aw. RE: aw. RE: Why did Elser plant the bomb?

[Bekah]

Kershaw's 2-volume biography of Hitler is absolutely magnificent -  
brilliant, imo.   I read the whole thing (!) 3 or 4 years ago.   The  
gist is pretty much what you're describing,  Rich.   Kershaw claims  
that Hitler was a bit of a megalomaniac nutter,  but not totally  
unique in that way or we'd be able to simply put him and his legacy  
aside as a special case - non-replicable.  And this idea completely  
exonerates the rest of Germany and lays full blame on Hitler.    We  
can't do that - it wasn't the case.

And Kershaw doesn't make Hitler the puppet of what the masses wanted  
either.   Hitler's Willing Executioners pushes that to the point of  
letting Hitler off the hook.   According to Kershaw,  no Hitler,  no  
Holocaust (as we know it).

  Kershaw touches both sides of the responsibility issue  and comes  
out somewhere in the middle saying that although Hitler was a  
somewhat of a madman,  driven, in his own mind by some providential  
force,  he also  had this incredible charisma which made people want  
to "work toward the Fuhrer."    And he tapped into the social and  
psychological distress of the times.

Had Hitler been assassinated,  German Nazism would have looked pretty  
much like Fascism under Mussolini.   There probably would  have been  
another World War and  grave human rights abuses but not the full  
scale genocide Hitler, for all practical purposes,  devised,  
inspired, directed.

Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

Kershaw is great - most biographers fall a bit in love with their  
subjects,  even if the subject is Hitler;  it's almost a  
psychological phenomenon.   But in the entire 2100 pages of Hitler,   
Kershaw never does this.  Hitler remains evil all the way through,   
leading people who, due to the circumstances,  are more than willing  
to follow his dream.

Bekah
who has probably read way too many books for solid, balanced mental  
health -



On Feb 14, 2009, at 6:44 PM, rich wrote:

> just read Ian Kershaw's essay Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism.
>
> essentially the deal Kershaw's on about is the historical debate over
> Hitler's role--was he the central cog, the sine qua non of national
> socialism or was he a weak dictator who sowed the field but was
> offstage to events and people and institutions working it out for
> themselves in a belief they were working towards Hitler in some
> way--i.e. a revolution from below in emerging radicalism and eventual
> mass murder.
>
> think Kershaw would agree that no Hitler: No holocaust. he thinks many
> historians underestimate his influence.
>
> all that said, you kill Hitler in 1939 that'd would've been a pretty
> major turn of events
>
> rich
>
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Kai Frederik Lorentzen  wrote:
>>> Ok, we're talking about Hitler, and the year is 1939.
>>
>>> ... Come on, don't leave it like that ...
>>
>>
>> let's say it had succeeded.  You'd have a dead Hitler and the dude  
>> who
>> wrote the Horst Wessel song would write a Hitler song.  Whoever in  
>> the
>> inner circle got ascendancy would have had a great excuse to tighten
>> security.
>> Hitler's strategy lost WWII.  In an alternate  timeline somebody more
>> canny would've maybe not opened 2 fronts, eg.
>>
>> Real life example: Reichstag fire, the dude according to my info  
>> was a
>> sincere anarchist.  What did his deed accomplish?
>>
>> Now Hitler in 1923...a lot more tempting...but find a way to  
>> embarrass
>> him publicly instead of kill him, and I'll sign on...
>>
>>>
>>