Talk:Adolf Hitler/Archive 9

message: Anyone who thinks this needs to go research Führerprinzip, and Wannsee conference (wherin extremely vague discussions on the final solution occured, and Hitler did not attend). Would Hitler have approved of such measures had he known of them? I assume so. But do we have any reason to think he would have been notified of specifics such as that? I seriously doubt it, based on the style of governance they had. Subordinates painted rosy reports for superiors, sparring them the gory details. This telephone game of misinformation increased as it went up the chain of ranks, and Hilter was much less aware of the circumstances of daily operation than most world leaders of today. In any case, much like the death issue, there is far less evidence to cite than debate and conjecture. Sam Spade 23:22, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I will point out as a side note that according to Hitlers own words and Nazi doctrine, he was indeed accountable and responsible for all of what occured during his reign in office. I personally give him less credit than that, as do others, of course. However it should be pretty easy finding a reference, or even a quote from mein kampf suggesting his culpability, if you really think such an insinuation is needed. Sam Spade 23:48, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest, to whatever extent the Jewish holocaust actually happened, it was probably small potatoes to Hitler at the time. He was losing the war, on all sorts of "exotic" medications (ie. narcotics), physically very sick and even worse so after the assassination attempt. In the last year, he was more concerned about his various scheming generals were up to and clinging to some desperate hope of the tide of the war turning than worrying about what was happening in those concentration camps. They merely became an inconvenience. Whatever aspects of holocaust story you believe, to think that with the German war machine collapsing and the fronts being pushed back every day, that the Germans would have had the resources and time to feed and medicate the hundreds of thoussands of camp inmates is a bit of an ask. In my opinion, what the Allies found when they overran the camps is exactly what you would have expected and barely any kind of proof for genocide. If there was any kind of mass killing mechanism, it's my opinion that it was likely an afterthought of what to do with those starving, disease ridden hoards of humanity, rather than the more fanciful and illogical belief that there was always a genocidal master plan. In this case, it might be argued that it was a more human approach than simply leaving them to starve as Stalin and Mao did.
In my humble opinion, to assert that the absolute (never mind micro-managing and anti-semetic) dictator of a highly developed, bureaucratic world power like Germany during the 1930s and 40s was unaware of the industrial scale slaughter of 6-11 million human beings in a vast network of railway connected camps managed by the SS is... unhelpful. Wyss 00:23, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: See User_talk:Sam_Spade#AH for a continued discussion of this matter. Sam Spade 15:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hitler ordered the Holocaust 

message: Please read "Hitler's death". There is nothing resembling clear evidence that events transpired as is suggested, indeed the current "concensus" is simply a bargain between the POV's of a number of historians, essentially none of whom buy into the compromise. I must insist that the narrative not claim he died by suicide, but rather that such is the general agreement. I don't want to dispute the neutrality, but I do insist that a thorough reading of hitler's death be made by anyone who thinks the current wording is acceptable. Sam Spade 20:24, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have read that article, and I prefere the current wording (without the "said to have"). Yes, there is an ongoing debate over whether he died from cyanide or a gunshot, or both. But we aren't disputing this or saying anything about it not being controversial by not having the "said to have" there. In either way he died of suicide, so the current wording is accurate. Shanes 21:02, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: This is no "bargain of PoVs". Several eyewitnesses (including the two who doused the bodies with petrol and lit them) repeatedly told the story of AH's suicide with Braun. Yes, eyewitness accounts are dodgy, yes, it's unlikely AH used both a pistol shot and cyanide, but these are details one would expect to be blurred and spun in the aftermath of Berlin's fall. The testimony, evidence and scholarly consensus are overwhelming and leave no room for qualifiers like "said to have died" or "believed to have died". The wording should remain as it is, or the article will have a big, docking, "Elvis sighting" gap of credibility. To put it another way, I have never heard of any scholarly, peer reviewed article or publication by any credible source giving any hint of plausibility to the notion that AH didn't die by suicide in the bunker under the chancellory as Red Army tanks rumbled nearby. Sure, I imagine there are loads of conspiracy and crank books around implying otherwise, skimming a bit of money off the still vast popular market for glossy, sensationalistic publications having anything to do with the Third Reich, but there's no evidence, no documentation, no AH post April 1945. Wyss 23:07, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: PS, I agree the death article could use some cleaning up, it gives too much weight to the possibility that AH may have survived the war (and the oldest man in the world bit seems unencyclopedic to me). Wyss 01:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: Look, if were going to delve into original research here, I find the idea that any of these deaths were suicide unlikely. The reasoning why can be found in bulk at Hitler's death, Odessa, and copious books and sources on the subject. There is no one I expect less honesty from than one of Stalin's officers. The story is absurd, as any historian will tell you. for One reason or other, no one believes it in full. Admit the confusion, cite the sources, and leave questionable stances out of the narrative. Sam Spade 22:03, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hitlers death 

