I don’t deny anything, I do question some of the evidence. Consider, the Katyn forest massacre, committed by the Soviets, was attributed to the Nazis at Nuremberg.
It can’t be both?
You’re tossing everything you have at the wall to see what will stick. Nothing is.
Your argument relies on the fact that his opponents weren’t themselves totally upstanding people. So what? Whatever Britain’s motivations, they didn’t manage to rule the world. Or even get close.
And even if that was their goal, that doesn’t suddenly make Hitler a better person for being on the other side. People are defined mainly on their own actions. And his actions are not defensible.
Even your defense relies not on Hitler’s good qualities but on the bad qualities of his opponents. Again, so what? If you have 2 bastards duking it out, I’m on the side of the bastard who doesn’t eat babies and punch grandmothers in the nose.
Doesn’t work.
Say there’s a 200 pound bully. But there’s also a 100 pound weakling. You take the weakling’s lunch. Not only that, but you defecate in his mouth and proceed to violate his sister.
And then the 200 pound bully starts to pound the crap out of you.
ETA: Strike this. You know the 200 pound bully is going to hit you, so you decide to cheap shot him in the groin first and toss some sand in his eyes, hoping you can get him to back down before he brings down holy hell on your head.
What you are not getting is, NO MATTER IF THE 200 POUND BULLY IS NOT A NICE GUY, YOU ARE WORSE!
Ok. Do you believe that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to kill all or most of the Jews in Europe? How many Jews do you believe they killed?
Any crimes of Britain pale in comparison to the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis.
They got very close, in Knuth’s book he discussed Britain’s control of the world in 1900, it’s something like 25% of the land mass (China was included) and if you count the seas the % goes way up the British navy ruled the waves, remember.
I’ve read the history between WW I and WW II but don’t remember it right now, but by the end of WW II England was in very dire straights, and had lost much of its empire, and the locus of power shifted dramatically toward the US.
So, now the Empire is US/Britain and has 700 foreign military bases in 130 counties, warships in all the seas, and is fighting 1,2,3 … ? wars. The Empire is intact.
Too off topic.
When discussing Hitler and the Nazis, this seems pretty damn on topic to me. Are you afraid to answer?
Again, so what?
Just because Britain is a bully makes Germany no less of a bully.
You try to cast Germany in the role of victim. Nope. Germany is the other bully, and you’re trying to make them look better merely by comparison. Your argument boils down to, “I didn’t think that bully would come at me because we’re both already bullies”. It doesn’t absolve Germany of also being a bully.
Hitler’s actions, on their own, are bad enough. No amount of comparison diminishes the atrocities his regime committed.
At the start of the war Germany was much less of a bully. Britain ruled the world and Germany had fought a war and lost much of its own territory. Its situation was dire after WW I and it was just recovering.
But, it turned out to be the Incredible Hulk, that is true.
I’d say trying to kill all the Jews is a bit more bully-ish behavior. Your attempts to make Britain seem worse than Nazi Germany are pathetic.
I see you are backing off the “it’s all Britain’s fault” a bit.
It doesn’t matter if it was “much” less of a bully or not. It was still a bully. Again, you are trying to make Germany appear less culpable by comparison. It has plenty of culpability on its own, as does Hitler.
Saying “the other side is just as bad or worse” never justifies your own horrendous actions, but you seem to believe it does. Why is that?
ETA: Going back to my previous bully example. What does it matter if there’s already a 200 pound bully in the schoolyard if you beat other smaller kids, defecate in their mouths, and violate their sisters? Saying “the other guy is just as bad a bully” is a lame excuse to offer.
Judging both Britain and Germany to be imperial bullies is accurate in my view. And WW I and WW II were imperial wars. If you read MK you’ll see that Hitler is first a foremost a German nationalist of the old school, and he has a completely positive view of war. I don’t recall his exact reaction on the advent of WW I, but it was something like ‘whoopee’. It seems anachronistic by today’s norm, and today’s reality.
This is particularly funny since most of Gack’s posts have been off topic. Ok, in addition to taking a favorable view of Hitler’s “genius” and Nazi Germany’s motives we can conclude that Gack rejects at least part of the history of the Holocaust. That’s not too surprising.
Hitler didn’t “eat his own lunch”. He tried to steal someone else’s lunch money.
Would you accept the bully’s perspective that the victim caused the fight by eating his own lunch?
Even this is a weak analogy. Because England was not the 200 pound bully of Europe. Now was France or Poland or any of the other countries that Germany fought.
In 1939, Germany had a bigger population (70,000,000) than France (42,000,000) or England (48,000,000) or Poland (35,000,000). Germany was the 200 pound bully of the playground. The reason Germany got smacked down was because all the smaller kids got together.
Germany (and German apologists like Gack) complain that it wasn’t fair when all those smaller countries ganged up against Germany. Germany, obviously, wanted a “fair” fight where it could beat up smaller countries one at a time.
I don’t think you have a proper appreciation for the extent to which the British Empire ruled the world in 1900. Knuth says they controlled 25% of the world’s land mass, as well as most of the seas. Another good book is Engdahl’s Century of War which lays out in more detail the geopolitics, particularly relating to oil, that made Britain’s suppression of Germany inevitable.
Is it also Britain’s fault that Nazi Germany tried to exterminate Europe’s Jews?
The mistake Germany made, which was also probably inevitable, was attacking Russia. According to the Oliver Stone series Germany had 10 divisions in the west, 200 in the east (or something like that). It was Russia that defeated Germany, with considerable assistance, not the Brits, and certainly not the US.
So, given that Germany not only invaded Poland but also the Soviet Union, how could it possibly then be said that Germany didn’t start World War II?