Who is this person?

[Moneyguy1]

The following are some very brief excerpts concerning a world leader. Care to guess who is being described?

"His most drastic revolutionary acts had to be brought into harmony with the law. If the existing law did not cover them, then the law had to be changed".

"(This leader) either by design or lack of creativeness, hit upon an elementary electioneering truth and has adhered to it ever since. An uneducated political public wants endless repetition of a few trite phrases; and he has kept on parroting certain phrases for over (number left out..don't want to give it away) years. A brainier individual would have wearied of this role of human (sound bite), but even today every speech is mainly composed of the same old generalizations, the same denunciations, the same old form of patriotism".

"Apparently he never reads very much beyond official papers....His personal rooms have no books...The written word has never had any appeal to him...He takes care, even today, to keep away from first-rate minds. He mistrusts intellect, even intelligence. Learning, as such, means nothing to him; he will do nothing to aid it, unless it be in the form of propaganda that may be of use to him".

"All the brutal sides of the (movement) pass him by. The repressions, the imprisonments, do not belong to the world of his imagination. He is too remote for them."

"He receives only the thrice-distilled views of (those) around him.Nobody can tell him anything or speak frankly, still less criticize his policy or himself.....Unless on accepts the view that he gets his inspiration directly from God, one must conclude that the future of (the nation) and the peace of the world rest on the mind of one man....."

"It is often maintained that he is a man of strong decisions. But may he not occasionally and jerkily take positive steps to convince himself that he is energetic- to cut the tangle of his own mental procrastinations? There are many opinions about this; but there is certainly a spasmodic appearance about his so-called rapid decisions that would appear to belie the interpretation that he is a man of action, thinking clearly and acting energetically."


Who is this person?

[techweenie]

Jeez, if it wasn't clearly a politician, I'd have said Steve Jobs!

[andrew15]

I'm guessing that this is a case of 'under a different light, Bush looks like a tyrant'

AM

[Moneyguy1]

Not at all. It is actual quotes from an actual biography of a world leader.

I simply found some of the quotes interesting, proving that time changes little when it comes to leadership style. If anyone reads more than that into it, that is not my intention. Ask yourself this instead:

How many world leaders have all or some of these traits?

[MrPants]

sounds kind of like Jefferson

[LeRoux Strydom]

Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe?

[tabs]

Ronnie tthe popular Reagan

[widebody911]

Hitler?

[djmcmath]

I was thinking Stalin, but he didn't really have any elections. Hitler was elected, per se, but none of the rest of it seems to fit. The repressions and imprisonments of the (movement) don't seem to fit anything in American history ... except perhaps the Civil Rights Movement?

I dunno, guess I'm not a historian.

Dan

[Hugh R]

Gotta go with Tabs on Reagan

[Moneyguy1]

I'll keep you guessing for awhile....

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Clinton.

[turbocarrera]

Ariel Sharon?

[tabs]

I thought of Stalin but he put bullets into peoples heads so he was not removed from thr opression.

Hitler fancied himself to be an artist and as such went with some pretty cutting edge ideas. Auto Bahn, VW, Blitzkrieg warfare. He also befriended Albert Speer who was a very bright man. He had Speer plan grandieous citys to be built...so Hitler did have bright people around him.

It could fit MAO... I just don't know enough about him.

[djmcmath]

FDR? Except I thought he was well-read, and could never pass for energetic, as he was in a wheelchair. Hmmm....

[Moneyguy1]

OK..enough is enough.

The book is "The House that Hitler Built"

by Stephen H. Roberts

published in (get this) 1938

That year Herr Hitler made the cover as Time's "Man of the Year". (actually the first January 1939 issue). Stalin was "man of the year" in the following year and also in 1942

[djmcmath]

Wow. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed, but it fits together now. Is the rest of the book any good?

Dan

[tabs]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1

He takes care, even today, to keep away from first-rate minds. He mistrusts intellect, even intelligence.


"It is often maintained that he is a man of strong decisions. But may he not occasionally and jerkily take positive steps to convince himself that he is energetic- to cut the tangle of his own mental procrastinations? There are many opinions about this; but there is certainly a spasmodic appearance about his so-called rapid decisions that would appear to belie the interpretation that he is a man of action, thinking clearly and acting energetically."


Who is this person?

As I said before this statement isn't wholly accurate...Hitler did have some very bright people around him...Alber Speer for one.


Hitler was lazy....living in Flophouses in Vienna before WW1, after becoming the Supream ruler of Germany he never had any work hours and would for months hang out a Berchtisgarten doing nothing. His followers would hanfg on his every word, write it down and go away and instiitute new programs which they hoped would please the Fuerher. Sometimes 2 or 3 people would institute the same programs completely independent of each other. Hitlers view was that a leader should just take control of as much power as he could carve out for himself. So the Third Reich was basically a bunch of fiefdoms carved out by Hilters various cronies all working at odds with each other. Thus in the Battle for the North Alantic the Navy and Luftwaffe hardly cooperated at all , neither trusting the other. So alot of oportunities were lost.

[techweenie]

Tabs. Speer may indeed have been very bright, but I can't think of a single other person in Hitler's inner circle that would merit that description. Speer may have been the only exception because like Hitler, he was an artist who understood the power of design.

As I understand it, even in Hitler's outer circle, smart people were pushed away or gotten rid of when they showed themselves to be 'too smart.'

[tabs]

Joesph Gobbels, Hermann Goering, Reihhard Heydrich, Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderain Ferdinand Porsche, Werner von Braun....

Goebbels and Goering were both very bright and ambitious men, even if badly flawed.

Goering last hurrah was at Nueremberg Trials, where he brillantly defended the National Socialist cause. Heydrich comes from the composers family,,,Manstein was the architect of the invasion of france in 1940. Guderain was the brillant founder of Germanys Panzer corp and architect of Blitzkrieg. Porsche and von Braun were the science and technology favorites of Hitler...

So to say Hitler didn't have some bright and capable people is false. But in general the Nazi Party was full of thugs and morons...