So, in 500 years, will this be how we remember Hitler?
The reason that we (“we” being people in the Western world) consider Hitler to be so much worse than Stalin or Mao probably has more to do with familiarity than actual evilness. There are tons of people still alive today who can attest to the horror of WW2, and the subject still looms large in the public conscious. Comparitively few people (in the West) really know much about the actions of Stalin or Mao, and neither guy gets much attention around here.
Forget 500 years from now: 30 years from now, only a handful of WW2 vets will still be alive, and the subject won’t get much more attention than WW1 does now. A century from now, when anybody with any meaningful memories is gone, Hitler will be someone that you vaguely remember hearing about in history class.
I think and sincerely hope the Jewish people will always rememeber him as the worst mass murderer, it does not bear thinking what would have to happen for them to stop. The Russians will probably not have a high opinion of him either.
Otherwise I suspect over the next few hundred years his crimes will become more and more of a footnote while his accomplishments will be put up in stark relief (“he was the master of Europe”). Alexander’s operations in Central Asia and South Asia were downright genocidal, very few people even in those areas remember that.
It is in the nature of time; mass murderers are a dime a dozen.
I think in 500 years there will be no Jews left. The population is shrinking, and the majority of them are concentrated in one tiny country (Israel) that could easily be destroyed completely with just one nuclear strike (and that’s with today’s nukes - the ones in the future will doubtlessly be even more powerful.) Everyone is against them.
With no Jews left to mythologize him as the ultimate nemesis, Hitler’s legacy will definitely be remembered with less infamy.
I suspect Hitler will be viewed as something like this.
Actually about as many Jews live in the United States as in Israel.
I don’t agree. The reason WW1 is more obscure isn’t the mere passage of time, it is that WW1 had no clear and compelling story (how many people could tell you what it was ‘about’?), obvious villians, the action was generally comparatively dreary, and it had no satisfying end. It will end up, if mentioned at all, as a footnote to the far more interesting WW2.
Again I don’t think it has anything to do with actual historical importance or body counts (though WW2 does top WW1 arguably in both categories), but the “memorableness” of the event in stories. Hence, even today, you still see mass-market best-sellers and movies featuring Nazis as villians, while rarely is WW1 mentioned (War Horse is an unusual exception).
Nonsense. The Nazis are ultimate villians to far more than just the Jews, and the dissapearance of Jews, were it to happen, would not impact his use as an example of ultimate villany in the slightest.
There is a reason for Godwin’s Law, and it is not that everyone using the Internet is a Jew.