Posted on 08/25/2014 4:20:53 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Hitler was a racist socialist.
Stalin was an equal opportunity killer, race didn’t matter.
My take is Himmler personally ran the SS, which ran the camps. It's inconceivable to me he wouldn't let Hitler know what was going on.
It's speculation on my part, but even at the high point of their military fortunes men in high places might have been reluctant to put too much in writing about what they were authorizing.
One of the many stories I have read about Patton is that his most used map was a Michelin road map of the region. That would reveal N.E. France as flat as a billiard table and served by an extensive road net - ideal tank country. There really is no natural defensive line for the Germans until they retreat to the German border and Dutch rivers.
To some extent. Stalin micromanaged everything, but by all accounts he had an incredible capacity for work, which Hitler did not. Stalin was also fairly bright; Churchill marveled at how he could be presented a novel situation and immediately grasp nuances of its significance.
Hitler was more of a "dilettante dictator." He was no workaholic. His sphere of competence in subject matter was also more limited. He had an excellent grasp of politics and diplomacy, and competent but skewed grasp of army and air force matters. He knew nothing about naval matters and no grasp at all of economics, science or technology. He could quote weapons specs and production figures, but didn't really know what they meant.
By 1940, Hitler spent most of his time on military matters. By January 1942, when he'd fired Brauchitsch and assumed personal command of the armed forces, Hitler spent ALL of his time on military operations. Hitler's dogs were doing what they thought their master wanted them to do, and he did indeed approve. But he was no longer the driving force. He may have been in the 1920s and early 1930s, but by 1942, they were pretty much on their own without any direct supervision from Hitler. And they did what they did.
As for World War 1, I don't think the Germans pursued any particular policy of extermination of civilian populations. The war was certainly a hardship for civilians in occupied France, Belgium and Russia, but war was a hardship on all of the Central Powers. The million deaths in Russia were due mostly to the refugees who fled with the Russian Army during the Great Retreat from Poland, and the economic dislocation caused by the war. It was not direct action by the German military.
Far be it from me to defend the likes of Shaw, but your video makes clear that he opposed Hitler's mass exterminations based on "race."
Sure, you might say it's a distinction without a difference, but what Shaw had in mind was "purifying" society by eliminating those few who were weak or deformed.
He did not approve of Hitler's efforts to exterminate entire groups for the benefit of one "master race".
Again, I'm not defending Shaw, only pointing out the distinctions.
Agreed, though iirc Stalin also relocated & exterminated whole ethnic groups, when the mood moved him.
Agreed, but already their policy was lebensraum, drang nach osten and they were as brutal as they believed necessary.
In the west, the war cost little Belgium (85,000 civilians died) almost twice the percentage of its civilians as Russia (1.1 million died) in the east.
I'm not saying WWI was as brutal as WWII, only that even then, Germans often did not play by Marquis of Queensbury rules.
Definitely distinctions but as you say, not really much of a difference. My point was that Hitler, rather than emerging from an ideological vacuum which I used to think, was apparently surrounded by support for his ideas which were basically hybrids of Marxism and Fabian Socialism.
FRiend, as I said before, have never seen a simple but compelling explanation of Hitler's "inner psyche", seriously doubt if one is possible.
But Hitler's anti-Semitism did not come from Karl Marx or Fabian Socialists, it originated in his early education and life-experiences.
Hitler's devotion to lebensraum for the Herrenfolk did not come from Marx or Fabian Socialists, it originated in imperial Kaiser-Reich, pre-First World War aspirations.
Hitler believed he was merely completing the agenda of territorial expansion -- drang nach osten -- adopted by previous German generations.
Hitler's utter disregard for the lives of millions, even millions of Germans, did not come from Marx or Fabian Socialists, it came first from his experience in the trenches of the First World War, a war which included the extermination of a million Christian Armenians, and nobody cared!.
He further noticed that during the 1930s, Stalin murdered millions (i.e., Ukrainian "holodomor") and nobody cared.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that what Hitler intended to accomplish in the East, is what Europeans in America did regarding native populations -- "cleansed" them for settlement by "Herrenfolk."
As for Einsatzgruppen and gas chambers -- well, that is your natural German-engineering mind-set going to work on a major problem (how to "cleanse" the East?) and coming up with an efficient engineering solution.
Nothing personal, you understand.
None of this -- zero, zip, nada -- has anything, not smidgen, to do with Karl Marx or British Fabian Socialists.
There was much more in Hitler's "inner psyche" than them, FRiend.
The connection between Hitler and Fabian Socialism appears at least indirect via Marxism which Hitler is quoted to have said influenced him. I'm not arguing there is nothing more to Hitler than this. I'm simply saying there's evidence that these things played a part.
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