Was Alexander the Great worse then Hitler

[Ironside]

Not sure about that Disruptor, there were a hell of a lot of dictators in the ancient and medieval era and not much in the way of investigative reporting and media to expose their behaviour.

But just of the top off my head what about:

Herod and the slaughter of the Israelite children.

The Pharoah of Egypt and the expulsion of the jews.

Ferdinand and Isabella and the explusion of muslims and jews after the reconquista.

The various Roman exterminations of barbaric tribes, including the Icenii after the Boudica revolt.

Boudicca's extermination of the populations of Colchester and London.

The way I see it this sort of behaviour is inherent in human nature, has been since the first man stood upright and will be until we are extinct. All that is missing in all of us is the opportunity and power to put it into practice and that power is mostly found in totalitarian regimes, which are busy murdering people even as we write.

The fundamental difference is that extermination were made on opposition, while the holocast was done on existance, cultural eradication (the most brutal form of organised massacres pre WWII) compared to physical eradication.

[Didz]

The fundamental difference is that extermination were made on opposition, while the holocast was done on existance, cultural eradication (the most brutal form of organised massacres pre WWII) compared to physical eradication.

Again I'm not sure thats strictly true. The fundemental issue behind the Nazi Policy was that the people they were getting rid of were the opposition. The objective was to purify the German people and eradicate the corruption which had undermined their culture.

This is exactly the arguement still being used today by countries to justify persecution of their particular 'unwanted' people, and it was the basis for most previous massacres throughout history.

e.g. They are not the same as us, therefore, persecuting them is acceptable.

[KARTLOS]

Not sure about that Disruptor, there were a hell of a lot of dictators in the ancient and medieval era and not much in the way of investigative reporting and media to expose their behaviour.

But just of the top off my head what about:

Herod and the slaughter of the Israelite children.

The Pharoah of Egypt and the expulsion of the jews.

.

in one thread you are doubting the accuracy of the bible, and in this one you are using as examples events for which there is no independent evidence outside of the bible!

[Didz]

in one thread you are doubting the accuracy of the bible, and in this one you are using as examples events for which there is no independent evidence outside of the bible!

Thats the joy of history, you can change it to suit whatever fits best with your personal goals.

[Ironside]

Again I'm not sure thats strictly true. The fundemental issue behind the Nazi Policy was that the people they were getting rid of were the opposition. The objective was to purify the German people and eradicate the corruption which had undermined their culture.

This is exactly the arguement still being used today by countries to justify persecution of their particular 'unwanted' people, and it was the basis for most previous massacres throughout history.

e.g. They are not the same as us, therefore, persecuting them is acceptable.

The difference here is that the corruption was in the blood (well, vaguely defined genes and physical attributes). You were condemned to death because of you parents and nothing you could do would ever change that.

The previous worst case scenarios involved that a member of your extended family did oppose or that you were unfourtunate enough to live in a city or tribe that was going to be massacred.
To put it different if the Nazis would rule the world, not even a crystal ball would be enough to save you if you were a "undesirable".

[Didz]

The difference here is that the corruption was in the blood (well, vaguely defined genes and physical attributes). You were condemned to death because of you parents and nothing you could do would ever change that.

That was certainly true for a large proportion of the victims of the Nazi solution but there was also a significant minority (possibly several million) who were eliminated for non-genetic unacceptabilities. A few examples include mental disability, homosexuality, political beleif's, religious non-conformity, certain physical disabilties and various unacceptable lifestyle choices.

In total, jewish victims only accounted for just over half the total population who fell within the boundaries of the final solution, its just that their propaganda machine is far better at highlighting the persecution they sufferred than that concerned with the others affected.

The key aim of the Nazi policy was purification and that went far beyond the extermination of the jews. It was about conformance to an agreed cultural and genetic specification for all people of German descent.

This has been a pretty standard template for persecution throughout history and is still in use today, the only real significance of the Nazi example is that they did a more effective job of putting their policy into practice.

However, I personally don't think evil can be measured by the number of its victims, instead I would argue that exists as soon as the initial action is contemplated and becomes fact upon application to its first victim. Thus arguements such as 'the end justfy the means' cannot excuse evil acts.

[Ironside]

That was certainly true for a large proportion of the victims of the Nazi solution but there was also a significant minority (possibly several million) who were eliminated for non-genetic unacceptabilities. A few examples include mental disability, homosexuality, political beleif's, religious non-conformity, certain physical disabilties and various unacceptable lifestyle choices.

