The man doing the economic tricks to put the economy back on its feet/rebuild the German military (the two sides of one coin in my opinion) was Hjalmar Schacht, head of the Reichsbank and one of those technocrats with a brain the size of a planet. Basically he found a clever way to finance the military build-up that didn't show up until it was too late for Germany's old foes. He used a shell company's paper to create another, hidden form of national debt (mefo notes) that was about 60% the size of the official one plus he found many ways to focus funding on the military.
It was pretty clear to all involved that Germany was set on a course of aggression, persecution and extermination from about 1935 and anyone who has done the most cursory reading in what went on can find this fact out; it has been extensively documented.
To say something like, "I can't really say," of Hitler's role in the Second World War and the Holocaust, as Mr Ecclestone basically did might be fair enough if he had said nothing at all. Instead he picked a couple of things that can appear positive when taken out of context but whitewashed the obvious guilt of Hitler and his Nazi regime in much larger things. This simply seems to show that Mr Ecclestone finds the basic idea of dictatorship attractive enough to overlook the reality of Hitler's rule.
The next race on the calendar is the German Grand Prix. It will be interesting to see which local pols are willing to be photographed shaking hands with Bernie or Max. The German gutter press can hardly wait for this, I bet.
Basically he found a clever way to finance the military build-up that didn't show up until it was too late for Germany's old foes. He used a shell company's paper to create another, hidden form of national debt (mefo notes) that was about 60% the size of the official one plus he found many ways to focus funding on the military.
Haven’t we got some rather clever chaps who have done something similar? Except they’ve managed to “focus funding” away from the military.
Well, you know that Hitler didn't come up with the idea of the Autobahn. On the other hand when the Gestapo served you with an eviction notice to make way for one that got things done, for sure. No hippies sat in trees to get in the way in those days, no sirree!
Certainly motorsport was a great success in the early Nazi period; perhaps this is part of why Bernie seems to think that Adolf was basically a cool dude with a few character flaws.
Another thing Bernie probably missed is the essentially disorganised nature of the Hitler regime. The way he kept control was by having his underlings all wrapped up in power struggles. The keyword was dilettantism; the Third Reich had very few people who really had it together and a whole lot of crackpots and quacks.
Even some of the geniuses were pretty useless, such as Wernher von Braun, using scarce resources (and a lot of slave labour) to build his rockets which had very little military effect.
Or am I missing something here and underestimating Bernie Ecclestone? Here I am calling him ignorant for not understanding the basic nature of A. Hitler & Co., the way Adolf kept control, wiped out his enemies (well, many or most of them, anyway), stayed right on top of a heaving madhouse of competing factions that developed technically brilliant and mostly useless stuff... Am I describing aspects of the Third Reich or Formula One?
On the physical side both these guys look a bit deficient yet the former one was well-known for attracted swooning crowds of females and the latter one attracted and kept a giantess of a trophy wife for lo these many long years so that he must have more than just a big wallet to be able to do that.
Even some of the geniuses were pretty useless, such as Wernher von Braun, using scarce resources (and a lot of slave labour) to build his rockets which had very little military effect.
Von Braun was always more interested in the achievement of a viable space rocket than a military weapon. The V1 and V2 were exceptional pieces of engineering produced in barbaric circumstances.
I am sure that NASA and the Apollo engineers and scientists would dispute your "pretty useless" label but I think I understand you to mean that his contribution to the German war effort was mimimal in the scheme of thimgs. Good thing too!
His creations certainly killed a lot of people in London though.
You certainly wouldn't want to be in the lethal radius when one of those V2 thingies came in but as a military weapon it was pants! Lots of hard work and scarce alloys to drop a rather small quantity of high explosive somewhere in London... seems like a waste to me but then one could argue it kept Wernher from getting up to even bigger mischief making something deadlier.
So can we look forward to Max walking off with Bernie tucked under his arm?