message: There is also an accepted theory that he led a final futile assault against the incoming Russians at his fort, who were under strict orders to capture him alive.  As he was part of a small group attempting a sally forth approach, naturally he would have been mowed down.  
Having to admit to your senior officers that you accidentally killed the man they stipulated you must capture led to the suicide theory and would also explain the attempted desecration by burning (to make unidentifiable) and the hiding of his remains.
This is a conclusion that many historians are begining to come to, which are reflected in quite a few books on World War II I have read over the past year or so in my general studies of it.
Jachin 21:29, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Suicide or Shooting

message: An anon changed " In the September 1930 elections the Nazis suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win more than 18% of the vote along with 107 seats in the Reichstag, becoming the second largest party in Germany." to 38%. (emphasis mine) which is correct? --Golbez 07:56, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
:The anon was wrong. Though in July 1932, NSDAP received almost 38% (37.2%), so I guess the anon just got those two elections mixed up, or something. Shanes 08:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Btw, see here for the election statistics for NSDAP here on wikipedia Shanes 08:48, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anon edit 

message: I want to put here this tag because the intro of this article is too negative. Blaming Hitler as the responsible to the death of 11 million people is totally wrong. In addition I think that all the "good" stuff about Hitler and Nazism are not mentioned here (e.g. social policy, welfare, green policy, VW and etc). --Haham hanuka 14:27, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's have an actual discussion first before you add the totallydisputed tag. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 14:32, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
He has a point, but on the other hand, out of all 601,581 articles, this is perhaps the least likely to achieve NPOV ;) Sam Spade 14:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: It's still not true to say it's "totally disputed". That implies it's a completely ludicrous opinion that absolutely no-one holds - clearly not the case. Ben Bulben 14:45, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: I think they are well aware of his failings. If you look into the NPD, they by no means mirror the fuhrerprinzp and leader worship of the NSDAP. Anyhow, I would ask mr. hanuka to make the needed edits emphasising the good deeds of hitler, rather than putting an ugly dispute header up. Lets do whats best for the reader, they want to read an excellent article, not become aware of the extent of our editorial disputes ;) Sam Spade 15:02, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The last line of AH's political will and testament essentially exhorts the world to continue exterminating jews. He didn't even see it as a "negative", so I don't fully grok how Haham hanuka, who in the past has promoted edits depicting AH as a one-dimensional characature of evil, has now decided that mentioning genocide in the opening is "too negative" and "totally wrong." ;) Wyss 15:35, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was quite taken aback as well; I wondered if his account had been hijacked. Jayjg (talk) 16:17, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV tag 

message: I reverted an edit likening Alois' discipline of AH and his siblings to that of a concentration camp. Tacitly transferring responsibility for the deaths of millions over to his father is not only rash (gross speculation), but unsupported by the evidence. Paula Hitler, for example, when debriefed by American intelligence agents after the war, made no mention of receiving abuse from her father and while she did say AH was punished frequently for misbehavior such as tardiness she gave no indication it was excessive or unusual for the circumstances in that time and place. Wyss 13:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've always heard the abuse was severe, but I believe thats interpretive. Hitler himself suggested he often recieved a beating, but also seemed to feel it was deserved and appropriate. He had a quote to the effect of "I loved my mother, but I respected my father". Sam Spade 17:19, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's rather the same sense Paula seems to give in the transcript of one of her OSS debriefings. Lots of biographers have tried to characterize Alois' treatment of young Adolf as harsh physical and psychological abuse but the primary sources don't support it. For example, there is zero evidence these "almost daily thrashings" were pummelings or woundings. The vocabulary must be taken in the context of the time and place (and by the bye I've never read in any scholarly source that Alois ever thought he might have killed the boy, as one editor recently asserted). To make a point, throughout history lots of stern, slapping fathers have created problems for their sons, most of whom didn't go on to choose careers in industrial genocide. Wyss 05:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Alleged abuse by Alois

