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Is assasination ever called for

Is assasination ever the right thing to do

  • In some cases assasination is right

    Votes: 30 83.3%

  • assasination is never right EVER

    Votes: 6 16.7%
  • Total voters
    36
Cardinal said:
That Hitler specifically distanced himself from the activities of the concentration camps is news to me. Can you provide anything for me to read on that?
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Two semesters ago I took a class on the Holocaust, and I do not recall the sources specifically. There were a lot of documentary videos in the class (Which I found wholly fascinating, but I digress). The general gist, however, was that Hitler pretty much never said anything specifically regarding them, one way or another. Not in writings, written memos or orders, or in speeches. One would think there'd be something found linking him directly, but there's not. (I'm talking concentration camps solely)

There is, however, a great deal of stuff linking other people.

Now, I do not believe that this he didn't know about them, and certainly his knowledge and failure to stop them makes him equally complicit, but I also think that based on some of the characters involved and supporting evidence that it is possible the ideas were put in place by others and Hitler approved and allowed it to happen as it served his goals. There were a great many people willing to "outdo" others to gain Hitler's favor, and it is well known that he actively encouraged such competition for his favor.
 
Cardinal said:
And another belief I don't understand the source of. There are plenty of quotes by him that talk about his Christianity. How do you know that he was disingenuous in each of those quotes?
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You're talking about a man who replaced crosses in classrooms with pictures of himself, threw dozens of priests into concentration camps, and was secretly plotting to assassinate the Pope. He also wholeheartedly supported the efforts of Himmler and his other subordinates to basically resurrect old Germanic paganism and the occult as a new "official" religion for the Nazi Party leadership.

At the end of the day, Nazism was always meant to be an all encompassing worldview and religion all unto its self. It had no use for competing ideas.

Hitler, at best, occassionally paid lip service to Christianity in order to secure political support from certain groups while simultaneously trying to subvert its cultural and political influence at the same time.
 
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Gathomas88 said:
You're talking about a man who replaced crosses in classrooms with pictures of himself, threw dozens of priests into concentration camps, and was secretly plotting to assassinate the Pope. He also wholeheartedly supported the efforts of Himmler and his other subordinates to basically resurrect old Germanic paganism and the occult as a new "official" religion for the Nazi Party leadership.

At the end of the day, Nazism was always meant to be an all encompassing worldview and religion all unto its self. It had no use for competing ideas.

Hitler, at best, occassionally paid lip service to Christianity in order to secure political support from certain groups while simultaneously trying to subvert its cultural and political influence at the same time.
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I understand that argument. It is, after all, the identical motivation for removing God from the Soviet Union (religion competing with communism). The difference here however is that while the Soviet Union's leaders were unabashed about atheism, Hitler gave us numerous quotes about Christianity. It's not cut and dried -- ambiguity remains. Let's also not forget that Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Vatican simply so he could divorce Catherine. Are we to conclude then that because of his antipathy toward the Pope and his obvious ulterior motives for leaving the Catholic church, that Henry was not in fact Christian?
 
radcen said:
Two semesters ago I took a class on the Holocaust, and I do not recall the sources specifically. There were a lot of documentary videos in the class (Which I found wholly fascinating, but I digress). The general gist, however, was that Hitler pretty much never said anything specifically regarding them, one way or another. Not in writings, written memos or orders, or in speeches. One would think there'd be something found linking him directly, but there's not. (I'm talking concentration camps solely)

There is, however, a great deal of stuff linking other people.

Now, I do not believe that this he didn't know about them, and certainly his knowledge and failure to stop them makes him equally complicit, but I also think that based on some of the characters involved and supporting evidence that it is possible the ideas were put in place by others and Hitler approved and allowed it to happen as it served his goals. There were a great many people willing to "outdo" others to gain Hitler's favor, and it is well known that he actively encouraged such competition for his favor.
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Of course he knew about them. But he didn't speak to his people about them. The reason most camps were in the eastern "frontier" was because they were out of Germany and out of the public view.
 
Cardinal said:
I understand that argument. It is, after all, the identical motivation for removing God from the Soviet Union (religion competing with communism). The difference here however is that while the Soviet Union's leaders were unabashed about atheism, Hitler gave us numerous quotes about Christianity. It's not cut and dried -- ambiguity remains. Let's also not forget that Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Vatican simply so he could divorce Catherine. Are we to conclude then that because of his antipathy toward the Pope and his obvious ulterior motives for leaving the Catholic church, that Henry was not in fact Christian?
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The Soviets, however, did not have to worry about being popularly elected in a predominantly Christian nation. Hitler did.

