I’m sorry to say this, but looking at the state of the world right now, I see no evidence that we have progressed at all in that regard. It’s very tempting to want to think that everything bad happens for a reason, but in all honesty, it seems to me that bad things just happen.
If there hadn’t been a Hitler, Stalin may have swallowed much of Europe. Of course, Hitler wasn’t much better…
Or maybe we would have had someone else.
Who knows?
Hitler was definitely not the most competent of individuals, but he had an excellent sense of peoples’ abilities and surrounded himself with highly competent people prior to the full onset of his paranoia and megalomania. As an example, Hermann Goering, despite his reputation as a drug-addled fool, was actually quite effective in guiding the Nazi party to power (with a lot of help from his wealth and reputation).
Probably the most important of Hitler’s pre-war associates was Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank, Minister of Economics and l’eminance grise of the miraculous German economic recovery in the 1930s. I have mentioned Schact to some of my American economist friends and they know nothing about him, but it appears as if some of his ideas, such as deficit spending and other stuff I’m not qualified to comment on, made their way into modern economic theory.
While undoubtedly a prick, some sources claim that he never even joined the Nazi party despite his close association with it.
There was an odd and persistent rumor that he died in a plane crash in 1939, but in actuality he was merely sacked by Hitler for opposing military rearmament. After a period of post-war imprisonment, he went on to advise Gamal Abdul Nasser during Egypt’s period of nationalization and modernization.
Is that link serious? Did Hitler come up with the beatle design?
:eek:
Beetle :smack:
Again…
No.
There was nothing good about Hitler. It is as simple as that. This thread so far only contains bits and pieces of myths and half-truths about his personality. Even the two statements in the OP are untrue. Even his alluded madness is not a certifiable fact.
It might sound odd, but I can’t contribute anything substantial at all about his personality even after having read thousands of pages about him, including his own writing. Not after having visited many of the places he was in during his life. Even personal, private places he supposedly loved tell me nothing of who he was. He is like a ghost that gets more and more difficult to see the harder you look at him. Look at his paintings; they are cold architectural and empty, devoid of humans and emotion, painted with a certain rude technical skill but nothing more. As if painted by someone who wasn’t thinking of anything except exactly what he saw right in front of him.
His personal staff and the inner circle of the NSDAP said he never spoke with them, only to them and that his usual form of dialogue was the monologue… don’t know if it’s true and what difference it makes. They say he only had one personal friend in his whole life Ernst Roehm, whom he had murdered during the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1934. Don’t know if that is true either, but it chills me to think that it probably is.
Geli Raubal, his niece and lover killed herself in 1931. Eva Braun his last love and finally in the last moments of their life his wife tried to do it several times. They both said they felt abandoned, yet they were right there with him, at his side.
There was nothing good about Hitler.
There you are, that’s all one can say about his person without writing a whole book about him, and even then you’ll only end up with a long way of saying:
There was nothing good about Hitler.
Sparc
From the Straight Dope Mailbag
SDSTAFF David doing the honors
Was Hitler a Christian?
The article ends with:
Isn’t there some speculation that Hitler had poor Geli killed-because he was obsessed with her, and she wanted to get away from him?
There is, but it’s pretty unfounded. He later in life claimed that she was the only woman he had ever truly loved, then again little things like that usually didn’t stop him from murder and mayhem. However, the fact is that she has been documented as having repeatedly complained of his being on the road all the time and not giving her enough attention. The Little Guy was an obsessive traveler, a somewhat restless fellow it would seem.
Sparc
Hey Sparc! G’day…
Is that true is it? Hitler used to bonk his own neice?
P.S. I made a post last week in the thread about Germany between 1942 and 1945 that you might find interesting.
Regards, Boo Boo Foo
Hitler did one good thing for the world, though it could be debatable if it is really good or not.
He showed the modern world what depths even a civilized man can sink to. Showed America what the world unchecked can bring to fruitation. Opened our eyes to the monster within, and allowed us to chain him. It kept America from turning into the new China, and made us take up more interaction with the world.
Boo Boo Foo: He is reputed to have engaged in coprophilia with his niece. I never heard he actualy engaged in penile penetration with her, but if your into feces coprophilia is just as good I suppose.
Hitler picked great uniforms. I can honestly say as a Jew who has considered fashion design that the SS had the best looking military uniforms of the 20th century (well US Navy whites are nice, but black is beutiful).
As for the Beetle. He was having lunch with Ferdinand Porche and made a sketch of a people’s car for Porche to use in designing it. This sketch is in the Volkswagen museum and was featured on a History Channel program about the car. It is reported that Porche said later on that the car was difficult to build based on Hitler’s design, but that he did what he felt he had to do to appease someone with unlimited power and no engineering knowledge.
I read one Hitler biography, and the only good things I could come up with about him were that he loved Germany and he loved dogs. In my opinion anyone who loves dogs can’t be all bad. Loving dogs seems to have been the only good thing about the man and in no way makes up for starting WWII.
Interesting that he lead Germany to destruction and tested his suicide poison by poisoning his favorite dog with it.
The fact that Germany was destroyed by following Hitler is not meant to detract from the genocide he lead against Jews, gypsies, slavs, et al. or to detract from the fact that he lead Germany to destroy much of Europe. certainly Germany’s self-destruction from WWII is in no way as bad as the genocide Germany perpetrated. I am simply pointing out that Hitler destroyed what he loved as well as those he hated.
