# I don't understand Hitler **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 6, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468 "2011-04-06T23:34:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/41 "2011-04-08T01:45:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Stalin and Mao didn’t kill millions for pseudo-scientific reasons. They killed millions for pseudo-economic reasons. > > Official communist doctrine denies any ethnic element. Marxism says that any child, regardless of its background, will grow up to be a good communist if he or she is raised in a proper communist environment. > > But the communists also believed in the concept of classes. They felt that class loyalty overrode any other loyalty. > > So when Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot wanted to kill a million people, they didn’t denounce them as a ethnic race; they denounced them as a economic class. > > It’s still evil but not as evil as eugenic genocide. The communists at least were willing to stop once they had destroyed the existing class. They didn’t keep hunting your children and grandchildren down and killing them. _shrugs_ Unless you’re Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/42 "2011-04-08T01:47:01Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > I got The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from the library today. This is huge; I’ll report back in 6 months when I’ve finished reading it. > > There are also like 2000 other books on the subject at the library, and at laest half of them are in German. > > This is why I can never learn anything new; because getting started is a such a daunting task and I will never make any progress. Try “Ordinary Men”. The book is exactly as it sounds - ordinary folk who end up contributing to the most horrendous of crimes. ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/43 "2011-04-08T02:28:48Z")
what book should I read if I want to read graphic descriptions of atrocities ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/44 "2011-04-08T03:19:14Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > _shrugs_ Unless you’re Jewish. The Soviets might kill adult Jews but they would take the children and put them into orphanages. The idea was that they’d be raised by the state and they’d grow up as good Soviet Communists not Jews. [cite](http://faroutliers.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/soviet-orphans-of-the-great-purge/) [cite](http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/650403/jewish/Escape-From-Berdichev-70-Years-Ago.htm) Evil? Certainly. But at least the children were not killed for having some assumed genetic liability. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/45 "2011-04-08T03:39:47Z")
You know how you know some guy, a mechanic, your barber, the guy you went to high school with? He says crazy things about Jews, Blacks, Cree Indians or whoever? OK, so you think he is just trying to get a rise out of you, just trolling. Some of them are not. Their point of view is so strange that you cannot even imagine that is honestly held. My ancestors honestly thought it was OK to buy and sell people because of the color of their skin. They really thought Black people were… whatever. We now make economic or social justifications for people who tormented Blacks. We figure they did it for reasons we can understand. The truth for at least some of these people is that they really believe what they say. They are not joking, looking for an argument or just letting off steam. Hitler was one of these people and somehow he gained the power to do something about it. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/46 "2011-04-08T06:28:00Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Soviets might kill adult Jews but they would take the children and put them into orphanages. The idea was that they’d be raised by the state and they’d grow up as good Soviet Communists not Jews. [cite](http://faroutliers.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/soviet-orphans-of-the-great-purge/) [cite](http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/650403/jewish/Escape-From-Berdichev-70-Years-Ago.htm) > > Evil? Certainly. But at least the children were not killed for having some assumed genetic liability. Nah, I didn’t say it was the same thing. I’m just adding that being Jewish was a liability in itself. (: ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/47 "2011-04-08T10:19:58Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Soviets might kill adult Jews but they would take the children and put them into orphanages. The idea was that they’d be raised by the state and they’d grow up as good Soviet Communists not Jews. [cite](http://faroutliers.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/soviet-orphans-of-the-great-purge/) [cite](http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/650403/jewish/Escape-From-Berdichev-70-Years-Ago.htm) > > Evil? Certainly. But at least the children were not killed for having some assumed genetic liability. They did that sometimes. Other times they intentionally starved to death populations of millions, including women and children, also in the name of class warfare. See the aforementioned _Bloodlands_ for cites. (Though it is both an incredibly depressing book and an incredibly poorly written one so tread into it with care…) ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/48 "2011-04-08T10:36:10Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Soviets might kill adult Jews but they would take the children and put them into orphanages. The idea was that they’d be raised by the state and they’d grow up as good Soviet Communists not Jews. [cite](http://faroutliers.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/soviet-orphans-of-the-great-purge/) [cite](http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/650403/jewish/Escape-From-Berdichev-70-Years-Ago.htm) > > Evil? Certainly. But at least the children were not killed for having some assumed genetic liability. FWIW, Americans did the same with Native Americans in some parts of the country, either killing the tribe and sending the kids to Christian orphanages to raise them “right” or plain kidnapping kids. I offer his only as a way to say the Soviets weren’t uniquely evil in that regards. Men are men wherever they come from, and men is bastards. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/49 "2011-04-08T14:02:37Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Stalin and Mao didn’t kill millions for pseudo-scientific reasons. They killed millions for pseudo-economic reasons. > > Official communist doctrine denies any ethnic element. Marxism says that any child, regardless of its background, will grow up to be a good communist if he or she is raised in a proper communist environment. > > But the communists also believed in the concept of classes. They felt that class loyalty overrode any other loyalty. > > So when Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot wanted to kill a million people, they didn’t denounce them as a ethnic race; they denounced them as a economic class. > > It’s still evil but not as evil as eugenic genocide. The communists at least were willing to stop once they had destroyed the existing class. They didn’t keep hunting your children and grandchildren down and killing them. Shrug. The communists thought that they had discovered a scientific theory which enabled them to create a utopian society. You can call this “economic” if you like, but it went far beyond the traditional concerns of economics and into anthropology/sociology. It is true that they did not