Hitler Then vs Hitler Now

Originally posted by Melbourne_Militia
Ive been saying that very same thing for years.....but to no avail.....

If WW2 had never happened, Hitler would have been reknowned as one of the greatest leaders of all time.

Hitler was a very reprehensible leader. He was a political opportunist of the worst sort who was devoid of human morality. He was not the architect of Germany's economic recovery after WW1 and in fact did everything he could to undermine the Weimar Republic which did tackle and solve the economic problems that Germany faced.

Lets put aside WW2........and the attrocities the Nazi's commited (let alone the ones the Allies committed too, but thats another thread), from my understanding, after WW1, Germany brought itself from ruin to a super power within short amount of time, by making what they needed IN Germany and NOT importing what they needed.

If you want a hero of the German economic recovery, it would be Gustav Stresemann and his government's policy of "Fulfilment" of the reparations demands of the WW1 allies. The vehicle used was massive loans especially from American investors.

Here is a quote from Alan Bullock's Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, page 142.

By 1927 the despised government of the 'November Criminals', had succeeded in restoring order, stabilizing the currency, negotiating a settlement of reparations, ending the occupation of the Ruhr, and securing Germany's entry into the League of Nations. To the Locarno Pact in the west Stresemann had added the settlement with the Soviet Union embodied in the Treaty of Berlin of April 1926, and to the evacuation of the First Zone of the demilitarized Rhineland and the withdrawal of the Allied Military Control Commission at the end of January 1927. In August 1928, at the invitation of the French Government, Stresemann visited Paris to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war, on equal terms with the other Great Powers. The visit to Paris and the friendliness of Stresemann's reception symbolized the progress Germany had made, through the policy of 'Fulfilment', in recovering that equality of rights to which Hitler and the Nationalists never tired of appealing."

Of course they were not out of the woods at that point and alarm bells were sounded over their continued heavy endebtedness, but they were well started on the road to recovery, all the while being hounded on every side by Hitler and his Nazi jackels.

This story is more complex than the latter day rehabilitators of Adolf Hitler would have people believe.

When Hitler eventually came to power and turned the German economic recovery program around, 180 degrees retrograde to what was good for Germany and redirected it to war production one of his important advisors, who eventually left Hitler's cabinet over the direction Hitler was taking, was Hjalmar Schact, the President of the Reichsbank, who as the head of a special commission for currency, appointed by the Stresemann government had stabilized the mark and ended inflation in 1924, while that great leader, Adolf Hitler was scratching his noggin in Landsberg Prison and sitting down to dictate Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.

To completely expose the lie that Hitler was responsible for the recovery of Germany after WW1 would require a much longer post than I have time for. I urge people to read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny and Konrad Heiden's Die Fuhrer.

The study of Hitler and the Nazis is extremely important in our time. They are the rough hewn prototype of what the United States is in the process of becoming.

Tell me this.....why is it that we cannot run society/economics the same way today if it worked so well for Germany prior to WW2?

In the Nazi model of fascism, the nationalist leader and his party were in the driver's seat and could exercise a "command economy" designed to strengthen the country for war. In the American fascist state the coroporations are in the driver's seat and are running the economy only for the benefit of their own small segment of the population. Whatever accrues to the people could be called "collateral benefits", regrettable but unavoidable.

These days industry is shutting down and moving ofshore to India and China rather than staying in the western nation and keeping the money in the country.

Industry is not there for your benefit.

We are all indoctrinated to beleive that Capitalism is the only way and the right way....well it is proven that a better way was achieved, so why cant we use some of those methods today?

What you want is a Rooseveldt style "New Deal" program in the United States. Rooseveldt's government seems funny and odd to us nowadays because it was actually run to benefit all segments of the economy and all levels of the population. Rooseveldt is the hero you should be looking into, not Adolf Hitler. Hitler is just a slightly different flavour of what is killing America in our own time.

Could surely help the USA get out of its financial mess.

A"New Deal" could, yeah. Investment in infrastructure, jobs stateside, taking care of business at home.

[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

Hitler was pretty sick, but he wasn't any sicker than any other leader. I think he's only especially hated because he lost, really.

I also think the Jewish Holocaust was in part because of the Nazis, but also done in part by the Soviets.

