Myth and Reality

While Hitler was a dictator with some bad habits, urinating on women was not one of them. That old story is English propaganda sent out during the war.


The point about Hitler being messed up by WWI is a good one. Before the war he was a dreamy painter. After the war he was the Fuehrer.


This shows to me that studying implements of war carries with them the warning that war is a bad thing and should be avoided if possible. WWI was the root of the entire mess and the balme for that can be divided up equally among the European powers.


In fact, its curious to me that WWI started over the issue of Austria "punishing" Serbia. Well, who just recently "punished" Serbia? Bill Clinton and the USA! Gotta wonder if maybe Austria had the right idea back in 1914 and we could have avoided a lot of sh*t if England, Russia, France, and the USA had let her do it.


Ain't history fun?

[Big Norm]

History is fun. And the more you get into it, the more you began to realise that there is never any one thing that causes another thing to happen. Your comment about WW1 causing WW2 carries a certain amount of truth in it. But it is just one of many deciding factors.


WW1 was not just started by the killing of one archduke and his wife. The guns on neutral Belgium were pointed in all directions because they knew that armies of either France, England or Germany would have to go through them. I am sure that they were very much afraid that they would have to fight all three at the same time to defend their neutrality. Their bravery in WW1 is a testiment to how strongly they cherished it. Their stupidity was that their military was limited to two cartridges of weapons practice per month. They also ordered all their cannons from one source and that was Germany who, in return, delayed the delivery until they went through Belgium. Who won WW1? I vote for Belgium because they fought so hard after the war began with limited weapons that they delayed the strict time table set by the Germans to conquer France. King Leopold of Belgium is truely one of histories great unknown leaders.

Few people realise how close America came to fighting England in WW1. America was a neutral country and we were shipping goods to Denmark, another neutral country. But the English were capturing our ships and, in effect pirating our goods. The British said that we were shipping war material to Denmark and that Denmark was then selling it to the enemy. But the British refused to define what was war material and continued to raid Americas ships. While America would not have allied itself with Germany, the furior over shipping almost caused America to go to war with the British.

What caused WW2? What really brought Hilter to power? Was Hitler crazy? Was Hitler as evil as Stalin? Was America trapped by the British into going to war with Germany in both wars? Did Roosevelt know beforehand that Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed? Did the British know it a month before it happened? Did the Dutch West Indies know about it three months before it happened? Could Hitler have been stopped before he went so far? Did an allied sniper have Hilter in his sights during the war and then get called off by HQ? That, gentlmen, are continuing debates for another time and place.


But there is one thought that I would like to inject in your minds before I leave. While Hitler was truely an evil man and I believe that that there is a special place for him for him in the here after. But he may not be the most evil man in RECENT history.


Hitler butchered about 10% of his population.


Stalin also butchered about 10% of his population.


President Roosevelt felt that Stalin offered the best chance for democracy in the Soviet Union. He also felt that the British were more interested in maintaining the monarchy and their empire. Winston Churchill knew that the Marxism was more dangerous than Nazism because Marxism can more easily masquarade as a democracy. Who is right?


Pol Pot butchered an estimated 20-40% of his population and America punished him by allowing his son to graduate from West Point last year.


Evil men, right? But Chairman Moa butchered more of his population than all of these men combined. So why is Hitler held up as the most evil man the world has ever created while all these other men are mostly ignored? Another discussion for a different time and place.

[Joe]

If you read a serious book on Hitler you will see that when WW I ended he did not want to return to civilian life, he wanted to keep the ONLY real job he had, the army. He was very seccessful in the army, winning the Iron Cross 2ed & 1st class. He was only a corporal when the War ended, as he refused the promotion to sergeant a number of times because he did not want to be transfered to another assignment and leave the few friends he had. Because of the communist cells that had crept into the military after 1917, he was assigned after the armistice by his commanding officer to lecture to the troops that the army was betayed at home. He was very good as a lecturer, even without any training and folks began listening to him. He used simple slogans to fire up the early crowds, which brought out their anger, fears and resentment. Most of the topics he spoke about were taken from other "leaders of hate" that existed in Austeria & Germany before the War. He discovered he had a "talent", so when he was discharged from the army he joined the small, insignificant German Workers Party which was one of 73 similar type groups in Germany in 1920.

I don't think that the War caused Hitler to become the ultimate leader of hate in Westren Europe, he just capitolized on what the average person was very concerned about at the time; communism and the emergence of extream nationalism. He eventually discovered a scape goat who was "really" responsible and he felt deserved the blame for

German's situation. The rest is history.

I don't know what else there could be but WWI to explain the transformation of a harmless lazy, dreaming artist wanna-be into a brutal class-act despot and messianic war leader of the Germans.


There were plenty of other would-be Fuehrers in Germany after WWI. I don't think the war guilt trip laid on Germany or the crippling reparations were a very good idea in retrospect. But France wanted revenge and England probably did too.


Notice they didn't make that same mistake after WWII.


There was no good reason for World War One in my opinion. It was a totally useless event. And had the United States not entered on the side of the Allies in 1917 and saved the war, the exhausted combatants were ready to quit as all the armies had had enough and were near mutiny. That too, would have provided a better ending than what we got, although the mass insanity should have been avoided in the first place.