adopt the scientific racism of the Nazis, but their victims could be forgiven for not noticing such nice distinctions … and Stalin absolutely did target specific ethnicities for elimination. For example, Ukranians were denounced as “kulaks” and forcibly starved by the millions in order to break them as an ethnic nationalism (no real distinction between “kulak” and "non-kulak"Ukranian peasantry was made). While Stalin also killed many ethnically Russian “kulaks”, the main weight of his oppression was clearly targeted. This was not the end of his ethnic cleansings - he also targeted ethnic Poles prior to WW2, and Crimean Tatars (and many others) during trhat conflict. Stalin had no problems killing whole peoples, down to the last grandchild - for example, the great Ukranian famine was most indiscriminate and children were less likely to survive than adults. This is sort of like someone denouncing Jews as “moneylenders” and then killing them all - then claiming the killer was not targeting Jews, but only moneylenders. The Marxist “class target” was the thinnest of veneers over pure empire-building ethnic cleansing. I’d say this for Stalin though - brutal and evil as he was, at least his murders had some sort of ostensible point: Ukrainians _were_, as a nationality, unhappy with Soviet rule, and _were_ prone to attempt to shake it off; also, stealing all of their food, and selling it, _did_ create a surplus for the Soviets to invest in industry. Hitler’s killings often had no point at all. Also, Stalin did not of course wholly eliminate the peoples he was targeting - he was satisfied if they were broken. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/50 "2011-04-08T15:13:40Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > \*\*I don’t understand Hitler \*\* The Hitler that can be described is not the true Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/51 "2011-04-08T15:16:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The Hitler that can be described is not the true Hitler. 😃 Lao Tze is gonna whup your ass for that. Edit: actually, through non-action, he’ll simply allow your ass to whup itself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/52 "2011-04-08T16:15:59Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > 😃 > > Lao Tze is gonna whup your ass for that. > > Edit: actually, through non-action, he’ll simply allow your ass to whup itself. “A leader is best when the people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we solved the Jewish Problem ourselves.” – from _Mein Tao_ ---
**Author:** ![mckall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@mckall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mckall)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/53 "2011-04-08T17:28:39Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Where did you hear that? > > It was not a cattle car. It was a pre-war dining car that had been converted into Marshal Foch’s field headquarters. Here’s a [picture](http://www.superstock.co.uk/stock-photos-images/4048-795) and as you can see it was a normal conference room (albeit a little cramped). > > And the Germans didn’t sign the treaty there anyway. That was where they signed the armistice. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles Palace. I know that, (misremembering more than not) that part of Hitler’s propaganda against the Jews was to reinforce the humiliation of signing the armistice (my mistake on terms) in such a place as a railroad car. Hell, when the pastor told the wounded at Pasewalk about the impending defeat, he says he went blind. Calling it the November Crime, I could swear he made the rail car much worse than a converted one. I know the reality of it, just curious about how it was propagandized. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/54 "2011-04-08T18:02:02Z")
I don’t understand Hitler either, my German is crap, and when he goes all gutteral and starts waving his arm about, then for me its goodbye Nuremburg rally. (I’ve always wondered,why did he only get all "foregn "with"just the one arm ? was he scared to commit himself? Oh yes I’m a fanatical Nazi but I’ve got my feminine side aswell, we’ll never know now dammit) ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/55 "2011-04-08T18:48:04Z")
[QUOTE=Frank] Ian Kershaw wrote an excellent two-volume biography of Hitler. (Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis) While a bit more of a “history makes the man” viewpoint than I care for, it’s stunningly well researched and written. [/QUOTE] I second this nomination. I never could believe that everything (the war, the holocaust) can be laid at Hitler’s feet. It’s unfathomable that 60 million people can be “forced” by one man into doing things they don’t want to do. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/56 "2011-04-08T19:21:41Z")
> [@surrounded\_by\_literalists](#): > > I have a very conservative friend who has several older children in the public school system. One day the two oldest, 16 and 17, brought home permission slips to be signed, allowing them to watch ‘Schindler’s List’ in history class. Lorraine (my friend) was apalled that they would wish to show such a movie to children. She was angered that the school was showing such filth. I said I hadn’t seen the movie, but I had heard that it was a very moving, historical account. Her problem, she told me, was with the fact that it showed two unmarried people, in bed together. I was floored. I looked at her and asked, “You watched Schindler’s List, and the most disturbing scene for you was two unmarried people in bed?” I told her that I found it easy to explain two people having sex outside of marriage, but I have _ **never** _ been able to explain Hitler. > > That being said, QBVII by Leon Uris to me was enlightening. Hitler did not operate in a vaccume. He happened to have a number of people who were a warped as he was who worked on a micro level. All of them said that they were just following orders, but they had to have a certain level of enthusiam for for what they were doing in order to do it so efficiently and with the greatest amount of misery. This seem to me somehow as a good analogy for my outsider view of the difference between conservatives and liberals on some levels. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/57 "2011-04-08T20:02:24Z")
Hitler: Nobody does. I’m das wind, baby. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/58 "2011-04-08T21:53:57Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > It’s easy to dismiss Hitler as crazy as people don’t like to think “normal” people are capable of doing such things. “[Dick, I’ve covered for you a lot of times cause I thought you were a little crazy. But you’re not crazy, you’re mean](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093105/quotes).” ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/59 "2011-04-08T23:19:20Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > I never could believe that everything (the war, the holocaust) can be laid at Hitler’s feet. It’s unfathomable that 60 million people can be “forced” by one man into doing things they don’t want to do. While you have a point there–a good point and, yes, the times were ready and right for a Hitler–that doesn’t mean that a Hitler was inevitable. Those things would never have occurred under Strasser, or even Goering or Rohm or Drexler. Wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468/60 "2011-04-09T00:08:17Z")
\*\*I don’t understand Hitler \*\* You can’t process Hitler with a normal brain. It’s called siegen. Boom. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-hitler/577468.md?page=4)