Hitler, like him or not, as a leader what a great man and also surrounded by abit of a myterious aura.....acknowledged by some of the worls leader of the era.

www.rense.com...

"After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg), you can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambitions for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made." --John F. Kennedy 'Prelude To Leadership - The European Diary of John F. Kennedy - Summer, 1945. Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washingon, DC. p 74

"Yes, Heil Hitler. I, too, say that because he is truly a great man." --David Lloyd George, Prime Minister, UK

Following World War II, after 1945, Winston Churchill obviously read 'Mein Kampf" and subsequentely expressed his opinion, to have "slaughtered the wrong pig" in WWII. (H. Sündermann, "Old Foe, What Now?")

England and the USA didnt fully understand the threat that Russia posed at the time and communism in general....if they did understand Hitler abit more and the threat that the Communist posed to Europe and the rest of the world, mark my words, the US and UK would have been there along side Hitler. And the world now would have been a drastically different place.

It wasnt far off eventuated thou, for Hitler did send an envoy to the UK to discuss teaming up with the germans.....it wasnt far off from happening.

At the end of the day....the following two quote sum it all up.

No one person in the 20th century has had such a profound effect as "the German Führer". He raised a robbed, starving, broken, and defeated people into a well fed, motivated, happy, prosperous, industriously advanced and highly successful nation. This was all achieved in peace-time in an unbelievable six years.

To a larger majority he was simply a strong leader with many good ideas that could have made a better world for all, but he went too far causing war and murdering millions of Jews.

Yes, he could have changed the world in a better way if he would have ut his attention to more pressing issues than war.

reply to post by Donnie Darko

Hitler was a very complex individual, a strange mixture of low class thuggish thought processes and brilliant political insights and strategies. I think he was considerably worse than most other political leaders, but he was very energetic and determined and probably the originator of the modern criss cross the country political campaign.

The thing that most motivated him was his belief in the lie that Germany had been stabbed in the back by it's own politicians and not really defeated on the battlefield. In reality the German general staff insisted that politicians sue for peace because they knew that the German army could not hold the allies back.

The generals never owned up to it and were happy to go along with the myth that Germany had been betrayed by it's politicians. They were skunks in WW2 as well when they wanted to remove Hitler from power but dithered and dithered and dithered and finally failed in all attempts.

Hitler was obsessed with restoring German prestige but had a very low-brow notion of what that was. He was a brilliant political strategist but fundamentally a venemous guttersnipe of a person.


[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

reply to post by ipsedixit




Thankyou for that....very informative and interesting reply....I appreciate it and will look into some of that further

Originally posted by ipsedixit
Hitler was a very complex individual, a strange mixture of low class thuggish thought processes and brilliant political insights and strategies.

Hitler was obsessed with restoring German prestige but had a very low-brow notion of what that was. He was a brilliant political strategist but fundamentally a venemous guttersnipe of a person.

My Patient Hitler

The Enigma of Hitler

Originally posted by Melbourne_Militia
No one person in the 20th century has had such a profound effect as "the German Führer". He raised a robbed, starving, broken, and defeated people into a well fed, motivated, happy, prosperous, industriously advanced and highly successful nation. This was all achieved in peace-time in an unbelievable six years.

Hitler was a very important and influential individual, but his influence was mainly for the bad. He was not responsible for the German economic recovery, but he did motivate the German people and through his use of the power of a command economy did raise their standard of living. He then blew up the whole country trying to undertake a diabolical plan to exterminate and enslave millions and steal land from Russia.

To a larger majority he was simply a strong leader with many good ideas that could have made a better world for all, but he went too far causing war and murdering millions of Jews.

Many people think that but they don't know the historical details. Hitler was a monster leading a criminal regime.

Yes, he could have changed the world in a better way if he would have ut his attention to more pressing issues than war.

Woulda, shoulda. But he couldn't and didn't because he was Adolf Hitler, the low brow demagogue from Linz, who never met an idea or person he wasn't ready to betray to get and hold power. He completely squandered the potential of the German people during his time in power and would have been happy if every man woman and child in Germany had followed him to the grave.


[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

reply to post by queenannie38

Thanks for posting the links.

The first one by Dr. Bloch is remarkable and I believe it is scrupulously accurate.

