I understand that Hitler wasn't democratically elected at first because we has simply appointed Chancellor by the current President, but was he ever elected democratically after that for multiple terms? Every website says something different, so I figured I'd ask her. If not, what other well-known 'evil' leaders have been democratically elected? I'm doing a presentation, and I'd like to put have a visual of a terrible ruler elected in a democracy.
The Nazi Party was elected to the largest plurality of seats in the Reichstag in the 1932 election. They did not have an absolute majority, but since the other parties were all ideologically opposed to each other and could not possibly form a coalition government, the President of Germany had no choice but to name Hitler the chancellor of the government.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
I asked for someone to find me evidence of voting polls or something but I can't.
Here is a ballot from 1938.
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
What Germany? There is no Germany, there is a partitioned country occupied by foreign troops, with a full Inquisition/Police state with more than 10.000 Political trials per year.
Do I sense a longing for a Gross Deutschland?
The Jews have their own country now, I want them to move their Inquisition from Europe to their own country and continue political repression and censorship there and leave us in peace, it costs us a lot to get rid of the Catholic Inquisition to now suffer the Jewish Inquisition, it has been going for too long, more than half century jailing people.
They have their own country and they can write their own laws right? If they want to imprison historians, reporters and students in a way worse than even the Chinese, it´s their country, but leave us in peace, we had too much bloodshed and revolutions to get a civilization based on things like Free Speech, stop destroying it.
I want book burnings to be a thing of the past, they prefer censorship, political repression and violence to force a fake history for their political benefit.
who are those "us"...that's what I don't understand when someone criticize jews or muslims or any other group of people.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Player:The Jews have their own country now, I want them to move their Inquisition from Europe to their own country
Alright, you're done here.
you seem unable to comprehend that it's possible to condemn both nazism and communism, as i have.
I've been condemning them constantly while you tried to convince everyone that Nazism is somehow better. I don't care which is better. They're both collectivist ideologies, but you're trying to make one mass murderer sound better than another, and trying to say I'm the one who can't condemn both? What are you talking about?
i do think, however, that certain aspects of germany's wwii behaviour have been deliberately exaggerated to distract from the appalling crimes of the soviets, and the sins of the allies, too,
This is what I'm talking about. You keep bringing up that the Nazi regime's behavior has been deliberately exaggerated. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. It doesn't matter. Do you really care if Hitler killed 6 million people or 10 million people or anything else? Either way, it's bad. There's no need to stick up for someone because he killed less innocent people than another murderer did.
Player: The Jews have their own country now, I want them to move their Inquisition from Europe to their own country
"Oh, no. Don't worry. I'm not an anti-Semite."
to brian anderson:
yes, i do care about accuracy and truth, even when dealing with people i loathe and ideologies i despise, especially when the facts can have consequences like entry in wwII.
i balance how many innocents were killed by both the axis powers' abuses with those of the allies. are you blind to the latter? i'm a convinced isolationist, are you an interventionist?
also, you've twisted what i said, which wasn't to defend national socialism as an ideology, but to doubt some of the specific crimes attributed to the nazis. two entirely different things.
let me use a more contemporary example to help illustrate. does it reall matter whether the babies-torn-from incubators was really a story concocted by the kuwaitis with the help of an american p.r. outfit? a few score of imaginary babies versus many more real and documented victims of saddam hussein's thuggish rule - but it was the emotional outrage that followed the incubator-babies-story that pushed american public opinion in favour of the allied intervention to retake kuwait.
so if we're going to forget about numbers and accuracy, then i guess we can forget about keeping track of how many died from that intervention. and who cares if wmd were also invented to help us into the next iraqi episode? saddam was a national socialist and therefore evil, so intervention was justified.
i balance how many innocents were killed by both the axis powers' abuses with those of the allies. are you blind to the latter?
No. I've said that before. You just seem pretty quick to jump the gun and stand up for the Nazis.
i'm a convinced isolationist, are you an interventionist?
Again, trying to blame things on me. And, not to get into semantics, but I'm sure you mean non-interventionist instead of isolationist...? I don't think anyone on here is an interventionist. You keep asking me random questions to try to make me sound as bad as you're sounding.
one thing "player" said i do agree with is on free speech bans - not with respect to this forum, a private domain - but in many state legislatures in the developed world. jailing people for opinions is not going to overcome racism or bigotry, quite the contrary. amnesty international does a good job helping many political prisoners internationally whilst agitating for the promulgation of laws creating political-opinion crimes in the developed world.
http://www.amnesty.ca/canada/un_cerd.php#communities
i've asked these questions because i can't understand how you can be for non-interventionism and yet relatively disinterested in the accuracy of the very facts that have been used by interventionists to sell their policies to a reluctant public. belgian babies on german bayonets, and other apocryphal atrocities is what got the english public excited enough to allow politicians embark on the great war, and the list goes on.
maybe you'd care to comment on the tokyo war crimes forum, where some revisionism on the nanking massacre is discussed. if there were in fact no massacre, then fdr's oil embargo against japan starts to take on a whole different complexion, an infinitely more tragic one, or an infinitely more wicked one.
i've asked these questions because i can't understand how you can be for non-interventionism and yet relatively disinterested in the accuracy of the very facts that have been used by interventionists to sell their policies to a reluctant public.
