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Comment by ponsin | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how old you are but when it happened I was more interested in watching the cool explosions on TV. In fact, there are some people here who probably weren't even alive when it happened. I'm not saying that it is surprising how people reacted, but rather it gives me a glimpse into how people felt.

Similarly I would be interested in how the public opinion of Hitler changed. There are quotes from some German Jewish leaders in the 30s saying that Hitler should get more power. I too would be interested in understanding how the opinions changed.

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Almost all churches preached antisemitic sentiments for centuries before Hitler came along. Hitler amplified an already existing hate against the Jews.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Tes...

We have pictures of Edward III the king of England visiting Hitler before the war.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/the-crown-edwar...

Rudolf Hess Deputy Führer flew to England in 1941 himself to convince England to join Hitler. With his capture it seems Churchill has single handedly stopped the cooperation of Great Britain with Germany.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess

I sort of assumed you weren't alive. I was in high school and remember watching the news reporting a plane had crashed into the tower with an unknown cause then later that there was an explosion then fire at the Pentagon. Finding that surprising is foreign to me, and I wondered if younger people had the impression that it was immediately clear that it was a terrorist attack.

The historiography of WWII has significantly downplayed Hitler's popularity before the war, however many Jewish leaders remaining in Germany were not speaking for the Jewish population.

I can sort of see how post-9/11 'kids' who grew up in a society that sees terrorism everywhere might think that it's odd to assume it was just a plane crash.

As a teen, I also thought it was just a crash. I was at school and someone mentioned it and we went to look for a tv. It's difficult to forget how the mood went from 'shit, that sucks but cool explosion and most people below the crash site will probably get out' to 'shit, another plane, and now the towers are collapsing'.

I also expect there's some rote memorization happening. After hearing "the terrorist attacks of 9/11" a billion times it kinda sticks.

I heard about the first plane from a colleague of my dad, and I (admittedly not that old) threated it as a fun fact kind of, almost like a joke. "Can you believe crashing a plane into a building! How can the plane fly so low, how can the building be so tall". Almost like we expected it to be featured on the next blooper reel. Then we came home and watched it on TV, and understood the seriousness. Learning about the second plane was surreal, that planted a seed of this couldn't be an accident. Then the towers fell and the world changed. One of the smallest ways it changed was that we never again will be as naive when we are confronted by an act of terrorism like we were then. That is a weird untangible world that now are lost.

>Similarly I would be interested in how the public opinion of Hitler changed.

I read "They Thought They Were Free" by Milton Mayer to get a glimpse of an answer to this question for myself. Highly recommended.

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