Of course it is and of course they did ... However, I think that this doesn't go anywhere constructive so I will not expand my point.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
This is a history forum, and we do allow the discussion of history here, where as most other parts of the forum are about games where we do not allow discussions that do not pertain to the game.
Anyone glorifying the Holocaust or any other horrible event from history, ofc would be dealt with
Really?
Following the General's Bomb Plot, many of the conspirators were hung from the neck with piano wire and their death agonies filmed. Hitler is said to have delighted in watching this unfold when it was shown to him. And these were not the first films brought to him of political opponents in agony.
Or, are you suggesting Hitler had no idea what happened in a Gestapo basement? He was clueless about what was going on in the Death Camps? He didn't have the torture and execution of specific enemies filmed for his consumption at a later date? Mengele's experiments were unknown to him? The emotional torture of the young women listed above is irrelevant?
I find your definition to be too shallow for my taste.
Regarding Stalin, i am not here to defend him. I am no fan. But Hitler is unique in history and his influence is felt today far more than Stalin's.
Last edited:
This is not exactly true since during e.g. the Holodomor deaths of millions was an objective. I agree though that Stalin did not do this as openly as Hitler or Pol Pot.
These things are new to me. I have to get it verified from multiple sources as i always do before believing something. I never heard Hitler enjoying the torment of other people so far.
Don't misunderstand me, i don't say he didn't cause enormous suffering to a lot of people, i'm saying only he didn't do it because it caused him enjoyment. He did it out of obsession and fanaticism. So that he is not evil to my understanding. It doesn't make him less dangerous, just a different type of personality.
I'm pretty sure Stalin was truly evil. A read a lot about the actions of the NKVD and the purges. There were a lot of occasions when Stalin wanted to get rid of an NKVD chief officer and he ordered specifically the closest friend of the victim to execute him brutally. This served no other purpose than enjoyment for Stalin to torment his subjects. Also when he got weary of a regional party official he sent a company of NKVD officers to arrest him with an extra order for all of them to rape his young daughter in front of him. Again this served no other purpose than Stalin having fun in the torment of others. And countless events like this. To me this is evil.
We all know what Stalin said re: One million deaths.
If a simple matter of statistics, Stalin is the supposed "winner".
there were no winners. only losers that lost their lives at the hands of murderous men, that were evil. Anyone saying one is not evil because others were worse is being disingenuous, and inflammatory
If there is one thing to think about in terms of “Hitler vs Stalin”, it’s how they would have proceeded, if they “had their way”. Our own timeline showed that Stalin did not keep up the mass killings. But what if Hitler succeeded in WWII? We can’t say for certain what would have happened, but general plan East painted an extremely gruesome picture..
Due to Hitlers desire to form a large Germanic land empire in Europe, I don’t think appeasement could have ever worked outside some “Hitler dies in a car accident” scenario or something.
Due to Hitlers desire to form a large Germanic land empire in Europe, I don’t think appeasement could have ever worked outside some “Hitler dies in a car accident” scenario or something.
Hitler has a rather profound sense of luck, as if something protects him. He moves away from incoming shells at the last moment because a voice whispers to him. He moves his cars, his trains, his automobiles on impulse and frequently breaks the rigid schedule of where he is to be and when; evanding direct assasination attempts on multiple occassions. Time after time after time, circumstance saves him from death. And one wonders what his true fate really was.
Well he did apparently catch a venereal diesease that ultimately caused him lots of bodily harm and directly reduced his faculties later in life, so happenstance wasn’t always in his favor.
There is a thought experiment though, where you have 100 people (who don’t know about each other) flip a coin. All the people who get heads are told to flip the coin again, and again, until there is one person left who got heads 10 times on a row or what ever. To that one person, they would appear to be unusually lucky(I flipped heads 10 times in a row! Omg omg), but what they wouldn’t be aware of is the multitudes of others who got tails.
So for all the lucky breaks that Hitler had, there would have been countless other folks who could have been in his shoes but weren’t due to chance. It’s the same thing with lottery winners and what have you.
Only if the lottery winner delved deep into mysticism to divine their winning number, and came back utterly changed forever to evolve into a being of deadly charisma and horrific determinations.
I recall one article mentioning that the last Nazi concentration camp was believed to have been closed around 1962-3, having been taken over at the end of the war and run by Stalin's thugs until after Stalin's death, used to house mostly political prisoners, but possibly others including Soviet Jews. The bodies were put into mass graves and coated with lime to speed their decay, but some were accidentally dug up before that process was finished. The killings weren't on nearly as large a scale as those Hitler conducted, but Stalin's post-war record is still pretty grim.
Appeasing Hitler was only viable as a temporary measure until the appeasers could arm themselves and resist. Ultimately, he had to be stopped by force, because he was not going to be deterred by any other means.
