considering to put them as a vast area was needed, but some consider it to be Siberia. It is clear that after their Russian defeat, the genocide took off, partly fed by concerns that they couldn't feed them all in the ghettos (they had to work for food basically). They did a trial of a few transports of 5,000 deportees which they locked up in a self-built camp in the Lublin area of Poland, but it did not seem practicable and so they abandoned the idea.

There is no doubt that assembling people, locking them up etc. would eventually lead to extermination if they became a burden, but it can be seen as the effect of a system where anti-semitism and banning them from society had been made completely acceptable. Who was first? Anti-semitism or Hitler? And to what extent was Hitler influenced by already existent anti-semitism? And why?
Anti-semitism and killing Jews because they were Jews, regarding homosexuals as evil, killing Roma, killing or locking away people because they are 'idiots', lunatics or whatever was there long before him. The much loved Aryan race in the mind of Himmler will have added to the Lebensborn and euthanasia idea and the rumours about the Jews who caused WWI will have influenced ideas these people and the rest had. If it became acceptable to kill people on a great scale, it must have been not because Hitler alone told people so, but because everyone thought so. The average German may not have known that Jews were being killed on an industrial scale, but they did participate in and allowed initial anti-semitic things to happen as well as allowed themselves to be influenced.


That's just politically correct nonsense. A concentration camp commander can line up thousands of women and children and order that they be gunned down in cold blood... but he is not evil because he's nice to his dog and takes his mistress out to a fine meal afterwards?

Not PC nonsense. The concentration camp commander is expected to do so, is influenced by the system. In all likelihood he has spent his adult life surrounded by racist speech. The constant bombardment of such information corrupts a person. Look at the Americans and their slaves: so long it has lasted before they realised that blacks were also people, and they still have problems with it in some places!
There is a difference between entertaining the thought of exterminating people and actually doing it, personally presiding over it or shooting them from your balcony because you feel like shooting a few that morning (Goeth who was arrested for embezzlement). I can think of a whole lot more people in the Nazi regime who I could consider more twisted and evil than Hitler.

[Darcy88]

Oh, come on, everything has a cause and an effect. so many things have been written about this man and so many psychological assessments made that you can call him strange, twisted, psychopathic, narcissistic and a whole score of other things, but evil? What is evil?

Was Robbespierre evil because he wanted to kill all aristocrats (had he had his way and not been killed by his own beloved giullotine there would at least have been a few ten thousand people less on earth).
Were the very first Americans evil for practically killing the whle Indian population because of their fetish with slaves? Were the slave traders evil because they considered blacks as cargo (similar to the Nazis in fact). Ok so they were not setting out to kill them all, but they definitely made life unbearable for them and knew it full well. When they had discovered the blacks, they confiscated Indian lands and locked them up in reserves... hmmm


YES, they are evil. Hitler was evil. The man who crammed African men, women and children into the dark putrid hulls of those slave ships was evil too. Robespierre was pretty awful, I have no problem calling him evil. But Robespierre and Hitler are in entirely different ball parks. There is such a thing as evil Kiki. Its philosophical bull**** to blur the distinction between good and evil by fleshing out the causes and the effects. Whatever the causes, evil exists. A man who orders the deaths of six million people is evil. Say it was his inner circle and not even Hitler who ordered it, even though that's false. If he did nothing to stop it he is as evil as they. Its easy for you to say Hitler was not evil. Would have been much harder for a young Jewish child whose parents had choked to death on gas and who was soon to be next to say the same.

And its grossly absurd to say that the logistics of confining all those British soldiers as POWs would be too big a deal and render that prospect more problematic than having to fight them again in Normandy 4 years later.

Evil is the opposite of good. Love is good, justice is good, beauty is good, many other things are good. Hitler personified the opposite of these things, he personified evil.

[stlukesguild]

Was Robbespierre evil because he wanted to kill all aristocrats (had he had his way and not been killed by his own beloved giullotine there would at least have been a few ten thousand people less on earth).
Were the very first Americans evil for practically killing the whle Indian population because of their fetish with slaves? Were the slave traders evil because they considered blacks as cargo (similar to the Nazis in fact). Ok so they were not setting out to kill them all, but they definitely made life unbearable for them and knew it full well. When they had discovered the blacks, they confiscated Indian lands and locked them up in reserves... hmmm


You seem to have a hard time with moral; issues. None of your examples is too difficult to answer. Was Robbespierre "evil" for unleashing the "rein of terror"? Yes. Were the first Americans "evil" for killing virtually the whole Indian nation? Certainly those who ordered the killing (employed Smallpox infected blankets, etc...) and participated in such killing might be termed as such. Were the slave traders "evil"? Most certainly. In every instance these individuals saw other human beings as inferior beings undeserving of life and freely condemned them and killed them as if they were eradicating vermin. Almost certainly a great majority of those most involved in such actions took distinct sadistic pleasure in their actions. The irony of your ridiculous attempt at a defense is that it is the same defense that the Nazi war criminals attempted to mount after the war at the Nuremberg Trials: "I am innocent because the context was different." "I cannot be held responsible for my actions because the society as a whole accepted that the Jews and Homosexuals and Handicapped were inferior beings". It is the most lame of Liberal excuses... the notion that the individual cannot be held responsible for his or her actions because he or she is but a product of society.

SLG (quoted)-That's simply naive. Even as it was, the Germans took some 40,000 British prisoners. Every prisoner in one less soldier in the enemy's ranks.

Not naïve. The more people you have to schlepp with you, the more difficult it is, logistically for a start.

Housing such prisoners is far easier that dealing with the same individuals as armed soldiers. Both sides housed hundreds or thousands of prisoners throughout the war. They are simply transported to some point distant from the front... ideally in some isolated locale. This makes escape and reconnecting with one's side a near impossibility.

The Maginot line was part of that yes, however, German intelligence documents of the time show that (I believe) they estimated the actual Airforce as about half its size. That's a major problem. To add to that, they were extremely slow in building their planes (about 2 weeks I think before they rolled out of the factory) while the British could do two days. So, you shoot them down and they're back in the air. For every German plane that goes down and is lost there are an etra 7 before the German one on its own can be replaced. Not very clever in a war situation, wouldn't you say? On top of this, the German planes were more difficult to get out of so there was a higher chance of German airmen dying than there was for British.
British planes were also much much cheaper and they were easy to repair, which made the RAF much more agile than the Luftwaffe despite the latter having much better technology.

And yes they were fighting for their home, but surely that cannot have made the planes roll out of the factory can it. That's romantic nonsense to me.

I have never come across any data concerning the roll-over speed in turning out replacement aircraft during the Battle of Britain, and my father was a WWII Air-war aficionado. The size of the German air-forces employed during the whole of the battle numbered 2,550 while the British forces numbered 1,963. This shows a clear German advantage in numbers as well as in the technology of the aircraft. The Luftwaffe's Messerschmitt Bf 109E and Bf 110C were faster than the RAF's Hurricane Mk I and the Spitfire. In spite of this the German casualties numbered nearly 2700 aircrew vs British losses of less than 550. The British had several advantages. Most important was that of the Radar system which afforded the British advance warning of incoming German aircraft and their positions. Secondly the German pilots were quite limited in terms of engagement time. Having flown from bases in Belgium, Holland, and France they rapidly ran out of fuel and had to return home. The British pilots referred to this as "Channel Sickness". The British, on the other hand, could rapidly land, refuel, and re-engage in the fray. Another huge disadvantage was the fact that the Germans never developed serviceable large, long-distance bombers such as the British Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax, and the Short Stirling and the American B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Consolidated, and B-29 Superfortress. Without such long-distance fighters able to deliver huge payloads, the Germans were unable to hit targets in the further Northern reaches of Great Britain and unable to deliver a large enough payload to do significant damage. Ultimately, it was the decision to shift from military, industrial and shipping targets to the terror bombing campaign against the British cities that afforded the British time to rebuild and eventuall take control of the air-war. The allied forces, however, did not gain a tactical superiority in the number of planes until 1942 when the Luftwaffe had committed a large percentage of its forces to the Russian front, while the Americans had entered the war bringing with them the advantage of the largest industrial complex in the world (Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc...) wholly unhampered by German bombers.

I have been told that Germany wanted to avoid any of the excesses from WWI where they burned, raped and beat just because they liked it or because they got drunk. Such things happened in my hometown where civilians were caught in crossfire between two German regiments who had been drinking and who thought that the other was the enemy. For the same thing they were subjected to reprisals.

I don't know whether that is true, but it is a fact that at least in Belgium the German troops were pretty well-behaved apart from the fact that they were soldiers, of course. I have been told by a relative that 'they sang so nicely when on patroll, in different voices as well.'

When one has the upper hand, one can afford to be magnanimous. Look at the American bombing tactics in the Middle-East. Attacks are precisely focused upon military targets. Of course there are mistakes which result in civilian casualties: "collateral damage in military terminology... but what do you think the American tactic would be if they were seriously fighting for survival. Carpet bombing of the sort used in WWII would not be out of the question. The problem is that the obsession with rounding up the Jews... and the atrocious treatment of the civilians in the Eastern front... the "inferior Slavs" resulted in an increased resolve and hatred of the Germans to such an extent that the Germans feared the Russians and their reprisals far worse that they feared the Western allies. There were even talks of a conditional surrender to the US and Britain while being allowed to continue on with the war in the East.

Who was first? Anti-semitism or Hitler? And to what extent was Hitler influenced by already existent anti-semitism? And why?

How is that even relevant. As a Rabbi friend of my studio mate has stated on a number of occasions, the only surprising thing about the Holocaust was that it hadn't been undertaken by the French as they were even more antisemitic than the Germans. Whatever the reality of antisemitism, it was Hitler and his high-ranking officials (especially Heinrich Himmler) who ordered the extermination of the Jews and other "inferior" human beings.

Anti-semitism and killing Jews because they were Jews, regarding homosexuals as evil, killing Roma, killing or locking away people because they are 'idiots', lunatics or whatever was there long before him.

Again... that sound's like the excuse used at Nuremberg... or a child's excuse: "Well X did it to so I thought that executing human beings in concentration camps was something everyone did."

Not PC nonsense. The concentration camp commander is expected to do so, is influenced by the system. In all likelihood he has spent his adult life surrounded by racist speech. The constant bombardment of such information corrupts a person. Look at the Americans and their slaves: so long it has lasted before they realised that blacks were also people, and they still have problems with it in some places!
There is a difference between entertaining the thought of exterminating people and actually doing it, personally presiding over it or shooting them from your balcony because you feel like shooting a few that morning (Goeth who was arrested for embezzlement). I can think of a whole lot more people in the Nazi regime who I could consider more twisted and evil than Hitler.

You really do have difficulty entertaining the idea of personal responsibility and morality. Again, this defense was completely deemed irrelevant by the judges at Nuremberg. You don't get a free pass on morality by simply claiming that you were merely following orders.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Plus, I don't get the argument that because someone doesn't think they're doing something wrong doesn't make them evil. Oh, so the slave traders, serial killers, and genocide committers didn't think they were doing anything wrong, didn't think they were being mean? They must not be evil then, because evil acts can only be committed when the committer realizes what he's doing is evil! Please.

[kiki1982]

You seem to have a hard time with moral; issues. None of your examples is too difficult to answer. Was Robbespierre "evil" for unleashing the "rein of terror"? Yes. Were the first Americans "evil" for killing virtually the whole Indian nation? Certainly those who ordered the killing (employed Smallpox infected blankets, etc...) and participated in such killing might be termed as such. Were the slave traders "evil"? Most certainly. In every instance these individuals saw other human beings as inferior beings undeserving of life and freely condemned them and killed them as if they were eradicating vermin. Almost certainly a great majority of those most involved in such actions took distinct sadistic pleasure in their actions. The irony of your ridiculous attempt at a defense is that it is the same defense that the Nazi war criminals attempted to mount after the war at the Nuremberg Trials: "I am innocent because the context was different." "I cannot be held responsible for my actions because the society as a whole accepted that the Jews and Homosexuals and Handicapped were inferior beings". It is the most lame of Liberal excuses... the notion that the individual cannot be held responsible for his or her actions because he or she is but a product of society.

Oh, but now I see what the problem is in this discussion: you practice the idea that 'what I find evil from my present viewpoint is evil in itself' and I practice the idea that 'things must be understood in thier context, however despicable, sick etc. they are.' You are imposing your modern day morality on history which is a major flaw in understanding anything in history, if not irrelevant.

Robbespierre was maybe a tirant, but not evil. He had principles and followed them, that is all, maybe fed by a few excessive and abusive noblemen of the time. Unfortnately his reign of terror was allowed to continue for a short while. Calling it evil is irrelevant as it contributes nothing to understanding it.
Same goes for slavery.


I have never come across any data concerning the roll-over speed in turning out replacement aircraft during the Battle of Britain, and my father was a WWII Air-war aficionado. The size of the German air-forces employed during the whole of the battle numbered 2,550 while the British forces numbered 1,963. This shows a clear German advantage in numbers as well as in the technology of the aircraft. The Luftwaffe's Messerschmitt Bf 109E and Bf 110C were faster than the RAF's Hurricane Mk I and the Spitfire. In spite of this the German casualties numbered nearly 2700 aircrew vs British losses of less than 550. The British had several advantages. Most important was that of the Radar system which afforded the British advance warning of incoming German aircraft and their positions. Secondly the German pilots were quite limited in terms of engagement time. Having flown from bases in Belgium, Holland, and France they rapidly ran out of fuel and had to return home. The British pilots referred to this as "Channel Sickness". The British, on the other hand, could rapidly land, refuel, and re-engage in the fray. Another huge disadvantage was the fact that the Germans never developed serviceable large, long-distance bombers such as the British Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax, and the Short Stirling and the American B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Consolidated, and B-29 Superfortress. Without such long-distance fighters able to deliver huge payloads, the Germans were unable to hit targets in the further Northern reaches of Great Britain and unable to deliver a large enough payload to do significant damage. Ultimately, it was the decision to shift from military, industrial and shipping targets to the terror bombing campaign against the British cities that afforded the British time to rebuild and eventuall take control of the air-war. The allied forces, however, did not gain a tactical superiority in the number of planes until 1942 when the Luftwaffe had committed a large percentage of its forces to the Russian front, while the Americans had entered the war bringing with them the advantage of the largest industrial complex in the world (Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc...) wholly unhampered by German bombers.

I know all that, not in too much detail, but it is a fact only recently released that they vastly underestimated the stock of planes the English had and German slowness in producing theirs meant that soon, the British had the upper hand in sheer amount of planes.
And yes, also the fatal mistake of leaving military targets to one side.


When one has the upper hand, one can afford to be magnanimous. Look at the American bombing tactics in the Middle-East. Attacks are precisely focused upon military targets. Of course there are mistakes which result in civilian casualties: "collateral damage in military terminology... but what do you think the American tactic would be if they were seriously fighting for survival. Carpet bombing of the sort used in WWII would not be out of the question. The problem is that the obsession with rounding up the Jews... and the atrocious treatment of the civilians in the Eastern front... the "inferior Slavs" resulted in an increased resolve and hatred of the Germans to such an extent that the Germans feared the Russians and their reprisals far worse that they feared the Western allies. There were even talks of a conditional surrender to the US and Britain while being allowed to continue on with the war in the East.

The Russian military has always been quite 'behind the times' in views on the enemy if I can be really crude. Not only against the Germans, against all they conquered. It is true that the Gemans hanged themselves out of pure terror for the Russians, but then the Red Army was not much better towards their fellow Slavs the Polish (however, they did despise them). That is the only real-life account I have heard, though, but the Russian psyche does not bode well for anyone else who has been conquered and is essentially weaker.


How is that even relevant. As a Rabbi friend of my studio mate has stated on a number of occasions, the only surprising thing about the Holocaust was that it hadn't been undertaken by the French as they were even more antisemitic than the Germans. Whatever the reality of antisemitism, it was Hitler and his high-ranking officials (especially Heinrich Himmler) who ordered the extermination of the Jews and other "inferior" human beings.

Hitler ordered Goering to solve 'the Jewish question' which initially was leaning towards forced migration (like the Tatars in Russia). It was only later that industrial etermination began. And it is known he knew about it and it is known that he did not do anything about it, but you can't call the system - which involved people like Eichmann who joined the SS to 'make a career' - and what it produced as the ideas of a few people. Eichmann, when tried in Israel, was called 'normal', even by Israeli psychiatrists although he organised the mass extermination of Jews and admitted it (in spite of what he said in the trial about following orders, tapes were found later in which he admits). If even people who are bound to be slightly biased admit he is totally normal, what does that say about being evil?

The system was evil, the people never were at their core, they were only influenced by it.


Again... that sound's like the excuse used at Nuremberg... or a child's excuse: "Well X did it to so I thought that executing human beings in concentration camps was something everyone did."

With your morality, I would like to see you try and do something else in such a climate. Remember, you have been in such a climate of hatred for at least 20 years, you have been bombarded with propaganda for the last 15 years and you are only moving in circles which endorse this kind of thing. And you possibly fear to end up the same as your prinsoners if you dare to put a foot crooked. At least Eva Braun said once to her sister (who was married to an SS official) when she asked questions about the poor lot of those prisoners that 'if [she wasn't] careful, [she] might end up there as well and then [she could] do nothing for [her] anymore.'


You really do have difficulty entertaining the idea of personal responsibility and morality. Again, this defense was completely deemed irrelevant by the judges at Nuremberg. You don't get a free pass on morality by simply claiming that you were merely following orders.

I never said he was not responsible, I only said I could never consider any person *evil*. As I said and I still believe the Nuremberg trials were a good start, but I hardly believe there was any way people were not going to be convicted. Admittedly, a few were acquitted, or came off with a light sentence, but the vast majority was convicted. They were all involved, yes, but were they all totally convinced of what they were doing had they not been subjected to the system for so long? I don't know.

Have you ever seen a film called De Tweeling (The Twins). A pair of twins is separated because their parents die or something. One goes to relatives in Germany and the other to relatives in the Netherlands. The one who is with relatives in Germany gains a boyfriend and husband who joined the SS because he had the right looks and he felt flattered he was offered the opportunity. Eventually he dies in the war. The other gains a Jewish boyfriend who was murdered or at least put in a camp. Eventually they meet up and when the former complains about her lot of widow the latter blames the former. Why?

