The Real History of Adolf Hitler Explained | Professor Thomas Weber

I don't know what I expected the answer to be, but that was an incredible answer.

I mean, that's, you're right.

The question I had teed up for kind of a little bit later on was Hitler's name.

It does get thrown around constantly now as shorthand for a terrible person or an authoritarian or maybe somebody I just don't like.

They're Hitler.

He's Hitler.

She's Hitler.

Does that diminish our understanding of what Hitler and the Nazi regime actually did?

Yes, absolutely.

And the problem here is that for a lot of people, it's precisely just that.

Hitler becomes a shorthand for whatever they don't like.

And at that moment, using Hitler has lost any of its cognitive value.

It doesn't allow us to understand or analyze anything in our own world.

It just becomes a way of shouting at people we don't like.

And this is not actually, by the way, this is not just happened by people in Germany.

ordinary life or in public discussions.

It's sometimes even happening in scholarship.

I mean, there is this, what I often refer to as a kind of gotcha approach to looking at Hitler or Hitler research is where people get the idea that, oh, well, maybe the key to understanding Hitler is this or that.

Then whatever they think this or that is, then they kind of look at Mein Kampf or Hitler's speeches and they try to actually see whether Hitler has ever mentioned anything of this kind.

And they find a couple of quotes, and they say, gotcha, now I've really proven that finally that there is a key to understanding Hitler.

But they don't ask themselves why in whatever in the other three million words of Hitler that have survived, he never mentioned these things.

Why is it that he only mentioned them once or twice? So this kind of gotcha approach to Hitler is really a problem because it really misdiagnoses Hitler.

And I think we get to really a point where despite, or actually in a way the fact that there's so many books on Hitler, it's almost kind of an impediment to understanding Hitler because they're often a reflection of whatever people don't like in life.

And to give you one example, do readers see that in a way we still don't understand Hitler? If you go to the Holocaust museums of the world, you see or look at documentaries, we constantly hear that for Hitler, the Jews are the personification of evil.

And then you look at Hitler's words, and he says explicitly time and time again, that is not the point.

I don't know what I expected the answer to be, but that was an incredible answer.

I mean, that's, you're right.

The question I had teed up for kind of a little bit later on was Hitler's name.

It does get thrown around constantly now as shorthand for a terrible person or an authoritarian or maybe somebody I just don't like.

They're Hitler.

He's Hitler.

She's Hitler.

Does that diminish our understanding of what Hitler and the Nazi regime actually did?

Yes, absolutely.

And the problem here is that for a lot of people, it's precisely just that.

Hitler becomes a shorthand for whatever they don't like.

And at that moment, using Hitler has lost any of its cognitive value.

It doesn't allow us to understand or analyze anything in our own world.

It just becomes a way of shouting at people we don't like.

And this is not actually, by the way, this is not just happened by people in Germany.

ordinary life or in public discussions.

It's sometimes even happening in scholarship.

I mean, there is this, what I often refer to as a kind of gotcha approach to looking at Hitler or Hitler research is where people get the idea that, oh, well, maybe the key to understanding Hitler is this or that.

Then whatever they think this or that is, then they kind of look at Mein Kampf or Hitler's speeches and they try to actually see whether Hitler has ever mentioned anything of this kind.

And they find a couple of quotes, and they say, gotcha, now I've really proven that finally that there is a key to understanding Hitler.

But they don't ask themselves why in whatever in the other three million words of Hitler that have survived, he never mentioned these things.

Why is it that he only mentioned them once or twice? So this kind of gotcha approach to Hitler is really a problem because it really misdiagnoses Hitler.

And I think we get to really a point where despite, or actually in a way the fact that there's so many books on Hitler, it's almost kind of an impediment to understanding Hitler because they're often a reflection of whatever people don't like in life.

And to give you one example, do readers see that in a way we still don't understand Hitler? If you go to the Holocaust museums of the world, you see or look at documentaries, we constantly hear that for Hitler, the Jews are the personification of evil.

And then you look at Hitler's words, and he says explicitly time and time again, that is not the point.