And also because he lost said war.
Had he won, different narative!
Hitler and Nazi Germany have been lionized unlike the others because it makes the countries that beat them look better.
In reality they were stupid racist weirdos who were constantly infighting. But that doesn’t make beating them sound heroic.
Yes they were quite good at building targets for the RAF and British anti-air gunners. Nice and loud, slow, and flew in a perfectly straight line.
They also came up with the first ballistic missile but it killed more people in production than it did when deployed.
Half the designs from Paperclip were basically unusable, and mainly existed as fake projects to convince Hitler and later the Allies that they were worth keeping around.
Not to mention their obsession with wonder weapons wasted tons of material on things that just wouldn’t work. And how they never built a heavy bomber because they were obsessed with making it a dive bomber.
They were absolutely idiots, and the more I learn about them the stupider they get. They invaded Russia in the winter for Christ’s sake! They waited to tell Hitler about Normandy because it was too early in the morning! They’re so dumb!
Also; They’re not the enemy anymore because their dumbasses lost, so I can call them dumb.
I think one description that fits for them is “too smart for their own good.”
All that wasted manpower and resources and building massive tanks and incredibly intricate guns that never quite worked properly.
I think their true stupidity was their organization and leadership. A shitty plane or gun or tank would get made because the higher-ups wanted it.
And the fascist idea that competition will inevitably produce the best results - social/technical Darwinism, essentially - meant that the design team that could be pushier and flashier would win over actually good designs.
Plus they kicked out or imprisoned hundreds of great scientists because they were from undesirable classes, further hamstringing their technology.
Also; They’re not the enemy anymore because their dumbasses lost, so I can call them dumb.
I’m talking in general. Obv nazi germany hasn’t existed for a long time. It’s better to overestimate than underestimate imo
You also have video games and movies and books making the Nazis out to be way more competent. It’s not like Wolfenstein ended with a drugged-up syphilitic Hitler cowering in a bunker, but a mecha-Hitler with Gatling guns.
And it made money because of what I mentioned: It made Americans and Brits and Russians feel like they’d defeated a huge monster, not a country full of amphetamines and vibes.
Hey just gonna point out that invading Russia in the winter would actually be the second best season to do it, since Russia has 4 seasons spring (mud), summer, fall (mud), and winter (really cold) frankly speaking the mud is what fucked the Nazis over more than anything else since it bogged them down completely.
Napoleon was the one who basically got shit canned by the winter since modern logistics didn’t exist yet and the Russians destroyed all the food while in retreat allowing winter to finish off the attrition.
The way the war was described was the perfect good caring allies was fighting the evil Hitler. Of course Hitler and the axis was the worse but the allies wasn’t good either.
One of the worse thing the allies did was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
of Europeans, that’s the point.
Churchill was responsible for the Bengal famine that kill up to 3.8 million civilians. but they weren’t white, so it is not taught in history
according to My highschool education, mostly yes.
and that massacre was not the fault of Germany, but due to British policies.
Hmm yes accidentally contributing to a famine of 3.8 million casualties because of wartime shortages is comparable to the 60 to 70 million attributed to the guy that fucking started the war in the first place and also systematically executed 6 million of his own citizens and of neighboring countries and enslaved millions more.
Look I’m sure Churchill was a right wanker but the specific cultural ethnicities of dead people is not why Hitler is demonized more than him.
All Hitler did was apply European colonialism to Europe. not that different than what Europe was doing for centuries. that is a fact. Europe wasn’t a group of good guys until bad Germany appeared. they were all busy with that colonial bullshit.
Are you telling me that the European led ethnic cleansing of the the Americas for territorial expansion isn’t lebensraum?
I’m am definitely not trying to push nazi appologia by saying “they were all bad”, just that we can’t ignore the horrors those allied nations committeed as well. Hitler imported a lot of his racism from the US. it’s always nations fucking the world, making the people suffer, then the victors painting themselves as heroes and beacons of civilization.
Yeah… Winston Churchill’s initiatives killed plenty of Europeans. The main reason Hitler is demonized is because he lost the war, that’s how history works.
And to be fair the main reason why Rhoades and especially Leopold aren’t on the same level as Hitler is because most people don’t really study history. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone claim Leopold was a good dude, he was ostracized in his own lifetime once his crimes were made public.
Hitler is history too, though.
So why do we study the history of Hitler, but not Leopold?
