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October 18, 2024 2:00pm by David Farrar

Scary

The age differences in this poll are very alarming. Only 59% of under 30s think Hitler was evil.

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Comments (52)

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NothingLeft

It’s conditioning. We are all told we are not allow to think of anyone as bad or evil anymore, no matter how awful their behavior – they’re just unfortunate victims of circumstance. Hating anyone is unforgivable and Manichean thinking verboten
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October 18, 2024 2:07pm
- RoboRob
  
  You can be evil and still have had a couple of good ideas. Its a poor question.
  
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  October 18, 2024 3:04pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    I agree.
    Hitler supported the creation of Volkswagon Beetle. The peoples’ car. Without him, it would not have happened.
    
    So at least one good idea.
    I am sure there are others.
    
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    October 18, 2024 4:44pm
    - Colville
      
      The autobahns?
      
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      October 18, 2024 5:43pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      He was a vegan. He liked dogs!
      
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      October 18, 2024 9:46pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Yes indeed this is a very poor survey in multiple ways.
    “Hitler had some good ideas” is not the opposite of “Hitler was evil and had no redeeming features”
    here is one redeeming feature of Adolf Hitler that is very difficult to argue against, Hitler was a brave soldier. he was awarded the Iron Cross twice, 2nd class in 1914 and 1st class in 1918, that is extremely rare honors for a lance corporal with no political or family connections. Isn’t bravery in the face of extreme danger a redeeming quality? And isn’t bravery a quality that is not the same as “A good idea”?
    This whole survey is bunk.
    
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    October 18, 2024 6:15pm
- gnodeb
  
  What if older generation is conditioned to cartoonishly evil picture of Hitler to the point that he can not have a single reasonable idea.
  
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  October 18, 2024 3:37pm
alphabeatrium

Hang on, you don’t have to be a Hitler apologist to admit to the low bar of “some good ideas”. I can’t really name any, because I’m not a socialist or a fascist, but if you’re in favour of the industrial nationalisation and state monopolies (KiwiRail? NZ Post?) then you’re probably in favour of Volkswagen:

“In 1934, with many of the above projects still in development or early stages of production, Adolf Hitler became involved, ordering the production of a basic vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). He wanted a car every German family would be able to afford.[6] The “People’s Car” would be available through a savings plan at 990 ℛ︁ℳ︁ (US$396 in 1938)—about the price of a small motorcycle (the average income being around 32 ℛ︁ℳ︁ a week)” (Wikipedia)

Not everything Hitler did was aimed at genocide, but yes he was genocidal and objectively evil.
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October 18, 2024 2:15pm
- RoboRob
  
  Lol I litterally just listed VW as a good idea, didnt see your post. Im not into Nationalism per sae but the VW was a good idea at the time.
  
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  October 18, 2024 3:05pm
Simon

Darryl Cooper may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1830652074746409246

Good and mild interview on WW2. The narrative around WW2 is changing. Especially in the UK – a country that no longer looks like it won WW2.

There is also Peter Hitchens book The Phoney Victory. Another mainstream.

Hitler was “evil”, the holocaust happened but now serious question marks over UK’s involvement in the war in Europe and the outcome. UK should have remained neutral.
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October 18, 2024 2:21pm
youcanthandlethetruth

Some of these seem OK to me.
1.Autobahn network
2.Volkswagen Beetle development
3.Anti-smoking campaigns
4.Public health initiatives
5.Improved workplace standards
6.Affordable leisure programs
7.Employment-boosting policies
8.Physical fitness promotion
9.Animal welfare laws
10.Environmental conservation efforts
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October 18, 2024 2:21pm
- freedom101
  
  But what have the Romans ever done for us?
  
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  October 18, 2024 4:44pm
- NothingLeft
  
  And attacking Russia and totalitarian communists under one of humanities most evil ever tyrants (Stalin) before it attacks you. Though that didn’t really work out well for Hitler
  
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  October 18, 2024 5:34pm
Quoich

There may not be a lot that the Nazis wanted that I would support, but to suggest everything they wanted was wrong by definition is a bit silly. Opposing decent pension provision for the elderly simply on the basis that the Nazis supported it would not be sensible.
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October 18, 2024 2:22pm
James Stephenson

He was strategically inept, which from the POV of someone whose parents were born during the Blitz, is definitely a positive.
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October 18, 2024 2:31pm
JimBobJoe

If you look at his road building record then many would be envious!

An obviously evil man and ideology – nasty, brutal and destructive just like its twin Soviet Communism.

But a person can say that man got some things right – shaking of punitive and utterly unnecessary war reparations being an example.

