A Hitler Speaks.

August 25, 2006 4:03 PM

Paula Hitler: "He was still my brother."
posted by Second Account For Making Jokey Comments (52 comments total)

To flesh this out somewhat, Paula Hitler's diary has recently been discovered, allegedly.
posted by fire&wings at 4:16 PM on August 25, 2006

I'm not sure why this is worth an FPP.

On preview, thanks for the additional info, fire&wings.
posted by amro at 4:17 PM on August 25, 2006

Did anyone else get the "Gas a Jew, win a free iPod" banner ad?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:26 PM on August 25, 2006

I'm not sure why this is worth an FPP.


Because it is about Hitler, duh.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:31 PM on August 25, 2006

Hitler loved two things: exterminating jews and web advertising.
posted by mathowie at 4:32 PM on August 25, 2006

Godwin.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:33 PM on August 25, 2006

Oh yeah? Well, you know who else was Hitler's sister?
posted by boo_radley at 4:41 PM on August 25, 2006

"Godwin."

lmAo!
posted by joshjs at 4:44 PM on August 25, 2006

I must honestly confess that I would have preferred it if he had followed his original ambition and become an architect. It would have saved the world a lot of worries.

Because, y'know, he was still her brother.
posted by owhydididoit at 4:45 PM on August 25, 2006

Isn't it a little hard to believe Hitler did all he did alone , with no support ? Even today no matter how good the horator or known the celebrity it is easy to see that political rallies , presentations, introductions, etc ..cost resources. I wonder who may have financed his party , who may have had some interest ?
posted by elpapacito at 4:52 PM on August 25, 2006

I wonder who may have financed his party , who may have had some interest ?

Maybe it was the Zionists.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 5:02 PM on August 25, 2006 [2 favorites]

elpapacito: IIRC, the wikipedia entry on ol' Adolf has a pretty good rundown on that.

It's also the reason I have a real problem with the whole "Hitler was pure evil" excuse - because that's exactly what it is; an excuse to avoid thinking too deeply about it. Hitler was a man, just like the rest of us, and we're all subject to the same sort of forces that shaped and created him.
posted by Pinback at 5:05 PM on August 25, 2006

"He was a scrubby little rogue."

I think that about sums it up.
posted by languagehat at 5:12 PM on August 25, 2006

There was something on that site that Spy Sweeper blocked. I'm not going back.
posted by rosemere at 5:16 PM on August 25, 2006

The couple had five children, but only two survived to become adults: Paula and her elder brother, Adolf Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction and organized insanity.

There was also Hitler's half brother
posted by delmoi at 5:32 PM on August 25, 2006

Hitler loved two things: exterminating jews and web advertising...

...and he's all out of jews!
posted by jonson at 5:57 PM on August 25, 2006 [6 favorites]

It's also the reason I have a real problem with the whole "Hitler was pure evil" excuse - because that's exactly what it is; an excuse to avoid thinking too deeply about it. Hitler was a man, just like the rest of us, and we're all subject to the same sort of forces that shaped and created him.

THANK you. And not only that, but a significant portion of the country's population supported him. I hate the "everybody was just too scared to do anything" excuse. The reality of human nature is much more frightening.
posted by LordSludge at 6:01 PM on August 25, 2006

I just want to say I was against Hitler from the beginning. In fact I was hating Hitler even before he was born.
posted by Citizen Premier at 6:02 PM on August 25, 2006

To see how Hitler came to power, all you have to do is look at the people who voted for Bush's second term. He had his 'accountability moment', and we didn't hold him accountable.

Expecting anything different from the Germans of the 1930s is wishful thinking.
posted by Malor at 6:38 PM on August 25, 2006

Fast fact: Bush and Hitler have never been photographed together. Think about it.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:46 PM on August 25, 2006

I wonder who may have financed his party , who may have had some interest ?
posted by elpapacito at 4:52 PM PST

If there was only some kind of network and a way to search that network to find the answer to such a question.

Praise be to Jesus that no one needs such, as we have Fox!
posted by rough ashlar at 7:00 PM on August 25, 2006 [1 favorite]

Paulas mother, born Klara Pölzl, was 23 years younger than Alois. She was so closely related to her husband that a special dispensation was sought from Rome before they could marry in 1884.

