10 Comments
User's avatar
wmj's avatar

I don’t intend the following comparison to be inflammatory nor offensive, only illustrative:

Hitler wanted his ideology to have its place in a future a world and realized Germany wasn’t big enough nor were there enough Germans to ensure that. It was surrounded by hostile enemies that would eventually grind it down - either ideologically or militarily or demographically - communism and liberal humanism.

It seems like you’re saying (and perhaps not wrong to say!) “well, life’s not fair, just gotta give up the dream, bud. Just assimilate or convert to one of them”. I wonder, are there any modern countries or situations to which you’d apply that advice and for similar reasons? Or would you say “some chances are worth dying for”?

Expand full comment
Misha Saul's avatar

Ye if your ideology is we have to conquer our neighbours and exterminate and enslave large swathes of them, not sympathetic!

Expand full comment
wmj's avatar

I think it was more like “we have to conquer them or they’ll conquer us”. Which, in a world without atomic weapons, in which the Soviet Union had already attempted or completed multiple wars of conquest, is not entirely groundless.

Expand full comment
Misha Saul's avatar

There's some truth to this, but i think its massively overstated by Hitler apologists

Lots of reasons he wanted to conquer the Soviets

Expand full comment
newt0311's avatar

It's funny you say that because we know what happened to the USSR in the next few decades. Germany could well have emerged victorious through sheer tenacity and playing the two sides against each other.

Expand full comment
Evan Goldfine's avatar

Excellent

Expand full comment
Martin Greenwald, M.D.'s avatar

The German invasion of the Soviet Union was so catastrophic and strategically ill-advised, one wonders what could have impelled them to do it. At the end of the day I think the answer, like the explanation for most of Hitler’s other actions, is found in Mein Kampf.

Expand full comment
Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka's avatar

Schadenfreude & nachas epitomized

Expand full comment
Misha Saul's avatar

There's not much nachas to be had on the Eastern Front… grim all the way down

Expand full comment
Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka's avatar

Germans getting payback elicits those feels

Expand full comment