
Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan - gruseom
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,683966,00.html
======
plinkplonk
Two things

(1) "Mein Kampf" is just another book for Indians. Sure it is available in
bookstores, it isn't particularly popular. Most people have read it, and most
think it is a turgid bit of prose.

(2) Why should Indians (or Pakistanis for that matter) have the same level of
Hitler Phobia and/or Holocaust guilt Germans have? I thought the German
"guilt" was all about how Hitler and co misled _their ancestors_ into The
Holocaust and other dirty deeds. Indians and Pakistanis were colonized by the
British at the time of WW2 and many of our ancestors fought against the Nazis
and the Japanese. (Some of them fought _for_ the Nazis/Japanese trying to
attain independence for India from the British).

Nutshell: People who had nothing to do with the Nazis or the Holocaust and for
whom the Nazis and Hitler were "people far away" fighting and winning aginst
an oppressive colonial power don't have as much of a bad reaction as people
who were invaded/ruled/slaughtered by them.

Big Deal.

Genghis Khan built mountains of skulls during his invasions but would Germans
blanch if they saw a Muslim with the name "Genghis" or "Timur" or think his
name is inappropriate?

As something to chew on, many babies born in the Middle East / Pakistan etc
are being named "Osama". An _American_ child with such a name would find
social situations difficult I imagine. No such stigma in Pakistan. At some
point will we see a headline "Saudis cringe at Osama's popularity in
Pakistan"?

To be even more controversial it could be argued that Bush and co "killed a
million Iraqis" for no real purpose. Should all Americans hate and abhor W?
Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths than Hitler Should Chinese be
surprised that some few Americans think Mao was "cool"?

fwiw I personally thing Hitler was a charismatic and thoroughly evil person.
Most Indians who are aware of actual history feel the same way.

But I am also aware concentration camps were "invented" by the British during
the Boer War and the large scale deaths of non combatant Boer women and
children in these camps could be called genocide if it happened today. Should
we hate Lord Salisbury (and Winston Churchill for that matter) too? I don't
see many Britishers being ashamed of them.

~~~
fh
In essence, you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly)
entertain is no big deal, because they are not responsible for the Holocaust.
As a German, who as a matter of fact doesn't feel particularly guilty about
things his great-grandfathers did half a century before he was born, I'd like
to know how you come to such a peculiar opinion. Evil is less evil if you can
blame someone else? It's okay to revere mass murderers as long as you're not
the one who let them come into power?

Your point about children's names is almost the textbook definition of a straw
man, and I think you know it. Many German children are named Joseph, but that
name has a long cultural and religious history, and no one in their right mind
would associate that with Stalin. I guess the story with the name Osama in
Muslim cultures is similar. However, if Pakistani parents name their children
Adolf, a name that has no cultural associations in Pakistan whatsoever except
being linked to a brutal mass murderer, then that's at least a little bit
cringe worthy.

(I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler
in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even
possible...)

~~~
plinkplonk
"you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly) entertain is no
big deal,"

There is no "Nazi cult" in Pakistan. Talk about exaggeration.

Yes, for _some_ people Hitler had some virtues (as they do Genghis Khan, Mao
Tse Tung, Stalin, Che, Lenin, George W Bush) which _they think_ are worthy of
being admired.

" I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar."

You are wrong.

There is a rise in babies being named Osama _after_ 9/11. I thought that was
obvious from the context. Sorry if I was not clear enough. Arab and Pakistani
teenagers wear T shirts with Osama's picture on them. There are large numbers
of people who think Osama Bin Laden is a heroic figure. You (and I) think he
is a homicidal maniac. Other people don't.

You can always find _some_ people somewhere who admire the mass murderers of
history (including Osama, Mao , Stalin and the British who created
concentration camps in the first place), as compared to those whose ancestors
were massacred. It doesn't mean much.

