Nazis and the Nature of Evil

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, in this case, since the thread is on the "nature of evil" and this is the topic, well... I know evil is the wrong word, but sleep deprivation, combined with medical problems related to harsh famines accelerated by heavy drinking, I think, in the end, brought out the worst of impulses in people, things like entitlement, inferiority complexes, possessiveness, and the most base of patriarchal desires.

[Riedquat]

I dunno, a lot of people like to sympathize with these past monsters, and demonize their victims. It still happens today. That's mostly political, sure, but at the same time, I've seen it happen.

Careful with that one - that sort of criticism is often applied by people who appear to look at things only in the most extreme black and white terms. A victim can never be to any degree a victim of their own behaviour, a perpetrator must be a 100% evil moustache-twirling cartoon villain with no redeeming features.

[Yukaphile]

I've flat-out acknowledged those guilty of these horrible evils, who crossed the line past Jupiter, had a few sliver of redeeming elements. But to treat both sides, those directly responsible for inflicting horrific crimes on somebody, and the recipient of said crimes, as equal victims and equal criminals, is just mind-bogglingly stupid unless you're applying it to a pure abstract, because as I've noted, Germany did keep invading territory and often in blatant defiance of treaties and it was completely unjustified, but that only makes the true victims of these crimes "guilty" in a pure abstract way, because of their national and ethnic heritage, and those guilty of these crimes "victims" in a pure abstract way. That changes when you get down to the individual level, when you're the person who actually has to carry these out, not on orders, but of your own doing. It really feels more collective guilt political correctness taken to an extreme degree, given that ethnic minorities and children often seem to be ignored in these types of discussions I see to focus on the "Germanic white women," acting as if they were the only victims here. Which is both white privilege and stigmatization against white people at the same time, because they hardly want to treat them as innocent. Those guilty were also not "victims" of their own behavior, they made their choices, many of them based on personalities they inherited or developed in early childhood, that shaped their decisions later in life and led to poor judgments. Never underestimate how powerful free will is. By contrast, their victims were being manipulated by the state to think a certain way, and favored certain groups over the other, so you could at least argue they had no autonomy. Choosing to inflict pain on somebody for personal gain and joy is a deliberate, voluntary choice. That makes all the difference.

[Riedquat]

I was talking in far more general terms about the whole modern practice of complaining about victim blaming every time something happens - I read your point as a referring to any and all circumstances (e.g. I get fed up every time a cyclist gets squished by a turning lorry they'd just tried to pass on the inside and people saying "the roads are too dangerous!" and have a go at you for "victim blaming" if you point out the cyclists was a bloody idiot). That doesn't mean unjustified victim blaming never happens but it seems these days like you've got to assume that any victim of anything was an angel.

[Yukaphile]

Well, we live in a society of triggered snowflakes. You gotta accept that. I'm not immune.

[Jonathan101]

Hitler bullied kids at school into playing with him and was generally a disruptive student in the classroom.

Citation needed. The only account of a classmate of his that I am aware of, is a memoire of August Kubizek, a close friend and a room-mate and that was well into his time into secondary school in Vienna, at the age of about 17-19. Hitler himself describes his elementary school experience as if he was a well-liked center-stage personality, but we only know of one account of him being found smoking at the age of 8, by one of his teachers and a rather infamous photography, where he was placed in the center of the back-row, appearing as the largest in his class with a stern look. That photography strikes me as someone who wants to be the tough guy in the center-stage, but lacks that position and friends. But hey, YMMV

Kubizek was not a classmate. They didn't meet until Hitler was either finishing or had just dropped out of secondary school, as they were fighting for a good viewing spot at a local opera.

There are lots of books that study Hitler as a youth, and they include references to teachers and others who knew him at the time who talk about him being disruptive and playing pranks on boys; Hitler himself said he was a leader and got the younger kids to play cowboys and Indians with him, although everything Hitler says should be taken with a grain of salt of course.

The boys I've got on-hand right now are Young Hitler by Paul Ham and Hitler by Ian Kershaw.

He was extremely argumentative and condescending, well past the point of being verbally abusive.

He may have shot at or pulled a gun on people during WW1.

He definitely took part in street fights and riots in the early years of the Nazi Party, and at the very least assaulted people- he stopped soon after his own head got split open, but he continued to deliberately incite them and sent his goons to start fights with the Communists.

He certainly threatened people with violence to get his way on numerous occasions.

He is suspected of murdering his niece but that is unlikely.

He absolutely ordered millions of assaults, tortures and murders in his lifetime. This wasn't just during WW2, but innumerable instances starting at even before he came to power. He had zero compunctions about ordering violence and he encouraged and approved of his underlings committing it and being ready to commit it.

He was also known to sometimes bring in officers and foreign diplomats for a private meeting and spend hours shouting at them, screaming at them, berating them, threatening them, blaming him for any number of terrible actions that they "forced" him to take (like, say, "how brutal do you want our pending invasion of your country to be?" sort of actions) if they didn't give him what he wanted...and then he would go of and joke and laugh about how absolutely terrified he just left them, as if it were all a big gag.