That's basically what you see with regard to his stances on Christianity. During his rise to power, he was quite vocally supportive of Christianity. After he had achieved this goal, however, and secured his position, his tone became far more indifferent, and even openly combative.

His private conversations were apparently far worse.

Hitler's Table Talk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany."
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"Science cannot lie ... It's Christianity that's the liar"
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“There is something very unhealthy about Christianity.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 418
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“Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 145
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“…the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 61
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“The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. Thus one understands that the healthy elements of the Roman world were proof against this doctrine.” -Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 75-76
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“Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn’t, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar. We are entering into a conception of the world that will be a sunny era, an era of tolerance.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 343-344
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“The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key-note is intolerance.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 7
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“Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers—already, you see, the world had fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing was Christianity!—then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 667
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“We’ll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.”

-Hitler’s Table Talk, pg 62
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Now, admittedly, Hitler was fickle by nature (and honestly more than a little bit nuts), so he tended to go back and forth on this.

However, there can be little doubt that the regime he was building, and most of the people involved in shaping its upper echelons of power, were not in any way, shape, or form friendly to Christianity, or envisioned the world in a way compatible with it's ideals. There can also be little doubt that, even if Christianity were to survive under Nazi rule, it would be in an almost completely impotent and subservient role which likely had little or nothing whatsoever in common with the religion as it exists today.
 
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Cardinal said:
I understand that argument. It is, after all, the identical motivation for removing God from the Soviet Union (religion competing with communism). The difference here however is that while the Soviet Union's leaders were unabashed about atheism, Hitler gave us numerous quotes about Christianity. It's not cut and dried -- ambiguity remains. Let's also not forget that Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Vatican simply so he could divorce Catherine. Are we to conclude then that because of his antipathy toward the Pope and his obvious ulterior motives for leaving the Catholic church, that Henry was not in fact Christian?
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That is a great example of exactly what I was referring to. :lol:
 
Gathomas88 said:
The Soviets, however, did not have to worry about being popularly elected in a predominantly Christian nation. Hitler did.

That's basically what you see with regard to his stances on Christianity. During his rise to power, he was quite vocally supportive of Christianity. After he had achieved this goal, however, and secured his position, his tone became far more indifferent, and even openly combative.

His private conversations were apparently far worse.

Hitler's Table Talk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



















​

Now, admittedly, Hitler was fickle by nature (and honestly more than a little bit nuts), so he tended to go back and forth on this.

However, there can be little doubt that the regime he was building, and most of the people involved in shaping its upper echelons of power, were not in any way, shape, or form friendly to Christianity, or envisioned the world in a way compatible with it's ideals. There can also be little doubt that, even if Christianity were to survive under Nazi rule, it would be in an almost completely impotent and subservient role which likely had little or nothing whatsoever in common with the religion as it exists today.
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These Table Talk quotes are entirely new to me. I'll have to read more on this.
 
lizzie said:
That is a great example of exactly what I was referring to. :lol:
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Sorry, but I'm the Greek god of exhaustion right now. What were you referring to?
 
Cardinal said:
These Table Talk quotes are entirely new to me. I'll have to read more on this.
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To be fair, according to the same source, he also supposedly said this in 1941.

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
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However, given everything else he said regarding Christianity, it seems doubtful that he really meant it seriously, or wasn't just inventing his own definition of the term to suit his whim at that particular moment in time.

Like I said, the dude was nuts, and spent most of the 1940s high off of his ass to boot. I'm not sure if I'd take any of his off the cuff remarks especially seriously. :lol:

In any case, the fact of the matter remains that Nazism itself certainly wasn't any kind of offshoot of Christianity or Christian ideals. It was its own worldview entirely.
 
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One really great book which will cause you you think about this issue is 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Yes - King is the well known writer famous for vampires and all sorts of horror but this book is about the Kennedy assassination and someone who can time travel who tries to prevent it. It is the best book King has written over the last twenty years and will really cause you to question the entire Hitler assumption.
 
History is written by the victors.
 
Gathomas88 said:
In all likelihood, yes.

If you were going to kill Hitler at all, it'd have to very early in his career. Frankly, even then, it's still entirely possible that he might have become a martyr, or that the Nazis simply would have found someone else to spread their message.

I mean... Honestly, the idea of assassinating a political leader to "silence" their ideas is kind of bunk in general. If you want to discredit a certain ideology, there are simply better ways to do it.
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You don't thinka psychopath in charge of a country should be assassinated?
 