Eichmann joined the SS to make a career, or so he said himself. He can't help that he was asked to do something because his organisational talents made him the right man for the job. And he cannot help being emotionally scarred if you will (that is essentially what racism is) by spending his youth subjected to hatred for less than perfect people. It was the process of firstly despising Jews, then attacking them on the street and finding that OK, then taking them from society that made sure they were ever less human and more beast. Hence the process of first cramming them into passenger trains and then in cattle carriages with straw into the bargain. From there, it is just a small step to killing them. Mr Stanley Milgram has illustrated the kind of paralysis in his Lost Letter experiment. You think that does not apply to these people then? Arendt who reported on Eichmann got it wrong based on his own defence of only taking orders, but I think Milgram hits the nail on the head. And thus there was also such a process in the Sonderommandos which had to shove dead people from te gas chambers into the ovens. Firstly they did it one by one because they were fellow people, and finally they just crammed them all on one rail and shoved them in. They admitted they did not see them as people anymore. Are these people evil? They are bound not to be because they were fellow Jews, yet someone subjected to hatred for Jews since childhood is supposed to still hold a neutral opinion? You know as well as I that that is impossible.

[Drkshadow03]

Oh, but now I see what the problem is in this discussion: you practice the idea that 'what I find evil from my present viewpoint is evil in itself' and I practice the idea that 'things must be understood in thier context, however despicable, sick etc. they are.' You are imposing your modern day morality on history which is a major flaw in understanding anything in history, if not irrelevant.

Robbespierre was maybe a tirant, but not evil. He had principles and followed them, that is all, maybe fed by a few excessive and abusive noblemen of the time. Unfortnately his reign of terror was allowed to continue for a short while. Calling it evil is irrelevant as it contributes nothing to understanding it.
Same goes for slavery.



No, the problem is that just because one should view history within its context doesn't mean one cannot also bring in their own value-judgements and condemn the ethics of individuals or even large sections of society.

I don't think there is anything particularly controversial about saying, "The German Dictator who instituted the murder of 6 million Jews and many other people who he perceived as undesirable such as Roma and gays, was an evil man."

[OrphanPip]

I was just a paper hanger
No one more obscurer
Got a phone call from the Reichstag
Told me I was Fuhrer
Germany was blue
What, oh, what to do?
Hitched up my pants
And conquered France
Now Deutschland's smiling through!
But it wasn't always so easy...
It was 1932. Hindenburg was working the Big Room and I...
I was playing the lounge. And then I got my big break.
Somebody burned down the Reichstag. And, would you believe it?
They made me Chancellor. Chancellor!
It ain't no myst'ry
If it's politics or hist'ry
The thing you gotta know is
Ev'rything is show biz
Heil myself
Watch my show
I'm the German Ethel Merman
Dontcha know
We are crossing borders
The new world order is here
Make a great big smile
Ev'ryone sieg heil to me
Wonderful me!
And now it's...
CHORUS:
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Goose-step's the new step today

[Darcy88]

Eichmann joined the SS to make a career, or so he said himself. He can't help that he was asked to do something because his organisational talents made him the right man for the job.

YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

[Alexander III]

YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

But there is a wrongness in saying "YES HE CAN HELP IT" when I and you would and all of us would have not had the courage to sacrifice ourselves for others.

[mal4mac]

Oh, but now I see what the problem is in this discussion: you practice the idea that 'what I find evil from my present viewpoint is evil in itself' and I practice the idea that 'things must be understood in thier context, however despicable, sick etc. they are.' You are imposing your modern day morality on history which is a major flaw in understanding anything in history, if not irrelevant.


'One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.' - The Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule is a standard that has been in place for millenia, if not from the dawn of human cognition. It's a fairy obvious moral standard that people can surely see is the 'right thing'. If they don't, if they go against it, then they are evil - now, then, whenever.

Hitler, the slave owners, Robespierre and the large minority of German people who voted Hitler in, consciously went against the Golden Rule. They were 'bad and harmful' people by any standard, historical or present day. And 'bad and harmful' is the dictionary definition of 'evil'.

Saying that Robbespierre was evil contributes to understanding, because we can then ask why he was evil, why didn't he follow the Golden Rule? Same goes for slavery.

Eichmann joined the SS to make a career, at the expense of following the Golden Rule. You can't use the excuse 'I was just following orders'. He was evil. Full stop.

The Jews who had to shove dead people from the gas chambers into the ovens were not evil. Who cares what anyone does with your dead body? You can't feel and suffer after you are dead.

[Darcy88]

But there is a wrongness in saying "YES HE CAN HELP IT" when I and you would and all of us would have not had the courage to sacrifice ourselves for others.

Actually, in all honesty, I would never be an Eichmann. Maybe I could have possibly been a Hitler supporter at that time, but there is no way in hell I myself would have killed innocent Jews. And there were a LOT of Germans who wouldn't have been able to take the path of an Eichmann either, even if they were anti-semitic and brainwashed and wrapped around the fuhrer's finger.

[cafolini]

YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

Sometimes you make sense.

[PrinceMyshkin]

YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

Notwithstanding his claim that he was "only following orders," he was able to process an exemption for a Jewish friend of his. No doubt his own life would have been at stake if he had tried to exempt ALL Jews, but couldn't he have exempted one or two more?

[Darcy88]

The moral principles I base my sentiments on when I condemn a man like Eichmann come not from some new perspective of right and wrong that's arisen in the few decades since world war 2. Its old, older even than the sermon on the mount. Some voice inside Eichmann called out to him that it was egregiously and disgustingly wrong for him to commit such horrid deeds. Context can justify behaviors we now deem immoral to a certain extent, but in no historical or situational context is it morally permissible to annihilate in cold blood entire peoples, innocent and unarmed, by the millions.

[OrphanPip]

There is some evidence that it does take a certain kind of personality to participate directly in these kind of atrocities. Apparently, concentration camp guards had extremely high turnovers because of suicide. Part of the reason they started using the victims themselves to remove the bodies from gas chambers was that the guards couldn't stomach the task. An individual like Mengele was a special kind of sociopath.

It's not that these people were exceptional, but we should understand that it does take a significant amount of conditioning to make human beings participate in that kind of cruelty.

[cafolini]

The moral principles I base my sentiments on when I condemn a man like Eichmann come not from some new perspective of right and wrong that's arisen in the few decades since world war 2. Its old, older even than the sermon on the mount. Some voice inside Eichmann called out to him that it was egregiously and disgustingly wrong for him to commit such horrid deeds. Context can justify behaviors we now deem immoral to a certain extent, but in no historical or situational context is it morally permissible to annihilate in cold blood entire peoples, innocent and unarmed, by the millions.

We are going to need Nuremberg for Syria. The only motive millions didn't yet die there is that the modern weapons are more accurate under highly improved technology.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

But there is a wrongness in saying "YES HE CAN HELP IT" when I and you would and all of us would have not had the courage to sacrifice ourselves for others.

How do you know that?

[kiki1982]

There is some evidence that it does take a certain kind of personality to participate directly in these kind of atrocities. Apparently, concentration camp guards had extremely high turnovers because of suicide. Part of the reason they started using the victims themselves to remove the bodies from gas chambers was that the guards couldn't stomach the task. An individual like Mengele was a special kind of sociopath.

It's not that these people were exceptional, but we should understand that it does take a significant amount of conditioning to make human beings participate in that kind of cruelty.

Exactly. I never said that they were all perfectly fine human beings who did only good.

I merely said that I doubt that any of them would have decided to do the very same thing on their own in a society free of conditioning.


YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

Actually, in all honesty, I would never be an Eichmann. Maybe I could have possibly been a Hitler supporter at that time, but there is no way in hell I myself would have killed innocent Jews. And there were a LOT of Germans who wouldn't have been able to take the path of an Eichmann either, even if they were anti-semitic and brainwashed and wrapped around the fuhrer's finger.

:lol: Do you believe that yourself! I read yesterday that someone of the SS, responsible for a ghetto in the Baltics somewhere asked a superior of his where these Jews were all going then if his ghetto was cleared or something to that effect. His superior laughted and said, 'Haha, nein, die gehen ins Jenseits.' (they are going to the other side). Tell me, if he did not want to be part of it anymore, what should he have done?
If you are in such a culture where you have been conditioned to hate people and no longer see them as people, I doubt whether you would have actually refused or even objected to the idea.

Eichmann was born in 1906. He would have been 8 when WWI broke out and 12 when it ended and Germany was crumbling on the edge of civil war. He would have been raised with the rumours of the Jews having started the war, certainly as his father was a veteran. Most of his teenage years, he spent as member of a militaristic youth club. You think that does not influence a person?

I have never said that he was not responsible, I have only said that these people had warped vision.


'One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.' - The Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule is a standard that has been in place for millenia, if not from the dawn of human cognition. It's a fairy obvious moral standard that people can surely see is the 'right thing'. If they don't, if they go against it, then they are evil - now, then, whenever.

Hitler, the slave owners, Robespierre and the large minority of German people who voted Hitler in, consciously went against the Golden Rule. They were 'bad and harmful' people by any standard, historical or present day. And 'bad and harmful' is the dictionary definition of 'evil'.

Saying that Robbespierre was evil contributes to understanding, because we can then ask why he was evil, why didn't he follow the Golden Rule? Same goes for slavery.

Eichmann joined the SS to make a career, at the expense of following the Golden Rule. You can't use the excuse 'I was just following orders'. He was evil. Full stop.

The Jews who had to shove dead people from the gas chambers into the ovens were not evil. Who cares what anyone does with your dead body? You can't feel and suffer after you are dead.

Ah, but that is the catch. What if one thinks that a Jew is not another? There was no problem for Robbespierre to murder aristocrats, nor was it a problem for slave traders to sometimes lose half of their cargo... You could even insure it!
I agree that it needs an awful lot of conditioning to consider killing people on a grand scale like that, but even a case like Mengele... Consider the idea that you think a fellow human being is not a human being but rather like an ape. They used to do experiments on apes, they still do, so why not on those people then, taking that logic? Would Mengele have done the same if he had not been long part of that system? And would he have done it if he had not been taught by someone who did exactly the same experiments and was also so much obsessed by race 30-odd years earlier? Indeed the academic world in Germany was already obsessed with race in 1906!

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

Following orders is of a totally different nature, though. That is admitting that you are guilty (which Eichmann could hardly deny), but that you were forced to do it. It is clear that he was not really forced per se and that he organised the genocide pretty zealously and voluntarily (if you could do so in the SS to a great extent), however, what is never considered in court is the question if a person inherently wanted to do it or that that will was forced on him. Between being guilty/responsible and being the inventor of the whole thing there is a vast difference. As such his defence could be refuted on the grounds that he was not merely taking orders, but it could be argued that he was conditioned to think what he thought. Something which of course does not do away with any of his responsibility.


The moral principles I base my sentiments on when I condemn a man like Eichmann come not from some new perspective of right and wrong that's arisen in the few decades since world war 2. Its old, older even than the sermon on the mount. Some voice inside Eichmann called out to him that it was egregiously and disgustingly wrong for him to commit such horrid deeds. Context can justify behaviors we now deem immoral to a certain extent, but in no historical or situational context is it morally permissible to annihilate in cold blood entire peoples, innocent and unarmed, by the millions.

Oh, no, it has never been OK to do that! The whole of history is full of it, my friend. It started with the Christians being murdered by Nero because they were Christian, Jesus being killed (why? it's difficult to say), then the Christians killing the Muslims because they were Muslims, the Russians wanting to murder the Tatars, the Turkish wanting to wipe out the Armenians, the Chinese at this point in time wanting to get rid and trying very hard to get rid of a Western looking tribe (forgot their name), the Japanese setting out to kill as many of the Chinese they despised as possible in WWII, the Tutsies wanting to wipe out the Htutus and vice versa as recently as the 1990s, the Inuit were also once under threat I seem to recall, the Laps, and I could still go on for a while if I wanted to. Maybe not all of these had millions in their populations, but at least someone wished them gone from the face of the earth.

[KCurtis]

How do you know that?

He doesn't, and some things are worth dying for.

[KCurtis]

[originally posted by kiki1982]"With your morality, I would like to see you try and do something else in such a climate. Remember, you have been in such a climate of hatred for at least 20 years, you have been bombarded with propaganda for the last 15 years and you are only moving in circles which endorse this kind of thing. And you possibly fear to end up the same as your prinsoners if you dare to put a foot crooked. At least Eva Braun said once to her sister (who was married to an SS official) when she asked questions about the poor lot of those prisoners that 'if [she wasn't] careful, [she] might end up there as well and then [she could] do nothing for [her] anymore."

The above is a scary post. There were people who sacrificed themselves, there were people who did something else in such a climate. Most people, unless insane, know right from wrong- this is innate. But, there are enough bad people who commit atrocities such as this. Luckily, they are not the majority. This is not behavior where one can say, "oh, what he did was bad, but he wasn't completely bad/evil."
We CAN say that these people were all bad/evil, whichever word you prefer to use. With my morality, I would prefer to be shot rather than partake. That happened too. You can believe me if you want, or not, but I think in that situation, given the choice of partaking in atrocities or being shot to death, death would be a far easier choice.
Makes sense to me.

[Darcy88]

Oh, no, it has never been OK to do that! The whole of history is full of it, my friend. It started with the Christians being murdered by Nero because they were Christian, Jesus being killed (why? it's difficult to say), then the Christians killing the Muslims because they were Muslims, the Russians wanting to murder the Tatars, the Turkish wanting to wipe out the Armenians, the Chinese at this point in time wanting to get rid and trying very hard to get rid of a Western looking tribe (forgot their name), the Japanese setting out to kill as many of the Chinese they despised as possible in WWII, the Tutsies wanting to wipe out the Htutus and vice versa as recently as the 1990s, the Inuit were also once under threat I seem to recall, the Laps, and I could still go on for a while if I wanted to. Maybe not all of these had millions in their populations, but at least someone wished them gone from the face of the earth.

Nero was regarded negatively in his own time for his apparent lack of humanity. The Roman dictator Sulla was hated by many for all the murders he ordered, while Caesar was beloved because of the clemency he showed his enemies. It has always been considered wrong to gratuitously kill. Thucydides related with a tone of revulsion and horror the bloody excesses of the Corcyran civil war. Alexander is said to have deeply regretted his lack of mercy in deciding to raze Thebes to the ground. These are examples going back millenia. Its in our genetic make-up. If we were an indiscriminately violent and murderous species we never would have evolved.

Your cataloging of all these crimes against humanity undermines the very point you're trying to make in doing so. You realize they were immoral, every person on here who sees them listed thinks of them as immoral, and so here you lay out proof that immorality objectively exists.

[stlukesguild]

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

I'm sorry, but no one is "conditioned" to such an extent that they cannot recognize that the slaughter of innocent human beings is wrong... is "evil". The camp commanders and the Nazi high command knew perfectly well that what they was doing amounted to a crime against humanity and a great many made every attempt to avoid being captured by the allies because they knew that retribution would be at hand. If they honestly thought that what they were doing was all right and good why even flee? Surely the invading Russians and Americans would be fully understanding of what they were doing.

Your arguments are based in ideals taken to the point of absurdity. There is no apology... no excuse that can be made that justifies genocide and wholesale murder. It has always been those individuals who place abstract ideals above human reality that see nothing wrong with rape, pillage, destruction, and whole-sale murder to achieve their end. In their warped minds, the end justifies the means. In the eyes of history and humanity they are what we know as "evil".

[Darcy88]

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

I'm sorry, but no one is "conditioned" to such an extent that they cannot recognize that the slaughter of innocent human beings is wrong... is "evil". The camp commanders and the Nazi high command knew perfectly well that what they was doing amounted to a crime against humanity and a great many made every attempt to avoid being captured by the allies because they knew that retribution would be at hand. If they honestly thought that what they were doing was all right and good why even flee? Surely the invading Russians and Americans would be fully understanding of what they were doing.

Your arguments are based in ideals taken to the point of absurdity. There is no apology... no excuse that can be made that justifies genocide and wholesale murder. It has always been those individuals who place abstract ideals above human reality that see nothing wrong with rape, pillage, destruction, and whole-sale murder to achieve their end. In their warped minds, the end justifies the means. In the eyes of history and humanity they are what we know as "evil".

I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Never mind. I re-read your post and saw that I interpreted it wrong. You're not saying that people are not conditioned to be evil, you are saying they can't be conditioned to think there is nothing wrong with large scale senseless murdering. I agree. Sociopaths I think know what they do is wrong, they just happen not to care.

[Darcy88]

We are going to need Nuremberg for Syria. The only motive millions didn't yet die there is that the modern weapons are more accurate under highly improved technology.

I wouldn't really compare what's happening in Syria to the holocaust. In Syria we see a dictator using force to hold onto power. In Nazi Germany we had a psychotic individual using all means available to achieve the total obliteration of an entire people. For Assad death is a means, for Hitler it was itself an end.

[stlukesguild]

I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Certainly we are all impacted by the classic duo of nature and nurture... we cannot, however, eliminate individual choice and responsibility. That is where I see kiki's defense of the Nazi's as akin to their own self defense at Nuremberg as well as some of the worst thinking of Liberal politicians in attempting to lay the blame for a person's action upon society: "It's not the individual's fault he raped and killed that old lady for a few dollars. It's society's fault. He was raised by a abusive father and an alcoholic mother. He attended one of the worst schools in the inner city. He was taken in by a gang at age 12. No one saw his pain..." Pure BS. There are endless individuals who have been raised under what we might think of as horrifying circumstances, suffering untold abuse. The vast majority of these individuals do not resort to abuse, murder, and genocide... nor do they lose the ability to recognize that certain behaviors are simply wrong regardless of the social context. The creep who rapes and kills some old lady for a few dollars recognizes that his actions are wrong... are abhorrent... are "evil"... and certainly Hitler, Himmler, Mengele, and the untold commandants of the concentration camps knew that their actions amounted to "evil".

In other words, social conditioning may help to explain part of how an individual came to act in a given sociopathic manner... but it is not an excuse or a defense... it doesn't eliminate individual responsibility... and the fact that certain behaviors are inherently "evil".

[Darcy88]

I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Certainly we are all impacted by the classic duo of nature and nurture... we cannot, however, eliminate individual choice and responsibility. That is where I see kiki's defense of the Nazi's as akin to their own self defense at Nuremberg as well as some of the worst thinking of Liberal politicians in attempting to lie the blame for a person's action upon society. There are endless individuals who have been raised under what we might think of as horrifying circumstances, suffering untold abuse. The vast majority of these individuals do not resort to abuse, murder, and genocide. The vast majority recognize that certain behaviors are simply wrong regardless of the social context. In other words, social conditioning may help to explain part of how an individual came to act in a given sociopathic manner... but it is not an excuse or a defense... it doesn't eliminate individual responsibility... and the fact that certain behaviors are inherently "evil".

