# Did Hitler Do ANYTHING Beneficial? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 9, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918 "2009-11-09T17:47:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/41 "2009-11-10T15:16:02Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Never saw a morbidly obese Nazi road worker did you ? Musta been that superior german metabolism :)… There was a widespread joke in Germany at the time that, despite Nazi ideology, most Germans remained as tall as Goebbels, as slim as Goering, and as blonde as Hitler. As for the death’s head: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsNLbK8\_rBY&feature=PlayList&p=5F5A9B76F62E367E&index=5](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsNLbK8_rBY&feature=PlayList&p=5F5A9B76F62E367E&index=5) ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/42 "2009-11-10T15:24:20Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Hitler promised [Arbeit und Brot](http://beck.library.emory.edu/greatwar/postcard-images/realsize/drum_liste.jpg) Psh, I’d prefer _panem et circenses_. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/43 "2009-11-10T16:44:46Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Semi-serious response: > > Hitler and Nazis are responsible for 60+ years of movie villains and probably inspired countless great literature and video games. The immortality of the Third Reich that they could not obtain in real life has been granted tenfold in fiction. It will be a long time before any one group or person approaches Hitler and the Nazi’s as examples of the epitome of pure evil Good point. No Hitler, no _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/44 "2009-11-10T20:15:13Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing;11759576[Robert Mugabe] ([http://www.topnews.in/files/robert-mugabe-2.jpg](http://www.topnews.in/files/robert-mugabe-2.jpg)), dictator of Zimbabwe, who takes a toothbrush mustache to a ridiculous extreme. [/QUOTE] Boy, I’ll say. It looks like an upper lip soul patch. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/45 "2009-11-10T20:35:19Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Sure. In the bunker. > > With a poison pill, & a pistol. > > Better late than never. I just wish he’d have waited until AFTER we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine how much he’d have shit his pants if he knew what the U.S. could have done to him! OOoh, I know!!! What about all those _Downfall_ parodies? Those are AWESOME! ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/46 "2009-11-10T21:29:45Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Hitler’s rep as a teetotaler wasn’t total. He occasionally took a bit of lager with his meals, because it aided his (famously tetchy) digestion. He wasn’t a total vegetarian either. He was quite fond of dumplings made from chicken liver. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/47 "2009-11-10T22:21:58Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > I suppose they weren’t entirely worthless, but a lot of the experiments amounted to meaningless and cruel confirmations of what was already known. “We know people die in cold water… but we really should confirm that in the lab.” I was under the impression that they were trying to find an effective treatment, not studying the effects. That is they weren’t trying to test the hypothesis that cold kills people, instead they froze people to neat death, then tried various ways of bringing them back. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/48 "2009-11-10T23:17:03Z")
> [@ToeJam](#): > > … > [li](http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html).[/li]… What an amazing asterisk that was. Just spent the past forty minutes reading through it and gaining a deeper understanding about the issues surrounding the Nazi data. Thank you for posting that. ---
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/49 "2009-11-10T23:33:10Z")
This was a nauseating read, but I am glad you posted it too! I _needed_ to know this. Q ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/50 "2009-11-11T05:36:43Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > How about the [Peoples Car](http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/vw.htm)? Rumors abound that the People’s car had [Jewish origins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Superior). ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/51 "2009-11-27T03:12:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Just as a side note, they’re changing the torch relay. After the 2008 relay protests, the International Olympic Committee decided that starting in 2010, the relay will only be inside the hosting country. It won’t go around the world anymore. > > And Hitler wasn’t responsible for the Autobahn. The Autobahn was conceived in 1926 by a corporate/Chamber of Commerce group (HaFraBa) led by a guy named Willy Hof, and the first stretch of the Autobahn, between Cologne and Bonn, was opened in 1932, before the Nazis came to power. In fact, in 1930, when a bill was introduced into the Reichstag for funding to construct a national highway system, the Nazis voted it down. Then, after Hitler came to power, he nationalized HaFraBa and claimed that the Autobahn was his idea all along. Maybe he didn’t invent it but he tapped the civil engineer who had experience with road design in college, Dr. Fritz Todt (1891 Pfrorzheim -1942), in 1932 after Todt had extolled the virtues of a superhighway system to move military materiel. Todt headed a corps of engineers that built the autobahns, the West Wall of fortifications, bunkers, airfields and bridges and became one of the most powerful members of the Nazi party by 1942. Having an interest in transportation history, I have a copy of the International Historic Films 1935 documentary on him, Dr. Todt-Berurung und Werk (Mission and Accomplishment) (in German w/English subtitles, 32 minutes). See imdb [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247304/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247304/) . The film states that Todt convinced the Party that building roads would create jobs and Hitler hiered him on only11 days after becoming Fuhrer. Then, the propaganda film says, that Hitler turned the first sod for the program on 9/23/33 and that on 5/19/35 the Darmstadt-Frankfurt section opened to traffic and by 1939 there were 4000 km of autobahn open, all of which “harmonized with the landscape”. General (later President) Dwight Eisenhower came back from trouncing the Nazis and brought the superhighway concept to fruition in the USofA when he became president in 1952, with (fellow alumini of mine) John A. Volpe (Wentworth Institute, 1929) as the first federal highway administrator and we now have a 42,000-mile freeway system built to move military materiel, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/52 "2009-11-27T03:45:51Z")
Another vote for killing himself. Saved the Allies some money putting his decaying body on trial. It would have been interesting though, to see if he could have pulled himself together at Nuremburg as well as Goering, or if they would have had to gag him to prevent the deranged shrieking. As to the earlier comments about “research” in the camps, it should be noted that Hitler himself was a scientist, though he had [a bit of trouble getting published](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY). ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/53 "2009-11-27T08:11:05Z")
