In my personal opinion Hitler is evil and in my opinion the Holcaust was one of the greatest human tragedies of modern time. It is horrific to imaging that one group of human beings were capable of doing this to other humans.
My hypothetcial question – Say Hitler was not a racist evil man, but simply hellbent on making Germany a World Power and to rule the world. Yet he did not create concentration camps or kill off races of people. If this was true, and everything else was the same, including the fact that WW II still happened, and Germany still loses.
What would our opinion be of Hitler today? Would he still be classified under the “evil” category – or merely another failed dictator that we have to look up in a book to remember his name?
Or was the holocaust his meal ticket to the infamous hall of fame?
From what I’ve read, and in the UK at least, I think at the time he was seen by most (but not all, alas) as a pretty frightening leader, even before the terrible truth of the Shoa was revealed/believed.
If you are restricting the term “Holocaust” to the genocide of Jews, it should be noted that Hitler killed millions of non-Jewish civilians all over Europe.
In addition his plan was to create a brutally repressive imperial German regime in Europe with a virtual slave society in Eastern Europe in particular.
So even if Hitler hadn’t killed a single Jew he would be remembered as one of the most terrible leaders in history.
It is kind of hard to subtract “Holocaust” from “Hitler”. It’s a little bit like asking people to try seeing the KKK for its organization or sense of community instead of all that racism stuff- the two are almost inseparable in so many people’s minds.
Hitler would likely still be considered evil, OMO, based on his party’s forced takeover and destruction of a more or less democratic political system, his unjustified invasions of peaceful neighbors, and the sacrifice of millions of his countrymen’s lives in pursuit of a hopeless cause (in this case mere “lebensraum” rather than racial purity).
The problem here is that Hitler’s (and, to be fair, his acolytes’) racial views are pretty much inseparable from the motives that sparked Germany’s invasion of its neighbors. If, for example, Hitler had only been interested in the economic redevelopment of Germany, it seems much less likely that there would have been a major conflict in western Europe. One could even imagine, with a kinder, gentler Hitler at the helm, Germany siding with the rest of Europe against Italian expansionism, rather than forming the Axis.
Another thing is that Germany’s economic recovery, and resulting military buildup, prior to WWII was in part financed through wholesale, state-sponsored, looting of the Jewish population’s assets. I’ll argue that if this had not occurred, it would have taken considerably longer for Germany to bring its military to the point where it could consider launching a war outside its borders.
Assuming a benign, non-expansionist Hitler, it’s interesting to think what might have happened if the German-Soviet conflict had still occurred, but started with a Soviet invasion of Germany rather than vice-versa. My mind boggles a bit at the thought of American lend-lease convoys transporting arms to the Nazis, and propaganda toasting “Uncle Adolph” as our European bulwark against the Godless Commies.