Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
(1) "Mein Kampf" is just another book for Indians. Sure it is available in bookstores, it isn't particularly popular. Most people have read it, and most think it is a turgid bit of prose.
(2) Why should Indians (or Pakistanis for that matter) have the same level of Hitler Phobia and/or Holocaust guilt Germans have? I thought the German "guilt" was all about how Hitler and co misled their ancestors into The Holocaust and other dirty deeds. Indians and Pakistanis were colonized by the British at the time of WW2 and many of our ancestors fought against the Nazis and the Japanese. (Some of them fought for the Nazis/Japanese trying to attain independence for India from the British).
Nutshell: People who had nothing to do with the Nazis or the Holocaust and for whom the Nazis and Hitler were "people far away" fighting and winning aginst an oppressive colonial power don't have as much of a bad reaction as people who were invaded/ruled/slaughtered by them.
Big Deal.
Genghis Khan built mountains of skulls during his invasions but would Germans blanch if they saw a Muslim with the name "Genghis" or "Timur" or think his name is inappropriate?
As something to chew on, many babies born in the Middle East / Pakistan etc are being named "Osama". An American child with such a name would find social situations difficult I imagine. No such stigma in Pakistan. At some point will we see a headline "Saudis cringe at Osama's popularity in Pakistan"?
To be even more controversial it could be argued that Bush and co "killed a million Iraqis" for no real purpose. Should all Americans hate and abhor W? Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths than Hitler Should Chinese be surprised that some few Americans think Mao was "cool"?
fwiw I personally thing Hitler was a charismatic and thoroughly evil person. Most Indians who are aware of actual history feel the same way.
But I am also aware concentration camps were "invented" by the British during the Boer War and the large scale deaths of non combatant Boer women and children in these camps could be called genocide if it happened today. Should we hate Lord Salisbury (and Winston Churchill for that matter) too? I don't see many Britishers being ashamed of them.
Your point about children's names is almost the textbook definition of a straw man, and I think you know it. Many German children are named Joseph, but that name has a long cultural and religious history, and no one in their right mind would associate that with Stalin. I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar. However, if Pakistani parents name their children Adolf, a name that has no cultural associations in Pakistan whatsoever except being linked to a brutal mass murderer, then that's at least a little bit cringe worthy.
(I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even possible...)
There is no "Nazi cult" in Pakistan. Talk about exaggeration.
Yes, for some people Hitler had some virtues (as they do Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Che, Lenin, George W Bush) which they think are worthy of being admired.
" I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar."
You are wrong.
There is a rise in babies being named Osama after 9/11. I thought that was obvious from the context. Sorry if I was not clear enough. Arab and Pakistani teenagers wear T shirts with Osama's picture on them. There are large numbers of people who think Osama Bin Laden is a heroic figure. You (and I) think he is a homicidal maniac. Other people don't.
You can always find some people somewhere who admire the mass murderers of history (including Osama, Mao , Stalin and the British who created concentration camps in the first place), as compared to those whose ancestors were massacred. It doesn't mean much.
Germans expecting all Pakistanis to hate and abhor Hitler as much as they do is like some Pakistanis expecting them to love Osama Bin Laden.
So yes the world doesn't always have prejudices in lockstep with your own, and sometimes admire people you abhor and vice versa. Sorry about that.
Sounds like what the Germans would say today if Hitler had won the war and founded a strong and dominant Germany? yeah there were mistakes but they weren't intentional. Sure.
The point is that an argument could be (and was) made that such starvation and ill treatment was intentional, as a method of forcing the Boer commandos to surrender. The British were essentially stalemated and could see no way of ending the war. By the accepted norms of war of the time, starving non combatants to death was a crime. But the British won and were a World Power (much as the USA is today), so no one convened the equivalent of Nuremberg. If the Boers had won, (unlikely, but just as a thought experiment) you bet your ass some Britsh politician would have been "criminals".
Let us read Wikipedia though.
"Hobhouse published a report in June 1901 which contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population.
In June 1901, Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical "When is a war not a war?" with "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those same camps and the policies that created them."
All that said, do read up on the Khaki Elections and the Boer War. Don't just read Wikipedia. Read your history in some depth and then talk.
" i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing those sent there."
This is exactly what some people, especially the Boers and their allies the Germans thought the British were doing (see above). The British Leader of the Opposition even claimed as much!
Political maneovres aside, What matters is that people died in the tens of thousands. ( A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one in four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.
It is thought that about 12% of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned. It is, however, worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held white Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in the camps that held native refugees". - Wikipedia)
Is it a lesser number than Jews in the Holocaust? Sure. Was starving non combatants to death (and denying that such things were happening) a "war crime"? You tell me. Victors are never war criminals are they?
Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.
As long as you keep asking like you did, you shouldn't be afraid to contribute. Just pushing opinions would be another thing, though.
I'm not sure how this didn't occur to me before I posted the article. What was I thinking? Well, I guess I know what I was thinking: it is an observant article about an interesting new (to me) phenomenon. It isn't particularly critical. In fact, the most surprising quality of the article itself is how gentle and non-judgmental it is. And I still think it's one of the most fascinating cultural pieces I've read in a while.
But you're right: Godwin's Law doesn't fail to apply just because one begins at the absurd instead of going through a reductio to get there, which means the probability of a good discussion approximates zero.
The 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing might explain that some people like him (there are other reasons, too). But if we look at Hitler himself and rate him on what HE did, then it is easy to see that he is in no way somebody that can be seen in positive light.
Also, when Hitler thought of 'Arier' he was thinking about a white, germanic 'race'. The word 'Arier' was a political tool and redefined as necessary.
You could argue that the post World War 1 "reparations" policy on Germany was indeed oppression.
But I wasn't talking about that. I meant that for Indians (and Pakistanis) of the time, Hitler was fighting the British, who was their oppressor/colonizer. The struggle for Indian Independence was in full swing when WW 2 broke out.
"if we look at Hitler himself and rate him on what HE did, then it is easy to see that he is in no way somebody that can be seen in positive light."
And yet many Germans did see him in a positive light. And if he had won the war would he still be considered universally evil? Stalin and Mao killed more people than he did yet there are significant numbers of Russians and Chinese who admire them today.
I agree with you that Hitler was evil. I completely agree that Hitler's "Aryan race" meant something completely diufferent from what people in India/Pakistan who admire Hitler think he meant.
I guess just don't see things completely in black and white and/or expect other people to believe exactly as I do, especialy about judging historical figures, and find them "cringe worthy" if they differ in opinion from me.
When I was living in the USA I met many people who thought the Confederates were fighting for a noble cause for e.g. and I didn't "cringe", though I didn't believe that myself. I understand that History is rarely uni dimensional and that other people have different views of History and historical figures than I do.
Europeans don't universally condemn Mao or Stalin. And there are a least a few who admire them.
Why should Pakistanis universally condemn Hitler? And why can't there be some Pakistanis who admire him?
Hitler in Germany is seen as evil. He did not win the war and he never would have won the war. Secondly people in Germany see him as evil not because he lost the war, but because he caused the death and suffering of so many people, was a brutal dictator and so on.
The discussion over the past decades in Germany makes this very clear. The current generation hasn't much positive to say about Hitler - especially those who learned a bit. Older generations loved that he built autobahns and got people to work - before these people then died in the wars. But those people were brought up in a different Germany with different values.
Mao and Stalin? I can't remember hearing here in Germany saying anything positive about them.
'Why should Pakistanis universally condemn Hitler?' Because he was a racist, started a war, caused killing millions of people, his secret policy tortured and killed many people, removed basic rights, installed a one party system, got rid of democracy, installed concentration and labor camps to kill millions of based on their worthyness and their race, his army fought a brutal war killing millions of civillians... I could go on for a while.
Didn't he try to make peace (or even an alliance?) with the British for a long time?
> Mao and Stalin? I can't remember hearing here in Germany saying anything positive about them.
You are right in a main stream sense, but see e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Gruppen for the loonies.
This isn't a question of whose 'wrong' is right or even whose 'wrong' is a little more right. It is a question of 'is it wrong at all?' And it is. It just isn't possible to argue that Hitler effected a positive (or even net neutral) change on the world - hence he is worthy of no admiration, regardless of what nation it comes from.
That's basically what it comes down to - 'Is X praiseworthy?' If X is not, then ultimately it doesn't matter a bit where the praise comes from. To say otherwise is to be an apologist for evil men and evil actions (as being evil makes an X not worthy of praise.)
No that is not my point at all. I said explicitly I think Hitler is an evil person. I am not trying to defend Hitler at all.
My point is what is "good" and "bad" varies from person to person and country to country and is rarely a binary judgement (and history is rarely "black and white" wrt good and bad) and where it is , it keep shifting with time.
Germans cringing because Pakistanis(!) don't see Hitler as completely evil makes no sense to me. Their historical "experience" of Nazism is too different to expect a consensus. Complete with a picture of kids making a swastika (the Swastika is a Hindu symbol of good fortune btw) that article is ignorant and supercilious.
Germans don't cringe about "bigger" murderers. Why should they hold Pakistanis to an unattainable standard? Rank Hypocrisy and sensationalism(imo).
'bad' cannot vary from country to country - Adolf Hitler cannot be seen anything but pure evil.