message: from 
Nazi Economics
By Michael McMenamin
Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, by Ian Kershaw, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 845 pages, $35.00
Adolf Hitler was "wholly ignorant" of economics, Ian Kershaw boldly writes in his excellent new study, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris. What the dictator did know was politics and how to achieve public support--Hitler was an immensely popular leader with approval ratings even Bill Clinton would envy--and early on, he made it clear that economics would be subordinate to politics.
One odd result of Hitler's decision is that few of his biographers have paid much attention to his economic policies prior to the Nazis' first overt military act, the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936. Indeed, if they pay any attention at all to the subject, most merely accept Nazi propaganda claims of Hitler's "economic miracle" in restoring Germany's prosperity. Kershaw's book is a welcome exception to this tendency.
The general view that Germany's shattered economy surged to life in the first few years of the Nazi regime is typified by Sebastian Haffner, a German writer whose short book The Meaning of Hitler (1979) received extravagant praise in John Lukacs' recent The Hitler of History. As Haffner put it, "Among these positive achievements of Hitler the one outshining all others was his economic miracle....In January 1933, when Hitler became Reich Chancellor, there were six million unemployed in Germany. A mere three years later, in 1936, there was full employment. Crying need and mass hardship had generally turned into modest but comfortable prosperity.
"Almost equally important: helplessness and hopelessness had given way to confidence and self-assurance. Even more miraculous was the fact that the transition from depression to economic boom had been accomplished without inflation, at totally stable wages and prices. Not even Ludwig Erhard succeeded in doing that later in post-war Western Germany."
Haffner is hardly alone in his glowing evaluation of Hitler's supposed economic miracle. In his highly influential Origins of the Second World War (1961), British historian A.J.P. Taylor similarly gave the Nazis credit for creating widespread prosperity, concluding, "The Nazi secret was not armament production; it was freedom from the then orthodox principles of economics. Government spending provided all the happy effects of mild inflation; while political dictatorship, with its destruction of trade unions and rigorous exchange control, prevented such unfortunate consequences as a rise in wages, or in prices."
Kershaw's version of things more accurately reflects what was really happening in Germany from 1933 through 1935. Hitler's economic policies were systematically wrecking the German economy and were rapidly painting him into a corner where his only choices were war or a loss of power.
Hitler, argues Kershaw, was deathly afraid of inflation and a repetition of the early 1920s. Nevertheless, he had to reduce unemployment or he wasn't going to last long enough to begin rearming Germany, a public goal of his since the '20s. Increasing exports was not a possibility since, unless the German government devalued the mark (as Britain had done with the pound and the United States with the dollar), German exports couldn't compete in a way that would add new jobs or bring needed foreign exchange. Hitler nixed devaluation because he thought it was a step on the road to inflation. Tax cuts were also out of the question because he believed they led to less revenue not more growth.
Hitler's solution for both the rearmament and unemployment problems was the same: massive deficit spending. In fact, by Kershaw's account, the Nazi government guaranteed some 35 billion ReichMarks to the German armed forces alone over an eight-year period, along with massive road building, subsidies to the auto industry, lots more bureaucrats to enforce all the new controls and regulations, and bribes to women to get married and stop working.
Did such policies reduce unemployment from 6 million in 1933 to 1 million three years later? Not exactly. Statistics from Dan Silverman's Hitler's Economy (1998) show that unemployment was reduced in Germany from 34 percent or about 6 million people, in January 1933, to 14 percent, or 2.5 million people, in January 1936. That's a dramatic reduction, to be sure, but hardly full employment. Even the 2.5 million number is extremely unreliable, as Stephen Roberts, an economic historian at Australia's University of Sydney who lived in Germany in the mid-'30s, explained in his 1937 work, The House That Hitler Built.
