Why The Holocaust? (No Flaming Please)

[Pegghead]

Didn't he also go after the Poles, Gypsies, and cripples?

Or am I just misremembering?

Oh he went after the Polish alright (I assume that's what you meant by Poles). My grandfathers living proof of that, in that those Nazi bastards had him at gunpoint on a forced labour farm busting his balls day in, day out with no breaks and very little food or drink.

So why do these jerkwads support that madman Hitler, though just for the record, he (My grandpa) was saved by the good ol' red, white and blue, migrated to Australia and isn't Jewish.

 

[Angerwing]

He was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna twice, as they thought his paintings were lacking (Hitler was an artist as well as a monster). Funnily enough, they were Jewish. Not to mention Hitler's mother died of breast cancer, and Hitler thought the Jewish doctor deliberately let her die. And anti-Jewish sentiments had been stretching back in Europe for hundreds of years, and a lot of the time it was sort of weird to not hate Jews.

Also a convenient scapegoat.

 

[NimbleJack3]

This sounds slightly suspicious to me. What's your source?

A man with a Ph.D in Historical Studies who wrote a 40,000 word essay on Hitler, his rise to power and the Holocaust.

If you stil don't believe I'm sure wikipedia or other websites would have information confirming this.

I'm afraid that I must question the authenticity of one person's statement(s). They may be wrong or mistaken. Even large numbers of people may be wrong. 1000 years ago, many people believed that the earth was flat.
Also, the Internet is a huge and diverse resource with contradicting information. I'm probably able to find information that confirms Hitler was part of the Thule Society, and also goes on to say that their headquarters was on the moon and they were all aliens. Please cite a specific source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Entry_into_politics

If you read the third paragraph it states Hitler involvement with the Thule Society.

It only says he knew the founder.

"Here Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people."

Also, Wikipedia is a freely editable source. Anyone could have typed that with a few dummy sites to back it up. There's hundreds of edits on that single page alone, and someone could sneak in a sentence about how he had mild links with the Thule Society.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

He was a devout christian, its only natural he would want everything that doesn't believe what he believes dead.

Thats how christianity works! "Believe what I believe or i'll hurt you"

 

[Michael S. Azrael]

Don't kids on the internet have better things to do than talk about WW2 and Hitler??

Don't you have better things to do then complain? At least we a managing to have a discussion about something that is not completely idiotic and was one of the most world-altering events.

Please there is no need to scold us for such a discussion.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

Don't kids on the internet have better things to do than talk about WW2 and Hitler??

[HEADING=1]^ Troll Alert ^[/HEADING]

 

[Superior Mind]

There are many theories. Jews were an easy scapegoat for one.

It shouldn't be forgotten that Jews weren't the only group targeted in the Holocaust.

 

[Motti]

Because he honestly believed that the germans were the master race and that everyone else needed to either die or be enslaved.

 

[mafyapenguin94]

He had some bad personal encounters with Jews in Bavaria (I think) and hopped on the hate bandwagon.

This is what I'm interested in finding out. What specifically set it all off?

Didn't he also go after the Poles, Gypsies, and cripples?

Or am I just misremembering?

Nope you are correct, I think he also started going for people without blonde hair and blue eyes (again if memory serves me correct)

Which is curious, seeing as he was neither blonde nor blue eyed.

Hitler believed that the blonde haired, blue eyed were "angels" in a way. Perfect beings that shared the same sort of features with that of angels and other divine creatures. He also felt that, because they shared these features, in his mind, that they needed to have a dark leader behind them.

It's all really convoluted honestly, and if you're going to ask for sources I honestly can't give them to you offhand. This was something that was discussed by one of my professors in a World History class, and its far too early and I'm far too lazy to do the actual legwork to back it up substantially. I guess I give my word as a history major?

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Didn't he also go after the Poles, Gypsies, and cripples?

Or am I just misremembering?

Not the Poles, but Gypsies and cripples yes. The confusion over the Poles arises because at the time of world war 2 Poland had huge numbers of Jews living there, and as such Polands more of Polands population than any other ended up in Nazi death camps. The Gypsies were targeted for the same reason as the Jews - racism and bigotry.

Cripples were targeted for different reasons. Basically eugenics, and this wasn't exclusively a Nazi thing. Eugenics practices had been going on all over the world (including the USA) long before the Nazis came on the scene, the Nazis just accelerated their eugenics program. After what had happened was made common knowledge, it was something of a wake up call for the world, and as a result eugenics became recognized as being unethical.

Never-the-less people deemed "unfit" to pass their genes on were being forcibly sterilized as recently as the late 1960s...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1150040.ece
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html

 

[Agema]

He was a devout christian, its only natural he would want everything that doesn't believe what he believes dead.

Thats how christianity works! "Believe what I believe or i'll hurt you"

Hitler was assuredly not a devout Christian. He was religious in a way best summed up by his comment: "We do not want any other god than Germany itself". He just picked and chose from Christianity, Occultism and whatever else could be used to glorify Germany.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

He was a devout christian, its only natural he would want everything that doesn't believe what he believes dead.

Thats how christianity works! "Believe what I believe or i'll hurt you"

Hitler was assuredly not a devout Christian. He was religious in a way best summed up by his comment: "We do not want any other god than Germany itself". He just picked and chose from Christianity, Occultism and whatever else could be used to glorify Germany.

Well yeah. He was a fucking nutcase.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

He was a devout christian, its only natural he would want everything that doesn't believe what he believes dead.

Thats how christianity works! "Believe what I believe or i'll hurt you"

Achievement unlocked: Goodwins Law.

Also, well done on displaying as much ignorance as any other garden variety theophobe! Here is a quote from Hitler himself:-

"I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."

(my bold)
Quoted from Hitler's "Table Talks" with Bormann,
in "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny" by Allan Bullock.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitler-Study-Tyranny-Alan-Bullock/dp/0140135642/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255436616&sr=8-1

 

[NimbleJack3]

Every post is "hitler this" "ww2 that". I suspect a lot of people on these forums get most of their WW2 education from Call of Duty. The only reason the Holocaust has such significance today is because people want it to, there's almost the sense in popular media that the Jews were the only ones to suffer in the Holocaust but they made up only half of the victims, as others have said there were millions of cripples, gays, poles, etcetera killed as well. And then in the grand scheme of things, the Holocaust didn't even kill that many people. What about the millions upon millions of Chinese civilians that were killed? Rape of Nanking anyone? Or the millions of Soviet civilians that died in the war. Or the millions more that Stalin starved afterwards?

Half of the ww2 threads on this board are stupid and the other half have such a narrow view of the war. What about the Japanese Canadians and Americans that had their possessions seized and were sent off to work camps while German-immigrants walked free?

Etcetera

We don't just talk about Hitler and WW2, you know. Check any of the forums. I only made this thread because I am studying the 1936 Olympics in college and got thinking about Hitler's motives. Not because I was fascinated by the rendered polygonal bad guy in CoD. I don't even own a copy.
I'm surprised you're here when the whole place is inundated with gaming posts. Why not attack them, seeing as they are in such large numbers? And yes, sometimes the holocaust is a little bit over-portrayed, but if you try to look at humanity's history of violence and brutality it quickly becomes apparent that you can only look at so much of it.

And before anyone else posts about it, check the first post. I've realized that the Jewish were not the only targeted group, so I've changed it.