I would like to hear others take on History’s “Hunting Hitler” which is being shown
in the UK at the moment.
I do find the programme gripping especially the submarine base in the Canaries
and i think their is no doubt that high ranking Germans did escaped to South America
(i.e. Adolf Eichmann) but I have difficulty in accepting Hitler did too.
Given that he was a controlling megalomaniac i just cannot see him remaining quiet
in retirement!
What TV channel is it on Grhm? I am British and have not seen it.
BTW we have a quarterly Battle of Britain event here in the UK. Tell me if you want to know more.
It is on History channel the same channel as Porn Stars and
The Curse of Oak island, I get it on Sky and I think it
maybe on Virgin.
In terms of learning about how the high ranking Germans
fled I think it is very good.
Yes if you have a link to the Battle of Britain I may be interested,
thanks.
opps I meant Pawn Stars!
I do have the same channel as Porn Stars, but not Pawn Stars! Only joking! :roll:
Here is a link to the “battle report” from the November event:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=36742.msg1470441#new
This Battle of Britain 1942.2 event is quarterly. All A&A players are welcome. We can currently accommodate three more.
The Winter 2015/16 event is on 7 February. Then the Spring 2016 one on 8 May.
If you are interested do let me know.
I’m enjoying this series.
What is your impression?
It is similar in format to The Curse of Oak Island and Search for the Lost Giants.
Given that he was a controlling megalomaniac i just cannot see him remaining quiet
in retirement!
Maybe he wasn’t. As soon he come to South America, he could have taken an alias, and taken up a career as writer or artist. Who would know ?
Given that he was a controlling megalomaniac i just cannot see him remaining quiet
in retirement!Maybe he wasn’t. As soon he come to South America, he could have taken an alias, and taken up a career as writer or artist. Who would know ?
Hitler’s first career attempt as an artist (in Vienna prior to WWI) was an abject failure because he had little talent or motivation, and because he was more interested in reading and daydreaming than in hard work. He mainly produced postcards and things of that nature. If he couldn’t find the motivation and discipline to make a serious career in art before he became the most powerful man in Europe, I seriously doubt that he could have spent a contented retirement as an artist after falling from the heights he used to occupy. And on a purely technical point, his Parkinson’s disease would have made it hard for him to control a paintbrush.
The idea of Hitler spending his retirement years writing is improbable for the same reasons – and even if it weren’t, one shudders at the notion of what he might have written if we go by his two most notable “literary” works, Mein Kampf and his 1945 political testament. Just from a stylistic point of view (without even getting into the substance of what Hitler says), Mein Kampf is almost unreadable. I’ve taken a few cracks at it, and I’ve never even made it completely through the first chapter. And bear in mind that the published text, rambling though it might be, is the version that Rudolf Hess (to whom Hitler dictated the book) edited to make it more readable than the original dictation. As for the 1945 political testament, it shows that if Hitler had tried to write his postwar memoirs (a document that would theoretically have been of interest to historians), they probably wouldn’t have told us very much we didn’t already know. Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary, said after the war that she was initially awestruck when Hitler told her than he wanted to dictate his political testament to her because she thought that she would therefore become the first person in the world to learn the secret of why Germany had lost the war. Her enthusiasm quickly deflated, however, when Hitler’s political testament turned out to be simply more of the same nonsense (racist and otherwise) that he had been spouting for the past two decades.
Churchill, incidentally, did successfully take up writing and painting after the war – but in fairness, that’s easier to do when you’ve won that when you’ve lost. I think he once famously asserted that he knew history was going to treat him kindly because he was going to write it himself…which indeed he did.
Look at the Medicine Franco ordered from May 45 -Sept 45 and why he flew a heart expert when his gardener was ill and eventually died, and then records get burned I think the name is Aldi Lupus
@suprise:
Look at the Medicine Franco ordered from May 45 -Sept 45 and why he flew a heart expert when his gardener was ill and eventually died, and then records get burned I think the name is Aldi Lupus
That was propably Wilhelm Canaris, he was a Close friend of Franco.
