Let's Talk About Hitler

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This topic has been split, from here

~YMG



Thats up for debate, he made alot of christian comments, but some say he, like most politicians, just said what he thought people wanted to hear. The main point here though, is that even if hitler was an atheist, he never committed his atrocities in the name of atheism. Thats a big difference from the religious fanatics who DO commit their atrocities in the name of their religion.

Hitler: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

hitler



no, not at all, to have an atheist in power is just preferable to having someone in power who believes in ghosts and goblins and fairies. Just because someone is an atheist doesn't mean the "are my man", I could very well disagree with them on a number of issues, they may be a conservative, or a libertarian or any other political stripe. I just think those in power should believe in science and facts, not mythology. Having a christian or muslim in power is like having a person who worships zeus in power. By the way, when I say this i am only referring to secular societies. If north america claimed to be a theocracy (such as saudi arabia) then, fine, of course religious zealots should be in power, I have a problem with it because we in the west are supposed to be living in a secular/separation of church and state, society.



? I answered as well:

a page or so ago, "to keep the poor from killing the rich." I think ferroburak also answered the OP.


Thats debatable, if I was suffering from depression and decided to delve into prescription pain killers I could claim they bettered my life...but did they? Could I not have found a more constructive way to help my depression than relying on drugs? People say a lot of things better their life, material goods, religion, drugs, alcohol, etc.



I disagree, without intolerance things would never change. People became intolerant or racism and sexism, and homophobia, because of that policies changed. Of course these things still exist, but we no longer have slavery (in its most insidious form), women can vote, and soon gays will be able to marry. Intolerance of offensive behavior is essential for moving society forward.

This post has been edited by yourmercifulgod: Aug 18 2008, 03:09 PM

The debate over Hitler's religion or lack of is one that isn't going to be finished any time soon, I suspect. Personally I'm of the belief that he was raised with religion in his life, as everyone was around that time, but as he grew older he became distanced from any faith he once had, and grew to loathe it. Which can be seen in various quotes of his.



I won't go on quoting, but the list is pretty substantial.

As you say, he was partial to the odd fire and brimstone religious comment to stoke the ardour of the faithful public but I don't feel that it adequately proves him to be a religious man.

His hatred of Jews (among others) was the product of contempt, hate and intolerance. Unless we address the generalised intolerance of other faiths and their intolerance of the agnostic/atheist, history is doomed to repeat itself.

Was he not just using them? I sometimes doubt that he truly hated the Jews, just that they were a convenient tool.

There is that, but if it were simply convenience it doesn't explain the fervour with which he tried to exterminate them once they (and other minorities) were 'safely' imprisoned.

Also, I think it's widely believed that conflict with Jewish students at Realschule in Linz sparked Hitler's anti-semitism and the influence that people such as Richard Wagner, Karl Lueger or Georg Ritter von Schönerer had on him was also fairly potent.

This post has been edited by m15hun: Aug 18 2008, 03:03 AM

It wasn't just Jews Hitler killed... inc. around 20 million Russian military & civilians killed.
11,000,000 soldiers 6,700,000 civilians
No definitive tally exists and many believe that Stalin made the numbers 'look lower' - I have read a figure as high as 27 million, this is the highest number that I have ever seen. Most historians believe that the Soviet Union was quite literally decimated, losing a full 10% of its population which was about 17-18 million total people lost. source

Quoting from WWII for Dummies -"Over 60 million people died in WWII and of those 60 million, more were civilian than soldiers." Pages 363 and 364 give a run down with some numbers but does not offer a breakdown of the total civilian vs. soldier.

The Soviet Union lost the most with 25 million deaths, but only about a third were combat related.

China's death toll is incomplete but estimates are between 15 and 22 million.

Poland had 6 million deaths including 3 million Jews, roughly 20% of its prewar population.

Germany lost 4 million soldiers and 2 million civilians, many of them women.

Japan had 1.2 million battle deaths and another 1.4 million soldiers listed as missing, almost 1 million civilians were killed in the bombing raids between 1944 and 1945.

Over 1.7 million Yugoslavs and 500,000 Greeks died in the war.

France lost 200,000 soldiers and 400,000 civilians.

Italy lost 330,000 people.

Hungary lost 147,000 men in combat.

Bulgaria lost 19,000 in combat.

Romania lost 73,000 in combat.

Great Britain lost 264,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians in bombing raids.

The United States lost 292,000 soldiers.

The Dutch lost 10,000 soldiers and 190,000 civilians.

Australia lost 23,000 men in combat.

Canada lost 37,000 soldiers.

India lost 24,000 men in battle.

New Zeland lost 10,000.

South Africa lost 6,000.

The exact number of people killed by the Nazi regime may never be known, but scholars, using a variety of methods of determining the death toll, have generally agreed upon common range of the number of victims. Recently declassified British and Soviet documents have indicated the total may be somewhat higher than previously believed[20]. However, the following estimates are considered to be highly reliable. The estimates:

5.1–6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews
1.8 –1.9 million non-Jewish Poles (includes all those killed in executions or those that died in prisons, labor, and concentration camps, as well as civilians killed in the 1939 invasion and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising)
500,000–1.2 million Serbs killed by Croat Nazis
200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti
200,000–300,000 people with disabilities
80,000–200,000 Freemasons [23]
100,000 communists
10,000–25,000 homosexual men
2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses
Raul Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews, estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from "Ghettoization and general privation;" 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings;" and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000."[24] Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they generally include only those deaths for which some records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment.[25] British historian Martin Gilbert used a similar approach in his Atlas of the Holocaust, but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.[26]source

I think that Jews need to let the past go, no we should never forget the atrocities suffered or all the lives lost in WW2 including German not just 1 "relatively small group"..... compared to China and Russia..............

As you said, some of those figures are up for debate but what I was getting at was look what happens when intolerance takes hold. I wasn't singling the horrendous treatment of the Jews out above the suffering of anyone else, although they did suffer more than any other civilian minority.

It's irrelevant whether Hitler was truly religious or not. Hitler never killed anybody. The German people did the actual killing, and they most certainly were religious. The majority of them were catholic, and the Nazi government were explicitly supported by the catholic church. I for one don't claim they did what they did because they were religious, but clearly their religion wasn't enough to stop them, thus showing religion to be the empty vessel that it is, and ridiculing religion's claims to a superior morality.

"Gott mit uns" ("God with us") ~ the slogan of the Waffen SS


This post has been edited by Tootle: Sep 7 2008, 01:06 AM