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Hitlerology
Aug. 24th, 2010 05:02 pmI'm currently reading Alone In Berlin by Hans Fallada which is set in the 1940s, leading me to think about Hitler, rather too much.
Was amused that renowned Hiterlologist and Hugh Trevor Roper, the historian who authenticated the fake Hitler diaries (although apparently it was more to do with Murdoch's desire to print and be damned), was also a JFK death conspiracy theorist.
***
Also amused by the cities that claim to have been Hitler's choice as capital should the Nazis have successfully invaded Britain - Bath, Oxford, Norwich...none of these places use this 'fact' in their promotional material, however.
***
Surely Hitler's downfall wasn't (just) being an evil madman but trying to do too much. Multi-tasking was probably not his strong point, and fighting a war on two fronts, attempting to eliminate the Jews and keeping the Germans under control was far far far too much for any murderous regime to do all at the same time. If the Third Reich had forgotten about the Jewish population and kept to their original task of reversing the Treaty of Versailles rather than trying to murder all the Jews and take over Europe, then they'd probably have been in power for decades and Germany would have been a dictatorship that died out like Franco's in Spain, or Salazar's in Portugal.
(Some) Americans like to say: If it wasn't (sic) for us, you'd be speaking German right now, but I wonder how plausible it is that Germany would have been successful in an invasion of Britain. Maybe if the war had gone on another 5 years, the Allies would have been exhausted (in manpower, in weaponry) and unable to defend Britain, but it also seems that the Russians would have to continued to thwart the Germans. If Pearl Harbor had never happened, I don't think it would have made that much difference to the outcome of the war. There were more Canadian personnel in the war than Americans, despite what all the films purport to be true.
***
The common argument against time travel is a) if it existed then someone would have come back from the future to tell us about it and b) the grandfather paradox:- if time travel existed, then you could go back and kill your grandad and you'd never be born.
But what if someone has gone back and killed your grandfather? What if your grandma then married someone else and your parent was born anyway and you were born too, things changed in a subtle way, maybe your nose is now bigger and you're no good at swimming whereas once you used to be. But if time works in a Back to the Future way, you'd never know. You were once a different person. Maybe that's where deja vu comes from, you're remembering your past (other) life.
I wonder about the people who were never born, who died before reaching adulthood. If they'd lived, would the world be any different? Some things are considered inevitable: the socio-economic climate in '30s Germany was ripe for extremists. If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have been someone else. If the Pankursts had all died of scarlet fever, then female suffrage would still have happened, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later. If the Manhattan Project hadn't developed the A-bomb, someone else would have split the atom. Life is a choose your own adventure book with pretty much the same outcome each time. Although geniuses and evil narcissistic madmen undoubtedly exist, it's not so much about people as confluences of events.
Was amused that renowned Hiterlologist and Hugh Trevor Roper, the historian who authenticated the fake Hitler diaries (although apparently it was more to do with Murdoch's desire to print and be damned), was also a JFK death conspiracy theorist.
***
Also amused by the cities that claim to have been Hitler's choice as capital should the Nazis have successfully invaded Britain - Bath, Oxford, Norwich...none of these places use this 'fact' in their promotional material, however.
***
Surely Hitler's downfall wasn't (just) being an evil madman but trying to do too much. Multi-tasking was probably not his strong point, and fighting a war on two fronts, attempting to eliminate the Jews and keeping the Germans under control was far far far too much for any murderous regime to do all at the same time. If the Third Reich had forgotten about the Jewish population and kept to their original task of reversing the Treaty of Versailles rather than trying to murder all the Jews and take over Europe, then they'd probably have been in power for decades and Germany would have been a dictatorship that died out like Franco's in Spain, or Salazar's in Portugal.
(Some) Americans like to say: If it wasn't (sic) for us, you'd be speaking German right now, but I wonder how plausible it is that Germany would have been successful in an invasion of Britain. Maybe if the war had gone on another 5 years, the Allies would have been exhausted (in manpower, in weaponry) and unable to defend Britain, but it also seems that the Russians would have to continued to thwart the Germans. If Pearl Harbor had never happened, I don't think it would have made that much difference to the outcome of the war. There were more Canadian personnel in the war than Americans, despite what all the films purport to be true.
***
The common argument against time travel is a) if it existed then someone would have come back from the future to tell us about it and b) the grandfather paradox:- if time travel existed, then you could go back and kill your grandad and you'd never be born.
But what if someone has gone back and killed your grandfather? What if your grandma then married someone else and your parent was born anyway and you were born too, things changed in a subtle way, maybe your nose is now bigger and you're no good at swimming whereas once you used to be. But if time works in a Back to the Future way, you'd never know. You were once a different person. Maybe that's where deja vu comes from, you're remembering your past (other) life.
I wonder about the people who were never born, who died before reaching adulthood. If they'd lived, would the world be any different? Some things are considered inevitable: the socio-economic climate in '30s Germany was ripe for extremists. If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have been someone else. If the Pankursts had all died of scarlet fever, then female suffrage would still have happened, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later. If the Manhattan Project hadn't developed the A-bomb, someone else would have split the atom. Life is a choose your own adventure book with pretty much the same outcome each time. Although geniuses and evil narcissistic madmen undoubtedly exist, it's not so much about people as confluences of events.
