Should Hitler be in the game?

Should Hitler be included in the game?

  • Yes, because he was "great" in a way

    Votes: 37 8.6%
  • Yes, because regardless of ideology, he did have hell of an impact on history

    Votes: 263 61.4%
  • No, because he was a mass murderer

    Votes: 39 9.1%
  • No, because it may encourage or glorify Nazism

    Votes: 89 20.8%

  • Total voters
    428
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Sohan said:
It isn't a question of how important a leader is to history. It's how important a leader is to the history of their specific civilization. [...]

Adolf Hitler created the Third Reich, which was definitely a large albeit short-lived empire. However, don't forget that there were two Reichs before Hitler's, and both of them were just as powerful in respect to the rest of the world. The real big difference though is that Hitler's German Empire never ever had a peace-time. Napoleon's France, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Alexander's Empire all existed for a time during peace-time. Hitler's empire became powerful and was then destroyed in just one war. Napoleon had a ton of wars and plenty of peace-time for his empire. Alexander's empire lasted several years after his last military engagement. Hitler's empire, on the other hand, went from poor country to empire back to poor country in the span of a single war.

Nonetheless, I do agree Hitler was an important leader in terms of history.

Edit: And the best answer is probably sales. :P

Actually it is both. Look at some of the other leaders involved in the game such as Alexander the great (his empire collapsed after his rule.) There are similar such examples with other leaders. I would be willing to argue that the third reich was in many ways stronger than the previous two reichs with regard to the rest of the world, not just gauging by numbers of casaulties but by the sheer technologies involved. People do not realize how potentially possible it was for the allies to *lose* the war, there were numerous instances which honestly due to Hitlers blunders (or mental illness) allowed the allies to luck out. That's just the point, the war was a lot closer at many points than people realize. Hitlers empire never did have a peace time, one of the things I personally consider to be one of his greatest faults. In theory he could have not invaded Russia, finished off Britain and then taken a few years to consolidate his gains. It wasn't exactly a "single war" which ended the German empire and brought it back to decline economicly, but a world war, which is suggestive of numerous side battles / wars and conflicts. Afterall you could consider his invasions of Poland, France, Britain, Russia and parts of North Africa wars in of themself (and by their nature that is in fact what they were.) It wasn't as though one single force wiped out the third reich. It was a combination of fighting on 4 fronts against the 3 most powerful countries in the world. At the time of the U.S. invasion of normandy Germany was fighting at normandy, on the eastern front, Britain and North Africa. It wasn't that they were taken out in one "fell swoop" but rather, that is what was necessary for them to lose.
 
Giaur said:
Uhhh, I was scared that Hitler won't be rewarded as Stalin was. War criminals both of them should be treated the same. Stalin murdered Polish officers in Katyn. Hitler murdered milions of Jews living in Poland and many other countries. Puting no comment about that is a hero's work. My respect to the creators.

Aplause ...

P.S. Certainly won't buy an expansion, hehehehehahaha

Amazing how a comment like this can be made without realization of the hypocricy involved in it.

You think Hitlers actions to be criminal

Hitler tried to eliminate all rememberance of the jews by burning books

Firaxis doesn't acknowledge his accomplishments to keep people from thinking about how they are a plausible way to run a government successfully...

Yet you think Firaxis is heroic for keeping a leader out who isn't universally liked but nevertheless important and infuencial (basicly burning books.)
 
mtu said:
The Hitler-cheering in this thread makes me sick!

So maybe he did build up the economy - a war economy, if I might point that out. But for what price? I would love to trade all that "greatness" (where I think "they had the biggest plane" amounts to "they had the biggest dicks" and is worth as much) for a history where the country I live in did not bear responsibility for the murdering of six million Jews, millions of homosexuals, political dissidents, soldiers and civilians of its own population and soldiers and civilians of other countries.

Perhaps you just don't have any idea what it's like to live in a country that sees itself confronted with such a history. But whatever "good" Hitler did, it was for a too horrible price. Yes, I would accept to live in a country with a weaker economy, with less jobs and with less advanced technology. If only I could know it was so that 60 million people that died in World War II were still alive. And don't give me that "Stahlgewitter" bullfeathers - without Hitler, there would not have been World War Two.

