Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the leader of Germany during the Second World War and before, from 1933 to 1945. Just like Napoleon he tried to take over Europe but was unable to defeat Russia and Britain and lost in the end.
Hitler wanted to take over the world. With the master race, the Aryans, on his side – and the Jews killed off – Germany could rule the world. He wrote about it in the 1920s in his book “Mein Kampf” when he was a nobody. It is frightening how far he got.
By the end of 1941 Hitler had control of Europe from France to the Ukraine. By the end of the war he had killed three Jews in eight in his death camps, most of the Gypsies of Europe along with at least 4 million others.
In the 1930s he armed Germany and took over one country after another. He sensed that Britain, France and America would do nothing till it was too late. This seemed mad to his generals, but he was right.
Having lost over a million men in the First World War, too many in France and Britain thought that peace was the answer. If they had stood up to Hitler early on, they could have prevented a second world war and the death of millions more.
Hitler was particularly interested in taking the lands to the east for Germany at the expense of the Poles and Russians, whom he regarded as lesser beings – clearly not of the master race like himself. He hated communism, a second reason to make war on Russia.
As a leader he charmed the masses and murdered those who got in his way. As a good judge of men and history, few were his equal.
But he did make mistakes:
- He thought Chamberlain, the British prime minister in the late 1930s, was a fool, that if he broke his promises to him he would do nothing.
- He did not know when to cut his losses, leading to needless destruction of his forces, like in Stalingrad and Tunisia.
- He lacked patience to let an approach play out. He unknowingly had both Britain and Russia on their knees and then suddenly changed course.
- At the end he wanted to fight to the last everywhere, despite the advice of his generals. His generals knew this would divide Germany’s strength and make defeat certain.
- At the end he pushed all his divisions out to the front, keeping nothing back in reserve that could swiftly move to where it was needed. France had made the very same mistake in 1940. It appears Hitler did not take notes.
He also had a very poor understanding of sea power which meant he did not know how to cut Britain’s throat.
Hitler knew that an atom bomb was possible but did not build one: by the time it would be ready he would have already won or lost. He was right: the American bomb was not ready till after his defeat.
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hitler is a german nazi i hate him
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i hate his guts. no need for him to kill people he is a big weirdo
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he is so gay i h8 him
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just a correction, as a history student i know that hitler did not come to power in the reigstag (german parliment) until 1933 although he was the NSDAP leader from the early 1920’s. NSDAP is the shorthand for the national german’s people’s party, it did later metamorhise into the nazi party, but at that stage they were crude and laughable as a party. the first world war ended in 1918 when kaiser wilheim and his government conceeded defeat.
hilter and NSDAP thought that they were criminals who had betrayed germany… crucially hilter had convinced himself and others like him that the government were jewish and had vested interest in seeing germant defeated.
in 1924 they attempted a revolutionary putsch in a beer hall in munich, it failed miserably, he was put in jail where he wrote mein kampt. the rest is horrible bloodied stained history as they say.
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“hitler is a german nazi i hate him”
Hitler was an Austrian from birth, not german.
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Hitler was a bad art student. Jewish merchants had tried to sale his painting but one bought them. When he realized nobody bought them he said jewish people are the worst people on earth. Some people said he is one-third Jewish.
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That’s actually a favorite Austrian joke:
“Austria’s greatest achievement is convincing the world that Hilter was German and Beethoven was Austrian.”
“as a history student i know that hitler did not come to power in the reigstag (german parliment) until 1933 although he was the NSDAP leader from the early 1920’s”
It is one of Berlin’s greatest sources of pride that they never voted for him and were a major source of the Nazi-resistance. Berlin was actually a very liberal city, then and now.
Also, he squeaked into power with only 43.9% of the vote: the majority of Germans did not vote for him (although the Bavarians were crazy for him, to their shame). But Germany has/had a parliamentary system that means that you don’t need a majority to lead the government (one reason why I believe the American two-party system is vastly superior: you have to convince at least a majority of the electorate in order to take power). So he took power and banned all other parties.
And then the economy improved, everybody had enough to eat for the first time in living memory, the children had decent clothing and a warm house, and people became docile and began to take pride in being German again. In Germany they say, “We didn’t want him. But then he built the Autobahn.” That’s the long and the short of it. And the Nazis perfected marketing. They could sell ice to the Eskimos.
