Toughest Philosophical Questions

Your attempts to rationalize Hitler's actions as good goes way beyond the pale of sanity.

Title: Hitler on race and health in Mein Kampf: a stimulus to anti-racism in the health professions
Authors: Bhopal, Raj
Issue Date: 2005
Abstract: Historically, it is impossible to ignore the impact of Hitler on the social and philosophical concept of race. By the start of World War II in 1939 his book Mein Kampf had sold 5 200 000 copies and been translated into 11 languages. His views had a particular impact on the practice of medicine. Reading Hitler today ought to increase the resolve of medical and other health professionals - 'the staunchest supporters of the Nazi regime' - to combat racism. 'Inter-racial' divisions in modern society are still reflected in health gradients, and modern genetics has re-awoken discussion of eugenic theories. This paper, based on quotations from Hitler on racial admixture, the superiority of the Aryan race and the creation of a superior society, seeks to assist professionals in health and health sciences to reflect on these writings and to strengthen anti-racism in public health, medicine and science. The author contends that racism is a major public health issue.

By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor, "euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men, women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers, camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans, Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. Among them 1,000,000 were children under eighteen years of age.1 And none of these monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or war-deaths.

The Holocaust was accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[184] Jews and Romani were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."[185]
Other targets of the Nazi mass murder or "Nazi genocidal policy",[186] included Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, and others), Romani people (see Porajmos), mentally ill (see T-4 Euthanasia Program), Homosexuals and "sexual deviants", Jehovah's Witnesses, and political opponents. R. J. Rummel estimates that 16,315,000 people died as a result of genocide, just over 10.5 million Slavs, just under 5.3 million Jews, 258,000 Romani and 220,000 homosexuals.[187][188] Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition would produce a death toll of 17 million.[189] A figure of 26 million is given in Service d'Information des Crimes de Guerre: Crimes contre la Personne Humain, Camps de Concentration. Paris, 1946, p. 197. Adam Jones has argued that the Nazi killing of 2.8 million Soviet POWs in eight months in 1941-2 was an act of "gendercide" (since only men were killed) and that it "vies with the genocide in Rwanda as the most concentrated mass killing in human history."[190]
In the longer term,[191] the Nazis wanted to exterminate some 30–45 million Slavs.[192] According to Roger Chickering, "Had the Germans won the war, they would have undertaken the largest genocide in history."[193] Some historians speak of the siege of Leningrad operations in terms of genocide, as a "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally.[194]

"Malignant intentions?" Hell, he was responsible for the execution of over twenty million humans.

Hitler told Himmler that it was not enough for the Jews simply to die; they must die in agony

You're probably one of those holocaust deniers.

Yes, Hitler was evil down to the core

You wrote,

Quote:

Are you saying that a man who never did anything for the people, a man who everyone hated and thought was evil, was elected to political office? And I'm being foolish?

I never said any such thing; that's all in your own imagination and/or making. You must understand the times in order to understand how and why he was able to take over the power in Germany. The world was in the midst of a Great Depression, and the German people were tired of the ineffective leadership during those times. Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg. Here's a good summary from the web:

Quote:

Summary
Hitler's rise to power was based upon long-term factors - resentment in the German people, the weakness of the Weimar system - which he exploited through propaganda (paid for by his rich, Communist-fearing backers), the terror of his stormtroopers, and the brilliance of his speeches.
During the 'roaring twenties' Germans ignored this vicious little man with his programme of hatred. But when the Great Depression ruined their lives, they voted for him in increasing numbers. Needing support, and thinking he could control Hitler, President Hindenburg made the mistake in January 1933 of giving Hitler the post of Chancellor.

Erm... If you underestimate someone "correctly" you are not underestimating them. If someone deserves their estimation, it is not underestimating.

The impression I get from this discussion is that you resist the idea that good intentions can result in bad action.

Quote:

You're probably one of those holocaust deniers.

No, I am not. I live in Europe. I've seen a concentration camp with my own eyes, and my grandfather was a prisoner in one. He fought with the Dutch resistance and got captured and sent to Sachsenhausen. I've seen the lab there where they experimented on human beings, sometimes by cutting off an arm and timing how long it took for the person to bleed to death.

But I still don't believe that the people who did these things were evil. That is a naive way of looking at it.

Quote:

Yes, Hitler was evil down to the core

Aren't you the same person who ridicules religious beliefs on other threads? I find it rather curious that you would believe in an absolute such as evil. Do you not know that "evil" is merely a perspective?