Either, I don’t care.. take your pick. My tongue was planted firmly in my cheek.
I am being told by Little Nemo that Hitler believed in what amounts to a conspiracy theory, and was therefore insane.
So let me ask again, with a different example: Is anyone who believes the moon landing was a hoax is insane?
Does believing in a kooky economic or social theory = insane?
This was used as an example of being creepy in PSXer’s pit thread. I have to say, I don’t agree. I’ve read tons of WW2, Hitler and 3rd Reich stuff, including most of the books mentioned upthread, and for some of the same reasons that PSXer mentions. The fascination for me is:
The atrocities are an important part of the picture, since they bear on #2. The more you read about Buchenwald, the more you ask yourself why and how. The more you read about some of the bizarre aspects of the Third Reich - notably their command structure around Hitler, the more you wonder about how they did so well for so long. Even though I know the answers, I still find I read more, and probe at it like a missing tooth.
I had a friend who used to watch WW2 documentaries late at night. We used to kid him that he was keeping an eye on things to make sure they turned out right.
Just wanted to say that post #9 was a truly terrific, concise bit of writing. Great job, BrainGlutton.
Thanx! 
Put it this way: C.S. Lewis once argued that, going by the narrative of the Gospels, Jesus, claiming what he claimed, must have been either a Liar, a Lunatic, or in truth our Lord – that there are no other logical possibilities. Many commentators since have pointed out that, of course there are: Jesus might simply have been Mistaken. Raised in his time and place with his belief-system, a Jew would not have to be insane to fancy himself the Messiah. (Today, one almost certainly would.)
What exactly is “National Socialism”?
Sounds like you’re saying you don’t think Hitler was insane.
Q: “Why did the Holocaust happen?”
A: “Well, Hitler was insane.”
Doesn’t cut it for me. It’s too simplistic.
Also, Miller stated Hitler was insane (post #2). So, I asked, based on what? A belief in a Jewish Conspiracy?
If he was dry humping the drapes and howling at the moon, he wouldn’t have been able to get the Chancellor appointment. In other words, his insanity is not as obvious. To me, nor to the folks arround him at the time, anyway.
He was evil (in wanting to kill vast numbers of humans for being who they are). Does evil = insane?
I see that in the wiki definition of psychosis, secondary delusions are included. ( Psychosis - Wikipedia )Is this what is being used to define Hitler as insane? If so, how about the millions of others in Germany who shared his beliefs? Mass insanity?
I don’t. I was just countering that particular rebuttal for nitpicking’s sake.
I think the point was, everybody knew Hitler’s rhetoric and ideology, and every German during the war knew in a general way that . . . certain things were going on; but, still, to hear a statement like that, live and in person, right out of the Fuehrer’s mouth, really drives it home.
It’s kinda like Communism, but the uniforms are way kewler, and when you club some undesirable with a rifle butt, you don’t have to pretend you’re not enjoying it.
All right.
Hmmm . . . Well, there was his sex life, or whatever you call it. Also his appetite for amphetamines (and by some accounts cocaine, I believe), though that consumed him rather late in life. And, there might have been other things.
I don’t know if there’s a precise line where following an irrational belief crosses over into insanity. But in Hitler’s case, he had several million people killed in accordance with his irrational beliefs about a non-existent conspiracy. So I think that wherever the line is between eccentricity and insanity, he was far past it.
No, seriously. Was it specific brand of economic program that the Nazis pursued even as it was overshadowed by war and genocide? Not socialism per se, but not not socialism? Or was it just a euphemism for everything the Nazis had on their agenda?
Maybe. I don’t think this question can be answered in absolute terms.
And I’m not sure it matters. What IMO crosses the line is how a person acts on those beliefs. If you order the deaths of millions and launch a word war based on them, then it’s fair to say the crazy line has been crossed.
In Soviet Russia, Hitler doesn’t understand you!
Socialism in its broadest sense is where the state controls the economy. You have government ownership of businesses rather than private ownership.
This can be relatively benign, as in some western European countries, where there is a democratic government. This means that the government is the means whereby the people own the businesses.
Then you have communist systems where the state says it is running the economy for the benefit of the people but doesn’t actually allow the people a say in the process. The actual running of the economy is done by a governmental elite which claims it is better informed about the needs of the people than the people themselves are. And it’s also claimed that this is a temporary situation and eventually the people will develop to the point where the governmental elite is no longer necessary.
In a fascist system you again have the government running the economy. But in this case there isn’t a claim that the government is representing the people. There’s no claim that the state will eventually step aside for the people - in fact, it’s pretty much the opposite. The idea in a fascist system is that the people, like everything else, exist to serve the state not vice versa.
Hitler wasn’t a sociopath (see Eva Braun and dogs, for instance). He could perfectly understand that people murdering children would feel bad. But he thought that those feelings had to be overcame for the greater good and to achieve an extremely desirable outcome.
Note also that his “racial disdain” could apply even to the German race if it wasn’t up to the task. The defeat of Germany meant that the Germans weren’t deserving of the fate he had dreamed for them. It was their failure and they would deserve whatever would happen to them afterward. That would be “social darwinism” at work.
Nothing to understand here. That’s human nature at work. It’s the same everywhere and in every time. Point at a scapegoat and you’ll have no issue finding tons of usually normal people ready to do the dirty work if you encourage them. See Armenia, The rape of Nanking, Bosnia, Rwanda (even the Red Khmers for massacres not based on racial/ethnic division). Of course, also the famous Milgram experiment.
If you’re unlucky enough to someday belong to some bad category of the population, don’t be surprised if your friendly next door neighbour is amongst the crowd that’s hanging you from a lamp post (or maybe it will be you doing the hanging instead). That’s a sad realization, but you’re better off giving up your illusions because it happens every single time without fail.
If I’m not mistaken, there are two different movies based on these notes.
It’s like this: In the eyes of the mass audience Hitler is trying to reach, Socialism is Good. Everybody has been talking about “socialism” for decades. “Socialism” means equality and community and security and sharing and we’re-all-in-this-together. You won’t get far running down “socialism.” (And you wouldn’t want to – as Lenin and Stalin have demonstrated, there is no other idea to date which can motivate masses of ordinary people to get things done with so much enthusiasm.) But you can distinguish “socialism” from “Bolshevism,” this new Russian-and-somehow-Jewish thing which has every working man in Europe of even slightly traditionalist temperament scared shitless. If you call your movement “National Socialism,” you preserve the appeal of “socialism” while shifting the emphasis: This movement isn’t a Marxist movement about a struggle between classes, it’s about a struggle between nation-races. But from the ordinary comrade’s POV, it still involves enthusiastic participation in the wider community, however defined.
And in terms of economic policy, once you come to power “socialism” can mean whatever you want it to mean – you can nationalize industry x and leave industry y alone, if you judge that’s best for the Reich; unlike a Bolshevik, you are not ideologically committed to nationalizing every industry.