RE: Was Hitler evil

["Bernie Doeser" <bernie@doeser.org>]

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I thought Downfall was a very good film and gave the viewer a personal
perspective of Hitler. Last year I became addicted to "Heimat" the
docu-drama of typical German life during the 20th century. Heimat gave a
good perspective from the average German's point of view and showed how easy
it was for them to acquiesce over or even support the Nazi persecution of
the jews.

Dramas, to be entertaining, often deploy heros and heroines in order to
distil good and evil in a story. We live in a time when simple instant
answers are demanded and therefore most dramas tend to employ the
hero/villain character. When one sees heros or villains one must remember
one is viewing drama rather than history. Reality is often more complex and
responsibility for good and evil is really distributed throughout us all,
and it becomes aggregated by history and focussed by historical hindsight.
Some time ago we were asked to nominate "Philosophical Films" and I think
that films which avoid allocating blame and responsibility, but instead try
to show how something happened, like Downfall, fall into this category.
Insomnia is another good example of such a film. Most "Historical Drama" is
a compromise. For example in recent years we have seen American films hijack
the history of other countries. We must be vigilant to remember that the
entertainment business does not have historical accuracy at the top of its
agenda.

Leaders become leaders because they embody contemporary values. They touch a
nation's nerve. If they are effective they can then bring a nation's desires
to fruition. As such one would see Churchill (and Hitler to a lesser extent)
as successful. I think Bush and Blair will be seen as failures over Iraq as
they misread public opinion, rather than because of the death count, or
because of the consequences of the war, which they have remarkably little
control over.

On the subject of personal evil I would expect everyone to think that what
they were doing was right at the moment they did it. We make decisions on
the basis of knowledge, belief and to a large extent instinct. I once had an
argument with a management consultant who was blaming staff for "bad
behaviour" whilst I suggested that most people go to work with the intention
of doing a good job, but they may have different opinions over what
constitutes a good job. In that respect I do not think there is a case for
personal evil.

Most of our prison population has some form of mental illness. We classify
people who fail to be controlled by guilt as psychotic, or those who have a
poor grasp of reality as paranoid etc. etc. There is a circular definition
that says that if you behave "normally" then your behaviour will be good,
but if your behaviour is bad, then you are abnormal, and these days you
would be likely to be classified as having some form of mental illness.
Humans have a spectrum of forms of behaviour. Within the structure of
society abnormal behaviours are often criminalised on the basis of human
culpability. We are not consistent here as we treat "Bad People" at times as
culpable / responsible and at other times as ill / not culpable. I think
philosophy is good in enabling us to explore these inconsistencies, whereas
it has difficulty in coming to any conclusion on ethics.

Bernie Doeser
Sandiway, Cheshire, UK.






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