I leave you with this piece of German poetry:

"Die könnten jetzt doch alle
In Madagaskar sitzen
Schön warum und überhaupt auch viel mehr Platz
Der ganze Zweite Weltkrieg
Ein Gegenstand von Witzen
Und über unser Land kein böser Satz"

[ Couldn't they all just sit
In Madagascar now?
Nice and warm and more space overall
The whole of the Second World War
A subject of jokes
And not a bad word about our country ]

Again with the "Hitler was an evil man" ideology, let me disprove the logic behind this stance for the last time.

I myself am half Irish (and I look full blown Irish.) My people came to America as a result of the Irish "potato" famine, which caused the starvation of millions. As someone who follows history, I know that Ireland at the time of the famine was producing more than 4x the food to sustain its populace. The fact that it was only potatos the irish ate is a myth. The truth is the famine occured because although it is true that the potato crops failed, Britain controlled Irish economic policy which as a source of income was going to be regulated how they saw fit. Although family members of mine suffered from British policy, I am not about to fault them or start blanket calling them "evil." They were one of the worlds greatest empires, and they were doing what it is empires are in the habbit of doing: Furthering and protecting *their* empire.

Hitler was not an evil man so much as it was that he did what it was he saw fit that he had need do in order to produce the ends he wanted to attain. True I am sure his personal prejudice was involved, but not nearly so much as the truth that by rounding up people in concentration camps, it was a very good source of cheap labor as well as a propoganda tool. The word "jew" as seen by the Nazi party was more of a reference to *any* person of whom which disagreed with and was contrary to what the party saw fitting their goals. A good example: Did you realize there was a naval officer in the German army who was jewish? Did you also realize that he never gave a German salute to Hitler, but yet Hitler may have "overlooked" this? I have to dig up the specific name if you want it, but I assure you it is true. This wasn't the stereotypical "empire from the bowels of hell." It was an "empire." That's all there is to it. They had policies that affected some people in very detrimental ways, and for their populace it was not only beneficial but one of the quickest ways to do so. To call anybody "evil" is an oversimplification of what the truth is, and in some way a quick way to assign a term to something that you wouldn't want people to look further into.
So when you cite how it was "a horrible price," remember the context. A horrible price to those who have to pay it.
 
I just wanted to add: the two reasons indicated by a "No" vote in this poll both have logical problems with them, which makes them not count on some level:

No, because he was a mass murderer (obviously being a mass murderer, or even a murderer does not change whether or not you were a "Great Leader" which is the topic in question, whether or not for him to be inducted into civ. Along with the fact there are other mass murderers *already* in the game)

No, because it might glorify Nazism (The glorification of Nazism has nothing to do with whether or not Hitler can be considered a "Great Leader." Although you may be afraid of Nazism because of your ethnicity, I can assure you, civ is not going to be the catalyst which will create the 4th reich :crazyeye: )
 
naterator said:
maybe not, but us americans live in a country that simply chooses not to recognize our such history. i'm not saying any individual american leader was as bad as hitler, but it IS an empire founded on the genocide of an entire ethnic group (ok, well only 98% of them), and the eradication of essentially the entire plains ecosystem for farming. and i love it here, i'm not saying we should give it all back, but it's important to see both sides of the fence, and in the long run, being forced to deal with it will be better for your country. america puts andrew jackson, the president behind the "indian removal act" of 1830, on our $20 bill, maybe if hitler was born 100 years earlier he would be on your money. it's important to remember that the idea of genocide wasn't really THAT controversial a few hundred years ago, when people who spoke another language, woshipped another god, or had another skin color were openly considered sub-humans, to be subjucated and exploited for their resources. really right up through WWI this was the prevalant attitude, as european empires enveloped the world.

Repeated for emphasis - one of the best posts I have seen on this subject. Very well put.
 
I agree that was something I had forgotten about and is very relevant to the subject. Something to add, it is widely believed that Hitler actually read about westward expansion in America and that may have influenced him in some way to his policy, believing that the west would not object. (and honestly we didn't until it began to become a threat to us.)

We reap what we sow~
 
Anti-semitism, on new-fangled "racial scientific" grounds (helped by good old Christian anti-semitism on older "they killed Jesus!" grounds) was a fundamental tenet of Nazi political & government philosophy. While the Nazis may have applied the Jew label to many they disagreed with, SilentDemon and others in the thread seem to be under the impression that this was no more than a matter of calling someone a counter-revolutionary or a terrorist. Yet this doesn't change the ultimate extermination policy that killed 5-6 million Jews. Unlike the Indians in America, whose children were seized, placed into boarding schools & beaten for speaking their native tongue, the Jews in the Third Reich were simply killed based on ancestry. That a few thousand "wertvolle Juden" survived doesn't mitigate this. If the Jews had "only" had their property stolen & been moved into crowded ghettos & left there at the time Germany surrendered, this discussion might be different and we'd be comparing them to Native Americans on reservations.

