Oh dear... This is getting out of hand. To make it worse, let me say:
1) Napoleon was actually not too short. He was 5.2 french feet tall (obsolete measurement as they now use the metric system), which is about 5.8 english or modern feet. He was caricatured as short by English papers and it stuck.
2) He was not genocidal. Neither was Tito. They did not hunt down specific national groups, and their actions, otherwise intended, did not result at the extinction or near extinction of such a group. Ideologies aside, they should be placed at least on the border to lawful neutral.
3) I've made up my mind. Hitler was Chaotic Evil. He actually believed that might is right and that killing millions of people was good and a puspose in itself, not a means to an end.
4) Alexander didn't commit any outright genocide, or even extreme (for the morals of the time) attrocities in Asia. In fact he earned the wrath of his own generals, which neared open revolt at one point, because he treated the persians as equals to them. Maybe not because he was humanitarian but because he needed them to be king of the world instead of only macedonia, but for the time and place it was a huge moral leap. He did completely destroy Thebes in mainland Greece and killed his best friend on the other hand, so he can't be lawful good. I 'd say he was lawful neutral, bordering on neutral good, depending on how one evaluates his motives.
5) Placement in the allignment system is subjective.
3) I've made up my mind. Hitler was Chaotic Evil. He actually believed that might is right and that killing millions of people was good and a puspose in itself, not a means to an end.
I don't personally believe that Hitler was out to "kill millions of people for no other reason than to kill them". I've read nothing about him that suggests that he was the type of person that would pull the wings off of flies merely because he could. Was he evil? Quite probably. Were atrocities performed in his name? Absolutely. Am i trying to defend him or the Reich? No.
But....
He was attempting to bring his people back from the brink after WW1. They were starving and impoverished. He was attempting to build his race back up and ensure that they survived and thrived. In that, it was a means to an end that he eliminate what he saw as a drain on resources, and to leverage the resources available to ensure domination over what he perceived as his enemies. He was wrong in thinking that the people he was 'Getting rid of' were lesser in any degree, that much is true. did he need to go as far as he did or would have if he hadn't been stopped? I don't personally believe so.
But I don't for one minute believe that he attempted to commit genocide for the pure pleasure of killing loads of people. It was a means to an end. Still evil and wrong, but not done 'just because it was an end in and of itself'.
3) I've made up my mind. Hitler was Chaotic Evil. He actually believed that might is right and that killing millions of people was good and a puspose in itself, not a means to an end.
I don't personally believe that Hitler was out to "kill millions of people for no other reason than to kill them". I've read nothing about him that suggests that he was the type of person that would pull the wings off of flies merely because he could. Was he evil? Quite probably. Were atrocities performed in his name? Absolutely. Am i trying to defend him or the Reich? No.
But....
He was attempting to bring his people back from the brink after WW1. They were starving and impoverished. He was attempting to build his race back up and ensure that they survived and thrived. In that, it was a means to an end that he eliminate what he saw as a drain on resources, and to leverage the resources available to ensure domination over what he perceived as his enemies. He was wrong in thinking that the people he was 'Getting rid of' were lesser in any degree, that much is true. did he need to go as far as he did or would have if he hadn't been stopped? I don't personally believe so.
But I don't for one minute believe that he attempted to commit genocide for the pure pleasure of killing loads of people. It was a means to an end. Still evil and wrong, but not done 'just because it was an end in and of itself'.
I think he was Neutral Evil, his reasons were just for HIS people, of HIS religion, of HIS race. Ao we can't put him as good or even neutral, not all the people were a resouces drain (I can talk about that, in the country I live, more than 50% of the total population is totally poor, and they cause lots of trouble, also, our government is tyranic and everyone hates it, it makes more taxes each day, just to let the president keep the money for herself and use it to "make" things, as I say, to tell new lies, my country is a shame since the decades of the 50), think that there were lots of intele tual people of all races and religions, this wasn't the first slaughter of the century, in the previous one, the same happened. The thing was that Hitler was some sort of lawful evil, but he was a jerk, he didn't cared for others and, yeah, he thought slaughtering all the judes, black men and others in his country (and others!!!!) was OK for him, he thought of that as something that was helping out his country to grow.
