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Reggie Perrin wrote:

> Your German proverb illustrates a great deal of cynicism.

Pragmatism. It's when there are only options 1 and 2, and both are unpleasant. The proverb is used, for example, when a child shows fear about going to the dentist. Option 1 is the painful visit to the dentist, option 2 is not going and keep living with the toothache. You apparently tell the child to choose option 3 - go back in time and don't eat as many sweets.

> A
> terrible end involves terrible terror and 1945 was far too late
> to say that it was better than another 20 years of the Nazis.

Yes, but by 1945 (most of) the war dead were already dead.
I was talking about 1938, pre-war. Chamberlain chose option 2.

> Sorry there were more options than 1 or 2. The other option is
> that somebody had the good sense to murder Hitler at any time
> after 1918. Plenty of people saw him for the filth that he was
> even back then. Better still he should have been executed or
> given a very long prison sentence for treason for his actions
> in 1923.

Yes, and even better, at the Xmas football game in 1914 everybody could have come to their senses, keep fraternising and stop the war. Then Hitler and all that would not have happened at all. Option 3.

But the world does not work like that.

BTW That Hitler was not given a longer prison sentence had a lot to do with those remaining autocratic structures I was happy to see the back of.

I am not even confident that an early assassination of Hitler would have made things work out better. Before 1933, yes, as the rest of the party would have struggled to gain sufficient public support to take power. Later, it's a case of one lunatic homicidal maniac gone, but there were plenty left in the party to step into this shoes. Goering might have been (comparatively speaking) the mild option, [says he without much confidence], but just imagine Himmler or even Heydrich as the new Fuhrer, yikes!

Beutelwolf, are you Bryan Ferry in disguise ? You can't stop talking about SS uniforms !

...as opposed to a weird set of nest-featherers pleasing themselves on one hand, and then making it their life's work to make sure other people have no such opportunities. One thing the politicians of the last 15/20 years have done is pull the ladder up behind them in every way they can (bar politics, of course) leaving the current younger "Generic Generation" very little to look forward to other than a lifetime of debt and state control.
I'd agree that strong opposing political views (left, right, socialism, communism, maexism, thatcherism, reagonomics - whatever badge you put on them) are deeply flawed and tiresome, but surely the nature of politics decrees that the only genuine reason to enter that field is on strong convictions and beliefs (however misguided they may be) - anything else goes beyond the realms of 'regular' intellectual dishonesty deep into the waters of sheer greed and corruption. Which is where we are today.
If someone has a manor house, a moat, fleet of Rolls Royces, umpteen directorships so be it, but the cunts that have all that and more whilst masquerading under the umberalla of supposed socialism and liberalism - be they working class traitors like John Prescott or (a lot worse) moneyed toffs like Bliar, Mandelssssson and the Milliband freaks - and spend their life's work dictating to the minnions what they can & can't do whilst building up multi-million pound property portfolios and hiding being "blind trust" are so blatantly offensive to anyone with half a brain it's untrue.
Why the hell do people swallow this crap???

Come on, Razza. You can't conclude beutelwolf is 'a Nazi at heart' just because he liked their uniforms. For the record I think they look pretty cool too. If I had never heard of the Nazis, nor their philosophies and looked at their SS officer uniforms compared the the British, Russian, French and American equivalents then I'd say the SS uniforms were far more stylish; they looked the part.

Bringing the discussion up to date: I'm not too fond on religion; I hate it with a passion. But it's not all bad, just generally bad. Religious people are less likely to suffer stress, or depression, and usually heal quicker from disease and temporary disabilities. Religion and faith can give one hope and encouragement which eases stress and worry, which in turn helps the immune system. Religion gives communities a stronger bond between it's individuals and a more prominent feeling of kinship. I don't think anything as complex as a single personality, let alone a group of personalities that join together based on a few principles, can be 'all bad'. As 'wolf says, it's a simplistic way of looking at things.

Take Saddam Hussain: He improved the schooling of girls, for instance, compared to Iran, Saudi Arabia and other mainly Islamic countries. I'd say that was a good thing. I'm sure he did many more good things if I read up enough, but overall I believe he was bad for the people of Iraq and it's neighbours. Me saying that I admired Saddam's education policy doesn't logically conclude that I admired him or his regimen.

Let's not forget that it was the 'everything's either black or white, good or bad' attitude, as well as lazy generalisations that leads to a population tolerating parties like the Nazis. If something isn't deemed to be 'good' then it has to be 'bad' and therefore eradicated. Of course, too much toleration can be just as dangerous: yes, they are racist pigs but the trains are on time and the hospitals clean, their doctors competent.

Making generalisation like: "you display that classic selective and psychotic streak, which is part of the German character and allowed the Nazis to do what they did." is the exact sort of attitude as the German girl you've been complaining about. Her thoughts on Dutch campers must stem from something (ignorance/hatred) but it's continually solidified by unhelpful and mostly inaccurate generalisations.

And to say no Germans tried to stop Hitler apart from the Army can't be true can it? I don't know enough but I'm sure he wasn't totally adored by every single German, and I'm also sure plenty of Germans -not just Jewish Germans- fled the country before the war.

And on that note about perfectly respectable people doing horrid things, did you see the BBC programme on violence, documented by Portillo? It mostly covers violence but does end with a little on how ordinary folk can not only tolerate but commit cruelty and torture to innocent people with only a little encouragement. It was always easy for me to comprehend why a Nazi might hate someone. The world has plenty of bigots after all, but I was always puzzled as to how a whole nation put up with the stuff the Nazis got up to and this programme goes a little way to throwing some light on it. Anyway, it's on iPlayer here.

Maybe we need to bring in the Chinese way of dealing with corruption - those boys don't mess around.

Alluded to in the 45 by Level 42 'The Chinese Way'