Was Hitler Evil? (The Politics of Evil)

[Midnyte_Sun]

I think Stalin is up there at #1, then Genghis Khan, and last, but certianly not least, Timurlane. People always underestimate Timur's bloodthirst; Timurlane himself killed 5% of the world's population.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Also saving more than a thousand. He was penniless by the time the war ended, having spent most of it on bribes, and supplies.

He clearly changed his views throughout the course of the war.

Either way, the fact that the Jews he saved buried him in Jerusalem should tell you something about his deeds.

Like I said, I didn't argue he saved their lives, he clearly did. But he also spied on the Czech's for Hitler, and was actually arrested for it. He was an extreme opportunist. He took those Jews on as forced laborers.

Also he didn't lose his money because of the Jews. He lost his money because he was bad with money. He was a failure in business many times over and most thought of him as more interested in girls and drinking.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Hitler's the very definition of evil. If he isn't, the word has no meaning. He may have been a complex individual and all that, but he systematically slaughtered millions of people because of their race/religion.

Hitler more or less is the guy with "the buck stops here" sign. Everything from a trigger-happy SS who likes to line up Jews and shoot them in the head, to another who electrifies them in water (both happened) will, after they lost, be assigned totally to him. Some justified, some not, but it clearly underscores that Nazism was a lot more nuanced and there were a lot more people involved than just "Hitler was a really bad guy".

I mean no one saying Hitler's not a d***, it just takes more than one guy to kill 6 million Jews, 5-7 million others and hundreds of thousands of troops, on top of all the other things Germany was doing.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Like I said, I didn't argue he saved their lives, he clearly did. But he also spied on the Czech's for Hitler, and was actually arrested for it. He was an extreme opportunist. He took those Jews on as forced laborers.

Also he didn't lose his money because of the Jews. He lost his money because he was bad with money. He was a failure in business many times over and most thought of him as more interested in girls and drinking.

Opportunist, yes, but you are really underplaying what he did. He didn't lose his fortune because of bad business. How could he at that point? He literally went broke bribing the SS. He paid for hundreds of Jewish families who would have otherwise been sent straight to a death camp. And then he personally paid for their food and other needs.

Knowing full well that if they found out what he was really doing, he (and his family) would be put on trial, and probably sent to a concentration camp himself.

 

[Thundercrack85]

I think Stalin is up there at #1, then Genghis Khan, and last, but certianly not least, Timurlane. People always underestimate Timur's bloodthirst; Timurlane himself killed 5% of the world's population.

Well to be fair, there was a lot less for Khan and Timur to conquer. That was back when you could conquer the world (or at least Eurasia) with a well-equippred horde.

Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about world conquest.

 

[Baramos]

While it can be troubling that may label just Hitler as evil and therefore dismiss the evil of the entire system built around Hitler, and indeed the world-wide connections the Nazi regime enjoyed (some prominent citizens from our own country supported the regime through various industries), you also don't want to fall into the trap of rationalizing this in a way that lets Hitler off the hook. He and the Nazi high command were still the most responsible for the atrocities of WWII in the European theater, while at the same time we can still recognize the problems with our entire Western society and humanity as a whole that allowed him to be in power or the evil men in our own societies, or the evil in us ourselves.

I thought that number was over inflated and has come down to about 1.5M Jews over time

Most mainstream historians and scholars have not rounded it down from 6-8 million and it is still the agreed upon approximation. The people who attempt to degrade the number over time have always seem very questionable to me--they almost always have quite clear anti-semitic motivations and faulty statistics, and are a definite minority (think like 1% of historians).

For example, in Poland around 5 million Poles were killed, about half of those were Jewish. So that's already putting the number well above 1.5 million Jews, when you're not even including those from all the other various European countries.

EDIT: To me there seems to be a clear demarcation between historical warlords and modern dictators--to compare Hitler and Genghis Khan is again, somewhat letting Hitler off the hook. The social norms of the 20th century are so vastly removed from those of the 13th that attempting to rationalize Hitler's behavior by comparing him to Genghis Khan doesn't make sense to me. Germany was a modern, industrialized nation--they don't have the excuse for conquering other countries and killing millions of people, just like we don't have an excuse for our various atrocities committed in the 20th century, either.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

It is funny. The United States has killed 10,000,000 civilians since Kissinger. I've actually heard Kissinger is frequently called "the original Osama Bin Laden" in the Middle East. Stories like that make you wonder about how the losers of war are painted.

