[Closed] Hitler is idolised in India: WTF???

Say what you like about his politics, but he was clearly a very powerfull leader.

And how many people in this country wear Che t-shirts or have read his books? Strange how one mans revolutionary is another mans mass murderer.

"Say what you like about his politics, but he was clearly a very powerfull leader."
I fear I have just laughed so hard I fouled myself. 😛

when I was an angry fired up student I used to question the Che T-shirt wearers, about why they were celebrating the instigator of mass murder as if it were some kind of "revoloutionary" activity, most didn't know what I was talking about. now I just tut a bit. But yeah, To be fair, as my politics tutor put it, Hitler pulled a large and varied country out of recession and made them into an international superpower very quickly and very efficiantly. If He'd have won, he'd be a Legend and the whole concentration camp thing would be brushed under the carpet, but he didn't and now we all learn that success has a price, and its down to the leader as to who pays it.

...... and he had a nice side parting. Tidy gent, presentable, not like the riff raff you get these days who don't even own a comb. Say what you like about the extermination of the Jews, at least you could take him home to meet your mother!

"The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side."

Yeh, and haven't we all got a "at least the trains ran on time" tattoo ?

We tend to see Hitler as being utterly defined by the holocaust.I'm not making a judgement on that particularly, but we are vigorously reminded of it. That is not an accident, the memory of it is kept front and centre by (amongst others) jewish organisations committed to doing so.

Don't know, but I suspect the consciousness of the holocaust is much, much lower in India. They clearly know about it, but I suspect it isn't seen as the single most vivid event of the 20th century. If that's right, then their perspective is perhaps forgivably similar to that of large numbers of people in Britain and Europe in the 1930s, who admired Hitler's patriotism, drive, oratory, charisma etc etc etc (although most of them were more into Mussolini perhaps.)

I think the attempt to have Hitler without genocide, aggression and barbarism is exceedingly naive and silly viewed from 2010. But his widespread appeal before he got down to the serious business of actually exterminating Europe's jewish population and plunging the entire continent into bloody warfare cannot be denied.

History shows a fascination with evil characters and eventually they become distanced from their reality and take new forms within legend, think of Vlad the Impaler becoming Dracula as an extreme example. Obviously we might imagine that with more advanced forms of documentation, then a more accurate record will be recalled throughout the future but the example above shows that might not be the case.
Hitler was a realatively short time ago in the general scheme of things and I'm sure that time will alter the perception of him as all of the tangible links gradually die away.

But his widespread appeal before he got down to the serious business of actually exterminating Europe's jewish population

My 20th century history isn't that strong but iirc, the collapse of the Weimar Republic was almost a foregone conclusion. The Treaty of Versailles was excessively punitive and had more to do with a desire for retribution than a well thought out blueprint for continued peace. Given the slaughter of 1914-18 you can empathise to a degree but by effectively emasculating Germany as an economic power the seeds for future discontent and civil unrest were sown in 1918. All it needed was a strong and charismatic leader to emerge from the chaos of post war politics and Germans would follow. (I think the same could be said for most countries.) Had the communists won then we could have seen Germany develop as a communist state and maybe the outcome would have been just as bloody....just different.

The fact that he was more of a thug than his counterparts and was able to gather other strong people to his cause shows that he was either a wholly charismatic leader or simply that the Germans wanted someone to lead them,... anyone and the consequences could look after themselves.

Should history be rewritten to show him as a strong leader who had an unfortunate character flaw which lead to the holocaust? I don't think so.

Is it realistic for us to expect people in India to empathise with our distaste for him and all he stood for? I think not, but ask them about the Japanese and you might get a different answer.

We tend to see Hitler as being utterly defined by the holocaust.I'm not making a judgement on that particularly, but we are vigorously reminded of it. That is not an accident, the memory of it is kept front and centre by (amongst others) jewish organisations committed to doing so.

nice one konabunny

Slight hijack for context purposes: How does the holocaust which is the most famous genocide rank in terms of numbers killed when compared to others?

Also, would allowing millions of people to die from malaria, AIDS and starvation etc when the technology and medicine is there to mitigate those numbers be classed as genocide? If not, why not?

