Resolved: Hitler deserved a nobel peace prize

One last thanks to Balacafa. Burdens So, I don't know how you can realistically call our burdens equal when one of us is advocating for a substantial change to the way history perceives one of its greatest villains, but voters can decide. What I will point out is that Pro's response that his contentions prove "that Hitler went to extraordinary efforts to prevent a second world war" would only be sufficient if he'd stopped there. If he didn't follow that up by massively expanding that war, torturing, imprisoning and killing millions of non-combatants, and engaging in genocide, that might be worth something. But he didn't, so it's not. 1) Mass murdering f*ckhead Let me quote my opponent: "Hitler wasn't an anti-Jew... I admit that he was against Jews... Hitler liked Jews." If anyone else is confused by these sentences, then congratulations, you can read! Do I really need to post every quote Hitler made about the Jews publicly to be clear that he very much hated them and wanted them dead? "The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews...Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy." "How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! ... We shall regain our health only be eliminating the Jew." This is just scratching the surface, there's so much more.[1] Pro wants to deny that these exist, but they exist, and they're a matter of public record. Many of these state a desire to eliminate the Jews. Some Jews fought for Finland (which was practically forced to ally with Germany), but note that the article points out that "They lived in permanent fear of their identity [as Jews] being revealed" and, in cases where they were revealed, the Finns outranked the Germans, preventing any harm. They did not agree with Hitler, though they found common cause in battling the Soviets. Also, this was a grand total of 300 people, who agreed they "did not help the Germans". Pro makes the same claim for homosexuals, but his article gives examples among the Allies. As for Eva Braun, note that the article is titled "Hitler may have 'unwittingly married a Jew'". Misidentification doesn't profess love for Jews. The rest of this is just not at all responsive to my points. Pro conflates the war and the Holocaust, yet these were non-combatants, often German citizens, rounded up on trains and brought against their will to concentration camps where most died. There are a staggering number of accounts of this.[2] As for his claim that certain ethnic minorities are always killed more in wars, that does not justify the 6,000,000 Jews who lost their lives, so many of them women and children who literally couldn't have seen combat. Such a disproportionate number cannot be explained by this weak and, frankly, wrong assertion. Homosexuality was used to justify mass incarceration and, in the case of Ernst Rohm, execution. [3] But all of Pro's response is irrelevant. Pro ignores the 15-20 million deaths that Hitler himself is responsible for, whether as a result of war as he claims or as a result of the Holocaust. The Jews and Romani were almost killed off in the process. Whether the genocides were malicious or merely consequential makes no difference to the fact that they happened, and the blood was on Hitler's hands. A. Confiscation Pro concedes that confiscation happened and that it was specifically focused on Jews. He points to the need to pay reparations post-WW2 as justification for this, ignoring the fact that all of this confiscation happened BEFORE AND DURING WW2. Even if those reparations would justify taking all of their property (and Pro hasn't explained how completely depriving anyone of all their property is EVER justified), at the time these were confiscated, there was no such justification. The fact that so many of these people were fleeing the country is dropped by Pro, as is the fact that those funds expanded the war effort, directly against peaceful aims. B. Imprisonment and Forced Labor What Poland did doesn't justify Germany employing and dramatically increasing the use of concentration camps (not that his evidence of it is accessible). Since they housed mostly Jews, justifying these camps by saying that the Germans were getting back at Poland is clearly just scapegoating. Pro drops almost everything, so extend forced, dangerous labor, mass torture through deprivation, beatings, and lack of sanitation that led to disease spread. C. Eugenics Pro's source on providing clean water only talks about fluoridation, not access to water in general. There are multiple examples of how access was minimal, and led to sanitation issues, especially at Auschwitz.