The name says it all. Retaliation on the Allies for bombing Germany. Just a sop to the Germans to take their minds off looming defeat. However if they'd got further with the atomic bomb things may have been different
While Adolf did not invent the idea of the autobahn,he did embrace them and continue building them on a huge scale,probably for military reasons as much as anything.
Although the Nazi's did have their share of loonies....it did take the combined resources of the Allies to defeat them.They had their share of very clever people who luckily were sidetracked and/or ignored and never used to their complete effectiveness...
It has been said that Adolf was a very charismatic person and fun to talk to at a party and only became dangerous when he stood in front of 30,000 people ....
You have to ask yourself why BE has said that people like Adolf,the Taliban etc...are to be admired.No small wonder then why he is a friend of the spank me man.
I doubt anyone will see Bernie at the German Grand prix....thankfully.
Whilst I in no way support what Adolf Hitler represented, I do feel that 'the Germans' cannot see things in anything other than black and white.
It's too simple to say that Hitler was bad (though he was). He certainly managed to get (some) things done . . .
In my opinion, there were things (such as the autobahns) that were good for both Germany and Europe. It seems that, like Basil Fawlty, Germans don't know how to be moderate in their expression of things involving Adolf H. Why can't they be reasonable and judge the various attributes for their worth?
For reference, I despise all anti-Semitism (or, indeed any racism) especially the Holocaust. Germany, however, created many excellent aircraft during the 1930s and 1940s (even though the purpose for their creation was 'wrong').
The story goes that when Hitler was told of the nuclear process and that it was a jew that conceived the idea he ridiculed it and stopped any further funding for the project development.
Asks one alert contributor here. Good question, well put.
Just sticking to motorsport, the Nazis funded some amazing developments by Mercedes and Auto Union but, of course, had to mess around with details such as having at least one star driver, Rosemeyer, in the SS, with it still a matter of dispute whether he was forced to join or did that of his own volition. I think you could call that "reasonable" so long as you use Nazi logic; it is pretty much the same as putting the sponsor's name on the car. On the other hand, was it "sporting?" Well, probably not!
When Bernie says that he's an idiot (Here in Germany that's translated as "Dummkopf") I think he means that he's an idiot for saying exactly what he thinks, not for thinking what he thinks. Hey, does he have more money than many small countries? That entitles him to his opinions in the eyes of himself and many others, I think.
It's pretty much the same as Max Mosley being exposed as having a rather perverse sex drive tainted further with Nazi associations; that is nothing to do with his role as head of the FIA, or so he feels. Well, in a world that let Michael Jackson prance around on stage with his troupe of children who is to say that he's unreasonable to think that?
I hope that these two will now have to exit the stage, go off to enjoy their wealth and their odd hobbies, even if what they really want is to have it all, rubbing our pleb noses in their perversity.
"Reasonable" can be doing whatever you reasonably expect to get away with. Hitler was reasonable until late 1939 if you look at it that way. Bernie Ecclestone was being reasonable to share his thoughts on Hitler, etc. When that turned out to be a mistake then he made a reasonable apology that now turns out to be unreasonable in turn. So, what should this insanely wealthy dwarf do now, just go away and leave us alone? Be reasonable!
I think there is a certain amount of confusion here.
There is a difference between Germany,it's population and the Nazi party.The Nazi party like a number of other previous events throughout the world are history.
Quote:
Why can't the Germans be reasonable?
How can anyone say an entire race is unreasonable?
That statement is in itself irrational and prejudiced.
The problem with aligning yourself with anyone is that you take the good with the bad.To say that Hitler was good because he was decisive has to take into account that he was responsible for genocide on an immense scale.Simply because someone is capable of making difficult decisions does not excuse them of being a murderer.
This is just one more example of the leadership that runs the sport of formula one.
Warning: Some of these posts may contain traces of irony!
Of course you cannot label an entire group of people, the Germans, as unreasonable. Some of them are quite insane while others are merely very, very difficult so that there is always a broad spectrum to consider and the narrow term "unreasonable" will not stretch that far.
