How far do you take this? Was the U.S. committing evil by fighting Hitler? If yes, we aren’t going to be able to agree on anything. If no, then the means (killing Nazi soldiers) are justified by the ends (ending Hitler’s reign).
What’s wrong with that, ignoring the racist nature of it, is that an explicit part of that goal was the physical elimination of “mongrel” races.
Sua
There is another point to be considered here, and that is one of sociopolitical context.
There are two types of groups that want near-total power put in the hands of the government. The first is fascists, of which the Nazis are the prime and most extreme example. They want near-total control so that they can ensure social order and morality.
The second are socialists: They want near-total control in order to ensure equal benefits and/or equal outcomes to the citizenry. Communists are the most extreme example of this.
The problem with both of these systems is that when power is centralized and concentrated like this, control becomes nearly absolute, and dissent or diversity is quickly crushed and eliminated to the fullest extent possible.
It goes far beyond Hitler and the Nazis murdering other ethnic and social groups. While that may well have been one of history’s greatest atrocities, the fact that it was a natural outcome of the concentration of too much power in the hands of too few people is often overlooked. While the Nazis were more overt in directly stating this as a goal, they were no different at their core than any other fascist or socialist machine would be in the same set of circumstances.
The lesson to be taken from the Nazis and the Stalinists is not simply that they were evil lunatics with significant popular support, it is that centralized power without extreme restraints and limitations will ALWAYS lead to oppression and genocide.
All the way. There’s no other way to take it.
By your definition, I guess so. They were trying to end the reign of someone attempting to create a new paradise on Earth, and willing to firebomb whole towns to do so. Sounds evil to me!
You said the ends justify the means, right? So what if the means are bad, as long as the ends are good? Otherwise, how do you figure out which means are bad? Killing people is OK, but not killing minorities? 
Whaaa? My definition? What definition? I gave no definition.
I was asking you whether you think the U.S. was acting in an evil manner when it got involved in WWII. No definitions involved. Ignore whatever you think my “definition” was - what is your answer by your definition of evil?
You seem to be violating the first rule of this board - don’t be a jerk.
No, I didn’t. I said that there are exceptions to the rule. For example, I said that while killing a person is generally an evil act, killing a person in self-defense is not an evil act. Applying that to nations and war, we can start a discussion of the Just War theory, if you want to.
If persons (say, a group of Nazis) are engaged in the mass killings of a group of people, and the only way to stop the mass killings is to kill that group of Nazis, then yes, it is not only acceptable, but a moral duty, to kill that group of Nazis.
jmullaney, if you want to have a serious discussion of this, please do so. If you’re going to be an ass, please let me know, so I can ignore you.
Sua
OK, Sua. In case I wasn’t clear, I don’t think the ends justify the means.
Even if you make an exception for self-defense, I don’t see how invading foreign controled territory and killing people falls into the realm of self-defense.
For now, there are always immoral people willing to kill the other immoral people, hence consistantly reducing their numbers.
But I’ll cease being the devil’s advocate if it makes you feel beter. 
If you mean, would it be right for the US to just go into a tiny German peasant town and start randomly shooting, no, we wouldn’t be any better than nazis.
I don’t know if Hitler was the MOST evil man in history, but he was up there. There’s always Ivan the Terrible, Elizabeth Bathory, Vlad the Impaler, Attila the Hun, etc etc.
I think that another reason we tend to think of Hitler and the Nazis first when discussing evil is that they were a Western European nation with strong ties to the UK and US. Stalin was really evil–he murdered millions of his own people–but Russia is a little further off most Americans’ mental maps than Germany. Same with Pol Pot. Culturally, Germany was practically white middle-class America’s next-door neighbor, while Russia and Cambodia were (and are) easier to mentally categorize as “different from us.”
Also, to reiterate several others’ points, the Nazi’s entire goal was to eradicate the people they thought of as ‘lesser.’ They kept on killing Jews even when it went against their own best interests–they had a huge labor shortage and lots of Jews in camps, and yet they stepped up the pace of the killings and used fit soldiers to do it. They preferred killing Jews to fighting their own war. (Also from Hitler’s willing executioners.)
First, from Merriam Webster:
Main Entry: mo·res
Pronunciation: 'mor-“Az, 'mOr- also -(”)Ez
Function: noun plural
Etymology: Latin, plural of mor-, mos custom
Date: circa 1899
1 : the fixed morally binding customs of a particular group
2 : moral attitudes
3 : HABITS, MANNERS
Second, I don’t think I put forth a case for ethical relativism, merely for a recognition of sociological differences. Just because you believe a certain action to be right doesn’t make it so; it depends on your intent (as some people here have stated) and on the societal context of the action. For instance, in the United States it is generally considered assault and sexual molestation to perform Female Genital Mutilation; you can be prosecuted for the act, and most Americans consider the practice to be evil. In certain Middle East countries, the same act is considered proper and even devout. That’s not moral or ethical relativism; it’s different social mores.