@suprise:
Look at the Medicine Franco ordered from May 45 -Sept 45 and why he flew a heart expert when his gardener was ill and eventually died, and then records get burned I think the name is Aldi Lupus
Here’s the story: http://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
But I find it highly unlikely. Not just because the death of Hitler has been adequately documented imho, but also because there was no love lost between Hitler and Franco (Hitler famously stating to Mussolini that he would rather have his teeth pulled than to have another meeting with Franco), and because Franco wouldn’t want to risk any confrontation with the victorious Allies in 1945 if news of such an operation would be leaked. Of course, the transfer of an adequate amount of gold might have alleviated such concerns.
@suprise:
Look at the Medicine Franco ordered from May 45 -Sept 45 and why he flew a heart expert when his gardener was ill and eventually died, and then records get burned I think the name is Aldi Lupus
That was propably Wilhelm Canaris, he was a Close friend of Franco.
Canaris was executed April 9, 1945.
All in all, while I’m not a psychologist, I see no reason at all why Hitler wouldn’t have spent his life in peaceful obscurity if he would indeed have escaped. Suppose that around 1910, a Viennese art patron would have appeared who would have been particularly fond of Hitler’s paintings and enabled him to continue producing them while making a decent living…… chances are that we would never have heard of Hitler. Overall, I think Hitler was an odd man, but not extraordinary in any way. He rose to the occasion, like many otherwise mediocre rulers did before him. As for the atrocities he played such a key role in… well, I guess I’m not too optimistic about human nature in general.
I don’t believe that “Herr Wolf” escaped. I also don’t believe that he was caught (for those who prefer that equally ficticious scenario, The Berkut by Joseph Heywood provides a rather chilling account). I believe that Hitler shot and poisoned himself on April 30, 1945, in Berlin.
But that’s probably just me. I also believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, that terrorists and not the US government blew up the World Trade Center, and that Neil Armstrong did walk on the moon in 1969.
For whatever it’s worth, here’s an article on a recently-developed mathematical model which analyzes how long a conspiracy can be kept under wraps until (as almost invariably happens) it unravels because one of the conspirators blows its cover. The factors driving the model are the number of conspirators involved, the amount of time that has passed, and the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684
In the hypothetical case being discussed in this thread, remember that we’re talking about someone who was basically the most wanted criminal in the world, and someone whose personality wasn’t exactly low-key and discreet and self-controlled. For a still-alive Hitler to escape a global dragnet for decades, he wouldn’t only have needed money and connections (which arguably he might have had), he would also have needed the self-discipline and good judgment to keep a very low profile (which seems improbable to me because “self-discipline and good judgment” aren’t qualities that he displayed in abundance, especially in the last years of WWII).
I enjoy the History Channel, but I think many of their shows don’t realize what the definition of “history” is.
From some of the shows I’ve seen on that channel I’ve come to the conclusion that Hitler escaped Germany with the help of aliens from the constellation Sirius. And, he lived out the rest of his life in the “money pit” on Oak Island with the Ark of the Covenant ( which was really a nuclear reactor).
Want proof? Just read Nostradamus’ predictions…it’s all there!
@captain:
I enjoy the History Channel, but I think many of their shows don’t realize what the definition of “history” is.
Yes, good point. And I think that a supplementary problem is that many educational (or purportedly educational) channels feel – with some justification – that they are as much in the entertainment business as in the education business, and that entertainment sometimes has to take priority over scholarly rigor. For instance, I once saw a “documentary” produced for the National Geographic Channel that devoted a good deal of time to some pseudo-scientific conspiracy theorists, and did so in a way which seemed motivated by catchy sensationalism. In other words, the film wasn’t about exposing and debunking wingnuts; it seemed more about giving them equal airtime in the interests of open-minded balanced reporting. Frankly, it struck me as being something more worthy of the National Enquirer than National Geographic.
@CWO:
@captain:
I enjoy the History Channel, but I think many of their shows don’t realize what the definition of “history” is.
