Any of you been to Mexico City lately? There's a whole slew of VW's buzzing around as taxis..... c.i.
He did wonders for Mel Brooks' career....
Yes, yes, yes - finally!!!!!
Springtime for Hitler . . . and Germany . . .
Winter for Poland and France . . .
Don't be dumb, be schmarty
Come and join the Nazi party ! ! !
on Hitler's virtue
Nice response, BillW. I had not read the last part of Jefferson's dictum; "It is less far from the truth to believe nothing than to believe what is wrong." Clearly it is better to be agnostic on an issue until one has the evidence to form a foundation for a more "truthful" belief.
Back to the topic at hand. Hitler provided one--and very dubious--benefit to mankind: he showed us to what depths a human being can descend. This negative model shows at least what our negative potential is. Another thought. He showed how awesome the results may be when the pathology of an individual becomes state ideology/ power. Consider the horrific consequences of religious ideology when backed by the State: the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the forfeit of billions of actual lives for the promise of a bogus afterlife.
JLN, Unfortunately, history is repleat with monsters like Hitler. He was only one of the last to make history, only because the world had it's attention on Europe and Japan during WWII, and thereafter. I'm sure some knowledgeable A2K'rs can produce some names and statistics to match Hitlers'. c.i.
Percentage wide for decimating the population of a country, probably Pol Pot in Cambodia far out did Hitler. Of course, he didn't have the International thing going on.
We will also never know how many died during Mao's Cultural Revolution . . .
Add the Stalinist purges of the 1930's, that, and the gulags, makes Hitler look small time . . .
In 1968, Indonesia killed millions -
Most not by the government but fomenting the population!
It was not a lot of people in comparison to their population, but the way they did it was bizarre.
I also learned not too long ago, that millions of girl babies are killed by their mother every year in India. It's also common practice in China, but numbers are harder to come by. c.i.
When the Spaniard arrived at Tenochtitlan (modern Ciudad Mexico), Bernal Diaz recounts that they found a pyramid of skulls next to the temple of the war god. By counting the skulls along each side of the pyramid, and doing their math, they came to the conclusion that there were more than one million skulls in the pile. This has been disputed, on no more particular authority than to say that the Spaniard was trying to justify his own conduct. That's flimsy--the 16th Century Spaniard felt no compunction about conquest, it's human cost, nor it's details; neither did they imagine they would be condemned, and therefore needed justification. Whether or not, human sacrifice was practiced on a vast scale by the Toltecs. I imagine, for good reason, that a thorough examination of history would show slaughters and massive human disasters in every corner of the world, in every culture.
About the people in history with the same mentality as Hitler, how about Gen. Custer? smaller numbers, but same abuse of power.
Craven, as I understand your original question, you were looking for an evaluation of Asherman's comment in another thread. I think his thought is embodied in the following quote:
"Hitler was undoubtedly a monster, but his legacy did have one redeeming feature. Hitler demonstrated the ultimate expression of racism, and revealed it for the ugly cancer that it is. The Final Solution was the logical conclusion inherent to all racial superiority beliefs. Hitler's henchmen applied the power of modern technology to implement ideas on a scale that had previously been impossible. Hitler's ideas were not so very different than those widely held before him, and in all parts of the world. The Japanese, as the superior race, believed themselves justified in enslaving and murdering Korean and Chinese during WWII. Stalin slaughtered millions because they were inferior and an impediment to his building his Perfect World. African tribes still exterminate one another whenever possible. One group, however defined, is superior to all others, and that superiority justifies whatever they choose to do to their inferiors."
It seems to me that Asherman is patently wrong. This is the same as saying that it is good to commit the most evil act imaginable because in so doing we reveal to the world the knowledge of just how evil and destructive that act is. And God forbid we be denied good and useful knowledge!
By this rule, we can justify our first use of the atomic bomb. We demonstrated the deadly nature of the weapon and proved that it ought never be used.
By this rule, any atrocity can be justified, just as long as it is greater than any previous atrocity and thereby proves that it ought not be repeated.
My answer is no, Hitler did not do the world a favor by demonstrating that racism is deadly. We already knew that . We also knew that technology was and is capable of making it increasingly deadly.
I would say that the argument is not only wrong, it is just plain silly.
One thing that strikes me about the "good coming from evil" argument, as posed by some in this thread, is that is is so relative. Almost every benefit that might accrue to, say for example the US, would result in some detriment to some other country. If the goal is to promote world peace, economic prosperity, and personal freedom, then there is little to be gained when enormous benefits go to one nation while all the others remain in squalor.
Hitler brought on a war in which uncounted millions died and in which human suffering was raised to unheard of levels. To say that all this was good because it ultimately resulted in an increase in the American standard of living is just plain wrong headed or silly. At best it represents an intensely parochial point of view. I would agree that all morals are relative, but they must be couched in a global framework.
The fact that someone will benefit from war, does not make war morally justifiable.
Craven, Your question was:
"Was Hitler good for the world in any way?"
Perhaps you did not mean for the word "good" to apply in the moral sense, but in the sense of a "benefit."
Looking at it this way, we might observe that when any event occurs, it is likely that some will benefit and some will not. If an earthquake occurs, many will suffer, but those who do the clean up and rebuilding will benefit.
However, you specifically asked if the "world," which I take to mean the world as a whole, would be done some good, meaning benefit. We are talking here of benefits, as held separate from morality for the sake of discussion, that resulted specifically from Hitler's various actions.
What happens at this juncture is that we standing somewhere at some time, say in the US in 1938, and trying to see into a totaly vailed future and predict what might have happened if... Or in 2002 and wondering what if...
