Nonsense. The man was indeed consummate evil. Nazism was never anything more than the psychotic element of a nation being put in charge. Hitler and his henchmen were a collection of sadists and psychopaths, talented yes, but essentially evil. Nazism itself is simply not explainable as a coherent political philosophy, it was an illogical mess, a sort of bastardized Darwinism, it had none of the philosophical underpinnings of real politcal philosophies like Jeffersonian Democracy or Marxism. It was simply an ad hoc way to power suitable for the times. Have you ever actually tried to read Nazi political philosophical works? They are wretchedly stupid.

I thought you would place emphasis on timely proximity, which has, I am sure something to do with the level of intensity.
Within the timely proximity is not only a certain closeness to the lesson, but also an undeniable political usefulness of some of the lesson's particular aspects.

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I'd recommend David Irving's Hitler's War available here as a free download as are Irving's other books...

http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/

http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Hitler/index.html

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1983 300D

Not as I read Hitler himself. I haven't read widely enough in other Nazi political thinkers to comment. I see Hitler's motivation as not that dissimilar from many people who recoil at the idea of individuals being the centers of their own moral universe. Lots of people face the same choices and turn towards religion, I see Hitler combining the power of religion and the state together in one in order to give the individual something larger than themselves to which they can make a commitment.
Calling such attitudes 'pure evil' is a mistake in my view because it fails to explain why millions of people were and are drawn to it as good.
Again, this is not because I am in favor of it. I am strongly opposed to fascism but keeping it at bay requires understanding its appeal.

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Uhh, you mean THAT Irving?

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x2.

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1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
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Yes, the one who found the complete Goebbels Diaries in the Soviet Archives among other accomplishments. Have you read any of his books?

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1983 300D

I sincerely doubt he was able to think in any kind of moral terms. Nazism is a power dynamic, not a political philosophy, in fact at one point it was just as likely to be a leftist movement as it was to be a rightist phenom, Hitler turned it into a far-right movement simply because that's where the money and power was in Germany at the time, if he had thought he would have been better off as a leader of the masses, he would have been that instead. People are drawn to those kinds of dynamics because they feel somehow empowered by it themselves, if the politician plays the game correctly. Hitler was able to make them part of stamping out the evil Jew and battling the Communist thugs, all by the skillful use of propaganda. Ideaology had little to do with, because Nazism has no real ideaology, indeed, Mein Kampf is a wretched little book that is a mish mash of ridiculousness, I would hardly call it a systematic philosophy, in fact no one read the piece of garbage until Hitler was pushed into the fore-front of the political scene by the Great Depression, an event that made Hitler's anti-Semitic screed saleable to the general populace. I view his rise as a kind of accident. Hitler said the Jews were out to destroy the German race and make the Germans slaves. Since Jews tend to store gold and jewels in case of pogram, when the Depression arrived, the Jews seemed like they were the ones who had profitted from it because they were the only ones with hard money. Suddenly, Hitler looked like he was the one calling the game correctly.

I read several sections of the trial records Irving vs Lipstadt.

Boy, that's gonna be one heck of a can of worms being opened up ...

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I certainly would not call it a systematic philosophy. But it does give insight into Hitler's motivation (if one accepts it as an accurate portrayal of his thinking). To call him evil, sets up the expectation that he is motivated by what people think is generally evil and as such is completely different than the average person who obviously could not be motivated to pursue pure evil. It makes Hitler and National Socialism incomprehensible.
I doubt that National Socialism could have been leftist. Hitler either to his ass kicked by Marxists on the job (or was threatened to get his ass kicked) so he hated them intensely.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Lipstadt has her own agenda. Irving's book Hitler's War stands on its own. Do you think questioning the details of history should be punishable by incarceration or does it depend upon which details are being questioned?

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1983 300D

Very well said. I have yet to read Mein Kampf, simply because I know its not going to be good and I don't want to waste my time. But I will at some point, I think I have a good copy around my bookshelves somewhere.

From my fairly limited readings into the Nazi political machine I would have to say its all BS. It was based on power and control, nothing more or less. It was simply presented at the right time and place, by a very skilled speaker. Thats what caused it to gain traction.

I have a copy of The Bunker which I thought was done pretty well, I'll have to see this one and compare.