[4] Pro can argue all he wants that Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp (it was [5, 6, 7]), but that doesn't affect my argument. The deaths speak for themselves. I've argued that the camps were used for subjecting people to the most inhumane conditions and medical testing, and that many of these efforts were clearly aimed at creating a master race and ending others. Pro drops this. What he does say is baffling. This point on a typhus epidemic, which appears to apply solely to Auschwitz, is a myth that ignores actual death certifications (which show that roughly 69,000 died from typhus, not the 1.1 million that died there), the evidence of falsified death certificates, and a bevy of post-war testimony.[8] Typhus death rates were well below 5 in 100,000 in the 1940's, and that was without vaccination.[9] Mengele, who contributed so heavily to eugenics studies (Pro dropped his example) actually made an effort to reduce the incidence of typhus as well, sending serum and vaccinating prisoners (mainly to advance his research).[8] Thus, Pro's body count is inexplicable. Lastly, the placement of individuals into the camps increased the spread of typhus, which is caused by lice.[10] Jumping from human to human gets a lot easier when you're standing in crowded into close quarters.[11, 12] If typhus was the cause of death for so many, the Germans were at fault for increasing its spread. Pro attempts to justify German war crimes by pointing to Allied war crimes. Again, one doesn't justify the other. Hitler doesn't deserve a Peace Prize for committing war crimes, no matter whether someone else did it first. Killing people en masse, confining them, depriving them of property, safety, food, water, family, friends, and basic dignity is what the Nazis did. Pro concedes mass sterilization and torture in attempts to change eye color, either one of which would be sufficient to vote Con alone. 2) WW2 I disproved Pro's logic on this last round. Poland didn't attack first, and even if it did, that doesn't justify everything Germany did afterward, to Poland or any other nation. Protecting oneself against a bully doesn't entail take out a rifle and fill them and everyone around them full of holes - that goes well beyond self defense. Germany initiated conflict with Britain and France. He invaded the latter, and launched wave after wave of aircraft at the former, practically leveling London. These are not the actions of a peaceful man. This was not self-defense, and no matter how Pro spins it, it's never peaceful to invade another country or bomb them into submission. These were clearly war-furthering actions. These were clearly not just self-defense. Pro drops that Hitler was responsible for at least 40,000,000 deaths as a result of this war, that his allying with Japan, Austria and Italy showed even further willingness to support invaders and murderers leading other nations to war, and that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia without provocation and without the threat of response from other nations. All of this is damning evidence against him. Conclusion: Hitler was clearly behind some of the most egregiously evil acts in recent history. You can vote against the resolution because his actions clearly bear out his wayfaring, brutal nature, the antithesis of what the Prize stands for. He was Fuhrer of Germany during the time these atrocities happened. As the sole dictator of the country, he was responsible for every single act of violence committed under his regime. He's especially responsible for the actions of the Nazi party because they were his party, and as I've shown and Pro dropped, he even spoke out in support of many of these acts, lending a personal touch to them. If you're reading through this debate and suddenly seeing Hitler as a complex character who did some good in his time that might have qualified him for the Prize, you're still voting Con, because unlike every other winner I listed, he's complicated. The simple risk that Hitler's responsibility in killing over 40,000,000 people would demean the prize (and it would) is enough to vote Con. The Peace Prize, meant to showcase peaceful efforts in their purest forms, must not be sullied by Pro's efforts to rewrite history. The best Pro gains is changing the way Hitler is viewed, but that minimal benefit is far outweighed by any risk of demeaning every other Peace Prize winner and the Prize itself. This means that even if you're buying every argument Pro's made, you're still voting Con. But let's be clear that he didn't do good. Just delaying attacks when one is clearly planning to strike, as Hitler was against the USSR, doesn't qualify one for a Prize. Even if Hitler did display some measure of good intentions initially, that doesn't mean we should ignore a continued pattern of aggression and invasion on his part that came later with no signs of stopping. This is a man who deserves our revulsion, not our sympathies. Vote Con. 1. http://bit.ly... 2. http://bit.ly... 3. http://bit.ly... 4. http://bit.ly... 5. http://bit.ly... 6. http://bit.ly... 7. http://to.pbs.org... 8. http://bit.ly... 9. http://bit.ly... 10. http://bit.ly... 11. http://bit.ly... 12. http://bit.ly...