That the Swastika is a symbol from India, Germans know already.
Imagine if our judicial branch worked that way, would that lead to a sustainable society? Absolutely not. You couldn't legitimately punish anyone for a crime because what is a 'crime' to you may not be a 'crime' to the perpetrator. And so on, and so on...
Bottom line, if an action is evil, it is fundamentally evil. The nature of an action doesn't change according to who commits it. The day humanity stops "cringing" when faced with apologist behavior is perhaps the day when humanity dooms itself.
Yes. But they should.
(1) like plinkplonk said "Mein Kampf" is just another book to read, except its author killed 6 million jews.
(2) The conclusion that the article draws regarding 1.2 billion indians based on an art exhibit and a restaurant owner is akin to saying everyone in the United States is old after seeing two elderly people from the country.
(1) Hitler's Germany fought the British, who the common Indians/Pakistanis generally hated.
(2) Germany made token efforts to "assist Indian independence". Undoubtedly meant to destabilize the British, but any assistance was undoubtedly appreciated.
I don't want to talk about the elephant in the room (anti semetism), but for what it is worth, I have never heard a desi ever say "Hitler was great because he killed the Jews".
There is no anti semitism in India. There are hardly any Jews here.I believe there is one synagogue in Kerala. Most of the few jews who lived in India emigrated to Israel long ago. Very hard to hate people who you never encounter! The religious faultline in India is Hindu/Muslim.
Interestingly enough the image of Jews is that of ferocious and competent warriors, not meek/servile/moneylenders/fill-in-your-favorite-anti-Jewish-stereotype, largely due to the fact that Indians know of Jews mostly through the lens of Israel and its wars. Even people who are Pro Palestine/Arab anti/Israel think Israeli armed forces and the Mossad are very dangerous.
That's actually one of the easier things. Areas with less foreigners tend to have more xenophobia (e.g. in Germany).
Then most times came the "Hitler was good" response.
My theory is that what endears Hitler to Indians (and perhaps Pakistanis) is nationalism. Nationalism is rife in India. And Hitler's political party was ardently nationalistic.
To total outsiders, separated by vast differences of space and time, they don't care about the victims either and assign shortsighted judgments. How many Westerners within the last 30 years probably thought Genghis Khan was a total badass? How many people basically ignore the parts of the Bible that describe God leading the Hebrews in a variety of genocidal wars?
Genocidal conquest is how things were done, and it takes a very contemporary set of moral beliefs to even see that thing as wrong, as long as it wasn't committed against you. It's not even a lesson that's necessarily sunk in yet (review 2003-2008-era anti-Iraq-War rhetoric and compare mentions of US troop casualties to mentions of Iraqi civilian casualties). Powerful people in Europe bought into the concept of human rights and started building the contemporary moral view of genocide after Hitler did to Europe what Europe had been doing to the rest of the world, but if Hitler hadn't been defeated so thoroughly I suspect our very moral standards wouldn't be up to the task of vilifying him to the same extent. In a way, Hitler in WWII explicitly represented and practiced the philosophy that genocidal conquest is the way things are done, and the western allies--seeing the extreme to which Hitler had taken that idea--were forced to adopt (and develop) the contrary position. All in all, I think there's a fairly nearby possible world where Hitler achieved at least a partial victory and no one is nearly as shocked at him as we are in this world.
We should have learned from these mistakes. These are not how things should be done. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past.
I live in a country that was built through conquest by defeating its original inhabitants in war and either enslaving them, relocating them, or exterminating them so the conquerers could inhabit their land. I suspect a lot of us are, and we don't all live in the same country. That's how a frightening amount of history unfolded--and if you're alive today, there's a pretty decent chance your ancestors won one of those wars. Hitler's conquest of Europe differed only in his methods.
Again, I'm not making any moral judgments. It seems to me that centuries of history were made by some groups violently enslaving, relocating, or exterminating other groups, and no one really cared that much. Hitler, like most conquerers, thought it was perfectly fine to enslave, relocate, or exterminate other groups of people as long as it served the interests of his own. His philosophy wasn't unique in that respect, in historical terms it was probably the norm.
You and I are enlightened enough that we don't want to "repeat" those "mistakes", but only because Hitler was famously unpopular and lost the war. If Hitler cut a deal with the western Allies and satisfied himself with a large chunk of eastern Europe, I don't know how many of us would share the enlightened anti-Nazi attitude we do share.
Hitler wasted no time. When he came into power he soon killed his opposition, put them into labor camps or, later, send them to the front of the war. As soon as he got into power he started to go after the jews. As soon as he conquered Poland, they started the killing and when the front of war moved on, behind that they installed the concentration camp to get rid of disabled people, prostitutes, communists, priests, homosexuals, jews, ... Either they were killed immediately or, the stronger, were put to work - they were killed through working under extreme situations. They were enslaved.