Germans expecting all Pakistanis to hate and abhor Hitler as much as they do
is like some Pakistanis expecting them to love Osama Bin Laden.

So yes the world doesn't always have prejudices in lockstep with your own, and
sometimes admire people you abhor and vice versa. Sorry about that.

~~~
andrew1
It sounds like you know a lot more about the Boer concentration camps than I
do, maybe you can clear something up for me. From a quick perusal of Wikipedia
it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be
more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there.
Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large
proportion of the inmates died. I would not wish to lessen this tragedy, but
it does sound like a different situation to what we understand a concentration
camp to be in common parlance, i.e. a camp set up with the intention of
working to death/explicitly killing those sent there. I think there is a
distinction between those two types of camps, and while both are highly
unpleasant I don't think they're actually the same thing.

~~~
plinkplonk
" it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be
more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there.
Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large
proportion of the inmates died."

Sounds like what the Germans would say today if Hitler had won the war and
founded a strong and dominant Germany? yeah there were mistakes but they
weren't _intentional_. Sure.

The point is that an argument _could_ be (and was) made that such starvation
and ill treatment _was_ intentional, as a method of forcing the Boer commandos
to surrender. The British were essentially stalemated and could see no way of
ending the war. By the accepted norms of war of the time, starving non
combatants to death was a crime. But the British won and were a World Power
(much as the USA is today), so no one convened the equivalent of Nuremberg. If
the Boers had won, (unlikely, but just as a thought experiment) you bet your
ass some Britsh politician would have been "criminals".

Let us read Wikipedia though.

"Hobhouse published a report in June 1901 which contradicted Brodrick's claim,
and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of
extermination" directed against the Boer population.

In June 1901, Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the
assault and answered the rhetorical "When is a war not a war?" with "When it
is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those
same camps and the policies that created them."

All that said, do read up on the Khaki Elections and the Boer War. Don't just
read Wikipedia. Read your history in some depth and _then_ talk.

" i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing
those sent there."

This is _exactly_ what some people, especially the Boers and their allies the
Germans _thought_ the British were doing (see above). The _British_ Leader of
the Opposition even claimed as much!

Political maneovres aside, What matters is that people died in the tens of
thousands. ( A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom
24,074 [50% of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of
starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one
in four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.

It is thought that about 12% of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but
the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is
unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black
Africans who were interned. It is, however, worth noting that Emily Hobhouse
and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that
held white Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in
the camps that held native refugees". - Wikipedia)

Is it a lesser number than Jews in the Holocaust? Sure. Was starving non
combatants to death (and denying that such things were happening) a "war
crime"? You tell me. Victors are never war criminals are they?

~~~
andrew1
> Read your history in some depth and then talk.

Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to
engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

~~~
eru
> Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to
> engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

As long as you keep asking like you did, you shouldn't be afraid to
contribute. Just pushing opinions would be another thing, though.

------
mrphoebs
As far as india is concerned...

(1) like plinkplonk said "Mein Kampf" is just another book to read, except its
author killed 6 million jews.

(2) The conclusion that the article draws regarding 1.2 billion indians based
on an art exhibit and a restaurant owner is akin to saying everyone in the
United States is old after seeing two elderly people from the country.

~~~
jbm
As far as India and Pakistan is concerned... (from what I recall from what my
parents told me)

(1) Hitler's Germany fought the British, who the common Indians/Pakistanis
generally hated.

(2) Germany made token efforts to "assist Indian independence". Undoubtedly
meant to destabilize the British, but any assistance was undoubtedly
appreciated.

I don't want to talk about the elephant in the room (anti semetism), but for
what it is worth, I have never heard a desi ever say "Hitler was great because
he killed the Jews".

~~~
plinkplonk
"I don't want to talk about the elephant in the room (anti semetism),"

There is no anti semitism in India. There are hardly any Jews here.I believe
there is one synagogue in Kerala. Most of the few jews who lived in India
emigrated to Israel long ago. Very hard to hate people who you never
encounter! The religious faultline in India is Hindu/Muslim.

