Revealed: secret of Hitler's slippers

Scotland on Sunday ^ | February 13, 2005 | MURDO MACLEOD

[MadIvan]

Hitler was bonkers. We know this.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Ping!

[P8riot]

You Brits have a way of putting things succinctly. Come on Ivan, tell us what you really mean.

[skimbell]

And of course, as is the case with almost every individual who is mentioned today...

"Some have claimed that Hitler shunned women, and may have been homosexual."

[killjoy]

Dr Nathan Abrams, a modern history lecturer at Aberdeen University, said: "As a Jewish historian, I’m personally in favour of anything which humanises the history of the Third Reich because it demystifies what happened. There’s this notion that the Nazis were some kind of inhuman personification of evil, but the fact is that the atrocities of the Holocaust were carried out by very ordinary people. In some ways, the more we realise that these were people like us, who wore slippers and read all kinds of books, the better we can be aware of the whole horrific reality."

That is worth repeating.

[Grut]

It seems quite a contradiction that a man who did such things had books by a children’s author.

Actually, no. The striking thing about the nazis is how childish their behavior was; I mean, "death to our enemies", "we can beat anybody" and especially "no girls allowed!" are the mindsets of an eight-year-old.

I sometimes wonder if the enduring offensiveness of nazism rests not in what they did so much as in that by acting like eight-year-olds when they had grownup powers, they exposed what little monsters all of us guys are at that age and cheapened our memories of our own childhoods.

[what's up]

Mad Ivan...I see you like T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock".

Can you explain that poem to me in 3 sentences or less? I've never gotten it.

[MadIvan]

It's the musings of a man in love and contemplating his own mortality.

Regards, Ivan

[SkyPilot]

Interesting read--thanks.

[okie01]

That is worth repeating.

It is the major premise of Albert Speer's "Inside The Third Reich".

Speer was first Hitler's architect, then his armaments czar. He was at Der Fuehrer's side throughout the war. To his death, he never quite understood what came over him that he should have contributed to so much evil. Or that the famously sane Germans had undertaken to go collectively insane.

When it was happening, everybody and everything had seemed so...normal.

His book is a warning to other societies about the "normalcy of evil".

[what's up]

OK...thanks. I get the post WWI hopelessness of "The Wasteland" but Prufrock as a great poem I've never been able to understand.

[richmwill]

Scary insight into the mind of a living, breathing satan.

[zebra 2]

The bedside reading material. Does it reflect on the man's intellect? I doubt it. He was probably trying to get to sleep. I do the same thing, not with children's stuff, but with other, lightweight thematic material. Try to put my mind in neutral.

[SilentServiceCPOWife]

I can no longer even understand my enthusiasm for Hitler. I don’t know. I can’t now understand why so many people were so gripped by him.

I can't understand it either. What was it about that pathetic little man that enthralled so many?

[AnAmericanMother]

Surely it's unrequired love, Ivan?

"I do not think that they will sing for me . . . "

And the epigram at the beginning from the Inferno, about never returning alive from Hell . . .

[MadIvan]

Surely it's unrequired love, Ivan?

Unrequited love is the most common type.

And the epigram at the beginning from the Inferno, about never returning alive from Hell . . .

No one said his musings were cheerful.

Regards, Ivan

[AnAmericanMother]

Max und Moritz is pretty wild by modern standards. They are two VERY bad boys, who do all sorts of mischief that would get them tried as adults in short order today. But I think in the end they get their comeuppance - eaten by ducks IIRC . . .

Old Schikelgruber should have paid attention to the end of the book . . .

But I agree he was probably just trying to get to sleep. I have a whole bookshelf of old children's stories that make excellent bedtime reading - although my taste runs to E. Nesbit and C.S. Lewis rather than Wilhelm Busch.

[AnAmericanMother]

Poor soul, paralyzed by indecision. What is it they call it, analysis paralysis?

And thanks for reading my typo as I thought it, not as I wrote it (I'm certainly not inclined to dither over things, I just mash the "POST" button.)

[Reconray]

amen

[GingisK]

Albert Speer's "Inside The Third Reich".

Extremely interesting book, indeed. I recommend it to anyone interested in WWII.

I was struck by how bored eveyone was when Hitler went into his oft repeated after dinner monologe.

Incidently, I know a lady who lived in "The Bunker" in Berlin at the end of the war. She was the 7 year old daughter of a radio operator. Her entire family lived in the bunker, and she played regularly with the Goebel's children. She remembers clearly the day those children were poisoned, and the day the Russian troops entered the bunker. She told me that she was hugged daily by Hitler at each morning assembly. I was spell-bound by her account. It was detailed and lengthy.