Hitler wasn't such a bad guy

In this, the final round, I will rebut your contentions as clearly and articulately as I can manage.Concomitantly I aim to convince you readers that Hitler was a "bad guy", and that simply by applying that moral judgement to him, he becomes a bad guy.Rebuttals and argumentsFirstly, my opponent is either misinterpreting or misrepresenting my position. My assertion was that laws are democratic, and that laws are informed by the morals of the population. That is, laws reflect our collective moral position. As our collective moral position changes over time, so, too, do laws. This is how the principle of common law works. I will give a simple example to more clearly illustrate my point.Let's take two countries; Australia and America. For the most part, Americans are in favour of an armed populace. That is their collective moral position. Australians, on the other hand, argue that the population should not be armed without special reasons and licence arrangements. That is their collective moral position. The laws in the two respective countries reflect their relative moral positions on the issue of gun ownership. If we were to take your example of India and China and say that the entire planet should conform to their belief system, you are missing the point. Individuals have their own moral systems which are usually informed by the society they are brought up in. Subsequently, laws are made reflecting the needs of that group of people. However, the moral standard applied to those people doesn't have to be the same in other countries, as demonstrated by the Australia-America example.Extrapolating this information to the Second World War, we can determine that Germany (among other supporters of the Axis) held a general anti-Semitic conviction, and that to them, this was 'true'. However, in other countries, like England, Australia, New Zealand and towards the end of the conflict, the U.S., made a determination that this action was not moral, and this was equally 'true' for them.So now we must make the determination about whether or not Hitler was a "bad guy".Whether he thought he was acting morally or not is irrelevant. In asking the question, we must make the determination. In this round, I hope to convince you that my determination that Hitler was a "bad guy" is more agreeable than the converse. While, as stipulated, this moral finding can only be 'true' for those that find it to be, I intend to convince you of my position that Hitler was a "bad guy".Secondly, my opponent talked about quantity of action. Because of a lack of citation, my opponent has cherry-picked details about Germany's economy that suit his argument, but are not factually accurate. My initial rebuttal will simply be that doing good deeds does not revoke one's badcko)Chrome/36.0.1985.125Safar For instance, let us consider a man who routinely brutalises, rapes and murders defenceless children in very slow and agonising ways. He has not yet been caught. As it happens, he thinks that what he's doing is moral. Additionally, he makes quarterly donations to an orangutan sanctuary, often helps the elderly cross the street, volunteers at a homeless %07%round, % makes a conscientious effort to mediate his carbon emissions. Quantitatively, he does "more good than bad things". However, it is an absolute absurdity to assert that "he is not a bad guy because he does good things, too". The fact of the matter is that he commits acts of monstrosity against children, and that makes him a "bad guy". No court would rule that his good deeds absolve him of his crimes. No amount of spin will placate distraught parents from their bereavement. No society would accept this injustice. Not in the U.S., not in Australia, not in China and not in India. A high-ranking Save the Children official (the group responsible for KONY 2012) was arrested on child molestation charges and sent to prison. Just because he worked for a charity and did a lot of "good" things, doesn't mean he is acquitted of his crimes(1).Similarly, it follows that Hitler is responsible for his crimes.My opponent claimed that the German economy is still strong because of Hitler. This is not factually accruate. As aaccurateresult of the Potsdam Conference and associated war reparations paid by Germany (and its subsequent partitioning, annexation and administration by Allied governments), Hitler's effects on the economy were removed(2). The strength of today's German economy is complicated, but in simple terms comes from a mix of labour market reforms, massive skill base (around a quarter of all German children undertake apprenticeships in upper secondary school), and unrivaled manufacturing prowess(3).Thirdly, my opponent claimed that one cannot blame Hitler for the extermination of the Jews. My grandmother (still alive) lived in Poland during the occupation of both Germany and the Soviet Union. She has been interview, provided testimony and her story is available for viewing online at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her mother was executed in Auschwitz (I've been afraid to ask, but presumably Zyklon B or carbon monoxide). The story is similar in narrative to six million others. And the extermination of Jews was explicitly ordered by Hitler. Saying that he didn't pull the trigger is as ignorant as saying bin Laden wasn't flying the planes. Hitler directly and incontrovertibly ordered the extermination of the Jews(5).Saying that blaming Hitler for the destruction of millions of lives is equivalent to blaming Obama for obesity is fallacious. The two are not even remotely similar. Obama can be held accountable for acts of war and killings he is directly responsible for ordering. You need to do some research on the Nuremberg Trials(6).You have also presented a weak case in light of the tu quoque fallacy(4). Just because Spain and other countries experienced antisemetism does not make it acceptable. This is like saying that because a person has committed a bank robbery, he has set the precedence for the acceptability of bank robberies. Absurd.No, I am not an American.My opponent attempts to make a poor connection between my explanation of subjective moral philosophy and the German populous. Just because it was moral, to one group of people, at that time, doesn't mean it was moral for others at that time, or moral for us now. I am asserting that Hitler was a "bad guy", right now, based on my definition of 'bad', and that not only did many people consider him bad enough to fight a war against him at the time, but that we are sufficiently knowledgeable to make our own moral determination now. You say Hitler had nothing to do with their conditions. This is also entirely false, as the conditions were a direct result of his orders. Not only did he expect Jews and non-Aryan prisoners to be treated worse than Aryan prisoners, but he explicitly demanded the construction of mass extermination facilities(7).SummaryMany people are responsible for the atrocities of WWII. Hitler, a tyrant and a despot, was one of them. "Hitler wasn't such a bad guy" is a factual misrepresentation of his character and behaviour. Morally, the assertion that Hitler "was bad" is not invlaid, and in my judgement, is the only appropriate (although weakest variety) position to take on the topic of Hitler being a "good" or "bad guy".Hitler was, by all reasonable modern and retrospective moral standards, a "bad guy".Thank you.______________(1)[http://www.dailymail.co.uk...] (2)[http://en.wikipedia.org...] (3)[http://www.bbc.com...] (4)[http://en.wikipedia.org...] (5)[http://web.archive.org...] (6)[http://en.wikipedia.org...] (7)[http://en.wikipedia.org...]