Not HIM again!

Don't Americans get their fill of this freak on the History Channel, otherwise known as the 24 hour Hitler Cable Network?

I think you mean "Ernst" Rohm.

Cheers

And he means that in earnest!

The propaganda against Hitler started AFTER Hitler declared war on USA.

Until such time, magazines like TIME used to write about Hitler's weather luck, his uncanny premonition, his trip to paris much like any other leader. In other words, he was portrayed as yet another victorious monarch.

He was the first to recognize the Red Menace and shouted for the world to join against Communism. Unfortunately his bad side pogrom and other activities plus his move against USA sealed his fate as a bad guy.

Extremely intelligent, but paranoid. Simple(the only medal he ever wore was the Iron Cross he won in WW1) but grandiose. Brilliant Strategist but neorotic.

Such were his combinations. After all he single handedly fought against 4 great nations for over 5 years. No nation had done that for so long. Am not justifying Buchenwald or Auschwitz. Am just saying demonizing him would not help us understand him for future generations sake.

It denies the surprising, but necessary lesson that it's human beings who do atrocities. I am sure Hitler was capable of love, like any other human being--he apparently loved his dog, Blondi; and he kept his ritual of placing flowers on Geli Raubal's tomb for years. The thing we should never forget is that this doesn't mean he wasn't a monster. Monsters are people, and also monsters. We don't understand them better, or prevent others from getting to power, by believing them to belong to a totally different species from ours.

We just spent the last 8 years learning what happens when you dehumanize your enemies and dismiss them as simply "evil doers". Because you don't understand them, you miss opportunities to compromise with them, and they continue to surprise you and foil your efforts to stop them.

The most essential lesson to be learned from Hitler and the Nazis is how a man and a people could become such monsters.

I recommend the movies "Max" about Hitler's start and "Downfall" about his end.

In this serial killer smitten

Disneyland country....

What an interesting transformation the Holocaust book industry has taken! The connection to Hitler is a bit tenuous, admittedly -- a bit of sperm -- but there is still that sales connection.

"Cautionary tale of the Bush years??"

WTF?

Bush elected by the people

To serve two terms

"Hitler" lessons

So cautiously learned

Good roads, functioning socialism, he loved animals, etc.

I read this book and got no idea of a "love child." Winifred Wagner I think was swept up in the nationalism at the time as many other Germans, only she had a personal connection. She took advantage of the privilege that she was given/found. Hitler made her father’s Operas gospel for the Third Reich. The Wagner’s were a unique privileged family at a unique time. Yes people are human. We see how people interact with politics and the behavior they bring every day. Winifred at least had the courage of her convictions (balls) that we rarely see today. I really do not know how you can relate this to Bush or Obama other than this is a fact and the position of political advantage will happen most likely again sometime with other humans at another time. I live in the area of Bayreuth and the Fichtelgebirge. Hard not to think that I enjoy the same walks and views as Hitler did. No Nazi here, the same woods were hunted by the Kelten and probably the Neanderthal…

Several years ago I read an article in a publication (can't remember the name) about a man who had an apparently valid claim to be Hitler's "love child."(No, Eva Braun was not the mutti.)

And of course there were those notorious "breeding farms" that matched up high-ranking Nazis with "perfect Aryan girls" in hopes of producing a new generation of master-race babies. Is it not beyond plausibility that at least one of the best "specimens" would be selected for a patriotic romp with the Fuhrer himself?

I meant "Is it not within plausibility..."

Was all asexual

And only had a taste

For eating vegetables...

Hitler once said that to understand National Socialism, one had to understand Wagner.

It's probably one of the only true statements Hitler ever made -- not that Wagner should in any way be blamed for the Nazis' atrocities. Hitler also liked dogs.

We have Winnie and the Wolf

Where's Little Red Riding Hood?

Hitler was hardly the first to "shout against the red menace". Nor was he the first to take on more nations than he could chew (see Bonaparte, Napoleon). Even aside from his genocidal paranoia, Hitler did enormous harm to Germany and the world. I agree that it's dangerous and naive to pretend he was some sort of inhuman monster, and I'm sure he had his good points -- maybe he was a particularly adept and reliable paper hanger, for all I know -- but anything good about him has been justifiably washed away by the sea of evil he dove into, of his own free will.

"For sheer number of innocent people exterminated under an infamous regime, Hitler is no match for Stalin."

So what?

Hitler fascinates because unlike Stalin, within just a few years, he succeeded in dragging an open, cultured and tolerant society into barbarism. He did not do this through a violent revolution. He did this by convincing the German people to throw away freedom with both hands.

That's the difference.

Anything unclear about this?

"In such a manner were the youth trained for life and work and death in the Third Reich. Though their minds were deliberately poisoned . . . the young men and women seemed immensely happy, filled with a zest for the life of a Hitler Youth. And there was no doubt that the practice of bringing the children of all classes and walks of life together, where those who had come from poverty or riches . . . was good and healthy in itself. In most cases it did no harm to a city boy and girl to spend six months in the compulsory Labor Service, where they lived outdoors and learned the value of manual labor and of getting along with those of different backgrounds. No one who traveled up and down Germany in those days and talked with the young in their camps and watched them work and play and sing could fail to see that, however sinister the teaching, here was an incredibly dynamic youth movement.

"The young in the Third Reich were growing up to have strong and healthy bodies . . . Along the road between Aachen and Brussels one saw the contrast between the German soldiers, bronzed and clean-cut from a youth spent in the sunshine on an adequate diet, and the first British war prisoners, with their hollow chests, round shoulders, pasty complexions and bad teeth—tragic examples of the youth that England had neglected so irresponsibly in the years between the wars."