Mainly because it suits the propaganda purposes of western nations, but also because it is such a modern topic that is still in living memory. Give ww2 another hundred years and it wont likely be the cultural touch stone it is today.
Plus, most Western nations were actually involved in the European front of ww2 to a large degree. Ask most people about the Pacific front and the crimes committed by the Japanese empire and you won’t get the same responses.
that there’s plenty of colonisers who were basically as bad as Hitler, but because they focused their horrors to the colonial perifery no one really cares. and are often celebrated as heroes.
that’s the whole point of the post.
Hitler is hated because he tried to colonize Europe, while most European nations where doing basically the same in Africa/Asia.
which he used on Europeans, if he put then on a colony to kill non whites no one would have cared.
like no one cared when the Brits invented concentration camps, or mass starvation on their colonies.
was not taught that in school, or heard about it in any forum, until I searched it for myself. don’t think any WW2 documentary I watched even mentioned that.
it’s part of history the west is actively trying to ignore. but genocide on white people? that’s unacceptable. yhea, jews weren’t considered white then. but Hitler was hated not for his imperialism and racism. but because he applied that imperialism and racism to Europe.
Yeah? Did you go to school in America by chance?
They don’t really teach much at all about colonialism or the native American genocide…
Hitler was definitely hated for his imperialism and racism… It’s just way way more complicated than your redux here.
… I present to you as evidence:
Mr. Hitler - by Lead Belly

went to school in Spain, better education than USA, But still eurocentric
point being that plenty of European colonials who did what Hitler did, but to the Colonial perifery are treated as heroes.
I do appreciate your perspective…
I went to an American school with a good system in elementary, even had a “gifted program” for smarter kids… and then a shitty one when we moved. Each state is like its own country in a lot of ways.
But well for one, European countries are bound to be more upset when they themselves are attacked just because it’s themselves getting attacked…
For two, by that time imperialism was no longer seen as an okay thing to do… A lot of countries kept their colonies but they weren’t invading new countries or outright enslaving people anymore.
For three, the Nazis were industrially exterminating an entire race out of pure spite. The only other comparible level of extermination would be America (sorry btw… At least im enough Native American that I get to hate myself… Plus I’m part Pawnee… A tribe that helped the US military hunt other tribes out of revenge)[Lakotas basically genocided the Pawnee right before white people showed up]
But even that was more about not being able to fight them… Not just killing them to kill them…
…
At least we can bask in our white guilt together.
Spain sure has a terrible history in the Americas.
i won’t deny that Nazi Germany was the worst. I’m not trying to downplay them. just what they did was what Europe has been doing and was currently doing to the rest of the world. Not sure if that counts as the imperial boomerang. but it’s similar. Europe spent centuries colonizing and conducting ethnic cleansings and genocides whenever it pleased, until one European nation decided to do that to Europe.
Fascism was definitely a form of the imperial boomerang, when the colonial government abuse and absolute power it held in the colonial perifery was imported into the nation proper.
I have family that escaped Poland who told me all my family that stayed where killed. But we shouldn’t let history white wash the rest of Europe either.
Some of this I think comes down to documentation. We have so much documented evidence from every level of administration of the rise, crimes, and fall of the Third Reich.
Leopold and Rhodes I think enjoy the obscurity of the 19th century/pre-World War 1 world. Even with direct and clear connections to modern society or even WW2, they operated at a time when monarchies dominated Europe. It’s just enough of a costume change to have them appear irrelevant.
So when you guys find out someone is a Maoist what’s your reaction? Do you assume they endorse slavery and genocide?
Or do you think they’re mostly a bit of a terminally online weirdo who ignores things they don’t want to hear.
Ah, that’s why Napoleon is taboo. Because he killed mostly Europeans.
…
This is a rare L; Hitler is mainstream taboo because he is one of the few figures of the few movements which is associated with industrialized genocide as its core cause.
There are a lot of genocidal shitheads who don’t get the infamy they deserve in history, make no mistake, and some of them skirt by because of racism. But Hitler being Enemy #1 has much more to do with how and why than where.
… though, related to the trio mentioned, that Churchill is excluded from the likes of Leopold in the popular imagination is certainly a travesty. Four years of service does not redeem forty years of inhumanity.
it’s Lemmy, talk about class war and you’ll make friends.
talk about antiracism and they get their pitchforks.