A mature discussion of the historicity of this film

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you can't have a mature discussion on this subject 'cause everybody will say "omg you're a nazi sympathiser" although they can't answer some simple questions based on historical facts. and the movie illustrating hitler as a madman full of hate towards the jews is inaccurate and biased, he was rather an opportunist, a populist and a fool.

This is a great post and the type we need more of on here.

While there may be a lot of inaccuracies in this mini-series, there are two reasons I like it. First off, while not exhaustive, it does provide some insight into the social and political factors in Germany post-WW1 which led to strong support for Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Second, and this is what a lot of people choose to ignore, is that it shows that the Nazi Party was a legitimate political organisation which was legally voted in to government throught the system of the time. Obviously, Hitler manipulated and influenced public opinion and officials to get his way, but what politician doesn't?

I personally would have liked more in-depth analysis of Hitler's early formative years and some mention of people such as Dietrich Eckhart, Alfred Rosenberg, Josef Goebbels and Martin Bormann who were very influential. The mystical and occultic interests of the Nazis would have been interesting as well.

To refer again to my reasons for liking it, I think it's important to get away from the "Hitler was a madman and brainwashed everyone" populist propaganda as this is simply not true. Historians do accept that the conditions imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty were unfair and there's no other example of this occuring to another country at that point. For a country with a strong Imperial history and a cultured middle class, the threat of a revolution was very real. It's quite understandable to see why Germans would have supported Hitler's aims and ideals. If one gets away from the Jewish persecution, Hitler did turn Germany around in the '30's and back into a top economic power. Also, all countries need a strong sense of history, culture and nation which was especially relevant after the defeat in WW1, the stockmarket crash and a flood of migration.

Of course, the other post is right too, any mature discussion will be labelled as "Nazi", but I hope too for intelligent replies.

In memory of Sam Peckinpah

The entire tone of the film is historically inaccurate, not just facts.

They esentially made up an entire fake backhistory/character of a young Hitler based on what was in fact a small facet of his older worldview and actions.

It's like making a biopic about Michael Jackson and having him leering at young boys and bleaching his skin when he's 12 years old.

>supporters saying "You can't name a single example of an inaccuracy"<

What? The reviews show scores of inaccuracies, never mind the entire portrait is totally at odds with all the major sober and peer reviewed biography and analysis of Hitler's personality.

The faked caricatures of Hitler make the viewer miss the key point. Ardent called it the Banality of Evil. Hitler was an every-day politician. Charming, charismatic and persuasive to large and small audiences. Because of Germany's power, because of widespread attitudes toward mass killing (let's not forget Stalin killed more innocents), technology and the vein of post WW1 victim-hood in 1930-40's Germany, Hitler was able to kill a whole lot of people.

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by-Witness for the Defense
Probably few 20th century historical figures are as much disagreed about as Hitler. Here are 3 points to consider:
1)The historical facts promoted by hundreds of historians and dozens of holocaust museums, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org) are difficult to discount. Does anyone really believe that such a vast conspiracy of misinformation could successfully be advanced by such diverse sources, with no apparent common motive? Seems unlikely to me. Add to that the eyewitness accounts of American and Russian soldiers of what they saw. All those tattooed arms of survivors have to mean something. Add to that the logical fact that, since plainly much atrocity must have occurred in so many camps, the Nazis would logically have destroyed as much evidence as possible as the Americans and Russians closed in. Add to that the sworn testimonies of the Nuremberg trials. There is far too much evidence to reasonably refute.
Hitler had also declared the Poles and the Roma (gypsys) to be "sub-human," and their persecution and genocide is also well reported. I once knew an elderly Pole who had been a slave laborer in a salt mine under the Nazis.
2)Many disregard the evidence of Hitler's clinical insanity. Evidence suggests that Hitler had contracted syphilis when a young man, was treated at a sanitarium, and released as "cured." While I have not researched this much, I have read that in his treatise "Mien Kampf," written in prison, Hitler wrote several knowledgeable pages about syphilis, which he called "the Jewish disease." (Some speculate that he contracted the disease from a Jewish prostitute.) In the book "The Man with the Miraculous Hands," a biography of Heinrich Himmler's personal physician Dr. Joseph Kessel, is found an account in which Himmler allegedly showed Hitler's medical records to Kessel, who pronounce Hitler insane. Syphilis can remain dormant in a person for decades before returning as "syphilitic paralysis," an attack on the brain. Hitler's tremors and mood swings supposedly became obvious in 1937. He was a fanatical radical vegetarian (vegan,) which was commonly applied by the chronically ill in Germany in those days.
3)I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and Hitler declared war on us in 1934. The Auschwitz Museum includes an exhibit regarding Hitler's hatred of Jehovah's Witnesses at its entrance, and the United States Holocaust Memorial contains a small wing dedicated to my brothers and sisters, listing a very conservative 8500 as imprisoned. At least 2000 Witnesses died in captivity, about 270 executed, and many non-Witnesses testified to it, including Charles DeGaulle's imprisoned niece. Their crime? Being Jehovah's Witnesses. Though natural Aryan Germans, they refused allegiance to Hitler and membership in his "master race."