Could Hitler have risen to power in any other country..?

[kobold]

Theres been a lot of bad chaps in power since, elsehwere in the world, but I mean in the same time period as he did rise in Germany?

dave/kobold

[Angelo V]

Yes, of course!

And on purpose I omitted "given the circumstances" so dear to all who have an overly leaning attitude towards the "cause and effect" logic.

Hitler was not an offspring of "circumstances" and he would have been there with his inhuman philosophy even if Germany was sailing at top speed. He used all that could be useful to achieve his goal of domination through the ruthless and criminal use of power by dehumanizing some categories of men and getting a significant number of people happy and willing to have some "mice" to play the hungry cat with. All those who were in the way, whether home or outside, had only one apparent way out: be enslaved or be crushed. He, of course, knew how to suck their soul and blood out as slaves before kicking them off into a grave, so actually, not even enslavement would grant their life.

Fortunately, only a few like him were and are successful in getting the lead of their nations, but no one area in the world could claim to be safe from such dangers.

That being said, it is true too that not all peoples and nations would follow the hitlerist path both in their inner and foreign policies, but though varying in a number of more or less important details, they might have ended doing the same things were they foolish enough to follow such a champion of horrors.

Barbarians, with very few exceptions, may develop all kinds of theories about life, but what makes them such is they are victims of their own pretentious and false ideals: superiority, selfishness, excessive pride, constant selfrighteousness, antidemocratic attitudes, deep disregard of human beings not belonging to their faction, idolization of violence as a sign of "strength" and "undisputable authority", amorality. Hitler was one such barbarian and he would not even be good as a wolfpack leader in his Bavarian mountains as he lacked the main virtue of a wolf: courage.

Glad it doesn't happen too often, but when it does, no matter where, is just one too many.

[valadezaj]

You said:

Hitler was one such barbarian and he would not even be good as a wolfpack leader in his Bavarian mountains as he lacked the main virtue of a wolf: courage.

Hitler was a man of exceptional courage. In the great war he risked his life many time as message runner. He even won the iron cross first class, Germany's highest decoration.

[Angelo V]

Angelo V wrote:Hitler was one such barbarian and he would not even be good as a wolfpack leader in his Bavarian mountains as he lacked the main virtue of a wolf: courage.

valadezaj wrote:Hitler was a man of exceptional courage. In the great war he risked his life many time as message runner. He even won the iron cross first class, Germany's highest decoration.

I guess I learned about his insignificant military career a bit earlier than the day you were born, but that doesn't make me happy

