History Biased Against Hitler

I think I understand the point of this thread. You get a handfull of people saying Hitler did something. They tell a few people and those people run with it saying Hitler did something. Next thing you know everone is saying it and everyone simply accepts it as truth. Remember the truth is never dependent on a consensus of opinion. If a thousand people say something foolish it is still foolish. LOL. Don't remember where I heard that saying but i love it :-). Is there any proof that Hitler ordered these killings? Are there signed documents from him? Did he say "kill the Jews" or are people so used to hearing it that its just accepted as truth. And how many people that say he did it were perhaps trying to cover their own hides? With his constant plans to invade everyone there is no doubt he was a mad man. But just simply because he was mad doesn't make him automatically guilty. There are plenty of people who worked for him that were obviously bad. Did they take "get the Jews out of my country" and interpret that as a green light to kill them? (hypothetically speaking) And everyone assumed that Hitler gave the green light for the killings?

Originally posted by Mirthful Me

Originally posted by EnronOutrunHomerun
It's of interest to note that 6 million of the victims were Jews and 5 million were Jehova's Witnesses....

Five million Jehovah�s Witnesses killed in Hitler's purge of World War 2 Europe? Odd for a budding religion formed in 1872 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and didn't become the "Jehovah�s Witnesses" until 1931. Even more interesting is the Jehovah�s Witnesses claim only FOUR million members WORLDWIDE now. Quite a disparity.

Jehovah�s Witnesses history.

*sighs* I guess the fact that I said I took a course with a reputable Nazi Germany history professor who has published prolifically on this just wasn't enough, huh?
Check out these links....
en.wikipedia.org...'s_Witnesses_and_the_Holocaust
www.ushmm.org/education/resource/jehovahs/jwbklt.pdf
www.seva.net:8090...
jehovah.to...
fcit.coedu.usf.edu...
Do you want more?? I guess it slipped my mind that almost everyone on this forum just wants consipiracy theories...

EDIT: Added the "almost" to the "everyone" up above there....

[edit on 7/20/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

I think it's the 5 million figure you quoted that is incorrect. maybe it's a typo?

I was hoping that maybe one of those links contained an image of a document by Hitler ordering the killings. I don't have acrobat installed so I couldn't check the pdf file.

If the CEO of a corporation creates an empire of corruption, whether it was done by intent, or allowed to happen by negligence the person in charge is still held responsible. To think that Hitler was this 'poor little urchin' victimized by those around him has to be phenomenally unbelievable. 2 million people were butchered and Hitler didn't know? This stretches credulity beyond reality, it sounds like some sureal fantasy. Perhaps you want to mollycoddle Stalin while your at it.

From auschwitz.dk...

Private diaries of Goebbels and Himmler unearthed from the secret Soviet archives show that Adolf Hitler personally ordered the mass extermination of the Jews during a meeting of Nazi German regional governors in the chancellery. As Goebbels wrote "With regards to the Jewish question, the Fuhrer decided to make a clean sweep ..."

Of course maybe Goebbels was passing the buck...who knows? I think in this case, given who Hitler was, how he thought, and how he liked to meddle in everything he touched, in all likely hood he DID know. And as the one person who could have ordered it stopped, as the leader who inspired it in the first place, he was also responsible, however the cookie crumbles.

The question is, what evidence is there that he didn't know? That's where the burden of proof lies.



[edit on 20-7-2004 by muppet]

Muppet
Yeah - I may be wrong on the actual number, but what I think he was getting at was how could the population of JWs be greater before than it is now....I dunno - if he wants to know he can go to the pages I provided above and find out what the correct number is and do the statstics from there...

lmao@Indy - no...no sign by the dotted line documents....that would be one hell of a lawsuit today if there was tho - lol....eh...ya, maybe that's not funny....

Arguing with people who don't have enough knowledge on this subject is no fun - most Americans grow up, as Indy pointed out, being told "Hitler is the devil" - Hitler was in many ways a genious...he created the first cheap public transportation vehicle...he envisioned the autobahn...he was the first person to establish a car payment system using coupons and credit (maybe that one was a bad one - lol) but he had too many other things floating around in his head that pulled him down and made him into this beastial less-of a-moral human being

Originally posted by EnronOutrunHomerun
*sighs* I guess the fact that I said I took a course with a reputable Nazi Germany history professor who has published prolifically on this just wasn't enough, huh?
Check out these links....
en.wikipedia.org...'s_Witnesses_and_the_Holocaust
www.ushmm.org/education/resource/jehovahs/jwbklt.pdf
www.seva.net:8090...
jehovah.to...
fcit.coedu.usf.edu...
Do you want more?? I guess it slipped my mind that almost everyone on this forum just wants consipiracy theories...

