Oliver Stone - Hitler is an easy scapegoat.

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Oliver Stone, the controversial film director, is facing another backlash after suggesting that Hitler was made an "easy scapegoat" by history.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
10 Jan 2010


Stone, who has previously been accused of promoting conspiracy theories and glorifying violence in his films, has made a new documentary series which he says will place historical figures including Hitler and Stalin "in context".

In the trailer for "The Secret History of America" the director says: "You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate."

He told a press conference at the Television Critics Association in California that "we can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'".

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect," he said.

The director claimed many people in America did not understand the connection between the First World War and the Second World War and said his intention was to broaden minds, delving into the funding of the Nazi party and how American corporations were involved in it.

Stone said he did not want to make an "easy" history programme and talked about trying to understand people he despises. His series will aim to uncover little reported facts that shaped the modern United States.

Professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the series, said the programme would not portray Hitler in a more positive light, but would describe him as a historical phenomenon rather than "somebody who appeared out of nowhere".

Stone has courted controversy before, most notably in his film JFK which suggested a high level conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.

He has also polarised opinion with controversial films about President George W Bush, and Fidel Castro, the former Cuban leader.

Stone said his latest series would show history from an internationalist, rather than an American, point of view. That included a "complete other story" about how Stalin had fought against the German war machine more than anyone.

The director said he fully expected to face a backlash from conservative pundits.

He said: "Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we're going to get those kind of ignorant attacks." Stone, 63, who won Oscars for directing Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, also won a Purple Heart for his own military service in Vietnam.

Oliver Stone suggests Hitler is 'easy scapegoat' - Telegraph
 
Well the first and second World Wars were linked by the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression and so on, but i doubt Stone would go for the realistic angle.
 
Is he trying to demonstrate some new concept? Because he really isn't. Nothing he aims to show in his new series is remotely original or thought-provoking. He's just attention whoring to get people to see it. But seriously, saying we can't judge historical figures is quite silly. Hitler was an evil man, and his actions and beliefs can't be passed off as simply the result of actions taken by others.

Of course the Russians had to deal with the wehrmacht more than the British or Americans. There was a much larger front and Hitler wanted to eliminate the inferior Slavic peoples.

Oliver Stone is an attention whore. End of.
 
Is he trying to demonstrate some new concept? Because he really isn't. Nothing he aims to show in his new series is remotely original or thought-provoking. He's just attention whoring to get people to see it. But seriously, saying we can't judge historical figures is quite silly. Hitler was an evil man, and his actions and beliefs can't be passed off as simply the result of actions taken by others.

Of course the Russians had to deal with the wehrmacht more than the British or Americans. There was a much larger front and Hitler wanted to eliminate the inferior Slavic peoples.

Oliver Stone is an attention whore. End of.

Hear, hear
 
Hitler was an evil cnut but he wasnt alone. There was equally as fecked up folk within the Nazi party, who initiated violence on the Jews & others, but its really only Hitler that takes the total rap!

The Russians have alot of answer to aswell. They "liberated" Eastern Europe from Nazi grip & stayed there for anything up to 50 years or more. If you ask the people from these regions who did the most harm - Hitler / Nazi's or the Russians, I think the answer would be the Russians!

Stone is controversial, but he's completely single-minded & whats wrong with that?! I'd much prefer to hear a different angle & I look forward to hearing his!

Folk are jumping on his case before they've even seen the documentary, which i'm sure is really good!
 
Stone has an interesting bio. He dropped out of Yale and volunteered for Vietnam as a frontline soldier. I don't know of many people in similar situations who can claim to have done that.
 
We need more people like him who aren't brainwashed to believe only one side of the story.

Looking forward to it.
 
I don't see whats wrong with this particularly. He's not trying to "excuse" Hitler as the byline suggests, just explain how he became who he was. It's not original, and it's been done a few times before, but I don't see why it's such a taboo to examine Hitlers motives. He's right, it is too easy to dismiss someone as "evil" since evil is only a concept we've attributed to acts we find appalling. Delving into why a man would become so deranged as to think they were justified is clearly more interesting than simply pigeonholing them.

Basically all he's saying is Hitler was an evil man, but why?...And the answer isn't - "just because he was an evil man".
 
I blame Nietzsche for letting Zarathustra leave his cave and spouting all that Übermensch nonsense.
 
I don't think exploring the context of something in depth is ever really a bad thing... apart from maybe football formations.

And I'm not sure 'evil' exists, it's basically a religious category, albeit a useful one.
 
To be honest, I think this is just an excuse for him to link the Bush family with the nazis. There is some evidence that they had financial dealings with the nazis that set up the family fortune.

It's a story worth telling, but with Stone doing it it will be dismissed as crackpot conspiracy guff by conservative commentators.
 
I want to see Sarah Palin review it on her new Fox News show.
 
I'm gunna save famous folk a hell of a lot of bother here

Unless you're calling him a vile nasty evil cnut... don't bring up Hitler in public

How he became a 'vile nasty evil cnut' is something that ought to be looked into though. As mentioned in the article, a lot of Americans don't understand the link between the First World War and the Second World War. Anything that educates them can only be a good thing.