How close would that be?
posted by haikuku at 7:07 PM on August 25, 2006

This totally reminded me of when Stephen Colbert told Jon Stewart that his real name was Ted Hitler, yes, related to that Hitler. Good times.
posted by Operation Afterglow at 7:31 PM on August 25, 2006

Hitler wasn't pure evil.
He was 99% evil and 1% delicious lemon meringue.
posted by turducken at 7:33 PM on August 25, 2006 [2 favorites]

Fast fact: Bush and Hitler have never been photographed together. Think about it.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:46 PM PST on August 25 [+] [!]

I misread that as "Barbara Bush and Hilter" at first.

...but if you think about it, totally makes sense.
posted by kosher_jenny at 8:21 PM on August 25, 2006

turducken wins.
posted by kaseijin at 8:28 PM on August 25, 2006

God I wish Paula Hitler was an anagram for Paris Hilton.
posted by wigu at 8:46 PM on August 25, 2006

Who's afraid of Paula Wolff?
posted by graventy at 8:47 PM on August 25, 2006

"THANK you. And not only that, but a significant portion of the country's population supported him. I hate the "everybody was just too scared to do anything" excuse. The reality of human nature is much more frightening."

Sartre spoke often about the myth of the French Resistance, and how it was necessary to construct a fiction of rebellion against the Nazis when most French were A-OK with having German overlords. It was a lie that De Gaul rode to power, but arguably to the benefit of France (and something that allowed a lot of healing after the fact).
posted by klangklangston at 10:20 PM on August 25, 2006

A Jew is walking through the streets of Berlin when he sees Hitler drowning in the Spree River. He jumps in and saves him. Hitler is so grateful that he promises the Jew anything he wants as a reward.

"I just want one thing," the Jew says.

"Anything," Hitler says, magnanimously.

"Don't tell anybody what I did."
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:16 PM on August 25, 2006

"I must honestly confess that I would have preferred it if he had followed his original ambition and become an architect. It would have saved the world a lot of worries .."

"I must honestly confess?" Listen, no need to sound so apologetic about it there, Paula. I think you're not alone: there's a few more of us around who'd have wished the very same thing!

And, uh, did you say "a lot of worries"? WORRIES??
WORRIES??!!

I don't even know what to say...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:47 PM on August 25, 2006

most French were A-OK with having German overlords.

I have to call bullshit on Sartre for this, if that's indeed his claim. There's no doubt that France has a long and odious history of anti-semitism (which regrettably continues today in some respects), but to correlate that with being ok by being occupied by a people with whom they had warred nearly non-stop for a 100 years, is utter shit.
posted by Hypnic jerk at 5:16 AM on August 26, 2006

Clearly the number of Frenchmen that claim to be descended from members of la Résistance are almost as numerous as baby boomers that claim to have attended Woodstock, but the resistance itself was no myth, it actually did exist. Sartre himself was a member one one of its many factions. Perhaps his quote was borne of his frustration with all the bullshitter collaborationist assholes that, after the war, claimed to be maquis.
posted by Hypnic jerk at 5:22 AM on August 26, 2006

Pinback writes "an excuse to avoid thinking too deeply about it."

And a very very convenient scapegoat as well. At worst they could have said that he was batshit insane, that he tought Jesus talked with him and all that crap and get rid of him in a snap ; but a single point, a Dear Leader is waaayy convenient ; it's easy to put all the blame on a person while enjoying the benefits of being his acolytes. Also nobody forced germans simpletons to believe was he said, but they did so it was technically their fault when they decided to hand him over their brains.

Yet this can be understood and explained to a degree when we put ignorance, poverty and frustation togheter, considering that humans are only humans and hardly can resist forever the tentation of some comfort , some relax and a simple ideology that explains-it-all..we can see that with the various God/s , removing all the need to explain and understand.
posted by elpapacito at 6:16 AM on August 26, 2006

They saved Hitler's sister's brain.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:36 AM on August 26, 2006

jonson writes "...and he's all out of jews!"

Every time someone references They Live, an angel gets its wings. Thank you, jonson.
posted by brundlefly at 7:03 AM on August 26, 2006

the myth of the French Resistance, and how it was necessary to construct a fiction of rebellion

Very few French people I know are aware that there were only seven prisoners present when the Bastille was stormed, and some of them were unruly juveniles sent there by their parents.