I agree. I misinterpreted your post. I edited my response while you were writing this. lol. I don't understand what Kiki wants. For the Nazi's tried at Nuremburg to have been "understood" and perhaps even set free? Millions of Germans lived in the same anti-semitic jingoistic atmosphere as Eichmann, but I really doubt they would have allowed the holocaust to transpire were it not for their blind allegiance to a fuhrer with a vast network of secret police and propaganda, not to mention the fact that they were beset on all sides by the armies of their enemies who had been made their enemies by the madly aggressive steps taken by that same fuhrer. I don't think the average German was as bloodthirsty and homicidal as Eichmann, despite a shared culture.

[Mr.lucifer]

I think those who are horrible people because they came from a terrible background are probaly weak minded. If your common psychopath is that way because they had a terrible life, then they must be very feeble.

[Alexander III]

How do you know that?

Because lets say you are born into a poor familly, but you are bright. And the SS which was quite a meritocratic group offers you a chance in life - if you dont take i you will just work in the factory all your life and your childrend shall work in factories. As you entere deeper and deeper into the organization you realize more and more about what is truley going on. But you live in a world were there is only one voice and that voice is telling you that what you do is right. Furthermore at the begining the war is going splendidlt for you and it seemes that Nazism will move from Germany to to europe.

What do you do? Declare the atrocities going on, thereby ensuring that you and your wife and kids will be sent to concentration camps? Do you try to help the people in the camps ilicitly, and know that if they catch you you and your familly will end very badly. Do you quit? Your father was a factory worker and here you are on a one way road to enrue that you join the elite of a nation, welath and privellege for you and your familly which once is tasted is very difficult to sacrifice. What do you do wuit and go back to the factory?

What would you have done Mutis?


I am not saying the SS were not evil, tough that word does feel somewhat cartooniish, yes they were moraly corrupt, but then again under those conditions most men become morally corrupt. Lets face it Humans are very prone to evil. And this whole viewing Hitler as the most evil man will fade with time. Just look at how time ****s with our perception. Disney makes movies about all those lovable pirates. We all knew what pirates did, maybe disney will make movies about the lovable ss men in a couple hundred years. What about Gengis Kahn, and the vikings? I mean in nordic countries they are proud of coming from vikings. But anyone who knows about viking history can attest that these people made the SS look like pansies. "this whole evil thing is just time relative. The more time passes from the event the more acceptable it will become.. Otherwise human history would be morally unbearable.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Why even ask what I'd do? You said you already knew what everyone here would do. I was curious as to how you knew this.

[Alexander III]

Why even ask what I'd do? You said you already knew what everyone here would do. I was curious as to how you knew this.

When did I say that, all I said by looking at history it is easy to see that most of us would not have done anything. You can't deny that can you?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

No, I don't deny that. I was asking because it is what you said, though. Thanks for clarifying.


When did I say that?

But there is a wrongness in saying "YES HE CAN HELP IT" when I and you would and all of us would have not had the courage to sacrifice ourselves for others.

[PrinceMyshkin]

"Hate has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact the delegation of a piece of one's own identity to them… the hater longs for the object of his hatred."

–Vaclav Havel

[stlukesguild]

I think those who are horrible people because they came from a terrible background are probaly weak minded. If your common psychopath is that way because they had a terrible life, then they must be very feeble.

I believe that is true of some... those who mindlessly follow a charismatic leader or movement because it gives them a sense of power that they lack in real life. A great many of the Nazis were but pathetic individuals... petty thugs at best... before the rise of the party placed untold power within their hands. At the same time, there were those who most certainly knew what they were doing... who might even be called "brilliant" in their field. Surely Hitler, Himmler, Mengele, etc... were not stupid or weak-minded by most standards.

Painting them as something less or different from ourselves is where the danger lies. It leads us to believe the fantasy that it cannot happen here (where ever "here" may be). Speaking just of the US, we undoubtedly have more than a few individuals who are racist enough, and more than a few who are ready to mindlessly follow the first charismatic leader who promises them the right thing. Undoubtedly, we have any number of individuals who are at once highly intelligent and yet sociopaths. The "sociopath", you might do well to remember, does not imagine himself as inferior, but rather sees other human beings (even those above him in wealth and power) as being inferior.

"Hate has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact the delegation of a piece of one's own identity to them… the hater longs for the object of his hatred."

–Vaclav Havel

It would seem to me that perhaps Vaclav has confused "lust" and "obsession" with "love".

[PrinceMyshkin]

I think those who are horrible people because they came from a terrible background are probaly weak minded. If your common psychopath is that way because they had a terrible life, then they must be very feeble.

I believe that is true of some... those who mindlessly follow a charismatic leader or movement because it gives them a sense of power that they lack in real life. A great many of the Nazis were but pathetic individuals... petty thugs at best... before the rise of the party placed untold power within their hands. At the same time, there were those who most certainly knew what they were doing... who might even be called "brilliant" in their field. Surely Hitler, Himmler, Mengele, etc... were not stupid or weak-minded by most standards.

Painting them as something less or different from ourselves is where the danger lies. It leads us to believe the fantasy that it cannot happen here (where ever "here" may be). Speaking just of the US, we undoubtedly have more than a few individuals who are racist enough, and more than a few who are ready to mindlessly follow the first charismatic leader who promises them the right thing. Undoubtedly, we have any number of individuals who are at once highly intelligent and yet sociopaths. The "sociopath", you might do well to remember, does not imagine himself as inferior, but rather sees other human beings (even those above him in wealth and power) as being inferior.

This is a wonderfully lucid and articulate description of the situation.

[cafolini]

"Hate has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact the delegation of a piece of one's own identity to them… the hater longs for the object of his hatred."

–Vaclav Havel

It would seem to me that perhaps Vaclav has confused "lust" and "obsession" with "love".

I agree. And I think it's more than a "perhaps."

[billl]

OK, where did Vaclav get it wrong? Are you just worried that some dim people will take it that he's saying love and hate are the same?

I don't see how the quote does much for the debate (maybe it's meant to point to an irrational aspect of hatred, or was an attempt to make sense of hatred he and others in similar position were made to suffer for), but it doesn't seem to me like he got the quote wrong as far as it went.

[Darcy88]

Because lets say you are born into a poor familly, but you are bright. And the SS which was quite a meritocratic group offers you a chance in life - if you dont take i you will just work in the factory all your life and your childrend shall work in factories. As you entere deeper and deeper into the organization you realize more and more about what is truley going on. But you live in a world were there is only one voice and that voice is telling you that what you do is right. Furthermore at the begining the war is going splendidlt for you and it seemes that Nazism will move from Germany to to europe.

What do you do? Declare the atrocities going on, thereby ensuring that you and your wife and kids will be sent to concentration camps? Do you try to help the people in the camps ilicitly, and know that if they catch you you and your familly will end very badly. Do you quit? Your father was a factory worker and here you are on a one way road to enrue that you join the elite of a nation, welath and privellege for you and your familly which once is tasted is very difficult to sacrifice. What do you do wuit and go back to the factory?

What would you have done Mutis?


I am not saying the SS were not evil, tough that word does feel somewhat cartooniish, yes they were moraly corrupt, but then again under those conditions most men become morally corrupt. Lets face it Humans are very prone to evil. And this whole viewing Hitler as the most evil man will fade with time. Just look at how time ****s with our perception. Disney makes movies about all those lovable pirates. We all knew what pirates did, maybe disney will make movies about the lovable ss men in a couple hundred years. What about Gengis Kahn, and the vikings? I mean in nordic countries they are proud of coming from vikings. But anyone who knows about viking history can attest that these people made the SS look like pansies. "this whole evil thing is just time relative. The more time passes from the event the more acceptable it will become.. Otherwise human history would be morally unbearable.

If I couldn't find a way to get my family out of the country I would do all I could to sabotage the genocide machine. Or I would just commit suicide. There were men of conscience in Germany at the time. And I take back what I said earlier about how I might possibly have supported Hitler if I'd lived in Germany then. I would have to be an entirely different person, my beliefs and feelings and personality all radically and unrecognizably transformed, for me to look upon Hitler as anything but a dangerous raving demagogue. Every sentence in every speech reeks with an imbecile militarism and nationalism. Nietzsche gagged on the foul fumes of such rotten ilk decades before Hitler came to the fore. No doubt we hear little of those who opposed him due to the fact that they were either intimidated into silence or were shipped off to die in concentration camps.

Evil is not time relative. Ghengis and Attila are typically perceived as harsh brutal men. Many people acknowledge the profound iniquities of Julius Caesar. The centuries-bygone slave-trade is regarded as a gross abhorrence. And as long as there is any small amount of good in this world its existence will serve as a contrast to the evil of men like Hitler. Evil perhaps seems cartoonish on an internet forum, but I doubt it seems so when one stares it in the face, down the barrel of a gun, in the form of a white phosphorus munition, as a simple spear or sword back many centuries past, taking the lives of the those around you and threatening to take yours. I don't think evil seemed cartoonish to those Jews fated to die by the gas, along with their loved ones, their wives or husbands, their children.

[cafolini]

If I couldn't find a way to get my family out of the country I would do all I could to sabotage the genocide machine. Or I would just commit suicide. There were men of conscience in Germany at the time. And I take back what I said earlier about how I might possibly have supported Hitler if I'd lived in Germany then. I would have to be an entirely different person, my beliefs and feelings and personality all radically and unrecognizably transformed, for me to look upon Hitler as anything but a dangerous raving demagogue. Every sentence in every speech reeks with an imbecile militarism and nationalism. Nietzsche gagged on the foul fumes of such rotten ilk decades before Hitler came to the fore. No doubt we hear little of those who opposed him due to the fact that they were either intimidated into silence or were shipped off to die in concentration camps.

Evil is not time relative. Ghengis and Attila are typically perceived as harsh brutal men. Many people acknowledge the profound iniquities of Julius Caesar. The centuries-bygone slave-trade is regarded as a gross abhorrence. And as long as there is any small amount of good in this world its existence will serve as a contrast to the evil of men like Hitler. Evil perhaps seems cartoonish on an internet forum, but I doubt it seems so when one stares it in the face, down the barrel of a gun, in the form of a white phosphorus munition, as a simple spear or sword back many centuries past, taking the lives of the those around you and threatening to take yours. I don't think evil seemed cartoonish to those Jews fated to die by the gas, along with their loved ones, their wives or husbands, their children.

You get really good when you pickup speed. Excellent discourse. I don't care much about the word "evil" but what the heck? Along with some use, might make a lot of sense.

[KCurtis]

"Hate has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact the delegation of a piece of one's own identity to them… the hater longs for the object of his hatred."

–Vaclav Havel


"Hate has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact the delegation of a piece of one's own identity to them… the hater longs for the object of his hatred."

–Vaclav Havel

It would seem to me that perhaps Vaclav has confused "lust" and "obsession" with "love".

I agree too- lust and obsession is not love.

[billl]

I don't think it's out of bounds to consider a loved one to be a person that you would "depend on", and "delegate a piece of one's identity to them" (i.e. soulmate, better half, etc.). This lust and obsession business seems to be being shoe-horned into what Vaclav Havel was saying. "Longing" might be a bit of a stretch, a bit poetic for "hate" I think--but that focus and desire for interaction (negative, in this case) seems roughly analogous to the focus and desire to connect we can feel for someone we love.

(But, to be clear, although it seems beside the point to me: I think lust and obsession aren't love.)

[ScribbleScribe]

Holy crap. My thread exploded! O_O

I just listened to two more files of Mein Kampf today on the train. Every time I listen to it in public I get paranoid people around me are going to hear it and get hostile and physically violent with me.

In the two files hitler was talking about syphillis & how he hated modern art. He called modern art a sign of cultural decay.

Btw i have an Ian Kershaw biography of Hitler at college. I haven't read it yet. But I've also read another book about hitler called The Fall of the Third Reich and I have a book on my bookshelf written by someone that knew hitler when they were children together. The biography of hitler and the book about his childhood, i have not yet read. They should be good though.

[Darcy88]

You get really good when you pickup speed. Excellent discourse. I don't care much about the word "evil" but what the heck? Along with some use, might make a lot of sense.

I care much for the word evil. Nowadays our hearts bleed and our minds understand when they ought to unequivocally condemn. People fight the death penalty because they deem it too harsh. I am against it because of the chance an innocent man might be put to death, but if I had before me evidence conclusively incriminating a man for grave atrocities or otherwise evil deeds, I as judge wouldn't think twice about sentencing that man to death or torture. Its too bad Hitler took the matter into his own hands. Would've been nice if they could have gotten footage of him being hanged.

[JuniperWoolf]

There is some evidence that it does take a certain kind of personality to participate directly in these kind of atrocities. Apparently, concentration camp guards had extremely high turnovers because of suicide. Part of the reason they started using the victims themselves to remove the bodies from gas chambers was that the guards couldn't stomach the task.

I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Actually, with what I know about myself, I completely believe that in the same situation I would have chose suicide. If you don't follow orders you end up in there with them, don't you? Yeah, I'll just take care of that myself thanks. Death really is preferable to some things, being forced to torture children is one of them.


I care much for the word evil. Nowadays our hearts bleed and our minds understand when they ought to unequivocally condemn. People fight the death penalty because they deem it too harsh. I am against it because of the chance an innocent man might be put to death, but if I had before me evidence conclusively incriminating a man for grave atrocities or otherwise evil deeds, I as judge wouldn't think twice about sentencing that man to death or torture. Its too bad Hitler took the matter into his own hands. Would've been nice if they could have gotten footage of him being hanged.

I don't know about capital punishment, I'm undecided. I think that maybe law should be emotionless, because it must be fair above all things, and once you bring emotions into something it might tip the scales in one direction or the other. I always thought they should dish out penectomies for particulalrly cruel and/or repeat-offending rapists though.

[kiki1982]

In other words, social conditioning may help to explain part of how an individual came to act in a given sociopathic manner... but it is not an excuse or a defense... it doesn't eliminate individual responsibility... and the fact that certain behaviors are inherently "evil".

I think you are confusing two things here. Actions being evil and people being evil. I never said those people were not responsible, indeed they were punished and rightly so, but I would go with Alexander III when he sketches the situation. There was something wrong in the mind of Mengele, but had he not been taught by a professor who conducted the same kinds of experiments on Namibia (I think) and had he not been handed absolute freedom to do what he liked, would he have done it in his private doctor's practice?
Of course his acts were evil, but was he evil himself, though? Clearly there was something wrong with him because he always kept on saying that he was the victim of a mistake of identity, but what did his uni professor, also obsessed with twins, genetics, etc. have to do with his experiments?

I for one am not defending anyone here, I have never denied their responsibility, but only said that calling all of those people evil is a bit rich and that that is profoundly black and white. That has no place in this.

Come to think of it, that Nuremberg exhibition was quite adept in pointing out the process of indoctrination: you go through the whole thing and only once there is where the stones for the rally grounds came from. Then only at the end, you get the Endlösung and then images of murdered people, on a lower level than you are. It makes it all a bit burried and shoved under the carpet. While you were in that exhibition you have not thought about that, and you have grown accustomed to progressive confiscation of freedom and cruelty. It shows you how easily you yourself could have been taken in. Whether you were in the army or a mere citizen.


If I couldn't find a way to get my family out of the country I would do all I could to sabotage the genocide machine. Or I would just commit suicide. There were men of conscience in Germany at the time. And I take back what I said earlier about how I might possibly have supported Hitler if I'd lived in Germany then. I would have to be an entirely different person, my beliefs and feelings and personality all radically and unrecognizably transformed, for me to look upon Hitler as anything but a dangerous raving demagogue. Every sentence in every speech reeks with an imbecile militarism and nationalism. Nietzsche gagged on the foul fumes of such rotten ilk decades before Hitler came to the fore. No doubt we hear little of those who opposed him due to the fact that they were either intimidated into silence or were shipped off to die in concentration camps.

Evil is not time relative. Ghengis and Attila are typically perceived as harsh brutal men. Many people acknowledge the profound iniquities of Julius Caesar. The centuries-bygone slave-trade is regarded as a gross abhorrence. And as long as there is any small amount of good in this world its existence will serve as a contrast to the evil of men like Hitler. Evil perhaps seems cartoonish on an internet forum, but I doubt it seems so when one stares it in the face, down the barrel of a gun, in the form of a white phosphorus munition, as a simple spear or sword back many centuries past, taking the lives of the those around you and threatening to take yours. I don't think evil seemed cartoonish to those Jews fated to die by the gas, along with their loved ones, their wives or husbands, their children.

Oh, you would have, would you? Admittedly, there were a few who did try to sabotage or to save people - Schindler, I don't know how much of the film was actually true, but he did exist; and the guy of the Kindertransport, but if I am not mistaken he was safely in England - but they were in a unique situation: Schindler was the head of a factory and the guy of the Kindertransport had money to spare apparently and could maybe protect his people there. I find that heroic, but at the same time, I think in your dreams were the majority of SS people or any Germans whatsoever in that position.
And what about your wife and children? If you committed suicide she would have had to fend for herself. Admittedly she would maybe have got a handsome pension (although I don't know whether suicide qualified for that), but otherwise...
Suicide takes guts.

In all likelihood you would have been as blinded as all the rest and your wife would have been the naïve arm decoration she was supposed to be. Your children would have been the model Aryan children: the nice blonde boy and the girl with the golder tresses and you would not have had the courage to leave them.


I care much for the word evil. Nowadays our hearts bleed and our minds understand when they ought to unequivocally condemn. People fight the death penalty because they deem it too harsh. I am against it because of the chance an innocent man might be put to death, but if I had before me evidence conclusively incriminating a man for grave atrocities or otherwise evil deeds, I as judge wouldn't think twice about sentencing that man to death or torture. Its too bad Hitler took the matter into his own hands. Would've been nice if they could have gotten footage of him being hanged.

That is the problem with capital punishment and why we have done away with it since long on the continent: there are very few cases where the murderer firstly had the clear intention to kill (so not only a motive) and secondly that it is absolutely 100% certain that he/she did kill. There have been cases where it seemed 100% and after years and years they are acquitted because a new element emerges. Where are you then with your capital punishment? Things can seem absolutely certain now, but can you be 100% sure that that is going to be the same in 10 to 20 years?
The fact that one were to get pleasure from seeing someone hanged is worrying, certainly in modern society. In the past, humanity may have been a bit weird (maybe because they had so much contact with death that it didn't really matter how it happened), but nowadays, I find that profoundly strange and even slightly twisted.
I even found it an outrage that the Polish bungled the Sobibor camp commander's hanging three times. Only the fourth time it worked. In medieval times they would have considered it a sign that this person was not to be hanged, but that's modern times for you... I do not say he was not rsponsible or cruel (he was particularly twisted), but doing it in such a way shows your own cruel streak and in that case you are no better than the one you are hanging. Then you are motivated by revenge which makes you no better than the first Germanic tribes and the maffia now.