Of course had there been no WWI or II, my gun collection would be considerably smaller.

[Joe]

Herb

Please read the 2 volumn series on Hitler by Ian Kershaw. The first volumn covers the period from 1889 to 1936. Kershaw's research is serious and these books are interesting, but they read very slowly.


The author states, "The First World War made Hitler possible. Without the humiliation of defeat and the upheaval of revolution this failed artist and social drop out would not have discovered what to do with his life by entering politics......without the trauma of war, defeat and revolution, without the political radicalization of German society that this truma brought about, this demagogue would have been without an audience for his hate filled message". Without the War Hitler never would have become the leader of Germany.

During his early years as a painter [1908-13] in Vienna, Hitler attended many speeches given by anti semites and other purveyors of hate. They did not have fertile ground for their message to grow, at that time. The loss of the War and its aftermath in Germany gave Hitler an audience that was very receptive of his message.

I don't think the War changed Hitler, it was the social enviorment after the hostilities that changed the country, so they were willing to accept his idea of a "new" Germany.

[Big Norm]

Joe, you made some good points in your discussion. I did not know that Hitler was offered promotions in the army. But I think that I read someplace that he did not have many friends in his army unit. Somebody had stolen his arts supply knap sack and Hitler was mad at everyone for the theft


Hitler and his party almost road off into the sunset before Hindenberg formed a collition government with him. In Hitlers second attempt at being elected there was a big decline in his popularity and he almost vanished from the scene. Hindenberg felt that he could control Hitler and his wacko ideas. Unfortunately, Hindenberg died and Hitler took control.


But in my original thread I questioned why is Hitler hated so much that the German people, even to this day, are being punished for Hitlers errant ways? There are other evil men who were just as evil and maniacal. I had previously mentioned just a few. Personally, I think that Stalin was worse. But the movie "The Killing Fields" made me feel that Pol Pot was pretty awful too. And Mao Tse-tung rally takes the cake for butchery. But the feelings of hate for these other creeps is not as strong as they are for Hitler and many German people even to this day.


Why doesn't everybody call Stalin the bastard son of a prostitute? Maybe even conceived by a member of the Romanoffs royal family. A guy whose only claim to fame before the communist revolution was that he was a small time bank robber. And after the revolution, his only talent was that he murdered nearly everyone that he came in contact with, including his first wife and maybe even Lenin himself. He was a guy who was legitimatly diagnosted as a lunatic by a qualified psychiatrist, who not so surprisingly vanished. Why aren't the Soviet people villianized in the same way the German people have been? What is the difference between the KGB and the Gestapo?


Of course nobody knows much about Pol Pot and Mao Tse-tung. Does anybody even know what the Kimer Rouge stood for? Have we forgotten that we fought the Chinese in Korea? Sometimes I wonder if the reason I see nothing about these creeps on TV is that it isn't politically correct.

[JAMES]

I believe that the four main reasons Hitler gets more blame are that he nearly conquered all of Europe. (most of Western civiliziation) Second, most of the people he killed were Jewish or others based solely on their religious beliefs. Stalin did go after Jewish people, but mainly just his "enemies," nor did he conquer most of Europe, at least the Western parts. Third, it happened very recently. Forth, Hitler lost. History is written by the winner


Since Hitler nearly conquered all of Europe, his deeds obviously are going to gain more attention than a leader such as Pol Pot or Stalin.


Remember most "great" civilizations (Persians, Eyptians, Greeks, Romans, Napoleonic France) conquered much of the known world, and committed what we would consider mass atrocities. However, for many reasons, the biggest in my opinion being communication technology, leaders such as Alexander the Great, Ramses, and Ceaser are remembered more or less as great leaders, although they committed many of the same crimes Hitler did.


I have gone on long enough, could go on longer, though.

Hitler was a manic depressive, if they had prozac back then, WWII might never had happened!

[JAMES]

Sorry, back to Lugers.

[Big Norm]

James,


good points. But I really think that the reason that Hitler is characterized as the worst of the worst is that they took so many pictures both stills and motion. This lends itself to television well. Who would even know about Pol Pot if it was not for one movie. He never took pictures of his atrocities and neither did Chairman Mao.


Your right, I should not have gone off on what I wrote and I should restrict myself to Lugers and the point of this forum. Its just that my brother has an APAR girl from Germany staying with him. She told me about a vacation that she took in England. When some children heard that she was from Germany they started giving her the Nazi salute and making remarks. This event was fairly recent. This reminded me of some letters my mother received from relatives that lived in Germany early in Hitlers rise to power. They told my mother about how frightened they were of him. So I guess I just was a little bent out of shape when I heard what these people did to a young German girl who just happened to be vacationing in Great Britain and vented my anger in the wrong place.


Please accept my apologies for going off like I did. I will now take your example and go back to the real point of this forum, the intelligent and enjoyable discussion of Lugers.

Big Norm

[JAMES]

I didn't mean to say we shouldn't discuss this. Sometimes I just see some off topics that don't belong, In my opinion this is a topic that is OK, but then again its not my board.

[Jim Van Eldik]

Herb, Thanks for the history lesson. I've examined several history books and was never able to ascertain a reason for WWI. That one cost me an uncle. Do the politicians now have a better sense of history? Here's hope!!!