was hitler a great leader? bad leader?

[Vox Caster T2]

I can imagine the last thing FDR wanted to do was join into the war. It held little possibility of re-election, and you hadn't exactly prospered since the last world war. Then the over enthusiastic Japanese take out Pearl Harbour, one of the stupidest moves in the war, and in Japanese history. FDR declares war on Japan. Hitler (making another stupid move) declares war on the USA just 4 days later, thinking that the Japanese have a chance of bringing the US down. That way he can move in and take the rest after the European conquest is complete.

There is no way of telling whether FDR would have joined in the European struggle otherwise. I'd say no, but again it's down to speculation. Tell me, if you were the leader of an economically fragile country, who had been attacked by one powerful empire, would you simultaneously pick a fight with the Nazi machine which has almost desecrated Europe?

Actual FDR did want to join in the fight, primary sources and public events support FDR's intentions enough that it is not speculation. What held the United States out of the fight for so long were the isolationist proportion of Congress and powerful interest group supporters like Henry Ford. Congress had passed three separate Neutrality Acts starting in 1935, as of 1939 FRD began to openly press for modification of the Neutrality Act as indicated on Sept. 21st 1939 during a special session of Congress.

In support, we're lucky to have a public release of radio broadcast on the Special Session via this link, care of the University of Virginia:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/radio/day/radio.html

The broadcast is from 1:45- 3:00 PM and the actual speech begins on the second recording. It should be noted that FDR even though President of the United States of America, like all presidents to come, was responsible to Congress (the national purse string holders) and in the end to the general citizens of the US; with that said, FDR's language still had to be carefully chosen.

To answer the question begged, on why FDR would want to enter the war. This can be seen on three points, morales, pragmaticism, and economical. Towards FDR's moralities, the easiest and biggest indicator would be FDR's push for the United Nations. Like Wilson and the League of Nations, FDR also believe in global responsibility along with shared security and it's fact that both men shared similar ideals (Wilson personally appointed FDR as Assistant Sec of the Navy, 1913.)

Towards pragmatism, FDR saw Hitler and the NSDAP as a threat to global security. In support, as early as 1937 of course before even the invasion of Poland in 1938, FDR would over-rule the Joint Chiefs of Staff often on strategic direction (More than even Churchill) and press for joint combat exercises to test the services' abilities against possible German scenarios. Cited from: Records of the Joint Board 1903- 1947, National Archives Microfilm Publications M-1421, JB 350, Serial 608.

Finally we have economics, FDR and his cabinet (Which included Harold Ickes, of the PAW fame) believed in a hands-on government that took charge and held itself responsible for national economics and direction on a base-line that transcended beyond simple profit. This portion can analysis to incredible depths and exceed more than a casual post. Anyways, FDR and Ickes opposed sales of national fuel resources to Germany as well as using economic pressure as a weapon of influence, as supported by FDR's Oct. 5th 1937, Quarantine Speech.

In the end, pulling all of that together you get a pretty sound picture that FDR was pro-intervention, but had to content with an isolation-merchant minded Congress and interest groups. Luckily for FDR, Japan -had- to attack the British and Americans to fullfill their desires to control the Far East and aquire the Central Pacific oil regions.

@Dancingman - I apologise if any of my posts in this thread are somewhat enthusiastic in their outcomes, it is rare that I get use this portion of my formal education and I enjoy exercising it in a mature-ish discussional and non-argumentive forum.

 

[Iffat Nur]

Dig away at all of the WW2 and Holocaust, and you can see how he brought Germany out of hell

 

[Dancingman]

I can imagine the last thing FDR wanted to do was join into the war. It held little possibility of re-election, and you hadn't exactly prospered since the last world war. Then the over enthusiastic Japanese take out Pearl Harbour, one of the stupidest moves in the war, and in Japanese history. FDR declares war on Japan. Hitler (making another stupid move) declares war on the USA just 4 days later, thinking that the Japanese have a chance of bringing the US down. That way he can move in and take the rest after the European conquest is complete.

There is no way of telling whether FDR would have joined in the European struggle otherwise. I'd say no, but again it's down to speculation. Tell me, if you were the leader of an economically fragile country, who had been attacked by one powerful empire, would you simultaneously pick a fight with the Nazi machine which has almost desecrated Europe?