The "official statistics naturally tell only part of the story," wrote Roberts. "They do not take into account the Marxians, Socialists, Jews and pacifists who have lost their jobs and are cut off from relief; such persons do not appear in the official figures of unemployment. The refugees are ignored. In addition, at least a million people have been absorbed in the army, the labour-service camps, the Nazi organizations, and various partly-paid forms of labour on public works. Half a million women have been taken off the labour market in the last four years by means of the marriage allowance paid by the Government to entice them away....What they have done has been to introduce a series of emergency steps which have drastically reduced the number of unemployed; but such steps, by their very nature, are in many cases temporary. On the other hand, the reduction [in unemployment], however artificially it may have been achieved, has had a tremendous propaganda value for the Government, and there is the fixed belief of most Germans today that Hitler has achieved wonders in providing employment."
Hitler paid for his economic "miracle" partly by depleting his nation's gold reserves, which he used to import critical raw materials for the manufacture of weapons. When he took office, the Reichbank had reserves totaling 937 million ReichMarks; four years later, that figure was down to only 72 million ReichMarks. Massive government borrowing financed the rest of the government-driven economy. As Roberts put it, "The Nazi state is being financed by short-term [90 day] loans--up to 15 billion Reichmarks by the end of 1936....In short, Germany is going round and round. She can get nowhere until she returns to normal economic conditions, but she is afraid to try and get back to those, because she fears economic collapse and social upheaval if she does so."
Kershaw makes the same point and suggests that it was this fear of social unrest, heightened by serious food shortages in Germany during the fall of 1935--themselves largely the result of government policies--that played the major role in Hitler's decision to reoccupy the Rhineland in March 1936. Keep in mind that Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland was considered one of his "brilliant" strokes precisely because it was so unexpected--Germany was unprepared militarily or economically to carry out any extended effort in support of what even Hitler conceded to intimates was nothing more than a bold bluff.
Conventional wisdom holds that Hitler moved on the Rhineland when he did because the world was distracted by Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia. Kershaw allows that motive as a contributing factor but contends that turmoil in Germany occasioned by the food shortages is the real key to the timing of such a risky initiative. Indeed, he argues that Hitler invaded precisely because he knew it would be extraordinarily popular within Germany and divert public attention from his domestic difficulties.
Contrary to A.J.P. Taylor, by late 1935 Germany was experiencing anything but the "happy effects of mild inflation" and "freedom from orthodox principles of economics." As Kershaw writes, "A summary of price and wage levels prepared for Hitler on 4 September 1935 showed almost half of the German work-force earning gross wages of 18 ReichMarks or less per week. This was substantially below the poverty line...Wages, then, remained at the 1932 level--substantially lower than the last pre-Depression year of 1928 in the much-maligned Weimar Republic. Food prices, on the other hand, had risen officially by 8 per cent since 1933. Overall living costs were higher by 5.4 per cent. Official rates did not, however, tell the whole tale. Increases of 33, 50, and even 150 per cent had been reported for some foodstuffs. By late summer, the terms `food crisis' and `provisions crisis' were in common use."
These facts were well known at the time, both within and without Germany. Roberts and others had written about them, attributing the food shortages to Hitler's centralized agricultural policy, which had virtually eliminated food imports while implementing government controls. The predictable result: Germany produced less food, causing both shortages and price increases. According to Roberts, wheat went up 15 percent, eggs 50 percent, butter 40 percent, potatoes 75 percent, and most meat 50 percent--all despite "official" and ineffectual price controls which Hitler for appearances' sake refused to lift. Well into Hitler's "miracle," Kershaw notes, "poor living-standards, falling real wages, and steep price increases in some necessities...[were] the dismal reality behind the fine facade of the Third Reich."
At the same time, a ferocious economic policy battle was being waged over foreign exchange reserves: Should they be used to buy food imports or raw materials for armament production, the latter being Hitler's primary purpose since he first took office? Hitler appointed Hermann Göring (who knew less about economics than Hitler) to mediate between Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, who wanted to purchase raw materials for armaments, and Agriculture Minister Walther Darre, who wanted food to cover up his failed policies. Schacht, a social friend of Göring's, expected a rubber stamp in favor of raw materials for arms. To everyone's surprise, except Hitler's, Göring chose food, an answer that set Germany on the road to foreign conquest.
