Was Alexander the Great worse then Hitler

[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.