Hitler: Mad, genius, or both?

[Weskers Flag]

Before you start flaming, let me say that this topic is not against the rules in any way, and I asked a moderator if it would be okay before I made this topic. This is for a CIVILIZED debate. Meaning no name-calling, offensive remarks, racial slurs, etc.

In my opinion, Hitler was a genius, though he might have been prone to random boughts of madness.

What are your opinions?

[JcFFx]

Wasn't the extent of his 'genius' just exploiting the depression?

I do remember hearing about him making the same mistake as Napoleon...

[nemesiswontdie]

i already vote for locking this thread as im sure alot of people agree with me.

me and alot of people are sick of hearing the nazi/hitler bullshit im not trying to be the wanna be mod but still

[YamiYumes]

Well, I'm not going to deny that the man was intelligent. He was an excellent speaker, and definitely knew how to rally people to his side.

Then again, look at who he had to convince: The people of Germany were in a severe depression after World War 1. People were starving, the unemployment rate was ridiculous, so on and so forth. So it's not as hard as a lot of people may think for someone to convince them to follow someone who was preaching of reform, and the rebuilding of their country.

I also feel bad for the man, in a way. Yes, he caused the deaths of countless Jews. Yet, he was still human. I don't believe he was an entity of evil, like so many people. Yes, he made bad choices. Yes, they caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people. Yet...it took more than just HIS word for those acts to happen. People followed him, willingly or not. So the blame wasn't squarely on his shoulders.

But to answer the original question, I believe he was more insane than a genius. Which was probably helped by the amount of drugs he was taking at the time.

[Mr. Spencer]

It's astonishing how he was able to bring a nation back from defeat to the status of a global superpower, even if the methods he employed were less than orthodox. He was Time's Man of the Year in 1938, so clearly he was doing something right for the country, even if his methods involved the persecution of specific social and religious groups. Thousands were put back to work in constructing new transport networks for the country, such as the autobahns and such. He certainly was a very devious individual too, how he managed to completely circumvent the Treaty of Versailles, and also how he was able to seize territory.

Mind you, we ourselves are partly to blame for that. Neville Chamberlain had hoped to bring peace to Europe by negotiating with Hitler, namely because we were still recovering from the devastating effects of the First World War and our military at the time was in shambles. Here was a man who had bypassed a treaty, broken international law, rearmed his country and took over other countries without firing a single bullet.

However, there's also a darker side to this story. Hitler's rise to power being bloody and ruthless, you only need to read up about the Night of the Long Knives. I think that the power corrupted him even further, the fact that he knew that he could things and that no-one could stop him, which in turn gave him the self-assurance he needed to carry out whatever atrocities he deemed necessary in the pursuit of German superiority. When France fell in 1940, he must have felt like he achieve anything. He was practically the master of Europe, though all of Germany's military successes could be attributed to the likes of Guderian, Manstein and Rommel.

All in all, I don't know. While he was certainly a charismatic leader and a skilled orator, you simply cannot overlook the fact that this man was in charge of a regime that committed numerous atrocities and crimes against humanity. Do I think Hitler was the most evil man in the Third Reich? Not at all, in fact there's many others who I would consider to be the real assholes - Himmler, Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich all come to mind. It's just that Hitler was the man in power and the man with the responsibility, it's because of him that other men were able to commit acts of barbarity and evil. In fact, that's probably the scariest part of all this, the fact that these people weren't demons or monsters, they were living human beings.

[YamiYumes]

I believe the title of The Most Evil Man in the Third Reich belongs to the doctor.

The things he did to children alone, qualifies him for this. Easily.

Murder is one thing. Scientific experiments where they're kept alive in agony? Whole other ball game. *shudders*

[Mr. Spencer]

Ah, Josef Mengele. He was another bar-steward. Quite possibly one of the most despicable individuals in history. Shirō Ishii was another one, though he managed to escape persecution by collaborating with the Allies and surrendering the fruits of his research, even if that research involved human experimentation. It's a shame about Mengele though, he too dodged justice. He fled to Argentina, then Chile, then moved around South America for a while before dying of a stroke. He never answered for his crimes.