As Kershaw sees it, Hitler gave priority to food imports because the "immediate prime need was to avoid the damaging psychological effects of the only alternative: food rationing." But this decision, in turn, adversely affected German rearmament. "By early 1936," says Kershaw, "available supplies of raw materials for rearmament had shrunk to a precariously low level. Only one to two month supplies were left. Schacht demanded a slow down in the pace of rearmament....As Hitler entered his fourth year as Chancellor, the economic situation posed a real threat to rearmament plans. At the very time when international developments encouraged the most rapid expansion possible, the food crisis--and the social unrest in its turn--was sharply applying the brakes to it....Any slow down in rearmament...would inevitably bring increased unemployment in its train...[Hitler] saw this as all the more reason to hasten expansion to gain `living-space.'"
In other words, if Hitler had to spend foreign exchange reserves for food to keep the people happy, he would have to get the raw materials for armaments by taking them. Otherwise, there would be more unemployment when the arms workers were laid off due to a lack of raw materials. Hitler knew he couldn't survive both food shortages and a resurgence of unemployment.
Commenting in early 1937 on Göring's Four Year Plan for economic self-sufficiency, Roberts had presciently predicted the inevitability of either war or Hitler's fall from power. "There are 34 vital materials without which a nation cannot live, and unfortunately, Germany is worse off than any other great state insofar as these are concerned," he observed. "Whereas the British Empire is largely dependent on outside sources for only nine of these, Germany has only two in ample quantities--potash and coal. That means she must turn to the foreigner for all of her supplies of 26 of these and for part of six more. Yet this is the Power that sees fit to launch a plan for complete self sufficiency. It is ludicrous, unless she looks forward to obtaining control of the vast raw materials of central Europe or the lands beyond the Ukraine by some adventurous foreign policy....That is [Hitler's] basic dilemma. If he persists in the [economic] policies he has enunciated, he plunges Europe into war; if he abandons them, he can no longer maintain his position within Germany."
It's not that Hitler lacked contrary advice. Kershaw tells us that in October 1935 Price Commissioner Carl Goerdeler sent Hitler in October, 1935, "a devastating analysis of Germany's economic position." According to Kershaw, Goerdeler "favored a return to market economy, a renewed emphasis upon exports, and a corresponding reduction in the rearmament drive--in his view at the root of the economic problems....If things carried on as they were, only a hand-to-mouth existence would be possible after January 1936." But Goerdeler was ignored and later dismissed. Instead, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, to widespread popular acclaim, and Göring unveiled his Four Year Plan, putting the economy firmly on a war footing.
Hitler himself apparently never had a clue that the economic policies he had followed for the first three years of his regime were responsible for his production problems. By 1936, Kershaw makes clear, Hitler believed his own press clippings regarding his economic acumen. Thus, for Hitler, the food crisis only confirmed his preconceptions. In the secret memorandum on which Göring's Four Year Plan was based, Hitler wrote, "We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources. The solution ultimately lies in extending the living space of our people, that is, in extending the sources of its raw materials and foodstuffs." That is, the problem is not my fault and the answer is war, not economic reform.
Hitler's fears of losing power were not without foundation. His great nemesis, the Soviet Union, found that out 50 years later. In the 1980s, it could not keep up with increased U.S. defense spending and sustain what William E. Odom in The Collapse of the Soviet Military (1998) terms "a permanent war economy" in which 20 to 40 percent of the gross domestic product went to the military. The Soviets faced the same choice as Hitler: economic reform or war? Thankfully, the Soviet leaders chose economic reform, even though it didn't save them or their regime. Freeing yourself from orthodox principles of economics can be a tricky thing.
Contributing Editor Michael McMenamin is a lawyer in Cleveland and a regular contributor to Finest Hour, the quarterly journal of the Churchill Center. Additional research for this review was provided by Patrick McMenamin, a history major at the University of Rochester. 
(end of article) 4.250.132.180 21:52, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nazi Economics

