While I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think 1 in 5 thought : “well, he’s kind with his dog and an OK painter, I can’t in good faith say he’s completely bad”
12% had the rather less ambiguous responses of ‘he was at least as good as he was bad’. While 12% of folks were of the maybe defensible technicality of ‘well, even the worst person occasionally will do the right thing’, another 12% responded as ‘unsure’, which I would suspect would lean toward “I don’t want to admit a socially unacceptable answer”.
another 12% responded as ‘unsure’, which I would suspect would lean toward “I don’t want to admit a socially unacceptable answer”.
i’d lean towards “i don’t know enough about the facts to make a definitive statement”
public education isn’t great and even good public education rarely dives deeply in the life of Adolf Hitler beyond the obvious “he was a megalomaniac dictator who killed Jews and wanted to take over the world”
Hitler became Hitler because of his life experiences. He served in the German military during WW1, he was homeless in Vienna, he grew up poor with a sick mother. These events, along with the movements of the then-current cultural zietgiest, radicalized him in certain directions. It’s a complex story that is hard to break down into simplistic moral platitudes of “good person” or “bad person”
I understand there’s generally nuance and all for various folks villified through history, but given the last decade of his life, his story became one of the easiest in history to break down into “bad person” without oversimplification or any vaguely acceptable case of moral relativism. More context is informative as a key part of learning of history, but it doesn’t ultimately impact ability to simplify it to “bad person”
I’m completely against his policies and actions for obvious reasons. I hate Nazis.
Still, I could probably be convinced to say that he wasn’t 100% bad in every possible way.
Even the most evil people are complex human beings. There may be something good inside them at some point to some person, etc.
“All” is a very powerful word.
While I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think 1 in 5 thought : “well, he’s kind with his dog and an OK painter, I can’t in good faith say he’s completely bad”
I definitely agree with you on that.
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Views_on_Hitler_poll_results.pdf
12% had the rather less ambiguous responses of ‘he was at least as good as he was bad’. While 12% of folks were of the maybe defensible technicality of ‘well, even the worst person occasionally will do the right thing’, another 12% responded as ‘unsure’, which I would suspect would lean toward “I don’t want to admit a socially unacceptable answer”.
i’d lean towards “i don’t know enough about the facts to make a definitive statement”
public education isn’t great and even good public education rarely dives deeply in the life of Adolf Hitler beyond the obvious “he was a megalomaniac dictator who killed Jews and wanted to take over the world”
Hitler became Hitler because of his life experiences. He served in the German military during WW1, he was homeless in Vienna, he grew up poor with a sick mother. These events, along with the movements of the then-current cultural zietgiest, radicalized him in certain directions. It’s a complex story that is hard to break down into simplistic moral platitudes of “good person” or “bad person”
I understand there’s generally nuance and all for various folks villified through history, but given the last decade of his life, his story became one of the easiest in history to break down into “bad person” without oversimplification or any vaguely acceptable case of moral relativism. More context is informative as a key part of learning of history, but it doesn’t ultimately impact ability to simplify it to “bad person”