That just makes me a realist

If you respond to my claim that they are evil in my subjective opinion, which I clearly labeled as such, that they're not "objectively, absolutely evil", that doesn't make you a realist, that makes someone who is talking to himself and his strawmen. You say you wished people would drop a notion you introduced into all of this to begin with. Stop being a clown.

The thing is, we're describing historical figures. Our "subjective opinions" are not really helpful guides. Or, to be more accurate, they don't matter at all.

You keep repeating it's your "subjective opinion" as if that somehow makes it OK. A subjective opinion can be wrong. It's not like one can get away with saying "In my subjective opinion gravity doesn't exist".

Or, to be more accurate, it's one thing to say that you find what Hitler DID was evil or that he was an evil-doer (as a substitute for "bad") and leave it at that.

And it's totally another thing to say "Hitler was evil", as if that is some kind of explanation of his actions.

The first is mighty fine. The second is not. And I'm concerned with the latter mistake here which is a BS non explanation, analogous to "cargo cult programming", and it doesn't matter if one means it as his subjective opinion or as an objective observation.

In both cases, it hinders further and real understanding.

To get to why Hitler was like that and why he did what he did you go for the underlying causes. For the person it's his history, his ideological influences, experiences, mental issues, abuses, etc. For the German society in general the causes are historical, sociological, economical, cultural, etc.

Nowhere in those cases does "evil" come into play at all.

But the concept of "evil" is still very useful. The point of defining evil is so that you can teach people not to be evil. Humans may not have a "conscience" that comes from God, but our brains have evolved for a sense of conscience that can be cultivated via the social pressure of parents, family, friends, teachers, and leaders. The point of calling a person evil is to tell people, "Do not be like this person! This person was evil! If you are acting like this person act, you are a bad human being, and you should feel very bad about yourself and stop immediately."

In the case of the rise of Hitler, yes, there were events that led to his rise. But the rise of Hitler was not inevitable. Had Hitler been raised with a stronger, better moral compass, had the people who enabled his rise possessed a better moral compass, the war and the Holocaust would not have happened. After the war, the American occupiers rebuilt the education system to teach people that what Hitler did is evil, in order to install a moral compass that would prevent a repeat of the Holocaust from happening again. The Holocaust was not a tragic accident, it was not a necessary proportional response needed to prevent some other acts of suffering, the Holocaust was an act of evil. It should be labeled as such so that people's consciences will work to prevent it from happening again.

>But the rise of Hitler was not inevitable. Had Hitler been raised with a stronger, better moral compass, had the people who enabled his rise possessed a better moral compass, the war and the Holocaust would not have happened.

Things could have happened differently, but the war was more or less unavoidable due to the Versaille treaty. Hilter was just one man -- millions of Germans wanted "war" and were enraged with the treaty even before Hitler became known.

>After the war, the American occupiers rebuilt the education system to teach people that what Hitler did is evil, in order to install a moral compass that would prevent a repeat of the Holocaust from happening again.

What? This is extremely condescending to the German people. They knew very well what they did, and the rebuilding of the educational system has nothing to do with their "moral compass". You really believe that they needed ...Americans to instill a "moral system" onto them?!!! As if Americans are ...morally superior people?!!!

Had the Versailles treaty actually been enforced, had the winning powers actually declared war on Germany early in the 1930's when Germany violated the treaty, and before Germany had significantly rearmed, Hitler would have been quickly defeated.

Hilter was just one man -- millions of Germans wanted "war" and were enraged with the treaty even before Hitler became known.

Yes, but Hitler was a genius at using that hate and at giving the Germans a renewed sense of their latent power. The desire to rearm and invade eastern europe to steel their land was the great brainchild of Hitler, no other German leaders at the time had anything close Hitler's level of megalomania.

What? This is extremely condescending to the German people.

To be clear, it was not just Americans who rebuilt the education system. It was the Americans in conjunction with the leaders of the German resistance (who were now promoted into power) and the general population who were disillusioned with war. The prestige of victory is such that the Americans did need to use all that repressive methods to wipe out Nazi ideology.

You really believe that they needed ...Americans to instill a "moral system" onto them?!!!

Well, the Germans sure did not do it themselves in the 1930's before the American occupation! Germans had an ethical system then, but it was the ethics of Jenger's Storm of Steel - "Time only strengthens my conviction that it was a good and strenuous life, and that the war, for all its destructiveness, was an incomparable schooling of the heart..". The American victory taught Germans that the way of evil conquest was not an acceptable path, that it led only to ruin. The Nuremberg trials, the new German constitution, de-Nazification, a rebuilt education systen, etc, all ensured that German morals would be much more pacifist in the future.

As if Americans are ...morally superior people?!!!

The Americans of 1940 were morally superior to the Germans of 1940. Is there really any argument about this? Now, whether the Americans of 1835 were more moral than the Germans of 1940 is a different question. (It is striking how similar the concept of Lebensraum is to the concept of Manifest Destiny)

It means you make up stuff about my position and respond to that, instead of responding to my actual position. And now you just Dunning-Kruger on and on about generalities in a shallow way, as if I didn't know all of that and more of what you post. WTF.

it's totally another thing to say "Hitler was evil"

No, it's a shorthand for saying "I disapprove of his actions". It's stupid enough to outright claim what I mean by that, but now that I told you OVER AND OVER, to simply ignore it and bang on about your strawman instead is just pathetic. Cut your losses dude.

It's the worst possible way to say that you "disapprove of his actions".