But I don't for one minute believe that he attempted to commit genocide for the pure pleasure of killing loads of people. It was a means to an end. Still evil and wrong, but not done 'just because it was an end in and of itself'.
The end was to kill anyone who was not a member of the perceived master race. It was not the means to some other end. He was not going to tolerate them living in the other side of the globe. This pretty much decides the argument for me. Chaotic evil.
Yeah (…), lawful, neutral, or chaotic, all of the guys we're discussing were evil. Any argument to the contrary is misguided, at best. These were not good, (or even neutral), men. Edit: hey iOS, sometimes I want to use the word "were", and not the contraction "we're"! Geez.
But I don't for one minute believe that he attempted to commit genocide for the pure pleasure of killing loads of people. It was a means to an end. Still evil and wrong, but not done 'just because it was an end in and of itself'.
The end was to kill anyone who was not a member of the perceived master race. It was not the means to some other end. He was not going to tolerate them living in the other side of the globe. This pretty much decides the argument for me. Chaotic evil.
I disagree. I'd bet he 'SOLD' it as not allowing any of the race to survive, he might even have believed that. But I don't for a minute believe that he would have burnt his own house down to do it (the mark of a true zealot), at least not on purpose. I'm not saying not evil. I am not even saying not 'Chaotic Evil' (though I don't think that personally). I am merely saying that he wasn't a genocidal maniac with no other end other than the slaughter of another race. Or more specifically he didn't wake up one morning and say 'I am going to kill all of the jews, just because I want too.'
I don't like or agree with what he did. I abhor it in the extreme, but I do understand at least in part where it might have started. And it started with trying to get Germany out of debt and back as a major power in the world; not with 'I think I will commit genocide today.' Not that this excuses it, even a little bit. I also don't think that he was the one and only motivator behind it all.
To my mind, a Chaotic Evil leader on that scale would have done all of WW2 for the sole purpose of sewing chaos. I think they had goals which were more specific and structured than that. Evil? Sure.
@booinyoureyes I don't think that the gouvernment of Greece is so bad :P our country lies telling we are like OK, but I think the president never mentioned that they were stealing since her first day, that is worth mentioning, besides they ask for taxes and then they do not use the money, they move it to an bank account outside the country (t'was ovbious :P). And, yeah, the police didn't want yo work one day, so it ended up in something like a mass-looting over half country, what they did? A PARTY! Yeah, I only saw a worst government in our country, it ended in a civil war, the milician vs terrorists, a real mess, and now they blame those milicians for being merciless and "making a genocide" while half of the gouverment was actually part of the terrorist manifestation of the 70'.
To my mind, a Chaotic Evil leader on that scale would have done all of WW2 for the sole purpose of sewing chaos. I think they had goals which were more specific and structured than that. Evil? Sure.
Like Jagreen Lern, who let the Lords of Chaos enter the plane.
Jack, I don't think "austerity" is really the issue. It was the years of bad policy that forced austerity to occur. Germans are not responsible for our own irresponsibility. If the government hadn't been so incredibly short-sighted in their spending and if they hadn't then hid their borrowing for fifteen years they would not have had to take such desperate measures just to get by.
@the_spyder It's the other way around. The Nazis sold WWI revisionism to the German public to get them to support the plan for the eradication of inferior races. That is one of Hitlers main goals as laid out in his writings (that i did read, found to be delirious, and refuse to name). Everything came down to other races not having a right to life and land. Pure evil. A definite will to do harm and no notion of ordered society, save for the "fuhrerprizip", which means he simply wanted to do whatever he pleased. This is pretty much chaos for everyone else except him, to steal your own argument.
And he did let "his own house" burn down, rather than take even a reasonable step back. Think Stalingrad. Think Berlin. Think of how his own generals were afraid to tell him they were losing the war. How the most daring even tried to assasinate him, so that they could negotiate peace. You really got this the wrong way around.