I don't buy the second one at all. It reads like the biography one might get from the "Hitler for Chancellor" comittee. I think it is quite inaccurate and overrates Hilter considerably on the intellectual scale.

There is some interesting stuff on YouTube in which attempts have been made using specialized computer software to to lip read Hitler's conversation in some of the movies taken by Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden and there is an interesting snippet of conversation between Hitler and a Finnish leader that was taped on a railroad car when they were meeting.

I'm very opposed, despite my posts above,to one dimensional caricatures that have been the staple of depictions of Hitler since the war. They don't help us know him and the phenomenon of Nazism, but, and this is important, they do help to obscure the ways in which we and others around the globe are following in his footsteps.




[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

Originally posted by queenannie38
this doesn't seem to be "state"-oriented, at all:

"We have not broken down classes in order to set new ones in their place; we have broken down classes to make way for the German people as a whole. Our education also trains men to respect intellectual achievement: we bring one to respect the spade, another to respect the compass or the pen. All now are but German fellow-countrymen, and it is their achievement which determines their value...
What is necessary is to teach each class and profession the importance of the others. All together form one mighty body; labourer, peasant, and professional man."
- Adolf Hitler

Really?

You've never read Kim Il-sumgs Juche then? Oddly very similar.

But its obvious that you know very little of how Hitler came to power via the political double dealing, violence and manipulation of a society that was seriously aggreived by what it saw as a massive injustice from both the Treaty of Versailles following World War One, and the withdrawal of American loans and fundings following the Wall Street Crash.

Ultimately though he has to be judged on the whole package, not just his social and economic programme, and as I said previously his little jaunt into foreign territory didn't exactly do him - or the germans - alot of good. Not much gets produced from a carpet-bombed industrial site, does it?

And while you are familiar (or link to sites) that laud his economic/social order, you've missed the part where he decided that the enemies of the Reich should not benefit from it, and ordered a scorched earth policy destroying factories, mines and infrastructure during the retreat from the Allies. (The "Nero decree")

But still, if you want to worship the guy, thats your perogative.

Originally posted by OldDragger
Oh for Christs sake.
You guys want a police state. Great.
There is the gaining power by murder.
Book burning.
Curtailing of personal freedom, The SS and brown shirts.
Total control of media by the government.
Did I mention murder and a police state.
The harrasment of intellectuals and perversion of medicine and science.
The deiafication of the military.
And much, much more.
If you clowns are dying to hear the sound of jackboots at your door, you are......nuts.

Sounds like today's America!

Konrad Heiden's The Fuhrer was the first book length biography of Hitler and it is still one of the best.

Heiden was involved in the political process in Germany in the 1920's and personally heard Hitler speak during that era. He was a student who was involved in street clashes with the Nazis at the time. He jokingly refers to himself in the book's preface as the world's oldest living anti Nazi.

He was quite a guy and tells the early story of the Nazis very well:

In 1923, as the leader of a small democratic organization in the University of Munich, I tried, with all the earnestness of youth, and with complete lack of success, to annihilate Hitler by means of protest parades, mass meetings, and giant posters."

Page 1.

He believes that Hitler was involved in his first political murders in 1919 and charts the bloody rise of the Nazis up to the Roehm purge of 1934, a purge in which a lot of collateral houskeeping-style murders that had nothing to do with crushing the SA were carried out.

Hitler murdered his way through his entire political life. Quite a change from the sensitive young boy he was in Linz.

F.W. Winterbottom, who headed the code breaking operation at Bletchley Park during the war was an airforce attache in Berlin before the outbreak of the war and was spying for the Britain's Secret Intelligence Service undercover.

He has a vivid description of an interview with Hitler in his office at the Reich's Chancellory in which Hitler completely blew his stack, underwent a bizarre physical transformation, and launched into a tirade that lasted several minutes, then abruptly stopped when he smiled, smoothed his hair and resumed normal conversation.

Unfortunately, I don't have the Winterbottom book right in front of me but there is a suggestion in the account of serious mental problems and possibly even demonic possession, if my memory serves.

I think a lot of Hitler's early successes against people like Chamberlain and other world leaders prior to the outbreak of war is similar to the success a class clown can have in making an intelligent teacher look like an idiot. The two people come from different worlds. It took a long time for leaders to realize that Hitler wasn't like them and didn't share their understanding or their values.

