I’ve often wondered what Hitler’s legacy would be if it weren’t for the racial hatred aspect, particularly against the Jews.
If WWII had ended and there hadn’t been the extermination camps and all the slaughter of innocents without cause (other than racial ideology), Hitler might be remembered as an aggressive guy who had to be stopped (or,if he won, as the man who had a vision), but not the monster that we tend to think of him today.
Perhaps that is how we will think of Putin, though Russian homosexuals might disagree, and say yes, he is a monster, just like Hitler.
But one question is to what extent what success Hitler had was dependent on an ideology of hatred. Perhaps it didn’t have to be hatred of Jews, but hatred of some out group might have been necessary to generate the drive and unity of purpose that enabled that level of efficiency. There’s no doubt that common hatred of another group can help steel people’s resolve and turn off other aspects of critical thinking that can be helpful in military operations.
Finally, if there hadn’t been concentration camps and such targeting Jews in particular, it would be more acceptable to be anti-Semitic today. Anti-semitism still exists of course, in many places, but it tends to be a bit more hidden, and people accuse of it often feel they need to either hide it or justify themselves. Without the holocaust, that might not be the case today.
Yes, these conversations ultimately boil down to that question. Their success is partly their skills and partly their luck at having been born at a time when they could take advantage of them (and the luck of something as simple as not dying of smallpox, in the case of someone like George Washington, who actually did contract smallpox and then was immune later on when it was a threat to his troops).
Given that, I suspect Alexander might be a better bet in terms of ability to conquer, because the ability to be creative with tactics
(Note, I wrote this a few days ago, but apparently this never actually got posted)
it certainly reduced the number of jewish deaths that would’ve occured otherwise after WW2 as progroms were basically eradicated and European Jews had somewhere to go if necessary. but to say it was a good thing, no chance. saving say 10,000 in jewish deaths after WW2 would never make up for 6 million deaths during WW2. i guess you could say they “have a country now” as payment but still, not really worth it.
The fact that some positive change came about as a result of recovering from a horrific event in no way means that the event itself was less horrific, or in any way justified. And you know that.
I know that and most educated members of western society know that. I certainly hoped you were not suggesting that the Holocaust was a good thing, but in reality I don’t know you from Adam and your wording left a fair amount of room for such an interpretation.
Only because it was taken out of context and isolated so as to give it that “amount of room”.
The context was a discussion of what our view of Hitler might have been if he had just tried to take territory, as opposed implementing this ideology of racial superiority and the need to exterminate what he decided should be inferior races.
The paragraph quoted was at the end of this discussion of what the world might be like without if Hitler’s program did not have its racial element, and I ended with the observation that one consequence might be that it would be much more acceptable to be anti-semitic today under that scenario.
Any conclusion of “so it was all worthwhile, then,” was entirely the reader’s decision to embellish.
And in any case, you know me well enough from years of interacting on AF to know I wouldn’t have suggested that, so this is really just a game of “let’s see if I can twist his words.” The fact that you might not recognize me if we crossed on the street is irrelevant.
I imagine Hitler could have got away with quite a bit without much opposition if he didn’t have the racial element. Poland, gone. Czech? Gone. Austria? No problem. Maybe not France/Belgium/Netherlands but who knows. In 2014, the era of instant social media protest and fast moving news, a madman militarily seized 10,000 square miles of European territory while hosting the Olympics, shot down a passenger plane carrying hundreds of NATO civilians, and not a damn thing was done about it other than freezing a few known bank accounts of his buddies. Even the radical left, supportive of every cause, doesn’t give a shit about his military conquests. Hell in 1938 a guy could have got away with much more.
I’ve no interest in belaboring this, so I apologize. I honestly was not trying to twist your words, I really was curious if that’s what you were suggesting. If you’ve previously discussed your feelings regarding Jewish people and the Holocaust, I’m sorry that I’ve either not seen them or don’t recall them.
Apology, accepted, higgs. Im not horrifically offended anyway, I just thought it was so unlikely that someone who had been on this board for nearly as long as I had would cast me as a fascist supporter of racial extermination. I can understand some people calling me a commie, but a fascist?