The modern international law of genocide is contained in Article 6 of the Statute of Rome, of which the full text can be found [url= http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/romefra.htm ]here[/url]

The key words are "with intent to destroy". If you can demonstrate that "allowing millions of people to die from malaria, AIDS and starvation etc" is done "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" then you might be looking at genocide (you'd struggle with "deliberately inflicted" though). Otherwise the situation that you point to is something else. Not a good something, but calling it "genocide" doesn't help.

Article 6
Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Obi_Twa - how do you measure it?

In terms of absolute numbers killed the holocaust ranks lower than Stalin's murders

Rate - deaths per day? Rwanda would probably higher almost all years of the holocaust.

Proportion of the population? Perhaps Cambodia would be higher.

I think comitting holcaust and genocide is slightly more than a charachter flaw. It is true he united Germany,build a great economy, united the people etc but he was always violent/fascist/anti democratic from the start to his enemies and anyone he percieved as a threat. Attempted coup in Bavaria,Night of the Long Knives, reichstag fire and subsequent reaction/restriction of other communist leaders.
It is reasonable, in the sense you could right an essay on the subject, to suggest that not all he did was bad and that he had some strengths. However no charachter strength or charisma should enable anyone to ignore the character flaws of mass murder/war /genocide. Evil is an emotive term but he wears it well IMHO

Obi
1. I dont have a league table but can we not just say all genocide is bad or is it relative for you?
2. The difference with malaria is we are guilty by inaction. If we were giving them the disease by injection then it would be genocide.
It is likely history will judge us badly for this.

I'm struggling to believe what I'm seeing here - 'the holocaust was bad, but Hitler shouldn't be defined by that alone?' What should he be defined by? - 20-odd million dead Russians? A brutal police state? The destruction of his own country? Sending 14 year olds to their certain death against Russian tanks? Or maybe his nice watercolours or his vegetarianism perhaps?

failedengineer - he wasnt a vegetarian. He was, however, a c**t, and that's really what we should be thinking of, isnt it?

My wife, who has a german degree and still is involved in german teaching, always says that Hitler was a good & convincing orator before he lost the plot, and put a convincing case across to a nation that was still suffering after loosing the first world war.
He didn't remain sane, and with hindsight the entire world knows what a maniac he was to become, but to the 100,000 odd people he would speak to in some of the rallies he was an alternative to the more mainstream german politicians at the time.

I am not sticking up for Hitler here, merely pointing out that there are many far worse genocides that have taken place and that some have been carried out by the british.

I'm struggling to believe what I'm seeing here

What we're trying to do is to understand why he is apparently popular with Indian teenagers. And we're trying to find an explanation which doesn't involve assuming those Indian teenagers to be either evil or retarded. No-one is sticking up for Hitler (I think we all agree with mitch on the point), just seeking some understanding of how someone from the far side of the world might be a fan of his 50-odd years after his death.

merely pointing out that there are many far worse genocides that have taken place and that some have been carried out by the british

I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

trailmonkey - Member

merely pointing out that there are many far worse genocides that have taken place and that some have been carried out by the british

I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

The Boer war. Nazi Germany didn't invent concentration camps, the British did.

The first time I went to India, I remember being somewhat disturbed by seeing swastikas around the place (on temple walls, advertising hoardings, and perhaps most memorably, painted on an elephants arse). It wasnt until someone pointed out to me that it was a hindu (I think) symbol, and that Hitler's chums had reversed it for their use, that I began to get my head around it.

The importance in considering Hitler's strengths is that without them he couldn't have done what he did. Without compelling leadership qualities, political craft and charisma he couldn't have achieved a position where he could instigate war, genocide and the rest. Instead he'd just be some nutter in an alleyway kicking cats, or in this day and age - spamming the comments sections of the Daily Mail online.

The Boer war. Nazi Germany didn't invent concentration camps, the British did.

The Boer war was a worse case of genocide than the holocaust ? Not sure that the Boer war was a case of genocide at all. Not all concentration camps are camps for the systematic killing of people.

seeing swastikas ...painted on an elephants arse

Some elephants are closet nazis mind. You get a bunch of indian elephants together when they think no-one's listening and some of the things they say about african elephants are just astonishing.

I bloody knew it! The big trunked fascist t**t!

You get a bunch of indian elephanst together when they think no-one's listening and some of the things they say about african elephants are just astonishing.

No one's told them that their ears are much bigger and they might be able to hear.