His ideologies race policies were evil, the totalitarian, one Party state was evil. But evil does the odd thing right by chance

Having said that under 30’s seem woefully ignorant of the evils of totalitarianism be it Fascist or Communist. Which is really concerning…
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October 18, 2024 2:31pm
- David Garrett
  
  Jimbob: the autobahns are often – quite wrongly – attributed to Adolf (terrible sentence but i can’t be bothered re-writing it on my phone). The autobahns were beginning to be built – or were at least planned – before the Nazis took power in 1933
  
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  October 18, 2024 3:24pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    What is your standard for ” attributed to”?
    The standard of command responsibility works both ways.
    If the commander must take responsibility for the mistakes and crimes their subordinates do then they can take credit for their positive achievements as well.
    
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    October 18, 2024 6:21pm
mw

I was listening to a podcast and they briefly covered this poll while wondering if current US politics, democrats and MSM had a part in this.
The summary is that if you call Trump hitler enough, you keep comparing him to hitler all the time yet the people don’t think Trump is bad then perhaps there is some sort of softening on the view of hitler?
Of course no one is thinking hitler was a good guy but if you compare some things Trump does to hitler in a stupid and wrong way and people are ok with what Trump is doing then maybe they think some of what hitler did was ok too – obviously not the bad stuff which I shouldn’t have to qualify here.
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October 18, 2024 2:34pm
kglm

Is it possible to believe that Hitler was evil but had some good ideas (e.g. related to the economic rebuilding of Germany in the 1930’s)? Or is it just a binary choice?
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October 18, 2024 2:38pm
JackRabbit

The poll was rigged.

You could run the same poll for anyone evil in the world, and you would never get 0% asking if XYZ had some good ideas.

It is far more important to get said “likers” to write down what those ‘good’ ideas are, and how they have enhanced the public’s right to life, liberty and the fruits of their labour.

Q: “Does Kamala (or Ardern) have good ideas?”
A: “Yup.”
Q: “What are they?
A: “Dunno.”
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October 18, 2024 2:42pm
gazzmaniac

It’s not black and white. On balance Hitler was evil, but it is not correct to say he had no redeeming features. He built a lot of German infrastructure pre war, got his country out of the Great Depression, and reunited the German speaking people of Europe. His actions after that were abhorrent, but he did do a little good. Stalin and Mao were worse monsters than Hitler.

Just like Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman weren’t saints either. Overall they did good but Churchill authorised the bombing of Dresden, all did internment camps for civilians, and Truman nuked two Japanese cities with massive civilian casualties.
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October 18, 2024 2:57pm
- David Garrett
  
  There would have been up to 5 million civilian casualties if the A bombs had not been dropped…and up to 1 million American casualties if they had to invade the home islands. In short the decision to drop the bombs was the most justifiable decision of the War…perhaps any war
  
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  October 18, 2024 3:28pm
  - gazzmaniac
    
    The war was already won by the time the bomb was dropped. It was totally unnecessary and a brutal display of power.
    I’d love to know how you dreamed up 5 million civilian deaths. It sounds like a figure someone would come up with to justify a couple of hundred thousand civilians killed by being nuked.
    
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    October 18, 2024 6:55pm
- GreenYarn
  
  Look, I have ethical reservations about what happened in Hiroshima-Nagasaki, but the bombings of Dresden and the atomic bombs were done with the intention of ending war and, therefore, preserving life, not to completely exterminate an entire ethnic group.
  There was nothing redeeming about the Holocaust. It didn’t even help Nazi Germany. Hitler shot himself in the foot by driving away Jewish intellectuals, killing off a potential labour force and wasting much-needed resources and Nazi manpower in maintaining the concentration camps. Such a waste of human life for nothing.
  
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  October 18, 2024 5:32pm
  - gazzmaniac
    
    I think you missed the point, even people who were good overall did horrible things
    
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    October 18, 2024 6:57pm
- NothingLeft
  
  At the end of the day does it really matter what excuse or rationale you use to kill people in your country?
  
  Outside of wars they started or were involved in (and Stalin was an ally of Hitler at start of WW2):
  Mao 50 million
  Stalin 20 million
  Hitler 6 million
  Taalat Pasha (Ottoman), 1.5million Armenians
  King Leopold (Belgian) 10 million Congolese?
  Pol Pot 2 million.
  
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  October 18, 2024 5:51pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Of course reasons make a difference.
    There is a huge difference between “I made a mistake, got the calculations wrong, then the harvest failed and a lot of people died, but I didn’t want them to die and I regret that it happened” and “I wanted those people dead, I made a murder machine to kill them and stuffed them into it, killed a lot of them and I’m glad I killed them I just wish I could have killed more”.
    
