# Was Hitler really smart? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 1, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457 "2010-06-01T03:39:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Joanie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@Joanie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joanie)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/41 "2010-06-02T23:21:37Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > \Disgusting stuff\, Just change the pointy brackets to square ones and you’re good to go. I am not a Mod here but I have been here a while. Whatever it is, you can post it without spoiler boxes and you won’t be afoul of the rules. If it makes you more comfortable, go for the spoiler boxes. Doggone! I tried this but it didn’t show up correctly when I hit “Preview Post”. Let me try again: The disgusting fettish that is very rare is for a man to lie on the floor and have a woman squat over top of him and either urinate or defecate on his body. I have heard of this being done on top of his chest or even on top of his face. In Hitler’s case, I seem to recall it was urination. I don’t know how or why such a fetish would develop. Most fetishes, as I understand, find their root cause in some childhood sexual event. But I can’t imagine how this fetish would ever develope. I will try to Google “Hitler urinate fetish” and see what I can find. OK. Bingo! Here we go. Look under “History” and you will find exactly what I mean. [Sexuality of Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_of_Adolf_Hitler) OK. It works now. So I will post it here. I found it and have posted a link to Wikipedia. If you choose to look at this spoiler and see what Hitler’s disgusting sexual fetish is purported to be, I think it could easily be the cause of deep-seated shame and could easily be the cause of his self-destructive tendencies. Also, I want to thank “Attack from the 3rd dimension” and Boyo Jim. Yes. My reluctance was about the fear of violating board rules. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/42 "2010-06-02T23:49:45Z")
Glancing through John Toland’s biography of Hitler “in the last quarter of the school year 1897-98 he had twelve 1’s, the highest grade” (p.12). Toland also mentions that in 1900 Hitler had already live in more places than many of his classmates would visit in thir lives and they saw he as a man of the world. He read the adventure stories of James Fenimore Cooper and his German imitator, Karl May. After the death of his father in 1903 “the desultory school year ended with a failure in mathematics” (p.17). Hitler’s French teacher Professor Humer had mixed feelings about young Adolf “Hr had definite talent, though in a narrow field. But he lacked self-discipline, being notoriously cantankerous, wilful, arrogant and irascible. He had obvious difficulty fitting in at school. Moreover he was lazy; otherwise, with his gifts, he would have done much better. In freehand sketching his style was fluent and he did well in scientific studies. But his enthusiasm for hard work evaporated all too quickly.” (p.18). Hitler ended failing French and his makeup exam was given a passing mark on the condition he not return to the Linz school for the Final Form. At age 15 he went to school in Steyr, 25 miles away. He detested the town and family he stayed with and his grades suffered, being “excellent” in gymnastics, “good” in freehand drawing but only "adequate in his two favorite subjects, history and geography and failing mathematics and German. I think in general Hitler had a quick mind and he could pick up facts fast. He had some good points early in WWII because he had fought in the trenches for four years and there are worse ways to learn how armies work. He probably could size up people quickly unlike his opponents like Neville Chamberlain who never understood what Hitler was. His successes early in the war (his generals thought France would be harder to defeat than Russia) intimidated opponents since Hitler could point out “You said I was wrong to attack through the Ardennes and you were wrong”. But ultimately I don’t think he ever had a long term strategic plan. It’s also one of those things you wonder about how much the Holocaust detracted from the war effort by murdering 6 million people who could have helped the war effort as soldiers or factory workers, not to mention treating people of Eastern Europe as enemies instead of using them to fight against the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![Joanie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@Joanie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joanie)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/43 "2010-06-03T00:09:39Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > … > But he lacked self-discipline, being notoriously cantankerous, wilful, arrogant and irascible. He had obvious difficulty fitting in at school. Moreover he was lazy; > … > But ultimately I don’t think he ever had a long term strategic plan. > … I think you make some excellent points. I always thought that some of the key reasons Germany lost the war were: 1. The insane decision to fight the Soviet Union on a second front. 2. The insane decision to switch from bombing the British air fields to bombing London instead. I think they might have actually stood a chance of defeating England had they continued to knock out the British airfields. 3. The prohibition of any commander from bringing “bad news” to a senior commander. Germany fought its war in a “fantasy state” - acknowledging only its successes and pretending its failures never ocurred. 4. The corruption of the party structure. In The Sopranos, I recall a saying that went something like this, “Money flows uphill and Crap flows downhill”. It was similar with the Nazi party. Do you have any idea how much personal wealth Goerring amassed for himself? And so far as I know, he never even wound up seeing or using any of the many fabulous pieces of art and wine and liquor that he amassed. 5. The failure to realize the effect of the longterm production facililties of the USA and USSR vs Germany and Japan. Even the Japs realized that they stood absolutely no chance in the long term picture. Their only hope was to make a short term strike and hope the US would sue for peace. One of my most favorite parts of the story of WW2 was that after the Battle of Midway, the Japs never again built any aircraft carriers and the USA just built whole bunches of newer and newer classes of aircraft carriers. The Japs never again made any advances and the US never again made any retreats or lost any of it’s possesions. Apparantly, Yamamoto realized all of this would happen if they failed to follow up after Pearl Harbor. But this was something the Nazis never seemed to publicly acknowledge. Some of them may have realized this. But they were forbidden from publicly stating this because Hitler would not tolerate hearing any “bad news” - he would only tolerate hearing “good news”. I have often wondered just how much this cost the Nazis in terms of their war effort. I’d really like to know just how much of a difference this made. Supposing Hitler would have been willing to allow his commanders to report the honest truth - both good news and bad - how much of a difference would that have made to their war effort? ---