[kiki1982]

I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Actually, with what I know about myself, I completely believe that in the same situation I would have chose suicide. If you don't follow orders you end up in there with them, don't you? Yeah, I'll just take care of that myself thanks. Death really is preferable to some things, being forced to torture children is one of them.

I once saw a documentary about current permanent staff of a German concentration camp. They had an extremely fast turnover and one of the jobs which was particularly unwanted was turning off the lights in the evening, certainly in winter. It involved a last round to see whether everyone was out. One of those guys had been there 10 years and told the makers of the documentary that there had been suicides, drinking problems, depression and what have you amongst permamenent staff members. All of them.

They did do things pretty to-the-point though. A guided tour took visitors to the showers where the guide crammed a group into it of about 50 people like sardines in a tin, then asked one visitor to close the door and then told them that that was how things happened in the gas chamber... Dead silence.

If you have to do that every day, look at the permanent exhibition photos every day... indeed I think you go round the bend if you are normal in any way.

[mona amon]

I think you are confusing two things here. Actions being evil and people being evil. I never said those people were not responsible, indeed they were punished and rightly so, but I would go with Alexander III when he sketches the situation. There was something wrong in the mind of Mengele, but had he not been taught by a professor who conducted the same kinds of experiments on Namibia (I think) and had he not been handed absolute freedom to do what he liked, would he have done it in his private doctor's practice?
Of course his acts were evil, but was he evil himself, though? Clearly there was something wrong with him because he always kept on saying that he was the victim of a mistake of identity, but what did his uni professor, also obsessed with twins, genetics, etc. have to do with his experiments? - Kiki

An evil person is one whose acts are evil, just as a rabid dog is one that's infected with rabies. That's by definition. It does not matter if it's their fault or not that they are evil. But Kiki, what point are you trying to make by sweeping their evil-ness under the carpet?


The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele, who worked in Auschwitz. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries.[25] The full extent of his work will never be known because the truckload of records he sent to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was destroyed by von Verschuer.[26] Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards.

He seemed particularly keen on working with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and personally take them to the gas chamber. They would call him "Onkel Mengele".[27] Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins:


"I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and Ina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away. When they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents – I remember the mother's name was Stella – managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering." ~ from the Wikipedia entry for the Holocaust

It's "a bit rich" to call such a man evil? And the people who created a system where he could put his insanity into practice without any fear of retribution, they aren't evil? Then who is evil? Once again, what are you trying to prove? What lessons are we supposed to learn from all this?

[Alexander III]

I care much for the word evil. Nowadays our hearts bleed and our minds understand when they ought to unequivocally condemn. People fight the death penalty because they deem it too harsh. I am against it because of the chance an innocent man might be put to death, but if I had before me evidence conclusively incriminating a man for grave atrocities or otherwise evil deeds, I as judge wouldn't think twice about sentencing that man to death or torture. Its too bad Hitler took the matter into his own hands. Would've been nice if they could have gotten footage of him being hanged.

I don't like capital punishment. Capital punishment for me is revenge not justice. And it is cowardly revenge too, it is easy to shoot a man when he is on his knees. I dont see any honor in that type of revenge, and certainly no justice.


As for your previous reply as to what you would have done, I believe you which is fair enough. But the majority of men would have not been so able such as you to comitt suicide and abandon their wives and children to that monster.

[KCurtis]

I don't like capital punishment. Capital punishment for me is revenge not justice. And it is cowardly revenge too, it is easy to shoot a man when he is on his knees. I dont see any honor in that type of revenge, and certainly no justice.


As for your previous reply as to what you would have done, I believe you which is fair enough. But the majority of men would have not been so able such as you to comitt suicide and abandon their wives and children to that monster.

He didn't say he would abandon his children. There are clever ways of commiting suicide that are not violent.

[Alexander III]

He didn't say he would abandon his children. There are clever ways of commiting suicide that are not violent.

Comiting suicide is abandoning your wife and children in my book. As for comitting suicide, the method comes down to personal preference. For me I think the best way for men is with a gun, for women Heroin.

[KCurtis]

An evil person is one whose acts are evil, just as a rabid dog is one that's infected with rabies. That's by definition. It does not matter if it's their fault or not that they are evil. But Kiki, what point are you trying to make by sweeping their evil-ness under the carpet?



It's "a bit rich" to call such a man evil? And the people who created a system where he could put his insanity into practice without any fear of retribution, they aren't evil? Then who is evil? Once again, what are you trying to prove? What lessons are we supposed to learn from all this?

Good point. I don't understand why the person would be separate from the evil acts either.

[KCurtis]

Comiting suicide is abandoning your wife and children in my book.

No, I MEANT taking your wife and children with you- if you had to. That is always a last resort, I wonder how many families did that.

[mal4mac]

I don't like capital punishment. Capital punishment for me is revenge not justice. And it is cowardly revenge too, it is easy to shoot a man when he is on his knees. I dont see any honor in that type of revenge, and certainly no justice.

If it worked as a deterrent to future tyrants then, surely, it would be justice?

But, as tyrants have usually ended up being hung and it hasn't stopped future tyrants then we need to find better ways - not for any reasons of 'honor' but just because hanging them doesn't seem to act as a deterrent.

The ones who have ended up in the Hague look terribly frustrated during their interminable trials - all their power & money taken away, being confronted daily with the people they tortured, having to put up with all those boring lawyers and legal jargon (!) So maybe that *is* the best way?

Maybe some of them can be "turned"? Only allow them to read the worlds great literature - maybe a few decades "sentence" to reading the Ancient Philosophers, especially their texts on tyrants, could get some of them feeling real contrition?

We need to get lots of pictures of them sobbing with frustration, repudiating their former evil ways, and wishing they had been better people... Of course, to make that real, they would still have to get life sentences and no "easy life" - no fancy food, TV or pool for them...

[Alexander III]

It's "a bit rich" to call such a man evil? And the people who created a system where he could put his insanity into practice without any fear of retribution, they aren't evil? Then who is evil? Once again, what are you trying to prove? What lessons are we supposed to learn from all this?

The lesson we are meant to learn from all this is, that this is man, for better or worse this is who we are, Truth is if mankind did not produce it's Hitlers and genghis Kahns and Robespierres , it could never have produced it's Jesus and Gahndi's and Marcus Aureliuses. What we are meant to learn is that this is man, and what we often forget is that Hitler was not only driven by hate but by love, Love of his nation and people.



But a meek, humble man of honest sense,
Who, preaching peace, does practice continence;
Whose pious life's a proof he does believe
Mysterious truths, which no man can conceive.
If upon earth there dwell such God-like men,
I'll here recant my paradox to them,
Adore those shrines of virtue, homage pay,
And, with the rabble world, their laws obey.

If such there are, yet grant me this at least:
Man differs more from man, than man from beast.

[Darcy88]

Comiting suicide is abandoning your wife and children in my book. As for comitting suicide, the method comes down to personal preference. For me I think the best way for men is with a gun, for women Heroin.

Gun is a bad method. There's a chance you could survive. Hanging can either be the best and least painful or the worst and most agonizing way, depending on if you know what you're doing.


The lesson we are meant to learn from all this is, that this is man, for better or worse this is who we are, Truth is if mankind did not produce it's Hitlers and genghis Kahns and Robespierres , it could never have produced it's Jesus and Gahndi's and Marcus Aureliuses. What we are meant to learn is that this is man, and what we often forget is that Hitler was not only driven by hate but by love, Love of his nation and people.


The Hitlers and Ghengises and Robespierres are the exceptions. Few men harbor such unscrupulously murderous ambitions in their breasts. You are right of course that evil is an essential part of humanity and those utopians who imagine it possible for evil to ever disappear from the face of this earth are naive and blinded by clouds. But a Hitler need not have arisen. If the good men of the time had acted with more courage and conviction that vile weed could have been extinguished before it spread over Europe. That is why this attitude of understanding I see so many show towards evil is downright frightening to me. A tyrant who eliminates all political rights and freedoms and then uses his illegitimately acquired power to wage unjust wars and commit crimes against humanity forfeits his right to our understanding, he marks himself a monster, a dark shadowy piece of fate that must be mercilessly put down.


There was something wrong in the mind of Mengele, but had he not been taught by a professor who conducted the same kinds of experiments on Namibia (I think) and had he not been handed absolute freedom to do what he liked, would he have done it in his private doctor's practice?
Of course his acts were evil, but was he evil himself, though? Clearly there was something wrong with him because he always kept on saying that he was the victim of a mistake of identity, but what did his uni professor, also obsessed with twins, genetics, etc. have to do with his experiments?

I for one am not defending anyone here, I have never denied their responsibility, but only said that calling all of those people evil is a bit rich and that that is profoundly black and white. That has no place in this.

This is what I'm taking about. Kiki, I'm afraid that evil does in fact exist, as do evil persons. Again, its easy to regard so softly a thing we think upon from a distance, but to those millions of Jews who choked to death on gas the matter really was black and white. The men responsible for their situation were evil.


And what about your wife and children? If you committed suicide she would have had to fend for herself. Admittedly she would maybe have got a handsome pension (although I don't know whether suicide qualified for that), but otherwise...
Suicide takes guts.

In all likelihood you would have been as blinded as all the rest and your wife would have been the naïve arm decoration she was supposed to be. Your children would have been the model Aryan children: the nice blonde boy and the girl with the golder tresses and you would not have had the courage to leave them.


No I really wouldn't have been as blind. Hitler's speeches were quite starkly mad. Sure, if I were an entirely different person with a full set of radically altered convictions and passions and temperaments, maybe I might have gone along with the situation. But that is a meaningless point, since I am who I am, that other person wouldn't be me. As political as I am, I would have been one of the first sent to a concentration camp, probably as early as 1933.

And as far as leaving my wife and children, they would probably be better off widowed and orphaned than with a husband and father who openly opposes the policies of the regime in power. Some things are worth more than emotional ties. Transgressing every principle, ever truth and every good I know and hold dear, would be worse than facing death, whatever other things I would have to consider.

I would have enjoyed a hot glowing sense of triumph at being martyred for a cause so worthy as that of opposing Hitler. Far better than dying in a warm bed at age 70 after leading the long comfortable life of a coward.

[kiki1982]

An evil person is one whose acts are evil, just as a rabid dog is one that's infected with rabies. That's by definition. It does not matter if it's their fault or not that they are evil. But Kiki, what point are you trying to make by sweeping their evil-ness under the carpet?

I know all what he did and that is not my point, the man was clearly twisted. HOWEVER, an evil man would not be capable of any good. Yet Mengele gave sweets to his victims. The older ones regarded that as deception, the younger ones not. An evil man would not wish to give sweets, he would just wish to kill or see people killed (and there were some of these around). He received his new victims with asking them to call him 'uncle Mengele'. Pretty digusting if you think of it, although it was not necessary to keep them sweet so to say as they were prisoners anyway. Whether they wanted or not, they were there to experimented upon or could dhe not bear them to cry or something?
The experiments like sterilisation, were carried out already in 1906 in Namibia on indigenous tribes by his teacher, professor Fischer who was later manageing the university of Berlin. That Mr Fischer was also obsessed with twins. You see how far this goes back?

The reason why he was obsessed by Roma children was probably not because they were Roma gypsies, but because they were even worse off in Auschwitz than the rest. They were even less worth than the Jews. It is hard to believe, but they did not receive food or even less than the rest and they had no beds (if I am not mistaken). They were tucked into the furthest barracks and were exempt from working with the rest, locked up only and in the last months left to fend for themselves, they did not even bother to take them with them when the camp was going to be liberated. If he was doing experiments, my guess would be that he would subject them to the worst as they were worth the least.

I tend to agree with Alexander III that this is man. You give one slightly twisted and conditioned personality power over others and he will do this of his own accord. That is what we are meant to learn from this, not call him evil.

The only man who could be evil is the one who does these things by himself, having had no guidance to do so. Like a Breikvik (or however his name is spelled). He is a good candidate. Evil is not the man who has been told for his whole career that Jews are inferior, gypsies the scum of the earth, and that it is ok to do experiments on people.


It's "a bit rich" to call such a man evil? And the people who created a system where he could put his insanity into practice without any fear of retribution, they aren't evil? Then who is evil? Once again, what are you trying to prove? What lessons are we supposed to learn from all this?

I think Alexander III has answered that question the best it could be answered.

[cafolini]

Gun is a bad method. There's a chance you could survive. Hanging can either be the best and least painful or the worst and most agonizing way, depending on if you know what you're doing.



The Hitlers and Ghengises and Robespierres are the exceptions. Few men harbor such unscrupulously murderous ambitions in their breasts. You are right of course that evil is an essential part of humanity and those utopians who imagine it possible for evil to ever disappear from the face of this earth are naive and blinded by clouds. But a Hitler need not have arisen. If the good men of the time had acted with more courage and conviction that vile weed could have been extinguished before it spread over Europe. That is why this attitude of understanding I see so many show towards evil is downright frightening to me. A tyrant who eliminates all political rights and freedoms and then uses his illegitimately acquired power to wage unjust wars and commit crimes against humanity forfeits his right to our understanding, he marks himself a monster, a dark shadowy piece of fate that must be mercilessly put down.



This is what I'm taking about. Kiki, I'm afraid that evil does in fact exist, as do evil persons. Again, its easy to regard so softly a thing we think upon from a distance, but to those millions of Jews who choked to death on gas the matter really was black and white. The men responsible for their situation were evil.



No I really wouldn't have been as blind. Hitler's speeches were quite starkly mad. Sure, if I were an entirely different person with a full set of radically altered convictions and passions and temperaments, maybe I might have gone along with the situation. But that is a meaningless point, since I am who I am, that other person wouldn't be me. As political as I am, I would have been one of the first sent to a concentration camp, probably as early as 1933.

And as far as leaving my wife and children, they would probably be better off widowed and orphaned than with a husband and father who openly opposes the policies of the regime in power. Some things are worth more than emotional ties. Transgressing every principle, ever truth and every good I know and hold dear, would be worse than facing death, whatever other things I would have to consider.

I would have enjoyed a hot glowing sense of triumph at being martyred for a cause so worthy as that of opposing Hitler. Far better than dying in a warm bed at age 70 after leading the long comfortable life of a coward.

Very good. Hitler was indeed a coward. Look at his last two deeds. He knew of the possibility of the bullet failing. So he took the arsenic first. Then, because he knew of the inmense pain of death by arsenic, he shot himself.
But he didn't even care about Eva and gave her only the arsenic so that she couldn't possibly be left alive after his death.

"I will never marry. A woman only sees you as a hero if you do not marry her." ~ Adolf Hitler

Right before death, he pleased her, when he had nothing to lose.

[kiki1982]

The Hitlers and Ghengises and Robespierres are the exceptions. Few men harbor such unscrupulously murderous ambitions in their breasts. You are right of course that evil is an essential part of humanity and those utopians who imagine it possible for evil to ever disappear from the face of this earth are naive and blinded by clouds. But a Hitler need not have arisen. If the good men of the time had acted with more courage and conviction that vile weed could have been extinguished before it spread over Europe. That is why this attitude of understanding I see so many show towards evil is downright frightening to me. A tyrant who eliminates all political rights and freedoms and then uses his illegitimately acquired power to wage unjust wars and commit crimes against humanity forfeits his right to our understanding, he marks himself a monster, a dark shadowy piece of fate that must be mercilessly put down.
This is what I'm taking about. Kiki, I'm afraid that evil does in fact exist, as do evil persons. Again, its easy to regard so softly a thing we think upon from a distance, but to those millions of Jews who choked to death on gas the matter really was black and white. The men responsible for their situation were evil.

They are only the exceptions if man is not condoned to be violent.

Of course evil exists, but it is not embodied in people. That is profoundly philosophical but man is too imperfect to be perfectly evil, therefore there are no evil people, but only people who are somehow disposed to follow evil. Yet they are always capables of being kind.

I think it was a bad thing to execute them all. We could have learned so much of them, yet we killed them and have only their statements from Nuremberg to tell us what they thought. It would have been much better to put them in a room together and eavesdrop. That could have shed a light on what was really going on. But no, they had to die.

The British locked the German military officers they captured up in a nice country estate, gave them proper food and every comfort they might require and then recorded their conversations. After two weeks of this, the secret service was amazed at what they talked about. They were able to learn a lot about how the system worked and what the military actually thought of Hitler at that point. Before Nuremberg, they could have done the same, but no, they absolutely had to die and quickly... It was already bad enough that the two most important people had died.


No I really wouldn't have been as blind. Hitler's speeches were quite starkly mad. Sure, if I were an entirely different person with a full set of radically altered convictions and passions and temperaments, maybe I might have gone along with the situation. But that is a meaningless point, since I am who I am, that other person wouldn't be me. As political as I am, I would have been one of the first sent to a concentration camp, probably as early as 1933.

And as far as leaving my wife and children, they would probably be better off widowed and orphaned than with a husband and father who openly opposes the policies of the regime in power. Some things are worth more than emotional ties. Transgressing every principle, ever truth and every good I know and hold dear, would be worse than facing death, whatever other things I would have to consider.

I would have enjoyed a hot glowing sense of triumph at being martyred for a cause so worthy as that of opposing Hitler. Far better than dying in a warm bed at age 70 after leading the long comfortable life of a coward.

To be honest I don't know what I might have done. I suppose it would have depended on my husband. I think at least I would not have accepted that he do any of this nonsense, but I don't think I would have accepted that he openly protest. Then it would have been emigration. Far enough away.
I would probably not have been the one to hide Jews. However, if I had been in England, I would probably have done something, if I met the right people, as I would have been safe. For me there should always be enough reward to warrant the effort. The threat of being put in prison (as far as I would have known back then) or shot would not have warranted protesting or hiding Jews. Martyrdom in such a way, I find silly. Not because it is not honourable, but because you have done nothing much to improve things either way.

[kiki1982]

"I will never marry. A woman only sees you as a hero if you do not marry her." ~ Adolf Hitler

Right before death, he pleased her, when he had nothing to lose.