Morality Games said:
It's a high cost political strategy that establishes a very bad precedent in international relations. Not absolutely the wrong thing to do, but . . . expensive in terms of the traditional currencies of power and credibility.
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Kennedy tried to assassinate Castro
 
lizzie said:
That is a philosophical question that is very difficult to answer, because it gets into many "what ifs", which we can't know, with certainty, the answers to.
That being said, are assassinations okay? Yeah, but not for the reasons you may think, and not due a question of moral judgements. Reality is what it is, history happens, and just because one bad guy may have been taken out prematurely, it doesn't mean that everything would have been okay. That isn't how it works.
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We assassinated UBL and isn't the drone campaign targeting Alquiada and now ISIS leaders assassination?
 
lifeisshort said:
We assassinated UBL and isn't the drone campaign targeting Alquiada and now ISIS leaders assassination?
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No. Once war is declared then they are simply high ranking enemy combatants. There is no free pass granted to enemies simply because of their rank.
 
lifeisshort said:
You don't thinka psychopath in charge of a country should be assassinated?
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People have a love affair with the notion that if the head falls, the body will die, like in science fiction movies where every time the mother ship is destroyed all the other ships will be rendered inactive, kill the head vampire and the other vampires die or turn back to human, blow up the Death Star and the Empire crumbles, kill the Witch and Oz is saved. And it's almost certainly the same mentality that concludes that if you assassinate a head of state then his entire command structure, line of succession and ideology all go with him. Has it actually happened this way in history? I'm sure, but the message you should have gotten from this thread is that a command structure, line of succession and ideology almost always prop up that head of state, and the murder of that leader usually a)solves nothing, b)creates a power vacuum resulting in more chaos, or c)creates a martyr, which of all the outcomes can potentially be the worst possible thing for your cause. Are you so certain you would want Obama...I'm sorry, I mean Hitler...to be martyred?
 
The only time assassination would be reasonable would be if the State was the assassin. In my opinion the State has the power and right to do something like that. In my opinion there can be no such thing as so-called 'State Terror'. The State needs to do what it must to maintain order and peace.

I do think that assassination is very drastic though. Impeachment should be enough to remove a bad or unpopular leader.
 
spangledbanner said:
The only time assassination would be reasonable would be if the State was the assassin. In my opinion the State has the power and right to do something like that. In my opinion there can be no such thing as so-called 'State Terror'. The State needs to do what it must to maintain order and peace.

I do think that assassination is very drastic though. Impeachment should be enough to remove a bad or unpopular leader.
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I don't think I've seen better henrin bait lol
 
Maybe it's just me, but considering America's history, America's current political climate, America's fairly ready access to guns, I'm not sure a discussion about the merits of assassination is a wise one.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
No. Once war is declared then they are simply high ranking enemy combatants. There is no free pass granted to enemies simply because of their rank.
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Have we actually declared war on Alquiada and ISIS? No declaration of war as far as I know and remember that Kennedy tried to assassinate Castro.
 
spangledbanner said:
The only time assassination would be reasonable would be if the State was the assassin. In my opinion the State has the power and right to do something like that. In my opinion there can be no such thing as so-called 'State Terror'. The State needs to do what it must to maintain order and peace.

I do think that assassination is very drastic though. Impeachment should be enough to remove a bad or unpopular leader.
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Big fan of Putin's, are you?
 
Cardinal said:
People have a love affair with the notion that if the head falls, the body will die, like in science fiction movies where every time the mother ship is destroyed all the other ships will be rendered inactive, kill the head vampire and the other vampires die or turn back to human, blow up the Death Star and the Empire crumbles, kill the Witch and Oz is saved. And it's almost certainly the same mentality that concludes that if you assassinate a head of state then his entire command structure, line of succession and ideology all go with him. Has it actually happened this way in history? I'm sure, but the message you should have gotten from this thread is that a command structure, line of succession and ideology almost always prop up that head of state, and the murder of that leader usually a)solves nothing, b)creates a power vacuum resulting in more chaos, or c)creates a martyr, which of all the outcomes can potentially be the worst possible thing for your cause. Are you so certain you would want Obama...I'm sorry, I mean Hitler...to be martyred?
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Castro kept Cuba in line and Kennedy thought cutting off that head would liberate Cuba.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Maybe it's just me, but considering America's history, America's current political climate, America's fairly ready access to guns, I'm not sure a discussion about the merits of assassination is a wise one.
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Nobody is advocating assassination of Obama here. He has not crossed that line as of yet.
 
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