message: The reference to the death toll caused by SS, death camps etc. includes an article that actually states a much higher number - it starts with a list of 5-7.5 million Ukrainians, 6 million jews, 3 million Russian POWs, 3 million Russian civilians... so I think it is inconsistent to reference a number to an article that actually does not contain this particular number - we should change the 11 million figure to either a higher number or a range like "between 25 and 11 millions" - also see the details of the death toll on The Holocaust. Themanwithoutapast 22:05, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: 11 millions in intro and subsection

message: Dpr posted the following question on the Whiteleys talk page:
"Is it true that Adolf Hitler declared that when (if) he captured London, he wanted use Whiteleys as his headquarters? If so I can add this to the article."
If this could be verified, it would be a fantastic fact to add to the Whiteleys page. However, it sounds a bit far-fetched to me and a Google search only returns a handful of relevant matches (which seem to reference each other) including this one
Can anybody verify or debunk this? Cheers TigerShark 11:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Whiteleys HQ?

message: An anon posted the following into the article. There are some obvious issues with the wording and PoV, and along with the already long length of the article this might be a more helpful addition to the Hitler and religion article. I've put it here for discussion. Wyss 00:22, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My take... this sounds like early post-war spin by the allies to distance certain German church officials from the possibility of prosecution for war crimes as a result of their cooperation with the Nazi government. Wyss 00:35, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wyss, it's definitely not "post-war" spin...  See for instance the 1938 book "Inside Europe" by John Gunther; among other interesting things, it quotes Hitler's plans to eventually replace Christianity with Woden-worship in Germany. Codex Sinaiticus 18:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The quoted report is OSS (American), not German. The allies were deeply concerned with "de-nazification", war crimes trials, post-war occupation schemes and the geo-political consequences from at least 1944 onwards (as soon as it became clear that the war in Europe would inevitably be won by attrition, which I've been told some thought was forgone as early as November 1942). With regards to John Gunther, he was a popular author in the late 1930s (I've got several of his first editions) who wrote many pleasantly worded books about several countries but there has been lots of scholarship since then. As it happens, Goebbels was much more interested and vigorous in promoting Woden-worship and other revivals of ancient Germanic culture than was AH, who wasn't "against" it, but had much more pressing "practical" priorities like effecting the colonization of eastern Europe (which also included much of the industrial genocide we now call the holocaust). Wyss 18:25, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Hitler and Christianity

message: user:Codex Sinaiticus deleted the Kennedy and (as I recall) former SS member quotes. His edit summary, "not supported by current scholarship" was incorrect and nothing but a swipe at yours truly but that's ok, I don't mind. I'm editorially neutral on whether or not they should be there, though in terms of aesthetics and balance I much prefer his sister's "architect" quote as a stand-alone. So I agree with the deletion, but for different reasons ;) Wyss 17:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Legacy quotes

message: "The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag after Nazi SA paramilitaries had physically expelled the Communist deputies, gave Hitler legal dictatorial authority."
Is this some sense of the word "legal" I am not aware of?  I tried to remove the word "legal" from this sentence, and got accused of POV for having the sentence without "legal".  But it seems to me the alleged "legality" of this act is the POV, and one that I do not share.  What exactly is legitimate about seizing power with paramilitaries and expelling one of the main opposition parties in order to achieve a majority?  By calling his dictatorial authority "legal", it really sounds like you are trying to legitimize it in some way.  This will surely lead to a disputed pov.  Codex Sinaiticus 03:31, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Re the grammar, yipes, sorry, I was focusing on something else in the sentence since we're having what seems like a PoV misunderstanding. Wyss 03:53, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "legal"? 

message: Whyss, I think that this edit doesn't really clarify anything. Rather, it is only weasel language. Can you find any references for the accusations that the election was a fraud? --malathion talk 22:31, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Further note, this was a referendum to consolidate the offices of chancellor and president after Hindenburg died, a clever political move by the Nazis, but not a "show election" of Hitler, which the article has asserted for some time. Wyss 00:16, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: August eletcion

message: Ive followed this article for about a year and I've seen the intro picture go up and down and change about three times.  The one we have up now is not the best around.  I have to say, it really doesn't even look like Hitler. More like an actor in a staged prose.  I say the it should be changed.  I could upload a better one from the National Archives and Records Administration but what do other people think?  The last one we had up was pretty good. -Husnock 23:40, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That man in the intro picture doesn't look like an actor to me, it's just Hitler in one of his propaganda photographs showing his seriousness as an important aspect he tried to convey. His features seem obvious to dispute its not him. I do agree, however, the previous image was better and in any case there should be a vote on what image to use best. Husnock, do you have a link to the image you want to use? --Dynamax 06:08, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I shouldn't giggle at the mention of marylin manson (who I truly respect and think at times has a cool sense of taste) in these talk pages, but I did :) Anyway here's my nod in agreement that the AH pic in the header should be changed. Wyss 10:21, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro Picture

message: Herta Däubler-Gmelin, agerman-slovac politican, says that Bush´s methods are the same like Hitlers. That´s right!
::A common way to insult someone is to compare them to AH or a Nazi. Nothing significant or notable about that. Wyss 12:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A common way to insult someone, is also to compare them to George Bush --172.133.159.102 13:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

text: no he isn't, that doesn't change the fact that George W's name is used as an insult too, all I'm saying is maybe this Daubler guy is just making fun of Hitler, I mean that's allowed? isn't it?--172.166.227.71 20:23, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  bush? hitler?