I wonder whether he also never married because he was supposed to be this very hard working man, married with the people as it were and constantly busy to improve the life of the people. Or that was the image anyway. Though I don't think that idea - that the Führer is constantly looking out for the people and thinking about the people, even protecting his people - that this can be paired with a marriage. There would be someting between the Führer and his people, a kind of 'second woman' or 'mistress'... That would have been a problem as everyone should have been able to identify with the Führer.

[KCurtis]

The Hitlers and Ghengises and Robespierres are the exceptions. Few men harbor such unscrupulously murderous ambitions in their breasts. You are right of course that evil is an essential part of humanity and those utopians who imagine it possible for evil to ever disappear from the face of this earth are naive and blinded by clouds. But a Hitler need not have arisen. If the good men of the time had acted with more courage and conviction that vile weed could have been extinguished before it spread over Europe. That is why this attitude of understanding I see so many show towards evil is downright frightening to me. A tyrant who eliminates all political rights and freedoms and then uses his illegitimately acquired power to wage unjust wars and commit crimes against humanity forfeits his right to our understanding, he marks himself a monster, a dark shadowy piece of fate that must be mercilessly put down.



I would have enjoyed a hot glowing sense of triumph at being martyred for a cause so worthy as that of opposing Hitler. Far better than dying in a warm bed at age 70 after leading the long comfortable life of a coward.

I don't think any peice of literature could state this any better than you have, truly impressive.

[KCurtis]

I know all what he did and that is not my point, the man was clearly twisted. HOWEVER, an evil man would not be capable of any good. Yet Mengele gave sweets to his victims. The older ones regarded that as deception, the younger ones not. An evil man would not wish to give sweets, he would just wish to kill or see people killed (and there were some of these around).

This is NOT true. Evil is quite capable of doing good for it's own reward.

[Darcy88]

I know all what he did and that is not my point, the man was clearly twisted. HOWEVER, an evil man would not be capable of any good. Yet Mengele gave sweets to his victims. The older ones regarded that as deception, the younger ones not. An evil man would not wish to give sweets, he would just wish to kill or see people killed (and there were some of these around). He received his new victims with asking them to call him 'uncle Mengele'. Pretty digusting if you think of it, although it was not necessary to keep them sweet so to say as they were prisoners anyway. Whether they wanted or not, they were there to experimented upon or could dhe not bear them to cry or something?
The experiments like sterilisation, were carried out already in 1906 in Namibia on indigenous tribes by his teacher, professor Fischer who was later manageing the university of Berlin. That Mr Fischer was also obsessed with twins. You see how far this goes back?

I tend to agree with Alexander III that this is man. You give one slightly twisted and conditioned personality power over others and he will do this of his own accord. That is what we are meant to learn from this, not call him evil.

The only man who could be evil is the one who does these things by himself, having had no guidance to do so. Like a Breikvik (or however his name is spelled). He is a good candidate. Evil is not the man who has been told for his whole career that Jews are inferior, gypsies the scum of the earth, and that it is ok to do experiments on people.


No, just no. Are we really going argue whether Mengele, the Angel of Death, was evil? From whence this incorrigible resistance on your part to indict any man, no matter how depraved and lacking of humanity, as one who is evil? I don't understand it. Eichmann and Mengele were evil, regardless of whether they gave their victims sweets, dropped change into the poor box, or gave their dogs a nice pet. You admit their responsiblity and yet refuse to state the plain and simple truth that they were evil men. How is the Norweigan gunman, Anders Breivick, any worse, any more evil than they? He had them to look up to, their immoral example to emulate. Absolve men of their evil and you are one step closer to embracing it.


Very good. Hitler was indeed a coward. Look at his last two deeds. He knew of the possibility of the bullet failing. So he took the arsenic first. Then, because he knew of the inmense pain of death by arsenic, he shot himself.
But he didn't even care about Eva and gave her only the arsenic so that she couldn't possibly be left alive after his death.

"I will never marry. A woman only sees you as a hero if you do not marry her." ~ Adolf Hitler

Right before death, he pleased her, when he had nothing to lose.

Yes, he left Germany shattered and then ignobly jumped ship, not even man enough to face well deserved justice. A true coward indeed.


They are only the exceptions if man is not condoned to be violent.

Of course evil exists, but it is not embodied in people. That is profoundly philosophical but man is too imperfect to be perfectly evil, therefore there are no evil people, but only people who are somehow disposed to follow evil. Yet they are always capables of being kind.

I think it was a bad thing to execute them all. We could have learned so much of them, yet we killed them and have only their statements from Nuremberg to tell us what they thought. It would have been much better to put them in a room together and eavesdrop. That could have shed a light on what was really going on. But no, they had to die.

To be honest I don't know what I might have done. I suppose it would have depended on my husband. I think at least I would not have accepted that he do any of this nonsense, but I don't think I would have accepted that he openly protest. Then it would have been emigration. Far enough away.
I would probably not have been the one to hide Jews. However, if I had been in England, I would probably have done something, if I met the right people, as I would have been safe. For me there should always be enough reward to warrant the effort. [B]The threat of being put in prison (as far as I would have known back then) or shot would not have warranted protesting or hiding Jews. Martyrdom in such a way, I find silly. Not because it is not honourable, but because you have done nothing much to improve things either way.That is not profound philosophy, that is straight balderdash. By your impossible standard no man can be deemed good either, since there is always some minor moral slip up that even the best of us fall prey to. You've set your own definition of evil, a definition that neither I nor most people adhere to, and then come here spouting it as a general truth. Its not. An evil man is a man who commits evil acts, not one whose every fibre is bloated with some metaphysical evil presence.

And the sentiment of yours I quoted here in bold is the same sentiment that allowed the atrocities to occur. Not enough people were willing to risk it all, to spurn consequence and reward, and just do the moral thing. Its a passive, neutral way of thinking. You have the evil wolves and the good shepherds vying for influence over the great human flock. Both are relatively few in number, the bulk of humanity being passive, neutral sheep.


I don't think any peice of literature could state this any better than you have, truly impressive.

Thanks. The topic at hand lends itself to strong sentimental expression.

[JuniperWoolf]

The lesson we are meant to learn from all this is, that this is man, for better or worse this is who we are.

Yeah, seperating ourselves from destructive behaviour and denying that it's a part of us, assterting that it is some other called "evil" and insisting that the potential isn't there within us as well to commit gross acts would be a mistake. They mentioned that in Maus. Some German reporter told Art that German youths were really starting to get sick of being punished for the sins of their great-grandparents, and are they supposed to feel guilty forever? Art replied that maybe this burden isn't just on German kids - maybe it's on all people, maybe all of us have to feel guilty, forever.

[kiki1982]

No, just no. Are we really going argue whether Mengele, the Angel of Death, was evil? From whence this incorrigible resistance on your part to indict any man, no matter how depraved and lacking of humanity, as one who is evil? I don't understand it. Eichmann and Mengele were evil, regardless of whether they gave their victims sweets, dropped change into the poor box, or gave their dogs a nice pet. You admit their responsiblity and yet refuse to state the plain and simple truth that they were evil men. How is the Norweigan gunman, Anders Breivick, any worse, any more evil than they? He had them to look up to, their immoral example to emulate. Absolve men of their evil and you are one step closer to embracing it.

Eichmann and Mengele's actions were very different. Eichmann organised, Mengele did himself. You cannot deny that organising is different and easier than doing it yourself. Secondly, Mengele clearly had a history in experimentation. If the great chief of the university of Berlin of all people, also did sterilisation experiments on black women, was obsessed with race and focussed on mulatto chlldren, taught Mengele plus a whole lot of others, I contend that a twisted mind, which Mengele must have been seeing the cruel stuff he did, finds approval of its twisted ideas in such an environment. And he will certainly have found it in the rest of German society.

An Anders Breivik has not found approval or confirmation in his society, that is why it caused such a big shock. He has only found it in a minority of people who assemble on the internet. There is a great difference between the two.

Again, I have never said they were not responsible, I have only highlighted the fact that these ideas did not come from themselves, but were deeply embedded in what they learned and what they saw. That is profoundly different from an Anders Breivick. Turn it how you will, Anders Breivik was not living in a society that generally condoned shunning, beating and thwarting Jews or any other minorities. He may project anti-Semitic type of views onto Muslims as Blumenthal says, but he is not a neo-Nazi. And he despises Hitler as will be apparent from his own manifesto:


Whenever someone asks if I am a national socialist I am deeply offended. If there is one historical figure and past Germanic leader I hate it is Adolf Hitler. If I could travel in a time-machine to Berlin in 1933, I would be the first person to go – with the purpose of killing him. Why? No person has ever committed a more horrible crime against his tribe than Hitler. Because of him, the Germanic tribes are dying and MAY be completely wiped out unless we manage to win within 20–70 years. Thanks to his insane campaign and the subsequent genocide of the 6 million Jews, multiculturalism, the anti-European hate ideology was created. Multiculturalism would have never been implemented in Europe if it hadn’t been for NSDAPs reckless and unforgivable actions. Eastern Europe would have remained free, the US and Russia would never have risen up as super-powers. The balance of power would have remained in Europe. And it would be a beautiful Europe with beautiful cultural conservative policies – very similar to the ones you now find in Japan and South Korea. Hitler almost destroyed everything with his reckless and unforgivable actions and he will forever be known as a traitor to the Nordic-Germanic tribes.

And he goes on for a while like this.


That is not profound philosophy, that is straight balderdash. By your impossible standard no man can be deemed good either, since there is always some minor moral slip up that even the best of us fall prey to. You've set your own definition of evil, a definition that neither I nor most people adhere to, and then come here spouting it as a general truth. Its not. An evil man is a man who commits evil acts, not one whose every fibre is bloated with some metaphysical evil presence.

Not balderdash, my opinion. Not better or worse than yours. Man is not perfect.

Of course very few people adhere to that definition and that is the problem. We committed revenge on those Nazis, but we learned nothing. It is happening under our noses again and again and we fail to act. As Juniperwoolf said below you post, the fact that we (or you) call them evil, means that they are essentially different from you yourself and so that it can never happen again. Yet it is part of man and it happens again and again. Yet we do not learn.


And the sentiment of yours I quoted here in bold is the same sentiment that allowed the atrocities to occur. Not enough people were willing to risk it all, to spurn consequence and reward, and just do the moral thing. Its a passive, neutral way of thinking. You have the evil wolves and the good shepherds vying for influence over the great human flock. Both are relatively few in number, the bulk of humanity being passive, neutral sheep.

Again, it seems to be difficult to explain to you that this was a gradual process. Maybe it is best understood by Darcy's words on a much more trivial subject: 'I was in the middle of it before I realised.' The Germans were in 1933 supporting Hitler and beating Jews on the street, cutting off their curls and such before they knew it. It was too late to do anything. Martyrdom is all well and good, but it would not have done anythig against this vast perpetuum mobile which rolled on until it rolled straight into the abbyss. At the point where they decided that they wanted pleasure, they turned away from any interest in the long term effects of that day's pleasure and they voted for him. The Weimar Republik failed to act when it was supposed to and somehow Hitler was tried for his coup in the wrong court. He should have been tried in Dresden where there was very little support, yet he was tried in Munich which only increased his popularity. Somehow, everyone seemed decided to subject Germany and Europe to this and everything failed which could have stemmed his advance. People got used to the kind of militaristic behaviour we now see as a threat in Hungary and they got used to yellow JUDENLADEN signs on the windows of shops. We now see this as a straight sign that something is wrong. They got used to people wearing yellow stars on their coats. They did not even flinch. The great power of this was that is was so gradual that it went unnoticed. If you see it now you wonder how people never objected to it, never got genuinely concerned about it, but this was over at least 10 years if not more.
The sad thing is that people did not want to act because there was no seeming danger. Not even Jews themselves. They did not flee the country en masse becaue they thought it could not go on forever.
By the time everyone realised what was actually happening there was nothing to be done beause the year 1933 had ended and dictatorship had been firmly established. And still the west did not realise what the extent of the damage was and only made caricatures of Hitler...

What could you have done apart from uselessly sacrificing your life for nothing much apart from the grief of your own family? Besides, people hardly knew what was happening, so that is irrelevant anyway.

Again, the Americans branded the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto who were resisting evacuation liars because they did not believe their reports of mass extermination in Poland adn branded them as exaggerated. They only believed it when they saw the piles of bodies, goods etc. So why would we from the outside have done anything to 'save' them if they were not being murdered anyway? I suppose, though, that people did not dare to ask themselves where all those Jews were going. A few must have done 2+2, but maybe did not dare to imagine 4 or even consider that it was possible to actually do 4... Tricky question, isn't it.

[mona amon]

The only man who could be evil is the one who does these things by himself, having had no guidance to do so. Like a Breikvik (or however his name is spelled). He is a good candidate. Evil is not the man who has been told for his whole career that Jews are inferior, gypsies the scum of the earth, and that it is ok to do experiments on people.

People are products of their genes and their environment. There's no such thing as a completely unconditioned, untaught, unguided person. Breivik's extreme ideas were there before him. They did not spring out of his own mind. And it says that when he was in school he protected kids who were being bullied, a far more admirable thing than Onkel Mengle giving sweets to the kids before vivisecting them. I think you're calling him evil (without extending the same courtesy to people like Mengele) because the shooting has a more personal impact on you, perhaps because it happened only a few months back, while the atrocities of the Holocaust have become stale with time and repitition.


You give one slightly twisted and conditioned personality power over others and he will do this of his own accord. That is what we are meant to learn from this, not call him evil. - Kiki

Looks like we are only disagreeing about names here. What you call 'slightly twisted and conditioned' I'm calling 'evil'.

[kiki1982]

People are products of their genes and their environment. There's no such thing as a completely unconditioned, untaught, unguided person. Breivik's extreme ideas were there before him. They did not spring out of his own mind. And it says that when he was in school he protected kids who were being bullied, a far more admirable thing than Onkel Mengle giving sweets to the kids before vivisecting them. I think you're calling him evil (without extending the same courtesy to people like Mengele) because the shooting has a more personal impact on you, perhaps because it happened only a few months back, while the atrocities of the Holocaust have become stale with time and repitition.

No, not because he made a more emotional impact on me because it was only a few months back, because Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are profoundly peaceful countries which have not seen murders in this kind of way. Had it been in the USA, I and the rest of the world would not have flinched. But, fine, don't call him evil then, although he had less cause to feel like this then Mengele had reason to believe he could use these people as guinea pigs in the literal sense of the word. Mengele had no cause to give these children sweets as they were his victims with or without them. He was not a white van man who had to win their confidence first to then abduct them.

You admit yourself that people are influenced by what they see then what is the chance that Mengele got his views somewhere else? Breivik lived in a society which does not even feel the need to lock its criminals up. Sure, Breivik's views came from somewhere else as most people's do, however, you cannot deny that nor his family nor his society decided his was the way to go. Although these problems flowing under the surface is what is being explored in crime fiction as Wallander and Stieg Larsson, amongst others.

[Darcy88]

Not balderdash, my opinion. Not better or worse than yours. Man is not perfect.

I guess my 60 year old aunt who has a few grey hairs can no longer be correctly called a brunette since she has those few grey hairs and is therefore not "perfectly" brunette. I guess then that the heroic man who daily commits courageous selfless deeds such as risking his life to save a school house full of burning children or diving into icy rivers to retrieve people who've driven off the road into the water, I guess he is not a "good" man, even if his hobbies include running soup kitchens and traveling to disaster zones to dispense medical aid and food supplies, since he is not "perfectly good," he once cheated on his wife and he cuts people off while driving.


Of course very few people adhere to that definition and that is the problem.

No one fits that definition. You are denying that anyone is evil. I could find excuses for Breivick as valid as those you've made for Eichmann. Its a preposterous way of viewing things you have when it comes to recognizing the reality of evil.



As Juniperwoolf said below you post, the fact that we (or you) call them evil, means that they are essentially different from you yourself and so that it can never happen again. Yet it is part of man and it happens again and again. Yet we do not learn.

Not really. I said in a prior post that "evil is an essential part of humanity." I admit that I have evil in myself, the capacity to do evil. But I keep that potential for evil caged up and so it stays nothing more than potential.


Again, it seems to be difficult to explain to you that this was a gradual process. Maybe it is best understood by Darcy's words on a much more trivial subject: 'I was in the middle of it before I realised.' The Germans were in 1933 supporting Hitler and beating Jews on the street, cutting off their curls and such before they knew it. It was too late to do anything. Martyrdom is all well and good, but it would not have done anythig against this vast perpetuum mobile which rolled on until it rolled straight into the abbyss. At the point where they decided that they wanted pleasure, they turned away from any interest in the long term effects of that day's pleasure and they voted for him. The Weimar Republik failed to act when it was supposed to and somehow Hitler was tried for his coup in the wrong court. He should have been tried in Dresden where there was very little support, yet he was tried in Munich which only increased his popularity. Somehow, everyone seemed decided to subject Germany and Europe to this and everything failed which could have stemmed his advance. People got used to the kind of militaristic behaviour we now see as a threat in Hungary and they got used to yellow JUDENLADEN signs on the windows of shops. We now see this as a straight sign that something is wrong. They got used to people wearing yellow stars on their coats. They did not even flinch. The great power of this was that is was so gradual that it went unnoticed. If you see it now you wonder how people never objected to it, never got genuinely concerned about it, but this was over at least 10 years if not more.
The sad thing is that people did not want to act because there was no seeming danger. Not even Jews themselves. They did not flee the country en masse becaue they thought it could not go on forever.
By the time everyone realised what was actually happening there was nothing to be done beause the year 1933 had ended and dictatorship had been firmly established. And still the west did not realise what the extent of the damage was and only made caricatures of Hitler...

Some good points in there. But I would have opposed Hitler not only because of the holocaust but also because he was a tyrant, a freedom-subverting tyrant of the most wretched order.

Sic semper tyrannis.

[Darcy88]

No, not because he made a more emotional impact on me because it was only a few months back, because Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are profoundly peaceful countries which have not seen murders in this kind of way. Had it been in the USA, I and the rest of the world would not have flinched. But, fine, don't call him evil then, although he had less cause to feel like this then Mengele had reason to believe he could use these people as guinea pigs in the literal sense of the word. Mengele had no cause to give these children sweets as they were his victims with or without them. He was not a white van man who had to win their confidence first to then abduct them.

You admit yourself that people are influenced by what they see then what is the chance that Mengele got his views somewhere else? Breivik lived in a society which does not even feel the need to lock its criminals up. Sure, Breivik's views came from somewhere else as most people's do, however, you cannot deny that nor his family nor his society decided his was the way to go. Although these problems flowing under the surface is what is being explored in crime fiction as Wallander and Stieg Larsson, amongst others.