They didn't know they were dealing with a gangster from the gutter.

[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

I'll simply re-post from the Life Magazine pictures of NAZI Germany thread. Those that say the US is the same as NAZI Germany are simply ignorant,

Originally posted by Skyfloating
These pictures are relevant because many here use the word "nazi" too lightly. Neither Obama nor Bush have anything to do with the mass-craze and adulation that happened back then.



Truer words were never spoken! I absolutly loath GW Bush, but he was light years from Hitler. Those that casually banter about the term NAZI need to educate themselves on the unbelievable barbarism and horror that was Nazi Germany. There are simply too many people ignorant of the Nazi regime. I talked to one kid, just graduated from a prestigous Eastern University who thought the US fought Russia in WW2 "over land or something". I think it's difficult for cushy Americans to grasp living in a true police state, those that compare modern America with Nazi Germany insult the 50 million people that perished in the war.

A great leader turned delusional methhead

Things went downhill with him because

Hitler began using methamphetamine after 1937

his regular methamphetamine use and possible sleep deprivation in the last period of his life must be factored into any speculation as to the cause of his possible psychotic symptoms, as these two activities are known to trigger psychotic reactions in some individuals

1

2 cents

reply to post by Doc Velocity


The Holocaust actually killed about thirteen million people, Doc. Roughly half were Jews. The fact that they're the only ones you're remembering is evidence of some pretty strong propaganda efforts clouding up your brain - not your fault, there really is an effort to erase the other 7 million dead. Slavs, Rroma, homosexuals, criminals, political prisoners, POW's, people the Nazi government disliked for whatever reason, dissidents, people of mixed ethnicities. They were all crammed into the camps along with the Jews.

As a stalwart anti-atheist red-baiter, I know you love pounding hte numbers of dead Stalin racked up. And yeah, thanks to him, lots of people did die. The difference between him and Hitler in this regard, aside from a few million deaths, was the processes. Stalin killed unintentionally for the most part. There was no intention to starve the western half of the Bloc, it was simply crappy policy being used at the worst time. Hitler on the other hand, essentially formed his state around the idea of purging the undesirables and had a national system for clearing them out. it was regimented, systemic, and planned to the finest detail.

Am I excusing Stalin? Hell no. But I am maintaining that Hitler was worse both in terms of dead people and I terms of the ideologies that led to their deaths. Hell, Hitler killed twice as many Russians as Stalin did, between the fighting of the war itself and the resulting carnage and destruction to civilian life.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


It feels funny to defend Hitler - but Stalin and his predecessors were just as bad. Nazis wanted to "remove" people based on racial parameters, and Communists did the same on social parameters.For example rich farmers, clergy, officers , (funny how it is similar to Hitler wiping out SA) fellow revolutionists from other then bolshevik parties and numerous others "classes". And old bolsheviks also followed same path later. Stalin camps did not have gas chambers, true. But there was same hunger AND awful cold. Conditions that stopped German army with healthy young soldiers in 1941 are there every winter in Siberia and other areas chosen for Soviet concentration camps. Stalin is not the one who created those camps, but during his time, with his direct knowledge and according to his orders millions were sent there and nobody knows for sure how many died in those camps. Without any "propaganda". Nobody cares.

Originally posted by OldDragger
I'll simply re-post from the Life Magazine pictures of NAZI Germany thread. Those that say the US is the same as NAZI Germany are simply ignorant,

It's a technical point, but I agree. The US is not the same as Nazi Germany.

American fascism is much different. It's slicker and more subtle and most of it's atrocities have been carried on overseas against countries which are much, much weaker than the US. Countries that are easy to discredit with the sort of press control that occurs in the US.

I absolutly loath GW Bush, but he was light years from Hitler.

Actually no. He's much much closer. Only one generation separates him from the work his family did before, during and after WW2 to advance Nazi financial interests.

Those that casually banter about the term NAZI need to educate themselves on the unbelievable barbarism and horror that was Nazi Germany.

I agree that they should do this, but go a little further with it and look for the parallels in the US. They are very illuminating and show how a modern fascist and would be totalitarian state operates under a mask of democracy and democratic choice.

