While I can't remember the source, there's a quote that goes " eventually, every thread/forum about a controversial subject ends with a comparison to Hitler/Nazis."

Since the people who were trying to warn the Jews of 1930's Germany that bad things were comming probably experianced the same denial that we are going thru, does anyone have links to famous quotes and warnings of the 1930's?

I've been personally getting a lot of "don't worry, they will fix it". I've been replying "and in the 30's you would have said don't worry they (nazis) aren't really going to be a problem" I'd love to be able to respond with a quote or 2 from that timeperiod.

-- jay kusnetz (jayrtfm@hotmail.com), September 03, 1998

Answers

"People are more likly to believe the big lie, than the small one"- Adolf Hitler

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), September 03, 1998.

I've seen it stated as Goodwin's(?) law: any thread of discussion that mentions Hitler or the Nazis has come to the end of its useful life and should be put out of its misery. Not sure if this is supposed to apply to threads that do so at the outset, or to entire discussion groups. Nevertheless, the noise to signal ration of this bulletin board is definitely increasing. (don't take this as a personal attack; it's a general observation about the whole discussion group as judged by myself on a statistical basis).

At the very least, before people post here I wish they'd read and digest Ed's book and the web references that it contains!

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), September 04, 1998.

I think a lot of people in charge of these projects are lying to themselves. I know a company who is implementing a Year 2000 compliant system worldwide to replace their non-compliant one, and the implementation schedule extends into 2001. Every one is aware of this schedule and no one has challenged it. Who can admit that they are going to fail? Not me.

To answer your question, a lot of people have been quoting Winston Churchill lately. I'm sure a web search would turn up some quotes.

-- Amy Leone (aleone@amp.com), September 04, 1998.

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has complete gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more effective; and the world will follow our lead into the future."- Adolf Hitler, on the occasion of signing German'ys "crime" bill,1935---- "our streets will be safer, our police more effective; and the world will follow us across the bridge to the 21st century" Bill Clinton, on the occasion of signing additional "crime" legislation, August,1996

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), September 04, 1998.

Funny you should ask. Here is a section of a paper on the topic of Jewish response to y2k:

One area of interest is finding any quotes on the ethics of warning people of impending catastrophe. Telushkin notes that no major Jewish figure actually predicted the Holocaust, the Polish politician Vladimir Jabotinsky made an apparently prescient speech a year before the Nazi invasion of Poland: "For three years, I have been imploring you, Jews of Poland, the crown of world Jewry, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly that catastrophe is near. My hair has turned white and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you ... do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction .... Time is growing short for you to be spared .... Listen to my words at this, the twelfth hour. For God's sake: let everyone save himself, so long as there is time to do so, for time is running short." -- Vladimir Jabotinsky, cited in Benjamin Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World, page 364 Telushkin notes that this quote is often misunderstood. Vladimir Jabotinsky thought the threat was a weak Nazi Germany being confronted by an external power. Once Germany launched its invasion of Poland, Jabotinsky understood the new danger immediately. From my point of view, the important issue is the extent Vladimir Jabotinsky went to make his point about the dangers facing the Jews of Poland (i.e. working so hard that one's hair turns white and one grows old). Other than this quote, I cannot find anything directly bearing on the issue of how far one has to go to warn others of impending disaster, especially a disaster that seems so theoretical or non-existent to others. Perhaps the reader of this paper can find additional quotes on this issue. 

-- David Holladay (davidh@rdcbraille.com), September 04, 1998.

With due respect, I'd rather not.

The "Nazi" hot buttons I've found ar ejust that -- most often screamed by liberals (Titantic-romatic noveled-beanie babed emoticons in love their "feelings") and seldom (never) are intelligently used by htinkers and planners.

Learn from history, but keep politics and engineering separate. Focus on the process.

By the way, one important thing to remember (comparing current to past events) in terms of general instability: in 1918-1923 Germany was scrabbling in dumps and coal piles, starving with 1000%+ inflation. No army, no navy, no submarines, no air force, no civilization, (no nukes, no rockets). From that (in ten years) they grew to a substational military power. In 5 more years they grew to superpower.

Russia (and Eastern Europe/Mideast) are in deep economic troubles, but have a complete military foundation in place......they don't need ten years to climb out of the grave.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 04, 1998.

More from Bill- "And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When person freedom's being abused, you hav to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to make people safer in their communities"-3-22-1994,MTV (TEL) "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans...."-USA TODAY,3-11-1993, page 2a

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), September 04, 1998.

I once dated a lady whose grandparents had emigrated from Poland. It seems that during the period just prior to the rounding up of the jews in that country (don't remember the exact years, unfortunately), her grandfather had started feeling that something evil that way was coming. He tried to tell his family, and his fiancee, none of whome wanted to see what he saw. He finally decided that he had to act, and so bought a train ticket out of the country, and told his family to meet him at the depot if they wanted to come. At the last moment, only his fiancee showed up, and they did indeed get out of the country. They went back after the war and tried to find out what happened to his family. It seems that the very next day, the entire family was rounded up and sent to concentration camps. They never found any of them or found out exactly what happened to them after that, but assumed they all died. This is a true story, the moral of which, I suppose is that you make your own decisions, and you act accordingly. You cannot save everyone, you can only do your best, and sometimes there are no second chances.

-- Damian Solorzano (oggy1@webtv.net), September 05, 1998.

"What luck for rulers, that men do not think"

Adolph Hitler

-- leslie (leslie@ris.net), September 10, 1998.