You really don't understand evil. It doesn't matter what is its cause, all that matters is that it is done. You think that by tracing the line of cause and effect back to evil's origination you somehow eliminate it. You don't. An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

[Alexander III]

You really don't understand evil. It doesn't matter what is its cause, all that matters is that it is done. You think that by tracing the line of cause and effect back to evil's origination you somehow eliminate it. You don't. An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.

[JuniperWoolf]

Exactly. Identify and try to understand what it would have been like to be a victim, that's a big part of it and it's much easier to stomach too. But it's only half the story, half of the human condition; also try to understand the opressors. To deny that is to deny your own nature, which makes you blind to it. How are you going to control it if you can't even see it?

[Darcy88]

Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.

That is not all that Kiki is saying. Kiki argues that Hitler and Eichmann were not evil. Kiki argues that it is wrong to even condemn such men. These are incorrect and preposterous points of view. Yes, it is good to see in the evil of others the reflection of the potential for evil within ourselves. But that is as far as our understanding ought to go. Any further and you wind up going where Kiki has gone, absolving men of their crimes, refusing to condemn them, attributing their actions to prior causes.

You and Juniper hit on a good point, but the fact remains that there is a small segment of humanity which rapes and murders and commits atrocities. This segment is evil, such people act evilly where we would halt any such brutal impulse before acting on it. Or I guess we could say "hey, we're all capable of evil, Hitler wasn't so different from us, lets understand him, lets not condemn." Hogwash. Put his head on a pike I say. Defend the good with the same fanatical resolve with which evil men do their evil deeds.

[JuniperWoolf]

This thread strongly needs a functioning definition of "evil." Not examples, something solid. Otherwise it'll be difficult to understand each other.

[Darcy88]

Evil is wrongdoing on a severe scale. Bursting in on your wife getting ploughed by some dude and killing him with your bare hands in a fit of uncontrolled rage is very wrong but its not evil. Picking up a random hitchhiker and cutting off their head is evil. I mark the pedophile who rapes children an evil person, but I don't think I'd say the same of one who has those same urges but exercises self-control and abstains from acting on them. Its a somewhat ambiguous term, like justice or happiness or goodness, but you know it when you see it.

[Darcy88]

Hahaha. You search the word "evil" on wikipedia and a picture of Hitler pops up, no joke.

Here is what it says in the introduction:


Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of The Good. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its root motives and causes; however, evil is commonly associated with conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological well-being and dignity, destructiveness, motives of causing "unnecessary" pain or suffering and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence.[2] The philosophical question of whether morality is absolute or relative leads to questions about the nature of evil, with views falling into one of four opposed camps: moral absolutism, amoralism, moral relativism, and moral universalism.


I wholeheartedly concur with the part in bold.

[fb0252]

all this thread needs to end this stupid discussion is understanding that as far as Hitler, the Holocaust, what happened in Russia, Babi Yar etc. the adjectives to describe fail to exist. and, Hitler was a great orator. omg. look at speech content on u tube. only staged progaganda events hitting the same nationalist hot buttons ad nauseum. the sum is that Hitler and his band of pathological thugs merely observed the most consistent lesson in history that started way back when on the fertile crescent that whoever has the latest army prevails. Goethe described this quite well and almost anticipated as Goethe's work does. this is what happened in Germany under Hitler and Russia under Stalin:

"that ancient truth, we will recite it. Give way to force
for might is right. And who would boldly offer strife than risk
your house, estate, and life?"

[cafolini]

Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.

As you say, history has been full of people like Hitler. But as you don't say, we must remember 1945 and proceed along those lines, for, as you don't say or see, they are finished forever. The illness of Germany in those days will not repeat.
That's why I don't care about the word "evil." An evil man has always been a smartass allowed to take it too far. C'est finit. Don't believe me. Know it or pay the consequences as fast as a saxo player spits.

[cafolini]

Exactly. Identify and try to understand what it would have been like to be a victim, that's a big part of it and it's much easier to stomach too. But it's only half the story, half of the human condition; also try to understand the opressors. To deny that is to deny your own nature, which makes you blind to it. How are you going to control it if you can't even see it?

Of course, if you can't even see it, you can't control it. But we saw it from the very beginning and became ready as soon as it started. Freedom fighters gave many lives to get the ill scoundrels. It took too long. Now, if you want to see how long it will take today, check what we have in store in Military.com, channel 287 DTV. I'm polishing my AK47 as I listen to ignorance.

[Mutie]

my part jewish friend years ago tried to read in to understand that time better, but said "theres only so many times you can read the word negroid before you get bored".

I think Nazis and their like can only step in when a country is crazy and desperate, like after WW1. thats why i fear about their attempting to rise in the UK right now.

[Darcy88]

I'm polishing my AK47 as I listen to ignorance.

Caf man you've spouted some real gems but none can top this one.

[cafolini]

my part jewish friend years ago tried to read in to understand that time better, but said "theres only so many times you can read the word negroid before you get bored".

I think Nazis and their like can only step in when a country is crazy and desperate, like after WW1. thats why i fear about their attempting to rise in the UK right now.

Nothing to worry in the UK, Mutie. There are problems that are being handled. But madness is a different thing. Keep calm. There is a meritorious tradition in England that will not be overcome.

[kiki1982]

That is not all that Kiki is saying. Kiki argues that Hitler and Eichmann were not evil. Kiki argues that it is wrong to even condemn such men. These are incorrect and preposterous points of view. Yes, it is good to see in the evil of others the reflection of the potential for evil within ourselves. But that is as far as our understanding ought to go. Any further and you wind up going where Kiki has gone, absolving men of their crimes, refusing to condemn them, attributing their actions to prior causes.

You and Juniper hit on a good point, but the fact remains that there is a small segment of humanity which rapes and murders and commits atrocities. This segment is evil, such people act evilly where we would halt any such brutal impulse before acting on it. Or I guess we could say "hey, we're all capable of evil, Hitler wasn't so different from us, lets understand him, lets not condemn." Hogwash. Put his head on a pike I say. Defend the good with the same fanatical resolve with which evil men do their evil deeds.

I never said that you could not condemn, I said that blind condemnation did not bring you anywhere. That is something totally different. All we have done for the last 60 years is condemn and nothing more. That is for the court, but it does not aid one in dealing with the trauma. German society is still suffering from it. They were once culturured people, but they lost it all in ten to fifteen years of that. On 11/11, the Germans celebrate the start of Carnival, not armistice. Maybe this is a tradition, but to me it is a bit like, 'We need to have a party to be able to ignore that the rest of the world is mourning their dead, which we essentially caused.' Instead of including everyone, Germany was present at such a remembrance event for the first time only a few years ago.
My first class in uni about modern German literature started with the fact that the Germans built their country again, cleared the rubble away, but never dealt with the trauma of the Third Reich and so it is with the rest of the world. We feel condemnation, call these people evil and would gladly ignore that they were like you and me and that such people, if they were not you or me, are still among us. That was the trauma, not the fact that a system murdered 6 million people out of ideology.


This thread strongly needs a functioning definition of "evil." Not examples, something solid. Otherwise it'll be difficult to understand each other.

I think that is a good suggestion.


Evil is wrongdoing on a severe scale. Bursting in on your wife getting ploughed by some dude and killing him with your bare hands in a fit of uncontrolled rage is very wrong but its not evil. Picking up a random hitchhiker and cutting off their head is evil. I mark the pedophile who rapes children an evil person, but I don't think I'd say the same of one who has those same urges but exercises self-control and abstains from acting on them. Its a somewhat ambiguous term, like justice or happiness or goodness, but you know it when you see it.

Nonono, that is not being evil, that is evil manifesting itself. If you put a murderer of one person, out of passion or desire (the one more excusable than the other) on an equal level with someone who plotted or at least allowed the industrial killing of 6 million, then you are essentially insulting the killer of that one person.

And of course you are going to rant and rave at this one: the paedophile is essentially of a different sexuality as is a homosexual. Fortunately they are a small minority. Before you go off on one, I consider it wrong and traumatic for the child, it should not happen, but a paedophile cannot control his sexuality and falls in love with children as a homosexual falls in love with men. Unless he is a psychopath or a sadist (and that is not related to paedopilia), he knows what he is doing is wrong and does not derive pleasure from doing that to a child as it is profoundly wrong, but as children are everywhere, you will understand that it is pretty difficult to control those urges. On the upside, they can be helped by (chemical) castration and some go totally numb which they prefer above having their urges. For some such treatment does not work, they relapse even with hormone treatment and they decide to become hermits to protect society from themselves. Again, I consider it wrong, but evil, no, for the reasons above. If authorities were clever, they would offer those people a place to live without children. They can be useful, only far away from children.

[Pierre Menard]

Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.


Quality post, Alex.



This thread strongly needs a functioning definition of "evil." Not examples, something solid. Otherwise it'll be difficult to understand each other.

Agreed. I think the word 'functioning' seems to indicate there is no objective definition of evil though, especially when a tiny amount of people on an internet forum can't even decide. :P


Hahaha. You search the word "evil" on wikipedia and a picture of Hitler pops up, no joke.

Here is what it says in the introduction:

I wholeheartedly concur with the part in bold.

I dunno, Darcy, those parts in bold can accurately describe many, many day to day common people...I'm not really sure if the definition holds up.

[Darcy88]

I dunno, Darcy, those parts in bold can accurately describe many, many day to day common people...I'm not really sure if the definition holds up.

Actually it does hold up. If you equate taunting and bullying to hate speech and murder then sure, the average person is evil. Not a whole lot of people commit acts of "indiscriminate violence" and go out of their ways to cause others "pain and suffering." Common sense excludes bar fights and petty insults from any definition of evil.

And you think its a "quality post" in which someone asks us to view Hitler as a "victim?" I'm already on my soap box, been up on it since this thread began, so I'll just continue in the same vein....

WHAT!? What is there to possibly be gained by viewing as a victim a man who wiped off the face of this earth millions upon millions of innocent souls? This is pansy-assed political correctness grown to horrendously abominable proportions. Yes, its all well and good to recognize our own capacity for evil. But to label the greatest tyrant and murderer in perhaps all human history a "victim" is just ridiculous and insulting to the memory of his victims, all six million plus of them.


I never said that you could not condemn, I said that blind condemnation did not bring you anywhere. That is something totally different. All we have done for the last 60 years is condemn and nothing more. That is for the court, but it does not aid one in dealing with the trauma. German society is still suffering from it. They were once culturured people, but they lost it all in ten to fifteen years of that. On 11/11, the Germans celebrate the start of Carnival, not armistice. Maybe this is a tradition, but to me it is a bit like, 'We need to have a party to be able to ignore that the rest of the world is mourning their dead, which we essentially caused.' Instead of including everyone, Germany was present at such a remembrance event for the first time only a few years ago.
My first class in uni about modern German literature started with the fact that the Germans built their country again, cleared the rubble away, but never dealt with the trauma of the Third Reich and so it is with the rest of the world. We feel condemnation, call these people evil and would gladly ignore that they were like you and me and that such people, if they were not you or me, are still among us. That was the trauma, not the fact that a system murdered 6 million people out of ideology.



I think that is a good suggestion.



Nonono, that is not being evil, that is evil manifesting itself. If you put a murderer of one person, out of passion or desire (the one more excusable than the other) on an equal level with someone who plotted or at least allowed the industrial killing of 6 million, then you are essentially insulting the killer of that one person.

And of course you are going to rant and rave at this one: the paedophile is essentially of a different sexuality as is a homosexual. Fortunately they are a small minority. Before you go off on one, I consider it wrong and traumatic for the child, it should not happen, but a paedophile cannot control his sexuality and falls in love with children as a homosexual falls in love with men. Unless he is a psychopath or a sadist (and that is not related to paedopilia), he knows what he is doing is wrong and does not derive pleasure from doing that to a child as it is profoundly wrong, but as children are everywhere, you will understand that it is pretty difficult to control those urges. On the upside, they can be helped by (chemical) castration and some go totally numb which they prefer above having their urges. For some such treatment does not work, they relapse even with hormone treatment and they decide to become hermits to protect society from themselves. Again, I consider it wrong, but evil, no, for the reasons above. If authorities were clever, they would offer those people a place to live without children. They can be useful, only far away from children.

Why pick on homosexuals? By your definition pedophiles are just like heterosexuals too. I specifically said its wrong for pedophiles to have sex with children, not for them to experience the actual urges and not act on them.

It is still your contention that Hitler cannot be condemned as evil. I don't see how that position can have any solid basis and you've yet to demonstrate that it has.

[mona amon]

Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.

Words words words. Sounds good, means nothing. Do you truly and honestly see yourself mirrored in Hitler? Or in Pol Pot or in Stalin? Or for that matter in Jesus or Gandhi or Martin Luther King? The fact is that all these people are exceptional, and beyond a few uninteresting and unimportant things common to all human beings, they are nothing like you or me. That's why everyone knows their name, but has never heard of you or me.



No, not because he made a more emotional impact on me because it was only a few months back, because Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are profoundly peaceful countries which have not seen murders in this kind of way. - Kiki

This only shows that evil people can spring up in any society, even the most peaceful. Let's not put the blame on German society for creating a Hitler. He was not a product of his times. He was an evil genius who was able to see opportunities, manipulate and take advantage of the conditions of his society to seize power and carry out his own agenda with a cleverness and cunning that is beyond the comprehension of most human beings.


German society is still suffering from it. They were once culturured people, but they lost it all in ten to fifteen years of that. On 11/11, the Germans celebrate the start of Carnival, not armistice. Maybe this is a tradition, but to me it is a bit like, 'We need to have a party to be able to ignore that the rest of the world is mourning their dead, which we essentially caused.' Instead of including everyone, Germany was present at such a remembrance event for the first time only a few years ago. - Kiki
I agree that it probably doesn't help to call Hitler and his cohorts evil when everyone knows that already. I just don't understand how calling him "not evil" is going to help. Won't it be worse for German people if we were to say "Hey guys, it wasn't Hitler's fault. He wasn't evil. He was just a regular guy like you or me, who was conditioned by the society he grew up in. It was your evil society that made him do bad things"?

[stlukesguild]

mona amon-You really don't understand evil. It doesn't matter what is its cause, all that matters is that it is done. You think that by tracing the line of cause and effect back to evil's origination you somehow eliminate it. You don't. An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

Absolutely!

kiki1982- I think you are confusing two things here. Actions being evil and people being evil.

There is no confusion here. All you are doing is regurgitating the mantra: "There are no bad people, only bad decisions and bad actions." To repeat the emboldened phrase from above: An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

I for one am not defending anyone here, I have never denied their responsibility, but only said that calling all of those people evil is a bit rich

It's a bit rich to call someone "evil" who is responsible for the systematic genocide of 6 million Jews, God knows how many homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped, mentally ill, and any number of other individuals who were deemed "inferior" and "less than human"? It's a bit rich to suggest that an individual responsible for a war that ravaged nearly the whole of Europe, killed untold millions, and resulted in the Götterdämmerung... the devastation and ruin of his own nation just might be considered "evil" is rich thinking on my part? I would suggest that your continued attempts to justify and validate the actions of Hitler and the Nazis call your own intentions and beliefs into question.

Where are you then with your capital punishment? Things can seem absolutely certain now, but can you be 100% sure that that is going to be the same in 10 to 20 years?
The fact that one were to get pleasure from seeing someone hanged is worrying, certainly in modern society. In the past, humanity may have been a bit weird (maybe because they had so much contact with death that it didn't really matter how it happened), but nowadays, I find that profoundly strange and even slightly twisted.
I even found it an outrage that the Polish bungled the Sobibor camp commander's hanging three times. Only the fourth time it worked. In medieval times they would have considered it a sign that this person was not to be hanged, but that's modern times for you... I do not say he was not rsponsible or cruel (he was particularly twisted), but doing it in such a way shows your own cruel streak and in that case you are no better than the one you are hanging. Then you are motivated by revenge which makes you no better than the first Germanic tribes and the maffia now.

Yes... of course. Those responsible for sadistically killing innocent women and children and the mentally and physically handicapped should never have been so ill treated. They should have instead been treated to an all expense paid vacation to the south of France, and while there we might have suggested that they think about participating in some group therapy. After a few sessions they undoubtedly would have been fully fit to re-enter polite society.

What you miss is that the goal of execution is multifold: it is to provide some sense of justice or retribution and closure for the victims; it is to act as a warning to others; and it is a means of eradicating such evil persons from society. The notion that by taking such vengeance we become no different than our enemy is but one more weak-minded platitude. The difference between the Nazis and those who executed them is that the Nazis actions were undeniably "evil"... the killing of innocent human beings. This is the point you repeatedly ignore.

Words words words. Sounds good, means nothing. Do you truly and honestly see yourself mirrored in Hitler? Or in Pol Pot or in Stalin? Or for that matter in Jesus or Gandhi or Martin Luther King? The fact is that all these people are exceptional, and beyond a few uninteresting and unimportant things common to all human beings, they are nothing like you or me. That's why everyone knows their name, but has never heard of you or me.

Earlier I spoke of the fact that in many ways we have not learned the lesson from the Third Reich in that it can happen again... it can happen anywhere. I should clarify things... I am not suggesting that there was nothing exceptional about Hitler or Himmler or Mengele (or Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot)... that none of us are in the least different form them, and that with the slightest change in our up-bringing and experiences anyone of us could be them. What I was addressing was the blindness of the masses... the seduction of the many by the charismatic individual that most certainly can happen anywhere and at anytime.

German society is still suffering from it. They were once culturured people, but they lost it all in ten to fifteen years of that.

German culture was certainly undergoing a peak at the time of the rise of Hitler. Literature, painting, and sculpture in Germany and Austria rivaled that of Paris. German music was still the standard against which all other music was measured. The German film-makers were among the leaders of what would become the most important art form of the 20th century. German architects were inventing what would become our modern cities. All of this was swept aside by the rise of the Third Reich. The Germans themselves should despise Hitler and all he stood for that reason alone.

Germany's reputation was undoubtedly soiled by the events of WWII. the stain remains for several reasons. Both the scale and the nearness (in time) of the events of the Holocaust cause it to resonate far larger that the "Reign of Terror" or the atrocities that took place under Napoleon... let alone the Mongols or the various Roman despots. The systematic and mechanized genocide was also documented so well both boy the Germans and by the Allies as opposed to the mass killings in the Soviet Union or China under Mao. WWII itself stands as a pivotal point in the history of the UK and the United States (among other countries) so that they repeatedly return to the war. The Jewish population of the world has also, rightfully, done much to assure us that we can never forget.