Hitler and Nazi Germany installed a system to get these people and to bring them to the concentration camps.
Hitler also was not more unpopular after Germany lost the war. It took two generations to get rid of that. Children or grand children who questioned the doings and motives of their fathers and grand fathers. It took a lot of discussions, research, documentation to understand what happened and why. This understanding did not happen over night and not because Hitler won the war. But because people found out that there were millions of dead people, there were jews that were missing, where were they? The children asked their parents and they were not satisfied with the answers. What did the German army do in Russia? Research was needed to go to the truth and it was ugly.
Again: Hitler did not want to win some war and some partial victory.
He was talking about the 'Endsieg': the final victory.
You are making an assumption that is not in line with Hitler's goals. He would not have been satisfied with anything less then the Endsieg. Hitler was no rational politician - he was a racist and mass murderer.
There is also nothing positive to say about Stalin and all the other criminals from the past. That there were more like Hitler does not make him 'relatively bad'. He was bad. Period.
'What if Hitler did this or that?' is plain wrong if you don't understand his motives, his deep hate of other 'unworthy' races, etc. A compromise - that would be either tactics (like history shows his compromises were) or not Hitler.
Yes--German domination over the entirety of Europe. He bit off more than he could chew, though. If he hadn't allied with Japan and made a few strategic decisions better than he had, Germany would still have most of Europe today. That's not my point, though. My point is that, had Hitler been a successful conquerer, he wouldn't be nearly as hated as he is. Maybe that success would have involved slightly less ambition (but the same amount of genocide). As far as the brutality and genocide go, the main difference is that Hitler was so damned good at it. If you want to kill off 10 million people, it's far more cost-effective to enslave them and work them to death, isn't it?
On the other hand, consider the white domination of North America. The Indians were set against one another in various wars. If a tribe or band was defeated they were either exterminated or forcibly relocated to reservations. Treaties were repeatedly signed and broken--if we relocated a group of Indians to a piece of land that ended up being valuable, we relocated them again. We weren't organized enough to set up concentration camps, but we had enough room we could give them parcels of worthless land for reservations. If we didn't enslave them directly, we bought slaves from Indian slavers, which only led them to more warfare, so the winners could sell the losers as slaves. Incidentally, this is also how white people ruined West Africa.
Once white people achieved their "manifest destiny" over North America, they really didn't seem to care too much about all the genocide and mass murder and racism involved. Even today, a lot of them don't.
Incidentally, the German people turned against Hitler as soon as he started losing. I don't know that they really cared much about the genocide yet, but they were mad at Hitler because it was Hitler's fault that allied bombs were landing on their houses. If Hitler won, no one would have really questioned or cared what he did to get there, or why there was suddenly so much room in what used to be Eastern Europe for them to move out into.
"Hitler was no rational politician - he was a racist and mass murderer."
You keep acting like this is any kind of unique distinction among imperialists and conquerers throughout history.
I agree with the first part as a description. The second part about Hitler being a net gain was probably only true in perception--if you measured e.g. GDP (or even better consumption) the Nazis were most probably a net loss.
(no offense intended to those of you who are German of course!)
Edit: what, is it so impossible that some neo-nazis are trying to drum up support in foreign countries?
Not 100% accurate but I think it gets the point across.
We do have Nazi activists in our country, although they call themselves extreme right activists, and while being a group that spreads racist and antisemitic ideas, it's mostly harmless.
Although a large percent of the population is Christian and goes to church regularly (which are also hubs for spreading racist/antisemitic propaganda), such activism has had little impact on the general population.
That's because people are tired of propaganda and of empty promises and of big changes that don't bring that significant improvement in life quality that's being promised.
Germany wouldn't have ended up with Hitler if they wouldn't have taken a big hit in WW1. With Germans dying out of starvation because of the British blockade, or because of the economic meltdown post-WW1, it's easier to believe the fallacies in Mein Kampf, to believe in Hitler's vision and shut your eyes and ears in the wake of a genocide. But that's only because Germany's economy and quality of life had nowhere to go but up, and it did just that (for a while anyway).
But in a country where things are mostly working (i.e. there aren't many people dying from hunger) it's hard for such ideas to gain popularity, even if those ideas are spread by a champion as articulate and smart as Hitler was. That's because with a higher quality of life comes a higher moral ground, and people are mostly conservatives anyway.
The hit taken in the treaties of Versailles is just one reason. The economic crisis around 1930 is another one. Churchill made the suggestion that Germany should have become a constitutional monarchy instead of a republic to give the monarchists something to rally behind the new state.