FYI in the back of Guderians book he gave some very interesting impressions of the various Nazi leaders. Working with people for years you get to know them whether you want to or not.

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Politics and history blend with proximity. Even that teaches lessons. Look at the geniuses who already know how history will judge Bush. They are so intent on their uh, ... point of view that they couldn't objectively evaluate Bush even if they wanted to.

The same will be true for Obama. Obama came to power in a strongly divided nation. Nothing he has done has healed that rift. His supporters blame his detractors and vice versa. How will history judge him? Damned if I know. Do you?

Getting back to Hitler's legacy, he provides a wonderful opportunity for demagoguery. If one disagrees with this or that political event or action, invoke Nazism. So what? That's the nature of politics. That it demonstrates a lack of imagination isn't important. Most politics do.

The move to the left culminated in "The Night of the Long Knives", in which the leftist factions, the Socialists in the National Socialist Party as it were, were rounded up and executed by Hitler. Wiki Ernst Roehm for further information on the subject. A more modern example of leftist National Socialism can easily be seen in the Baath Party, which is essentially the Arab version of Nazism and more left than right in governmental philosophy. But I digress.

But back to the subject of his evilness. Hitler was IMO, ultimately a radical Darwinist, a man heavily influenced by Darwinism and the applications of Darwinistic ideas to political philosophy. His "world view" was essentially racist, it was a system of thinking he held from early on. At it's heart was the idea that there were only a few "pure" races on the planet, the Aryans, the Japanese, and later he added "the Latin race" and the Arabs as a matter of political expediency as fascism took hold in Spain and Italy and fascist movements began to challenge Britain in the Arab world, and of course, the Jews.

The Jews, in his view, were a people who had realized the same thing Hitler had centuries before and were actively plotting to destroy the only other utterly pure racial group, the Germans, which in his view, they almost succeeded in doing when the evil Jews hatched World War I and engineered Germany's defeat and attempted enslavement in the aftermath - it was this view that ultimately came to be held by all Germans and led to his rise to power on a wave of anti-Semitism caused by Germany's defeat and the Great Depression, and finally led to the attempted extermination of the Jews.

His view was that human history was a Darwinistic struggle, a competition for the finite resources of the planet, and that in the end the strongest race that maintained it's racial purity and sought to constantly improve it's genetic stock would rule the world. The other people of the world were polluted genetic stock (undermenschen), the Chinese and South Asians subjected to rape through invasion, the Americans freely co-mingled and the Africans were not even thought of as human, and the Slavs the descendents of a barbaric mob, while the Aryans had done a fine job of protecting their women from barbaric rape and had maintained a social system that frowned on racial or even cross-national breeding and as such were in Hitler's view the most highly evolved race on the planet who simply needed a strong leader to Awaken them in order to take their place as masters of the world.

His evilness came from this view. The undermenschen were to be enslaved, and the competing pure races were to be used to achieve the ultimate dominance of the Aryans and perhaps given a slice of the world or a sphere of influence for their aid, and the Jews were to be exterminated. Extermination was always a central part of Nazi philosopy. Undermenschen races were to be subjected to the management akin to that of livestock, used as beasts and exterminated at will. Lands populated by undermenschen needed by the Aryans for living space were to be de-populated thru extermination. Scientifically, we would call this evolution by natural selection and superior adaptibility, morally, we call it evil.

Oddly, Nazism, with it's Darwinistic base, is the most "scientific" of all of the political philosophies. Other philosophies believe in an eternally sustainable planet. Nazism does not. In the end, they are probably the ones who are scientifically correct, while the rest of us are facing extinction in a polluted world of overpopulation and diminishing resources, the Nazis would have been living in a well-managed abundant low-population planet, but heck, its going to be a lot more fun on the way to extinction than Nazism ever would have been.

I think it depends on how well versed the accuser is on the subject of Nazism. Nazism is an easily recognized political philosophy that at it's core is quite simple and goes thusly: I, for some reason I think is true, believe I have a right to take whatever you own by force for my own use, and I can kill you or maim you if I find the need to do so furthers my own aims. It is simply the opposite of the foundation of civilization's central idea: rather than societies being ultimately ruled by law and not men, Nazism is the rule of men without regard to law. It is really that simple, and accusations based on that premise are more than justified and valid, as much as calling someone a Republican or a Democrat because of some evident central belief is.