Well, you can add on the emasculation of France, the establishment of the low countries as vassal states, and the removal of the Royal Navy as an Atlantic based force (given the damage it had done to Germany in World War I). Other than that, totally reasonable on the West.
An unpopular view of history, to be sure… especially when Big History is doing everything they can to tamp down the opposition and force their “Hitler was a Bad Guy” THEORY on… and into…
Oh, fuck it. I can’t even finish the joke.
To be fair, and to give a longer answer, that ship had pretty much sailed by the time Chamberlain came to power.
He took office at the end of May, 1937. The time to stop the Nazis was, IMHO, 1936 (if not earlier). 1936 saw the British and French roll over and play dead with regard to the illegal remilitarization of the Rhineland, and betray the democratically elected Spanish regime to fascism. By the time it came round to Munich et al, Britain was frantically rearming, and would have been unable to stop Hitler. Adolph himself was supposedly livid that he didn’t get a war over Czecheslovakia.
Not to say Chamberlain was perfect or a genius. He did know fighting wasn’t an option, but he also continued the completely misguided and one sided policy of ‘neurality’ regarding Spain, a policy which inevitably undercut the Republicans, pushing them more into the arms of Stalin. But him (and Baldwin) did ensure the continued expenditure on radar stations, a technology that was totally unproven and laughed at by many, yet which did more to prevent British defeat than pretty much any other man-made thing I can think of.
Quite so, but these were not territorial ambitions, the point under discussion in Giles’ reply to my post.
My bad. The low countries are close, but you are correct, Sir.
Demagogues always admire each other. Their metier is swaying people despite the facts. Makes them feel powerful over those who have the truth but refuse to spin it to look better than the lie.
Scylla you seem to post some well thought ideas at times, but I think Mycroft Holmes has got you on this one. Mein Kampf is reasonable?
Perhaps you meant parts of it are reasonable? A point here or there amidst the overriding lunacy?
You have to admit … the punctuation is impeccable.
He has broken the Siegfried Oath! He must die!!!
The problem with talking about Hitler is that he is the pinnacle and sort of beyond description. I mean I suppose you could say, “Hitler? That guy is as bad as Hitler.” But what’s the point.
From BrainGlutton’s cite
Please tell me this is from a Monty Python episode.
I have never heard of this, but if so, Mr. Hitler was not evil, he simply was batshit insane.
The real problem with Pat Buchanan defending Hitler is that I don’t think Pat has ever had the quickness or staying power to handle Hitler one-on-one. By all accounts Hitler had some nasty moves and the only way Pat could have stopped him is by fouling.
And der Fuehrer was unsurpassed at foul shots.
Being evil and insane are not mutually exclusive.
And what’s wrong with that? :dubious:
Why dogs? Why not pets in general?
Why don’t you like cats? What *are *you? A Nazi?
I don’t know any Nazis. I know people who forward lolcatz. I know people who like licorice, and ABBA. I know other pervs and deevs as well. But no Nazis.
Me neither. I said Mein Kamp was reasonable. I did not say that a paragraph selected for its apparent unreasonableness, lifted out of context and presented by itself would look reasonable.
Your argument is faulty. I point to a vehicle and say "This is a car. You take the hubcap by itself and show it to me and say “How can you call this is a car?”
You are not considering the whole.
Perhaps this needs its own thread, but let’s see if I can’t clear this up in one post.
I think Hitler was an evil vicious fuck. I have no sympathy for him, his cause, or those who would support or apologize for him now. Talking about Hitler intelligently and honestly is dangerous. There are plenty of nutjobs out there like Stormfront happy to hijack anything they can use, and you have to be careful lest you be denounced as a Nazi sympathizer or apologist.
I like to look at contrary positions:
Brainglutton says:
“Just what is reasonable about it? Hitler’s whole race-based worldview is fundamentally unsound. His entire theory of history and culture is wrong. Every characteristic he imputes to the Jews, or rather, to “the Jew,”* is nonsense. All of this must have been painfully obvious to all reasonable persons even in 1926.”
That is a safe viewpoint, but it’s clearly not true. The simple fact is that Hitler had millions of followers, convinced millions. He took a wreck of of a country and within a few years made a pretty good run at conquering a good part of the world.
I think it is dangerous and foolhardy to simply dismiss him or his arguments as being stupid, or easily recognizable as false by “all reasonable persons.” To think that is to miss something.