Granted, I am not speaking from a position of authority. I am Jewish as well, but I can recognize the man as a master of public presentation – he had a hand in much of the design of the pagentry of the Nazi party, down to choosing the swastika as a symbol. He seized on symbols and displays which were mystical, easily identified, unique, awe-inspiring, etc. etc. Add to this that he was an incredibly charismatic orator and a supremely good political manipulator. His Nazi Party was in essence a bunch of rabble-rousers and misfits with little political experience based on an unreadable book in Mein Kampf. Hitler single-handedly brought it from a fringe, outlawed party to most dominant, then the only party in Germany for 12 years. In just a few years he went from imprisoned political extremist to President, Chancellor, and eventually Fuhrer. While this is not necessarily “good,” it is a case study in top-notch political and societal manipulation.
Oh, and a bit of info on the Volkswagen. IIRC it turned out to be a big ploy for more money. Basically, soldiers and workers could put money away for this car, automatically deduct from their paychecks or whatever. But, as resources ran short in wartime Germany, the car was always pushed back. The first Volkswagens were actually only made after the war.
Didn’t Hitler pretty much single-handedly invent the tactic of Blitzkrieg?
He gave us the abiltiy to see how awfully out of control leaders in power, and their assistants can get if we don’t take it upon ourselves to understand how he did what he did .We need to see that, so when it comes back–under another name, dressed differently, telling the popular culture what they want to hear. The idea that all these cultures cannot possibly live together in this world drives all of it.
Searching for redeeming qualities is as productive as playing in your own feces.
Not too fond of posting in this thread, but I still will. To understand Hitler, especially from a redeeming or remotely balanced perspective is impossible. To understand him at all is extremely difficult without getting into some very hairy quandaries regarding what it actually was that happened during those years. No matter what you say you risk demonizing some innocent people or marginalizing the suffering of millions of other people.
For instance:
This is a very vital remark and a sensible one I might add before I continue. However, it begs for extreme caution in debating. The first part regarding the mass murders of the NSDAP and the consequences for Germany is irrefutable out of a moral perspective IMHO. The second regarding the European war opens up a very complex issue that cannot immediately be equated with guilt on one side. Unfortunately the two are so intertwined that it takes much more space, time and effort to weed out the whats and whys than we have in this forum.
Never the less I will make an effort to answer some of the posts that beg for some reply.
‘Germany’ did not perpetrate the genocide. A number of people in Europe did. A majority of those were certainly German, but many were French, Romanian, Polish, Dutch and so on. The general electorate of Germany can certainly and justly be argued to share guilt for putting into power the administration that carried this out as can every single European in Germany or in the occupied zone that silently supported or actively facilitated this atrocity. However, the main responsibility must be carried by the active perpetrators of this crime against humanity, this the world community through it’s judicial might has gracefully carried out by consequently not condemning peoples, but people.
Showed the world I might say. Thanks to the horror he demonstrated, Churchill was able to start the process of uniting Europe as well, but as pointed out this ‘greater good’ was in no way worth its price. This is exactly the point were the war and the Holocaust diverge. The war itself may have been inevitable since it might be argued to have been hardwired into the geopolitical divisions, the power structures and social systems of Europe. The Holocaust was by no means such an inevitable event; it was the result of madness and terrifying amounts of hatred and intolerance that we could have curbed if the powers that were had not been given the room they did.
zen101, I think it’s alright to ridicule H as much as one wants to but IMHO it’s better to do so based on ‘fact’ or things we can all see for ourselves as least. Chaplin did a remarkable job of it in ‘The Dictator’ for instance. While as your below the belt comments immediately makes one go ‘no he did not, that’s disgusting!’ – now we don’t know if they did or not, but we do know that his general achievement was truly disgusting in a much more real and terrible way and your comments tend to distract from the real horror he represents.
As a matter of fact he did. It is his only documented personal military achievement. Once again it’s hard to say that this is a ‘good’ thing, but the fact remains that he did.
I’ll say it again; there was nothing good about Hitler.
Sparc
Note: I did not mean to infer that Jack@ass made all the comments I quoted, I ment to not attribute the quotes at all but overlooked the first one.
My regrets,
Sparc
It should be said that Hitler’s love of animals was rather self serving - the Nazi’s contrasted their supposed affection for animals with the alleged cruelty of Jews and other non-Aryans to animals (I refer to the shitwad of a movie Geobbels produced - “The Eternal Jew”, which shows lurid footage of alleged kosher butchery).
This is reaching…but Hitler set off a chain of events that contributed to decolonization, the baby boom (and it’s by-products - from rock and roll to halter tops), and the unification of Europe. And Hitler’s negative example probably fueled the Civil Rights movement in the United States, South Africa, and other countries.
Hitler doesn’t deserve any credit for this, but his war did help set it all off.
"If there hadn’t been a Hitler, Stalin may have swallowed much of Europe. Of course, Hitler wasn’t much better…
Or maybe we would have had someone else. "
I disagree. If anything, Hitler’s attack on Russia led to the Cold War and bringing the SovUnion into the rest of Europe. Before then, no one else had a relationship with Russia at all. After that, webs of fear and suspician begat the Cold War. Stalin never would have mobilized and taken Eastern Europe without Hitler to force his hand.