Do you think Adolf Hitler was mad? Or just bad?

1. 80

   Ella Quirkposted 11 years ago

   Do you think Adolf Hitler was mad? Or just bad?
   
   

   replyreport
2. 69

   Radical Rogposted 11 years ago

   Context is so important. Prior to coming to power Germany was crippled due to paying reparations for the 1st World War. With rampant inflation, millions out of work and starving the then government pleaded to have this eased. France refused so giving fuel to extremists like Hitler.
   But then there is his agreement with the Catholic Church for the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire throughout Europe. His Thousand Year Reich, any connection to the thousand year reign of Christ described in Revelation? Hitler the Messiah? Consider the efforts the Nazis made to find and take Holy icons and relics to Germany the Arian or chosen people ideology. Plus slaughter the Jews who, according to some, failed Christ before.
   Mad! Stark raving bonkers but I wonder if any madder than many other world leaders still alive today.

   replyreport
   1. 80

      Ella Quirkposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I see what you mean. Thanks.

      replyreport
3. 76

   alancaster149posted 11 years ago

   Adolf Schickelgruber, alias Hitler, was largely demented. He'd be sectioned these days, or be in charge of somewhere like Iran or Libya. He was delusional at a time when most Germans/Austrians/Sudeten Deutsche suffered from a corporate persecution complex.
   They largely saw the German/Austrian surrender as a betrayal and blamed either of the Kaisers for pulling them into war in the first place. (It was originally Kaiser Bill's decision to back Kaiser Franz against Tsar Nick his cousin George and the French cockerel, come what may).
   Additionally he laboured under the various pre-conceptions that Germans/Austrians do even nowadays about the world around them. For one thing he believed he was not alone in his fear of Communism in invading Russia, but like Napoleon before him underestimated the size of the country and its seasons. Up to the end he moved map pins around in his bunker, thinking them to be his no longer extant divisions.
   Where he wasn't delusional was in his treatment of 'minorities'. That was plain insanity, but he couldn't have achieved all of it without his co-conspirators, the ones who 'were only obeying orders', and he couldn't have achieved his rise to power without the connivance of a large part of the German/Austrian population. Vichy France, Italy and Germany's other 'satellites' didn't lag behind in their part, however. The Vichy government embarrassed the Germans by pushing their 'undesirables' at them without being asked, as did the Belgians and Dutch. Blame was too conveniently allocated to a small group of high-ranking Nazis who could be easily identified. It would have been next to impossible to squeeze more into the courthouse at Nuremberg.
   The French did manage to identify their own bogeymen, aka Laval and Petain. They knew there were many others, but the Paris courthouses would have been swamped as well!
   It's just as well he did himself in, isn't it.

   replyreport
4. 80

   PoeticPhilosophyposted 11 years ago

   He was a badass. My grandpa's been watching his documentary of the world war on Netflix for the past-2 day's. Guy was nuts.

   replyreport
   1. 76

      alancaster149posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      He couldn't have done it alone. The Germans ignored the dark side of what was happening, pretended it wasn't happening and told themselves they could do nothing about it because the Gestapo would see them off to the KZ camps for rocking the boat.

      replyreport
5. 69

   WalterPoonposted 11 years ago

   Anyone who advocates murder in whatever name has something wrong with his brains. No one consciously want to be bad. But the very fact that he had the good sense to commit suicide to avoid capture obviously shows that he is not mad. If anyone is mad, I would think it's Saddam Hussein who would rather hide in a rat hole, when faced with imminent capture, considering that he had earlier told his countrymen to die for their nation.

   replyreport
6. 73

   KoffeeKlatch Galsposted 11 years ago

   I think he was just plain nuts.  Of course, there's no question that he was troubled.

   replyreport
7. 83

   gmwilliamsposted 11 years ago

   Adolf Hitler was beyond bad, he was the personification of pure, unadulterated evil.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  As a young man, he indicated that he wanted to make Germany a prime and a racially pure country, implementing the nefarious things he elucidated in his book, MEIN KAMPF.  He indoctrinated Germany and conquered most of Europe, enslaving those he conquered, especially Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians (ostarbeiter).  He all but exterminated Roma and Jews.  He clearly stated such goals in his book.   
   
   In addition to that, he was against the mentally and physically handicapped, considering them to be unworthy of life and useless months.  He established euthansia experiments which later would be used in the concentration camps to gas people.  However, the outcry from religious establishments stopped these euthansia experiments on these people.
   
   Hitler was not mad.  Far from it.  His mind was lucid regarding his diabolical goals of world conquest.  Luckily, this never come to fruition.  At the end, he even turned against the German people.  He asserted to his inner circle that if Germany loses the war it is because the German people were inferior and not worthy of him.

   replyreport
   1. 76

      alancaster149posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      That's about the top and bottom of it. Too many preconceptions on the world around them deluded the Germans into following Hitler, then he turned on them. It's the old one about the snake biting itself in the neck, isn't it..

      replyreport
8. 79

   cyoung35posted 11 years ago

   To do the things he did you would have to be a lot of both.

   replyreport
9. 85

   krillcoposted 11 years ago

   I believe that he had an Axis II diagnosis of personality disorder, likely narcissistic/anti-social in today's parlance. He was also a pharmaceutical addict which complicated his mental health issues. Eventually, he very well could have had a psychotic break towards the end of his life.

   replyreport