[A_C_Slater]

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The guy is fielding questions from forum members and answering them the best he can. What has been discussed has not been dictated by the OP and he has not shown any lack of desire to put his knowledge into a broader context. If you would like the discussion to go as such, why don't you ask him questions yourself?

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CW, perhaps I phrased my post too strongly. I'm not intending to attack the OP too viciously. I'm just commenting that the extremely narrow focus of his interest on Hitler the man seems curious.

And I respectfully disagree with you: he's shown several instances in which he has deliberately avoided gaining a broader context for his knowledge. For instance, he doesn't want to explore Nietzche and Schopenhauer any further, despite their being the philosophical launching-pads for the man he is interested in. He takes an agnostic sort of of approach to questions about the war more generally and the deaths involved in the "final solution" in particular. He's not interested in comparisons between Hitler and other demagogues.

I can appreciate OP's original reasons for being interested in Hitler, I just think that he's selling his own understanding of the phenomenon short by not looking a little further afield.

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This isn't a thread about Nietzche and Schopenhauer. From what I've read they hold very pessimisstic world views and hold survival of the fittest type ideologies. I'm not going to study philosophies from men that I feel are wrong and based upon misanthropy, in the same way I won't study philosophies regarding the myth of the Aryan Superman which is obviously false. As far not understading him in relation to other demagogues, I have read a biography on Stalin. Though he was more of a bureaucrat then a demagogue. I have also read a Lenin biography and he was more similar to Hitler in the way he acquited power via rhetoric. Stalin owed nothing to rhetoric.

And as far as ancient demagogues there is just not as much information about them as there would be a 2oth century demagogue. But what I do know is why Hitler had an interest in pessimisstic philosophies. A man that spent so much time living on the streets and in the trenches of WW1 would certainly take on a pessimisstic view.

It would nearly be impossible to rise above those experiences and assume a benevolent world view.