You're getting facts confused with reactions to facts. Interventionists will use all of the facts they want to justify a war/occupation. It doesn't matter to them. They found out there were no WMDs, so the reason changed to promoting democracy, etc. It will change forever. The difference is that I know what my beliefs are. Interventionists and non-interventionists can be given the same facts and will always come up with different conclusions. That's why I'm telling you to stop trying to stand up for the Nazi regime after WWII has been over for like 65 years.
maybe you'd care to comment on the tokyo war crimes forum, where some revisionism on the nanking massacre is discussed.
I don't.
then fdr's oil embargo against japan starts to take on a whole different complexion, an infinitely more tragic one, or an infinitely more wicked one.
I know. The thing is, if you really want people to become non-interventionists, you have to explain to them the effects of international interventions and occupations in a way that doesn't seem to shine a positive light on the Nazis.
debunking "facts" is important to reduce scope for interventionists' reactions. promoting libertarian ideology is good, but not sufficient to combat interventionism.
those who believed in the "facts" supporting the claims of wmd's are less likely to support the next foreign adventure. it's facts that constitute casus belli, not ideological differences. bay of tonkin was the excuse for intervention in vietnam, not opposition to communism per se.
Brian, you will have a hard time answering this question without calling into question the "facts" many of us have had spoon fed to us from our youth. As answered by some earlier, point to FDR, Truman, Lincoln, etc. You need look no further to get your answer. But try to explain that to any group you will speak to. Every democratically elected leader is painted as "good" by western historians, because that is what is wanted. And for Hitler, he is painted as obviously bad, and this is blamed on the "evil" that is the German character, and cannot be blamed on the institution called democracy.
But what of this character? Compared to the British, the Germans fought in far fewer wars prior to WWI. They had far fewer colonies, and were far less of an empire. To compare the two in these regards is almost laughable. Conversely, what wonders the German character brought to the world, in music, science, and other subjects. Much of the beauty we know as Europe can be attributed to German culture in the 17th and 18th centuries. (Please, I also know the negatives: public schools, for example. Nothing is black and white.)
Now, before the bullets start flying my way, I of course am not painting them as innocent saints. However, to look to the real culprits of turning the 20th century into one of tremendous bloodshed, the names of Stalin and Churchill must go on the list above Hitler (I will start ducking now). And to those who say any amount of poison is bad, so a little or a lot makes no difference to a libertarian. Please, be serious. Would you prefer life in Switzerland or North Korea?
I am not educated enough to comment on the gas chambers and death camps. However, I have learned enough to know that almost everything I have learned in school and through the MSM about the history of the west is false, or exaggerated to make one side always good, the other always bad. I will venture to guess most people posting on this thread have found the same to be true as they have matured. This "fact" in my life is enough to be cautious about believing the story of the victors as regards Hitler and WWII. We should believe the Soviet version of these stories?
I do not say he was a nice man. I do not avoid the fact he was a direct cause of deaths of millions. However, I need know no more than this: almost everything I was taught about western history was a fairytale. To not call into question the conventional wisdom of this episode in European history at least a little bit would be rather naïve on my part.
it's facts that constitute casus belli, not ideological differences. bay of tonkin was the excuse for intervention in vietnam, not opposition to communism per se.
Then you need to focus on casus belli before and after the wars instead of the actions of the parties on each side. That is what will convince people that the nature of war is corrupt at its core, and that, the next time we go to war, they need to focus on why the military is going into a country and then compare it to the reason the military gives after the occupation and battles.
However, to look to the real culprits of turning the 20th century into one of tremendous bloodshed, the names of Stalin and Churchill must go on the list above Hitler (I will start ducking now
I would definitely agree with you that Stalin was much worse than Hitler. Again, that's my personal opinion. Who is 'worse' is really a subjective thing. The conversation was switched around, though. What I was saying this entire time is that newson was seemingly standing up in support of the Nazi regime with a strong anti-Semitic sentiment, not only on this thread but on others as well.
And to those who say any amount of poison is bad, so a little or a lot makes no difference to a libertarian. Please, be serious. Would you prefer life in Switzerland or North Korea?
I don't know who said that. I said that there is clearly a difference between the rulers of that time, but they were all mass murderers. The difference really shouldn't matter in that respect. I'll use two different countries in the WWII periods to emphasize my point since clearly I'd choose Switzerland. But when the thread comes to the point where it's, "Would you rather live in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union?" I'm going to say I'd rather live in Nazi Germany, but I'd rather not live in either of them. Trying to say, "This mass murderer is better than that mass murderer," is pointless and even offensive when discussed with anti-Semitic overtones.
However, I need know no more than this: almost everything I was taught about western history was a fairytale.
I agree. I've realized the past two years that nearly everything I've learned has been for nothing. Lies, misleadings, and misinterpretations. At this point, the teachers probably don't even know the difference, which is a scary thing to know.
kindly point out where i've supported the nazi regime, either in this blog or elsewhere. i just don't defend untruths.
also, there is no casus belli after a war, by definition.