'Aryan' in its pre-loony context refers to Iranians, broadly. As we all know a historically large number of Iranians moved towards and into the Subcontinent.

Obviously anyone of this background reading Mein Kampf without realising that the writer was a complete shortarse austrian nutter with chip on his shoulder might be given to think "Master race? Moi? Oh go on then".

Naturally such an individual would have to be mightilly ill-informed and rather hard of thinking, but in the context I feel this can be taken as read.

I am not sticking up for Hitler here, merely pointing out that there are many far worse genocides that have taken place and that some have been carried out by the british.

Plus - he was a better painter than Winston Churchill.

I've never understood why claiming to be a communist or displaying a hammer & sickle emblem is acceptable, while claiming to be a fascist or displaying a swastika is not.
Does it really make much difference to the people living under either system of government ?

I've never understood how wars can have rules either.
Surely, if you're going to have a war, genocide is the best way to do it.

I still like to believe he was somewhat lacking in the full complement of testicles department, but alas, it appears that that wasnt true either.

The Boer war. Nazi Germany didn't invent concentration camps, the British did.

What we generally refer to as concentration camps in the German sense were actually extermination camps rather than camps merely designed to be "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp#Concentration_camps

I still like to believe he was somewhat lacking in the full complement of testicles department, but alas, it appears that that wasnt true either.

That makes sense. I never understood why the other one would be in the Albert Hall anyway.

Yes, but what about poor old Goebbels?

I still like to believe he was somewhat lacking in the full complement of testicles department, but alas, it appears that that wasnt true either.

Really? I was reliably informed that the other is in the Leeds Town Hall.

Quite disappointing that so much of what I learned in school turns out to be misinformation.

Sadly, I have to inform you that the entire song was a tissue of genital based lies. However, I am reliably informed that 'milk milk lemonade' is based entirely on sound scientific fact.

It is true he united Germany, build a great economy, united the people

Hitler didn't build a great economy - it was a totally unsustainable war economy that required constant expansion and expropriation of others, hence the invasions.

He didn't remain sane, and with hindsight the entire world knows what a maniac he was to become, but to the 100,000 odd people he would speak to in some of the rallies he was an alternative to the more mainstream german politicians at the time.

On a lighter note, the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen has two huge stone Indian elephants with mahoosive swastikas on the side which were built into the facade in the 1920s. The guides claim that the workers covered up the swastikas during the German occupation. Hmmm...

DrJ - Member
Plus - he was a better painter than Winston Churchill.

Carlsberg elephants 🙂

[img] [/img]

[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyrh/3959704472/in/set-72157621875764117/ ]http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyrh/3959704472/in/set-72157621875764117/[/url]

However, I am reliably informed that 'milk milk lemonade' is based entirely on sound scientific fact.

"The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side."

Yeh, and haven't we all got a "at least the trains ran on time" tattoo ?

No just a number on your wrist

just seeking some understanding of how someone from the far side of the world might be a fan of his 50-odd years after his death.

Robert Burns in Russia
Norman Wisdom in Albania
David Hasselhof in Germany (ok he's still alive, I think)

.....and you expect an answer on a cycling web site that will allow you to understand these things...... [img] /confused-smiley-17432.gif[/img]

NORMAN WISDOM'S DEAD?!?

The Boer war was a worse case of genocide than the holocaust ? Not sure that the Boer war was a case of genocide at all. Not all concentration camps are camps for the systematic killing of people.

OK, not genocide on the scale of Nazi Germany, but the British at times routinely imprisoned boer woman & children into laagers, subsequently concentration camps. Because the British were already struggling to survive they then had the problems of [i]trying[/i] to feed & water these prisoners. Ultimately the prisoners were not a priority, so many starved to death or died of dehydration.

Merely illustrating that while the world sees WW2 as the origins of concentration camps, the history goes back longer. If it had been something positive we'd have been blowing our trumpet about it a long time ago.

That makes sense. I never understood why the other one would be in the Albert Hall anyway.

Really? I was reliably informed that the other is in the Leeds Town Hall.

So he started out with three testicles?

So he started out with three testicles?

Someone, somewhere, is spreading stories. I think we need to be told The Truth!

Apologies if I shocked you Coyote. He's still alive and kicking at 95 😳

The beauty of history is that it's usually very subjective and with the benefit of time people can pick and choose the bits they like. Plus if you're studying someone from a completely different culture it's even easier to discard the bad bits.

