And they didn’t get PTSD and go to therapy like today’s snowflakes. They got shell shock and dealt with it through alcoholism and domestic abuse as real men so.
Hitler wasn't a bad guy in WW1. He was just another soldier caught in the midst of a continental disaster that changed everything and improved nothing.
I'm fairly certain people like Himmler better fit the description of psychopath. Hitler was, as famousone said, just a man. A fairly charismatic man, and a good reader of people, but a man nonetheless. He eventually lead his people to do great and terrible things, but as far as I know he never displayed an inability to empathize. If they'd won, he'd have been regaled as a hero and a liberator of the German people. As the old adage goes "war doesn't determine who is right, only who is left." Or, if you prefer, "history is written by the victors." Perhaps: "everyone is the hero of their own story, and the villain of someone else's." All ring true.
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Not that I'm defending what Hitler did, but writing him off as being born evil or a bad egg is a complete misrepresentation and oversimplification of the situation. (How's that for unintended alliteration?)
As an aside - being a psychopath doesn't by definition make you a bad person. There are people that fall on that spectrum and somehow lead completely normal and on the whole uneventful lives. It does make you more predisposed to becoming a "bad" person, but only a person's actual actions can define who they are
I remember hearing that Hitler used to carry around a riding crop and whip people when he was a teenager.. Can't speak to the truth of that, though. I do know that his doctor was pumping him full of a cocktail of drugs during WW2 that can't have helped his mental state
In those last days the man was getting no regular exercise, unnutritious meals, and was watching his life's work get burned and pillaged from all fronts. Must've been absolutely miserable, but still better than he deserved.
no famousone, you do not have to commit genocide to be a bad person. Hitler had the potential to do evil, and the predisposition to kill indiscriminately. He had no empathy for the suffering of other humans, and I think that makes him a bad guy.
He was a vegetarian who loved children. His empathy was arguably selective, not nonexistent. The man couldn't even bear to look at his country when the war ravaged her.
Potential and predisposition don't mean shit until it's acted on.
I've got a predisposition for alcoholism, but don't drink. Does that make me an alcoholic?
Hitler was only human. One who chose to do terrible things.
obviously hitler was a human. not all humans are the same though. Hitler wasn't normal. A normal person wouldn't lack the humanity to do what he did. So yes, he was human, but he was a bad human. One that had no qualms about wiping out an entire population.
"But hitler loved his dog uwu"
That doesn't matter. Loving some things doesn't redeem you for killing others
Okay, I get it. You are afraid. You fear the thought of a man quite like you or me being capable of doing such things.
So you dehumanize him. Try to rationalize the fear away; "Hitler wasn't normal". Nobody is normal.
A reasonable fear, but you and society in general need to move past that fear. Men who do evil are not born evil, there is no once-a-millenia planet alignment that creates evil men.
Do not mischaracterize my refutation for sympathy or justification.
Refusing the humanity of evil men will be what allows them to hide until it is too late.
The Final Solution was plan C, Hitler was known as a warm and charismatic man, an exceptional leader who led a war ravaged, starving, and bankrupt nation back to the forefront of world powers.
Do not let your fear or hatred blind you.
Hitler literally wasn't incapable of empathy. Iirc he'd spent several years watching his country be squashed into the dirt, his people suffering and dying, their money worthless, unable to provide before he truly began to snap. Again, how they got there is not the point.
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And if we're looking specifically at his treatment of the Jews: the sad reality is that Hitler's views on them weren't original. Most of the treatment of them had been accepted and encouraged for many years by other countries, including varying degrees of violence and death. Hitler was simply one of the first ones (in the more modern times) to actually take it to the next level. Even the ones receiving refuge from Germany during and after the wars were often treated as "less than."
People, perfectly average normal people, are capable of terrible things. The ones turning Jews into lampshades may have been operating under Hitler's rule, but it's likely they weren't operating under Hitler's specific orders. Certainly not every single time one of those atrocities was committed. Many of the Germans that cheered and were fine with the goings on of the camps, walked through in quiet horror when they were shown what, exactly, their approval had paid for. But they'd been fine with it at the time.
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Power, revenge, anger, righteousness, desperation, pride.. Any person can become a monster with the right motivations.
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Not that I'm defending what Hitler did, but writing him off as being born evil or a bad egg is a complete misrepresentation and oversimplification of the situation. (How's that for unintended alliteration?)
Potential and predisposition don't mean shit until it's acted on.
I've got a predisposition for alcoholism, but don't drink. Does that make me an alcoholic?
Hitler was only human. One who chose to do terrible things.
"But hitler loved his dog uwu"
That doesn't matter. Loving some things doesn't redeem you for killing others
So you dehumanize him. Try to rationalize the fear away; "Hitler wasn't normal". Nobody is normal.
A reasonable fear, but you and society in general need to move past that fear. Men who do evil are not born evil, there is no once-a-millenia planet alignment that creates evil men.
Do not mischaracterize my refutation for sympathy or justification.
Refusing the humanity of evil men will be what allows them to hide until it is too late.
The Final Solution was plan C, Hitler was known as a warm and charismatic man, an exceptional leader who led a war ravaged, starving, and bankrupt nation back to the forefront of world powers.
Do not let your fear or hatred blind you.
.
And if we're looking specifically at his treatment of the Jews: the sad reality is that Hitler's views on them weren't original. Most of the treatment of them had been accepted and encouraged for many years by other countries, including varying degrees of violence and death. Hitler was simply one of the first ones (in the more modern times) to actually take it to the next level. Even the ones receiving refuge from Germany during and after the wars were often treated as "less than."
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Power, revenge, anger, righteousness, desperation, pride.. Any person can become a monster with the right motivations.