70th Anniversary of German Terrorism: The Beginning of WWII

So you subscribe to the "Great Man" theory of history?  I'm more with Tolstoy on this. Hitler was acted upon as much as he directed events.  He was surrounded by paranoia, xenophobia and greed, quatlities which haven't been unknown beyond 1930s Europe.

By the way, I didn't say "force of nature."  My use of "nature" meant more like "character."

In the HNN history documentary I watched, there were Germans who lived in Germany who said that most people didn't take Hitler very seriously. And they didn't believe European leaders would take him seriously. Hitler was a crazy man who would be routed in the next election as far as they were concerned. And there have been elections during the cold war era that were unfair and marred by violence, and where government soldiers guarded polling stattions and standing menacingly too close to frightened people casting ballots into transparent glass ballot boxes. In this hemisphere.

No. I am more in line with the view that there is a symbiotic relationship between persons (great "men" if you like) and the social relations that suround them. But the issue here is "nature" and intelligence. I think there is a clear distinction to be made between "social relations" and "nature". Social relations are in many ways a by-product of applied intelligence, and the intention of those who appeal to "nature" as the cause of human folly are just sidestepping the social responsibility of applying ones intelligence to bettering "social relations."

So for example one considers Stalin in the context of the social relations that suround him, while at the same time realizing that he is part and parcel of the process of creating those social relations. Was the Russian Revolution inevitable? I think so. Would there have been leadership to guide it if Lenin had slipped on the ice and froze to death in Finland? Certainly so. But at the same time these persons influence the outcomes to a greater or lesser extent.

I also think that some kind of tyrrany was more or less an inevitable part of that revolution, but I also think that the post Lenin leadership struggle itself intensified the infighting among the party brass, and as a result the most paranoid, ruthless and guileful one came out on top. I doubt that had Lenin continued in power into the 30's and 40's that he would have needed to assert his authority in such a bold and agressive manner, even though I think he was capable of doing so. But I doubt he would have needed to because his reigning authority had already been established in the revolution and the Civil War itself.

The party was his clearly. This was not so for those who came after.

Thus, I don't support alternate theories about Trotsky salvaging the revolution from Stalin. I see no evidence that he was any less ruthless. And indeed had he come to power, I believe very much that he would have had to assert the same kind of authoritarian measures to hold onto power. So, the relationships are simbiotic.