And yes, he did start out as a disilusioned austrian corporal in the wake of WWI, but he wasn't just a revisionist. For him the outcome of that war was first and foremost the result of a jewish conspiracy. He actually believed that. The best documented case ever.
Yeah (…), lawful, neutral, or chaotic, all of the guys we're discussing were evil. Any argument to the contrary is misguided, at best. These were not good, (or even neutral), men.
That Hitler and Mao was "evil" is commonly agreed upon. But you also seem to say that Napoleon was evil as if it was a fact, but it is very much debatable (at least in modern history, except in British school books from the 19/20th century). I would rather have Napoleon as a head of state than ANY of the contemporary monarchs of that time that I know of.
I'd rather not be under any of their thumbs. There's an old saying: Napoleon was a great general - he just needed an income of 10,000+ men/month to replace the ones killed under his command. To say nothing of civilians. Napoleon was not a good man.
I'd rather not be under any of their thumbs. There's an old saying: Napoleon was a great general - he just needed an income of 10,000+ men/month to replace the ones killed under his command. To say nothing of civilians. Napoleon was not a good man.
Does that make MacArthur an "Evil" man as well? How many men died under his command? Or how about Washington? Or Lincoln?
Saying a General lost X men a month/day/year/campaign while prosecuting a war is only relative. Even "Needless" deaths are relative to the cost, the cause and the benefit. Stating that X number of men died under a leader's command isn't in and of itself indication of anything other than there were losses. Need more information here in order for the relevance to be clear.
@Michail - I haven't read any stuff personally written by Hitler, nor am I likely to. So in absence of additional arguments on my end, I concede your point. The funny thing is, if he had won, we might very well be arguing how Lawful Good the man was (what an utterly abhorrent thought). How's that for situational ethics? History has a tendency to play silly buggers with moral absolutes.
It wasn't the fact that he lost men under his command, it was that he was commonly known not to value their lives, repeatedly throwing reinforcements into various lost causes. To be clear, I'm not putting him on the same level as Hitler, Mao, etc., I'm simply saying he was not a good, or even neutral man.
Sorry, I still don't take that point. MacArthur kept on throwing troops in, apparently with no regard for them either. And ultimately that was a lost cause. The same with the Allies during WW2. The same can be said, I am sure, of just about any and every war ever fought, good or bad. War is hell. Soldiers die. Given the time and ethics, I don't think you can evaluate Napoleon based on that factor alone to determine his goodness or evilness.
To (miss) quote Yoda: "Wars not make one great." Nor do they make one horrible.
If you put the Helm of Opposite Alignment on a true neutral person, does the universe implode? Best we all stick to playing evil or good characters I guess.
I think worse was done during Vietnam. And I am not arguing that he isn't evil. Merely that the arguments put forth (X number of men died per month in what might be useless and fruitless manners) are not "Necessarily" indicative of being 'Evil'. Give more arguments and we might very well agree.
How about his Egyptian campaign where he poisoned his own troops, then eventually abandoned his army as he fled the scene? Or using sulphur dioxide to murder slaves in the Carribean, all in the name of quelling a rebellion? Or simply the fact that he intentionally left many of his most brutal orders unwritten, with only the results left to serve as evidence that he was no less than a war criminal?
The funny thing is, if he had won, we might very well be arguing how Lawful Good the man was (what an utterly abhorrent thought). How's that for situational ethics? History has a tendency to play silly buggers with moral absolutes.
This view of "situational ethics" really does not strike true with me. As an American I view leaders like Andrew Jackson as evil despite him having been the "victor". I think you are conflating the "public perception" of who was good or evil with Jack's opinion on the matter. Just because the public at large may have a skewed outlook on historical events, it does not mean that the people you are currently discussing this with view things the same way.
I also disagree (as we debated on a separate thread) that morality is entirely relative or situational. No matter what historical norms are, its hard to imagine ever seeing slavery or genocide (or even plain old fashioned murder for that matter) as anything but evil. Providing a reasoning or a *motive* for someone's abhorrent actions is quite different than providing an *excuse*.