Of course, most Americans are not that knowledgeable about some of Hitler's sources of financing.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:37 AM on August 26, 2006

I believe that people without siblings can never truly understand what it's like to have siblings. Sharing childhood is a poweful bond. It inspires love, loyalty and mercy. It also leads to the erroneous belief that a grown brother or sister is basically the same person, just bigger.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:12 AM on August 26, 2006

"I must honestly confess that I would have preferred it if he had followed his original ambition and become an architect. It would have saved the world a lot of worries .."

"Yeah, well...we have a saying around here: 'Get used to it, Hitler'"
posted by illovich at 8:55 AM on August 26, 2006

Very few French people I know are aware that there were only seven prisoners present when the Bastille was stormed

Exactly how many French people do you know? This is what they teach in their history and civics classes as well, and I can assure you, it's common knowledge. Having lived there for a better part of a decade, I call bullshit on that.
posted by Hypnic jerk at 9:51 AM on August 26, 2006

Of course, most Americans are not that knowledgeable about some of Hitler's sources of financing.
posted by StickyCarpet

This Hitler thread has been officially Bushed.
posted by merelyglib at 10:12 AM on August 26, 2006

You lived in the Bastille for the better part of a decade, HJ? I thought they shut that place down.

Come clean, though. What they get you for?
posted by Sparx at 10:32 AM on August 26, 2006

How close would that be?

They were actually the same person. Alois had a sex change operation, then went back in time and married himself. No wonder Adolf was so screwed up!
posted by languagehat at 11:31 AM on August 26, 2006

I found it weird that he had the exact same haircut from about age 6 on.
posted by thekilgore at 11:33 AM on August 26, 2006

Stealing bread.
posted by Hypnic jerk at 12:42 PM on August 26, 2006

Yes! Yes! Say it! He...was...my...boyfriend!!
</bleucher>
posted by kirkaracha at 12:50 PM on August 26, 2006

I was in Weimar a few years back, hanging with some of my german friends (IYKWIM), generally soaking up the small town, gothic / modernist vibe of the place, when out of boredom I went to an exhibit that showed, among other things, photographs of Weimer during the Nazi era. It was a shock to see the same quaint streets, shops, &c. dripping with swastikas and the streets full of angry looking germans with raised salutes.
It got me thinking, how some of the older people in town might be in some of those pictures, goose-stepping or sig-heiling, and here I was, a half-jewish kid, buying wurst from them on a Sunday morning.
My warsaw-ghetto born grandmother must have been rolling in her grave.
posted by signal at 3:05 PM on August 26, 2006

Speaking of the French, Dad was in Marseilles during the immediate aftermath of the ETO part of the war, and he told me that while he was there he found there were French folks who'd been doing so well on ripping off the Wehrmacht that they actually resented being "liberated" -- until they realized that stealing from les Américains was profitable too. A fellow armorer's locker o' howitzer repairing tools was the first thing to come up missing....
posted by pax digita at 3:36 PM on August 26, 2006

"...the reality of human nature is much more frightening." - posted by LordSludge
You know LordSludge, sometimes that gets me down too. I think about the duality of man and how often great evil goes unpunished because of the necessity that life must go on and how a man like Hitler was possible only because people wanted to believe. Then the oddly comforting thought occurs to me that Abraham Lincoln would have knocked the crap out of Hitler
posted by Smedleyman at 11:57 PM on August 26, 2006

I thought this was a pretty interesting post, so thanks. I wonder how long it'll be before some enterprising dimwit writes a bestselling thriller about Paula's secret child the world never knew about. Call it The Hitler Code or some such?
posted by ktoad at 12:50 PM on August 27, 2006

Paula sounds almost simple minded.

Marlene Dietrich (who immigrated from Germany to the U.S. as an adult) discovered after the war ended that her sister and brother in law had spent the war years working as entertainers at the Belsen concentration camp — because after the camp guards and administrators had put in a long hard day killing Anne Frank and other they needed a little R&R.

Dietrich did everything she could to help her sister, and after that never spoke to her again. In her later years she denied even having had a sister.
posted by orange swan at 1:56 PM on August 27, 2006

Smedleyman, that picture is disturbing on so many levels.

haikuku, per Wikipedia Klara was either Alois' legal second cousin (no blood relation) or her half-uncle (blood relation). It all depends on who Alois' father really was.
posted by deborah at 12:55 PM on August 28, 2006