My point, in my response to the OP, was that while the policies of the Nazi Party in Hitler’s Germany may have had no more “evil” results than other regimes in the history of mankind, they can be considered evil when compared to the expectations of the modernized world for nation-states. However, one must be blind to historical precedents to believe that the Nazis would always have been considered evil by other civilized nations.
So, Nazism simply equals sadism? This is probably not true. I think, rather, the Nazis that actually did the killing killed non-German ethnicities partly because of fear–fear of races in their own territory that were seen as alien, dangerous, a readily identifiable “fifth column”. And mostly because they were convinced to do so and ordered to do so by masters who did have a political end.
Hoo boy. Actually, there were strategic points to the demonization of the Jews. In trying to build a new “Thousand-Year Reich”, the Nazis were trying to eliminate a culture that would never swear ultimate loyalty to the rulers of the lands they lived in. Being extreme nationalists of an early-1900’s type, they tried to eliminate peoples whose ethno-national identities simply could not be incorporated into that worldview’s definition of nation-states: Jews and Gypsies. I imagine many Nazis were true believers in a fascist worldview, which identifies the individual as essentially a mere “cell” in the “body” of his nation. In that Weltanschauung, such peoples, always “resident aliens”, can easily be seen a constant threat, a parasitic infection in “normal” nation-states. This is even more the case when racism, that pervasive fallacy of the modern era, gets into the picture.
From a “cynical”, rather than “true believer”, viewpoint, the strategic value is the same: by encouraging this belief, the revolutionary power structure is maintained.
To hit kunilou’s points quickly:
LAND: Did anti-Jewish policies gain them territory? Maybe not. But anti-Judaism played well, in Europe, in those days. It may have won them supporters in neighboring countries as well as within Germany itself.
CAPITAL: Dispossessing Jews (and all other enemies of the Reich) was a source of funds for the Nazis, and their land (i.e., real estate) could be given to the Nazi faithful.
ELIMINATION OF ORGANIZED OPPOSITION: Well, there was a lot of that, anyway. And offing people just because of who their parents were gives a lot of potential opponents pause.
CONQUEST: Hey, from a Nazi point of view, it was conquest! They were taking the land away from non-Germans!
REVOLUTION: The elimination of the “evil” Jews was a major element and tenet of the Nazi revolution, which wasn’t just an empty “revolution” about changing who got to be king, but a revolution of society itself.
ELIMINATING A RIVAL: Philosophically, all national-religious beliefs may be seen as rivals. To a fascist, all other nations (even those without nation-state territories) might be seen as rivals. True, in a strict geopolitical sense, the Jews and the Gypsies weren’t really rivals. But if one believed in “The Secret Councils of the Elders of Zion”, who knows?
RELIGIOUS FERVOR: Nazionalsozialismus not about religious fervor? Surely you kid! Even illegitimate religions can have fervor–and Nazism had definitely religious qualities.
Are any of you people who say that the Nazi’s were the worst offenders not Jews? I know a man who was in China during the Japanese occupation. It was not even Nanking but his tales of the wholesale slaughter of Chinese on whims and impulses are incredible. And this was done on an entire population.
The Turkish-Armenian problem does not even belong on the same page as these bona fide genocides. This may be subject to argument but it was more of a civil war than a genocide.
It’s interesting that you mention the Armenian genocide in the same breath as the Holocaust. These two events have in common a legacy of holocaust deniers. In the case of the Armenians, this effort is led by the Turkish government, which is trying to sanitize history in the U.S. and abroad. There should be no doubt about the nature of the Armenian genocide, or that holocaust denialis evil.
And the relevance of this question is?
Tom, the relevant observation is that Chinese think the Japanese atrocities were the worst, Tutsi’s would think the Hutu’s were the devil incarnate, and the Irish still hate Cromwell. Jews think the Nazi’s are the worst.
Jack, I said it was debatable but didn’t the Armenians rise up against the Ottomans and side with the Russian invaders in the far east part of Turkey during WWI? Didn’t the atrocities occur during this civil war and the subsequent wholesale transport and forced evictions of Armenians? My point is that this is different from the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking.
Also from Webster
Main Entry: [ethical] rel·a·tiv·ism
Pronunciation: 're-l&-ti-"vi-z&m
Function: noun
Date: 1865
1 a : a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing b : a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them
For the purpose of this discussion, I would say that mores and ethical relativism are the same thing. The concept is that somehow what is right or wrong is dependent on culture/social norms/point of view/blah blah blah of the person or culture committing the act.
I would say that the opposite is closer to the truth. Whether or not a REASONABLE person would feel that the action taken on them was right or wrong (reasonable means that the person would not willingly have harm done to himself or those close to him). The “do onto others…” rule we all learned in kindergarten is still a pretty good moral compass. (Now Germany, how would you like it if Poland blitzkrieged you?)
