Did you know Hitler waged WW2 only to get the US?

[Logjam]

I do not think that Hitler was crazy. Nor do I think that he was very bright. He, however; thought that he was a super genius. I've read "Spandu", "Inside the Third Reich", and the best book about Hitler in my opinion, "The Biography of Eve Braun".

I've also met a fellow who knew Hitler well. He was the head of the Minister of Propaganda in Austria. He reported directly to Joseph Gobbles. The fellow's name, as I recall it;( I met him 30 years ago), was Dr. Prost. I was sitting next to this gent in a restaurant. He told me that many times he had sat as close to Hitler as he was sitting to me. I was also a guest of a family of old, WWII hard corps Nazis. They were rather charming, actually.

They LOVED Hitler, and they decried the Holocaust. They did not say that the event didn't happen, what they said was that it tainted the history of the Third Reich. They blamed WWII on Stalin. They loved being Nazis, the elderly lady of the family said. reflecging on the Hitler years, "Ya, those were the great days".

Hitler believed that he was sacrificing his happiness for the future of the German People. He also said that he didn't marry (He lived with Eva for 17 years. She was a state secret.) because he didn't want to break the collective hearts of the women of Germany. He figured that they were head over heals in love with him. He was also amazed that he was as successful as he was. His successes lead him to believe that he must be brilliant.

I don't know if Hitler wanted to evenually conquer the US. He probably thought about it. He wanted badly to conquer Russia, destroy communism in Europe and kill Stalin. He figured that with Russia he'd have enough raw materials to keep the war going on as long as he saw fit, and he'd have a huge store of slaves. He also figured, I think, that he'd have the nuke. He was building aircraft carriers, which he might have used to attack the US. He certainly would have used his carriers to attack Britain.

While I do not think that Hitler was brilliant, I do believe that he was arrogant and paranoid. He surrounded himself with sycophants. People who worked for him where scared to death of him. However, his secretary, Martin Borman found him rather easy to manipulate. His personal physician, (Dr. Bland?) gave Hitler shots of bull urine.....figured it brought out the "beast" in him.

The world is a better place without Hitler, and those who are like him. Now if we could just get rid of the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea we'd be even better off.

[Lou Minotti]

Quote by: Matt W I view Hitler by his writings, and by what he achieved. It kind of speaks for itself. If that's sanity, then I dread being sane. And indeed, he was a madman surrounded by madmen. Efficient ones, at that. With all respect to dotcoma, as he has pointed out, he has a fairly focussed History Channel documentary, looking at some of the excerpts from Mein Kampf. I have other primary sources, and somewhere in the region of 4-5 years of study. Did you actually bother to read any of what I said? I said yes, Hitler would almost certainly have wanted to compete against the US. Was that at the forefront of his mind when he launched the attack on Poland? I doubt it. Would he have taken on Russia if his pre-emptive goal was the US? Not likely. Certainly, not at the stage he did, with the war un-won in the West.

Uhh, again, the Nazis viewed The Soviet Empire as part of the Jewish conspiracy. By taking out the engine of that so-called conspiracy (Britian and the US), the Nazis believed that could conquer the world. So, you say he "would have", we say, "No, it was their master plan from the get-go". See the difference?

[Matt W]

See the difference?

We seem to be crossing wires. I say 'His/their goal was world domination; which includes the conquering of the US', you seem to be saying (but correct me if I'm wrong) 'His goal was the US; full-stop'.

Are we done yet?

[Lou Minotti]

We were done a while back. His goal was an end to "the Jewish Conspiracy" so that would include US/Britain as the ultimate target, yes, you are correct.

[dotcoma]

Matt, I think the point is that Europe was just the shed Germany needed to stockpile resources, labor, capital, and agriculture to defeat the real opponent to their world domination.

[Matt W]

Ummm...not really, dotcoma. Like I said, you're missing factors such as revenge, the destruction of Communism, and so forth. Britain needed to be taken out due to the huge resources our Empire afforded us; the French annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was an insult to Germany...there are other factors. Europe was by no means an afterthought or a minor task or even a 'shed'.

[Lou Minotti]

Europe was by no means an afterthought or a minor task or even a 'shed'.

This is all semantics at this point....the Nazis wanted the world. To get the world they needed Europe and it's imperial engine, the US (they saw one as an extention of the other and both an extention of "the Jewish Conspiracy". They also saw communism as the other half of this same "conspiracy". The end.

[Matt W]

The end

Works for me. End Goal: World Domination. Not 'just' the conquest of the US.

Semantics are important, y'know!

[Lou Minotti]

World Domination. Not 'just' the conquest of the US.

No one said 'just'. Reread this thread. You've just proven our point.

[Nono]

I think for the Nazis "the world" was Europe basically. Sure they wanted all those pretty colonies the other Europeans had screwed them out of, but I see no reason to believe they consciously planned global conquest. As members of the master race they probably assumed it would fall naturally to them, once they'd dispensed with those pesky Jews and Bolsheviks -- but I repeat myself ...

[Lou Minotti]

I don't know Nono, the Nazi movement was pretty significant in the US for a spell (before it went underground...like the KKK). And it was various Wall Street cronies that bankrolled Hitler AND the Bolsheviks. I think this stuff goes much deeper then most people think.

[Matt W]

Lou, I was responding to the title of the thread - 'only' means pretty much the same as 'just', in my humble opinion.

Anyhoo, onwards & outwards....

[Nono]

Reply to Logjam

From long experience I know that while talking with Old Nazis produces good anecdotes, it makes for lousy history. Being a wacko, Hitler may have believed he was sacrificing his own happiness for the German people, but what he did – quite deliberately, especially toward the end – was sacrifice Germany on the altar of his own weird ego.
Better than any book I know, the film Downfall, with Bruno Ganz playing you-know-who, shows that Hitler actually hated the German people and, in the end, yearned for its destruction.

Of couse, almost the entire German people worshipped him. Big deal. He had good PR. (Here's an anecdote: A guy who'd been in the Hitler Youth once told me that if he and his friends had been let loose on the von Stauffenberg plotters they would have torn them limb from limb -- no, far worse. I admired his frankness. He was certainly no different from just about everybody else.)

I'm sure Hitler respected the potential power of the US (though the fact that he declared war on it rather backs up the idea that he was delusional, at least in later years). So I see no reason to think that his original plan didn't involve conquering Europe and basically playing live-and-let-live with others (opportunism notwithstanding).

Now if we could just get rid of the leaders of … Venezuela ...

Yeah, that rascal Chavez. If the dude would only stop screaming Sieg Heil and unleashing his armoured divisions on his neighbours all the time. Oh, and take down those concentration camps too; so unsightly.

Just because he leads an oil-rich country and doesn't spit everytime Washington coughs doesn't mean that he's Hitler.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Quote by: Nono Yeah, that rascal Chavez. If the dude would only stop screaming Sieg Heil and unleashing his armoured divisions on his neighbours all the time. Oh, and take down those concentration camps too; so unsightly. Just because he leads an oil-rich country and doesn't spit everytime Washington coughs doesn't mean that he's Hitler.

I know we prolly shouldnt reply just to agree with someone, but I am.
Well said Nono, (funny too :))

[Gilligan]

Quote by: Matt W *laughs* No, no, and yet a third no! Yes, Hitler would've seen the US as 'racially superior', but to suggest he waged war 'only' to get to the US is simply ridiculous.

Hitler spoke a lot about the "New Order" or "New World Order" that would have to include the U.S.