Yes and no.
Yes, Hitler would only be stopped by force.
No. True Nazi concentration camps were operating up to 1990 under Kameraden leadership, albeit far from Germany.
In Chile, under Pinochet, Walter Rauff (one of Heydrich’s aides), unofficially commanded DINA and was operating full scale Nazi style camps, such as Chacabuco, to suppress internal dissent complete with torture facilities and mandatory beatings for prisoners.
Strossener’s Paraguay, the last true Nazi stronghold, had a repressive security system that may well have been controlled and operated by Heydrich’s best attack dog, Heinrich ‘Gestapo’ Mueller. La Technica torture/internment facility in Paraguay might have been the last OG Nazi run concentration camp on earth when the people of Paraguay finally expelled Stroessner and his Nazis in 1989.
No not really, not if the goal was to make Hitler stop making demands at some point. Cave in and he would press for more concessions, it would be a never ending domino effect.
It's like appeasing a crocodile: keep throwing other people at it to sate its appetite, until you're the last one left. Appeasement assumes that the aggressor is only trying to fulfill some specific rational goal, and if you allow it, they'll suddenly become friendly. When that agenda is inherently irrational, or subject to change on a whim any time the opportunity arises to take more, it will never and can never be fulfilled, and they will never be friendly. That, essentially, is the behavior of a wild, untamed animal. At that point, the only workable solution is force or the threat of force.
Just a simple little border adjustment or two:
Reoccupation of the Rhineland (treaty violation, but within German territory)
Unification with Austria, by coercion
Annexation of the Sudetenland, by threat of violence
Annexation of Czechoslovakia, by threat of violence
Annexation of Memel, by threat of violence
Annexation of Danzig, by....uh oh.
From what I've read in a couple of books, dealing with Hitler and his constantly shifting and expanding demands was an unpleasant experience, like trying to negotiate rationally with a child throwing a tantrum who won't accept "No" for an answer, and even "Yes" isn't enough.
Just a simple little border adjustment or two:
Reoccupation of the Rhineland (treaty violation, but within German territory)
Unification with Austria, by coercion
Annexation of the Sudetenland, by threat of violence
Annexation of Czechoslovakia, by threat of violence
Annexation of Memel, by threat of violence
Annexation of Danzig, by....uh oh.
From what I've read in a couple of books, dealing with Hitler and his constantly shifting and expanding demands was an unpleasant experience, like trying to negotiate rationally with a child throwing a tantrum who won't accept "No" for an answer, and even "Yes" isn't enough.
The analogy breaks down because the assumption is that it's on the appeased to stop. In the case of pre-ww2 the motive for appeasement was not to sate Hitler but rather to keep him in check until alternatives were ready. They didn't need the alligator to decide it was done devouring people, they needed to delay it long enough to get the engine on the escape boat refueled. Instead they decided to try going for it with paddles and also lied to the polish guy so he wouldn't try to run away from the gator. Or for the toddler analogy, you aren't saying yes because now they won't throw any more tantrums, you say yes until you've left the store and have a chance to now give him a spankin or other more PC form of punishment.
ANY discussion that calls for a point where it is Hitler who decides he is done is misguided. The appeaser needs to either not do it at all (ideal) or, if doing it, keep at it until reaching a point that they can finally back up their no.
Appeasement was standard Great Power politics prior to WWI. You recognise some 'legitimate' claims to a piece of land or to influence over a given smaller nation and in return the other power renounces some other claim you have a problem with or recognises some claim of yours. By such means were large scale wars mostly avoided. If Hitler were a rational statesmen then the recognition of claims would have been legitimate. Up until the invasion of Czechoslovakia it looked like Hitler was following the standard belligerent power playbook. It was only after the invasion that it became obvious that he did not regard treaties or agreements as binding and that he had to be opposed by force.
There were benefits from delaying the war for the Allies and that clearly had an affect on policy and decision making, but I would argue that the primary reason for the appeasement policy was that people thought that Germany could be 'appeased' and therefore a war could be averted in its entirety. Like so many questions in WWII alt-history it might have worked if Hitler was not Hitler.
I also think people confuse the cynical behaviour with regards to Poland, which does seem to have been to throw them under the bus to buy some extra time to rearm, with the behaviour in Czechoslovakia where the primary aim was to avoid war entirely. Allied policy on Germany was not a fixed thing and varied during 1938-39, largely due to Germany's behaviour.
According to wiki, prestige of Chamberlain went to the toilet in public eyes when a book called Guilty Men released, which confirmed his failure to equip the British armed forces adequately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilty_Men
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilty_Men
Throughout the 1930 s Churchill warned about German rearment and Hitlers politics and unfortunately did not UK belived him.