Interestingly enough the image of Jews is that of ferocious and competent
warriors, not meek/servile/moneylenders/fill-in-your-favorite-anti-Jewish-
stereotype, largely due to the fact that Indians know of Jews mostly through
the lens of Israel and its wars. Even people who are Pro Palestine/Arab
anti/Israel think Israeli armed forces and the Mossad are very dangerous.

~~~
eru
> Very hard to hate people who you never encounter!

That's actually one of the easier things. Areas with less foreigners tend to
have more xenophobia (e.g. in Germany).

------
stevoski
This popularity is also in India. Although I'm not German, I live in Germany,
and when in India I often answered the ubiquitous question "where are you
from?" with "Germany".

Then most times came the "Hitler was good" response.

My theory is that what endears Hitler to Indians (and perhaps Pakistanis) is
nationalism. Nationalism is rife in India. And Hitler's political party was
ardently nationalistic.

~~~
borism
Indian subcontinent is after all the birthplace of the original "Aryan race".

~~~
shishir_pandey
well neither AIT nor any other alternative theory has as yet been accepted as
totally correct. But AIT is more often thought of as being more accurate..so
Indian subcontinent may not be the birth place of aryans.

~~~
borism
I meant the concept, not the people.

------
vegashacker
The photo in the context of the article's title is a little misleading. It
makes it seem like these children are lighting candles in honor of Hitler.

~~~
borism
every intelligent person knows that swastika is a good luck sign in central
asian cultures, especially in today's Germany

------
philwelch
What's odd about this isn't Hitler's popularity in Pakistan, it's Hitler's
unpopularity elsewhere in the world, particularly Germany. Most countries
lionize their conquerers, even their genocidal conquerers. Had Hitler won even
a limited, partial victory, it's not unlikely Germany would see him as a hero
today (or at least as a "complicated figure"). Consider the attitudes of their
respective homelands towards such figures as Genghis Khan, Ataturk, and Andrew
Jackson. If you help your own "people" at someone else's expense, you become a
hero to one side and a villain to the other, and Hitler definitely was a net
gain for your average "Aryan" up until they started losing the war. It's
standard us vs. them, ingroup/outgroup thinking.

To total outsiders, separated by vast differences of space and time, they
don't care about the victims either and assign shortsighted judgments. How
many Westerners within the last 30 years probably thought Genghis Khan was a
total badass? How many people basically ignore the parts of the Bible that
describe God leading the Hebrews in a variety of genocidal wars?

Genocidal conquest is how things were done, and it takes a very contemporary
set of moral beliefs to even see that thing as wrong, as long as it wasn't
committed against you. It's not even a lesson that's necessarily sunk in yet
(review 2003-2008-era anti-Iraq-War rhetoric and compare mentions of US troop
casualties to mentions of Iraqi civilian casualties). Powerful people in
Europe bought into the concept of human rights and started building the
contemporary moral view of genocide after Hitler did to Europe what Europe had
been doing to the rest of the world, but if Hitler hadn't been defeated so
thoroughly I suspect our very moral standards wouldn't be up to the task of
vilifying him to the same extent. In a way, Hitler in WWII explicitly
represented and practiced the philosophy that genocidal conquest is the way
things are done, and the western allies--seeing the extreme to which Hitler
had taken that idea--were forced to adopt (and develop) the contrary position.
All in all, I think there's a fairly nearby possible world where Hitler
achieved at least a partial victory and no one is nearly as shocked at him as
we are in this world.

~~~
lispm
You got that wrong. It is not about winning wars. Hitler also did not care
about the wars. They were tools for him. Tools in the struggle of the
'germanic race' over all other races. If the Germans do not win the war, they
were not worthy in his view as 'race' to survive. Hitler was motivated by
racism and race struggle.

