Hitler clarification

[sco!stewarte@ucscc.UCSC.EDU]

Oops, sorry about that last message.  It was a mistake, obviously.
However, I do want to respond to the following from Michael Mendelson 
<mendel@cs.uiuc.edu>:

>Well, you must have been dreaming because you have misinterpretted what
>I said.  (It appears that other people have done the same thing, so I
>will clarify what I meant.)  What I am expressly NOT saying is that Hitler
>should be viewed as the Devil, or some other non-human entity.  NO,
>not at all.  I agree with you and the others who have so correctly 
>observed that the scariest thing about the Holocaust and the Nazis
>was the fact that they (not just Hitler, but all of them) were human.

>My point, however, is that any attempt to include Hitler and the Nazi
>attrocities in a song (or any other art form for that matter -- with
>the exception of memorials set up to explicitly *commemorate* the
>slaughter of over 6 million people) and in particular in a song that
>romanticizes, even a slight bit (as you must admit KT's song does),
>Hitler or is cohorts, is dangerous, because it serves to partially
>eclipse the totally heinous nature of Hitler's actions, and these must
>in no way be diminished.

Certainly, I admit that the song romanticizes Hitler, in the sense that
it depicts him as charming and charismatic.  This shouldn't be a shock
to anyone who's seen a documentary on World War II or the Holocaust, as
nearly every one of them will tell you how charismatic a leader Adolf
Hitler was.  I think the crux of our argument is that I don't believe
that this trivializes his actions at all.  In my opinion, the best
memorial we can give the victims of the Holocaust is ensuring that
such a thing never happens again.  Remembering that even Hitler could
be charming helps us in that.  If Ronald Reagan had ordered us to
round up all the Jews and homosexuals, would we have gone along with
it because he seemed like such a nice man?  It's always the most
charming ones that are the most dangerous...

Just to clarify my interpretation, here are the sentences from Michael's
original posting to which I was particularly responding:

> Hitler's crimes against society are
> so heinous, that even a cautious reference tends to trivialize these
> acts.  I, and many to whom I am close, feel strongly that allusion to
> Hitler in any light (e.g. his human side, attractiveness in the midst
> of "devil," etc.), however fleeting and cautious, must simply be
> avoided no matter the temptation.

I don't think I was too far out of line in interpreting this as "you
shouldn't acknowledge Hitler's humanity".  And again, I have to 
disagree that it trivializes his acts.

>To put Hitler in a song of this type is to do him an honour that
>he does not deserve.

I'm not sure I'd say he's being honored...really, he's hardly a 
character in the song at all.  The narrator is the only real character
in this song, and the real story is about her horror when she realizes
just who she was dancing with.  So why did KaTe need to mention Hitler
at all?  Because he's familiar to all, and the scope of his atrocities
are pretty much universally acknowledged.  I fail to understand how this 
either honors him or diminishes the impact of the Holocaust.

Longwinded again,
                 Stewart