The difference between good and evil...?

Question

"Adolf Hitler was a great man who did what he needed to for our future."

That is what history would tell us if WW2 had gone the other way, with Germany and the Nazi's winning the war.

For proof of this we need only look at (in this timeline) the US President that ordered the dropping of the nuclear bombs on populated semi-unprepaired Japanese cities, is he not regarded as having done what he needed to for our benefit.

Therefore my question is, is it not true that those who we regard as "evil dictators" and those who we regard as "great leaders in difficult times" are tard of the same brush, the only difference being history has gone with or against them?

What does this say for our present and future?

SERIOUS ANSWERS ONLY.
Please explain your answers.

I thank you in advance for your insight.

Answer 1

There is nothing is good and evil.....................

This is our standard and mentality that is deciding the good and evil. lets take your example of Adolf Hitler that whatever he did that was good if we take the standards of Adolf Hitler and Germany but in the eyes of friends countries it was an evil act.

US dropped bombs on the Japan... It was a good act to stop the greedy ambitions of Japan, but if we think about Japanese then it is an evil act from which they suffering yet now.

So if you will change the view of those people who wrote the history then this will be a swapping of evil and good act of our history.

So everything depends upon the mentality.

Good luck

Answer 2

Its all a matter of perspective. In my mind anyone who fights a war is negative and anyone who promotes co-operation over competition is positive. I don't believe in Good and Evil. Hitler did what he did becasue he was convinced that Germany's neighours were intent on wiping Germany from the map. The point at which he lost the plot was when he invaded Poland and enslaved Jews. If he had stopped at Czechoslovakia, History would have been much different.

George W Hitler on the other hand is just a crazy, greedy oil baron who wants to dominate the world. He is, in reality, an "evil dictator".
The US was never set up to be a democracy. It is a republic dominated by the business class. History will eventually record the US as an "evil empire".

Answer 3

Well Historians today still criticise Truman for this decision, they also debate weather FDR would have done the same. There is no way of knowing of course, History only has one real timeline. However, if you remember the United States stayed out of the war much to the frustration of the British and the Frnch until Pearl Harbor. So, we were in a way justified. Hitler, on the other hand blamed the Jews for no good reason (ironically he himself was a quarter Jewish) and praised the master race of blonde hair blue eyes (here again is contradiction.) He also broke his treaty with the USSR, after were off. The US did not bomb because we wanted to be the surviving master race,. However, we did bomb when we did because we had been working to beat the Germans to it, although it was German scientists like Einstein who invented the bomb. We did it to show that we were not to be messed with yes, but the difference is we didn't start the fight the Nazis did.

Answer 4

You have a point. American History is an exercise in great P.R. Somehow they put a positive spin on anything. But make no mistake. American leaders have been evil too. Americans are so patriotic they want to believe the best. The media & history books make them out to be heroes.

Everyone knows Hitler was evil. He's an obvious one. What about the sneaky, more insidious evil men (like Bush...though I suppose he's more of dopey figurehead than an evil mastermind...) What if American heroes were villains? What if there are conspiracies & cover-up stories preventing people from seeing the truth? It may be more subtle but senseless killing in the name of greed & power still goes on, doesn't it? (Let's invent a war & go steal all that oil from the middle east, distract people with the idea of terrorism so they're too fearful to know we're pulling the wool over their eyes...)

The difference between good & evil in some cases is just good public relations. I guess they didn't have spin doctors like we did now in WWII & as you said, if Hitler had won, who knows how history books would have been written? To the victor go the spoils...You don't want to piss off the guy in power...better make him out to be the good guy...

Answer 5

Adolf Hitler killed millions of Jews, Gypsies, and all other races that he thought were "unpure." The US president dropped the nuclear bombs because Japan didn't surrender to us when we declared war on them for dropping bombs on our Pearl Harbor. There is a difference. History would not tell us Adolf Hitler was a great man who did what he needed to for our future. I would tell us that Adolf Hitler fought hard for what he thought was right and "pure." The point that I'm trying to make is that those who we regard as "evil dictators" were people who did what they thought was right and influenced and tried to force others to think the same way. Great leaders in difficult times made their choices based on what would help other people.

Answer 6

The difference between good and evil is like the difference between light and darkness. Good exists; evil is the non existence of good. Light exists; darkness is the non-existence of light.
There is a planet that sends us light.There is no planet sending us darkness. Light has a physical source. Darkness has none. A room "full of darkness" can be transformed in an instant by just flicking a switch and all the darkness in the universe can do nothing to turn it off.
This analogy shows that what we call bad or evil is just the absence of good. For example to be cruel is considered bad. But cruelty is the absence of a moral quality which is kindness.
Cruelty is not caused by an unknown or malefic force, it is only the absence of a moral virtue in man which is kindness.

Hitler was a man with absolutely no moral virtue and as time went by he got worse and worse. Anyone who has read about his life reaches the same conclusion. But people usually feel sympathy for the heroism of the German people having to follow obediently a crazy man.
With Truman it was totally different. He was not a cruel, amoral, crazy and deranged person. And as terrible and unjustifiable it may seem to us, at this point of the evolution of the human society, the act of dropping not one but two nuclear bombs, on defenseless people, ready to surrender, we have to wait the outcome of the rapid transformation that is happening in the world, to better judge what great disasters this terrible act may have saved us from.

Answer 7

Thank you far a great STAR question!!

The difference between good and evil, in the ultimate analysis, is that good always outlasts evil. A majority of the world, including numerous citizens of the US do believe that the use of Bomb against innocent population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not just a blunder... that it was a major sin against humanity.

I disagree that history goes with the victors.... when long enough time has passed, the past events are seen more objectively than ever before and therefore, the good and the evil do get duly identified. The evil has such inherent frailties and contradictions that it inevitably brings its own downfall in due course of time.

Answer 8

Totally agree..it is all about perspective. Keep in mind that Hitler WAS a bad guy, as are many others...But if you look at modern times, we have current showdown (kinda) between the US president and the Iranian president. Many in the US probably view the Iranian president as evil without realising that history will prove Bush to have been evil also. It is all a matter of perspective...history (hindsight) is 20/20.

Answer 9

It is very true that history is written by the victors. But good and evil are not ultimately defined by historians. Good and evil are judged by God. Old Adolf may very well have had the German people's best interest at heart to a point. That point being when it became evident that armistice was in the best interest of Germany. At that point he did not choose armistice. He chose to destroy Germany with as much determination as he applied to the destruction of Stalingrad. This would indicate to an historian that in hindsight and only with the benefit of observing actions concurrent with defeat are the quality of the leader's values truly transparent.

Answer 10

The thing is you are comparing Hitler who systematically killed 6 million people in an attempt at racial cleansing to a man who as a last resort bombed 2 cities in order to end a war that the Japanese were not prepared to give up on. The president in essence save lives on both sides compared to a man that took the lives of minorities. Bad arguements that don't make sense, so step up your facts before you step up to the plate.