So, I read it to understand, and to see what it was that captured a nation. If you decide you are going to read Mein Kampf, you will find that it’s actually pretty difficult. There were at least four different versions published during Hitler’s life. Two of them are quite different from the other two. Which do you choose? The one for married couples? the one for the political elite? The abridged version for soldiers?
The next question becomes the translation. There are multiple English versions. Again, they are quite different from each other. Recently there was an “Unexpurgated version” published by some white supremacists that is rather more extreme than Hitler’s original versions. There are several other versions used by neo-nazis that are actually toned down to make Hitler seem more mainstream. There is at least one translation which attempts to make Hitler seem even more monstrous than he was (as if this was needed,) and goes out of its way to use more offensive language and imagery.
These different versions and translations vary widely in their content. The problem is we have a piece of writing which started off as propaganda which was then propagandized multiple times by whoever wanted to show their point of view with it.
I chose the Ford translation, as it is pretty generally accepted as being pretty faithful to the original first published version.
In this, Hitler tells the tale of growing up under poor but somewhat idyllic circumstances. There is a bit of a shadow of repression over his household, but it is hidden from young Hitler to a degree by his parents. He talks about germanic culture the beauty of his village, cultural values. He encounters strong anti-semitism and he dismisses it as incredibly stupid and ignorant. He shows himself to be open-minded and tolerant (this is the picture that he paints, and again, if you didn’t know what came afterwards, at this point you would probably buy into this self-characterization he makes.)
During his Vienna period he is gradually convinced or has demonstrated to him that he was wrong. He sees that Germany was being saddled with unfair war reparations that kept its native populace in something like slavery level poverty, exploited for profit by corrupt foreign powers. He rails at the injustice of it.
I hope nobody will take me wrong when I say that I think he had a point here, a germ of truth that he could exploit that would seem very reasonable and appealing to the germanic populace. His tone is earthy and basic. He gives the impression of being very intelligent but not particularly well educated. This tone would be appealing to a German on hard times. He would like to hear that his situation is not his fault that foreign powers are to blame and that he is being treated unfairly by a corrupt foreign government that his denying him his rights and heritage. He would like to hear that he is better than his circumstances dictate. He would like to hear that there is a scapegoat and someone to blame, and Hitler gives it to him. The Jew.
Hitler just doesn’t start with the anti-semitism. He makes arguments, and he gives reasons, and he gives the appearance of a skeptic being convinced of the evil of the jew gradually and against his will.
I’m not going to go into Hitler’s anti-semitic arguments. I really don’t want to voice them. I don’t think it serves a purpose, and it would sicken me to attempt to represent them well or sympathetically. They are wrong and they are evil. I also think that they were calculated to be appealing and reasonable to his target audience, and I think unfortunately that they worked very well.
In this sense Mein Kampf is not unreasonable. It is evil and wrong but scarily intelligent and reasonable within its own context as a piece of propaganda with a targetted audience.
I’ve got to say, after two summers in Missouri, that an “Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects” is just fine by me. I would request that the person filling such a position concentrate on defending me from gnats and insects drowning in my glass of tequila.
Perhaps that’s just me.
Well shucks, that’s the germ of the matter - people are always taking poor Adolf out of context. 
You’re saying that because he succeeding in infecting a large number of people with his delusions and hatreds, that they are transformed into something respectable? And that the ability to project military might confers “reasonableness” on ideology? In roughly the same period, Italy was reaching heights of military prowess (based on modern Italian standards, anyway) and Soviet Russia was beginning to swallow up its neighbors. Were their state ideologies vindicated by their military successes? In Germany’s case, they might have had even greater military achievements if they hadn’t been so hung up on false ideas (i.e. about Jewish scientists, including those of the nuclear variety).
No one is arguing that Hitler started off his political career as a shrieking loon. He had themes of nationalism and bigotry that carried appeal, and he was a skilled propagandist and mesmeric orator. He was also in the right place at the right time. That doesn’t in any way vindicate his basic philosophies or excuse the base instincts of the masses that gravitated to him.
That’s obvious enough, and I don’t think you’re a sheep in brownshirted clothing. Be a contrarian all you like, but consider the hazard of sliding from mere contrariness into outright jackassery.
No. I am absolutely not saying they are respectable, and I do not think you parenthesized addition to my quote is an accurate one as it changes the meaning.
No. I’m not arguing that either.
No. I do not think military success conveys reasonable, but way to beat the shit outta that strawman.
So Hitler was a Grammar Nazi?