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    October 18, 2024 6:29pm
mandk

Stupid question.

Are being evil and having some good ideas mutually exclusive?
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October 18, 2024 3:03pm
RoboRob

Not really Scary.

If I was answering that survey I too would say Hitler had some good ideas!!!!!!!!

One that springs to mind was the volkswagon. A cheap car for the people that would reliably start in sub zero temperatures.

Saying he had at least one good idea doesn’t mean you approve of Hitler. Stupid survey question.
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October 18, 2024 3:04pm
Henry Filth

The headline’s defective.

There’s a difference between “no redeeming features” and “some good ideas”.
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October 18, 2024 3:11pm
Kiwiladdy

If this poll was taken in a western country, the younger skews can be very easily explained by certain demographics of immigrants who are known for following and supporting a religion which is mostly interested in the total destruction of Jews.
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October 18, 2024 3:15pm
Rumblestrip

I have to make the logically obvious point: some of Hitler’s ideas would have been good, in a trivial and banal way. “Make the trains run on time” is a classic example. Hitler was voted into power in 1933, and it wasn’t because Germans suddenly decided they loved evil, or foresaw the horrors of the holocaust.

I suggest we shouldn’t completely demonise Hitler or the Nazis, and suggest they did nothing but scheme evil all day long, because that attitude prevents us from picking up on the fact that most Nazis were in fact boring, everyday humans exactly like us.

That is the key point: Nazis were not demons, they were us. And that is a hell of a lot more horrifying. By demonising them we miss a key message, that under the right circumstances, with the right conditioning, a good person can become a “Nazi” and we need to be eternally vigilant against that possibility.
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October 18, 2024 3:48pm
- Miritu
  
  You make a very good point. We need to learn and understand the power of indoctrination and propaganda, and stay alert. Large numbers of ordinary German citizens fell for it and treated their fellow citizens terribly. For example why did so many in the medical profession willingly participate in atrocious experiments on Jews?
  
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  October 18, 2024 5:27pm
  - gazzmaniac
    
    Sounds like a certain overblown respiratory virus. Why did so many medical people go along with forcing the population to take a poorly tested and dangerous vaccine in our country, and why did so few speak up?
    
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    October 18, 2024 7:01pm
- Colville
  
  Yip. ’30s Germany was on a par with USA for modern living standards and education.
  
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  October 18, 2024 6:07pm
- Jake Dee
  
  Good points.
  The time has long since past to kill off the idea of “Demonic Super-Hitler” and regard him as he was and is, a man and a figure in history.
  Adolph Hitler as the apotheosis of Ultimate Evil is a key plank in the post-WWII atheistic Liberal faith I have heard called “The Boomer truth régime”.
  As that régime continues to fail and crumble “Satanic Super-Hitler” will fade away with it.
  
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  October 18, 2024 6:35pm
Inandout

Gosh, as a child I remember my Granny saying ‘Hitler had some good ideas, but he went off the tracks with his bad ideas’. That attitude was not unknown back then but I very much doubt she had ever heard of (less read) ‘The Scourge of the Swastika’. It is a crazy world and in the early 30s Hitler was backed by some German Jewish industrialists because of his anti communist views and actions. Of course this didn’t last long when the true meaning of Nazism became apparent. Had Hitler been killed in the 1944 bombing I think Germany would have arrived at an understanding with the Allies. The cult of Nazism of course would have survived as witnessed by the South American enclaves of German ex pats who escaped in 1945.
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October 18, 2024 3:55pm
cmm

Of course Hitler had some good ideas.

Sure he was an evil person, but that does not mean he didn’t have any good ideas or that every one of his ideas was terrible.

One of our family friends when I was growing up was a German Jew who fled the Nazis. He said that Hilter was the best German leader ever – if you put aside what he called “the Jewish stuff”.
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October 18, 2024 4:39pm
freedom101

To be fair, many of those young people would not know who won WWII or even who fought against who. It just doesn’t register. There is no living memory for them as their parents weren’t directly affected either. For older people, they knew people who died in combat, were killed in the holocaust etc.
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October 18, 2024 4:43pm
- Rumblestrip
  
  Which leads us to that famous warning, “those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.”
  
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  October 18, 2024 5:49pm
CJames

I believe the question was poorly framed. “Hitler had some good ideas” is very ambiguous. As a commenter has already pointed out, he wanted a people’s car. He was also supposed to be a vegetarian and loved dogs. Are those evil? He was an antisemitic psychopath and the world needed him gone but like most evil dictators, (think Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot), not 100% of their thoughts were bad – maybe just 95%
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October 18, 2024 5:03pm
GreenYarn

Hitler was evil. No doubt about. He committed the worst atrocity in 2000 years.