We should have learned from these mistakes. These are not how things should be
done. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past.

~~~
philwelch
What part did I get wrong? I'm not making any moral statements, just
synthesizing some facts. It largely wasn't until after Hitler lost that the
Western world really cared about condemning genocide.

I live in a country that was built through conquest by defeating its original
inhabitants in war and either enslaving them, relocating them, or
exterminating them so the conquerers could inhabit their land. I suspect a lot
of us are, and we don't all live in the same country. That's how a frightening
amount of history unfolded--and if you're alive today, there's a pretty decent
chance your ancestors won one of those wars. Hitler's conquest of Europe
differed only in his methods.

Again, I'm not making any moral judgments. It seems to me that centuries of
history were made by some groups violently enslaving, relocating, or
exterminating other groups, and no one really cared that much. Hitler, like
most conquerers, thought it was perfectly fine to enslave, relocate, or
exterminate other groups of people as long as it served the interests of his
own. His philosophy wasn't unique in that respect, in historical terms it was
probably the norm.

You and I are enlightened enough that we don't want to "repeat" those
"mistakes", but only because Hitler was famously unpopular and lost the war.
If Hitler cut a deal with the western Allies and satisfied himself with a
large chunk of eastern Europe, I don't know how many of us would share the
enlightened anti-Nazi attitude we do share.

~~~
lispm
This part: Hitler would never have been satisfied with a partial victory, so
the whole assumption is wrong. The victory also would not look like the
Germans won over France in the second world war or the allied forces won over
Germany.

Hitler wasted no time. When he came into power he soon killed his opposition,
put them into labor camps or, later, send them to the front of the war. As
soon as he got into power he started to go after the jews. As soon as he
conquered Poland, they started the killing and when the front of war moved on,
behind that they installed the concentration camp to get rid of disabled
people, prostitutes, communists, priests, homosexuals, jews, ... Either they
were killed immediately or, the stronger, were put to work - they were killed
through working under extreme situations. They were enslaved.

Hitler and Nazi Germany installed a system to get these people and to bring
them to the concentration camps.

Hitler also was not more unpopular after Germany lost the war. It took two
generations to get rid of that. Children or grand children who questioned the
doings and motives of their fathers and grand fathers. It took a lot of
discussions, research, documentation to understand what happened and why. This
understanding did not happen over night and not because Hitler won the war.
But because people found out that there were millions of dead people, there
were jews that were missing, where were they? The children asked their parents
and they were not satisfied with the answers. What did the German army do in
Russia? Research was needed to go to the truth and it was ugly.

Again: Hitler did not want to win some war and some partial victory.

He was talking about the 'Endsieg': the final victory.

You are making an assumption that is not in line with Hitler's goals. He would
not have been satisfied with anything less then the Endsieg. Hitler was no
rational politician - he was a racist and mass murderer.

There is also nothing positive to say about Stalin and all the other criminals
from the past. That there were more like Hitler does not make him 'relatively
bad'. He was bad. Period.