Ironically another "well known" genocidal maniac Elizabeth Bathory is of dubious origin. Yeah, there was violence in her township, but only when others conspired to steal it from her did the mass murdered title get tacted on. Many historians refute the whole thing.

 

[Baramos]

Bathory was more of a serial killer. Vlad the Impaler was more the mass murderer.

Most Imperialistic nations have definitely killed millions of people, the U.S. included, although some of that is more indirect deaths. But then you do have things like the Filipino Genocide, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. where there were definitely tens of thousands of direct civilian deaths, let alone the numbers killed via other causes related to the wars.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Bathory was more of a serial killer. Vlad the Impaler was more the mass murderer.

Bathory probably didn't kill anyone.

 

[Baramos]

Bathory probably didn't kill anyone.

I dunno, it seems like there must have been some tortures/murders, just nowhere on the scale attributed to her. Highly inflated, probably.

Of course you have probably read actual books on the subject, I just have various websites to go by...who knows if any historians are really involved in most of the "scholarship" on the internet.

EDIT: Probably what I should say is that her accusers probably were responsible for the same level of tortures/murders/atrocities, but as you say wanted the excuse to take her family's land/titles/power.

 

[Thundercrack85]

While it can be troubling that may label just Hitler as evil and therefore dismiss the evil of the entire system built around Hitler, and indeed the world-wide connections the Nazi regime enjoyed (some prominent citizens from our own country supported the regime through various industries), you also don't want to fall into the trap of rationalizing this in a way that lets Hitler off the hook. He and the Nazi high command were still the most responsible for the atrocities of WWII in the European theater, while at the same time we can still recognize the problems with our entire Western society and humanity as a whole that allowed him to be in power or the evil men in our own societies, or the evil in us ourselves.



Most mainstream historians and scholars have not rounded it down from 6-8 million and it is still the agreed upon approximation. The people who attempt to degrade the number over time have always seem very questionable to me--they almost always have quite clear anti-semitic motivations and faulty statistics, and are a definite minority (think like 1% of historians).

For example, in Poland around 5 million Poles were killed, about half of those were Jewish. So that's already putting the number well above 1.5 million Jews, when you're not even including those from all the other various European countries.

EDIT: To me there seems to be a clear demarcation between historical warlords and modern dictators--to compare Hitler and Genghis Khan is again, somewhat letting Hitler off the hook. The social norms of the 20th century are so vastly removed from those of the 13th that attempting to rationalize Hitler's behavior by comparing him to Genghis Khan doesn't make sense to me. Germany was a modern, industrialized nation--they don't have the excuse for conquering other countries and killing millions of people, just like we don't have an excuse for our various atrocities committed in the 20th century, either.

I do dispute the social norms bit. Not the imperialism stuff. Though that was perfectly acceptable for the time. No one thought anything of Japan conquering China, or Italy conquering Ethiopia.

Anyone who was anti-Semetic in the early 20th century has blood on their hands. What the hell did they think was going to happen? I've seen people use this argument a lot (like a certain car company founder). Most Germans hated the Jews, and wanted them gone. They didn't care how. Hitler and the Nazis just took mainstream prejudices to their logical conclusion. No one should have been surprised in 1945.

Evil is evil, not matter what century.

 

[Thundercrack85]

It reminds me of those American Evangelical groups spouting anti-gay rhetoric in East Africa. Now they act surprised and horrified when the East Africans start lynching gays, and passing laws condemning gays to death.

Every single death is on their hands.

 

[Lighthouse]

Some of the most horrifying acts of WWII were committed by the Russians. Some seriously, seriously awful stuff.

 

[Schlosser85]

It reminds me of those American Evangelical groups spouting anti-gay rhetoric in East Africa. Now they act surprised and horrified when the East Africans start lynching gays, and passing laws condemning gays to death.

Every single death is on their hands.

They're not surprised. They know exactly what they were supporting.

 

[The Overlord]

No human being is pure evil, but Hitler is about as close to pure evil as a human can get. If your evil deeds start to really pile up, after a certain point it doesn't matter if you like dogs and get along well with small children.

Can anyone think of any sort of justification for what the North Korean government does to its citizens? What about serial killers who kill innocent people for their own gratification? What about parents who torment their own kids?

 

[Thundercrack85]

The ironic thing is that Hitler himself never killed anyone personally (or physically, anyway). At least after World War I (it's unknown if he actually killed anyone).

Genghis Khan was a great warrior, and general. He could kick your ass in person. Hitler was a failed painter turned armchair general. And his second in command was even less threatening (a failed chicken farmer).