Yes, good point. And I think that a supplementary problem is that many educational (or purportedly educational) channels feel – with some justification – that they are as much in the entertainment business as in the education business, and that entertainment sometimes has to take priority over scholarly rigor. For instance, I once saw a “documentary” produced for the National Geographic Channel that devoted a good deal of time to some pseudo-scientific conspiracy theorists, and did so in a way which seemed motivated by catchy sensationalism. In other words, the film wasn’t about exposing and debunking wingnuts; it seemed more about giving them equal airtime in the interests of open-minded balanced reporting. Frankly, it struck me as being something more worthy of the National Enquirer than National Geographic.
Yes i have also noticed that more of the comedy channels appear to be playing films now too.
ie they are deviating away from their original goal of showing historical or science or comedy programmes.
I think one of the problems that History and Discovery has is that i suspect they expect the viewer to be shown
images and videos etc and sadly it is only under 100 years that they have footage.
Maybe i am an anorak but i would love to see a programme getting involved with museum artefacts. Griff Rhys Jones
hosted a quiz show called Quizeum. It was not perfect, rather short but something on that them.
Or perhaps a programme showing the changes to uniform detailing the various insignia etc.
Herr KaLeun wrote:
But that’s probably just me. I also believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, that terrorists
and not the US government blew up the World Trade Center, and that Neil Armstrong did walk on the moon in 1969.
I would argue that the human desire for social, economic, or sexual rewards is typically much, much stronger than the human desire to impartially seek absolute truth. To give an example, imagine the following scenario. You are a college student. You are convinced that religion/belief system X is objectively true. So you go to a few meetings associated with X. You are very disappointed with the quality of person at those meetings. On the other hand, you find yourself very attracted to many of the students at the Mithras worship sessions. So you take one of them aside, and try to convert her to X. She sees your efforts as an attack, and avoids you in the future. You try this on one or two others, and they respond the same way.
Undaunted, you persist in attending the meetings of X, while eschewing Mithras worship. Then you get out into the real world and start looking for work. One of the hiring managers you talk to is very pro-Mithras, and openly states his desire to hire only other Mithras people. You mention your dissatisfaction with that encounter to some other hiring manager. That other hiring manager completely shares your disgust. Then he adds that it’s completely obvious that Mithras is a joke, and that everyone should be worshiping Thor. He sees your story as confirmation of the rightness of his own decision to hire Thor worshipers only. Displeased by all this, you decide that you’ll only get hired if you network through other members of X. You do plenty of networking, but never come across anyone within X who has the authority to hire you.
Displeased by your love life (due to only being able to date believers in X), and displeased with your vocational situation, how long will it be before you begin to proclaim your enthusiastic devotion to Mithras? Even if you, personally, would never get pushed to that point, the average person would. In environments where there is strong social, economic, or sexual pressure to profess a belief in ____________, most people will profess that belief, completely irrespective of that proposition’s truth.
Take the September 11th attacks for example. Supposedly, it was the journalists’ job to investigate the government’s claims rigorously and impartially before accepting them. Did the journalists in question do that research? Or, might they have been pressured (with threat of job loss or otherwise)? If such pressure existed, their apparent consensus on the September 11th issue should be seen as a social consensus, not an intellectual consensus. (An intellectual consensus is the result of analysis of facts and data. A social consensus is the result of social pressure.) Obviously, a social consensus communicates information about social factors only, and does not communicate information about the underlying truth or falsehood of any given proposition.
I do not claim to know whether the consensus on the September 11th attacks is a social consensus or an intellectual consensus. If the former, it is noise to be ignored. If the latter, the data and logic which led to that consensus can and should be carefully examined. If both are found solid, then and only then can we safely join that consensus. This is the approach one should use toward every historical consensus, not just the September 11th attacks only.
What does all that have to do with Hunting Hitler?
I would argue that the human desire for social, economic, or sexual rewards is typically much, much stronger than the human desire to impartially seek absolute truth.
The basic problem with impartiality is that there are no impartial definitions of impartiality.
