[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.

[SkyPilot]

Interesting read--thanks.

[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?

[Verginius Rufus]

Wasn't that the point Hannah Arendt tried to make a long time ago, about the banality of evil?

There was a program on the local PBS station last night which I came across by chance, about the capture of Berlin in 1945, told from the perspective of surviving German soldiers, who were mostly pretty young at the time. One of them said that he didn't know about the concentration camps until after the war. The Russian soldiers' behavior was so atrocious (mass killings and mass rape) that the Germans kept fighting on even when they realized the war was lost: "enjoy the war, because the peace will be worse." I was surprised that they mentioned the rapes by the Red Army...after all, it was PBS.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Good post, bro.

I have a book on the managers of the concentration camps, and it makes the same point others have made here about how very commonplace they were. They were men like many others, but the Nazis put them in snappy uniforms and gave them a chance to Be Somebody.

Of course, in the end they were hanged.

"To Be, or To Do." -- John Boyd's question; you can only pick one.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[tet68]

Hitler was also fond of American wild west writers usually
of the dime novel sort, and seemed to take his images of
American behaviour from them. I would suppose he was exposed
to these before WW. I. When he was living in the hostel and
bumming around the streets trying to get accepted into the
Art school,or perhaps after he was rejected by them, and was
reduced to painting post cards.

[wagglebee]

BTTT! Great article.

[sully777]

#

[lainde]

BTTT

[Lazamataz]

Paul Bishop, Professor of German at Glasgow University, said: "This author is a very strange choice for Adolf Hitler. It’s odd to think that he had an author most known for children’s books as his bedside reading. He was a very strange man, of course."

(quickly putting down my copy of Winnie the Pooh)

[Lazamataz]

The film sparked a national debate in Germany when it was released last summer about whether it was fitting for a German film to portray Hitler as anything other than a monster.

No, it's okay. We already know he's a monster. Let's hear about his quirks.

[Lazamataz]

I would like to annouce my new beverage label called Senseless Genocide.

Senseless Genocide^TM Tea
For the brutal dictator in all of us.

Senseless Genocide^TM Coffee
When killing them all just ISN'T ENOUGH

Senseless Genocide^TM Cocoa
The Ukraine may be starving, but your mug is full!

[hershey]

This book is creepy, and trying to imagine how this woman's mind works even now is difficult. She didn't have a doubt in the world about Hitler until she saw piles of Jews' dentures and hair? Maybe that's unfair, but 'folksy' details about Hitler make my skin crawl.