In total, jewish victims only accounted for just over half the total population who fell within the boundaries of the final solution, its just that their propaganda machine is far better at highlighting the persecution they sufferred than that concerned with the others affected.

The key aim of the Nazi policy was purification and that went far beyond the extermination of the jews. It was about conformance to an agreed cultural and genetic specification for all people of German descent.

But it's here were a part of the final solution was different from the brutalities before, the second part is how it was done (the industrial approach). And I'm not sure that all of the categories you mentioned weren't considered "genetical" by the Nazis.
The people that are eliminated due to opposition, always suffer if a brutal regime takes power. Grades of evil you know.

However, I personally don't think evil can be measured by the number of its victims, instead I would argue that exists as soon as the initial action is contemplated and becomes fact upon application to its first victim. Thus arguements such as 'the end justfy the means' cannot excuse evil acts.

That I can certainly agree with.

BTW for sheer brutal madness I would say that Pol-Pot isn't mentioned enough in this thread. I mean genocide, "starvation reforms" (=stupid reforms that causes massive starvation), and murderous paranoia after "traitors", in one regime... Can it get any worse?

[Didz]

But it's here were a part of the final solution was different from the brutalities before, the second part is how it was done (the industrial approach).

I'm not sure that the method used to implementent persecution actually makes that much difference to the victim. Whether ones children are killed with fire, sword, gas or smart bomb they're still dead and the person who ordered it is still evil in my opinion.

Is a person who kills a child through deliberate starvation any less evil that a person who throws them in a gas oven?

I don't think so.

This really hinges on ones definition of 'evil', and so far the best definition I've heard stated that 'A person is evil when they decide to do something which they know to be wrong, or omit to doing something which they know to be right and by so doing increase the suffering to others.'

Thats a pretty all encompassing statement, which at the time I heard it made me feel guilty enough to get in my car and drive 300 miles to visit my Mum rather than trying to think up contrived excuse not to.

[Ironside]

I'm not sure that the method used to implementent persecution actually makes that much difference to the victim. Whether ones children are killed with fire, sword, gas or smart bomb they're still dead and the person who ordered it is still evil in my opinion.

Is a person who kills a child through deliberate starvation any less evil that a person who throws them in a gas oven?

I don't think so.

While the method by itself usually doesn't matter much (it's usually meassured by the time of suffering before death, and as such would make gassing less evil than starving), it often reflects the intent and that matters massivly.

[Gray Beard]

I've read Mien Kampf. Because my PhD dealt with Martin Heidegger (A really nasty piece of Nazi work) I've really read more NAZI material than I'd ever like to admit. I've read the primary sources in many cases.

Hitler didn't start out OK and then go bad as was stated above. Nazism was the culmination of probably 200 years of German antisemitism that had been simply ignored by polite society. The NAZI's were, like all evil people pretty good at latching onto a couple of issues that most people could agree with and then piggy-backing their evil ideology into the mainstream that way. If the German economy had been good then the Nazi's would have found different issues to champion. I believe you see the same thing happening in the nation of Turkey right now. They just elected a government that wants to turn the nation into another Iran because the radical Islamist are, in some ways a little less fiscally corrupt. People voted for an honest government and will get an Ayatollah. The NAZI's did the same thing.

Moral equivalence when you talk about dictators is a strange concept to me. I wouldn't want to live in the USSR under Lenin, Stalin or anyone who came after them I wouldn't have wanted to live NAZI Germany, I probably would have been killed if I lived in Mao's China. (I currently live in China BTW).

Most nations from antiquity until fairly modern times had harsh, draconian legal systems. Rulers were often arbitrary and cruel. But Hitler raised the concept of cruelty to new heights. That said, peruse through a copy of the "Black Book of Communism" and you'll see he wasn't alone in killing huge numbers of his own populations and there is a sound intellectual basis for believing that Mao and Stalin were as bad or worse as was Pol-Pot. The above poster is correct when he says that Pol-Pot is not mentioned enough in threads like this.