But instead, resources were expended on killing them on an industrial scale at a time the German war effort was faltering, for no reason other than that they were Jews. Instead of using the mass of them as slave labor, they were killed as the ideological imperative of the state to exterminate them took precedence over practical matters on a large scale. What you must realize is that they were killed on an industrial scale for being Jewish. Even after conquering Ukraine & western Russia, instead of simply killing everyone in sight, the Nazis left millions of Slavs were alive under their yoke to produce food & engage in slave labor. Low as they were on the racial totem pole in Nazi ideology, they were still considered useful as subjects & slaves. The Jews didn't even merit that, and the Nazis expended much effort on separating them out from the local population, when they could have killed on a more widespread scale with less effort.

Since an anecdote about a purportedly Jewish naval officer caught someone's fancy, I offer this in return: When Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D (one of the mobile killing squads in Ukraine & Russia) encountered an obscure Crimean sect known as the Krimchaks, he had to ask his superiors for directions, as he could not determine whether or not they were Jewish in ancestry. The answer he received from Adolf Eichmann: to err on the side of "safety", the Krimchaks were to be executed. (They were.)

I won't offer an argument for or against why the Nazis might be more or less evil than other regimes of the 20th century, but I did wish to point out that it was not simply a matter of wanting someone's land or company, and then going back to invent reasons why they were Jewish. The Nazis' fixation was on Jewish blood, and they went to great lengths to carry out their "purification" schemes in what they thought was an "appropriate" manner.

Edit: clarify paragraph.
 
ranger999 said:
I won't offer an argument for or against why the Nazis might be more or less evil than other regimes of the 20th century, but I did wish to point out that it was not simply a matter of wanting someone's land or company, and then going back to invent reasons why they were Jewish. The Nazis' fixation was on Jewish blood, and they went to great lengths to carry out their "purification" schemes in what they thought was an "appropriate" manner.

Hate is an ill advisor, and when hate starts to dominate evil things happen. Fascism is a very bad companion to hate, especially when it makes people believe there are superior and subhuman races. All these regimes have to find an "enemy" - and the Jews had the extreme bad luck to be declared as the one and official enemy. But neither the extermination concentration camps were used exclusively for Jews (although the majority of the prisoners were Jews), nor it is the only mark of the Nazi's brutality: you can see with what ease they killed whole cities in occupied territories, just for their infamous "counter-measures". Quite simply, they had a very low respect for human life, and that lead them in disgracing the whole humanity.

Hitler and the Nazis are also too recent - we tend to forget earlier genocides, not because they were less severe, but because they seem to us more remote. I could easily provide here quite a few examples, but it's not this the point - so it will suffice to say that any genocide attempt is brutal, ruthless and inhuman, like the (very recent) genocide in Rwanda. I chose just a very simple example, but I could carry on with others - the common denominator in all of them is that there is NO mercy and humanity in such actions.

I agree with those that don't want Hitler in the expansion, but not because he was somehow more evil than others. I have big difficulties in calculating exactly the evilness, so I don't even attempt it. We can't use our current standards, that were shaped AFTER the Nazi attrocities, to compare Hitler, for example, with Genghis Han. For me, it is sufficient to say that I don't want him in the game because he embarrasses many people - giving special emphasis to the Jews and the Germans, but not excluding also the Slavs, the Gypsies, and many others. While I don't think it gives Hitler any kind of justification if he is included into a game, I don't see why you should go towards a direction that is embarrassing other people.
 
I would vote no, but the "NO" choices presented here have nothing do with with my reason for not considering Adolph Hitler a "Civilization worthy" leader.
 