Courage is not, as usually believed, a feature or virtue you can ascertain and evaluate basing on a few, though interesting facts which are commonly believed to be its trademark.
Courage, when properly defined, is the result of a well balanced learning, training and, most of all, a deep knowledge of one's self. That means such a virtue, though born with you, need be cultivated in the proper way to give the owner those results which are most directly connected with its basic features, that is the ability to face hard situations and try to overcome them in the best possible way to your own and your community's advantage. Under this light, it takes much more than a few episodes to give someone the prized attribute of being a corageous individual. It takes your whole life to get the true picture and see whether what was defined as courage was really that or something else.
A few examples: a man driving down a country lane at 100 ml/hour is not corageous, simply a wreckless woodhead hellbent for the nearest local graveyard.
One that jumps down in a canal hoping to save someone drowning there who is not a good swimmer, but can barely stay afloat in a quiet pool, is not courageous, simply an idiot.
In the case of "Der Fuehrer" these examples seem not to fit, given the fact that he acted in the right context, at the right moment and obtaining a given result. Ok, I agree.
The point is that, throughout his life and career he showed a number of flaws so serious and leading to such predictable tragic consequences to let us conclude he lacked the necessary balance (this doesn't make him crazy, of course), was way too stubborn in his decision to admit they had to be changed to avoid worse results, he felt he knew all about strategy and pretended no one could match him, but facts prove he was simply dreaming of an Alexander the Great while forgetting he was Adolf the Little, he was obfuscated by a persistent form of persecutory mania according to which the Jews were the personification of Evil and as such had to be destroyed, he believed it so much he almost got to be successful, but once again he forgot you need to be God to beat the Devil. At that point he had only 2 ways out: either forget about it or start convincing himself he was God. He opted for the latter and miserably failed. (To be honest it must be said he did take a huge number of Jews with him though, that is true, and that's the only thing he can be proud of.)
He was obsessed with space, not the one we usually call the sky, but the one space you need to live in, room, square mileage, areas, zones, districts, regions, countries... He showed a tremendous degree of cleverness when he made up his mind and told himself that his possible claustrophobic nightmares originated from the excessively too little and confined house he was living in. That house, though expanded to include some more rooms. namely Austria, half Poland, most of Czechoslovakia, was still too narrow to allow its people to breathe long and deep as they needed, so he settled for a last extension: the Soviet Union!(European section only, mind you ). By now you will have certainly understood that house under constant modifications and enlargement was Germany.
Now, you see, I could take you for a ride and let you see for yourself how funny was dear old Adolf, were it not for the skulls he paved his floors with, but I guess you know that highway just enough to eventually add all that's been missing here.
You'll probably see now why I say Adolf lacked courage.
Oh, me forgetful...I was about to close without mentioning his shooting himself up the day he realized those rooms he wanted were lost for good and he'd have to relive again his claustrophobic nightmares beginning and ending with a sound of a throat grasping for air in a little room too narrow for being a Lebensraum and too frequently ghost ridden to be even a living room.
Courage ? No, just RAGE.

Regards.

[Phil V]

A barbarian is defined as a person who is crude, course, brutal and uncivilised.

A "barbarian" would not have been able to accompish what Hitler did!!!

[Angelo V]

You're right, Max!

He was actually below standard barbarian standards!

Crude, he was, any doubt ? But cruel is surely more appropriate.

Coarse ? Well if that is the opposite of "fine" his coarseness was comparable to the stone-age finesse. (I concede, not with Blondie, his dog, Eva, his woman and a few others in a very restricted circle.)

Brutal ? I guess he's definitely the champion of them all, even though Stalin came very close to him.

Uncivilized ? Well, if we go by reading, writing and making speeches, no doubt he new the basics; he could even paint, and that was nice.
The fact is that civilization takes some more to be there: his world vision was the opposite of a civilized notion and that simply because he was burning with hatred, egotism, selfishness, presumptuosness, inhumanity,
excessive pride, and strength worshipping. That way he was bound for a great big fall and that's what happened.

You're right again, Max! A barbarian would have had that sense of the limits he totally lacked to avoid the extermination of millions of innocents and the plunging of his Country in such a tragic condition as hardly experienced throughout her history.

Germany definitely deserved something better!

One last consideration: the rest of the world surely has a given amount of co-responsibility in what happened during those 12 years of his brutal dictatorship, but that doesn't lower an inch the full liability he bears for all the crimes that were committed in his name and on his behalf.

Regards.

[Benoit Douville]

I think no, Hitler was the kind of man that Germany was looking for after those tough years after the defeat of World War I. He bring back power and dignity to Germany so that's why he was a perfect fit for Germany.

Of course he was a brutal idiot just thinking that the Slav were sub-human...

[Phil V]

Angelo - your sarcasm to my post has defeated my resolve.

Apologies - I was wrong in my opinion.

Sigh....

[Angelo V]

Max, that's me, but don't take it personally

On the other hand, if you believe you have good reasons to stick to your points, don't give up! Eventually, see if there's a more balanced compromise between mine and yours.
We all have to learn (even sarcastic chaps like me)!
No apologies, it would eventually be me the one who should make them.

Have a nice day! (And may you get a true vision of things better than mine, too. When that happens, let me know. I too have my own biases, unfortunately).

