I'd have to agree. Whatever people's moral views are about the man, I have no doubt about his fanatical drive to bring Germany back to greatness and have it dominate Europe. I can't help but admire that sense of single minded purpose and iron willed drive, I think we can all learn from that.
Exactly. I believe Hitler has a great deal we can learn from. And frankly, his story is remarkable. I often cite him to people who do not believe in themselves. He was short, ugly & had failed more times than he had achieved (twice rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts). If Hitler surged and became the greatest conqueror since Genghis Khan, Attila & Tamerlane, who are you not to dare to believe & achieve?
As for the Jews, Hitler's Germany was hardly the first country to target them for destruction/expulsion/murder. Throughout history, the Romans, Arabs, Persians, English, Spanish, French, Russians, Polish, Lithuanians, Italians etc etc have all consistently tried to make this people go away, each for their own reasons. Wherever they have gone, for whatever reason, the Jews were not a very well liked people.
Interesting to hear some of your views on this guy.
I recommend the most complete book on Hitler. It is by John Willard Toland. I've read Mein Kampf and other books highlighting the Third Reich, Afrika Korps & the SS.
I'll give you some of my thoughts of Hitler's thinking based on a private recording between him and Gustaf Mannerheim, the wartime leader of Finland. Hitler had no option but to invade Russia when he did because he feared that the country would grow too strong if he waited any longer. During the conversation, he expressed how shocked he was when he found out just how well armed Russia really was. A quote from the conversation:
“We ourselves were not completely sure of this, how monstrous this strong armament was.. It is evident…evident. They have the most monstrous armament that is humanly conceivable (‘menschendenkbar’)…so…if anybody had told me that one state…(footsteps)…if anybody had told me that one state can line up with 35.000 tanks (Hitler uses the word ‘tank’), I had said ‘you have gone mad’…
http://civilianmilitaryintelligence...ecording-of-adolph-hitler-and-carl-mannerheim
I think Hitler was a military genius who gained extensive experience in warfare tactics through fighting on the western front for four years. His leadership and how he overruled much more experienced generals in the world's best trained army and how he led these armies to overrunning Europe is nothing short of breathtaking. Like Napoleon, he made some classic mistakes. Versailles was pretty harsh, but it could have been a lot worse. The Germans didn't like it, and I can understand where they were coming from. So close to winning WWI, they had already won in the east and still occupied foreign territory in the west. If not for American money and being stabbed in the back on the home front, they might have won.
I do not think Hitler had to necessarily invade Soviet Russia. Stalin faced the same predicament Hitler did from the West. The only reason Hitler is designated as evil much more than Stalin is simple as the following: Somehow Stalin ended up as the victim and the Allies saw the perfect crack in the armor to defeat Nazi Germany. Turn it the other way around and we'd be talking about Stalin.
I can literally talk for days about WWI and WWII so maybe I'll just stop there.
Those wars fascinate me. The Russo-Japanese war is one i find myself reading a lot about. One of the least mentioned empires is that of Japan. People do not know that both Koreas, Taiwan and various parts of China were property of Imperial Japan. Hideki Tojo led Japan during WWII and was the almighty character behind Pearl Harbor.
That being said, Hitler has been demonized to a certain degree by the media. There have been far worse killers in history (mao, stalin) who have not been vilified nearly as much.
Also, just to comment on the rumour about Nazis going around killing dogs it may be a little ironic but Nazi Germany actually passed some of the strictest animal protection laws in all of history:
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Nazianimalrights.htm
Good point bringing up King Leopold, one of the most vicious and bloodthirsty killers in history. Rumour has it he was responsible for the murder of 10 million blacks in Congo, and punishments such as cutting off hands and feet for not cutting enough rubber trees was pretty standard. But I'm not sure if I'd blame him totally for what's going on with the modern day genocides in Rwanda and Burundi today. The ethnic resentment that has been going on there between tutsi and hutu have existed for centuries before the Belgians arrived (ie tutsi kings ruling over a hutu majority).