It says a lot about a species when their greatest villain is a glorified bureaucrat.

 

[The Overlord]

The ironic thing is that Hitler himself never killed anyone personally (or physically, anyway). At least after World War I (it's unknown if he actually killed anyone).

Genghis Khan was a great warrior, and general. He could kick your ass in person. Hitler was a failed painter turned armchair general. And his second in command was even less threatening (a failed chicken farmer).

It says a lot about a species when their greatest villain is a glorified bureaucrat.

A bureaucrat can kill a lot more people then even the most prolific serial killer.

 

[Thundercrack85]

A bureaucrat can kill a lot more people then even the most prolific serial killer.

Only with lots and lots of help.

 

[The Overlord]

Only with lots and lots of help.

But an organization will always be effective then one individual. A mafia family is responsible for more criminal activity then one lone crook is.

Hitler and Stalin have body counts that massive out rank even the most prolific serial killer, the fact they didn't kill anyone themselves is irrelevant, they gave the orders, without those orders, no one would have died.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Command responsibility is a funny thing. Never seems to work in court.

I do find it annoying that now everyone in Germany says it was Hitler. You know, like he built the ghettos, the death camps, and rounded everyone up himself. Who needs holocaust denial when you can blame an entire nation's crimes on one man?

Twelve million people murdered, only twelve men sentenced to death at Nuremberg (well, Himmler hung himself). The rest got slaps on the wrist.

I see Hitler (and his Nazi contemporaries) more as the culmination of centuries of European anti-semtism. He just took contemporary European racism to its logical conclusion. Like how the Japanese took their racism into genocidal territory in China.

An inevitability. Point being that most of Hitler's crimes would have been done without him. So, he's an evil monster, but a very replaceable one.

 

[Schlosser85]

I do find it annoying that now everyone in Germany says it was Hitler. You know, like he built the ghettos, the death camps, and rounded everyone up himself. Who needs holocaust denial when you can blame an entire nation's crimes on one man?

Uh, Germany has pretty much done the most thorough job of any nation of owning up to its past atrocities, including the US.

 

[The Overlord]

Command responsibility is a funny thing. Never seems to work in court.

I am pretty sure it does, some crime boss who orders the deaths of others, is just as legally responsible as the guys who carry out those orders.

I do find it annoying that now everyone in Germany says it was Hitler. You know, like he built the ghettos, the death camps, and rounded everyone up himself. Who needs holocaust denial when you can blame an entire nation's crimes on one man?

Twelve million people murdered, only twelve men sentenced to death at Nuremberg (well, Himmler hung himself). The rest got slaps on the wrist.

I see Hitler (and his Nazi contemporaries) more as the culmination of centuries of European anti-semtism. He just took contemporary European racism to its logical conclusion. Like how the Japanese took their racism into genocidal territory in China.

An inevitability. Point being that most of Hitler's crimes would have been done without him. So, he's an evil monster, but a very replaceable one.

That's big maybe, if Germany had been led by a reasonable nationalist, who just wanted to return Germany to her pre 1914 state and get rid of the Treaty of Versailles then maybe WWII wouldn't have happened. Hitler would not have been able to seize power without the Treaty of Versailles.

 

[Schlosser85]

If it didn't work in court, Adolf Eichmann wouldn't have been hanged. His whole defense was that he was just following orders and responsibility lay with his superiors Himmler and Heydrich (both of whom were conveniently long-dead).

 

[Thundercrack85]

Uh, Germany has pretty much done the most thorough job of any nation of owning up to its past atrocities, including the US.

That's not saying much.

If it didn't work in court, Adolf Eichmann wouldn't have been hanged. His whole defense was that he was just following orders and responsibility lay with his superiors Himmler and Heydrich (both of whom were conveniently long-dead).

Well, I meant command responsibility as in the entire segment of the country who voted Hitler into power, and all those who supported him.

Metaphorical. I guess it does work to a limited degree, with the higher echelons.

 

[Thundercrack85]

That's big maybe, if Germany had been led by a reasonable nationalist, who just wanted to return Germany to her pre 1914 state and get rid of the Treaty of Versailles then maybe WWII wouldn't have happened. Hitler would not have been able to seize power without the Treaty of Versailles.

There's a reason "reasonable" nationalists didn't get into to power. Not for a lack of trying either.

My point is, even if Hitler had died, there'd be a few genocidal bastards eager to take his place. Hitler didn't even attend the conference where they planned the holocaust.