They were smart enough to realize that the first thing you do is get rid of all of the intellectuals against you (who also were a conveniently Jewish portion of the population) and bribe the remainder because the simpler people will follow their “betters”.
I’m not excusing the Germans for what happened thereafter, just making the point that not everybody over there was gung-ho about Hitler and that this kind of thing can happen anywhere: just look at China or Afghanistan. Hungry people are dangerous.
My own relatives were very guilty, though. The Sudetendeutsche had been an oppressed minority in Czechoslovakia for a long time and were hysterically happy when the German troops rolled in to “liberate” them. After the war, they got kicked out and sent back to Germany on foot. The Czechs were not sad to see them leave, to put it mildly.
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One of the lessons that we should have learned about the rise of Hitler is that it can happen again. Throughout history, people have repeatedly been unwittingly gulled into believing false promises and fooled by flowery rhetoric. That is how tyrants get into power. They pretend to be benevolent and they tell the people what they want to hear. Tyrants will not reveal themselves to be tyrants until it is too late.
Be warned. Pay close attention to whomever you vote for. Look at their moral character closely. Who do they associate with? As the saying goes, you can judge a person by the friends he or she keeps. Don’t be seduced by cults of personality.
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That is true. But so is the inverse: Just because you think somebody has a poor character or bad motives doesn’t mean that what they are saying isn’t true. Sometimes it’s the people we don’t like that are speaking the truth. And sometimes the people we do like and trust are spouting nonsense.
And another good warning is:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Solutions to big problems are rarely simple, pleasant, nor do they tend to benefit everybody. There’s always a loser. Or, as an economist would say, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Somebody is paying.
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B&G, I am not sure if you are making a connection between a person’s character and that person being liked. When I refer to moral character, I am talking about honesty and integrity.
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Yes, but even honest people can be wrong sometimes and dishonest people can be right/correct. Someone can be entirely corrupt, evil, and despicable and still be correct on a certain point.
That’s what I meant. Sorry to confuse you with my 1984-style word choice. At least I didn’t say “nice”. I need to get myself a thesaurus. LOL!
For example,
In the documentary “We Feed the World” (overall excellent, by the way) they have an interview at the end with the CEO of Nestlé. It is clear from the way they film him that he is supposed to be the antagonist of the film.
I agree that Nestle has a lot to answer for (such as the audacity of selling baby formula in countries without reliable clean water supplies) but their portrayal distracts the viewer from noticing that what he is saying in the interview is ACTUALLY CORRECT. Spot on, even.
His point was that providing unlimited water for free (or dirt-cheap) was a bad policy because it leads to waste, which reduces the availability of water, which leads to further poverty. (just check out Australia to see what happens when water is a “right”). The most effective policy is to price water at it’s true market value (taking into account it’s scarcity) and then provide vouchers (an allotment per person in the household) for the poorest so that their daily water needs can be met. That way, only those who use more than the average have to pay for it. That would also discourage the planting of water-hungry crops in drought areas (such as the insanity of growing rice in southern California).
In other words: he was speaking sanely and logically but it was difficult to understand his point because he’s such a controversial figure.
It’s the old Ad Hominem attack: why should we listen to what he has to say? He’s a bad man. Therefore, anything he says must be wrong.
This actually feeds tyranny.
It’s endemic in politics nowadays. Look at the chat-shows where the people just scream at each other over an ideological divide. They don’t even listen. They don’t care if their opponent is right, even on a small point. Their entire world would fall apart if they even admitted that. It’s the great weakness in modern politics.
Another example is vouchers for private schools. Obama is dead-wrong on this one. But black people (who profit disproportionally from this Republican, economically-liberal scheme) are reluctant to call him on it. After all, they voted for him, they like him, therefore HE MUST BE RIGHT.
Or look at the black people in New York’s hatred of Guliani. (He’s not a racist, by the way, he’s just an asshole.) Do they not realize that the drop in crime during his administration came to the profit of black people? White people in New York were not the victims of those crimes, they weren’t living in neighborhoods wracked by drug-dealing, vandalism, and murder. It was black people who were being violated. White people were just annoyed by the beggars and squeegy men.
Contrast that we the chronic re-election of Marion Barry. He could do no wrong.
It’s like modern tribalism.
