Was Hitler good for the World in any way?

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Tantor wrote:
Hitler is the rebuttal of the classic argument that man can only be evil due to lack of education. When you see a reenactment of the transcript from the Wansee Conference with a gaggle of German PhDs working on the details of the Holocaust, it becomes obvious that you can be really smart and really evil. Your character determines whether you are evil, not your education. Education simply amplifies the speed toward the direction your character points.

Tantor
Could you please explain, what you mean by that?

I think it may have been Socrates who said that people are not evil but uneducated. If they were educated about the bad effects of their bad behavior, they would behave better. It looks good on paper, but Hitler proves it false.

As you study the Holocaust, it becomes apparent that it took real intelligence to arrange it. There was the managerial expertise necessary to budget, create, and schedule it. I am struck by the entrepreneurial nature of it, of the officers like Eichmann and Heydrich who sought to build their own little bureaucratic empire by serving Hitler, or "working towards the Fuhrer" in Nazi parlance, which is to say, finding out what Hitler wanted and delivering it. They were perfectionists, constantly reinventing the execution process, making it more efficient. The synchronization of the apparatus of the Final Solution to feed the death camps with new victims on schedule required considerable administrative talent.

Most of all I am struck by the handful of German leaders at the Wansee conference who held doctorates, particularly those officers of the State department. They smoothly integrated the raw anti-semitic hate of the Nazis to make a foreign policy. It's quite something to see the State department doctorates sitting at the same table as the crudest Nazis.

The lesson I draw from that is that education does not make you a good person. If you are an evil person, education facilitates your evil acts. It simply provides you with more skills to act out your evil intent. It's your character that determines whether you're a good person, regardless of how educated you are. Character is destiny.

Tantor

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Thanks for your response, Tantor.

"If you are an evil person, education facilitates your evil acts." That's similar to how the Nazis disqualified the academic awards of the Jews, btw.
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Having been to Vienna recently and seen the the Art Academy there, I think, we would have to talk about all this, if the profeesore had had another view of his graphic talent :wink:

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Quote:

I think it may have been Socrates who said that people are not evil but uneducated. If they were educated about the bad effects of their bad behavior, they would behave better.

I'm sure Socrates said it it in magnificent prose, but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans, let alone investment in public education.

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Actually, i was always struck by the inept way in which the Nazis stumbled toward "the final solution." The SD started by shooting their victims, and then someone did the math, and realized how inefficient that was, in terms up burning up ammunition which would have better served their armies in the field. The SD was at a loss, so they started driving the victims around in trucks, with the exhaust being directed into the back of the truck. This was no good, it burned up precious fuel in an army already heavily dependant upon horses. The Zyklon solution is only brilliant if one considers the focus of intellect on the destruction of innocent lives to be a desirable goal. On many occasions, troops badly needed at the front were left at railroad sidings while Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other "undesirables" were transported to death camps. On more than one occasion, transport for wounded German soldiers was commandeered by the SD. However, i am not at all surprised that Tantor admires the Nazis for their effort--it well fits my image of his sense of right and wrong.

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The original "foundation document" of the NSDAP from August 21, 1925, was 're-found' in the USA recently.

It will be published in an online-magazine (which will get it's first printed issue on Monday next as well).

Here's a copy from Spiegel-online:

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,337529,00.jpg

This sheet of paper and about 50 more had been in the USA since 1945. Obviously, a soldier "got" them, and now the family gave them to the publisher of said magazine.

This papers got an English transcript as well, which is stamped "Central Collecting Point Munich" - so the Allies knew the content [=mostly speeches, e.g. Goebbels on "You can't overcome terror with discussions but only with counter-terror"].

Source: Spiegel-online

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

"If you are an evil person, education facilitates your evil acts." That's similar to how the Nazis disqualified the academic awards of the Jews, btw.

Similar only cosmetically, not substantially. I don't accept the Nazi definitions of good and evil. Your argument fallaciously uses "evil" ambiguously.

I think it's quite acceptable to dismiss the achievements of a highly educated man such as Dr. Aymin Zawahiri, second in command of Al Qaeda. His medical education has only facilitated his evil nature.

Tantor

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Setanta wrote:

Actually, i was always struck by the inept way in which the Nazis stumbled toward "the final solution." The SD started by shooting their victims, ...

It started before that, with the mercy killings of the handicapped, those "unworthy of life", in the Nazi lingo.

Tantor

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