Quite a few years ago I was at an academic conference where, for a period of about ten or fifteen minutes, two of the people in the room held up the entire meeting by getting into an increasingly acrimonious debate over a particular issue. I remember getting more and more restless as their heated exchange went on, and I could tell that other people in the room were squirming too. The particular issue they were debating didn’t particularly interest me, so at first I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying, but eventually I started listening out of either sheer boredom or sheer irritation (I can’t remember which it was). And as I listened, I gradually started to realize why their debate was never going to get anywhere. The problem wasn’t so much that they were rejecting the substance of each other’s arguments; the problem was that they had a completely different conceptual framework of what constituted a valid argument in the first place. It reminded me a bit of the old joke, “Between a carnivorous plant and a herbivorous animal, no agreement is possible,” though a better analogy (because it deals with the different world view that different people have) would be something I heard recently on an astronomy-related program. The narrator explained that most human cultures since ancient times have looked up at the stars and connected them to form patterns (like the Big Dipper, or constellations like Orion). Different cultures have disagreed on which stars should be connected in what way to form which patterns…but at least they were all in agreement about the basic connect-the-dots methodology. One culture, however, approached the issue from a completely different perspective: the Aboriginal people of Australia didn’t connect the stars, they instead formed patterns in the sky by drawing outlines around the dark patches between the stars. This would have sounded weird and perhaps even incomprehensible to, let’s say, the ancient Greeks who named many of the traditional northern constellations, but the Greek approach probably would have sounded just as weird and perhaps even incomprehensible to an Aboriginal resident of Australia.
CWO Marc wrote: The basic problem with impartiality is that there are no impartial definitions of impartiality.
I agree that’s a serious problem. Even if everyone was trying his or her very best to be impartial, there would still be points of significant disagreement. One person’s sincerely held beliefs will not always completely overlap another’s. Your example was a good illustration of that.
As big a problem as that is, there is another that’s even more basic. Everyone wants to claim credit for being objective and impartial. But not everyone actually wants to be objective or impartial. Sometimes, disagreements are due to the fact that one or both parties lack interest in being impartial. Without the ability to read people’s minds, it’s sometimes difficult to determine which disagreements are due to that cause, and which are due to differences of opinion among those sincerely trying their best to be impartial.
Consider an advertiser’s claim that its own product is amazing, and that a competitor’s product is trash. Are such claims impartial? Do they represent a sincere attempt at impartiality?
We recognize bias when someone has an obvious, immediate financial interest in arriving at a particular conclusion. But when the economic motive is absent or hidden, we often have a tendency to assume that others are making a good faith effort to be impartial. That assumption is of course justified some of the time. But it is typically a mistake to make that assumption about the actions or motives of the members of our economic and political elites. Those elites have not demonstrated the desire to be impartial, they have not demonstrated benign intent toward the nation they rule, and they have done precisely nothing to have earned the benefit of the doubt. “Innocent until proven guilty” is an absurd standard to apply to those elites, because their typical pattern does not consist of innocence. Of course, I’m not suggesting that we should send anyone to jail based on guesses or speculation. That would be both absurd and illegal. But in analyzing the elites’ past actions, one finds that guilt is a far more common theme than innocence. It is silly to say things like “at least their intentions must be good,” or “they are probably innocent this time around” or any other such statement that ignores or explains away the clear and consistent pattern of past guilt.
The core argument I’ve seen advanced against the September 11th attacks having been an inside job is that Middle Eastern terrorists have malignant intent, whereas our own elites have benign intent. The second half of that argument is of course absurd. It is so patently false that it’s not even worth the time to refute. Both the terrorists and the ruling elites have malignant intent, both gained power as a direct result of those attacks, and both should be considered as possible suspects in the September 11th attacks. Either the terrorists or the ruling elites should be eliminated from suspicion based on evidence only. It would be extremely naive to believe that either the terrorists or the ruling elites would hesitate to murder 3,000 people, if such murder would advance their respective agendas.
The utter absence of benign intent on the part of the ruling elites is of course not proof, or even evidence, that the attacks were an inside job. On the other hand, the U.S. government’s claims that the attacks were committed by terrorists are not evidence either of that government’s innocence or of the terrorists’ guilt. They are simply claims, and carry neither more nor less weight than bin Laden’s claim that he was not responsible for the attacks.
