Adolf Hitler: Evil or Insane?

[antizalfer]

Hitler was not insane thats an very ignorant comment. Many people define insanity by someone possesing a mental state short of community standards. An unbiased view of insanity is someone who is in a mental state in which he is defficient at survival ie someone who choses an option of self degredation because they do not fear getting shot in the head for example. Evil is the biggest human opnion, is self satisfaction at the cost of the pain of other evil - if yes why?? There is no universal law that deams good and evil (excluding religion) rather its the opinion of man or more so the community at large. Generally people consider genocide evil and in Hitlers case particularly selfish; a fuel for the german war machine. Than again eugenics has an upside too. If disabled people are killed that is an act of evil. To promote the birth of more disabled children (whom will suffer in life) initself is also evil. In hitlers case he was inelligent but adleast 9/10 peoples moral standard deams him evil.

[munnos]

I have read Mein Kampf and many of the things made sense, the others were all half propaganda half madness.. But before he became chancellor he was a lot different than he later became.. I do not think he was really evil I don't really know of any evil painters do you?

To answer your question about evil painters: what about Hitler? It is totally reprehensible to say anything in Mein Kampf made sense, and I think the plotting to kill Jews in 1925; and the Beer Hall Putsch in which he could reportedly call on 15,000 thugs to fight his corner (and still didn't succeed in the coup), maybe suggests HE WAS the same before he became Chancellor? He was totally evil- admittedly a skilled politician; maybe a little reliant on oppression though LOL. I really don't know how anyone could argue he wasn't evil to be honest.

This is the kind of stuff im trying to say..Germany was defeated after ww1 and Hitler made it into a world power..He was probably one of the best speakers in history yet..I still think he was ing crazy.



Wir Deutsche tun alles besser.

To be fair right, if we are going to get into the realms of the "best" dicatators: look no further than Stalin. Defeated Hitler in WW2, due to his impregnable leadership and far better judgement, whereas Hitler was an idiot. He also didn't rely on an economic downturn to get into power and used his political nuance to outmanouver his opponents. He continued his vice-like grip on the leadership of the USSR until his death; and alive another if he was alive another 2,000 years- my bet would be he would still have the same hold on power. I am not pro Stalin by the way- it just pisses me off when people go on about how great Hitler was.

There were rumors going around that the Jews were scheming with the Soviets to humiliate Germany....

The Soviets didn't exactly embrace the Jews (at least under Stalin) He began an anti-semetic purge following WW2; culminating with the 1953 "Doctors Plot" in which he accused Jewish doctors of murdering Zhdanov, and likely had Stalin survived he would orchastrated another huge purge- probably encompassing a lot of Jews too. Learn your facts before you attempt to defend Hitler.

[Krieglord]

Theirs a very very thin line between genius and insanity...

Personally I believe Hitler was just a man... a man who had so much weight on his shoulders after a while that it drove him to insanity

Do I think he was evil... no

[Hakkapeliitta]

It's not Hitler's fault that he had such enormous sex appeal that a whole nation was enchanted by him, all the way to the point of self destruction.

A flash of some wrist over here...


A bit of seductive walking over there...


..and is it a wonder that Germany fell in love with such an adonis and lusted after him. Hell, Hitler had to keep his mistresses secret, as men and women in all Germany were hoping to one day become "Mrs. Hitler", and had they lost that hope they might have become blind with jealousy. John Lennon had to keep his first wife out of public view for similar reasons.

[Col. Tartleton]

He lost.

I don't know if moral judgments or psychological ones matter.

I think most moralists would say Hitler was bad and most doctors would say Hitler was ill.

He was a man of his times and far more normal than we would like to admit.

I would call him evil and crazy but that's just me.

[Invictus XII]

Evil. Insane detonates a sense of lack of capabilities, which he was certainly capable as a leader, and as a thinker. Evil men are able to think, act and do good, but have a singular (or more) evil trait(s), ideas and prospects.

[Gatsby]

Well, the way I see it a truly evil person knows that they do bad, ie. a murderer who knows that killing is wrong but simply enjoys it and thus does it.

I think Hitler genuinely believed that he was a messianic figure who was defending all that was good and beautiful in the world.

All of his victims were were either good Western soldiers, who were more victims of their own stupid governments who opposed him, political opponents who absolutely needed to die for the greater good, or sub-humans whose deaths could not even be thought of as murder.

He applied such a sick perception to the world that in his rationalistion he only ever did what was best for the world and humanity.

I think he was just incredibly unstable, deluded, and absolutely crazy. His entire reality was completely centred around him and just morphed seamlessly to shield him from any perceptions of wrong.

[Krieglord]

They say power corrupts...

[Cyclops]

Hitler was by his own standards a sub-human (if thew stuff about his jewish ancestry is true) failure (he led Germany to almost total destruction).

I think he was insane in that his mind did not function in a healthy way, and he was evil in that he undertook wilfully destructive actions that made the world a worse place.

Its worth considering these questions (murky as the qyuestion becomes as people troll, semi-troll and act-out some teenage angst by appearing to approve of Hitler) because as evil and mad as Hitler was, he was a human being produced by a civilisied society. It could happen anywhere, given the right stresses and circumstances.

[SLN445]

I'm going to have to go with Evil, mostly for his actions.... though he was probably insane by the end of it all.
He was more a product of his time then his own personal delusion, taking a sadly common hatred of minority groups to the next level.

[Tiberios]

A man with a really disgusting extremist (and that's an understatement) ideology. Evil? To most people yes.

[Kitsunegari]

I would say he definitely had some sort of mania, but he was also capable of premeditation and cautious planning, so no, not insane.