Actual FDR did want to join in the fight, primary sources and public events support FDR's intentions enough that it is not speculation. What held the United States out of the fight for so long were the isolationist proportion of Congress and powerful interest group supporters like Henry Ford. Congress had passed three separate Neutrality Acts starting in 1935, as of 1939 FRD began to openly press for modification of the Neutrality Act as indicated on Sept. 21st 1939 during a special session of Congress.

In support, we're lucky to have a public release of radio broadcast on the Special Session via this link, care of the University of Virginia:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/radio/day/radio.html

The broadcast is from 1:45- 3:00 PM and the actual speech begins on the second recording. It should be noted that FDR even though President of the United States of America, like all presidents to come, was responsible to Congress (the national purse string holders) and in the end to the general citizens of the US; with that said, FDR's language still had to be carefully chosen.

To answer the question begged, on why FDR would want to enter the war. This can be seen on three points, morales, pragmaticism, and economical. Towards FDR's moralities, the easiest and biggest indicator would be FDR's push for the United Nations. Like Wilson and the League of Nations, FDR also believe in global responsibility along with shared security and it's fact that both men shared similar ideals (Wilson personally appointed FDR as Assistant Sec of the Navy, 1913.)

Towards pragmatism, FDR saw Hitler and the NSDAP as a threat to global security. In support, as early as 1937 of course before even the invasion of Poland in 1938, FDR would over-rule the Joint Chiefs of Staff often on strategic direction (More than even Churchill) and press for joint combat exercises to test the services' abilities against possible German scenarios. Cited from: Records of the Joint Board 1903- 1947, National Archives Microfilm Publications M-1421, JB 350, Serial 608.

Finally we have economics, FDR and his cabinet (Which included Harold Ickes, of the PAW fame) believed in a hands-on government that took charge and held itself responsible for national economics and direction on a base-line that transcended beyond simple profit. This portion can analysis to incredible depths and exceed more than a casual post. Anyways, FDR and Ickes opposed sales of national fuel resources to Germany as well as using economic pressure as a weapon of influence, as supported by FDR's Oct. 5th 1937, Quarantine Speech.

In the end, pulling all of that together you get a pretty sound picture that FDR was pro-intervention, but had to content with an isolation-merchant minded Congress and interest groups. Luckily for FDR, Japan -had- to attack the British and Americans to fullfill their desires to control the Far East and aquire the Central Pacific oil regions.

@Dancingman - I apologise if any of my posts in this thread are somewhat enthusiastic in their outcomes, it is rare that I get use this portion of my formal education and I enjoy exercising it in a mature-ish discussional and non-argumentive forum.

No problem good sir! You're right on the money on it too. But yeah, the USA was pretty much neutral in name only since we fibbed about such things and supplied the Allies anyway, and polls at the time showed that a ton of Americans did support supplying the Allies, but yeah, you've read my wall of text, it would've just lead to a re-run of the Lusitania and we'd have declared war on Germany, we probably would've gone for Japan too just because I really don't think anyone was going to sit down and say "THOSE DAMN GERMANS (or Japanese) ATTACKED US, LET'S GO TO WAR WITH ONLY THEM AND FORGET THEIR ALLIES", at least not if the Office of War Information had anything to say about it.

But yeah, isolationists like America First and Lindbergh (who was a Nazi sympathizer himself but just wanted us out of the war) were pretty strong before the Pearl Harbor raid, however the fact of the matter is that with FDR in the Oval Office they could do jack diddly squat when FDR began taking some pretty bold moves towards the Allies, embargoing the shipments of fuel and spare parts Japan, freezing their assets, and such, well that and the aforementioned shipping that eventually evolved into the Lend-Lease Act in 1941. But we still had pretty important things like Destroyers for Bases and such.

 

[Dancingman]

Adolf Hitler was one of the greatest leaders our world has ever seen. I don't support his intentions and the acts of his government were atrocious; but the fact is, he dragged Germany from the depths of economic depression to become one of the greatest world powers, his name became known world-wide and he created and entirely new form of government. My great uncle was intelligence in the army and a scholar of history and literature; he says that, though Hitler's actions were abominable, he was a genius and we should always paid him the due respect for the sheer immensity of his tactical and political prowess.

Perhaps only the evil make good leaders... Had that man succeeded, the world would be a much different and a far more terrible place. Another will rise and, when the world is beaten down by these fake, commercial and cosmetic wars, we shall fall under the military power of a genius warlord. Only these days, genocide would be a lot easier.

