Oliver Stone is no stranger to stirring things up, and his latest provocation -- saying that Hitler was a "scapegoat" and expressing empathy for Stalin -- is, unsurprisingly, making headlines.
"(Hitler) is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect."
"People in America don't know the connection between World War I and World War II."
"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply."
True; WWI was almost a direct cause of WWII, and World War I can be traced back to the times of the Roman historian Tacitus in the 2nd century AD, in the woods of the West Rhine between modern day France and Germany.
There were many philosophers and historians in the late middle ages who were able to deduce from the economic and political history of Europe that hundreds of years from then a great war of the world would insue with Germany at its epicenter, and were also able to predict that the war(s) would have resounding effects on the following generations and may very well be the war to end all wars.
Thus, philosophers like Nostradameus, who supposedly predicted the rise of Hitler and a great world war, were really nothing new. Historians and philosophers from all over Germany foresaw a world war centering in Germany centuries before it happened.
So to put the entire onnus on Hitler is to view the situation in a vacuum and not consider the historical effects that had accrued over thousands of years. The Holocaust, however, seems to be Hitler's own little obsession, though he certainly wasn't alone in carrying it out..