**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:** [June 3, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/44 "2010-06-03T00:32:25Z")
Hitler also had a “divide and conquer” style of management. He essentially kept all his subordinates competing against each other by giving them overlapping areas of authority. This did serve the purpose of keeping anyone from becoming powerful enough to challenge Hitler’s leadership but it also resulted in a lot of wasted effort. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/45 "2010-06-03T02:00:37Z")
> [@Joanie](#): > > My reluctance was about the fear of violating board rules. For your future information, the word “coprophagia” is not forbidden on the SDMB. Though I suspect it doesn’t crop up all that often. Except maybe in threads about the New York Yankees. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/46 "2010-06-03T02:06:53Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > For your future information, the word “coprophagia” is not forbidden on the SDMB. Though I suspect it doesn’t crop up all that often. Except maybe in threads about the New York Yankees. I’m sure I’ve seen the word before, but I’d forgotten there was such a… academic sounding word for a bizarre fetish. I wouldn’t have even thought to look for one. I would just have posted, “Hitler liked women to shit on him. Literally.” As a statement of fact, this kind of language is also allowed. The moderators do get quite upset, however, if you start using obscenites in reference to other posters. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/47 "2010-06-03T02:08:06Z")
> [@Joanie](#): > > Doggone! I tried this but it didn’t show up correctly when I hit “Preview Post”. > > Let me try again: > > The disgusting fettish that is very rare is for a man to lie on the floor and have a woman squat over top of him and either urinate or defecate on his body. I have heard of this being done on top of his chest or even on top of his face. > > In Hitler’s case, I seem to recall it was urination. I don’t know how or why such a fetish would develop. Most fetishes, as I understand, find their root cause in some childhood sexual event. But I can’t imagine how this fetish would ever develope. > > I will try to Google “Hitler urinate fetish” and see what I can find. > > OK. Bingo! Here we go. Look under “History” and you will find exactly what I mean. > > [Sexuality of Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_of_Adolf_Hitler) > > OK. It works now. So I will post it here. I found it and have posted a link to Wikipedia. > > If you choose to look at this spoiler and see what Hitler’s disgusting sexual fetish is purported to be, I think it could easily be the cause of deep-seated shame and could easily be the cause of his self-destructive tendencies. > > Also, I want to thank “Attack from the 3rd dimension” and Boyo Jim. Yes. My reluctance was about the fear of violating board rules. hm, we have immense threads about popping zits, pan frying sperm, feeding sperm to fish … I am not sure it is possible to gross the board out … ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/48 "2010-06-03T02:25:16Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I’m sure I’ve seen the word before, but I’d forgotten there was such a… academic sounding word for a bizarre fetish. I wouldn’t have even thought to look for one. I would just have posted, “Hitler liked women to shit on him. Literally.” I’ve been corrected via PM. Coprophile is more correct, but even that is only about feces. Urolagnia is urine. I’m not sure if there’s a word for both; I’m not sure I want to know if there is. Can I interest you instead in a thread about pan-fried semen? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/49 "2010-06-03T02:51:01Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > For your future information, the word “coprophagia” is not forbidden on the SDMB. Though I suspect it doesn’t crop up all that often. Except maybe in threads about the New York Yankees. I just searched and 64 threads came up. So like once every two months. I didn’t analyze them to see how many were about the Yankees. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/50 "2010-06-03T15:10:00Z")
I’ve heard about that fetish before. He’s also been called a latent homosexual, too. (I don’t buy the latter.) I wasn’t sure if it was post-war propaganda stuff written to make Hitler seem more bad than he really was. There is a psychological need to demonize the enemy. In Hitler’s case, the truth should have been sufficient to make clear that the man was not one to be idolised or adopted as a role model. Is the fetish claim credible? ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/51 "2010-06-03T15:34:07Z")
Yes, after the Fall of France, I can see how Hitler would be regarded as a genius…but what about Russia? After losing 600,000 men at Stalingrad, what did the German generals think? If I were part of thge GS, I would have been thinking about how to get rid of the guy. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/52 "2010-06-03T15:42:47Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Yes, after the Fall of France, I can see how Hitler would be regarded as a genius..but what about Russia? After losing 600,000 men at Stalingrad, what did the German generals think? > If I were part of thge GS, I would have been thinking about how to get rid of the guy. If you use a bomb in a briefcase, include both packages of explosives. ---
**Author:** ![Big\_Norse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/big_norse/32/9954_2.png) [@Big\_Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Big_Norse)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/53 "2010-06-03T15:51:51Z")
From what people are saying it seems there is evidence he was a naturally intelligent guy but he didn’t have a lot of formal education past grammar school. The problem was his leadership style and narcissism led him to dismiss advisers and force some stupid military blunders. The big one that comes to my mind was his refusal to let Rommel determine strategy in North Africa and his basically quarterbacking the war from Berlin - while being in the “fantasy state” Joanie mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/54 "2010-06-03T17:00:21Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I keep seeing people call him crazy, but he wasn’t truly mentally ill until the last part of his life. Isn’t that right? > > Evil and foolish, sure. But mentally ill? Was he diagnosed with anything or can he be diagnosed today with anything? He suffered from hysterical blindness after WWI, and was treated by a psychologist. I’m thinking that this would be considered PTSD today, and was brought on by what he experienced in the war, so it’s not the same as just being crazy. But nonetheless I would say that is a serious mental problem. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/55 "2010-06-03T17:54:51Z")