I think the Teletubbies should be added as rogue hit squad bent on world domination!!!
 
ranger999 said:
Anti-semitism, on new-fangled "racial scientific" grounds (helped by good old Christian anti-semitism on older "they killed Jesus!" grounds) was a fundamental tenet of Nazi political & government philosophy. While the Nazis may have applied the Jew label to many they disagreed with, SilentDemon and others in the thread seem to be under the impression that this was no more than a matter of calling someone a counter-revolutionary or a terrorist. Yet this doesn't change the ultimate extermination policy that killed 5-6 million Jews. Unlike the Indians in America, whose children were seized, placed into boarding schools & beaten for speaking their native tongue, the Jews in the Third Reich were simply killed based on ancestry. That a few thousand "wertvolle Juden" survived doesn't mitigate this. If the Jews had "only" had their property stolen & been moved into crowded ghettos & left there at the time Germany surrendered, this discussion might be different and we'd be comparing them to Native Americans on reservations.

But instead, resources were expended on killing them on an industrial scale at a time the German war effort was faltering, for no reason other than that they were Jews. Instead of using the mass of them as slave labor, they were killed as the ideological imperative of the state to exterminate them took precedence over practical matters on a large scale. What you must realize is that they were killed on an industrial scale for being Jewish. Even after conquering Ukraine & western Russia, instead of simply killing everyone in sight, the Nazis left millions of Slavs were alive under their yoke to produce food & engage in slave labor. Low as they were on the racial totem pole in Nazi ideology, they were still considered useful as subjects & slaves. The Jews didn't even merit that, and the Nazis expended much effort on separating them out from the local population, when they could have killed on a more widespread scale with less effort.

Since an anecdote about a purportedly Jewish naval officer caught someone's fancy, I offer this in return: When Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D (one of the mobile killing squads in Ukraine & Russia) encountered an obscure Crimean sect known as the Krimchaks, he had to ask his superiors for directions, as he could not determine whether or not they were Jewish in ancestry. The answer he received from Adolf Eichmann: to err on the side of "safety", the Krimchaks were to be executed. (They were.)

I won't offer an argument for or against why the Nazis might be more or less evil than other regimes of the 20th century, but I did wish to point out that it was not simply a matter of wanting someone's land or company, and then going back to invent reasons why they were Jewish. The Nazis' fixation was on Jewish blood, and they went to great lengths to carry out their "purification" schemes in what they thought was an "appropriate" manner.

Edit: clarify paragraph.

"Anti-semitism, on new-fangled "racial scientific" grounds (helped by good old Christian anti-semitism on older "they killed Jesus!" grounds) was a fundamental tenet of Nazi political & government philosophy. "

Nobody is arguing that, I have simply said there are also other considerations to be had when discussing this time period and the usage of the phrase. It is not so simple as many people make it out to be.

Actually the terms are in very many ways synonymous. How many times have you seen american media refer to the insurgents in Iraq as "Terrorists," which by definition they usually are not. How many times in news and government have Iranians been referred to as "Arabs" which they technically aren't. There is a reason for oversimplification, it is propoganda and it very easily invokes nationalism.

"Yet this doesn't change the ultimate extermination policy that killed 5-6 million Jews. Unlike the Indians in America, whose children were seized, placed into boarding schools & beaten for speaking their native tongue, the Jews in the Third Reich were simply killed based on ancestry. That a few thousand "wertvolle Juden" survived doesn't mitigate this. If the Jews had "only" had their property stolen & been moved into crowded ghettos & left there at the time Germany surrendered, this discussion might be different and we'd be comparing them to Native Americans on reservations."

Agreed it doesn't change the extermination policy, but nevertheless Native Americans were on a percentage scale nearly annhiliated as a race, there are a few thousand left in the *world* today, compared to the millions that once existed and the millions of jews that still remain to carry on their legacy. This discussion shouldn't be being had you are right, Native Americans were treated equally badly if not worse in some instances. If you believe that they were only "seized, placed into boarding schools & beaten for speaking their native tongue," you have very little knowledge of this point in history. Native Americans were on many instances mutilated and decapitated, and also in many instances simply slaughtered by american armies. There are accounts of American military running around in a frenzy after battles with pieces of women and children strewn from their bodies (wearing things like uterus's on their heads) in celebration of their victory. Reservations may in many ways be compared with to concentration camps, as not only were natives starved in some instances but also forced into entire different ways of life than they had become accustomed, more so than the jews were changed culturally.

"But instead, resources were expended on killing them on an industrial scale at a time the German war effort was faltering, for no reason other than that they were Jews."

Were not Native Americans systematicly and industriously wiped out to serve westward expansion and economic / territorial gains just because they were native americans who were "there?"

"Instead of using the mass of them as slave labor, they were killed as the ideological imperative of the state to exterminate them took precedence over practical matters on a large scale."