DragonBallFan is reaching, but Hitler is hardly a good person just because he wasn't personally physically violent with others. He certainly wasn't like that because he lacked the stomach for it, and he was extremely abusive and mean spirited in other ways. That is a weak line or reasoning.

His niece murdered himself (thanks to Hitler's overbearing, obsession-like and suffocating influence), a soldier is not a killer and everything else you mentioned is past his World War I experience and thus well into and after his phase of (self-)radicalisation. My point is not, that Hitler didn't become a monstrous human being, he undeniably was, but that Hitler is neither a born monster, nor a complete monster with no positive traits, as outlined in this previous post:

and maybe I do have some negative aspects in common with Hitler and other historical monsters but my point was that those monsters did not have any positive traits in common with normal human beings.

You do realize that, in order to disprove your absolutely silly point, all one has to do is, find one trait about "Hitler and other historical monsters" that is a good thing about them?

Oh and Hitler's shouting? That is quite literally performance art. He trained himself to do that as a means to an end after World War I, during his time as a spy for the internal/political security section of the military. Argueably, it became part of his personality later in life, as it was so deeply ingrained in him to perform like that at will. But it certainly wasn't part of his personality before the 1920s.

Also, Riedquat gets it. Demonizing Hitler is only serving one goal, to distance yourself from him and what he did. It does not explain why he became the way he was and it certainly does not help in preventing it from happening again, especially if those who demonize him use exactly the same sort of mental gymnastics that Hitler used himself and declare a human being to be an unhuman. That is, unless you are willing to proclaim that every follower of Hitler was and is literally a demon-worshipper and a follower of a black magic practitioner. Yeah, that will work well

By his own admission he was very argumentative even before WW1, all the back to Vienna and even in school. Plenty of others who knew him at the time attested to this, that he would sometimes listen to others talk politics and then get up and start loudly disagreeing with everything they were saying if they were being critical of Germa culture or whatever. He once claimed that he spent time working on a construction site in Vienna until the other works tried to kill him for criticising Socialism too much, although that story is a bit dubious since there is no record of him having such a job.

Hitlers' shouting was partly performance, but it was also a well-established part of his character long before he received any training in it, and while he sometimes used it for show or benefit there were plenty of times he seemed to genuinely lose his temper.

The stuff about a soldier not being a killer (debatable) is pretty moot, since the claim was that Hitler never so much as pulled a rifle on someone and that is a meaningless point at best, and a factually dubious one at worst. The "killed his niece" bit probably isn't true no, but since we can never be 100% sure I thought it was worth bringing up that old conspiracy theory regardless.

Regardless, my point wasn't that it was or wasn't part of his personality before the 1920s (although it definitely was), it was that Hitler sometimes used it in a domineering and outright sadistic manner, faking extreme rage to reduce people to fear and tears then going off and laughing about it, and that was a pretty sociopathic trait.

I was not claiming that Hitler was born like this, or that he was utterly devoid of any redeeming features whatever; I'm just pointing out that even when you step away from the warmongering, conquest, slavery and genocide stuff, he was actually a pretty unpleasant guy even on an interpersonal level, and many of apparently admirable traits either need to be put in context or were not actually true.

Hitler was evil, but more to the point, he was kind of a dick.

[Mecha82]

Well, we live in a society of triggered snowflakes. You gotta accept that. I'm not immune.

I am sorry but I just can't take any "snowflake" claims seriously. From my experience it's one of those terms used as way just to ignore opposing opinions on internet. Also word "triggered" gives impression of some one having his or her PTSD triggered and way it's used on internet tends to marginalize that serious real world psychological problem. Those that tend to use those two words tend to fit to way they use those words themselves.

[Yukaphile]

Well, I wouldn't want to downplay somebody's pain, of course. But the world hurts us all. The question is how you handle it.

[Riedquat]

The "snowflake" line gets applied to those who think they're special when really they're no different to anyone else, and who refuse to even address issues but think they should be shielded from them. There's also a massive degree of arrogance in them because they're so convinced they're right that they're unable to even grasp other opinions. You could throw arrogance at me but not to the point where I can't ever see where others are coming from.

Like a lot of things it's generally an exaggeration, but one with a kernel of truth to it.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Well, there is something similar on TV Tropes. "Good Cannot Comprehend Evil" and "Evil Cannot Comprehend Good." SF Debris has discussed this at length as to the disconnect of human brain functions. He brought up vore, how much it disgusts him, and how he could never understand that mindset. He doesn't pass judgment on it, but he doesn't understand it. And I can relate, and this is a voraphile saying that. In that instance, true empathy is impossible. He said "you might as well be from different planets." I think it's less "good versus evil" and more having a hard time understanding radically opposed mindsets past the similarities we all share. Also, it's been said for criminal investigations to catch a criminal, you gotta get inside his head, think like him, and thus you need to have a little larceny in you. Maybe it's just harder for you because you're a lot nicer than I am. See, I can get into a criminal's head because I've been tempted to do evil, even for the right reasons, but I never do. Does that help?

no, I comprehend evil individuals what I can't comprehend is someone doing truly evil things like serial murder or rape and also having any good traits in their personalities.