> [@Joanie](#): > > After all, his overall goal was the destruction of everyone and everything. No, his overall goal was the destruction of the nations of Poland and Russia (and the Jews), and the creation of a continental German Empire on their bones. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/56 "2010-06-03T17:56:03Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > During his final days was not their evidence of him being a little mental like didn’t he have a mental disorder and was high on drugs? [He was addicted to amphetamines from 1942 to his death.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_health#Addiction_to_amphetamine) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/57 "2010-06-03T18:08:26Z")
From [_Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties,_](http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Twenties-Perennial/dp/0060935502/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196390812&sr=8-3) by Paul Johnson, Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the ‘East Policy,’ but from his early speeches and so-called ‘Second’ or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the ‘cleansing’ process – the elimination of the Jews – was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as ‘negative supermen’. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because ‘blood purity’, as he put it in Mein Kampf, ‘is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth’. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes – ‘all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood’. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler’s youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become ‘lord of the Earth’. (Mein Kampf.) > > What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that ‘cleansing’ could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the ‘Jewish race-poison’ and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style ‘Jewish’ Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin’s Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat ‘an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia’. Thus the ‘cleansing’ fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale. > > Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, created a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination. > > No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it. Same book, Chapter 11, “The Watershed Year”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s ultimate aim was to create a German Volk of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of ‘drafting’ Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being ‘cleansed’ of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it: > > > [@](#): > > > > The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The ‘Reich peasant’ is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level! > > As Hitler’s vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed – Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between ‘the German Empire of the North,’ with a new ‘Germania’ as its capital, and ‘the Roman Empire of the South’. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter’s Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant ‘Monument to the Unknown Soldier’. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, ‘revive the Cimbrian art of knitting’, appoint a ‘Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs’ and an ‘Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects’.’ Pride goeth. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/58 "2010-06-03T18:09:36Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > hm, we have immense threads about popping zits, pan frying sperm, feeding sperm to fish … > > I am not sure it is possible to gross the board out … So true. I would have bet money that the Fuhrer’s fetish was “snowballing”. ---
**Author:** ![Joanie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@Joanie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joanie)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/59 "2010-06-03T21:14:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, his overall goal was the destruction of the nations of Poland and Russia (and the Jews), and the creation of a continental German Empire on their bones. If that is true, then: 1. why did he order his General Rommel to “fight to the last man” in N. Africa? 2. why did he order his General Pauling to “fight to the last man” in Stalingrad? 3. why did he order his demolition teams to destroy Paris when they retreated back to Germany? In the first two cases, both generals refused to follow his orders. They recognized those orders for what they were (mass suicide) and they refused to participate. There are several other examples that I can’t quite remember off the top of my head. If anyone else can help, I would appreciate if you would join in and post any other examples of Hitler’s decisions that were self-destructive. ---
**Author:** ![Joanie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@Joanie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joanie)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457/60 "2010-06-03T21:44:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, his overall goal was the destruction of the nations of Poland and Russia (and the Jews), and the creation of a continental German Empire on their bones. I understand that he wanted to defeat and occupy Russia because it had so much “living space” (not to mention the oil wells in Romania). But, I never t heard that he wanted to \*\*destroy \*\*Russia exactly - just that he wanted to destroy the Russian people (perhaps by forcing many of them to work as slaves) and then populate Russia with Aryans. But I have never heard of him having any desire to destroy Poland or the Polish people. This is something new to me. Can you explain why he wanted to destroy Poland and/or the Polish people? If it was because he considered the Poles to be sub-humans, I believe he considered many, many countries to be populated by sub-humans. Why would he direct any more hatred towards Poland than he would towards many of the other countries populated by non-Aryans? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hitler-really-smart/541457.md?page=4)