A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
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Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#2I read Mein Kampf a few times as a kid. It's worthwhile - I ended up seeing hitler as a tragic, broken figure, tormented by his demons, skewed by his misplaced rage at the Weimar Republic, which lead to a path of destruction for millions.
Until you understand that anyone can be Hitler, you don't understand.
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#3I read Mein Kampf a few times as a kid. It's worthwhile - I ended up seeing hitler as a tragic, broken figure, tormented by his demons, skewed by his misplaced rage at the Weimar Republic, which lead to a path of destruction for millions. Until you understand that anyone can be Hitler, you don't understand.
I started reading Mein Kampf in 8th grade, but I just found the speaker so whiney and irritating that I lost patience before WWI. I should perhaps go back to it sometime.
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#4I read Mein Kampf a few times as a kid. It's worthwhile - I ended up seeing hitler as a tragic, broken figure, tormented by his demons, skewed by his misplaced rage at the Weimar Republic, which lead to a path of destruction for millions. Until you understand that anyone can be Hitler, you don't understand.
I started reading Mein Kampf in 8th grade, but I just found the speaker so whiney and irritating that I lost patience before WWI. I should perhaps go back to it sometime.
Can't be worse that The Catcher in Rye... Can it?
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#5I read Mein Kampf a few times as a kid. It's worthwhile - I ended up seeing hitler as a tragic, broken figure, tormented by his demons, skewed by his misplaced rage at the Weimar Republic, which lead to a path of destruction for millions. Until you understand that anyone can be Hitler, you don't understand.
I started reading Mein Kampf in 8th grade, but I just found the speaker so whiney and irritating that I lost patience before WWI. I should perhaps go back to it sometime.
Yeah, that sums it up. Woe is me, it's all someone else's fault. That much was true - wilhelm ii was a flea of a man with ego issues who bought ruin to prussia almost single-handedly.
Hitler's narrative was utterly disconnected from reality, but utterly reasonable to him and the millions that followed, as a comfortable illusion is preferable to a miserable reality - to most.
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#6> In his introduction to the “Second Book,” which was finally published officially in 2003, Weinberg wrote, “Germany and the rest of the world have not yet come close to coming to terms with Hitler as a person, as leader of a great nation, and as a symbol.”
After each of the recent mass shootings, I've been wondering more and more about whether we aren't doing anything about it because it's so easy to just label the shooters as evil, as if they aren't people. It's tough to accept that real people, with identities and feelings just like you and me, can do terrible things. Understanding tragedy and history is key to not repeating it.
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#7> In his introduction to the “Second Book,” which was finally published officially in 2003, Weinberg wrote, “Germany and the rest of the world have not yet come close to coming to terms with Hitler as a person, as leader of a great nation, and as a symbol.” After each of the recent mass shootings, I've been wondering more and more about whether we aren't doing anything about it because it's so easy to just label the…
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Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started reading Mein Kampf in 8th grade, but I just found the speaker so whiney and irritating that I lost patience before WWI. I should perhaps go back to it sometime.
Can't be worse that The Catcher in Rye... Can it?
Mein Kampf mit Jugendlich Alters Angst
Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#9Re: A Historian Who Fled the Nazis and Still Wants Us to Read Hitler
#10> In his introduction to the “Second Book,” which was finally published officially in 2003, Weinberg wrote, “Germany and the rest of the world have not yet come close to coming to terms with Hitler as a person, as leader of a great nation, and as a symbol.” After each of the recent mass shootings, I've been wondering more and more about whether we aren't doing anything about it because it's so easy to just label the…
I'll probably maintain for all my days that there is no good or evil, just acts. Yes, cry "moral relativism!", but morals are social constructs, whether you like it or not - there is no universal law of morality, even if your name is Kant.
Hitler thought he was good. Those who followed him thought he was good. In the narrative and perceptive reality of nazi Germany he was good. My grandmother waxes lyrical about the wonderful and charismatic Herr Hitler (she's Austrian, was a hitlerjugendherberge), and listening to her makes oh so clear the dreams and glory that hitler successfully sold to the very disillusioned masses.
He wasn't evil. He just served a moral code so alien and repulsive to us today that we write it off as "evil". In fact, at the time, his politics were aligned with those of the US, UK, and other allied powers - eugenics, fascism, and antisemitism were rife in all - but it was their expansionist policy which ultimately led to the branding as evil and ww2.
Don't get me wrong - I'm no apologist - but I do try to understand events from a contemporaneous and empathic perspective.