From your own post's references:

from provided reference
In the concentration camps, Jehovah's Witnesses were required to wear a purple triangle to distinguish them from other inmates. Many of them died from disease, hunger, exhaustion, brutal treatment, and exposure to the cold. About 10,000 Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi period. An estimated 2,500 to 5,000 died.
Jehovah's Witnesses and Nazi Germany Index

*Double sigh* All your provided links point to 20,000 to 25,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in pre-war Germany, so any claim of five million deaths must be regarded as patently false (not to mention the above excerpt from your reference). In addition, the pontifications of a single professor, no matter how well regarded, learned, or published, cannot be held as "the gospel" (funny how that happened in the midst of a JW thread) if unsubstantiated, or worse still, refuted by the weight of evidence.

p.s. �consipiracy� is my middle name.

I don't consider the lectures my teachers gave as gospel, but I do hold them high as I valued their opinions....

To be honest, I didn't even thoroughly read the links I gave you b/c I figured I knew I was right to a certain degree and decided that if I was off that I would have "inspired" you would do the work for me - Thanks!

I think what I meant to say was that Jews were the majority of the population being put into concentration camps, but the rest constituted roughly close to half of the rest...I must have had some wrong neurons fire when I put only JWs...I remembered they made a significant portion and perhaps that's why - here's support for what I was trying to say:

Additionally, an estimated 5.5 million non-Jews, including hundreds of thousands of Romani (Gypsies), Polish nationals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political criminals and others, were systematically murdered. While many of these might, perhaps, be classified as executions of criminals and enemies of the state on political or military grounds, this was clearly not the case for Jews and Romani who were classified by the Nazi regime as "racially" inferior and, therefore, as "life unworthy of life."

That's from www.mtsu.edu...]

But at any rate, thank you for clearing up my mistake - I think my point was still a valid one, although statisically incorrect, or should I say way off

[edit on 7/20/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

[edit on 7/20/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

[edit on 7/20/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

I'm not saying Hitler didn't do it. He was certainly the boss and as the boss you are responsible for what your people do. Doesn't mean you did it but you are still responsible. He he didn't do it he certainly needed to have better control of his people. Result either way is that he takes the blame. Can we also consider the possibility that he was so wrapped up in his wars that he either didn't know about or didn't care about what was being done to civilians? Have you ever been so focused on something that you lose sight of what is happening around you? There is no doubt that he hated Jews. Thats very obvious from his own writing. But do we know for a FACT (in his writing) that he ordered the killings or did he simply look the other way and let his thugs do his dirty work?

I guess it all comes down to what is defined as evil. Does a person have to 100% evil all the time, or does 70%, or 50%, or 30% still count? Is a person less evil for killing one person rather than two?

Do other factors come into it? Was he a great leader because he united the german people, or was he lousy because he led them to destruction? He was he a great speaker for inspiring the masses, or was he a bad speaker for being so wrong?

It all depends on what you're measuring. I wouldn't invite him to any of my parties though.

BTW.... Hitler was a very busy leader dealing with wars and what not. As most good leaders do they delegate authority to people. Do you think he had the time to fight all his wars, take care of running a country and deal with something like the extermination of a race?

Agreed Muppet. The man had problems. Serious ones. He was a little Hitler. LOL. Ok I didn't know who else to compare him to. He wanted to take over everything and create the perfect Germany. Invite him over to your house and the next thing you know is you have the Nazi flag on your wall. Serious ego problem.

Not to mention he'd probablly rip down any art you have on the walls and replace it with the proper "high-art" - I can see it now....welcome to anohter episode of "Swapping Art," with your host....Adolf Hitler!

Regardless of what Hitler's precise role in everything was, he didn't do it alone. It would be blind of us to ignore an entire supporting apparatus. Again this points out that a large number of Germans were involved. And if Germans can do it, anyone can do it, including Americans. The best prevention is acknowledgment of our individual and collective potential, so we keep an eye on one another to keep us all on track.

Originally posted by cyberdude78

P.S. For the record I think he was a horrible person before anybody starts attacking me with torches and pitchforks.

In what way would such an "anybody" be any different from the worst Nazi, fascist, KKK member, criminal etc.?

I find it somewhat troubling - but, sadly, typical - that anyone even feels the need to add such a caveat ...









[edit on 10-12-2007 by Vanitas]

Originally posted by slank
Regardless of what Hitler's precise role in everything was, he didn't do it alone.

Indeed, he had quite hefty international support, right up to 1939...

And he didn't "do it" out of the blue, in a vacuum, either.

Situations always develop for a reason.

Demonising individuals (not to mention entire nations - on the basis of some "national character", I mean) is the REAL reason why history keeps repeating itself.






[edit on 10-12-2007 by Vanitas]