Was there a point to this, Matthew? FWIW, I completely agree with Kennedy here. It's only recently, now that those who lived during his lifetime are mostly gone, that a rational assessment of Adolf Hitler is even possible. He still comes off as a very bad man, but "one of the most significant figures who ever lived" is surely an accurate assessment. What else could we call the man who touched off the biggest war in history and rearranged the great-power map, eclipsing the British Empire and bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to dominance, and as a side-venture took actions that resulted in the founding of the state of Israel and decades of turmoil in the Middle East that followed?
Hitler's achievements are as extraordinary as his crimes. He took over the government of Germany when it was in a shambles, restored order and prosperity, tore up the Versailles Treaty, and achieved unification of most ethnic Germans in central Europe under a single government without going to war.
Then he did go to war, which proved to be a disastrous mistake. Under the cloak of war, he initiated history's most infamous genocide. But it's important nonetheless not to demonize him, because what he did, others might do, and it's important to understand how he achieved the success he did. And you can't understand someone if you're determined to make him a boogie-man.
Some Germans saw the danger in Hitler and opposed him from the beginning (and usually ended up in concentration camps). But most Germans supported him wholeheartedly, adored him even. Why was that? What is it about people that leads them to support strong, even harsh, leadership at the expense of their own liberty, even if it leads to disaster? What Hitler gave Germany in the beginning is clear enough, and perhaps explains his popularity, which lasted until the war began to be lost. It's something any free people must be aware of as a possible danger, and guard against.
