Let’s say that Hitler wasn’t a racist and his ideas (an actions) hadn’t killed millions of jews, polish, etc. He was just an stateman who made a huge bet and lost. To make it more clear, WWII still happens in this scenario minus the holocaust.
Having said that:
Hitler managed to rebuild Germany.
Till September, 1939 he also managed to tear page by page the Treaty of Versailles. He also “conquered” Checoslovaquia and Austria.
Until that moment he was, certainly, a great statement.
His achievements made him careless and he miscalculated with Poland (and then Rusia and U.S.A).
But still, he deserves to be called Hitler the Great.
“The Great” is an antiquated honorific title that doesn’t really sound appropriate in modern usage. Hitler might have been a great leader, but I doubt anyone would have literally called him “Hitler the Great.”
Anti-Semitism was the centerpiece of Nazi ideology. Without it, there would have been no Nazi movement worth mentioning, and Hitler wouldn’t have come to power. It’s like asking if Lenin would be considered a great leader if he hadn’t been a Communist and the state he established hadn’t been quite so totalitarian.
Utterly false, and based on false premises. Hitler did not manage to rebuild Germany. When he took over, the recovery was underway. Hitler’s economic policies were war driven - Germany would have imploded completely without the systemattic stripping of the economies of the conquered nations. A prominent Nazi economics minister (Funk?) warned Hitler that the economy was unsustainable. Workers were essentially forced to lend money to the government, which was never repaid (such as early payments on VWs, and on workers’ holidays, etc).
Also remember the oppression of the Nazis wasn’t solely limited to racism. The assaults on working class institutions should be ignored. The SPD & KPD were banned, and their leaders imprisoned. From 1933-38, real wages dropped by 25%. Unions were destroyed as independent entities. Workers were banned from quitting jobs. Then we also have the oppression of homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, freemasons etc, none of which was based on racism as such.
Nazi Germany was a big ponzi scheme. Without the war it would have collapsed, but Nazi Germany without the war is inconceivable.
Charlemagne, or “Karl der Grosse” (Charles the Great), was actually a large man. His father was not: Pippin the Short (Pépin le Bref or Pippin der Kurze).
The fact of the matter is that Hitler failed, which disqualifies him from greatness. All of history’s Greats - Alexander, Alfred, Charles, Peter - left something behind them. What ws Hitler’s legacy?
It seems that Kaiser Wilhelm I (not II, who’s more often termed a loser, as DrDeth alluded above) had that epithet associated with him in the early 20th century, probably for presiding over the unification of Germany in 1871 – An ocean liner specifically carried the name. I don’t think even the Germans have often referred to him as “the Great” in the Federal era, though.
Regarding Hitler, it’s often stated, as LonesomePolecat does, that “Anti-Semitism was the centerpiece of Nazism” – it certainly was an obsession of Hitler’s, and its consequences were certainly grevious. I’m not sure that Nazism “wouldn’t have amounted to anything” without it, though. Much of the attraction to Nazism was as a more two-fisted counter to Communism than any other German political parties were offering. It also emphasized German nationalist sentiments more masterfully than its competitors. While Anti-Semitism struck a key chord with some of the Nazi constituancy, I don’t think it’s impossible to imagine an alternative history where it was deemphasized, or other “foes of the Aryan race” like the Poles or Slavs or “Asiatics” were emphasized.
Without focusing on the Jews, however, it would have been harder for the Nazis to consolidate power once they had it, in that without seizing Jewish property and ousting Jews from political and commercial positions of prominance, they would have had significantly less booty with which to reward their followers. This was also responsible in some measure for Hitler’s “rebuilding of Germany” – confiscation of property was a vital source of revenue for the Reich government, particularly before the war started and they had other nations’ property to confiscate. villa’s point about Nazism as Ponzi scheme is a good one.
Returning to the OP, though, I’d largely concur with Quartz that without the systematic atrocity record, Hitler would be seen as more of a later-day Napoleon. Napoleon, though, is often seen somewhat positively by many today as having been a force for modernism and secularism. Even ratcheting back the Anti-Semitism, however, Nazism was still largely anti-intellectual and fundamentally racist. One wonders, however, whether racism itself would be quite so looked down on today without having had the death camps to discredit it.
There’s a quote from the first Harry Potter book to the effect that Voldemort did great things. Terrible things, but great. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to draw the parallel between Voldemort and Hitler.
False, for all the reasons stated earlier. Even if you were to concede the “achievements” cited by the OP (which I don’t), he still left his nation in ruins and under occupation, and his name remains hated by virtually everyone throughout the world. “Great” he ain’t.
And may I add, this is one of the most entertaining misspellings I’ve seen in a long time.