Haven't wars been commercial, fake, and cosmetic since the first damn Neanderthal chieftain decided that the neighboring tribe had better hunting land and took it from them by force?

Also, Hitler was actually quite a dumbass in retrospect. Sure he was pretty decent at rebuilding but he set up so that Germany would have to start a war to make it prosperous once more. When he wound up picking a fight with two major world powers (of which Britain was arguably unavoidable and the Soviets would've attacked him anyway) and then declared war on a third for no real reason at the behest of an ally that had already proven itself unwilling to go along with Germany's intentions I think the spark of brilliant charisma that launched him into total power was long gone.

However it had started to go downhill quite a ways before, what with his staffing the highest levels of Germany's government with incompetent cronies (like Goering) and his purposeful strategy of setting up the government so that various organizations and bureaucrats would fight with each other and, by his theory, the best and most skilled leaders would come out on top. Well it created a whole generation of people in the Nazi government who were skilled at bureaucratic infighting and keeping power but no so hot at actually running the country like they were supposed to.

Hitler couldn't even get the military aspects right. He overruled and eventually outright alienated his best generals with stupid plans that would never work, his politicization of the sciences in Germany meant that he alienated the best and brightest German nuclear physicists, and also meant that they automatically disagreed with any theories set forth by Jews, like Einstein, that one cost their program big time. Hitler even tried to veto the production of the Stg44 (the world's first assault rifle, i.e. a huge advantage for the Wehrmacht) because he didn't like its appearance. Other Nazis were more intelligent and overruled his decision, but think about it, he almost stopped the production of a powerful weapon that only his country possessed...because he didn't like how it looked.

 

[Tim_Buoy]

so this is my first time creating a thread be gentle and didn't turn anything up on the search bar
so anyway i was walking through my college campus a few days back when i heard a heated debate between two people one of them was insisting that hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing and the other person considered his opinion was worth as much as the cigarette but i had just crushed under my foot and refused to discuss it with him
saying that he cant talk to people that blind to reality. so anyway what do you think

He was an awesome leader. He was just a psychopath. He also liked women to shit on him and degrade him sexually. Then there's that whole genocide thing. But, we're talking about leadership, right?

yeah and he did lead the germans to kill them. nice avatar by the way

 

[Verlander]

Trimmed

Well you learn something new every day. Thank you for sharing

 

[Frank M III]

A leader....well he did do things for the people at first and brought a whole country under a rule. In that regard....yes. But the negatives he did out way the goods. So he was a great leader just..not all there...

 

[TraderJimmy]

so this is my first time creating a thread be gentle and didn't turn anything up on the search bar
so anyway i was walking through my college campus a few days back when i heard a heated debate between two people one of them was insisting that hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing and the other person considered his opinion was worth as much as the cigarette but i had just crushed under my foot and refused to discuss it with him
saying that he cant talk to people that blind to reality. so anyway what do you think

Hitler was a lazy shiftless bum. He joined the army, failed to get into art school (because he was awful AND unoriginal, at a time when German art was very exciting and genuinely cool), ended up in jail, and once he achieved power due to the failures of others and screwing over the people who actually worked to create his party spent most of his day sleeping and generally doing not much of anything.

If he wasn't the most recognisable evil man in the history of everything he would've made a terrible leader. He was a good public speaker, but only within the society his more worryingly competent underlings had created.

He genuinely believed that the best way to run a government was to make different sections of it battle it out - that is the kind of thing which tvtropes would describe as "Nietzsche Wannabe" and "Chaotic Stupid".

EDIT: I don't think blitzkrieg was an impressive strategy either. Sure, when you're facing a Polish army which still uses horses (and they still put up a good fight considering their relative military strength), tanks will do well. But it's not a clever strategy. Using fast well-equipped troops when you have access to them isn't even common sense, it's just what you do.
I don't think he made a single good decision during his reign.

That's without including the genocide, which is pretty difficult to do. He was an awful leader. Compare Stalin, whose Five-year plans genuinely revolutionised and modernised whole swathes of Russia. Yes, he was evil, but he had some success. Hitler had none.

EDIT2:

Snipped

I've already previously discussed this post with someone else, where I went through the exact same points that you have just pointed out. At the end of the day this is all speculation. Who knows how it might have turned out? My points were taken from leading theorists and historians, and I trust those people, so I stick by them. If you have a different opinion, that's your prerogative.