Yes, it is easy to see why Hitler/Napolean/other assholes of history may have done what they did in a certain situation. This does not make it any less evil. I agree Napolean is a more difficult case, though I'd say his motivations were hardly benign. I'd also agree with you that Hitler was not Chaotic Evil but Neutral Evil. I think Chaotic Evil is more descriptive of people who find self-gratification in cruelty and are more entirely self serving rather than having loyalty to a given race/ethnicity/nationality/other arbitrarily classified community.
These kinds of threads never go well when non-fiction examples are brought in. I think you guys should stick to characters, rather than historical figures.
How about his Egyptian campaign where he poisoned his own troops, then eventually abandoned his army as he fled the scene? Or using sulphur dioxide to murder slaves in the Carribean, all in the name of quelling a rebellion? Or simply the fact that he intentionally left many of his most brutal orders unwritten, with only the results left to serve as evidence that he was no less than a war criminal?
Edit: spelling!
Those I would absolutely take as reasons to call him evil.
@booinyoureyes - Understand that if Hitler had won, we would be descendants of primarily Aryan stock and probably brought up on values of same. Freedom of speech, equality of races and other 'Values' which are indicative of our American Value system would have evolved over time much differently than they did. Where we now see him as a monster for committing genocide, if we were brought up by people who believed that (as horrible as this sounds) the Jewish people were evil and a lesser species, the extermination would have been no more or less abhorrent to these (fictitious) other selves than slaughtering cattle for beef.
As far as your argument about slavery being evil. I 100% agree that in today's ethics, it is evil. I would never condone it, nor would i partake or stand by while it went on. However, 200 years ago it was common place and very normal in most areas. It was no more evil than driving a car is today. And the further back in history, the more it is acceptable. The people of the south didn't think that Slavery was evil. They didn't consider themselves evil. Even some people in the north thought it was a reasonable way to do things, but that change was beneficial. Again, I do not condone it at all, and if I could wipe it from history and the collective consciousness, I would ABSOLUTELY do it. But that is a product of changing ethics.
If you believe in absolute subjective good and Evil, and even Plato didn't label slavery as 'Evil', then people for thousands of years have been doing evil unknowingly and with never a thought to it being such. That means that the ethics of the time were wrong. What then is there to prove that the ethics of today are right? Who is to say that in 1000 years from now people won't look back and say "Wearing Plaid is EVIL. How could people have been so EVIL as to walk around in public dressed that way?"
@booinyoureyes - Understand that if Hitler had won, we would be descendants of primarily Aryan stock and probably brought up on values of same. Freedom of speech, equality of races and other 'Values' which are indicative of our American Value system would have evolved over time much differently than they did. Where we now see him as a monster for committing genocide, if we were brought up by people who believed that (as horrible as this sounds) the Jewish people were evil and a lesser species, the extermination would have been no more or less abhorrent to these (fictitious) other selves than slaughtering cattle for beef.
As far as your argument about slavery being evil. I 100% agree that in today's ethics, it is evil. I would never condone it, nor would i partake or stand by while it went on. However, 200 years ago it was common place and very normal in most areas. It was no more evil than driving a car is today. And the further back in history, the more it is acceptable. The people of the south didn't think that Slavery was evil. They didn't consider themselves evil. Even some people in the north thought it was a reasonable way to do things, but that change was beneficial. Again, I do not condone it at all, and if I could wipe it from history and the collective consciousness, I would ABSOLUTELY do it. But that is a product of changing ethics.
If you believe in absolute subjective good and Evil, and even Plato didn't label slavery as 'Evil', then people for thousands of years have been doing evil unknowingly and with never a thought to it being such. That means that the ethics of the time were wrong. What then is there to prove that the ethics of today are right? Who is to say that in 1000 years from now people won't look back and say "Wearing Plaid is EVIL. How could people have been so EVIL as to walk around in public dressed that way?"
No. Cba to explain but you are so wrong i find it funny.
These kinds of threads never go well when non-fiction examples are brought in. I think you guys should stick to characters, rather than historical figures.