I don’t agree that morals are based on the social norms at the time. People can always step back from their situation and question if an action is right or wrong. We usually know the answer, we just like to rationalize that an action is ok if it’s in our best interest and the rest of our peers are ok with it. Just because 40 million Germans believed in an idea, didn’t make it right.
Hey Hey! Talk about timing. I was about to sit down and begin writing a paper for my introductory philosophy course when I decided to procrastinate, hence my presence. The issue I have to deal with is normative cultural relativism (NCR), the view that 1. Different cultures have different moral codes. 2. Therefore, there is no objective “truth” in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.
I don’t agree with NCR because it has quite a few problems.
The most damaging point regarding NCR is the trouble in defining culture. NCR appeals to what your culture says you should do … But individuals belong to multiple “cultures” and different cultures often have different morally required actions.
A second point NCR is that since the culture defines what is right and wrong, anything the culture considers right is a morally required action. If you accept NCR, and were living in Germany in WWII, you would have had to turn in any Jews you came across to be exterminated because the German culture of WWII deemed it right.
How does this all relate to “Are NAZIs Bad” ?
It answers the question. Different cultures have different beliefs regarding morality. Killing all the Jews might be deemed morally right by one culture, but does that make it right? No, the culture could be wrong about morality.
James Rachels illustrates this point by saying:
Simply put, the Nazis were bad for killing the Jews. Other groups that commit genocide are also “bad.”
I guess I’m not really procrastinating after all. I should be able to use some of that in my paper.
Thats the point of my original entry.
Are the Nazis the worse …?
or are they just a bad example of “Evil/Bad”.
my conclusions:
“Evil/Bad” seems to be defined by the society. examples: female circumcism, male circumcism, human sacrifice, genocide, abortion, death penalty, ethnic cleansing.
And the sensitivity seems to be tied to the “closeness” of the observer/writer. examples Jews and the Holocaust, Chinese and Nanking,…
“Evil/Bad” things happen all through history , enough for me to believe its a characteristic of human society.
and finally,
You need more than a single source for history since the definitions will be determined by the writers.
A bit of curiousity: What are German students taught about the fire bombing of Dresden? “the United States firebombed an entire city because it had a surplus of planes/bombs and nothing else to do” vs “…?”
Justin, if you want to be taken seriously, whether in a history class or by society as a whole, you’ll have to stop lumping genocide in with things like “male circumcism”. There are some events that are so compellingly horrible that they shock all of society (not just the members of the group that suffered the tragedy). Read the records of the Nuremberg trials. Or the section of “The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich” that deals with human experimentation in the death camps. Then tell me that only Jews have “sensitivity” to the features of the Holocaust that set it apart from virtually every other event or injustice named in this thread.
I don’t agree that mores are the same thing as ethical relativism. Nor do I agree that a recognition that social mores are not fixed means that one must hold all societies in equal regard.
Look, I truly do think that there are actions which are always wrong and have always been wrong; I just don’t think they have always been considered to be wrong by all societies. The OP asked if the Nazis were truly evil, or merely reflective of humanity’s propensity for brutality. My answer is that we can only judge this in light of the multinational context in which the Nazis operated, and by that context, yes they were evil.
Really? I don’t think that even a cursory look at history supports this, if you mean that humans’ concept of what right and wrong are has remained faily constant through out time.
If, on the other hand, you think that some actions are inherently wrong, even if the majority of people living at the time would not have found it so, then I’ll ask what makes your morality inherently better than their’s?
If cultures don’t decide what is right or wrong, then who does?
Someone else made a good point:
We know now that genocide and slavary are wrong, other cultures may not have “discovered” this yet. It dosn’t make genocide “right” back then any more than it makes the world flat in the 1400s. So to answer your post Amok:
Yes, the perception and understanding of right and wrong has changed over time (it is pretty complicated). However, just like the world has always been flat, some things are always right and some things are always wrong.
It has nothing to do with MY personal morality. Some people think Britney Spears is immoral because she dresses provacatively. Thats not what I’m talking about. That’s someone trying to impose their cultural preferences on another and using “morality” to lend weight and credability to their oppinion.
I’m talking about the rightness of intentionaly commiting an act that harms other people, regardless of the intent. There is no justification for systematically wiping out another group of people. Even if is in your nations best interest. The only thing that gives a group that “right” is the fact that at that point in history, they happen to be stronger.
The other alternative is that there is no “morality”. It is simply “might makes right” and “survival of the fittest”. Morality is simply the customs dictated by whatever group is strong enough to sieze power. So, if thats the case, then no, Nazis are not evil. They were simply removing those who did not follow their beliefs and customs. Well, since 50 years after the fact, everyone but the occasional disenfranchised lunatic views their actions as wrong, then I would say that there is a universal concept of what is right and wrong.