The Final Days of the Reich

[hassiman]

I have heard many of "Well Hitler had some good ideas..." phrase before... and well... NO he didn't. Try living in a country where any careless worked would have GESTAPO at your door for you to dissapear into the night and fog. Try having your mentally disturbed son or daughter liqidated by the stae for the "Greater Good". Try being a Jew or a Gypsy or a dissenter of 100 other things that get you sent to a camp or the Guillutine. Yes the reparations after WWI were horrible... and yes Uncle Joe Stalin was a monster... but the truth is that Adolf was a nutcase before the beer hall putsch. I know many WWII vets that are mad as hell that US marines posed with a SS flag and stupid enough to think we would believe it stood for Sniper Scouts... Nope nothing good either in the F-ing Nazies or the SS and Stalin was no better

[Consonecollector]

I notice that everybody here is talking about hitler's and Stalin's crimes. But nobody mentioned the britan's and american's ones. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, bombing of Dresden and other, are exemples of their crimes... hundreds of thousands of civilians died there.

[sandgroper]

Wow, what incredible photos, spine chilling to say the least, particularly the one with the dead soldier and the Brandenburg gate.

[Greenhorn]

I notice that everybody here is talking about hitler's and Stalin's crimes. But nobody mentioned the britan's and american's ones. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, bombing of Dresden and other, are exemples of their crimes... hundreds of thousands of civilians died there.

Sorry, young man....Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not crimes. They were retaliations during a war that saved many lives for the U.S. All wars are horrible things, and the events at these named places were also horrible, but certainly not crimes.

Green

[operaman]

At 16 years old you really don't know what you are talking about.Please study a little more before you make a broad and ridiculous statement like the one you made on this forum.

[Battery Command Post]

I don't believe Hitler was mad at all (except for the 1944-45 period where the stress had clearly brought him to mental breakdown). It's very easy to explain WW2 as the result of a madman forcing an entire nation to do evil, but of course, as a hypothesis it is more than improbable, it's impossible. People like Hitler don't get to rule nations without the majority of the people's support, and they don't get there if they're crazy.

What Hitler was, in my opinion, was a master orator and a classic populist politician. He didn't brainwash or force anyone, all he did was take thoughts that were already in people's heads and throw them back in a eloquent way that played to their own emotions and desires. The 'evil' of Nazism is not from Adolf Hitler, it's from the depths of the human psyche and born of desperate frustration. He played to it, he didn't create it. He gave people what they wanted, and told them what they needed to hear.

Of course it is true that it was a different generation and a different time, and so it is wrong to try to put modern values on the past. However, if you look at the period in Germany it was characterised by two things: a) the aftermath of WWI and the suffering it caused Germans personally and politically, and b) the fear of communism as a political idea. Hitler and the NSDAP were an answer to these things. Jews were a good scapegoat because they were unpopular as an ethnic minority, viewed with suspicion and were linked to communism via Karl Marx. Again this was playing to the worst of people's emotions, but revenge is a powerful one, and it really doesn't matter whether it was deserved or not.

You have to remember these were incredibly hard times to live in, in way I don't think we can really fully understand today. Furthermore these were people who had suffered and been hardened by WW1 and the horrible aftermath of political unrest, hyperinflation, and a national feeling of resentment. Hitler was born of these things, he believed in what he was saying, people came to agree with him because he played to their basic instincs, pride in their country and culture, and told them it was OK to take revenge on those that were 'to blame'.

That's not madness, but it was a recipe for disaster, and the worst and most terrible conflict in history.

Rob

[Gary J]

Excellent Photo's ....
And now let's get back to talk about collecting ..
Thread closed.

Gary J.