One must distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939. The thing is that Hitler collected [German] lands. If he had become famous only for uniting without a drop of blood Germany with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, in fact completing what Bismarck failed to do, and if he had stopped there, then he would have remained a politician of the highest class.
18 comments
Meh, I'm willing to believe that if Hitler had indeed stopped there, and not started more wars or engaged in genocide, we would remember him fairly positively. Politician of the highest class, not so much.
Problem no. 1: He didn't stop.still be a mass murderer. And that stuff started before 1939.
Er, no. Persecution of Jews and communists under Hitler began in 1933. Dachau was immediately filled with people who spoke against Hitler. The Nuremberg laws, designed to strip Jews of all legal rights, were passed in 1935. Kristallnacht happened in 1938.
This is part of the defense of Putin going around the far right. But after Memel, Hitler's next ostensible goal was Danzig, another small territory populated by Germans. There is little to distinguish Danzig from Austria, the Sudetenland, or Memel. The difference was that, especially after the occupation of the Czech lands, Britain and France were no longer willing to tolerate Nazi expansionism. At the point where the West is no longer able to tolerate Putin's expansionism, we reach Hitler post-1939 as opposed to Hitler pre-1939. Besides, Mr Migranyan also forgets that Hitler's triumphs were built on highly dubious economic grounds and that if he had postponed going to war beyond 1940, he risked the whole project unraveling.
On a historical note, Bismarck defeated Austria-Hungary in 1866. Austria-Hungary was not, as Austria was in 1938, a small, turbulent, and virtually bankrupt nation, but one of the great powers of Europe with considerable force of its own. To say that Hitler succeeded where Bismarck failed is ahistorical nonsense. Besides, Memel was already part of Bismarck's empire.
@Kuno and @Hasan Prishtina
I'd say, in the famous words of our own Moose-sama, that you "tore him a new one argumentally." Well done, guys.
I might add that Bismarck was apparently good at writing, unlike Hitler, who was a mediocre painter.
In fact, I have the nagging thought Hitler would have been considerated as a great German statesman and an equal of Frederick II of Prussia and Bismark if he would have died in 1938: after all, he would be the one to have put Germans back to work - in weapons factories -, broke "Versailles's yoke", reunited German lands, put order - by crushing his opponents in the streets - and kept the "Red Hords at bay - by opening Dachau -, and the worst atrocities have ocurred during the war; given Communists, Jews and Gypsies were considred as rabble by the society, their persecution by the Nazis would have been, at best, considered as a footnote : after all, the proportion of West Germans who thought Hitler would have been a great man without the WWII didn't drop below 50% until well the Sixties.
But if you have to use the "Good Hitler" argument - when he has already made opponents imprisonned and killed - to defend the robbery of Crimea by Putin and the destabilization of Ukraine, then you cause is hopeless and undefendable and yourself are utterly and definitively morally bankrupt.
@Hasan Prichtina
The American far right has no longer anti-Russian sentiments? I know tneir European brethren are pro-Putin because of anti-US sentiments and love of strongsmen.
@ JeanP
I wonder about what you say if Hitler had died in 1938. My feeling is that this might have been so for a fair number of people, but the economic consequences of his policies would have led his successors either to continue on the path to the destructive war that followed or to denounce him as a reckless adventurer as, one by one, the gains he had made came undone.
On the American far right, you may have missed Pat Buchanan's paean to Putin in FSTDT a few days ago. Putin is the man who stands up for Christian values against gays, Muslims, minorities, Obama etc. Russia is now the home of true, moral values and America is in the grip of Satan. The fact that Putin also persecutes evangelicals seems to be neither here nor there.
@Hasan Prishtina
The folks who will have to rule Germany after him will get assigned the blame for the fallout of Hitler's irresponsible economical policies - the debts so high he didn't publish the State's financial ledgers, the exile of numerous intellectuals, artists and high-earners and the over-bloating of the military.
Thelove for Putin of Rev. Buchanan - who wanted to be, in the 1980s, the American Le Pen -, just reveals he would sacrifice democracy to his ideology.
@[url=http://fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=100712&Page=1#1660267]1660267[/url]
And, moreover, there areas used to be half of Mexico and were only lost because some pro-slavery politicians wanted more land for plantation in Texas.
@ JeanP
Hitler established the Führerprinzip and encouraged active competition between departments within the Party and his administration; during the war, party and state infighting led to significant problems for the Third Reich. Hitler's early death would have meant a massive power struggle between the leading political figures and, in all probability, a bloodbath. Because of its focus on the leader, Hitler's administration was not the same as many other autocracies of the time; the Allies abandoned plans to assassinate Hitler during the later stages of the war precisely because they thought Germany would collapse more quickly with him in control than with the Wehrmacht able to run its own affairs. As the Third Reich was so completely structured around the Führer, his early death could have led quite easily to its collapse. If any successor were able to emerge from the wreckage with anything approaching Hitler's power, the obvious line for the new administration would be to open the books and blame the mess on Hitler.
There are, unfortunately, a great many others like Pat Buchanan in the US.
That's probably true. He would have still destroyed democracy in Germany, he would still have murdered plenty of his own people, but people have overlooked worse than what Hitler did by 1939. Most of the atrocities of the Nazi regime postdated the invasion of Poland.
He'd probably still be controversial - reviled by the left and members of groups he persecuted, beloved by nationalists - but there's a ton of difference between "controversial" and "the guy you compare people to in order to express that they're being evil".
@Hasan Prishtina
Unfortunately, it will only take on people living 40-50 years after the end of the regime.
Some of the people living while the Third Reich would be destroyed would remember the death of Hitler brought the end of the "good times" and would remember the civil war and the bankrupcy which followed.
Consequently, the military junta who would rule Germany will, unjustly and unfortulately, get assigned the blame and any attempt to put the responsability wheteit belongs (Hitler) would be regarded as an ploy to scapegoat "the beloved Fuehrer" by people who are considered as the "real" responsibles of this crisis.
@birdboy2000
After all, they were Stalinists in the 1930s and Maoists in the 1960s who didn't care about the mass starvations and slaughters.
Even today, around 50% of Russians think Stalin was an effective manager.
EDIT:
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