If you consider the atomic bomb being the deterrent, and the nuclear race being the winning factor of the war (which it wasn't for the Nazis), then you would consider Germany declaring war on the Americans the deciding factor. America was at war with the Japanese until 4 days after when Germany declared war on the US, I don't think that America would have joined in the European invasion otherwise. Germany was developing similar weapons to the atomic bomb, it was just a time issue. You got there first.

Oh God an appeal to authority, let's not and say we did okay? Claiming your arguments are backed up by "leading theorists and historians" doesn't mean that it automatically reinforces a faulty argument, if those really are the arguments that leading historians are making about WWII's possible outcomes then I'm depressed.

The technology for the atomic bomb was never really anywhere near within reach of Nazi Germany, we started our program partly because of Einstein's insistence and partly because we were afraid that the Germans would get it first, well, it turned out that they weren't ever exceptionally close to achieving their goal. The fact that they outright declared certain theories to be untrue (like Einstein's theories, because he was Jewish) and then actively pursued a policy of persecution meant that they pretty much alienated a lot of good scientists who instead defected to either the US or the USSR.

And in regards to the European war comment I disagree, the USA was already all but committed to the Allies in terms of running supplies to Great Britain (and later the Soviet Union) via the Lend-Lease Act, Hitler would've done something like call on u-boats to strike at U.S. ports eventually, even if by astronomical odds he were to stand on the sidelines and merely shake his fist at the fact that we were supplying his enemy, we'd have gotten in eventually. Roosevelt wanted to get us in the war and we were economically too close to the nations of Europe to leave them to fend for themselves.

The story of the guerilla attacks on the supply routes to Germany's heavy water plant in...was it Norway? are a lot more impressive and important if you assume, as most documentaries and books on the subject do, that Germany would otherwise have definitely obtained the A-Bomb. Otherwise it's not as great an achievement - and we all want heroes. I'm obviously not using this as an argument that they were close, merely describing one area of the history of WWII in which the consensus of most sources I've seen has been that Germany was close to the A-Bomb. So there ARE some prominent historians who are of that opinion, for their own reasons, not that it matters anyway ;P. Also: prominent, not leading, used here for a reason.

 

[TraderJimmy]

He pulled Germany out of a massive depression and created what was probably the world's foremost millitary superpower at the time. Though, WWII also plunged the country right back into depression.

Oh, and he ordered the systematic desruction of an entire race of people--among other things.

Edit: on the strategic side of things he also made a glaring tactical mistake: NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE RUSSIAN COUNTRYSIDE IN THE WINTER: IT WILL BE YOUR UNDOING!!

Shoulda brushed up on his Napoleonic history. Actually, he shouldn't cuz the world might be a shitty place otherwise.

King Karl XII (number might be wrong, sorry) of Sweden was the first person to learn that lesson, I think.

And sorry for double post but I can't be arsed editing this into the post I already made, tired of that.

This is an unexpectedly interesting thread.

(not aimed at your post) I do wish people would stop calling those with differing opinions or less knowledge of history idiots though. If you have to do that, then at least explain why they're wrong, rather than just saying things along the lines of "clearly, you know nothing, and must be ignored". We're all (mostly) here to discuss the topic and hopefully learn some more about it, not to shut down conversation completely as soon as it begins.

 

[Breaker deGodot]

He was good - at first. Towards the end, when he began consulting spirit mediums, that's when he turned completely nuts.

 

[Dancingman]

so this is my first time creating a thread be gentle and didn't turn anything up on the search bar
so anyway i was walking through my college campus a few days back when i heard a heated debate between two people one of them was insisting that hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing and the other person considered his opinion was worth as much as the cigarette but i had just crushed under my foot and refused to discuss it with him
saying that he cant talk to people that blind to reality. so anyway what do you think

Hitler was a lazy shiftless bum. He joined the army, failed to get into art school (because he was awful AND unoriginal, at a time when German art was very exciting and genuinely cool), ended up in jail, and once he achieved power due to the failures of others and screwing over the people who actually worked to create his party spent most of his day sleeping and generally doing not much of anything.

If he wasn't the most recognisable evil man in the history of everything he would've made a terrible leader. He was a good public speaker, but only within the society his more worryingly competent underlings had created.

