Gandhi defeat Hitler? Don't think so.

Most people miss the point here. I am Indian and I am no supporter of Gandhi. I am against almost everything he stood for. But that being said, there IS NO way his methods would have worked in tyrannical dictatorships. The Brits were vicious bastards that literally raped and pillaged my country. They were brutal and there are countless instances to prove that. They were racist pigs who believed themselves to be entitled. However, what differentiates the Brits from Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, etc is the fact that they were more democratic as a constitutional monarchy and hence were more accountable. The conservatives had to deal with the liberals. The House of Lords had to deal with the Commons. Power was shared amongst more people. This brought limits to what one person or a small group could achieve with brutality. They would always be liable to criticism from an opposing quarter. In a dictatorship, they wouldn't face such limits. Dictatorships tend to have a more homogenous agenda. The Brits couldn't kill or execute Gandhi for fear of losing face amongst its Allies, some of its people and other civilised nations. Hitler and Stalin would have no such limitations. It is all about this accountability. Fear of repercussions and lack of sufficient power.

Another fact is that Gandhi came at the right time in history. Colonialism was already on its last legs. The concept of Nations and Self-rule had already reached the developing world and many of them had already acquired independence before India. India would have got its independence even without Gandhi. The World Wars had weakened Britain making it easier for Gandhi & Co. Had Gandhi been born a few decades earlier, he would never have been able to do what he did.

Thus, Gandhi's methods would work best in a democratic situation but in a dictatorship, at best it would be like a fart in the wind.

While I do agree that if civil disobedience was done against Hitler and his army by another country they were attacking, I think that that would have been ineffective and would have ended horribly.
But, being that Ghandi was causing a civil disobedience from within, I believe he meant it in that way and if their was a larger civil disobedience from within Hitler's own country and people actually spoke up there instead of being quiet as Hitler took over and or as Jews and others were rounded up and taken to camps than he may have been defeated. Also, as the Nazis conquered territory, if there was civil uprising in all the countries they were conquering than that might have also took Hitler down. That is the basic premiss of this movie, England took over India and its difficult to have a grip on every country you are in control of that are far away from the place that is trying to control it so a civil unrest occurs among the people being controlled or brought to poverty.
Civil disobedience took down Louis 16th and Marie Antoinette of France, it put Castro in power, and ended the reign of the Tsars in Russia; so while it didn't happen to Hitler, it could have happened.

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What you say in public is what you want people to hear; what you say in private is who you are.

According to Louice Fischer Gandhi's said "I cannot hurt England to help India" . Gandhi never thought of defeating even Briton. Fischer, based upon whose biography on Gandhi the film was made, said Gandhi thought "The British in India were the victims of their past and caste system in liberating India and he thought he was also freeing Brtish for a new future.

Could have Gandhi been killed by the diabolic dictator, had he fought Hitler with his principles of non-violence? I think he didn’t find a way that he could have avoided death in either. Neither the British nor Hitler killed Gandhi. But that doesn’t mean Gandhi got not killed. Gandhi’s fast for a united India in which Muslims and Hindus live as the right and left eyes of the nation succeeded even when the nation was thrown into the madness of communal riots during the partition. But Gandhi’s life ended when Nathuram Godsey, a mindless RSS activist murdered him in cold blood. The point what I’m intending to tell you is Gandhi could have been killed by dictators like Stalin or Hitler, but Gandhi would never have preferred violence to non-violence. He was the best human being and the most courageous man I've ever studied or heard of. He’s a synonym for love and human values.

In the interests of actualising the point that you and I are people - here on this message board - writing, I could not help but notice that you started this topic and then disappeared. You began it three weeks shy of 3 1/2 years ago now. I say this because it is a highly contentious topic. I see from your profile that you have only made one additional post on imdb.com and that it was about a month after you made this one. Hey, it is one way to go but I find it rather conspicuous - I'll write about Gandhi "defeating" Hitler (whatever that means) and then drop the whole thing.

In any case, your point begins that there have been people in history with a mindset that they are superior to everyone else. That, having reached or having such a mindset, civil disobedience by others is/would be ineffective. Okay, well, it has been documented (references available) that when Nazis came up against nonviolence, they did not know what to do. The Nazis themselves diarised that they had been well trained in military tactics. None of it was of any use when the counterparty (they would say enemy) was not trying to use violence, not trying to kill etc. Can any of us argue that the Nazis successfully annexed those countries, took them over or began to govern them?