And yet how deep is the "stain" on Germany? How profoundly have they been brought low by history? Germany is now one of the most powerful nations in Europe... probably the most powerful in economic terms. German culture is still among the most influential in the world: German composers account for more of the music performed by symphonic orchestras than those of any other country. German literature is broadly studied at the universities, while Kafka, Mann, Hesse, Grass, and Rilke remain among the most read writers in the world. German film-makers had a profound impact upon American film industry... and especially the film noir... an influence that continues to be felt. German painting has only grown in influence until painters such as Paul Klee and Max Beckmann are seen as standing shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Picasso, while perhaps the greatest (certainly the highest paid) living painter, Anselm Kiefer, is a German artist who has repeatedly confronted Germnay's history and the Holocaust. Most intelligent human beings recognize that Germany is more than Nazis just as japan is more than Pearl Harbor and the Batan Death March.

[Darcy88]

mona amon-You really don't understand evil. It doesn't matter what is its cause, all that matters is that it is done. You think that by tracing the line of cause and effect back to evil's origination you somehow eliminate it. You don't. An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

Absolutely!

kiki1982- I think you are confusing two things here. Actions being evil and people being evil.

There is no confusion here. All you are doing is regurgitating the mantra: "There are no bad people, only bad decisions and bad actions." To repeat the emboldened phrase from above: An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

I for one am not defending anyone here, I have never denied their responsibility, but only said that calling all of those people evil is a bit rich

It's a bit rich to call someone "evil" who is responsible for the systematic genocide of 6 million Jews, God knows how many homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped, mentally ill, and any number of other individuals who were deemed "inferior" and "less than human"? It's a bit rich to suggest that an individual responsible for a war that ravaged nearly the whole of Europe, killed untold millions, and resulted in the Götterdämmerung... the devastation and ruin of his own nation just might be considered "evil" is rich thinking on my part? I would suggest that your continued attempts to justify and validate the actions of Hitler and the Nazis call your own intentions and beliefs into question.

Where are you then with your capital punishment? Things can seem absolutely certain now, but can you be 100% sure that that is going to be the same in 10 to 20 years?
The fact that one were to get pleasure from seeing someone hanged is worrying, certainly in modern society. In the past, humanity may have been a bit weird (maybe because they had so much contact with death that it didn't really matter how it happened), but nowadays, I find that profoundly strange and even slightly twisted.
I even found it an outrage that the Polish bungled the Sobibor camp commander's hanging three times. Only the fourth time it worked. In medieval times they would have considered it a sign that this person was not to be hanged, but that's modern times for you... I do not say he was not rsponsible or cruel (he was particularly twisted), but doing it in such a way shows your own cruel streak and in that case you are no better than the one you are hanging. Then you are motivated by revenge which makes you no better than the first Germanic tribes and the maffia now.

Yes... of course. Those responsible for sadistically killing innocent women and children and the mentally and physically handicapped should never have been so ill treated. They should have instead been treated to an all expense paid vacation to the south of France, and while there we might have suggested that they think about participating in some group therapy. After a few sessions they undoubtedly would have been fully fit to re-enter polite society.

What you miss is that the goal of execution is multifold: it is to provide some sense of justice or retribution and closure for the victims; it is to act as a warning to others; and it is a means of eradicating such evil persons from society. The notion that by taking such vengeance we become no different than our enemy is but one more weak-minded platitude. The difference between the Nazis and those who executed them is that the Nazis actions were undeniably "evil"... the killing of innocent human beings. This is the point you repeatedly ignore.

Words words words. Sounds good, means nothing. Do you truly and honestly see yourself mirrored in Hitler? Or in Pol Pot or in Stalin? Or for that matter in Jesus or Gandhi or Martin Luther King? The fact is that all these people are exceptional, and beyond a few uninteresting and unimportant things common to all human beings, they are nothing like you or me. That's why everyone knows their name, but has never heard of you or me.

Earlier I spoke of the fact that in many ways we have not learned the lesson from the Third Reich in that it can happen again... it can happen anywhere. I should clarify things... I am not suggesting that there was nothing exceptional about Hitler or Himmler or Mengele (or Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot)... that none of us are in the least different form them, and that with the slightest change in our up-bringing and experiences anyone of us could be them. What I was addressing was the blindness of the masses... the seduction of the many by the charismatic individual that most certainly can happen anywhere and at anytime.

German society is still suffering from it. They were once culturured people, but they lost it all in ten to fifteen years of that.

German culture was certainly undergoing a peak at the time of the rise of Hitler. Literature, painting, and sculpture in Germany and Austria rivaled that of Paris. German music was still the standard against which all other music was measured. The German film-makers were among the leaders of what would become the most important art form of the 20th century. German architects were inventing what would become our modern cities. All of this was swept aside by the rise of the Third Reich. The Germans themselves should despise Hitler and all he stood for that reason alone.

Germany's reputation was undoubtedly soiled by the events of WWII. the stain remains for several reasons. Both the scale and the nearness (in time) of the events of the Holocaust cause it to resonate far larger that the "Reign of Terror" or the atrocities that took place under Napoleon... let alone the Mongols or the various Roman despots. The systematic and mechanized genocide was also documented so well both boy the Germans and by the Allies as opposed to the mass killings in the Soviet Union or China under Mao. WWII itself stands as a pivotal point in the history of the UK and the United States (among other countries) so that they repeatedly return to the war. The Jewish population of the world has also, rightfully, done much to assure us that we can never forget.

And yet how deep is the "stain" on Germany? How profoundly have they been brought low by history? Germany is now one of the most powerful nations in Europe... probably the most powerful in economic terms. German culture is still among the most influential in the world: German composers account for more of the music performed by symphonic orchestras than those of any other country. German literature is broadly studied at the universities, while Kafka, Mann, Hesse, Grass, and Rilke remain among the most read writers in the world. German film-makers had a profound impact upon American film industry... and especially the film noir... an influence that continues to be felt. German painting has only grown in influence until painters such as Paul Klee and Max Beckmann are seen as standing shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Picasso, while perhaps the greatest (certainly the highest paid) living painter, Anselm Kiefer, is a German artist who has repeatedly confronted Germnay's history and the Holocaust. Most intelligent human beings recognize that Germany is more than Nazis just as japan is more than Pearl Harbor and the Batan Death March.

Yes, exactly. The people on the other side of the argument would never dream of using power to unleash such staggering statistics of suffering and death as Hitler did. Its deranged philosophical contortion for an average person to see themselves in Hitler. It focuses only on the minor irrelevant things they share with the man and ignores those stark profound differences which separate them. Blondes and brunettes share so much in common against the single difference which divides them. Thus it is with good and evil, and the division in this case is no less plain.

The holocaust is no mere idea or word, it was the unjust slaughter of millions of individuals just like us, as innocent and as loving and as desirous of life as each of us are. Yes, Hitler was human, we have much in common with him, but, morally speaking, its like night and day, and in the end morality must matter much if not most. Fate made Hitler what he was, made him evil, but that does not change what he was, that does not make him any less evil.

[Mr.lucifer]

One frightening thing about Hitler was that he probably wasn't a sociopath.

[Darcy88]

One frightening thing about Hitler was that he probably wasn't a sociopath.

A smiling Hitler sneaks out of his bunker to commend his child soldiers for their valour in the battle of Berlin after all hope for German victory had perished.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071107213552/psychology/images/thumb/4/49/19450420_Hitler_65bd_awards_HJ_Iron_Cross.jpg/180px-19450420_Hitler_65bd_awards_HJ_Iron_Cross.jpg

[Mr.lucifer]

A smiling Hitler sneaks out of his bunker to commend his child soldiers for their valour in the battle of Berlin after all hope for German victory had perished.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071107213552/psychology/images/thumb/4/49/19450420_Hitler_65bd_awards_HJ_Iron_Cross.jpg/180px-19450420_Hitler_65bd_awards_HJ_Iron_Cross.jpg

I wonder why Stalin isn't talk about as much. He was just as evil, killed possibly more people, and the scary thing is that he is still respected today by many in Russia.

Pol pot might be ever eviler than both. He killed a greater percentage of his people than both of them and certainly more insane.

[Darcy88]

I wonder why Stalin isn't talk about as much. He was just as evil, killed possibly more people, and the scary thing is that he is still respected today by many in Russia.

Pol pot might be ever eviler than both. He killed a greater percentage of his people than both of them and certainly more insane.

Part of it might be that Stalin was our (most of us) ally. But then Russia became the villain, so you'd think Stalin would have been demonized as much as Hitler in the years since world war 2. I think just the sheer ugliness and inhumanity of the gas chamber presents so grotesque a thing that many of us feel greater outrage over the crimes of Hitler than those of Stalin.

I mean we fought Hitler, my grandfather and three of my great uncles actually fought him and his armies. It makes sense his infamy would exceed that of Stalin's, however unfair that is.

[Pierre Menard]

Actually it does hold up. If you equate taunting and bullying to hate speech and murder then sure, the average person is evil. Not a whole lot of people commit acts of "indiscriminate violence" and go out of their ways to cause others "pain and suffering." Common sense excludes bar fights and petty insults from any definition of evil.

And you think its a "quality post" in which someone asks us to view Hitler as a "victim?" I'm already on my soap box, been up on it since this thread began, so I'll just continue in the same vein....

WHAT!? What is there to possibly be gained by viewing as a victim a man who wiped off the face of this earth millions upon millions of innocent souls? This is pansy-assed political correctness grown to horrendously abominable proportions. Yes, its all well and good to recognize our own capacity for evil. But to label the greatest tyrant and murderer in perhaps all human history a "victim" is just ridiculous and insulting to the memory of his victims, all six million plus of them.


I didn't equate murder and bullying directly, but those definitions you provided create a huge umbrella. It more goes to show the inability to find a proper concrete definition of 'evil'.

I don't think Hitler is a victim, and I don't necessarily agree with everything Alex said, but I feel understanding the history of such a person, what made them tick, can go along way to telling us why and how such atrocities occur. Saying 'because they're evil' doesn't actually get to the heart of 'why?'.


As for 'political correctness', you're talking to the wrong guy. I'm not arguing from a politically correct bent, I'm arguing more from my belief in the subjective nature of morality and the lack of an objective definition of 'evil'.
I think Hitler was 'evil' per se, on a purely personal level, but I certainly don't think my definition of evil is 'objective'.

[JuniperWoolf]

I think the word 'functioning' seems to indicate there is no objective definition of evil though.

Exactly. It's too vague. We need an operational definition just for the purposes of this thread. If "it" is not to be tolerated and can be punished with death and torture, then what is it? Destructive behaviour on a massive scale, but how massive?

Personally, I don't like the word. It doesn't tell me anything about motivation for, or prevention of, gross acts. It seems like just... emotion. An emotional response to injustice. That's understandable, but we shouldn't make decisions based only on emotion, and the law can't, ever. Wrath without logic is dangerous.

[kiki1982]

And you think its a "quality post" in which someone asks us to view Hitler as a "victim?" I'm already on my soap box, been up on it since this thread began, so I'll just continue in the same vein...

On that soap box you are no better than the people you are labelling evil. Alexander never said Hitler was a victim, he said he was a seemingly normal man and product of his time. You could say Himmler had an inferiority complex, Goebbels also went that way, but in slightly different terms. Himmler wanted power, Goebbels an inspiration. Sadly he found it in Hitler, although their initial road did not go over roses. Had he never come in contact with the NSDAP, been in another country, he would no doubt have faded in history or become a shining politician. Who will say?


WHAT!? What is there to possibly be gained by viewing as a victim a man who wiped off the face of this earth millions upon millions of innocent souls? This is pansy-assed political correctness grown to horrendously abominable proportions. Yes, its all well and good to recognize our own capacity for evil. But to label the greatest tyrant and murderer in perhaps all human history a "victim" is just ridiculous and insulting to the memory of his victims, all six million plus of them.

Again, we are not trying to view him or anyone else as a victim, but as a question. A mourning process goes through several stages: shock, denial, (bargaining,) guilt, anger, depression, resignation and acceptance. We have had all the shock, denial, bargaining in a certain way (we should never forget, that way we are somehow offering something in return for it), guilt, anger. But we have had no resignation nor acceptance. We keep on repeating that it happened, that it should never happen again, and as such, as I said, trying to compensate for those six million. Even the Jewish population has had the guilt phase (Eli Wiesel). Yet, in order to give this a place and learn from it or at least do something constructive with it, we should resign ourselves and accept that they were human and a deadly cocktail, brought together by circumstances with lethal effects.
It will make us understand how things like this happen and it will help us prevent other things like this for which we have been blind up till now.


Why pick on homosexuals? By your definition pedophiles are just like heterosexuals too. I specifically said its wrong for pedophiles to have sex with children, not for them to experience the actual urges and not act on them.

I was not picking on homosexuals. Why is that picking? Surely you cannot deny that heterosexuality is the 'default' sexuality in our society. But, ok, then call pedophiles the same as heterosexuals. If you prefer that, that's fine by me.
However, urges like that, inevitably lead to action. You try to keep away from one you are madly in love with. I wish you a lot of luck.


It is still your contention that Hitler cannot be condemned as evil. I don't see how that position can have any solid basis and you've yet to demonstrate that it has.

If you had continued reading that article on wikipedia about evil, you would have come by the idea of 'the relativity of evil' which stated the genocides in the Third Reich and Rwanda/Burundi as examples of this relativity because they were not considered evil by the people who carried them out.


Words words words. Sounds good, means nothing. Do you truly and honestly see yourself mirrored in Hitler? Or in Pol Pot or in Stalin? Or for that matter in Jesus or Gandhi or Martin Luther King? The fact is that all these people are exceptional, and beyond a few uninteresting and unimportant things common to all human beings, they are nothing like you or me. That's why everyone knows their name, but has never heard of you or me.

This only shows that evil people can spring up in any society, even the most peaceful. Let's not put the blame on German society for creating a Hitler. He was not a product of his times. He was an evil genius who was able to see opportunities, manipulate and take advantage of the conditions of his society to seize power and carry out his own agenda with a cleverness and cunning that is beyond the comprehension of most human beings.

That does not make sense. Stalin is much more Russian than you would dare to imagine. Putin himself let the survivors in the Kursk submarine die depsite knowing they were still alive down there and paid their families money because he wanted to suppres a diplomatic scandal that the USA had accidentally torpedoed their submarine when it was doing a demonstration for China (I believe). The Russians do not know really what democracy is and condone the strong man in Putin. There seems to be coming some hesitating improvement in this psyche, but it is going to take a long time. Notwithstanding their great culture, they have not hesitated to kill in order to preserve their status. My husband spent 6 months on the streets in Moscow and met numerous people there. He calls them 'ruthless with a passion'.

Hitler took on board the ideas of his time or are you denying it? His great merit was that he had great oratory talent and it was also his great danger. In that, he is no more than a twisted man with a talent. Put him in the wrong company and there you go, put him in the right company and you come away with a good genius.


I agree that it probably doesn't help to call Hitler and his cohorts evil when everyone knows that already. I just don't understand how calling him "not evil" is going to help. Won't it be worse for German people if we were to say "Hey guys, it wasn't Hitler's fault. He wasn't evil. He was just a regular guy like you or me, who was conditioned by the society he grew up in. It was your evil society that made him do bad things"?

You think German society was independent from the rest of Western Europe? It is the very French who bear a big brunt for the shatters Germany was in and so for the ensuing war. Had they not been so despicably 19th century about everyting, Germany would not have ended up frustrated and angry and nothing much would have happened. Had the rest not appeased and appeased and appeased, nothing much would have happened. Had the academic world not have been obsessed with genetics and race, nothing would have happened. Had the Weimar Republik been a little bit more than decoration, nothing much would have happened.


There is no confusion here. All you are doing is regurgitating the mantra: "There are no bad people, only bad decisions and bad actions."

Regurgitating the other mantra is one-sided.


It's a bit rich to call someone "evil" who is responsible for the systematic genocide of 6 million Jews, God knows how many homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped, mentally ill, and any number of other individuals who were deemed "inferior" and "less than human"? It's a bit rich to suggest that an individual responsible for a war that ravaged nearly the whole of Europe, killed untold millions, and resulted in the Götterdämmerung... the devastation and ruin of his own nation just might be considered "evil" is rich thinking on my part? I would suggest that your continued attempts to justify and validate the actions of Hitler and the Nazis call your own intentions and beliefs into question.

I am not justifying anything here, nor have I ever said they were not responsible, nor that their actions were not evil, that is a big misconception of what I wrote. The only thing I have been trying to say but which a few do not wish to contemplate (note most of them do not come from Europe) is that this was not the idea of one man, but of all of them together. Kristallnacht, set up by Goebbels, plaid a big part in the end of foreign appeasement policy and in blatant persecution of Jews. At the moment they were fighting on two fronts and the war was lost, what should they have done, pray? Bearing in mind that he did not want to be made a spectacle of like Musolini after his death (which was quite despicable). Bearing in mind he was afraid (like all others in Berlin) of the Russians and bearing in mind he was in denial? What should he have done, pray? Should he have run to the Russian lines and offered himself?
As with the start of the persecution process of Jews, it was inevitable that they would all be (attempted to be) killed, it was inevitable that a war, if it was lost, was going to end in total annihilation. The Third Reich was too firmly established and too deluded to ever be able to return from it without annihilation.
As this thing was no-one's and everyone's intention at the same time (the German population and the rest of the world decided to turn away from any concern, Hitler and all his officials together decided to take fully on board every bit of ideology), none of them cannot be called evil as that would mean the German population itself was evil at the same time which it is clearly not.


Yes... of course. Those responsible for sadistically killing innocent women and children and the mentally and physically handicapped should never have been so ill treated. They should have instead been treated to an all expense paid vacation to the south of France, and while there we might have suggested that they think about participating in some group therapy. After a few sessions they undoubtedly would have been fully fit to re-enter polite society.

I never said they should not go to prison for it. If you consider killing people evil, then what does that make a state which kills people because they have killed others? Fair?


What you miss is that the goal of execution is multifold: it is to provide some sense of justice or retribution and closure for the victims; it is to act as a warning to others; and it is a means of eradicating such evil persons from society. The notion that by taking such vengeance we become no different than our enemy is but one more weak-minded platitude. The difference between the Nazis and those who executed them is that the Nazis actions were undeniably "evil"... the killing of innocent human beings. This is the point you repeatedly ignore.