Although it is true that the jews were considered lesser peoples and were in more instances left to die than not, they still were indeed on many accounts used for slave labor, so although your comparrsion has some merit it is not entirely accurate.

"Since an anecdote about a purportedly Jewish naval officer caught someone's fancy, I offer this in return: When Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D (one of the mobile killing squads in Ukraine & Russia) encountered an obscure Crimean sect known as the Krimchaks, he had to ask his superiors for directions, as he could not determine whether or not they were Jewish in ancestry. The answer he received from Adolf Eichmann: to err on the side of "safety", the Krimchaks were to be executed. (They were.)"

This supports my previous claim that the term "jew" was used to describe *anyone* who had differences of opinion or ideology from the system rather than being specifically attached to all those people of which had jewish ancestory.

"I won't offer an argument for or against why the Nazis might be more or less evil than other regimes of the 20th century, but I did wish to point out that it was not simply a matter of wanting someone's land or company, and then going back to invent reasons why they were Jewish. The Nazis' fixation was on Jewish blood, and they went to great lengths to carry out their "purification" schemes in what they thought was an "appropriate" manner."

Again, nobody has denied that this was the case, and your previous statements are very suggestive over trying to prove a case that they were "more evil." All that has been done has been to examine the situation further than the simplifications that you have provided as there are many other considerations to be made.
 
atreas said:
Hate is an ill advisor, and when hate starts to dominate evil things happen. Fascism is a very bad companion to hate, especially when it makes people believe there are superior and subhuman races. All these regimes have to find an "enemy" - and the Jews had the extreme bad luck to be declared as the one and official enemy. But neither the extermination concentration camps were used exclusively for Jews (although the majority of the prisoners were Jews), nor it is the only mark of the Nazi's brutality: you can see with what ease they killed whole cities in occupied territories, just for their infamous "counter-measures". Quite simply, they had a very low respect for human life, and that lead them in disgracing the whole humanity.

Hitler and the Nazis are also too recent - we tend to forget earlier genocides, not because they were less severe, but because they seem to us more remote. I could easily provide here quite a few examples, but it's not this the point - so it will suffice to say that any genocide attempt is brutal, ruthless and inhuman, like the (very recent) genocide in Rwanda. I chose just a very simple example, but I could carry on with others - the common denominator in all of them is that there is NO mercy and humanity in such actions.

I agree with those that don't want Hitler in the expansion, but not because he was somehow more evil than others. I have big difficulties in calculating exactly the evilness, so I don't even attempt it. We can't use our current standards, that were shaped AFTER the Nazi attrocities, to compare Hitler, for example, with Genghis Han. For me, it is sufficient to say that I don't want him in the game because he embarrasses many people - giving special emphasis to the Jews and the Germans, but not excluding also the Slavs, the Gypsies, and many others. While I don't think it gives Hitler any kind of justification if he is included into a game, I don't see why you should go towards a direction that is embarrassing other people.

I would agree with your conclusion except that Stalin and Mao (who are on the same scale of recentness) are in the game as is.
 
auldian said:
I would vote no, but the "NO" choices presented here have nothing do with with my reason for not considering Adolph Hitler a "Civilization worthy" leader.

Then you shouldn't have voted at all, or complained to the post creator (as you are invalidating this poll) :)
 
I woke up this morning to learn that the British NAZI Party have just doubled their number of councillors in the local elections. It's not a crisis yet, they've gone from being 0.1% of the (22000) seats to 0.2%, still a step in the wrong direction though. Oddest bit is, they seem to have done it by capturing a large amount of Asian votes.
 
:mad: NO SIRI BOB!!!

nobody should be allowed to be hitler.

i think also the game will be banned in Israel if it will be an opition cause he slashed 6,000,000 jews.
 
Commander Bello said:
It clearly is disgusting - to say the least - to see these "polls" come up again and again. Seems that certain people don't get their lesson from history.

About the argument "civ is a game for adult" people, I only can laugh. This thread clearyl shows that minors are attracted by controversal figures like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Drooling with excitement they seem to see themselves in a black uniform.
Absolutely disgusting!

i couldn't have said it better!

there is a limit to things - even thou it's "just a game"

people are getting to identify with the leader they are playing.
i know i was really felt closer to Alexander each time i play the greek, and went for a conquest.

i hate to think where will it put people in relation with Hitler may his name to be destroyed forever in hell.
 
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