[Nifster]

and he was kind to dogs.... I mean what the heck is your point?

[iowamark]

It appears the Hess family became over-confident that its link to Hilter would keep them alive. Berta, his sister, had told people she "enjoyed the special protection of the Nazi party" but Adolf Eichmann, the logistic mastermind of the Holocaust, personally signed her deportation order.

Berta was deported and died in Auschwitz. Hess's mother, Elizabeth was also deported but survived.

People who made the mistake of trusting Hitler wound up dead.

[moonshot925]

Hitler is on the far left.

[re_nortex]

This provocative thread, which did catch my attention, triggered my memory of one of the most compelling books I've read in my 70 years:

I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years by Victor Klemperer.

I'll quote from one of the reviews:

...the most disarming and appealing feature of this tome is its slow and ineluctable building of suspense and empathy as World War I veteran Klemperer steadily weaves the day to day details of his life in Nazi Germany in the 12 years of that regime into a portrait of a rogue state moving irresistably down the path to tyranny and terror. The reader is sucked into the vortex of what it is like to live under such circumstances, where an aging Jewish professor who has built a life of purpose and meaning based on scholarship, hard work, and the belief in the rationalism of the state begins to understand that it will all unravel around him.

If you haven't read the books -- it's a 2-book set -- set some time aside this summer. You'll find it unforgettable.

[Lancey Howard]

[ransomnote]

“Adolf Hitler made a personal intervention to spare a Jew from the Holocaust that consumed millions of Jewish lives it has been revealed.”

The way that sentence is written, it sounds like Hitler was witnessing ‘the Holocaust’ instead of identifying it as HIS HOLOCAUST.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[AnalogReigns]

All this goes to show is that yes, while Hitler was a MONSTER...he was also a human being.

A lot of people seemed to be threatened by this idea, and I think underneath that is the fear that given the right circumstances—we also could, as sinners all, possibly commit the atrocities of the Nazis.

I’ve seen in Europeans especially an idea that somehow the Germans are an especially evil people—in that 70+ years ago they were doing things the English, or the Swedes, or the French, or even Americans...would never do.

The fact of the matter is that for 12 years—an especially evil mania gripped Germany—and it could, in other forms, grip any country as well, given the right circumstances.

We cannot have a triumphalism which says, “Oh, well we’re not Germans (or Japanese, or Chinese for that matter, Mao...), so it can’t happen here!” It can, and it can happen anywhere to any people, if we are not vigilant for freedom.

The fact that Hitler—and others who did the most monstrously evil things, were also human....should serve as a warning to us all.