As a study of the cult of personality Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are superb examples, as are many classical figures going back millennia. Unfortunately such individuals normally have a tendency to impose their will very forcefully.

As others have said the youth choosing to idolise some pretty shady characters from the past is nothing new, especially when said character is so heavily removed from their own way of life.

Dare I think it, but give it a few more years and I'd imagine general European opinion toward the Nazi's may well soften into something more objective. Every nation soaked its hand in the blood of the WW2 conflict and the way the Americans finished the Pacific campaign could be seen quite easily as genocide by some.......

Someone, somewhere, is spreading stories. I think we need to be told The Truth!

It's all a load of bollocks.

The swastika is a religous/lucky symbol for many in that part of the world, maybe this has skewed their view somehow?

*Dries eyes*

Thank you <sniff>

As a sense of perspective (God forbid) and Hitler bollock jokes aside.

to quote the article;

Books and memorabilia on the German leader's life have found a steady market in [b]some sections[/b] of Indian society where he is idolised and admired, mostly by the young.

[b]The numbers are small[/b] but seem to be growing.

Thats jounalist talk for, "we've found a couple of Indian teenagers who idolise Hitler, and needed to make a story out of it."

I'm not sure the vast majority of Indian do not idolise Hitler.

Hitler didn't unite Germany, he dismembered it

You are correct he was a flaming loon but remember this as there has been some with hindsight revisionism but yes a ****ing nutter.
This is Hitler as Time magazineman of the year for 1938 published 1939
[img] [/img]

from thwe article

Adolf Hitler.

Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.

All these events were shocking to nations which had defeated Germany on the battlefield only 20 years before, but nothing so terrified the world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events which during late summer and early autumn threatened a world war over Czechoslovakia. When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a "hands-off" promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the Year.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html#ixzz0rCwGwjXw
WTF am I doing defending Hitler am like his Alstair campbell 😯

nothing so terrified the world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events

I'm not very familiar with Time Magazine, but I suspect that these sorts of phrases generally don't appear in their "man of the year" articles these days. 🙂

yes I dont think the Iran leader [ no way am I trying to spell that name 😐 ] or bin ladden are in with a shout this year iirc BP all the way for the yanks this year

Junkyard: Hitler was still alive when the Soviets entered Berlin itself! He "achieved" that.

Man of the Year is not "great" man of the year, just "person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

They copped out and said Rudy Giuliani (!) instead of Bin Laden for 2001.

OK, not genocide on the scale of Nazi Germany, but the British at times routinely imprisoned boer woman & children into laagers, subsequently concentration camps. Because the British were already struggling to survive they then had the problems of trying to feed & water these prisoners. Ultimately the prisoners were not a priority, so many starved to death or died of dehydration.

yes but the corridor was gone and technically Germany was still unified.
You only have to ignore the post war partition of the country and the conquering forces running amok in Germany surely you can do that.
IGMC you win.

I seem to remember reading that Hitler is credited with helping bring about Indian independence, by weakening the British Empire, which he possibly sort of did in a roundabout way

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3684288.stm

Intriguingly, Stalin was Man of the Year twice. [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year ]List here[/url]

British imprisonment of boer non-combatants was undoubtedly a war crime by modern standards (and was widely perceived as such at the time). It was not genocide, because there was no intention to eliminate the people, the miliatry objective was to deprive the enemy combatants of the civilian population who were supporting and supplying them. While the ridiculously high death toll was grim, predictable and preventable it was not the intention of the policy.

What does semantics mean?

The swastika is a religous/lucky symbol for many in that part of the world, maybe this has skewed their view somehow?

mirror image IIRC, bit like displaying a cross upside down?

p.s. no one's mentioned quite how racist(insert other workd here for irational hatred depending on the group) some Indians are against ****stan, anyone of a poorer class, other religions.

What does semantics mean?

If this (presumably rhetorical) question is aimed at the issue of why you're wrong about genocide then the problem is that you aren't understanding the issue from a legal perspective.

Words can, as Humpty-Dumpty points out, mean whatever you want them to mean. The word "genocide" has a particular legal meaning derived from the Rome Statute. If it means something else to you that's fine, rock on. 🙂

To be fair, as my politics tutor put it, Hitler pulled a large and varied country out of recession and made them into an international superpower very quickly and very efficiantly.