The Hutu's in Rwanda however, I believe, currently hold the all time record for killing and maiming the most innocent people in the fewest number of days. On a day by day basis they made the Nazi's look like rank amatures

I believe there is also a qualitative, if not quantitative difference between killing enemy armies and even civilian populations in a war and killing citizens of your own country simply because of their ethnicity or political affiliations. Hitler's government would have killed every Jew it could have whether WWII happened or not. The two things were not dependent upon each other. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon (Who may have invented the Police State BTW), The British, or Joshua in the Old Testament for that matter, were building an empire and would kill the populations in order to control the city, state or geographical area. Populations who joined the cause were spared and given a place in the society.

Question, would you prefer the Assyrian way of controlling conquered population which was to enslave everyone and also cut their thumbs off so they couldn't effectively fight back? You could argue, and I think make a pretty strong argument, that in some ways both Alexander and Joshua were being merciful when they killed a population because it might be better to be dead than to be a slave.

For what it is worth, I'd put the Aztec up there with the Nazi's too as far as brutality genocidal behavior goes.

[DisruptorX]

Alexander and the Romans also spread a culture that we still look back to today, whereas the Nazis' culture, for the most part, died with them.

All Empires bring death and do some evil, but I think you could argue (and I do) that the better ones, such as the Romans and British, for example, also brought good things with them, such as new technologies and ideas.

The Nazi empire did nothing of the sort.

[Didz]

The Nazi empire did nothing of the sort.

To be fair the Third Reich never acheived a period of lasting peace in order to enable it to deliver any major benefits. But just for the record Germans still drive on roads built and paid for by the National Socialist government under Hilter and its industry and economy was far more efficient than the British at the start of the war.

The sad fact is that dictatorship is the most effiecient form of government, but it always comes at a heavy price to those sections of the population who fall outside the dictators personal and preferred group. This mean that dictators are wonderful if you happen to be one of the chosen, but terrible if you are not.

[DisruptorX]

To be fair the Third Reich never acheived a period of lasting peace in order to enable it to deliver any major benefits. But just for the record Germans still drive on roads built and paid for by the National Socialist government under Hilter and its industry and economy was far more efficient than the British at the start of the war.

The sad fact is that dictatorship is the most effiecient form of government, but it always comes at a heavy price to those sections of the population who fall outside the dictators personal and preferred group. This mean that dictators are wonderful if you happen to be one of the chosen, but terrible if you are not.

A very good point. However, thats more in the territory of arguing the benefits and shortcomings of dictatorship. Did the conquered people of the Reich enjoy any of its benefits? Hardly, they were used as slave labour. Did they enjoy the rich culture of the conquering people? No, the Nazis were very anti-intellectual, and the only art they perfected was propaganda.

The people conquered by Alexander did benefit from becoming part of the Empire. Alexandria, which was in Egypt, became more important than any Macedonian or Greek city.

Strictly military conquerors, such as the Assyrians, Mongols, etc, are admired for their military prowess (heck, so are the Nazis), but they aren't really respected as much as the Empires that brought culture and benefits to their conquered people, like the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, and British.

And brutal conquerors like the Mongols killed those who opposed them in battle, they didn't seek to completely erradicate entire groups of people because their very existance offended them. In terms of pure carnage, only the Communists surpass the Nazis, and even though their effects were arguably worse, their ideology wasn't based around complete annihilation of races of people.

[Didz]

A very good point. However, thats more in the territory of arguing the benefits and shortcomings of dictatorship. Did the conquered people of the Reich enjoy any of its benefits? Hardly, they were used as slave labour. Did they enjoy the rich culture of the conquering people? No, the Nazis were very anti-intellectual, and the only art they perfected was propaganda.

One can hardly argue this point as universal truth. Even ignoring the fact that the populations of some countries considered themselves liberated by German invasion, the Third Riech was never given the same opportunity as say the British or Romans to surplant their own cultural values on their conquered nations. From its inception the Third Reich was in a state of constant conflict whereas all the other Empires you mention managed to reign over their conquered territories for long periods of relative peace after the atrocities associated with subduing their resident populations.

It also has to be noted that unlike the other examples you list the German occupations were almost always subject to active subversion funded by outside agencies, much like the current occupation of Iraq. And as we are aware from our own expereinces in Iraq attempting to deliver any benefits to a resident population when constantly being harrassed by hostile resistance groups is damned near impossible and guaranteed to incite the worst behaviour from your own occupation forces.