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B&G, I agree with nearly everything you said. I was just saying that a candidate’s character must be considered in voting. It would be foolish to vote for someone with a track record of dishonesty. Some voters select a candidate for the stupidest of reasons, including voting for someone because of his/her ethnicity. I vote for a candidate based on his/her positions on issues. I also consider wisdom, experience, character and courage. Unfortunately, too often, we still get poor choices of candidates, which leads to the “lesser of two evils” dilemma.
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Yes, that’s always very frustrating.
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there are millions of “theorys” on why Hitler disliked the jews, some dude told me that they jews in Germany had much power. Owning banks etc etc, and that in some of the shops owned by the jews the german had to pay more for the same product than the jews. I have no idea whats true and whats not tho.
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They did have particular power (but were shrewd businessmen and did not have race-based pricing, for your friend’s information). But it was born of their oppression:
1. In the middle ages banking (usury) was illegal for Christians. So the Jews took over that sector (as they were banned from any other) and became specialists in it. 2. Their diaspora contributed to vast trading networks.
3. They were also “people of the Book” and great scholars. Remember, literacy was rare back then.
Therefore, in the Wiemar era, the average Jew was wealthier and better educated than the norm for Germans (the reverse of the Gypsies who were also banned from normal work — also hated by the Nazis). Even the “lower class” Jews did better than their gentile compatriots because of social transfers within their community.
They made convenient scapegoats. As any good populist knows: pick on the wealthiest and the poorest. The middle class will enjoy that. Germans call it Schadenfreude. It’s very current, isn’t it? With the current financial crisis there are two major scapegoats: the investment bankers and the minority home owners.
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“They made convenient scapegoats. As any good populist knows: pick on the wealthiest and the poorest.”
well to pick on the wealthiest is quite natural since its them who holds the Power.
The bankers, multinational companys, media owners, global financial institutes etc etc holds a lot of power, enuff power to control who is the President, which country to invade, and what is considered the “truth”.
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“well to pick on the wealthiest is quite natural since its them who holds the Power.”
That holds true only in a non-democratic country. I hear poor and middle-class people in America complain constantly about political power being concentrated by the wealthiest. Although there is corruption at all levels, I wonder about this theory. The truth is, poor people don’t vote so no politician cares about their interests. This is only logical and sensible of politicians. This is like complaining that the teacher’s union doesn’t care about students. Well… duh. It represents TEACHERS, that’s the whole point. Politicians should represent all Americans but, hey, they have to get re-elected every 4 years. The only way to get rid of such corruption would be to limit politicians to a single term.
Contrast that with India in which poor people are more likely to vote than middle or upper-class people. The politicians have adjusted accordingly (to the detriment of their economy).
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But if you think about it, most Americans (including myself) pay little or no taxes but get to make the rules. That doesn’t seem at all fair to me. It’s like free-money.
Poor people would care more about politics if they were funding it. You want to increase voter turn-out?: raise taxes on the poor and middle class. They’d all show up the next round. LOL!
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It is amazing how dangerously right he was on many occasions. I still need to get around to understanding “men and history” though.
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the world need one more hitler .
the time was coming riveting hitler
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He was Austrian-born in the nationality sense, however ethnically Austrians are Germans.
Treaty of Versailles denied them joining the unification in 1871.
Austria is a independent German state.
Anschluss was wanted for re-uniting the German people.
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[…] Hitler […]
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@LordOfMirkwood
The majority of Europe was antisemitic at the time, not just Germany.
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Hitler defeated Britain and France.
That’s why the American president had to pass the Lend Lease Act unconstitutionally.
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ww.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/hitler-had-deformed-micro-penis-and-only-one-testicle-medical-records-reveal?akid=14000.1929437.CnZHbD&rd=1&src=newsletter1051187&t=30
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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I’m black and i love Adolf Hitler and he had guts.
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Adolf Hitler😃
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“Just like Napoleon he tried to take over Europe but was unable to defeat Russia and Britain and lost in the end.”
Unlike Napoleon, who died 200 years ago, may he rest in piss, he won’t be celebrated as an enlightened man. He didn’t kill enough Blacks.
‘”
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The man who caused the greatest amount of damage to White people.
In addition to killing tens of millions of us (something that never happened to blacks), the following negative developments were a reaction to him
Decolonization
Mass migration
Eugenics becoming taboo
Racial preservation becoming taboo
The loss of the Ostgebiete
I hope he burns for eternity
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