Ciao

[Angelo V]

Benoit, I do agree about brutality, of course.

As to Germany looking for a "Hitler" after WWI and all that followed, I would say yes and no.

Yes,many Germans certainly hoped that a "strong man", not tied up to what we would call today the hypocritical and in many cases nonsensical theatralities of the so-called democratic parties, could emerge to take firmly the wheel of the boat and have it bound for a decisive reasset of both economy and foreign policies, even at the cost of running some risks.
This I think it's plausible, and I could even go as far as to accept rather easily the risks connected with the re-occupation of Saar, the Sudeten, that is Czechoslovakia and even the famous Danzig corridor which brought to the invasion of Poland.

No, in my opinion, when Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union. At that point, many of them, I guess, realized that such a step was way too risky and that an eventual possible failure would have implied catastrophic consequences for them all. But even admitting they felt this way, it was just too late to stop it.
That's when, I guess, they started realizing the step was much too long for their leg but.... we all know how it went.
On the other hand France and Britain committed their shares of mistakes too in stretching the rope too much (this in the years between 1918 and 1933) and noticing too late that Hitler did not behave according to their usual schemes, thus granting him the recurring chance to always add a new blackmail to the list. When they decided the jug was overfilled they simply didn't have a dam ready to stop the flood.

My 1 cent.

Regards.

[Phil V]

Was joking - tongue in cheek.

[Angelo V]

Glad to hear it

This place needs that badly at times

[scatcat]

Hitler was a man of exceptional courage. In the great war he risked his life many time as message runner. He even won the iron cross first class, Germany's highest decoration.

Courage is a little bit more elusive than putting yourself in harms way - that is just physical courage which, believe it or not, for many ppl is by far the easiest aspect...

There are other parts to courage, like for example moral courage - the bravery of seeing/doing what is right even if it is detrimental to yourself, or to the respect you get from those around you:

• Like the general who orders retreat from an untenable position even though it will cost him his career,

• like the person in a mob who tries to stop the lynching,

• like the soldier who refuses an illegal order,

• like the politician who decides to go with what he believes in, rather than what will please the public,

• like the loosing general who surrenders and gives his own person up, taking responsibility for the actions under his command.

Mister H. schemed for a position of power, he believed in power with an almost religious fervor. Psychologically such a fixation on power and the use of power is a sign of fear - as external empowerment is used to compensate for internal insecurity. Compare with phenomena as anorexia or bulemia, where the control of ones body takes the place of control of ones life.

The courageous man seek no power, it's thrust upon him - and he accepts it only in so far he see the possibility of providing something positive through that power. Few men have such courage, but that is the idea of public service.

Had H. truly been courageous, he would not have needed to went his anger and frustration against jews, gypsys etc.
He would furthermore have seen the futility of "settling the account" with the allies, and tried to be a benevolent victor.
He would have trusted the professionals around him when they told him that there were limits to his ambitions.
He would have at least listened to the strategists who did not have the same opinion as him.
He would have trusted his subordinates to do their job, and not handed them their arses for not beeing able to complete orders without having means.
He would have chosen his men on the basis of merit rather than personal loyalty/reliability/arse-licking.
And when the fecal matter hit the rotating impeller he would have taken responsibility for his actions and those commited in his name rather than fleeing by the "bullet in the brain"-train.

Just my two cents

/Scat

[scatcat]

Theres been a lot of bad chaps in power since, elsehwere in the world, but I mean in the same time period as he did rise in Germany?

dave/kobold

Of course, may I be so bold as to say Stalin? Not a much more brilliant star on the field of humanism...

Germany may have been easier than most, given the seething discontent coming from years of crisis under Weimar - but let's face it, the lure of a powerful man to save the day is strong, both then and today.
BTW, H.'s anti-semitism, while extreme, is not totally atypical of the period - Germany were probably not even the worst in that respect.

/Scat