I am disturbed

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by nostromo

I think a lot of his admirers see him as the 20th century Napoleon. But, if you ask me, he wasn't exactly of Napoleon's caliber

hehehe,

badly, he tried to be a caricature.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by VetLegion
I'm not surprised at this. India is far away and WWII didn't touch it much. It would be surprising to me if most people there ever heard the name "Hitler".

Which is completely rational. European history in general is simply a waste of time for Indians to study unless they're going to become a historian or a diplomat.

Sums it up. Pretty much all we learn about WW2 over here (apart from Japan vs. Britain in SE Asia and India's eastern border) is that Germany under Hitler fought all of teh world's great powers and was almost a match for them. Teh educated acknowledge that Hitler was indirectly one of teh contributors to Indian independence.

[DinoDoc]

Re: I am disturbed

Originally posted by aneeshm
Now, this week we were asked to conduct mock interviews of random people from our batch. A person from my group asked another person who their idol was.

"Hitler."

I couldn't believe it in the beginning. What sort of an idiot answers "Hitler" to a question like that, in an environment supposed to simulate a corporate interview? I raised an objection (even though I wasn't really involved, I couldn't let something like this go).

You are still in India, are you not?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4711475.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5275866.stm

[CrONoS]

it's bad that the psychiatrist who hypnotisms Hitler during the WWI died in 1933. (surely on Hitler order)

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by CrONoS
Hitler appeared at the right time, and the right moments. He wasn't a genius; he was just profoundly mentally sick.

I'm not a Hitler buff, but I think he was fairly sane up until 1943 (Then he started to deteriorate. Probably the alleged syphilis and all the drugs.) A crazy person couldn't have done what he has done. A lot of people try to find comfort in the belief that he was crazy. Its not as simple as that.
He was an antisemite, yes, but antisemitism was rampant at the time. Even our Prime Minister at the time, William Mackensie King, was an antisemite. According to Wikipedia:

King hoped an outbreak of war in the 1930s could be averted and he therefore supported the appeasement policies of the British. He met with Adolf Hitler who, he remarked in his journal, came across as "a reasonable and caring man ... who might be thought of as one of the saviors of the world." Telling a Jewish delegation that Kristallnacht "might turn out to be a blessing," he refused to allow Jewish refugees who were attempting to leave Nazi Germany entry into Canada.

Another thing. For a while, I thought that it was naive to call him evil. But then I realized: if he isn't evil, who is?

Cronos, have you read "Les Bienveillantes"? If so, what did you think about it?

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by nostromo
Cronos, have you read "Les Bienveillantes"? If so, what did you think about it?

Lesbians in veils?

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: I am disturbed

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You are still in India, are you not?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4711475.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5275866.stm

CORPORATE INTERVIEW, remember?!

And as for that restaurant - it was done for shock value, and therefore free publicity. The local Jewish community was mighty pissed. IIRC, the owner re-themed it after there was a massive outcry.

Funny thing is, nobody in India is bothered to be really anti-Semitic because very few people are even aware that there exists a Jewish community in India, and the few who know about it know that it's completely insignificant in the larger Indian scheme of things. Being anti-Semitic in India makes about as much sense as being anti-Buddhist in Africa or Europe. The one exception is a very small and probably insignificant segment of the fundamentalists within the Indian Muslim community (who, again, themselves don't really matter in the larger Indian scheme of things, and are as insignificant as the targets of their hate).

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by nostromo


I'm not a Hitler buff, but I think he was fairly sane up until 1943 (Then he started to deteriorate. Probably the alleged syphilis and all the drugs.) A crazy person couldn't have done what he has done. A lot of people try to find comfort in the belief that he was crazy. Its not as simple as that.

I didn't say Hitler was crazy; I said Hitler had severe mental illness; for the reason I wrote above. He was able to logically think... But he was profoundly neurotic... at a level that I can't imagine.

The psychiatrist who treated him during the WWI said that he was a He found Hitler to be 'a psychopath, with hysterical symptoms. Would be cool, if the psychiatrist was alive after the second world war.

He was an antisemite, yes, but antisemitism was rampant at the time. Even our Prime Minister at the time, William Mackensie King, was an antisemite. According to Wikipedia:

I didn't made any links between his antisemitism and his mental illness in this thread. (at least not now But antisemitism was already flourishing in Europe, that's why, Hitler appeared at the right moment at the right time... otherwise, it wouldn't never be possible to gain so much influence.

Another thing. For a while, I thought that it was naive to call him evil. But then I realized: if he isn't evil, who is?

He was an extremely idealist guy, which his ideals gave him a goal.

Badly, he got "contaminated" by the waste of European ideology of the beginning of XXst century. (nationalism, racism, antisemitism, totalitarism)

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by nostromo


Cronos, have you read "Les Bienveillantes"? If so, what did you think about it?

nope, is it good? I heard bad and good review of the books.

[DinoDoc]

Re: Re: Re: I am disturbed

Originally posted by aneeshm
CORPORATE INTERVIEW, remember?!

Why should they think it might offend someone when they have the Indian State providing textbooks that praise Hitler?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by CrONoS


nope, is it good? I heard bad and good review of the books.

As a novel, no. But its crammed with historical information about the period. Seems pretty solid and up to date. That was pretty interesting.

[DaShi]

Hitler is popular in China too among younger people. It's the image of power and success. Although, they seem to forget how WW2 ended for him.

[Kuciwalker]

wtf?

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Re: Re: I am disturbed

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why should they think it might offend someone when they have the Indian State providing textbooks that praise Hitler?

As far as I can recollect, they totally denounced Hitler. Even showed a few pictures of horribly weak and emaciated people who had survived the concentration camps.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by nostromo

He was an antisemite, yes, but antisemitism was rampant at the time.

But not all antisemites, even the ones who became Prime Minister of their countries, thought of Jews as 'racial bacilli' or 'tuberculosis' and set in motion a mass extermination programme for their own citizens.

A crazy person couldn't have done what he has done.

Depends what you mean by crazy. He exhibited paranoiac and megalomaniacal tendencies and certainly appeared to have fits of uncontrollable rage- rather like Ivan the Terrible or the Fatimid Caliph Hakim.