So you’re willing to give him credit for both the Volkswagen, which was conceived under Hitler but not built, and the Autobahn, where Hitler’s government took over other existing plans?
And yeah, Hitler increased industrial production. There was a Depression. He increased spending to put people back to work. That’s different than “dragging Germany into the industrial age”.
But it was built under him. He personally rode in one. He didn’t just conceive of some vague notion of a people’s car, he was personally involved with its design and production. He drew plans for it by hand. It was his baby.
What you’re saying is that Heath Ledger should get no credit for the Joker, because that film was released after he died.
Centuries from now, people will be talking about how the “Un” Un-Nazied the world from Charlie Chaplin and his evil army of dinosaur riding Nazi regime.
Led by Diana, Warrior Princess, naturally.
But the Volkswagen was never built or sold. A few “demonstration models” were built, and then the entire plant was turned over to war production.
Not only that, german workers put money down for Volkswagens before they started production. Then Hitler started the war, and no cars were ever produced, and all those down payments were used to fund the war.
And quickly weighed out again the next day, issuing an apology for his statements about Hitler, the Holocaust and the ‘Jewish-dominated’ US media.
Guy hasn’t even got the courage of his own idiotic convictions.
My actual point was that was how Germans thought long after the war. But I do think there is some truth to it, especially the Volkswagen, which may not have existed had Hitler not commissioned it regardless of when actual mass production began. and in your previous post you did say construction of the autobahns began under the Weimar Republic, and that’s not true.
I’m not defending Hitler here. Again, just mentioning that was what German non-Nazis I knew told me personally long after the war, and they claimed it was the general regard among their country folk regardless of the degree of reality.
The first section of the autobahn, from Bonn-Cologne, was begun in 1929, and finished in 1932. Hitler became chancellor in 1933.
I surrender! Stick me in a gas chamber. Sheesh!
Who cares about the Volkswagon anyway? They would have just built some other car. A car is a car. It’s not like he invented the car and they wouldn’t have had any otherwise.
Some of this is probably post war collective rationalisation about why he was supported before it all get messy - he fixed the country, etc etc.
They talk up or even make up good things so as to feel less guilty about the bad things they ignored, said nothing about or even supported.
Otara
Such a big fuss over one little mistake!
What if everybody held a grudge?!
It’s not the car itself, it’s the principle behind it. The Volkswagen was designed to be sturdy to use/easy to fix, as well as cheap to make. IOW, a cheap car for the working masses. AFAIK, as a concept, that’s a first in the West - back then, cars were the dominion of the rich, while the poor got around on bicycles. That was how things were, that was the estabilshed social order.
I know today it doesn’t seem like such a big thing, when everyone and his dog has a car. 80 years ago, it was. The times, they have achanged.
But that concept predated Hitler. The goal of building an affordable car for working people was shared by a lot of car companies prior to the KdF-Wagen. Henry Ford said about his Model T is 1909:
In France, there was the 1919 Citroen Type A, which Citroen called “Europe’s first mass production car”, and the 1928 Rosengart LR2 and LR4. In Germany, there was the 1924 Opel Laubfrosch, in the UK, the 1922 Austin 7, in Italy, the 1936 Fiat Topolino, and in Czechoslovakia, the 1936 Tatra T97.
In fact, Porsche stole the design for the Tatra T97 for the KdF-Wagen. The design of the two cars is identical.
Adolf was just a little moody…that’s all. IF he had some paxil or zanex or something similar…he would have been just another vegetarian politician.
(sarcasm)
:dubious: I’d like to see some support for this. I read a book about the history of the Volkswagen, and granted that was a few years back, but I don’t remember anything like this.
There’s this, from this Tatra website:
http://www.tatra.demon.nl/cars_history_T97.htm
I can try to find more info.
WWI obviously. When you say scale I assume you mean as in something like ”percentage of population of warring nations involved killed”. I’m not a war buff but I would guess that the 30 year war had simmilar casualty rates. The Russian revolution or Taiping maybe? But yes, it was a big one. But it’s not mainly the war he’s being judged for, it’s the genocide.
My opinion is that lots of nations were committing genocide, and some on that scale. And among the worst offenders are ‘good’ and ‘innocent’ nations such as the UK, Spain, Belgium and the USA. My argument is that we in the west have a severly edited view of history, with us as the good guys and Hitler as a monster. But that in reality, we’ve all been behaving like monsters and the way we look at Hitler is a way of escaping responsibility ourselves.
My comments are not racially insensitive, they’re pointing out the racism that was prevalent then, and the racism that is prevalent now. That we still on many levels think that hitler killing millions of white people is worse than us killing brown people. Pointing out racism isn’t racially insensitive. It might be socially insensitive, but also a moral obligation.
I don’t think gassing someone is more evil than intentionally spreading diseases, chopping people into bits or using firing squads. The idea that some genocides are more ”evil” than others and therefore deserves to be judged differently to this extent seems irrational. I don’t think there’s a humane way to commit genocide and I’m pretty sure none of the ones committed have been humane.
Mao and Stalin killed more than Hitler. So if it wasn’t the most successful in regards to eradicating groups and it wasn’t the most successful in amount of people killed… why is it regarded as the worst? My opinion: Because the people were white and it happened in Europe.