Certain things did happen. The US became the leading power in the world. But, the US was probably already the leading power, or would have been without the war. But maybe not. Who knows. And was it worth the process. How about all those dead Americans. What if they had lived? How might they have affected the course of history? We don't know. Can never know. And, does the US becoming the leading power, maybe nearly the total power, benefit the world as a whole? How will we get agreement on that one?
The Russians lost 20MM+ in the war. Do we suppose that they look upon that war and its aftermath as a benefit? I wonder. As I think Booman may have said as one point (I paraphrase), anything that benefits one party is likely to be a detriment to some other. So, maybe it makes no sense to frame the question in this way. We only become ensnarled in unanswerable queations about a future shrouded in darkness. We can't have "what if..." We can only have "what is."
As Yogi Berra said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."
I'm amazed this thread has gone on so long. The answer is simply NO.
(He doesn't even provide a useful lesson from History, because for most people as soon as the name Hitler is invoked, reason and dispassionate thought go out the window).
Notsofast Steve... Because of Hitler, The Black American soldier, was able see he was held in less regard than German prisoners of war. This planted seeds of realization, that bore fruit in the next decade as the civil rights movement. the Black, and Jewish alliance could have had it's orgin here also.
It seems that some feel that I've fallen prey to the old fallacy, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The concentrated effort, especially in the United States, to root out racism began just after WWII. Was it the horror and revulsion that the world felt when confronted with the Nazi Final Solution, that provided important impetus for elimination of racial chauvinism? I believe that it was. However, no one can really be sure what the world would be like if any historical event just didn't happen, or happened differently than it did.
Chauvinism, feelings that one's own group is somehow superior to all others, has been evident in every culture, at ever time and place in the world. European expansion began in the late 15th century, and the Portuguese discovered sugar cane. To grow the sweetness that all of Europe craved, the Portuguese originated the plantation system. The intense labor required for sugar cultivation came from slaves. Slavery had always been a feature of sub-Saharan tribal life/economics, and the Portuguese had no trouble-buying slaves. African slaves were treated brutally and so over worked that death often occurred within a year of captivity. Like all slave cultures, the Masters lived in dread of slave revolt, and salved their consciences by dehumanizing their slaves. "They aren't really human, like us. So we will work them like cattle. Their deaths were a small price to pay for the fortunes that we will make from sugar." No one challenged their assertions, or thought the Portuguese especially morally corrupt, or racist. Of course, they were by modern standards, but during the 15th through the end of the 18th centuries their conduct was acceptable everywhere in the world. The Lords were always superior to the commons, and the Master superior to the Slave.
The sugar trade was so profitable that soon everyone was getting into the act, and everyone was buying slaves and working them to death. The Spanish used the Indians, an inferior people, to work the mines and the vast estancias that were the foundations of Mexico and the Southwest. The British would sooner give up all of North America, than to risk losing their plantations in the Caribbean. Slaves of every ethnicity were not uncommon in Colonial society, but on the great plantations of the American South, Negro Slavery came to predominate. Blacks and Indians were regarded as inferior, and again no one questioned it, or objected to the enslavement of "inferiors".
While all that was going on, the Enlightenment was beginning a revolution in the way Europeans thought about almost everything. Enlightenment thinkers believed in being rational, and in questioning traditional wisdom. Science, as we know it, is strongly rooted in thinking from the mid-17th century. During the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers were active in political science, economics, and social structures. The Founding Fathers were enthusiastic heirs of the Enlightenment. Their notions of justice, fairness, and equality, all spring from the Enlightenment. The Constitution embodies those values and ideas about equality. Slavery was the acid test, and it proved to be the greatest challenge to the nation for almost a hundred years (1785-1865). What we tend to forget is that almost everyone in the country idealized political equality, and equality before the law, as the proper intent of the Constitution. Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, people from Eastern Europe, Jews, and on and on and on, were as being "racially inferior" to those whose ancestors originated in Northern and Western Europe. They all were entitled to political and legal equality, but that didn't change the "fact" that they were inferior.
I wish it were otherwise, but most Americans until after WWII accepted those chauvinistic prejudices as "fact", and rarely questioned the morality of their prejudices. WWI didn't change the racial prejudices of the country, the number of Jim Crow Laws increased, the number of lynchings during those years remain a national disgrace. The Great Depression set ethnic groups against one another. Refugees from the Dust Bowl were too "inferior" to be admitted into California. Blacks were the first to be unemployed and they were the last to receive White charity.
Things didn't chance immediately after WWII, but the beginnings of the end of racism in America can be easily seen. Truman's integration of the military was a major step. During the Fifties, the movement for racial equality was slow, but it was beginning to happen. White America was beginning to come see that Hitler's racism wasn't qualitatively different than American racism. Could Americans adopt a Final Solution of their own? Most Americans rejected that outright, and determined that things in this country had to change. Enter the Sixties. My generation fought hard against institutionalized racism, chauvinism of all sorts. Young people struggled, were jailed, clubbed and killed for promoting racial equality. And, we were pretty much successful in putting Jim Crow into a cold grave. After the mid-sixties, it's become increasingly unfashionable and objectionable for anyone to express chauvinistic sentiments.
Would racial prejudice and chauvinism been so strongly worked against in this country if it hadn't been for Hitler's example? If it wasn't the final understanding that racial chauvinism is the most pernicious of prejudices that led to the American Civil Rights Movement, what was it? I remember the sentiments expressed by others in the movement during those turbulent days, and Hitler's racial theories were often pointed to as an example of what racial hatred really meant. Maybe there were no American Treblinkas, but the attitudes that made Hitler's camps possible were alive and well in Mississippi. Conditions for minorities during the sixties weren't equal, but they were better than during the first sixty years of the 20th century. Things were changing, just not very fast.
Of course changes weren't immediatly noticed, after the war, that;s why I said "seeds" were planted.
