was hitler a great leader? bad leader?

[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

 

[The87Italians]

In my opinion, he was a good leader with bad intentions.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Hitler was a good leader at least in the begining of his regime. How do you think he managed to get so popular and become "Der Fuhrer"? Some luck was involved but he did have a way of getting the people to follow him fanatically. Plus he managed to get Germany out of the horrible depression it was in and raise it up to being a world power. I always figured that he would be remembered more fondly if it weren't for the whole WW2 and Holocaust thing, but then off course that's a big if.

He was a successful leader yes, but that doesn't mean he has to be well liked.

Course towards the end though he was pretty crappy. He was actually one of the reasons the Allies won (at least in Europe).

 

[Funkiest Monkey]

He was an extremely good leader!

Then again, so was Darth Vader.

 

[Rhiehn]

Had he not caused the holocaust he may have been one of the best leaders in history.

 

[T_ConX]

Saying 'hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing' is a lot like saying Charles Manson was a good song-writer despite the whole Sharon Tate murder thing, or Ted Kaczynski was a good academic despite the whole bombing Airports and Universities thing.

Sure, as AWESOME as the Autobahn is, it doesn't make up for the whole 'HE ORDERED THE SYSTEMATIC MURDER OF 12 MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE' thing.

 

[Karathos]

What Hitler did to raise Germany from the post-WW1-disaster was absolutely brilliant. Germany was absolutely crippled by the slave-treaty of Versailles, and he managed to pick up the pieces and turn that into a nation that basically waged a worldwide war for about eight years. That should be saying something about his ability to lead.

I'm not that educated on specifics so I don't know just how good a military leader he was - but one only has to look at one of his old speeches to see what effect he had on the people. You don't have to agree with the message in order to admire how he basically had the entire nation lined up behind him.

So basically, in my opinion there's no doubt he was a great leader. It's too bad his ultimate message was that of a complete genocidal lunatic. But the start - rebuilding Germany like he did, nothing short of brilliant imo. (This depends on how much faith you put in old documentaries and such showing the truth, obviously)

 

[Karathos]

Saying 'hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing' is a lot like saying Charles Manson was a good song-writer despite the whole Sharon Tate murder thing, or Ted Kaczynski was a good academic despite the whole bombing Airports and Universities thing.

Sure, as AWESOME as the Autobahn is, it doesn't make up for the whole 'HE ORDERED THE SYSTEMATIC MURDER OF 12 MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE' thing.

It's not about his qualities MAKING UP for a genocide. It's about those qualities existing despite of it.

 

[Flig]

Oh he was an amazing leader. He was just a bit of a deuche.

And by a bit of a deuche I mean a genocidal maniac with a fondness for Franz von Stuck.

 

[Enzeru92]

I say he was a really great leader but a rather fucked up person which is why he almost took control of the world

 

[natster43]

He is a good leader in the sense that he brought his country from a crippling depression into a world power with high morale. Also I think under his leadership they created many good things such as the Volkswagen and Autobahn. But he was a bad leader due to the fact that he tried to eliminate the entire population of European Jews while also trying to take over Europe which led to one of the largest if not the largest wars in the history of the modern world.

 

[SonicKoala]

Hitler was a great politician, but I wouldn't call him a great leader. He was irrational, impulsive, and kind of.... you know, batshit insane.

 

[Aidinthel]

He got his country bombed to hell and back. Even if you ignore morality, he was still a terrible leader.

 

[Billion Backs]

Yeah, he was a pretty good leader.

He certainly roused the people and found a good scape goat for the pretty downtrodden Germans to beat on. Considering the miserable state Germany was in after WW1, I'd say he accomplished quite a lot. Although I suppose the whole "jews as scapegoats" plan wasn't exactly new, the entire Europe has been doing it since I don't know when. The Holocaust wasn't the first time some assholes fucked around with the jews, it goes way further in the past to conflicts between Christianity and Judaism.

Saying 'hitler was a good leader despite the whole mass genocide thing' is a lot like saying Charles Manson was a good song-writer despite the whole Sharon Tate murder thing, or Ted Kaczynski was a good academic despite the whole bombing Airports and Universities thing.

Sure, as AWESOME as the Autobahn is, it doesn't make up for the whole 'HE ORDERED THE SYSTEMATIC MURDER OF 12 MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE' thing.

So I suppose it's cool to judge someone's proficiency in one thing by things that are completely unrelated to it? World's greatest tennis player (I dunno how you'd judge that, maybe by popularity/overall score?) would still be the world's greatest tennis player EVEN if he was a pedophile, serial killer, and a neo-Nazi, at least until the time someone managed to outscore him.

It doesn't mean you're supporting whatever the guy's doing if you admit it. But letting external matters enter the judging of one specific attribute just makes you look like a biased asshole.

 

[Vilcus]

Hitler was a charismatic leader, not necessarily a good leader. He could get people to follow him with his words, and people found him to be very dedicated.

However, Hitler was essentially an idiot. Germany lost the war because of him, and had the attempts on his life by his own generals been successful, then the war might have turned out differently.

During WWII, Germany had developed jet engines for their fighters, which would have made them many times faster than any fighter the Allies could have brought against them. However, Hitler didn't want any aircraft being developed that didn't have bombing equipment. He also didn't like any technology that he didn't fully understand, he even disliked the V-2 rocket, and didn't want to use it until the scientists who designed it could explain it to him.

Hitler was a government person, and he was not fit to command an army. Had he left his forces in the hands of his very capable generals, Hitler's Reich, and his genocidal goals might have come to fruition. Luckily for us he remained in place, and continued to make incompetent decisions time after time.

In conclusion, Hitler was a charismatic man who knew how to play to a crowd. However, when faced with a military campaign, he basically knew nothing of tactics, or what weapons would be successful in war (which is strange because he was a soldier in WWI).

 

[JWW]

He could unite a nation, but he couldn't keep in under control. Invading Russia and underestimating the power of the female American workforce were his two biggest mistakes.

 

[Funkiest Monkey]

Hitler had a sense of humour, he stole his moustache style from Charlie Chaplin.

I am not shitting you.

EDIT: buuuuut, he ordered 6 million Jews to death. He wasn't that funny. In fact, he was kind of a dick.

 

[Closet Superhero]

Bad leader. Aside from being at the head of a genocidal government (which makes him as morally evil as anyone in history), he and his secret police also ruthlessly murdered any political opponents to their regime, and thereby, through fear, repressed any expression of public opposition to policy.

To me, if you can only have the support of your people by murdering or threatening any divergent opinions, then you are just a ruthless dictator. It might make you successful, but it does not a 'good' leader make.

Also, he instigated a World War that led to his country's defeat. Clearly a bad move.

 

[Judgement101]

Great leader. Bad military general.

 

[Stefan Larsen]

"Hitler Gave Great Speeches Too" The way to win people over is a great speech, Hitler nailed that and so does Obama.