A victim does not get closure by killing his enemy or his dead relative's killer, a victim gets closure by accepting the issue. That is what Europe has since long understood. I do not suppose that any person who has faced his relative or friend's killer in the assisen court and has seen him put in prison for 25 years or lifelong sentence has not obtained closure. Revenge is a savage thing. Dumas already knew that.
I am not ignoring the point that they killed millions (it would be very hard indeed), yet I do not wish to call the people who thought about it evil, but only their actions. That is the point you ignore.


And yet how deep is the "stain" on Germany? How profoundly have they been brought low by history? Germany is now one of the most powerful nations in Europe... probably the most powerful in economic terms. German culture is still among the most influential in the world: German composers account for more of the music performed by symphonic orchestras than those of any other country. German literature is broadly studied at the universities, while Kafka, Mann, Hesse, Grass, and Rilke remain among the most read writers in the world. German film-makers had a profound impact upon American film industry... and especially the film noir... an influence that continues to be felt. German painting has only grown in influence until painters such as Paul Klee and Max Beckmann are seen as standing shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Picasso, while perhaps the greatest (certainly the highest paid) living painter, Anselm Kiefer, is a German artist who has repeatedly confronted Germnay's history and the Holocaust. Most intelligent human beings recognize that Germany is more than Nazis just as japan is more than Pearl Harbor and the Batan Death March.

Oh, I know all that, but I was talking of the general German fear of being proud of their nation, artists, or anything to do with themselves. Of course most intelligent people recognise that, but Germans are afraid to try how far they can go. They never speak out against a country as the first out of fear they will be reminded.


Part of it might be that Stalin was our (most of us) ally. But then Russia became the villain, so you'd think Stalin would have been demonized as much as Hitler in the years since world war 2. I think just the sheer ugliness and inhumanity of the gas chamber presents so grotesque a thing that many of us feel greater outrage over the crimes of Hitler than those of Stalin.

I mean we fought Hitler, my grandfather and three of my great uncles actually fought him and his armies. It makes sense his infamy would exceed that of Stalin's, however unfair that is.

Meh, probably that is because Stalin never 'invaded' anything per se. Before anyone starts about Hungary and Czechslovakia, yes their tanks rolled into Budapest and Prague, but frankly that was no surprise. All those Warsaw Pact countries were satellite governments anyway. And Afghanistan, well, no-one really cared about that. The difference with Hitler is that he did not keep himself to himself.

[Drkshadow03]

Agreed. I think the word 'functioning' seems to indicate there is no objective definition of evil though, especially when a tiny amount of people on an internet forum can't even decide. :P

Oh, I don't know. It seems to me Darcy offered one already:

evil is commonly associated with conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological well-being and dignity, destructiveness, motives of causing "unnecessary" pain or suffering and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence.



I dunno, Darcy, those parts in bold can accurately describe many, many day to day common people...I'm not really sure if the definition holds up.

You do realize simply pointing out his definition could describe many everyday people is not an actual rebuttal.

[Pierre Menard]

Oh, I don't know. It seems to me Darcy offered one already:

evil is commonly associated with conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological well-being and dignity, destructiveness, motives of causing "unnecessary" pain or suffering and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence.


Wikipedia's definition of evil is an objective definition of evil? What? I mean, the very same paragraph on wikipedia also mentions the words 'definitions vary' and 'commonly accepted'. I mean, that's hardly objective, even if we were just using wikipedia.




You do realize simply pointing out his definition could describe many everyday people is not an actual rebuttal.

No, maybe not. But it seems that 'evil' has been used to describe a particular, specific sort of person by some people on this thread...I mean, if it applies to many everyday people, then that again casts doubt on the definition of what 'evil' it is.

[Drkshadow03]

Wikipedia's definition of evil is an objective definition of evil? What? I mean, the very same paragraph on wikipedia also mentions the words 'definitions vary' and 'commonly accepted'. I mean, that's hardly objective, even if we were just using wikipedia.

It might not be an absolutely objective definition, but it certainly works as a "functioning" one. Also, just because there are varying definitions of evil doesn't mean that we can't select one that we deem to be the most objective.

There are tons of variant definitions for complex social phenomenon like "religion" or even "racism." Does that mean we can never discuss them in a conversation because no one will ever agree on the exact definition?




No, maybe not. But it seems that 'evil' has been used to describe a particular, specific sort of person by some people on this thread...I mean, if it applies to many everyday people, then that again casts doubt on the definition of what 'evil' it is.

Or it could just mean that evil is more common than we give credit.

[Alexander III]

Or it could just mean that evil is more common than we give credit.

This is what we have been saying the whole time, but the otherside is positing the view of Hitler as beyond the average human, as not human, as if he were truley very different from us, isntead of being simillar and just having more power at his disposition than most of us could dream of. Just because various men achieve various degrees of succes in making their dreams come true, does not mean that their dreams do not burn with the same level of passion and desire.

[Pierre Menard]

It might not be an absolutely objective definition, but it certainly works as a "functioning" one. Also, just because there are varying definitions of evil doesn't mean that we can't select one that we deem to be the most objective.

There are tons of variant definitions for complex social phenomenon like "religion" or even "racism." Does that mean we can never discuss them in a conversation because no one will ever agree on the exact definition?

Sure, I'm not saying we can't find a 'functioning' one, or that we can't discuss the topic, I mean, we're discussing it right now, my posts were more about the objective nature of a definition, and the fact that we have to rely on a 'functioning' one, or, a subjective one, rather than an objective one.






Or it could just mean that evil is more common than we give credit.

Which gives a bit of credence to what Alex, Juniper and the like have been saying to some degree. It's something that fascinates me to be honest; the idea of how cruel or what lengths we are all capable of in the 'right' circumstances.

[Darcy88]

I didn't equate murder and bullying directly, but those definitions you provided create a huge umbrella. It more goes to show the inability to find a proper concrete definition of 'evil'.

I don't think Hitler is a victim, and I don't necessarily agree with everything Alex said, but I feel understanding the history of such a person, what made them tick, can go along way to telling us why and how such atrocities occur. Saying 'because they're evil' doesn't actually get to the heart of 'why?'.


As for 'political correctness', you're talking to the wrong guy. I'm not arguing from a politically correct bent, I'm arguing more from my belief in the subjective nature of morality and the lack of an objective definition of 'evil'.
I think Hitler was 'evil' per se, on a purely personal level, but I certainly don't think my definition of evil is 'objective'.

Evil is objective. Any mentally well individual is going to have the same conception of evil as every other mentally well individual. You go back to ancient Rome and yeah, the morals were different. But they were not entirely different. Cruelty was still cruelty, compassion was still compassion, and these things were as chided or as commended as they are today.

The definition of evil from wikipedia which I posted is not that bad. Deliberately causing others suffering or harm in a severe and significant manner works pretty well. You just exclude the petty manifestations of cruelty that many of us experience and perform.

[stlukesguild]

One frightening thing about Hitler was that he probably wasn't a sociopath.

A Sociopath or Psychopath (the preferred term) is an individual who may be characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. Their behavior often includes a lack of empathy or remorse, false emotions, selfishness, grandiosity or deceptiveness. Other behaviors include superficiality; Ego-centrism and grandiosity; Lack of remorse or guilt; Lack of empathy; Deceitfulness and argumentativeness; Impulsive; Poor behavior controls; Lack of responsibility. The individual lacks the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony" Some psychologists and sociologists in the eraly 20th century defined such individuals as "morally retarded", "moral imbeciles" or "morally insane".

This would seem to be a perfect description of Adolf Hitler.

[Darcy88]

He sent out young child soldiers to fight with inadequate arms the rampaging Russian tanks during the Battle of Berlin, after the reich had lost any hope of emerging victorious. He walks along a line of them smiling in that pic I posted. Seems pretty sociopathic to me.

[Darcy88]

On that soap box you are no better than the people you are labelling evil.

If you had continued reading that article on wikipedia about evil, you would have come by the idea of 'the relativity of evil' which stated the genocides in the Third Reich and Rwanda/Burundi as examples of this relativity because they were not considered evil by the people who carried them out.


Oh I don't know about that. I am not essentially any different from Hitler. But in every other way, every way that really matters, the difference between he and I is no less plain than that of black and white, of night and day. Give me his upbringing and his experiences and his genetics and yeah, I might have gone on to wage horrific war and genocide. But the point is that I was not dealt the same hand as fate dealt that evil man. Hitler was like a dangerous dog with a long history of attacks that had to be put down. A dog is not to be blamed for what it is, but it is nonetheless dangerous. Hitler was evil, and like a virus or like winter cold evil must be treated as a bad thing and measures be taken to deal with it.

And I don't buy the relativity of evil bull. Every non sociopathic individual knows what evil is. The human conscience is hard-wired in the human brain. You have exceptions in various cultures around the world now and throughout the past, but as a general truth the existence and the quality of evil has been and is known. What percentage of the entire world's population would regard the senseless hacking to death with machetes of one million Rwandans a good moral thing?

[JuniperWoolf]

And "evil" must be punished, right? For the good of the victim. You've mentioned killing and torture. How evil does their act have to be to warrent that? Also, what if it's a misconception that the death of the perpetrator makes the family of the victim feel better?

[Darcy88]

And "evil" must be punished, right? For the good of the victim. You've mentioned killing and torture. How evil does their act have to be to warrent that? Also, what if it's a misconception that the death of the perpetrator makes the family of the victim feel better?

I'll leave that in the hands of the judge. I said before I'm actually against the death penalty. There can be no chance that an innocent man be put to death, and there have been instances in America recently where the guilt of the men executed was greatly in doubt.

But you kill in cold blood a number of people, or you do as someone not far from here did a few months back and rape and strangle to death an innocent sixteen year old girl, stuff like that, you do that and you forfeit any claim you have to the mercy of society.

[Alexander III]

He sent out young child soldiers to fight with inadequate arms the rampaging Russian tanks during the Battle of Berlin, after the reich had lost any hope of emerging victorious. He walks along a line of them smiling in that pic I posted. Seems pretty sociopathic to me.

And the old generals in WWI sent out the 17-18 year old kids (Including Hitler) to fight with inadequate arms, over the top in suicide missions for a 1% chance of capturing the russian or french trenches, when it was knows that the war was lost for Germany.

I don't see your point...

The more we are cultured in History the less exeptional Hitler appears.

[Darcy88]

And the old generals in WWI sent out the 17-18 year old kids (Including Hitler) to fight with inadequate arms, over the top in suicide missions for a 1% chance of capturing the russian or french trenches, when it was knows that the war was lost for Germany.

I don't see your point...

The more we are cultured in History the less exeptional Hitler appears.

I think Hitler will always be exceptional, even if men as wicked as him also appear writ upon the pages of history. If you closely look at that picture and see him grinning next to children who barely stand tall as his chest, sent out with antiquated weapons to fight state of the art red army tanks at a time when all hope was lost, his evil is most apparent.

And despite your prior charge of my lacking historical perspective I converse on an equal footing with my friend who is a history professor regarding all of western history up until the fall of Rome.

[kiki1982]

And yet Fritz Fischer (labelled the most important German historian) said about him:

"Doch mit der Judenfeindschaft und dem Krieg um ‚Lebensraum‘ erweist sich Hitler nicht als originell und als Kind einer breiten Strömung in der deutschen wie der österreichischen Gesellschaft vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg […]. Er gehört, gemessen an den Voraussetzungen, die sein Wirken und sein Auftreten ermöglichten, wie an seiner Gedankenwelt, tief in die Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts hinein.“

"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20ieth century history."

It seems that a German historian no less would agree that he was not so exceptional after all.

[Darcy88]

And yet Fritz Fischer (labelled the most important German historian) said about him:

"Doch mit der Judenfeindschaft und dem Krieg um ‚Lebensraum‘ erweist sich Hitler nicht als originell und als Kind einer breiten Strömung in der deutschen wie der österreichischen Gesellschaft vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg […]. Er gehört, gemessen an den Voraussetzungen, die sein Wirken und sein Auftreten ermöglichten, wie an seiner Gedankenwelt, tief in die Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts hinein.“

"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20ieth century history."

It seems that a German historian no less would agree that he was not so exceptional after all.

Oh no Kiki, I suppose you are right. Like dominoes tyrants of Hitler's significance have their turn, plunging civilization into war and chaos, orchestrating the mechanized extermination of six million innocent persons, imprinting themselves as the very personification of evil in the minds of many generations to come. Common as rabbits, not very extra-ordinary at all. Nor were Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander or Cyrus very exceptional. Omar Al-Bashir is my neighbour, Kim Jong-il's property at the end of my street just sold to a nice young newlywed couple. War criminals abound! They often gather at my local Starbucks and reminisce over their atrocities while sipping espresso.

[KCurtis]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
And you think its a "quality post" in which someone asks us to view Hitler as a "victim?" I'm already on my soap box, been up on it since this thread began, so I'll just continue in the same vein...


Quote;
Originally posted by kiki1982
On that soap box you are no better than the people you are labelling evil.


Evil relativity-scary. It's even scarier that people really believe this bs. Go Darcy. Oh, btw, you are better than the people you are labeling evil- but you already know that.

[Pauline135]

http://www.heritems.info/avatar4.jpgYes ,I had!:blush:

[Darcy88]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
And you think its a "quality post" in which someone asks us to view Hitler as a "victim?" I'm already on my soap box, been up on it since this thread began, so I'll just continue in the same vein...


Quote;
Originally posted by kiki1982
On that soap box you are no better than the people you are labelling evil.


Evil relativity-scary. It's even scarier that people really believe this bs. Go Darcy. Oh, btw, you are better than the people you are labeling evil- but you already know that.

Thanks, its good to receive confirmation that my moralizing doesn't put me on the same level as hateful mass murderers. I was a little worried for a second there.

[mona amon]

And the old generals in WWI sent out the 17-18 year old kids (Including Hitler) to fight with inadequate arms, over the top in suicide missions for a 1% chance of capturing the russian or french trenches, when it was knows that the war was lost for Germany.

I don't see your point...

The more we are cultured in History the less exeptional Hitler appears.


"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20ieth century history."

It seems that a German historian no less would agree that he was not so exceptional after all. - Kiki

Hitler is not at all exceptional in what happened to him. It happened to countless others besides him.

He is exceptional in the way his mind worked, and the deeds that he did.


Stalin is much more Russian than you would dare to imagine. Putin himself let the survivors in the Kursk submarine die depsite knowing they were still alive down there and paid their families money because he wanted to suppres a diplomatic scandal that the USA had accidentally torpedoed their submarine when it was doing a demonstration for China (I believe). The Russians do not know really what democracy is and condone the strong man in Putin. There seems to be coming some hesitating improvement in this psyche, but it is going to take a long time. Notwithstanding their great culture, they have not hesitated to kill in order to preserve their status. My husband spent 6 months on the streets in Moscow and met numerous people there. He calls them 'ruthless with a passion'. - Kiki

This has no connection with my post that you have replied to, and I can't understand what you are saying. Something must have got missed in the quoting process. Anyway, never mind.


You think German society was independent from the rest of Western Europe? It is the very French who bear a big brunt for the shatters Germany was in and so for the ensuing war. Had they not been so despicably 19th century about everyting, Germany would not have ended up frustrated and angry and nothing much would have happened. Had the rest not appeased and appeased and appeased, nothing much would have happened. Had the academic world not have been obsessed with genetics and race, nothing would have happened. Had the Weimar Republik been a little bit more than decoration, nothing much would have happened.

So now it's the fault of France, and the rest, and the academic world - everyone except Hitler himself, poor misunderstood lamb, who would have been a good genius if all this hadn't happened.

People who are blaming Hitler out here, whether we come from Europe or not, are aware of the historical background. I never supposed that Hitler just sprang up, fully formed, or that his ideolgy all came from his own head. I just don't agree that this exonerates him in any way.


Yet, in order to give this a place and learn from it or at least do something constructive with it, we should resign ourselves and accept that they were human and a deadly cocktail, brought together by circumstances with lethal effects.
It will make us understand how things like this happen and it will help us prevent other things like this for which we have been blind up till now. - Kiki

I agree with this, but it's something that will only happen gradually, over time, and not because of any oh so helpful pleas for compassion and understanding that we might make. But it is important for the healing process to at least acknowledge the evil-ness of the people like Hitler and his cohorts, who were directly responsible for the genocide.

[stlukesguild]

"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20th century history."

Again, this is nothing more than an attempt to deflect responsibility and lay the blame upon the whole of society if not the whole of humanity. "Well... anyone of us might have acted in the same way under the circumstances, so let's not be too harsh on the man. He made some poor choices, but haven't we all. Who here is without sin. Perhaps a fine is in order... nothing too large... and perhaps something by way of a public apology ("Oops, my bad.") and then we can all move on with our lives.":sosp:

[stlukesguild]

A victim does not get closure by killing his enemy or his dead relative's killer, a victim gets closure by accepting the issue. That is what Europe has since long understood. I do not suppose that any person who has faced his relative or friend's killer in the assisen court and has seen him put in prison for 25 years or lifelong sentence has not obtained closure. Revenge is a savage thing. Dumas already knew that.

Oh... yeah... you're right. 6 million dead. Just deal with it. Che sarà sarà. As for Dumas, who gives a f*** what a hack novelist who lived well before Hitler has to say. Why not see what the survivors of Auschwitz have to say.

I am not ignoring the point that they killed millions (it would be very hard indeed)...

No, you're not ignoring this slightly inconvenient fact of history; you are simply trying to sweep it under the rug in a more than cavalier manner: "Oh well, s*** happens. Forget about it and let's move on."

...yet I do not wish to call the people who thought about it evil, but only their actions. That is the point you ignore.

No, you'll notice I haven't ignored this point at all... indeed I directly addressed it and called you on it for what it is, weak-minded, PC BS. Again, An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

[stlukesguild]

You think German society was independent from the rest of Western Europe? It is the very French who bear a big brunt for the shatters Germany was in and so for the ensuing war. Had they not been so despicably 19th century about everyting, Germany would not have ended up frustrated and angry and nothing much would have happened. Had the rest not appeased and appeased and appeased, nothing much would have happened. Had the academic world not have been obsessed with genetics and race, nothing would have happened. Had the Weimar Republik been a little bit more than decoration, nothing much would have happened

And let's not forget those damn Jews who controlled the art markets and art schools. If Hitler had only been allowed to realize his dream of becoming a great painter none of this would have happened, but as you can see the Jews certainly deserved everything they got.



:cuss: