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Never, ever, EVER say the internet can't get stupider. Because it can.

 

I've been watching a lot of WW2 stuff on YouTube lately, when I have a bit of extra time on my hands. A dismaying trend, though one that doesn't actually surprise me all that much given the intellectual climate online, is just how much adoration is given to the losing side.

 

Also advertised on History Truths channel are other like minded channels, such as "Six Million 4 Truth", "Fuhrer's Vanguard" and, I suppose appropriately, "The Alex Jones Channel."

 

And why not? The template is a familiar one now. All of history and the workings of society as you know it are all a big lie. It's like Morpheus is right there in front of you - red pill or blue pill, man. Prepare to be blown way. From there, it's just a matter of what kind of crack-pottery you decide to get yourself into. History truths is an oldie, but definitely a mainstay. Here are some comments from a speech by their beloved Fuhrer:

 

 

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Yup. It's a conspiracy. The Americans, the Soviets, the Jews. Whatever.

 

 

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That Jewish propaganda will get you every time. Actually, the allies won fair and square and we don't actually need Jews to do our propaganda for us. We can say whatever we want, can't we? If goofs like Jordie Hurst want to cry about it ... well, I guess the Third Reich should have fought harder, shouldn't they've?

 

A typical response to someone who tries to actually question baseless conspiracy nonsense:

 

 

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Okay. Just watch this. The one video THEY don't want you to see! Wow! My hum-drum life just got more exciting already. Watch out though, the International Banking Elite, who control everything, don't want you to see it! Red-pill me, man! Now my life gets to be an exciting drama!

 

Hitler. Yeah, what a great leader. Now, he had his talents, make no mistake. And maybe if he'd have called it quits after knocking off France, he'd have gotten away with it and gone down in history as a great statesman. But leading your country into a do-or-die genocidal war against an enemy vastly more powerful than you, then declare war on another world powerhouse to boot? This is the guy you're gonna idolize when you go through your early twenties "I've got it ALL figured out" phase? Please, internet, stop. You're just going to look back on this ten years later and wonder how you could have ever been such an idiot.

 

Come on, people.

 

Come on.

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My dad told me about a history teacher in high school who had actually seen a concentration camp first-hand while in the military (don't remember which one), and he says when they complained about how much time they spent on WWII and in particular the Holocaust (cause at that time, it wasn't ancient history; everybody had relatives who had been there, seen it, done that, so big deal), the teacher said it was 'cause he didn't want people to be able to forget or deny... and he promised to the class that 10, 20, maybe 30 years down the road there would be people who want to claim the Holocaust never even happened, because the normal human mind simply does not want to accept something that horrible and methodical as fact.

 

I don't know if he was right about the reasoning, but that teacher dude was prescient about the deniers slithering onto the scene once memories began to fade...

 

:eek:

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I have to wonder if part of the reason the deniers seem to gain traction is because there's so much emphasis in school. I mean, to be generous a 10 year span of history was covered in every grade from 6th through 12th for me. And in that decade, only a small section of the world was discussed - Nazi Germany. That's a lot of focus, and it takes away from other things that are also important to know.

 

And given my personal experience with the type, we're not talking people who enjoyed school, so there's also probably a good amount of "I hated Ms. So-and-So and she was wrong about everything so the 6 months she spent teaching us about the Holocaust was all a lie"

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See, this is why 'rasslin' is so popular. There's a ton of people who want to or adore the heel. They realize there is a need for a bad guy. So they embrace the bad guy.

 

I also think that "news" programming is at fault in some liberal way. I mean when you get your reports of events from something that is not presented with fact or has a bias or just poses one side of the story you tend to really wrap yourself in that idea presented to you.

 

From Hitler to Palpatine many bad guys in history just started out trying to right a perceived injustice.

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Here's an odd concept-- I believe in every bit of the Holocaust. And I simultaneously believe that Hitler was one of the greatest leaders of the past few centuries-- and for nothing to do with the Jews. It takes a persuasive leader to build a propaganda machine that can lead to such blind hate. I think he can have been a convincing leader as well as crazy as hell.

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I guess that depends on your definition of leadership. If the point is just to get followers, he's great. If the goal is to lead people in a positive direction, or judged by the results of his leadership, he's one of the worst leaders ever.

 

Consider: a CEO is extremely popular and earns a modest profit for his company, eventually over extends the company and it ends up being split up between his two biggest competitors and he does in shame.

 

Is he a good leader?

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Here's an odd concept-- I believe in every bit of the Holocaust. And I simultaneously believe that Hitler was one of the greatest leaders of the past few centuries-- and for nothing to do with the Jews. It takes a persuasive leader to build a propaganda machine that can lead to such blind hate. I think he can have been a convincing leader as well as crazy as hell.

Like I said, if he stopped after the fall of France, and contented himself with expanding his influence more slowly and diplomatically, he could have gone down as being among the greatest statesmen and military leaders of all time. Hitler's been ragged on a lot for being a bad military commander, but just as often it was his supposedly infallible generals who made mistakes and Hitler's ideas that panned out. Early on, at least. His charisma, his ability to project a strong force of will, and his near encyclopedic knowledge of military hardware made him a potentially prodigious military leader - on par with Caesar or Genghis Khan.

 

But then it got to his head, and he started to believe his own s**t. It all went sideways in the U.S.S.R - an action he undertook more because of his ideology than out of a soundness of military and foreign policy thought. That was his real Achilles Heel. He REALLY BELIEVED in all that Thule Society, Aryan race claptrap, and started to base his military endeavors on it.

 

I'd also like, if I ever get the chance, to go to the Wolfsschanze, in north eastern Poland. Something tells me that being sequestered in this secret bunker in the middle of a dense forest rather than out working crowds like he did somehow got to his head. The place strikes me as being pretty gloomy. Tourists can visit it.

 

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Guest El Chalupacabra

My dad told me about a history teacher in high school who had actually seen a concentration camp first-hand while in the military (don't remember which one), and he says when they complained about how much time they spent on WWII and in particular the Holocaust (cause at that time, it wasn't ancient history; everybody had relatives who had been there, seen it, done that, so big deal), the teacher said it was 'cause he didn't want people to be able to forget or deny... and he promised to the class that 10, 20, maybe 30 years down the road there would be people who want to claim the Holocaust never even happened, because the normal human mind simply does not want to accept something that horrible and methodical as fact.

 

I don't know if he was right about the reasoning, but that teacher dude was prescient about the deniers slithering onto the scene once memories began to fade...

 

:eek:

First off, to get it out of the way so as not to seem a hypocrite, I know in this thread I started, I was a bit irreverent, but it was more to to illustrate the ridiculousness of the very idea of Hitler Ice Cream. But to the topic of Hitler actually being idolized, it's something that is disturbing to me.

 

Here we are, some 70 years out from the end of WW2 (and almost a century since the end of WW1), so I think maybe for some parts of the world, the evil that Hitler and the Nazis represent almost seem surreal to some, and the shock of the war has faded for many. Add that to people who, for whatever reason, be it for political reasons, historical ignorance and disconnect, or they may just be out and out antisemitic, deny the holocaust. It's pretty demoralizing, and for me is quite shocking and appalling, because when I grew up WAAAAYYY back in the late 70s and 80s, WW2 was still very much in the social consciousness. Both my grandfathers fought in WW2, one still is alive in fact. Now, to many, WW2 is a video game, or a flipantway to win a political argument (IE compare someone to Hitler, Nazis, whatever).

 

I don't know if these are just isolated incidents (I hope they are!), but to me, it's disturbing to think people look at Hitler as simply as some hero conqueror, like Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon (all of which, are not heroes but MONSTERS by today's standards, when you think about it). In fact, we are just a couple weeks away from the 200th anniversary of Waterloo. Back in Napoleon's day, and all the way into the late 19th century (maybe up until WW1, in fact), Napoleon was viewed much the same way Hitler was viewed post WW2. The Napoleanic Wars were one of the most deadly wars in Modern-era Europe, at some 3.5 million dead, after all was said and done, most of whose deaths can be laid at Napoleon's feet. Napoleon for a long time was considered literally as the antichrist (outside France).

 

Is it possible that as time marches on that Hitler is becoming the "new Napoleon?" I don't think it's that extreme yet, but who is to say in another 50 years time, that more people will think so? The thought of Hitler being known as some elder statesman and the champion of the VW Beetle or autobahn, rather than the evil and murderous dictator that he was.....is revolting.

 

Here's an odd concept-- I believe in every bit of the Holocaust. And I simultaneously believe that Hitler was one of the greatest leaders of the past few centuries-- and for nothing to do with the Jews. It takes a persuasive leader to build a propaganda machine that can lead to such blind hate. I think he can have been a convincing leader as well as crazy as hell.

Like I said, if he stopped after the fall of France, and contented himself with expanding his influence more slowly and diplomatically, he could have gone down as being among the greatest statesmen and military leaders of all time. Hitler's been ragged on a lot for being a bad military commander, but just as often it was his supposedly infallible generals who made mistakes and Hitler's ideas that panned out. Early on, at least. His charisma, his ability to project a strong force of will, and his near encyclopedic knowledge of military hardware made him a potentially prodigious military leader - on par with Caesar or Genghis Khan.

 

But then it got to his head, and he started to believe his own s**t. It all went sideways in the U.S.S.R - an action he undertook more because of his ideology than out of a soundness of military and foreign policy thought. That was his real Achilles Heel. He REALLY BELIEVED in all that Thule Society, Aryan race claptrap, and started to base his military endeavors on it.

 

I'd also like, if I ever get the chance, to go to the Wolfsschanze, in north eastern Poland. Something tells me that being sequestered in this secret bunker in the middle of a dense forest rather than out working crowds like he did somehow got to his head. The place strikes me as being pretty gloomy. Tourists can visit it.

 

 

I get the point I think you are trying to make, LK, but have to disagree with you there. Hitler was a skillful orator and leader, but even if he had stopped in France, and not taken on the UK, USSR, and US, he wouldn't have gone down as some great statesman. More like a notorious despot. And really, someone who led his country to ultimate ruin and refused to listen to his advisers, as it turns out, is the WORST KIND OF LEADER. The thing is, what made Hitler so able to take Germany, mesmerize its people, and turn it around financially and industrially (for a brief time), and able to climb to the top as its leader, was the same exact thing that ultimately led to his hubris thinking he could take over all of Europe and project German power unchallenged globally: his egomania and megalomania. Hitler was NEVER going to stop. As he gained more land, he was emboldened to take even more.

 

Not to mention, this is to say NOTHING of the atrocities of the Third Reich. Concentration camps and walling off the Jewish Ghettos date back to day one of Hitler's ascension to power. He was so consumed with the "Jewish Problem" since the end of WW1 (didn't he write a book that said as much?), that I think it is impossible NOT to conclude that even if he did stop after France, that at some point, Hitler and his cronies weren't going to at some point do what they ended up doing: mass murder.

 

So yeah, I find nothing praiseworthy of Hitler. Did he make German life somewhat better for Germans for a very brief period? Sure. But it was a high price indeed, and the cost was born on the backs of so many millions dead! And in some ways, Germany still hasn't fully recovered (IE the former East Germany still is poorer, and for most Germans, you have the collective shame that is associated with Hitler).

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The thing is, what made Hitler so able to take Germany, mesmerize its people, and turn it around financially and industrially (for a brief time), and able to climb to the top as its leader, was the same exact thing that ultimately led to his hubris thinking he could take over all of Europe and project German power unchallenged globally: his egomania and megalomania. Hitler was NEVER going to stop. As he gained more land, he was emboldened to take even more.

This is definately true. The success Germany enjoyed with Adolf at the helm until 1940 was a faustian bargain in every sense of the word. And when the devil finally came to collect five years later, the price would be beyond measure.

 

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I agree with everything you just said Chalup. However it is a shame that Hitler has the monopoly on being a monster in the public consciousness.

 

Stalin put to death 24 million of his own people. Yet this is a narrative not taught in schools or emphasised enough.

 

An estimated 7.5 million ethnic Ukrainians were wiped out in the 1930's Holodomor. Genocide by man-made famine. Again at the hands of Stalin.

 

I had no idea about the Ukranian Holodomor until a band taught me about it. That shit should get as much attention as the Holocaust.

 

I guess in the end the world has had no shortage of monsters. Hitler was an evil monstrosity but I don't think he was particularly worse than any of the other monstrosities of history.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I agree with everything you just said Chalup. However it is a shame that Hitler has the monopoly on being a monster in the public consciousness.

 

Stalin put to death 24 million of his own people. Yet this is a narrative not taught in schools or emphasised enough.

 

An estimated 7.5 million ethnic Ukrainians were wiped out in the 1930's Holodomir. Genocide by man-made famine. Again at the hands of Stalin.

 

I had no idea about the Ukranian Holodomir until a band taught me about it. That **** should get as much attention as the Holocaust.

 

I guess in the end the world has had no shortage of monsters. Hitler was an evil monstrosity but I don't think he was particularly worse than any of the other monstrosities of history.

Oh for sure there is enough monstrosity to go around!

 

Idi Amin Dada (80,000 to 500,000)

Yakubu Gowon (1.1 million deaths)

Mengistu Haile Mariam (400,000 – 1.5 million deaths)

Kim Il Sung (1.6 million deaths)

Pol Pot (1.7 million deaths)

Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5 million deaths)

Hideki Tojo ( and by extension , Emperor Hirohito of Japan, 5 million deaths)

Leopold II of Belgium (2-15 million deaths)

Adolf Hitler (17 million deaths)

Joseph Stalin (24 million deaths)

*Mao Zedong (49-78 million deaths, far and away the worst!)

 

Not to mention the likes of Ivan the Terrible, Attila the Hun, Robspierre, Ayatollah Khomeini. That is whom I can think of to list, and I am sure I left out a lot more.

 

That all said, I think Hitler stays in our consciousness because he was so well documented by himself and his ministry of propaganda, as well as the Allies. Hitler's atrocities don't minimize or diminish what the other mass murderers have done, nor do their crimes diminish Hitler's crimes. But what makes Hitler scary to Americans, I think, is how much of a parallel there was with Germany and the US during the same time in the early 20th century: two emerging, relatively new countries that were rising powers, Hitler and Roosevelt were in power of their countries for about the same time, both countries had comparable societies. Most importantly, outside Germany, the US has the largest German population in the world, as well as the largest amount of Jewish population.

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I agree with everything you just said Chalup. However it is a shame that Hitler has the monopoly on being a monster in the public consciousness.

 

Stalin put to death 24 million of his own people. Yet this is a narrative not taught in schools or emphasised enough.

 

An estimated 7.5 million ethnic Ukrainians were wiped out in the 1930's Holodomir. Genocide by man-made famine. Again at the hands of Stalin.

 

I had no idea about the Ukranian Holodomir until a band taught me about it. That **** should get as much attention as the Holocaust.

 

I guess in the end the world has had no shortage of monsters. Hitler was an evil monstrosity but I don't think he was particularly worse than any of the other monstrosities of history.

Oh for sure there is enough monstrosity to go around!

 

Idi Amin Dada (80,000 to 500,000)

Yakubu Gowon (1.1 million deaths)

Mengistu Haile Mariam (400,000 – 1.5 million deaths)

Kim Il Sung (1.6 million deaths)

Pol Pot (1.7 million deaths)

Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5 million deaths)

Hideki Tojo ( and by extension , Emperor Hirohito of Japan, 5 million deaths)

Leopold II of Belgium (2-15 million deaths)

Adolf Hitler (17 million deaths)

Joseph Stalin (24 million deaths)

*Mao Zedong (49-78 million deaths, far and away the worst!)

 

Not to mention the likes of Ivan the Terrible, Attila the Hun, Robspierre, Ayatollah Khomeini. That is whom I can think of to list, and I am sure I left out a lot more.

 

That all said, I think Hitler stays in our consciousness because he was so well documented by himself and his ministry of propaganda, as well as the Allies. Hitler's atrocities don't minimize or diminish what the other mass murderers have done, nor do their crimes diminish Hitler's crimes. But what makes Hitler scary to Americans, I think, is how much of a parallel there was with Germany and the US during the same time in the early 20th century: two emerging, relatively new countries that were rising powers, Hitler and Roosevelt were in power of their countries for about the same time, both countries had comparable societies. Most importantly, outside Germany, the US has the largest German population in the world, as well as the largest amount of Jewish population.

 

I think the problem with tallying death totals like that is, people don't look at the larger picture. They only consider the deaths that a tyrant directly caused or ordered, not the ones that were the results of their other policies.

 

For example, the 17 million dead figure only counts the Holocaust. It does not count the overall deaths in WWII, which started as a direct result of Hitler's invasion of Poland. If that is factored in, that would make Hitler responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people.

 

And the casualties in the Korean War and Vietnam, backed up by China, could also be laid at Mao's feet, for initiating the policies that embodied Communist China, as could the actions of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

 

The deaths committed by the post-Stalin Soviet Union, as well as the Soviet-backed satellite states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, could be considered the fault of Stalin, who set the stage for further deaths by his actions.

 

When all that is factored in, it's hard to say exactly WHO is the worst, only that the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history. All due to only a small number of evil men.

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And in some ways, Germany still hasn't fully recovered (IE the former East Germany still is poorer, and for most Germans, you have the collective shame that is associated with Hitler).

 

From my experience with friends and extended family, I have found more than a few who are easily irked by what they perceive as academia (to a degree) / media's insistence on defining German history not by a culture that goes back to antiquity, but almost completely by the actions of one, horror-government in one period of time. They have also not been too fond of the entertainment industry making anyone with a (usually poor) German accent somehow harboring just-under-the-surface, or overt Nazi beliefs. That became the fallback in everything from inane TV series to teenage comedies of the 80s, and any other kind of production you can think of, and it is still abused. The way they see it, they cannot think of any other group so universally defined by one part of history to the point where pre-and post Hitler does not matter much (ex. people of Chinese descent are not--as ingrained reaction--associated with Mao Zedong).

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I think part of that is, Germany is YOUNG. Germany as an independent, unified state had existed for less than 100 years by the time the Nazis took power. Before that, it was smaller states, or part of other countries like the Holy Roman Empire or Prussia.

 

Consequently, unlike countries like England, France, China, which have been around for over a thousand years, Germany does not really have a lot of history that is definatively its own. Most of it's history was made when Germany was part of another country. There were no major, history changing acts to cement Germany into in the minds of the world until the Holocaust.

 

On top of that, let's also remember that Germany was largely seen by the Allies as the instigator in World War I, the country responsible for pushing Austria-Hungary into war with Serbia, and one that agressively and zealously embraced the war when it happened. That another war less than 20 after the first ended could also be laid at it's feet does Germany no favors in the image department. Many historians today have said that the bloodshed of the Second War World would have been avoided had Germany been broken up at the end of the first war.

 

Combined, I think these facts have an impact on how Germany is perceived by the rest of the world.

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I don't know about that. Italy lost the war, and it's not remembered JUST for that. It still has it's history during Roman times and so on to be remembered for.

 

Same for Japan. Despite their lost of the war, Japan is still well respected, and is known for far more than WWII.

 

While Germany's loss no doubt played a part, I think it was the other things that really impact how the country is seen.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah, the Nefarious German persists even today, in pop culture and Hollywood, but saying that Germans receive more than their fair ration of negative publicity and perception solely because they lost the war, really marginalizes the horror of the holocaust. Yes, I agree that you don't see that with Italians (they have the stigma of the Mafia, instead), or the Japanese. In japan's case, it is sort of a double standard, because you have the rape of Nanking, Bataan, as well as the war crimes the Japanese soldiers committed throughout the Pacific with other Asian and Polynesian cultures. The Japanese certainly were the Nazis of the pacific in terms of being racist..believing they were racially superior to all other Asians and Polynesians, and even Americans. And yet the Japanese don't receive the same type of negative perception that the Germans receive, at least with respect to WW2, and where racism and genocide is concerned.

 

The thing I believe makes the difference between Germany and the other Axis powers is that the Germans alone had made a concerted effort to effect a genocidal policy that they were so efficient at, and the level of involvement (and thereby culpability) every German had. Some, maybe a majority of Germans, were just caught up in the times, and supported Hitler and the war effort with out knowledge of the concentration camps. But the thing is that for such a policy of genocide on such a wide scale as it had been in Germany to even have been possible, means that many if not a majority of the German people turned an active blind eye, if not out and out supported it. They saw their Jewish neighbors being assaulted, killed or disappear. SO, even if the average German citizen didn't realize the Nazis were sending them to gas chambers and ovens, they had to know something wasn't right.

 

In fact it is scary to think that had Hitler not invaded Russia and the war had not turned against Germany so soon, who knows how far they could have taken the genocide of the German Jewish population. So on that basis, I think Germans still have a stigma and shame about their country some 70 years after the fact. That all said, maybe it is fair to direct some of that shame towards the WW2 German population, but I don't think to the generations in Germans that followed WW2 deserve it.

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Had Germany won, they would have written all the history books, as the only win for Hitler would have been European domination at the very least. So from that perspective, definitely.

 

Germany gets a lot of flack for multiple reasons, including the fact that in many ways the response to Nazism is to have a dictatorial response to those who share the sentiments. That, along with debatable responsibility for two world wars, a lack of history and the Soviet connection for half of the country (fair or unfair) and the fact that the Nazi's make the best villains of all time with the combination of evil action and sweet uniforms, and you have a recipe for not being able to escape the shadow of Hitler.

 

Had Germany not been divided and instead been a US stronghold against the Soviets, as Japan was used against Communism in the Pacific, I think it would probably be different. Unfortunately, the choices made in the war by Germany helped lead them toward that result.

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