But believing that he had no redeeming qualities or good ideas is dangerous. It leads us to set him apart as this monster and a once-in-a-millenium freak of human history. We so easily assume that we’d never be like him since we have our good qualities.

However, Hitler loved his mum. He left secret love notes for a girl he had a crush on. He was a talented artist and an incredible orator. He was great with children and animals. He was personable and considerate with people around him and won their loyalty.

I always find the first scene of Der Untergang (a German film on Hitler based on eyewitness testimony, etc) jarring. Hitler was so kind and gracious to his secretary, Traudl Junge after she had flubbed her job interview. It’s almost hard to believe that a year before that interview, that same man had given the order for all European Jews, men, women and children, to be murdered.

It’s a reminder that with a seared and corrupt conscience, one could exhibit benevolent attributes while at the same time perform acts of depravity with no apparent internal conflict.
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October 18, 2024 5:12pm
Colville

Ardern was evil but had some good ideas.
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October 18, 2024 5:45pm
NothingLeft

The majority of conentration camp internees in 1933 voted for Hitler und der Nazis:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1933/nov/13/secondworldwar.germany2

Concentration camps’ vote

At the concentration camp of Osthofen, near Frankfort, of the 88 inmates entitled to vote 79 voted “Yes” on the referendum question and endorsed the Reichstag list.

At the Brandenburg concentration camp out of 1,137 votes in the election 1,006 were for the Nazi party. In the referendum 1,024 inmates voted “Yes” and twelve “No.” In the Oranienburg camp 301 prisoners out of 377 voted for the Nazi party, while 330 said “Yes” to the referendum and 33 “No.”

An amnesty for political prisoners is regarded as probable in view of the “splendid demonstration of faith in Hitler.”
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October 18, 2024 5:56pm
coge

Third rate, thinly veiled agitprop. Charming. Odd time for such a ‘poll’ to be released.
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October 18, 2024 6:02pm
- Jake Dee
  
  Very well said.
  
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  October 18, 2024 6:39pm
Media hater

It appears that the point of these questions was designed for this outcome, and subsequent reaction.

Gee, I wonder why now.
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October 18, 2024 6:42pm
Jake Dee

Scary? This poll actually scares you?
This poll is utter bunk and with approximately zero scientific use. Its only value is for propaganda and narrative control.
Many other commenters have pointed out how badly the questions are framed so I won’t bother to repeat that, but consider this. If we search out the original Daily Mail article (Something that DPF didn’t bother to link to)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13950533/Adolf-Hitler-poll-Gen-Z-Nazi-good-ideas.html
We learn that this was a survey of “1000 likely voters”.
The last US presidential election saw 158.4 million ballots cast, a 66.1% turn out rate 213.8 million registered voters.
But the maths isn’t even the real problem.
This is a statistical representation of a survey about personal opinions of the relationship between a historical figure and an abstract metaphysical concept. Regardless of the truth of the matter, maths just doesn’t work on it.
What is “Evil” anyway? you have your idea and I have mine are they the same idea?
This isn’t a survey of people, it is an abstract representation of a shonky pseudo-scientific survey of personal opinions about vague abstractions.
Pure bunkum
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October 18, 2024 7:03pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Cool, that’s Hitler covered.

Now, let’s do Stalin.
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October 18, 2024 9:50pm
Fentex

The age differences in this poll are very alarming. Only 59% of under 30s think Hitler was evil.

No, even presuming honestly reported that only recounts how a question (not in evidence) was answered, completely divorced from context.

It is not a fact to assert.
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October 19, 2024 3:30pm
AJL

Mostly the problem here comes from weasel wording of the poll.

By which I mean, from a technical perspective, the poll asks “Did he have *any* good ideas?” vs “He was evil and had literally zero positive features.”

So like… going with the whole “Hitler was a vegetarian” argument or whatever, someone could easily think “He had a whole lifetime. Probably at some point he did at least one positive thing or had at least one positive idea. This in no way balances out the oceans of cruelty and evil, but the question is asking `does he literally have zero redeeming qualities?’ ”

The question isn’t “Was he net negative” or “Was he a terrible person”, the question is “Did he have no positive traits whatsoever?” , which seems like an extremely high bar to cross, even for a very very very bad man.

Mostly it just seems like a stupid and poorly worded poll.
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October 21, 2024 9:41am

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