Did Hitler realize he was being evil?

Question

I've heard before that Hell is a state of mind-of being without God-but do you think Hitler thought that way?

Answer 1

I agree with Elliot up above. Hitler was doing whatever he could to create a thousand year reich for the Aryan people. The ends justifying the means.

Besides, if he had gotten away with the WORLD domination he wanted, who would have ever known? HIstory is written by the winners.

Answer 2

Someone with an antisocial personality disorder may not think twice about killing, even though he knows its completely wrong. These kinds of people are very frequently what anyone would describe as hard core criminals, and spend their entire lives in and out of prison.

But Hitler's behavior was different. He was well mannered and knew how to please people at the right moment. He gave the impression of being a savior. And I think he beleived himself that he realy was a savior. He wasnt a tyical psycopath!

And he beleived he was doing good. He planned the Holocaust carefully and reasonably. And the extermination of the Jews was his whole agenda, so that even as he was obviously losing the war, even as the Americans were approaching, he still increased the number of Jews deported, untill the final moments.

And thats the way with sin, that even the worst sinner can actually think hes doing the right thing - at least thats what I heard from a a forensic expert dealing with pedophiles, who was also a franciscan.

Answer 3

Here's the thing about evil. All evil begins as a pursuit of some good. This good is often thought of as the greatest good by the person pursuing it. Hitler thought it would be good to have a strong Germany again, after the bitter defeat and obscenely unfair peace settlement of World War I. Germany was a mess, with no sense of order or direction, inflation was murderous. Hitler was determined that situation should end.

To put his intentions into practice he needed power. He worked very hard at getting power. His methods were brutal and often illegal, but he had to save Germany at any price, and to do that, he had to have power.

He interfered with elections, his "brown shirts" beat up political opponents, but he got the power.

Now he could save Germany. And for a time it appeared that he was doing just that.

But he had to hold onto the power. Anything that even looked like a threat to power had to be crushed before it could interfere with his saving of Germany. The Jews were internationalists and socialists and as such, could not be trusted. Remember it was "Deutschland Uber Alles."

The virtue of love of one's country became rabid, paranoid nationalism, and nationalism, wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "leads inevitably to war."

Hitler took what began as something good, and made it evil.

Lord Acton wrote "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is why we must always be careful that too much power doesn't get into the hands of too few people.

Awful things can happen, even if those people believe that they are doing good.

Answer 4

Honestly, I believe Hitler knew God exists. But I also believe that Hitler did not care about what he was doing. There are people with antisocial personality disorder which I learned about in a Psychology 101 class. Such people have no conscience, it's like the lights are on but no one's home. Unfortunately when you combine that with a man of Hitler's persuasions and talents, the mixture will be deadly.

Hitler was very much into the occult, things "hidden" from regular orthodox beliefs. If Hitler really wanted to be with God, he would have never done what he did. The ultimate realization for him, should have been "What you have done unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Answer 5

Frankly, I don't Hitler thought about much of anything regarding heaven or hell. According to a program I saw on the history channel a few weeks ago, Hitler did everything he did because his mother had been told by a "seer" (prophet) that her son would grow up to be a king....and that he would be known throughout the world etc. She raised him with that idea in mind and it took. Hitler was an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur and he used religion and the purity of the line as his excuse for living up to the prophecy. Sad day for the world.

Answer 6

Hitler was insane, so I think that he truly believed in what he was doing. Though, sometimes for the insane, evil can be relative. They may state that, in fact, they are not the evil people. The evil people are the people who are slowly starving the country of its own deserved income. The true evil people are the bankers and money changers that squander and cheat others out of money. That was his reason for killing Jews. Whether it is a good enough reason to take a human life or to have any kind of prejudice whatsoever is a different story. Sometimes, in a person's mind, evil may be a relative term.

Answer 7

I don't think that Hitler thought in terms of good and evil. Only in terms of what his perfect Nazi world was and what stood in the way of it. What brought that world into being was right, what stood in its way was wrong and had to be altered or eliminated. All Hitler could see was his kingdom and his power. I don't think good or evil ever came into it in his eyes.

Answer 8

Hitler thought he was doing good. Evil is a very subjective term.

Answer 9

There seems to be a theme tonight. The "How did Hitler think?" theme.

I have no idea, I can only speculate.

Hitler, to me, would have thought that the was something. I think I'll call it 'Politicianism'.

If you are suffering from Politicianism, you think that you are worth being voted for.

Answer 10

People can live good lives without believing in god and they are not evil or in hell.
Many of the things attributed to Hitler were the doing of his evil minions.