While I tend to agree, often times fictional characters are so cardboard and one dimensional that there really is no discussion at all. Yep, The Joker is Chaotic Evil. End of conversation.
Seriously though, IRL people are so often more than the sum of some single appellation or description that people can discuss and debate endlessly. Then when you base the actual discussion exclusively on history book accounts (thanks for @Dragonspear's comment) and third, fourth and fifth hand accounts of partial events, it becomes even more convoluted. It can almost be the opposite.
@tennisgolfboll - I'd be curious where you think my comments were wrong. Just in broad strokes. Might make it easier to understand your point of view.
These kinds of threads never go well when non-fiction examples are brought in. I think you guys should stick to characters, rather than historical figures.
While I tend to agree, often times fictional characters are so cardboard and one dimensional that there really is no discussion at all. Yep, The Joker is Chaotic Evil. End of conversation.
The D&D alignment system can only be applied to cardboard, one dimensional fictional characters because it can only sufficiently describe cardboard, one dimensional characters for which the inner thinking, intentions and goals are known. There is no room for grey areas in the alignment system and the real world has grey areas; true motivations/intentions aren't always clear and can even shift or change over time. In order to properly place someone into an alignment, you have to have clearly defined motivations, intentions and actions.
Comments
1) Napoleon was actually not too short. He was 5.2 french feet tall (obsolete measurement as they now use the metric system), which is about 5.8 english or modern feet. He was caricatured as short by English papers and it stuck.
2) He was not genocidal. Neither was Tito. They did not hunt down specific national groups, and their actions, otherwise intended, did not result at the extinction or near extinction of such a group. Ideologies aside, they should be placed at least on the border to lawful neutral.
3) I've made up my mind. Hitler was Chaotic Evil. He actually believed that might is right and that killing millions of people was good and a puspose in itself, not a means to an end.
4) Alexander didn't commit any outright genocide, or even extreme (for the morals of the time) attrocities in Asia. In fact he earned the wrath of his own generals, which neared open revolt at one point, because he treated the persians as equals to them. Maybe not because he was humanitarian but because he needed them to be king of the world instead of only macedonia, but for the time and place it was a huge moral leap. He did completely destroy Thebes in mainland Greece and killed his best friend on the other hand, so he can't be lawful good. I 'd say he was lawful neutral, bordering on neutral good, depending on how one evaluates his motives.
5) Placement in the allignment system is subjective.
But....
He was attempting to bring his people back from the brink after WW1. They were starving and impoverished. He was attempting to build his race back up and ensure that they survived and thrived. In that, it was a means to an end that he eliminate what he saw as a drain on resources, and to leverage the resources available to ensure domination over what he perceived as his enemies. He was wrong in thinking that the people he was 'Getting rid of' were lesser in any degree, that much is true. did he need to go as far as he did or would have if he hadn't been stopped? I don't personally believe so.
But I don't for one minute believe that he attempted to commit genocide for the pure pleasure of killing loads of people. It was a means to an end. Still evil and wrong, but not done 'just because it was an end in and of itself'.
The thing was that Hitler was some sort of lawful evil, but he was a jerk, he didn't cared for others and, yeah, he thought slaughtering all the judes, black men and others in his country (and others!!!!) was OK for him, he thought of that as something that was helping out his country to grow.
Edit: hey iOS, sometimes I want to use the word "were", and not the contraction "we're"! Geez.
I don't like or agree with what he did. I abhor it in the extreme, but I do understand at least in part where it might have started. And it started with trying to get Germany out of debt and back as a major power in the world; not with 'I think I will commit genocide today.' Not that this excuses it, even a little bit. I also don't think that he was the one and only motivator behind it all.
To my mind, a Chaotic Evil leader on that scale would have done all of WW2 for the sole purpose of sewing chaos. I think they had goals which were more specific and structured than that. Evil? Sure.
And, yeah, the police didn't want yo work one day, so it ended up in something like a mass-looting over half country, what they did? A PARTY!