Consider the Romans, who came, saw, conquered and then shook their heads, gave up the whole idea of ruling Germany as a bad idea and went away again, back to France. Quite a reasonable decision, that one, and one I wish I had made myself...
No, the joke in that was, I think, that the Germans should take some sort of balanced, "reasonable" look at the disaster that was the Hitler period. Sort of like saying that, well, the SS did have rather spiffy uniforms, that is very much beside the point or, taken to extremes, flatly illegal in Germany itself.
Eva Hermann and Bernie should get together, especially given that he must be looking for a new mate. They could put their heads together to sift through the wreckage of the Hitler period looking for the good stuff. For him, the Autobahn, for her the promotion of the woman's role in family life, when if you bred prolifically enough, you got a medal. Ah, yes, those were the days!
There's always a pull on the weak-minded from the neat toys that were there during the Nazi period. Just look at any Mercedes-Benz or Auto Union racing car from the Thirties. My God, what a piece of engineering, so far ahead of anything else on the track. Is it reasonable, though, to divorce that machine from its context, when it served to promote a terrible regime? No, I think reason tells us to keep things in context, to look at the whole of the Nazi period rather than to cherry-pick a few technical accomplishments but ignore the rest. What was here being criticised as being unreasonable is actually being very reasonable indeed, drawing logical conclusions from the whole instead of just jumping to a conclusion from a part.
That was exactly what the Nazis wanted, of course. They often slapped their swastika brand on things that had been developed by their political foes, such as the famous Zeppelin airships, to take the credit for something that had nothing to do with Nazism per se. To say, "Hitler, Autobahn, blah-blah-blah," is exactly what they tried to get people to say.
Interesting responses - and I accept the flaws in my argument (which I admit is 'uncertain').
I don't entirely approve of AH any more than I completely condemn BE. I don't believe that you can unconditionally endorse the actions of others - especially those with strong characters who sometimes act autocratically. Who can approve of every decision of our governing politicians?
We can form opinions to either support or oppose the policies of a political party but rarely will every proposal meet with our unconditional approval.
My suggestion that 'Germans are unreasonable' was prompted by decisions such as causing Eva Herman to resign because she endorsed the creation of autobahns as being a creation of Adolf - which was both correct and incorrect (he didn't invent them but he facilitated their expansion). Only Greenies would deny the benefits that autobahns brought to Germany IMO.
I grew up in the UK in the shadow of WWII where everything German was either never mentioned or considered to be somehow poor or ill-intentioned. When I visited Germany and discovered such things as the Dornier X (which I had never previously heard of) and also learned of the civilian applications of the Zeppelins (which I had been taught were evil war-machines) I had to realign my appreciation of pre-War Germany. Of course there was the VW Beetle - which was both a technical success yet also a flawed design (swing axles) - which was said to be a product of Hitler's personal involvement. Was that a good or a bad thing? In the same vein was the Trabant a wholly bad thing when it allowed (some) East Germans to become car-owners? Like bubble-cars (which originated in Germany) they served for a while to 'liberate' some who wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford a 'proper' car.
In the light of concerns (whether justified or not) about global warning and climate change there is a case for vehicles that use smaller engines that use less hydrocarbon fuel instead of our current style of vehicles that can accelerate rapidly to speeds that far exceed the National Speed Limit. What would be the effect (beneficial and otherwise) of restricting all vehicles to 70mph (or 60mph or 80mph) and limiting acceleration to levels that were commonplace and 'acceptable' in the 1950s? Our demand for speed and power means greater fuel consumption. Trucks which used to manage with 150hp are now provided with 500-700hp (though are limited to 56mph).
Britain no longer dominates (if we ever did) in vehicle and engine design. Many buy German vehicles (which have become 'acceptable' to many) - but these emanate from the 'new' Germany rather than the Third Reich (which was a 'bad' thing).
