Inside Hitler's Killing Machine

I'd buy that he never visited the camps. Why run the risk of being photographed at one? Plausible deniability you know.

There are some, like his sister, who defended him by saying he never knew about the camps, and that it was all Himmler and Heydrich's doing. That I don't buy. He damn well knew about the death camps.

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How could one guy, (Hitler) motivate seemingly tens of thousands of soldiers to carry out such brutal atrocities, without carrying out more carnage than he actually did. I've heard a lot of conjecture on what the appeal to Hitler was, and how they painted the jews as an equivalent of a rat. That just doesn't click in my brain that he could convince that many people to do what they did.

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1920's and 1930's Germany was just a perfect storm for the rise of the Nazis. As far as the hatred of the Jews, there had already been anti-Semitism in Europe for a thousand years. They had been persecuted and run out of nations around Europe long before World War II. It may not have been as hard as you think to mobilize the ones you needed to carry out mass murder against the Jews.

Biden hasn't been to the border either!

Was listening to a podcast on the "experimenting" Japanese scientists did on Chinese captors the other day. Things like freezing arms in cold chambers then smashing the arm with a hammer. Forcing prisoners with bad venereal diseases to have sex. All sorts of slow torturous pain threshold deaths. They bred plague carrying diseases in fleas then released them on towns in China. And so much more. This was on the kings and generals pacific war podcast.

That was a much different time (obviously) and the value of life was much less.

Life actually meaning something of worth is a 20th century creation with the advancement of healthcare and technology.

Yes life as always meant something to someone, but life expectancy was short (see chart) and people were dying of all sorts of things. Life to the masses had little overall value, which is why women were popping out 10 kids, with the hopes 2 or 3 would make it.

Then you couple that with Hitler was able to saddle all the pain the Germans were suffering from WW1 and Depression - Boom.

After 9/11 here, about every normal American would have supported genocidal warfare against muslims. If Bush had nuked Afghanistan off the map, he would have came out the other side still with over 50% approval.

This board and its hitlor obsession.

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After the war there were a lot of interviews with people who had been in the crowds. They all said it was a feeling of group euphoria.

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Definitely a great speaker. That's one of his talents but all the other stuff led to ... well... making him the worst human possibly of all time.

100% control of all media. If the government you trust says something is true, and every newspaper and radio station agrees, most people will believe it, especially when they have no access to any contradictory information.

People, especially vulnerable people, are unbelievably easier to manipulate than you think. There are many historical books that give great detail into this subject matter. "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the best.

I'll admit I have a morbid sense of curiosity about Hitler. I've read in some publications that the studies Mengele did would have great significance even in today's medical community if they could discover his notes but he was able to not only escape Germany alive but also destroyed all of his medical notes. The loss of the notes just adds insult to injury to the mutilations he performed on his victims.

Add to that, the lessons we can learn from how Hitler came to such power, the words and methods he used can be studied for a whole host of reasons.

I'm fine with you being annoyed with Hitler obsession. I also find the comparison of virtually every president since WWII to Hitler to be oddly interesting. Hitler had the power of persuasion obviously. He had qualities that every good leader should have, but he was a bad person and used it for bad things. But it's hard to say that any one person would ever have the effect that Hitler did, just due to the nature of the internet among other things. I don't like any comparison to Hitler, because he seems like such a bizarre case study. Biden certainly is no Hitler. . . He's to phucking stupid to convince anyone of anything. I don't believe Hitler was stupid. Just evil.