He genuinely believed that the best way to run a government was to make different sections of it battle it out - that is the kind of thing which tvtropes would describe as "Nietzsche Wannabe" and "Chaotic Stupid".

EDIT: I don't think blitzkrieg was an impressive strategy either. Sure, when you're facing a Polish army which still uses horses (and they still put up a good fight considering their relative military strength), tanks will do well. But it's not a clever strategy. Using fast well-equipped troops when you have access to them isn't even common sense, it's just what you do.
I don't think he made a single good decision during his reign.

That's without including the genocide, which is pretty difficult to do. He was an awful leader. Compare Stalin, whose Five-year plans genuinely revolutionised and modernised whole swathes of Russia. Yes, he was evil, but he had some success. Hitler had none.

EDIT2:

Snipped

I've already previously discussed this post with someone else, where I went through the exact same points that you have just pointed out. At the end of the day this is all speculation. Who knows how it might have turned out? My points were taken from leading theorists and historians, and I trust those people, so I stick by them. If you have a different opinion, that's your prerogative.

If you consider the atomic bomb being the deterrent, and the nuclear race being the winning factor of the war (which it wasn't for the Nazis), then you would consider Germany declaring war on the Americans the deciding factor. America was at war with the Japanese until 4 days after when Germany declared war on the US, I don't think that America would have joined in the European invasion otherwise. Germany was developing similar weapons to the atomic bomb, it was just a time issue. You got there first.

Oh God an appeal to authority, let's not and say we did okay? Claiming your arguments are backed up by "leading theorists and historians" doesn't mean that it automatically reinforces a faulty argument, if those really are the arguments that leading historians are making about WWII's possible outcomes then I'm depressed.

The technology for the atomic bomb was never really anywhere near within reach of Nazi Germany, we started our program partly because of Einstein's insistence and partly because we were afraid that the Germans would get it first, well, it turned out that they weren't ever exceptionally close to achieving their goal. The fact that they outright declared certain theories to be untrue (like Einstein's theories, because he was Jewish) and then actively pursued a policy of persecution meant that they pretty much alienated a lot of good scientists who instead defected to either the US or the USSR.

And in regards to the European war comment I disagree, the USA was already all but committed to the Allies in terms of running supplies to Great Britain (and later the Soviet Union) via the Lend-Lease Act, Hitler would've done something like call on u-boats to strike at U.S. ports eventually, even if by astronomical odds he were to stand on the sidelines and merely shake his fist at the fact that we were supplying his enemy, we'd have gotten in eventually. Roosevelt wanted to get us in the war and we were economically too close to the nations of Europe to leave them to fend for themselves.

The story of the guerilla attacks on the supply routes to Germany's heavy water plant in...was it Norway? are a lot more impressive and important if you assume, as most documentaries and books on the subject do, that Germany would otherwise have definitely obtained the A-Bomb. Otherwise it's not as great an achievement - and we all want heroes. I'm obviously not using this as an argument that they were close, merely describing one area of the history of WWII in which the consensus of most sources I've seen has been that Germany was close to the A-Bomb. So there ARE some prominent historians who are of that opinion, for their own reasons, not that it matters anyway ;P. Also: prominent, not leading, used here for a reason.

Oh God quote pyramid! But yeah I'm sorry if my post was a bit ambiguous as to my views on the German a-bomb project, but yeah I'm not saying that they DIDN'T have the capacity to build one, it's just that anything they'd have been able to do, even at the height of Nazi territory (i.e. with full access to all the resources, especially uranium in Czechoslovakia) they were still pretty crippled. Oh, also it was actually a heavy water producing facility that was sabotaged not a supply route.

Germany was close as in by theory and resources to the a-bomb, they had the delivery system covered with V2 rockets which nobody else could have really retaliated against, problem was the aforementioned exodus that the Nazi regime caused. All of Germany's good nuclear physicists with the exception of Dr. Heisenberg and a few others either fled Germany or defected. Outside of the USA, Germany was probably the nation most capable of developing nuclear weaponry, but think of it like building a house from scratch: they had all the tools and materials and a decent enough foundation but they still had to build the house. Their nuclear reactor design was at best flawed and at worst dangerously unstable, the fact that they would almost certainly have had to finish their weapons by 1944 (i.e. when the Allies really gained momentum and the Germans were pretty much holding off the inevitable steamrolling by the Allies) probably just wasn't the time the Germans needed to finish their project.