Yeah, I only saw a worst government in our country, it ended in a civil war, the milician vs terrorists, a real mess, and now they blame those milicians for being merciless and "making a genocide" while half of the gouverment was actually part of the terrorist manifestation of the 70'. Like Jagreen Lern, who let the Lords of Chaos enter the plane.
It's the other way around. The Nazis sold WWI revisionism to the German public to get them to support the plan for the eradication of inferior races. That is one of Hitlers main goals as laid out in his writings (that i did read, found to be delirious, and refuse to name). Everything came down to other races not having a right to life and land. Pure evil. A definite will to do harm and no notion of ordered society, save for the "fuhrerprizip", which means he simply wanted to do whatever he pleased. This is pretty much chaos for everyone else except him, to steal your own argument.
And he did let "his own house" burn down, rather than take even a reasonable step back. Think Stalingrad. Think Berlin. Think of how his own generals were afraid to tell him they were losing the war. How the most daring even tried to assasinate him, so that they could negotiate peace. You really got this the wrong way around.
And yes, he did start out as a disilusioned austrian corporal in the wake of WWI, but he wasn't just a revisionist. For him the outcome of that war was first and foremost the result of a jewish conspiracy. He actually believed that. The best documented case ever.
Saying a General lost X men a month/day/year/campaign while prosecuting a war is only relative. Even "Needless" deaths are relative to the cost, the cause and the benefit. Stating that X number of men died under a leader's command isn't in and of itself indication of anything other than there were losses. Need more information here in order for the relevance to be clear.
@Michail - I haven't read any stuff personally written by Hitler, nor am I likely to. So in absence of additional arguments on my end, I concede your point. The funny thing is, if he had won, we might very well be arguing how Lawful Good the man was (what an utterly abhorrent thought). How's that for situational ethics? History has a tendency to play silly buggers with moral absolutes.
To (miss) quote Yoda: "Wars not make one great." Nor do they make one horrible.
Edit: spelling!
I also disagree (as we debated on a separate thread) that morality is entirely relative or situational. No matter what historical norms are, its hard to imagine ever seeing slavery or genocide (or even plain old fashioned murder for that matter) as anything but evil. Providing a reasoning or a *motive* for someone's abhorrent actions is quite different than providing an *excuse*.
Yes, it is easy to see why Hitler/Napolean/other assholes of history may have done what they did in a certain situation. This does not make it any less evil. I agree Napolean is a more difficult case, though I'd say his motivations were hardly benign. I'd also agree with you that Hitler was not Chaotic Evil but Neutral Evil. I think Chaotic Evil is more descriptive of people who find self-gratification in cruelty and are more entirely self serving rather than having loyalty to a given race/ethnicity/nationality/other arbitrarily classified community.
As far as your argument about slavery being evil. I 100% agree that in today's ethics, it is evil. I would never condone it, nor would i partake or stand by while it went on. However, 200 years ago it was common place and very normal in most areas. It was no more evil than driving a car is today. And the further back in history, the more it is acceptable. The people of the south didn't think that Slavery was evil. They didn't consider themselves evil. Even some people in the north thought it was a reasonable way to do things, but that change was beneficial. Again, I do not condone it at all, and if I could wipe it from history and the collective consciousness, I would ABSOLUTELY do it. But that is a product of changing ethics.
If you believe in absolute subjective good and Evil, and even Plato didn't label slavery as 'Evil', then people for thousands of years have been doing evil unknowingly and with never a thought to it being such. That means that the ethics of the time were wrong. What then is there to prove that the ethics of today are right? Who is to say that in 1000 years from now people won't look back and say "Wearing Plaid is EVIL. How could people have been so EVIL as to walk around in public dressed that way?"
"Winners write the history."
Seriously though, IRL people are so often more than the sum of some single appellation or description that people can discuss and debate endlessly. Then when you base the actual discussion exclusively on history book accounts (thanks for @Dragonspear's comment) and third, fourth and fifth hand accounts of partial events, it becomes even more convoluted. It can almost be the opposite.
@tennisgolfboll - I'd be curious where you think my comments were wrong. Just in broad strokes. Might make it easier to understand your point of view.