If one compares the Third Reich with earlier expansions of the German Empire which unified the many small kingdoms of the 19th Century into a single German state you can see no ongoing resistance amongst the people of these states to German rule and as far as I can tell the Hannoverians, Saxons, Brunswickers, Bavarians and Wurtemburgers are all happily enjoying the benefits of being part of the great German culture.

There is no reason to suppose that had the war gone differently a unified Europe would not have eventually settled down to enjoy similar benefits. The only real issue would have been the centralisation of power which arose from the corruption of the German constitution by the National Socialist Party, but that is little different to the sort of problems currently facing some of our countries anyway and so WW2 may only have delayed the inevitable decline of our countries into police states.

It will certainly be a major challenge for Britain over the next few decades.

And brutal conquerors like the Mongols killed those who opposed them in battle, they didn't seek to completely erradicate entire groups of people because their very existance offended them.

I'm afraid that simply isn't true, and rarely is of any of the examples you are using.

The Mongols in particular systematically erradicated whole rural populations simply because they considered their existence to be pointless and their lives worthless. The Romans did exactly the same thing to whole nations simply to clear the land for resettlement and the British did the same in Africa, New Zealand, Australia and many other of its colonial conquests.

You seem to basing your arguements on a very selective view of history which is designed to suggest that the actions of Germany in WW2 were somehow extra-ordinary. In fact, they were not unusual at all and were just following the standard pattern adopted by almost every conquering power throughout history. It was for instance the British who invented the concentration camp not the Germans and the same system is still being used to day even though its was demonized following WW2.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that the Nazi were not some genetic human mutation that suddenly burst into existence from nowhere and once eradicated can be assigned to history and forgotten. These were ordinary human beings doing what any ordinary human being is capable of doing when allowed the power and opportunity. Therefore, the real lesson to be learned from WW2 is not that Nazi's were evil, but that this is what can happen, when we as individuals and as nations allow too much power to placed in the hands of too few people. This gradual drift towards centralised power is natural consequence of our own lethagy, ignorance and self-interest. As a consequence we are already seeing the actions of the Nazi's being emulated all over the world and eventually our grandchildren will have to pay the same price our grandfathers did to correct our mistakes.

Most people in Britain for example know every intimate detail about the contestants of Big Brother, and yet haven't a clue about the how the British constitution protects their freedom, and so when Blair or Brown announce changes which undermine their freedom they don't even register the threat let alone understand its implications on the future for their children. I'm sure the same is true of every other so called democratic country, and so we sit here arguing about who was the most evil whilst all around us the next bunch of Nazi's are organising themselves ready to repeat the lesson which we should have already learned.

[DisruptorX]

You may have me there on the second point. Though, the mongols are pretty much viewed as being rather bloodthirsty these days. I believe in the middle east, they are seen as being as bad as we see the Nazis.

I do think that portrays Nazis as being somehow inhuman monsters to distance ourselves from them is incorrect, but then again, I don't see how one could compare Alexander the Great, an enlightened ruler who respected the culture of the people he conquered, to a man who set out to wipe out the Jews and Slavs.

[Didz]

I do think that portrays Nazis as being somehow inhuman monsters to distance ourselves from them is incorrect, but then again, I don't see how one could compare Alexander the Great, an enlightened ruler who respected the culture of the people he conquered, to a man who set out to wipe out the Jews and Slavs.

Again I would argue that you are being very selective about what aspects of Alexanders character you include in this assessment. Alexander was essentially a teenage thug with a huge ego complex, probably bought on the abuse of his father. During the course of his short life he not only committed murder on a regular basis just from his own amusement but supervised acts of genocide against any nation which he took a dislike to. There is even a theory that in the end he was poisoned by his own friends who could no longer tolerate his abuses.

Alexander's empire was no rosegarden. Especially after the final defeat of King Darius the court was plagued by controversy and intrigue. Alexander had some of his loyal aides tortured and killed. The justification for these acts is still subject to debate. Especially during the campaign in India, the Macedonians used brutal force to subdue the conquered peoples. Even the sick and elderly, it is written, were butchered.

But also earlier on, during the long siege of Tyre (Lebanon) in 332 BC, Alexander had 2,000 inhabitants mercilessly crucified. In modern Iran he is still known as an evil king - a personification of the devil if you like - who did his very best to destroy the respectable old Persian culture and religion.

None of that detracts from his acheivements but one needs to keep a clear perspective on the fact that many of the people we are encouraged to worship are no less human than we are when it comes to abusing power.