What about Napoleon? After the French Revolution, he was the one who "had all the answers", the biggest army, the most popular support etc. He gets to Moscow and the Russians evacuated the place. Sat there like a duffer and had a sizable proportion of his men freeze - to death! What of the Russians? Could they take over sub-Saharan Africa? Displace all the locals? To do so at the same time as taking over Australia, South America, southeast Asia, the Iberian Peninsula, Japan, the Middle East...?

None of us has the time or the ability to take over the world.

It may anger some, it may be frustrating to the point of feeling like one is in hell, it may even drive one to devise plans to take over the world. Yes, some have gone ahead and tried. The world, however, is not only diverse - it is also complex. Violence, murder. Oooh... no defeating it. It lacks imagination. When violence, as an option, is shelved, quite incredible what the human mind is capable of devising.

The argument that it was a fluke of circumstances that nonviolence was able to work is also one which lacks imagination. In this movie, Gandhi is shown calling off a nationwide campaign because of one incident. His own supporters called the incident isolated. It is about moral resolve. Seeing an inherent value in life - including one's own life. In terms of physical effort, violence requires more than nonviolence does. Nonviolence can also operate without the use of possessions; violence needs something physical. I am not saying any of it is easy.

I wonder whether you thought about the implications of your topic title. What now? The perpetual escalation of violence? Is this why we are able to blow ourselves up a nonsensical number of times? People have said it before me: it is no longer a question of violence or nonviolence, it is a question of nonviolence or nonexistence.

In short, it is an attitudinal issue. We are in this thing - whatever it may be at any given time - together.

Want recent proof? Look at arab countries where the protesters stuck to non violence and refused to be baited into violence by the dictators, like Egypt.

What happened? When Mubarak resorted to ordering his soldiers to shoot and kill the protesters en mass, they REFUSED, precisely because they were not armed and were not trying to fight.

THAT is when Mubarak suddenly was forced from power, because his people refused en mass his orders, and without his minions, he and all dictators are powerless.

Same thing in Tunisia and Yemen.

But in Libya and Syria, the protesters took the bait and replied with violence, hence the armed forces had no qualms about fully engaging them. Assad is still hanging years after, and Gaddafi had to be removed by NATO or otherwise he would still be there hanging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_revolution#Arab_Spring_revolutions
http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/08/24/think-again-nonviolent-resistance/
http://blog.oup.com/2015/03/chibli-mallat-nonviolence-revolution-arab-spring/
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/year-four-arab-spring-proved-everyone-wrong

SO while he personally would most likely have been killed in the beginning (dictators have no qualms from being criticized by rival factions in their governments), if his followers had stuck to his example, German soldiers would start refusing orders en mass.

But there's a clear difference in India's and WWII examples: India was PART of the empire, not at war with it. While the rest of Europe was at war with Germany. So peaceful resistance in those countries would be ineffective as long as that country were still at war with Germany and resistance movements were still resorting to violence which they always were.

Another is that Hitler spent years "conditioning" the German people (all them rallies and speeches were not just for fun and vanity) into a mindset that would allow them to view the Jews as subhuman and enemies, thus making Jewish non violent resistance most likely fruitless at least in short term (however with the concentration camps running, short term would be all ol' Hitler needed).

Gandhi didn't face an enemy who wanted his entire race exterminated.

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I think that non-violent methods used against a relatively free and democratic state can work. Great Britain at the turn of the 20th Century was a relatively free and democratic state. One need only compare it to the other powerful governments of the world AT THE SAME TIME.

By the end of WWII it was more free and democratic than ever. So, Gandhi's methods could work, especially in an environment with mass media.

It has not worked and is not working in Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, or China. I am sure that there are several countries that can be added to the list.

The use of violence when it is not necessary is immoral. The refusal to use violence when it is necessary is at least as immoral. To make it clear and blunt, I believe that pacifism in the wrong circumstances is an immoral none act. The pacifist who refuses to carry a weapon is almost always protected by someone else who will.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.