When you think about it, Hitler was just a conduit for greater evil.

[YamiYumes]

Then again, with human experiments we get far more information, much quicker...but the price. Is that really worth it? Then again, that's a whole different debate.

And I agree. I think Hitler was more of a figure head. He started the regime, yes, but once people like Mengele joined in, it snowballed into tragedies like the Holocaust and his experiments.

[Mr. Spencer]

Yeah, Hitler kicked the ball and everyone else just ran with it. Unfortunately for us, Hitler was just one of those people who was simply too enamoured with his vision to not let anything stand in the way of it. If he wasn't so driven to achieve what he wanted, then I think he would have been a lot more reluctant to allow such things to happen. Heydrich was one of the worst too, he pretty much laid down the groundwork for the Holocaust at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. Though you'll be pleased to know that he got his comeuppence, he got killed by a couple of Czech agents that we trained. Kind of funny really, his staff car just happened to pull up outside of a café where one of the agents was waiting, so the bloke pretty much got up and lobbed a grenade into the car.

Far as I know he died from septicemia caused by fragments of his seat embedded within his body from the explosion. The reprecussions weren't particularly pleasant though, I think they massacred an entire ghetto in retaliation for his death.

Back to the topic at hand, Hitler should never be taken seriously. Never allow him the dignity of being treated as a serious figure. It's always good to laugh at his expense, case in point, Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Wolfenstein 3D. Just look at Downfall (Der Untergang) too, every scene with Bruno Ganz is unintentionally hilarious.

Like Dot50Cal looking for a new moderator:

[ValentineKnight]

Mad and evil.Pure self righteous evil as was everyone of those Third Reich Nazi bastards.

[Vector]

i already vote for locking this thread as im sure alot of people agree with me.

me and alot of people are sick of hearing the nazi/hitler bullshit im not trying to be the wanna be mod but still

PSEUDO MODERATOR

[nemesiswontdie]

PSEUDO MODERATOR

speak for yourself yo

and how is that being a pseudo mod? cause i vouch for locking a thread cause im sick of hearing about the nazi thing on a RE forum site?
wow.

[Vector]

speak for yourself yo

and how is that being a pseudo mod? cause i vouch for locking a thread cause im sick of hearing about the nazi thing on a RE forum site?
wow.

Yes, it's annoying, isn't it?

[nemesiswontdie]

Yes, it's annoying, isn't it?

not really

[USF_Col_Keller]

Hitler was a genius in some areas and a complete lunatic in others. He thought he could fight two wars on two fronts and while his top generals highly advised against that tactic, he wouldn't hear of it and fired them...that or killed them. If Hitler kept his promise with Stalin and didn't invade Russia, I seriously think he may have won the war and we'd be under a different flag today. And he most sure have won if his atomic energy plans actually did big things like work. If he didn't kill off or deport the jewish population, he probably would have had the bomb before the US did. It was because of his mindless killing and deporting of jews that the US got ahold of Albert who helped make the nuke for us. To be frank, Hitler was a genius in politics but was an idiot when it came to warfare. If you watch all the documenteries on him on like NatGEO or the History channel, you can see that as he got older he got more and more insane and started fucking up by getting his hands into warfare tactics. Plus he had Parkisons Disease, notice how his left hand shook and left leg? Symptoms.
But also, Hitler wasn't born in Germany, he was born in Austria and put his nose into German politics because after WW 1, he felt that the German people were backstabbed by the jews amoung other people. Guy was fucking loony toons. Course, when your over baring father comes home drunk and violently beats you senseless until you're in a coma and beats on your mother right in front of you, and your mother tries to sheild him under her from the father - plus when he develops the unhealthy relationship with his mother....yeah....no one is walking away from that completely sane and normal.