When you look into Hitler with a kind of Devil’s Advocate-ish no pre-bias approach, certainly some good ideas. Was for workers, abortion, prostitution, national healthcare, good minimum wages, women’s rights,… But there’s just some… just a few… a handful, if you will, that were maybe…maaaybe what could be considered psychopathic monstrously batshit insane ideas.
But, hey, plenty of people love the Christian god, and Hitler is somewhere between that guy and a Powerpuff girl, so no surprises for me.
The power of charisma over those apathetic to self-thinking.
Edit: Apparently we have a lot of God-fearing neo-Nazis here! Sorry, it was a joke, I’ll just leave. No need to try track me down.
hides under the floorboards They’ll never look here!
What a terrible question. He was an awful person but obviously nobody is all bad.
He was vegetarian (loaded topic, I know but probably gets more support than 20%) and loved dogs, for example.
He wasn’t, it’s well documented he wasn’t vegetarian this was spread as anti vegetarian propegand.
Oh yeah? Care to share some links for that claim? Since Wikipedia has a whole article about Hitler being vegetarian. Apparently, he wasn’t super strict about it but he identified as one and the article also quotes newspaper articles of the time. I’d assume “anti-vegetarian propaganda” is a more modern thing.
Yeah, but that can’t possibly be true - which we ofc all know it can’t be, yet what you said is a very standard thing to say.
(Even “killing Hitler” was at that point of no good consequence - but “he” (?) would have been a hero if he killed Hitler at least one year sooner … but also max about 22 years earlier … so he completely missed the window on that “one redeeming quality” as well … so that whole thing is just a nonsense saying.)
The more nuanced data: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Views_on_Hitler_poll_results.pdf
I was hoping that the ‘not all bad’ would be almost all of it. Unfortunately while it was half of it, a full half said Hitler was as good a guy as he was a bad guy, with an equal number responding unsure, which is likely leaning toward I don’t want to give a socially unacceptable answer.
There is literally nothing I can think of that would make him good in any isolated field. For a long time people held the believe that he was pro environment and animal rights. But he also killed his own dog. People also say that he had a special aura around him. That he was very charming. But those people were likely like trump supporters today. My great grandmother actually got to see him before she fled Germany. She said that there was nothing particularly interesting about him except for the way he speaks maybe.
The question is still to vague. Obviously all of his politics were the worst. But the way it’s phrased, you’d kinda have to agree he wasn’t ALL bad if, for example, he made a pretty tasty pasta sauce. Like. Not that it’d be relevant. It’s the vagueness of the question that I’m critiquing. Maybe I’m just having an autism moment.
Even without or beyond judging the person, it’s the actions, results, and consequences of those actions too.
Which is even more complex, but important for understanding the context.
But it’s def really important to avoid black & white (wrongful) memefication, bcs suddenly the memetic value (the “idea” that the image of Hitler represents to masses on average) is vastly corrupted & serves other purposes.
That’s not fair phrasing and will lead to high numbers.
Hitler wasn’t “all” bad technically, he was just so bad that the good shouldn’t matter at all. Pushing forward technology (VW Beetle, Autobahn) should is no way be justified by genocide (obviously).
A better question would have been something like “do you like Hitler overall?”
The full poll data: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Views_on_Hitler_poll_results.pdf
Do you think of Adolf Hitler as. . . ?
- A completely good person: 1%
- A good person who did some bad things: 4%
- An equally good and bad person: 7%
- A bad person who did some good things: 12%
- A completely bad person : 65%
- Not sure : 12%
So 12% felt he was at least as good as he was bad, 12% fell into the 'well, even a horrible person can do something right, and 12% were somehow not sure…
This is interesting, thank you for sharing.
I personally would tally this up as “12%” rather than “24%”.
Or at least in my opinion, option “D” (bad person that did some good things) is most likely the closest to an objective answer and “E” (completely bad) is a totally acceptable summary. But both D and E both summarize Hitler as bad. The people summarizing him as “balanced” or “good” totaled to 12%.
To be clear, this is still horrific imo.
and 12% not sure aka couldn’t really make up their mind if Hitler was bad or not… so ads up to 24%
Yes a question about Hitler being good overall is far better. Attempting to shove him into an all bad category is just dishonest and allows opponents a free win. The good absolutely should matter, because painting people as all one thing isn’t accurate and makes understanding how things happen more difficult.
He did great things.
The problem is that he only did them for people he liked. And he did TERRIBLE things to the people he didn’t like.
Skip to the part where the he knew he was going to lose. He gave jack shit about" his" people. He didn’t even care in 42 when the German army was surrounded in Stalingrad. No he thought only about himself and how to become a god and emperor. In fact he hated people in general. He had more love for his dog than an average person.
I would not be suprise if Herr Trumpf will have the same ideals. These could be the start of dark times for humanity. And I hope I am wrong.
education, housing, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. Again, only for people that he considered worthy.
I’m Jewish BTW. I don’t support Hitler. But you’d have to be ignorant of history not to realize that he did great things for so-called “aryans”.
Its important to remember as we see the rise of fascism in many countries right now. We need social programs that benefit all people, not just what your local authoritarian claims to be the “right” citizens
I’m not sure how true that is in terms of housing, healthcare, etc. Do you have any sources?
He did claim to have ended the Great Depression in Germany. While people have pointed to projects like the Autobahn, these projects only had a modest effect on unemployment.
What really brought down unemployment was massive deficit spending on expanding the army / rearmament and combined with conscription.
In addition, women, Jews, etc. were forced out of the workforce.
The problem was this was unsustainable. Nazi Germany began WW2 with a debt to GDP ratio greater than what the USA ended the war with.
It narrowly avoided a balance of payments crisis in 1934.
If it hadn’t invaded much of Europe and looted it’s wealth, the economy would have collapsed.
Source: Wages of Destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze.