One of the problems with people who think they know the Nazis is that they equate Nazism with the horrors of the holocaust and overlook everything else that was going on.

In our post war world we benefitted from the holocaust, everyone, not just Americans. America and the Soviet Union went further than all other countries in grasping the torch that was falling from failing Nazi hands and carrying on with it after Germany's defeat.

There are simply too many people ignorant of the Nazi regime.

I absolutely agree with this.

A thorough understanding of the Nazis can't be overrated in the context of trying to understand our modern world. They were the most advanced fascist state of their day; corporatist state, in Mussolini's preferred terminology. The United States is the most advanced corporatist (fascist) state of our time.

I talked to one kid, just graduated from a prestigous Eastern University who thought the US fought Russia in WW2 "over land or something". I think it's difficult for cushy Americans to grasp living in a true police state, . . .

More and more people are getting it though. Americans are starting to have some of those 'police state' experiences. Check out the video "Liberty Bound" on YouTube or Google Video.

those that compare modern America with Nazi Germany insult the 50 million people that perished in the war.

This is the kind of statement that closes the door on rational discussion. Obviously I disagree with it. Jim Marrs has written a very good book, The Rise of the Fourth Reich, showing the offshoots of the poisonous Nazi plant grafted onto America.

In doing so I think he has kept faith with those who perished in the war in the best way a writer can.


[edit on 1-1-2010 by ipsedixit]

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


"Nobody know how many died in those camps"? Well, we do know how many were killed by the Nazis. So you're kind of hinging your argument on "if".

I, personally have my doubts that the gulags and regimental purges of Stalin and Lenin combined reached the numbers of the full Holocaust. But as you say, we don't know, and it's unlikely we will.

With the numbers we DO have, though, Hitler is the clear... uh... "winner" is such an odd term to use. If we add in the deaths cause by Nazi aggression, there's simply no contest.

Originally posted by OldDragger
Oh for Christs sake.
You guys want a police state. Great.
There is the gaining power by murder.
Book burning.
Curtailing of personal freedom, The SS and brown shirts.
Total control of media by the government.
Did I mention murder and a police state.
The harrasment of intellectuals and perversion of medicine and science.
The deiafication of the military.
And much, much more.
If you clowns are dying to hear the sound of jackboots at your door, you are......nuts.

You don't have to be an advocate of the police state to acknowledge the many accomplishments of Nazi Germany before it went off the rails. More a testimonial to the German people than the ideology, I would say, because West Germany rebuilt after the war...as did the East, though it rebuilt Russia, first.

It would be more interesting to analyze the roles of Americans such as Henry Ford in the Nazi regime.

Before it ran off the rails?reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Before it ran off the rails?
This is what kills me! IT BEGAN OFF THE RAILS in murder and deceit.
You cannot seperate the crimes of NAZI Germany from Hitler, it was an evil criminal enterprise from day one. The Holocaust was just the crowning achievemnent of the NAZI's, crimes were commited every day of their regime, every day Germans were murdered or imprisoned for the furthering of the Reich. Yeah, Hitler was kind to his dogs! Jeezuz!
and Manson was Ok, well aside from that goofy murder thing.
The lack of understanding of Hitler,the NAZIs and history on this thread is appaling.

Originally posted by OldDragger
Before it ran off the rails?reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

Before it ran off the rails?
This is what kills me! IT BEGAN OFF THE RAILS in murder and deceit.
You cannot seperate the crimes of NAZI Germany from Hitler, it was an evil criminal enterprise from day one. The Holocaust was just the crowning achievemnent of the NAZI's, crimes were commited every day of their regime, every day Germans were murdered or imprisoned for the furthering of the Reich. Yeah, Hitler was kind to his dogs! Jeezuz!
and Manson was Ok, well aside from that goofy murder thing.
The lack of understanding of Hitler,the NAZIs and history on this thread is appaling.

You are being obtuse. I am not glorifying the Nazis, but if you reduce the movement to cartoon evil, then you diminish the possibility that it could happen again...people let down their guards, and you get Homeland Security and Patriot Acts.

Nazism got a broken society back on its feet...the cost was not immediate. Not because it was good...but because it was efficient.