Reddit mentions of Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography

I'm reading a book on Hitler and Himmler right now. They were fucking nuts way beyond what I ever thought they were. The weird thing is how kind they often were, and how compassionate. Their world-view was simply fucked. Himmler thought he was doing a great service by selecting the most "humane" modes for death possible, even down to designing the atmosphere of hope on their arrival (most thought they were being relocated to new towns). There are even accounts of Himmler saving people from firing squads or trying to in one case by nearly begging a blond kid to say he wasn't Jewish.

It's all so fucked up it borders on incomprehensible. They weren't actively trying to do evil things, just that their framework of reality was so twisted that what they were doing fit in positively.

Anti-semitism was rampant world-wide; they just took it to the extreme because they thought they were saving the world. American didn't take in any Jewish refugees because they didn't like Jews either. Ford was pretty representative: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interview/henryford-antisemitism/

Edit: For those requesting which book I'm reading, it's this one: http://www.amazon.ca/Adolf-Hitler-Definitive-John-Toland/dp/0385420536/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413555276&sr=1-2

Audible also has it.

> "My name is Adolf, but my friends call me Dolfi."

I liked that reference.

I'm a history student in uni right now, and Hitler is a favorite subject of mine.

I'm not sure about his friends calling him Dolfi, but I do know for a fact that the children of the inner Nazi party members referred to him as "Uncle Dolf." He was extremely popular with children.

Once, one of the early party member's children was so excited to see Uncle Dolf, that he ran with full speed to the door, but hit a chair on the way. The child was in tears from his collision, and Hitler, to cheer up the child, removed his belt, and pretended to spank the chair for hurting him.

The child was so delighted, than on more than one occasion, he requested that Hitler repeat the mock-spanking.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-Definitive-John-Toland/dp/0385420536

Well, what did the Nazis themselves think?

> "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination - by starvation and uneven combat - of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity."
>
> -- Toland, Adolph Hitler

Sounds logical to me. If one of my jobs was to remove pesky ethnic populations (a surprisingly common problem faced by those in power), I'd crack open a couple history books and see what worked for other people. (Actually, I'd hire a motivated lieutenant to do it, but whatever.)

There's of course huge modern-day forms of racial control in the US to consider. For example, it's no accident that the US jails its citizens at by far the world's highest rate.

You're right.

Toland wrote in his book, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography.

>“He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”

https://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-The-Definitive-Biography/dp/0385420536

>“America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.”
>Because of this, Nazis were more interested in how the U.S. had designated Native Americans, Filipinos and other groups as non-citizens even though they lived in the U.S. or its territories. These models influenced the citizenship portion of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship and classified them as “nationals.”

http://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow

>The record of that meeting is only one piece of evidence in an unexamined history that is sure to make Americans cringe. Throughout the early 1930s, the years of the making of the Nuremberg Laws, Nazi policymakers looked to US law for inspiration. Hitler himself, in Mein Kampf (1925), described the US as ‘the one state’ that had made progress toward the creation of a healthy ... society, and after the Nazis seized power in 1933 they continued to cite and ponder US models regularly.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-nazis-studied-american-race-laws-for-inspiration-2017-2

I think this is a nuanced take, but to complicate the narrative a little further, Hitler was known to have studied the genocide of the Native Americans in the USA in particular-- as inspiration:

>“Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity. John Toland, in his book Adolf Hitler (pg. 202)

Hitler did not want war with England or France, but he wanted to annex Poland and the Ukraine (and expel the Jews from German-occupied territory). Nothing the Poles did would have made any difference. Pat Buchanan should know this. Adolf Hitler by John Toland explains all this without demonizing Hitler.

The quote comes from the book "Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography" by John Toland.

http://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-The-Definitive-Biography/dp/0385420536

It sounds interesting. I just do not know if I want to read an entire book about Hitler.

I would also highly recommend Adolf Hitler by John Toland It's massive but great.

I'm a big fan of https://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-Definitive-John-Toland/dp/0385420536

its less dry than other biographies on him and does a decent job of humanising him so you learn about the man as well as the historical events.

> No he wasn't.
> He was gassed. Once.
> He also didn't have an abusive childhood.

Whoever I was replying to with that said he was shot.

Probably THE definitive book on Hitler: https://www.amazon.ca/Adolf-Hitler-Definitive-John-Toland/dp/0385420536/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483118512&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=tolland+hitler

It's on audible as well.