'What if Hitler did this or that?' is plain wrong if you don't understand his
motives, his deep hate of other 'unworthy' races, etc. A compromise - that
would be either tactics (like history shows his compromises were) or not
Hitler.

~~~
philwelch
"Again: Hitler did not want to win some war and some partial victory. He was
talking about the 'Endsieg': the final victory."

Yes--German domination over the entirety of Europe. He bit off more than he
could chew, though. If he hadn't allied with Japan and made a few strategic
decisions better than he had, Germany would still have most of Europe today.
That's not my point, though. My point is that, had Hitler been a successful
conquerer, he wouldn't be nearly as hated as he is. Maybe that success would
have involved slightly less ambition (but the same amount of genocide). As far
as the brutality and genocide go, the main difference is that Hitler was so
damned _good_ at it. If you want to kill off 10 million people, it's far more
cost-effective to enslave them and work them to death, isn't it?

On the other hand, consider the white domination of North America. The Indians
were set against one another in various wars. If a tribe or band was defeated
they were either exterminated or forcibly relocated to reservations. Treaties
were repeatedly signed and broken--if we relocated a group of Indians to a
piece of land that ended up being valuable, we relocated them again. We
weren't organized enough to set up concentration camps, but we had enough room
we could give them parcels of worthless land for reservations. If we didn't
enslave them directly, we bought slaves from Indian slavers, which only led
them to more warfare, so the winners could sell the losers as slaves.
Incidentally, this is also how white people ruined West Africa.

Once white people achieved their "manifest destiny" over North America, they
really didn't seem to care too much about all the genocide and mass murder and
racism involved. Even today, a lot of them don't.

Incidentally, the German people turned against Hitler as soon as he started
losing. I don't know that they really cared much about the genocide yet, but
they were mad at Hitler because it was Hitler's fault that allied bombs were
landing on their houses. If Hitler won, no one would have really questioned or
cared what he did to get there, or why there was suddenly so much room in what
used to be Eastern Europe for them to move out into.

"Hitler was no rational politician - he was a racist and mass murderer."

You keep acting like this is any kind of unique distinction among imperialists
and conquerers throughout history.

------
WalkingDead
In many places the vocal minority controls the media. I guess this popularity
issue is not a Asian thing only. A significant large number of silent people
in Germany I assume is supportive of Hitler's work --- that's what my
impression is after personally talking with a limited few.

~~~
thomas11
(Disclaimer: I'm German.) It is only a tiny extremist minority who is even
somewhat supportive of Hitler. Even if the media was completely controlled by
a vocal minority - not entirely possible in a free democracy like today's
Germany - you would at least see these Nazi-leanings in election results. Not
the case.

------
ugh
“Don’t mention the war”?

~~~
biotech
Are you referencing the episode of Faulty Towers in which Germans are
visiting? John Clease repeats "don't mention the war" several times to his
fellow English hospitality workers, but he himself fails in this endevour,
with hilarious consequences.

~~~
sliverstorm
Thank you so much, that was hilarious :)

(no offense intended to those of you who are German of course!)

~~~
eru
As far as I can remember the Germans in the episode aren't made fun off.

------
sliverstorm
The Nazis are waging a new kind of war. The war of public opinion, in which
they weasel their way into completely unexpected places...

Edit: what, is it so impossible that some neo-nazis are trying to drum up
support in foreign countries?

~~~
bad_user
That's just paranoia.

We do have Nazi activists in our country, although they call themselves
extreme right activists, and while being a group that spreads racist and
antisemitic ideas, it's mostly harmless.

Although a large percent of the population is Christian and goes to church
regularly (which are also hubs for spreading racist/antisemitic propaganda),
such activism has had little impact on the general population.

That's because people are tired of propaganda and of empty promises and of big
changes that don't bring that significant improvement in life quality that's
being promised.

Germany wouldn't have ended up with Hitler if they wouldn't have taken a big
hit in WW1. With Germans dying out of starvation because of the British
blockade, or because of the economic meltdown post-WW1, it's easier to believe
the fallacies in Mein Kampf, to believe in Hitler's vision and shut your eyes
and ears in the wake of a genocide. But that's only because Germany's economy
and quality of life had nowhere to go but up, and it did just that (for a
while anyway).

But in a country where things are mostly working (i.e. there aren't many
people dying from hunger) it's hard for such ideas to gain popularity, even if
those ideas are spread by a champion as articulate and smart as Hitler was.
That's because with a higher quality of life comes a higher moral ground, and
people are mostly conservatives anyway.

~~~
eru
For all the Weimar Republic's flaws the more interesting questions almost
becomes not why it failed, but why it lasted so long.

The hit taken in the treaties of Versailles is just one reason. The economic
crisis around 1930 is another one. Churchill made the suggestion that Germany
should have become a constitutional monarchy instead of a republic to give the
monarchists something to rally behind the new state.