[Phier]

No more evil or insane than any of histories conquerors. He just had the misfortune of being the last one in an age where mass media and mass education became common.

[Scipio Afracanis]

That is the point many miss.

Not is Hitler X or Y but are many historical conquerors we remember more fondly closer to his ilk then we would like to admit.

[AqD]

In my opinion Hitler was originally a good man, An artist, a loyal soldier, It appears to me that he lost his mind after becoming Chancellor "There is a theory this is from syphilis" I consider Hitler a great man who unified a divided country and made it into a world power in just 8 years. I mean just think of if he was a good guy? What is your opinion?

His followers are both, and also idiotic. He is but a leading monster.

[ivan_the_terrible]

His followers are both, and also idiotic. He is but a leading monster.

No, I disagree. He was monstrous in his behaviour, yes. But he was himself not a monster but a human being just like you and me - that is the truly frightening thing, in my opinion.

He was a man of his times and far more normal than we would like to admit.

This is a very important thing to understand, in my opinion. His ideas were a logical, though a twisted and not necessarily an inevitable, development of many 19th and 20th century ways of thinking, particularly 19th century obsession with scientific classification/categorisation and 20th century modernity (and fascism).

It's all too easy to ignore this and label him 'insane' or a 'monster', thereby distancing ourselves from some common heritage, and from the very real possibility that we may have not rejected some of his concepts had we been in a position to choose...

[Lysimachos11]

No, I disagree. He was monstrous in his behaviour, yes. But he was himself not a monster but a human being just like you and me - that is the truly frightening thing, in my opinion.



This is a very important thing to understand, in my opinion. His ideas were a logical, though a twisted and not necessarily an inevitable, development of many 19th and 20th century ways of thinking, particularly 19th century obsession with scientific classification/categorisation and 20th century modernity (and fascism).

It's all too easy to ignore this and label him 'insane' or a 'monster', thereby distancing ourselves from some common heritage, and from the very real possibility that we may have not rejected some of his concepts had we been in a position to choose...

Indeed, Hitler was not an abnormal person. Hitler's xenophobia and hatred of the (factually existant) extremely rich and influential Western European and American Jews can be traced back to the same root for Communism: Late 19th century/Early 20th century Europeans transforming from peasants and townsfolk into "labour" useful for the wealthy and powerful in industry.

Essentially people went from being "human" to being "labour/workers" in the course of the 19th century. Both Communism and Fascism/National Socialism can be seen as counter movements to this dehumanization of people into tools in the hands of the wealthy, able to be used and fired at the industrialists mercy. Both Communists and Fascists wished to ban asocial elements aiming only at enriching themselves from society. Hitler added nationalism to that mixture: the honest peasants were the Germans and the exploitative class enriching itself were the Jews.

I only remember the main lines of this theory, but does it sound familiar to anyone? It always seemed like an appealing explanation to me.

[Nik]

No more evil or insane than any of histories conquerors. He just had the misfortune of being the last one in an age where mass media and mass education became common.

True to a degree, as other dictators/rulers killed people in their millions. let's just have look at people from the 20th century, where the big names like Stalin, PolPot and Mao also produced death tolls in the millions, Hitler is probably shocking to us as he was seen neither a ruthless sociopath like Stalin scheming and murdering his way onto the top of the food chain, and no enigmatic figure from another culture like Mao or PolPot (making them therefore "other" than us).
He came from one of the grails of european culture, germany, where relgious tolerance was far more at home then say France (just look at the Dreyfuss Affair) or Spain and humanists and philosophers like Kant had operated for hundreds of years.
Germany, a people of poets and philosophers, but also of judges and hangmans.
When germany can produce such a monster (and no doubt, he was one), then what country is save from such a development?
Add to that an idelogy that was murky, illdefined and irrational, which defined it's own twisted logic and people followed it willingly. At least with Stalin you knew where you stood. With Hitler?
The most poignant definition of national socialism was given by Borhmann, when asked by his son what exactly national socialism was: "The will of the fuehrer"

[SlartyBartfast]

We are all insane. Only the steady tedium of our lives disguises our insanity, allows us to pretend that we're calm and normal. All it takes are a few prods in a sensitive area, a little frustration and a couple of sleepless nights, and we too are ready to exterminate the entire world. Luckily for the world, we have not the power to exterminate it -- and we have Total War to distract us from the fact that we have no power. We can only imagine what it must be like to order the extermination of an entire city.

And as for evill... With what little power we have, we commit atrocities every day; thinking and unthinking we abuse our power. An example: We buy products that are made by people who are virtual slaves, and who do not have enough to eat because we refuse to pay them more for their product -- we know this, and yet we still act evilly. Just like the bombers dropping bombs in the dark on people thousands of kilometres away, we can't see them, so why should we care about them, so why not pretend they don't exist. Just like Hitler signing a document to have the Jews gassed, offhandedly in amongst the other pressing concerns of his day. Thankfully for the world, the average citizen's power to express evil is greatly limited.

Most of the people on this forum, if not all, would act just as evilly or insanely as Hitler did if they were granted his power. He had the power to make the maddest of his ideals and beliefs a reality, and so that's what he set out to do. What would be the result of you forcing your ideals and beliefs upon everybody? I'm sure it would be a lovely world of rose gardens and sunshine.

[Hakkapeliitta]

No, I disagree. He was monstrous in his behaviour, yes. But he was himself not a monster but a human being just like you and me - that is the truly frightening thing, in my opinion.

This. If we think of Hitler and the nazis as inhuman monsters, then we are missing a lesson, and making it more possible for something similar happening again.