Heil Fuhrer

Someday I'll be a great artist, Mother.
And what a performance he staged for the entire world. Everybody would wait with bated breath to watch his next act. The villain of the story of World War II whom we know as Adolf Hitler. Devil incarnate? Lucifer's own blood? Not very flattering descriptions can be made about him. I'm a huge follower of war history, especially World War II. Their aviation techniques, the slump in world economy, political masquerades, everything but their was something about the Nazis which held my interest.
Adolf wanted to grow up to be an architect but he failed his entrance exam. He should have studied better, shouldn't he? He served as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Germany lost and was subjected to the humiliation dictated by the treaty of Versailles. According to The History Channel documentary, Hitler's superior in the army was a Jew, who according to him made really lousy battle plans which could have lead to Germany's surrender and that may have planted the sapling of hatred against Jews in his mind, because Hitler held Germany's leaders and not her people for this mess. Kaiser William fled the country and the Weimer Republic was a national disgrace. German mentality refused to let the people accept democracy, they believed in letting one man decide what was the best for the nation. And Hitler strove to be that man.
He began by giving speeches in small cafes and gradually formed the Nazi party with a group of disbanded, unemployed soldiers. He preached hatred against the Jews and blamed them for the deterioration of the nation. He sort of reminds me of Nero in this respect. Nero blamed the Christians for the decline of the Roman Empire but he was a barmy old lunatic. Hitler was way better in my opinion. Atleast he didn't torch 2/3rds of the city to make room for a new palace. But the building where the Reichstag was holding a meeting did catch fire....Hmmmm.........Well the Nazi party did have their own army and their duty was to break up meetings of other parties. I wonder if that was one of their "methods" Another Italian I would like to compare him to - Benito Mussolini. You don't hear much about him, do you? I bet people don't want to know much about him either because his biography costs Rs 750 while Mein Kampf costs only Rs. 135. But he was one of the dictators during the war (his biography describes him as a buffoon on the jacket [hee hee]) What atrocities he committed, I have no idea. My History Textbook doesn't say much and he's not even a pop culture icon but he did say that "If I advance, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me" Well, when Italy surrendered, he was murdered by the people on the street and his dead body was hung from the roof of a petrol bunk. My, they really took his words to heart, didn't they?
The Nazi Party got a majority in the Parliament (why wouldn't they? they certainly "took care" of all the other parties) Hindenburg had to appoint Hitler as Chancellor and when he died, Hitler combined the office of the President and the Chancellor and assumed the title of Fuhrer. Power turned him loony. The commander of the disbanded soldiers (his first supporter and a very good friend) who were the first Nazis demanded that the soldiers be allowed to return to the army but Hitler refused. They fell out and Hitler had him shot in a bunker and then addresses the soldiers explaining his action saying that "he was plotting to kill him" and then in his honour, moved the soldiers back to the army anyway. Loony, I tell you.
Another problem of his was that he sort of had a superiority complex, in my opinion. He believed the Aryan race to be superior and he was against intermixing because he felt it would lead to the degradation of the race. He had his officers sent to far-off places like Tibet to trace the roots. Mind you, the other half of the Aryan race ie. we Indians were being eyed by Germany apart fom the fact that we were a British colony and wantedly or unwantedly, a supporter of the Allies. They even started laying train lines from Baghdad to India!!
Hitler hated Jews, we know that. So what was "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem?" Concentration Camps. Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau...trains loaded with Jews were sent here to rot, to suffer, to die. So what was probably the worst thing that happened at these camps?
* Have Jewish filmakers shoot films depicting just how happy the Jews were at these camps and then shoot them (Hitler did want to be an arist......)
* Be forced into slave labor and ultimately die of malnutrition.
* Pushed into mass graves and shot
* Be subjected to medical experiments. [One survivor tells us about how two twins were experimented upon and came back sewed to each other, back to back, with the wounds still oozing of pus. Their mother fed them morphine so that they could die in peace]
* Death marches to another camp. Death because if you fell behind or stopped , you would be killed
* Death squadrons where some people were selected everyday to be fired at or hang by the rope
* Thrown into the furnace alive if you failed to retrieve the valuable possessions from the dead bodies and hand it to the Nazi officers.
or...........................................
* Arrive at the camp by train and be swept into a neat reception area and be told that coffee is waiting for you in the lounge but you had to take a bath first so you are given soaps, towels, toothbrushes and taken to a sauna room where the door is shut and poison gas is released
Liberation of these camps by the Allies was probably like the call of heaven for the inmates. The Holocaust survivors had a gruesome story of their own to tell. There is one such person who lives in Australia, I think. He was an ex-Nazi officer. And he is a Jew. Yes, he was Hitler's personal favourite, more like Nazi's poster boy. Such stories really make me want to laugh in Hitler's dead face. Tough luck, mate. You don't always get what you want. Fate's bound to play pranks on you some day. He saved himself from public humiliation by consuming cyanide capsules. Well, I bet you didn't suffer even a fraction of the torture you put the Jews through.
So, why did I make this post more into a History lesson? Well, first because I'm a History buff but I also wanted to share my views on the man the world wished was never born. He wanted to be the pride of Germany but I'm sure her head sinks in shame when he is mentioned. Anything mentioned with reference to the Nazis now creates an international ruckus. Take Carla Bruni likening a tabloid to a Nazi - run press. The Nazis did something worthwhile. They provided the jobless with work and uplifted economy and set up a new education system.........which turned the Germans into blind stooges of the Nazis.
But nobody's born evil. Hitler was only a man who loved his country more than himself. I'm not supporting him or anything and I know most people think he is beastly but I think there were some human elements in him. Whatever he did, he did it because he thought it was the best for Germany. It was almost selfless, it was patriotic. When he was a young soldier, he would sketch to kill time. Human trait.....And he thought that Snow White was the best movie ever! (well Snow White wasn't a Jew and I think the Grimm Brothers were German) Of course, he also thought that Charlie Chaplin's aim was world domination (hey did you ever notice that both their moustache styles are somewhat similar?) So Adolf Hitler, devil incarnate?? Hmmm.....more like a maniacal patriot