I've recently taken to just lurking on here, rather than posting, but that comment ^^^ really is complete nonsense. And it offers perhaps an insight as to why Britain is on such deep political shite ....... if [i]"politics tutors"[/i] are teaching that sort of bollox.

Of course I should have guessed that konabunny would come along and inject a bit of sanity and reality into the thread - with some factually based comments.

So just to add to konabunny's comment, Hitler and the Nazi Party were indeed hugely incompetent. Yes, Hitler did indisputably lift Germany out of recession, but he did that to a very large extent through rearmament and preparation for war.

This was not however a clever plan thought out by a "genius" - the consequence of massive government spending which war preparation invariably involves, is of course self-evident. Exactly the same situation occurred in the United States - from the Wall Street Crash right through until Pearl Habor, the US economy was in recession. After Pearl Habor the frantic activities of the US war economy created so much stimulus that the US emerged wealthier at the end of WW2, than it had been at the start of the war.

Actually Hitler's frenzied rearmament program caused huge problems for the German economy, and as a result Germany was plagued with recurring balance of payments crises. One solution offered to deal with this problem was to give absolute priority to imports for the armaments industries whilst rationing food and consumer goods.

Hitler however would have none of this, realising as he did, that his popularity would take a severe knock ..... he so wanted to be loved by his people. In fact, as an example of Nazi incompetence Germany only introduced rationing after Britain had. And initially in the early stages of the war there was very few restrictions, eventually severe rationing was introduced - when it was far too late.

Furthermore, at every other level of government activity the Nazis were hugely incompetent. Internal rivalries in particular, caused massive bureaucratic inefficiencies. Many ministries and state security/organisations/apparatus duplicated each others work/brief.

And it was something which Hitler himself actively encouraged - winning the Fuhrer's confidence/favour was what every ambitious Nazi strove to do. However, when those in power are constantly stabbing each other in the back, and then only telling the Fuhrer what he wants to hear and/or lying to him, then it is hardly conducive to an efficient and competent society.

I am not sticking up for Hitler here, merely pointing out that there are many far worse genocides that have taken place and that some have been carried out by the british.

Is that some sort of joke ?

Hitler industrialised genocide, no one else in history has done that. From the time the trains packed with victims pulled up at the extermination camps, they were marched to be gassed, and finally cremated, could be sometimes measured in minutes.

And these men, women, children, and babies, weren't murdered because they were political opponents or posed in any way a threat - their only crime was that they were "breathing".

Hitler is unique in history.

.

In terms of absolute numbers killed the holocaust ranks lower than Stalin's murders

That is quite false. In terms of absolute numbers, somewhere in the region of 700,000 were executed during Stalin's Great Purge. This compares with 6 million put to death during Hitler's Final Solution.

And putting 'absolute numbers' to one side for a moment, it's worth remembering that Stalin's Great Purge was exactly that - a purge. Because Stalin's victims were primarily communists, which he understandably, perceived to be the greatest threat to his power.

And not just any old party member - invariably it was the most able, gifted, and outstanding communists, which his paranoid mind deemed to be a threat.

Individuals such as Nikolai Kondratiev the Marxist economist who's brilliant analytical mind formulated what we now know as the "Kondratiev Waves", a theory which was used by some western economists recently to explain the present global economic crises.

And Marshal Tukhachevsky who, despite coming from an aristocratic family, was completely and totally committed to the Bolshevik revolution, and was a brilliant military commander during the Civil War.

Whilst undoubtedly there must have been been some who would have wanted to plot against Stalin, most were utterly innocent of any crime and were simply victims of Stalin's paranoid mind - he is famously quoted as having said "[i]I trust no one, not even myself[/i]".

Stalin did presumably believe these individuals to be a threat, and he did at least go through the pretence of Show Trials on trumped-up charges before having them shot.

Hitler on the the other hand didn't bother or worry about such stuff, and had old women and children loaded onto cattle trains to be gassed without any pretence that they were guilty of any crimes.

So that's another difference, apart from the "absolute numbers killed". And one which makes Hitler unique.

[i]Say what you like about his politics, but he was clearly a very powerfull leader.[/i]

erm... he was a dick head. A chicken sh1t so full of fear and scared of his own shadow.

Is it too late for BarnsleyMitch to be nominated for the Labour leadership?