MAJOR thread hijack. > [@Ignatz](#): > > (fellow alumini of mine) John A. Volpe (Wentworth Institute, 1929) Wentworth Institute in Boston?! My grandfather graduated in '30. I still have the watch fob and his yearbook somewhere back home in the States… (wonder if he and Volpe ever knew each other. Prolly not.) [MTH] ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/54 "2009-11-27T09:51:47Z")
Hitler’s primary legacy is to serve as a horrible example for everyone else . . . permanently affecting the usage of simile and metaphor and straw men . . . and making many other evil men seem not so bad, in comparison. He also helped the cause of Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel. And oh yes, the suicide. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/55 "2009-11-27T13:08:06Z")
The archetypal example of the bromide “[the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others](http://despair.com/mis24x30prin.html).” ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/56 "2009-11-28T14:22:06Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > MAJOR thread hijack. > > Wentworth Institute in Boston?! My grandfather graduated in '30. I still have the watch fob and his yearbook somewhere back home in the States… (wonder if he and Volpe ever knew each other. Prolly not.) > > [MTH] Hi, Jack. That’s the place, although I got out decades later. Never been out of work since. See their website at www.wit.edu ---
**Author:** ![Bisected8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a4c791/32.png) [@Bisected8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bisected8)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/57 "2009-11-28T16:10:27Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > What’s the Straight Dope on the medical experiments performed on people in the camps? Did nothing come from those? I recall at least one study was controversial because it used data from them, so they must have at least produced some workable data… ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/58 "2009-11-28T22:24:41Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > German investment and research in rockets and jets significantly advanced the technology. Both US and Russian space programs depended a lot on ex-German scientists. Without Hitler’s interest in rockets and the war in general, it’s likely that the technology would have been low-priority and poorly funded for many decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if a world without Hitler was just now making our first manned flights to the moon. While I’m not going to say that these statements aren’t true, the fact is that Werner von Braun and Hans von Ohain are ascribed too much exclusive credit for the development of rocketry and jet power, respectively. Von Braun certainly pushed and pursued the technology under the developing Third Reich, but much of the basics and technology that was implemented in the _Aggregate_ family of rockets (including the V-2 rocket) was either adapted from or parallel to developments made by the Russian scientists and mathematicians, or by Goddard, Theodore von Kármán, et cetera. Post-WWII, the adoption by the United States via Project Paperclip of von Braun and his crew of A-rocket scientists and engineers definitely advanced the start of the art of liquid fuel rocketry in the United States (the work of Goddard and his people was mostly relegated to the basement archive, as it didn’t seem to have any immediate use as a weapon and the ‘mature’ view of the future of rocketry was that it was pure science fiction), but solid propellent motor development continued apace at GALCIT, albeit funded primarily by the Army at relatively low levels and intended primarily for tactical use. The Soviets also acquired some of the A-program scientists and engineers and (mostly broken) hardware, but primarily stripped them for information, built one design (the R-1) adapted from the A-4, and then proceeded to develop their rocket technology essentially independent from the Germans. This allowed them the early advantage, albeit with vehicles that were not really suited as weapons. (The R-7 booster did and its descendants still do use cryogenic fuels and therefore had to be fueled on-pad before launch.) This prompted rapid development of American cryogenic liquid rocket systems, (PGM-17 ‘Thor’ and PGM-19 ‘Jupiter’ IRBMs, and then the SM-65 ‘Atlas’ and the SM-68 ‘Titan’) followed by development of storable liquids (LGM-25 ‘Titan II’) and solid propellant rocket motor vehicles (LGM-30 ‘Minuteman’ family, UGM-27 ‘Polaris’, UGM-73 ‘Poseidon’, UGM-96A ‘C-4 Trident’, UGM-133A ‘D-5 Trident II’, and LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’) which were typically had lower maintenance demands and were somewhat superior in technical capability (and, until the late 'Sixties, numerical superiority) over Soviet developments. Von Braun’s crew had basically nothing to do with solid motors and von Braun himself was philosophically opposed to the use of SRMs in any man-rated vehicle, often forestalling efforts to use SRMs as parallel stages (strap-on boosters) for an uprated Apollo V variant. The long and short of this is that while von Braun was certainly influential in the American space program, the German scientists were not nearly as much on the Russian program (and obviously almost not at all for the French, Chinese, or Japanese) and the basic technology existed independently of German development. More significant to space exploration than the A-rocket scientists was the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, which compelled both powers to spend large amounts of funds that would not otherwise have been available for development. > [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t think there’s actually any controversy about von Braun: He was willing to work with and for any government that would fund his research. He probably didn’t share the more reprehensible Nazi views, but he didn’t object to them, either. Sort of a mercenary scientist. This is absolutely true, and von Braun made no bones about it; he would work with anyone who would advance his dream of space planes, voyages to the Moon and Mars, and eventual space habitats. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/59 "2009-11-28T23:12:47Z")
> [@Bisected8](#): > > I recall at least one study was controversial because it used data from them, so they must have at least produced some workable data… In Japan, I believe a lot of the Unit 731 atrocities were ignored by post-war reconstuctionists in the US government in order to capitalize on their findings. It is debatable whether germ warfare advances are a good thing, though. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2009, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918/60 "2009-11-29T00:17:26Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > Rumors abound that the People’s car had [Jewish origins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Superior). A classic car magazine I had lying about had an article about a British officer whose job it was post war to get the VW factory up and running. It wasn’t until he was in charge that the factory started mass producing Beetles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hitler-do-anything-beneficial/516918.md?page=2)