Reddit reviews Hitler: A Biography

There's actually a book written about this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Biography-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393337618

... :P

Just a thought, but if you want to get an understanding of Hitler you may be better off reading something like Ian Kershaw's Hitler: A Biography and then read Mein Kampf.

> Can you show me where it says socialists can't be authoritarian, violent, racist, etc?

I never made that argument. So that's a strawman and I don't see how it adds to the discussion.

>It seems the argument is, "None of these people were real socialists because they were racists and/or nationalists."

Again, I don't know who is making that argument. Because that's not what has ever been said.

>And yet for some reason, when it comes to the Germans, it's always, "Well, they weren't really socialists because they were racists and white supremacists..." or whatever.

No, it's that they weren't really socialists because they weren't really socialists.

>But it seems those who disagree simply find it sufficient enough to cut and paste links to Huffington Post, Reader Digest-level academics

Now you stoop to throwing attacks at experts because their credentials don't suit you?

Ian Kershaw is a Huffington Post level academic?

William Shirer, who actually saw the Nazi party's rise?

How about Richard Evans, who was knighted for his scholarship?

>Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism. True, as some have pointed out, its rhetoric was frequently egalitarian, it stressed the need to put common needs above the needs of the individual, and it often declared itself opposed to big business and international finance capital. Famously, too, anti-Semitism was once declared to be “the socialism of fools.” But from the very beginning, Hitler declared himself implacably opposed to Social Democracy and, initially to a much smaller extent, Communism: after all, the “November traitors” who had signed the Armistice and later the Treaty of Versailles were not Communists at all, but the Social Democrats.

I'll take the work of actual experts who have studied this far more than me or you.

Thanks mate! I earnestly enjoy whenever WW2 gets brought up either here or on WWW, it's nice knowing people enjoy rants on the subject.

If you really enjoy the subject, I highly encourage you to peruse this selection by Sir Ian Kershaw, an abridged version of his two other biographies on the life of Adolf Hitler. Note: "abridged", here, means still over 1300 pages. With about 60 pages of citations afterward. Maybe not worth slogging through casually, but the main wartime chapters and citations are hella informative.

Also, sorry if I'm mistaking your enthusiasm, again, still drunk, and just love talkin bout this :)

One of the best books on Hitler, by a great student of the subject

It gets pretty damn depressing when he gets to the "working towards the fuhrer" theory though.

He was known for going off for hours about German/political history(normally incorrectly) as a kind of grand standing show of his "understanding" of history and why he was the chosen one who could see it and lead Germany to glory. Also he had horrible flatulence.