I think a few here is fond of the old Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but looking into the actions that he did during the years into the prelude of World War 2 was really interesting. At his behest, he supplied Joseph Stalin and the whole Soviet Union of military equipment and intelligence to prepare for the Nazis. I really don't think that Americans during at the time was on board with supplying another enemy, the communists, with their own handmade products just to hold off the Reich.
Let's not get started with the internment camps he did against Americans of Japanese lineage after the Pearl Harbor attacks, how the Democrats were tight-lipped about it to this day, and the communist project that the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt did in Arthurdale, Virginia, that was still left untold on how many people died due to starvation on that god forsaken experiment of hers.
Churchill is closer to the modern era, and I agree he had a moral core, but I think many of the more prominent politicians in the early years of the US had a strong moral core as well, likely far stronger than Lincoln. Ultimately, though, they're all human, and should be considered as such.
I don't like the cult of worship (or hatred) that surrounds so many historical leaders. This community is great, because we can say audacious things about revered and reviled figures, and sometimes have a decent conversation about it.
I am not as familiar with that period, but likely true.
A certain kind of human. Because most ordinary people do not go into politics. Those who do, are interested in power, as a general rule. So one ought to be more skeptical of them.
That's funny. I did see some of the cult of hatred on this thread. I don't worship Lincoln, but I did see some people who hated him based on nonsense.
I'm fine with almost any opinion (even with people who hate a particular ethnic group and can give a better than piss-poor explanation for it), but I'm not with any fact. Some of the stuff spouted here was just retarded nonsense, because it was not backed up by anything except prejudices or what the writer heard at some point.
Fair, but the writing of history is an exercise of revision, and every revision leaves the taint of the writers own bias. Things are lost, or extrapolated, sometimes without any other reason than a modern lens. When a historical figure becomes Legend, that also factors in, as much as the author may claim it doesn't. In this environment, "fact" becomes a bit amorphous. I mean, Black Reconstruction in America has heavily influenced the teaching of US reconstruction, despite ignoring primary sources, and some of Du Bois apparent leaps of logic.
When you discover that you can't really trust what you've been told your whole life to be true, it can give you a bit of a license to say anything. A place like this is particularly susceptible to saying anything, but that's an opportunity that isn't afforded generally, whether you want to counter it, or support it.
Here's a fact. "It's unknown whether Hitler ordered the death of any Jew."
Not a popular fact, sure. Some people have the opinion that Mein Kampf inspired the Holocaust through his subordinates, while others are of the opinion that it was a secret operation with orders from the top. The latter view is what most consider to be fact, but it's not a fact at all.
I enjoy being able to say that.
'Influence' is not the same as determine. One can be influenced by Black Reconstruction without accepting everything in the book, and I don't think even neo-abolitionists accept everything in it.
Absolutely true. This is a major problem with how institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted that nothing that comes out of them can be relied on at all. But that is also no justification for espousing just about anything, as long as it is not coming from these institutions. Sometimes, quite by accident, they speak the truth.
In the same sense that "we don't know if we are brains boiling in a vat created by a mad scientist", yes. But of course, while Hitler often made sure to not have any written orders for undertakings that may turn out to be failures, the likelihood that what happened occurred without his command, approval and knowledge range from infinitesimal to impossible.
Who are those 'some people', other than such notorious frauds as David Irving? Because I don't know any serious historian who would say anything like that. Particularly because it's not as if there was a void between Mein Kampf and 1942. Even in January 1939, Hitler said that a world war would result in "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe". This was then later cited by Goering that "the war has come, the annihilation of the Jewish race must be the logical consequence".
Yet even after Mein Kampf, and after January 1939, the Nazis - Hitler - did not have an ideological commitment to killing Jews. They just wanted them out of Europe, to languish and die either in a place like Madagascar or a reservation in the USSR. Mass killing was a result of radicalization spurred by the war and by an overpopulation problem, where local Nazis who had Jews dumped on them resorted to the expedient of murdering them to avoid feeding them and outbreak of disease among the tightly cramped ghettos, a practice which then spread with the objective of making Europe free of Jews rather than solving local problems (this is the structuralist explanation for the Holocaust, which I do find more persuasive).
That it came from the top is most certainly a fact. There is an audio recording of Himmler, who was definitely at the top, affirming as much. That is as close to a fact as you can get.
The only speck of a doubt that you may say there is, is whether Hitler gave the order, or whether he went along with initiatives that came from below, or whether he saw initiatives from below and decided to extend them.
What you're saying is pretty tame. I think you know how to present stuff diplomatically.
Disagree. My understanding is that Hitler was cautious of written orders after Catholics complained about the euthanasia orders, but I could be wrong. However, it's still speculation. That's the point. I think it's highly unlikely that he had no knowledge of what was occurring, but there's no proof of any orders, which is what my statement of fact concerned. As I said before, history is a process of revision. It was unchallenged "fact" that the road to Auschwitz was straight, until the 70s.
Okay, admittedly, I did a horrible job of summarizing the functionalist vs intentionalist debate, but you got there anyway. It really seems likely to me that the Nazis stumbled and blundered their way into the holocaust. Hitler may have approved (and based on surrounding context, almost positively did), but that's just conjecture.