And similarly to Plech I don't believe that evil actually exists. Ian Rankin gets it right when he says: “What we mean by evil is very complex,” he says. “It is a protective device. We prefer to demonise certain people, put evil in a world of monsters because it prevents us confronting the fact that these people are just like us, the people next door. It lets us off the hook.”
 
How he became a 'vile nasty evil cnut' is something that ought to be looked into though. As mentioned in the article, a lot of Americans don't understand the link between the First World War and the Second World War. Anything that educates them can only be a good thing.

And similarly to Plech I don't believe that evil actually exists. Ian Rankin gets it right when he says: “What we mean by evil is very complex,” he says. “It is a protective device. We prefer to demonise certain people, put evil in a world of monsters because it prevents us confronting the fact that these people are just like us, the people next door. It lets us off the hook.”

Hitler was just like me? :confused:

I think he's got that quite badly wrong personally

I don't think it's particularly worthwhile or interesting to look at someone like Hitler, and try to reason with him, or consider his nice traits. feck that
 
Why feck that though Brad? Surely examining why he did the things he did can only be of good. It may help us avoid or even merely identify the same pitfalls in the future. I think elvis is right in his assessment. What is evil? I think the Pope's comments on condoms are, many people clearly don't. It's not a thing you are born with, or a manifestly tangible thing, it's a concept, merely a word even, that us humans attribute to things. And at one point in his life Hitler was just like you, maybe only for a short time as a child, but to pretend he was inherently evil is to pretend that normal men aren't capable of such things. They clearly are, under the right (or the wrong) circumstances.
 
No-one is trying to 'reason with' Hitler, just try to understand why he became the monster he was. He was a decorated serviceman in World War 1, many would have said he was a hero for what he did in that war. So what happened? Why did it happen? Why was it allowed to happen? How could he gain control of the Nazi party? Why could their policies be accepted by the majority of the German people? You don't think any of that is interesting?

This is a good article from the Times a while back on what we mean by evil, worth a read if you have a spare 5 minutes (From 2002 actually).

Myra Hindley, the popular personification of evil, is dead. Her body, thanks to the services of Cambridge crematorium, will tonight be reduced to a pile of ashes. It stands to reason, does it not, that if the tabloid high priestess of wickedness is no more then the world must be slightly purer for her passing?

It is unlikely that many people believe this, in the literal sense. For the past 36 years Hindley has been less equipped than the average person to inflict harm on the community and has existed more as a peroxide blonde icon of amorality and malevolence.

Yet Hindley’s crimes were so heinous, so beyond our realms of comprehension, that when she died she managed once again to leave us linguistically impotent. The only way to describe her destructibility was to reach, as always, for the language of hellfire and brimstone.

The Sun declared that Hindley was “The Devil”, no less, its report confidently asserting that she was at last “rotting in Hell”. The Daily Mirror simply called her “A Woman of Evil”. In a different approach, the Daily Mail published a transcript of the tape-recorded last words of the murder victim Lesley Anne Downey, arguing that “only by reading them can we begin to understand the nature of true evil”.

Can we? Do we? By hearing a little girl begging not to be stripped while a flat-voiced Hindley orders her to put the gag back in her mouth so that Ian Brady can molest her, what do we learn about evil’s make-up? And does the fact that something so terrible happened mean that the perpetrators are automatically evil or must they by definition be mentally ill?

A person well placed to answer such questions is Dr Gwen Adshead. For half of her week she works as a consultant psychiatrist at a London trauma clinic, treating victims of violence and torture; for the other she works at Broadmoor maximum security hospital, where the likes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, are held, and where she has qualified as a consultant psychotherapist.

She sees both sides of extreme cruelty — victims and perpetrators.

A popular modern view is that neurophysics and psychiatry have neutered traditional interpretations of good and evil via the “abuse excuse”, the idea that maltreatment in a person’s past is to blame for their violence in the present.

But Adshead believes that many human actions can indeed be termed evil — and that all of us are capable of committing them. Neither, she says, must the perpetrators be ill, psychopathic or serial offenders. They can briefly enter a psychopathic state of mind then go back to living perfectly normal lives, as did the Bosnian soldiers who raped women then returned home to become model citizens.

“I prefer to use the word (evil) as an adjective, not a noun,” Adshead says. “Rather than an entity out there, it is a state of mind . . . and everybody has the capacity to get into an evil state of mind. There are people in evil states of mind up and down the country, all day, every day. As we speak now somebody is getting it together to smash his wife in the face. Somebody will be getting into a state of mind that may end up in rape. I see people who have been fantastically cruel to their children but they aren’t mentally ill at all.”

Despite its prevalence, though, evil continues to elude definition. It is not, Adshead stresses, a medical term, and certainly not a psychiatric one. It is less a diagnosis and more a term of incomprehension. Morality and theology are required to complete the picture. Even the Oxford English Dictionary gives the spectacularly unhelpful definition of evil as “bad, harmful”, something that could equally apply to speeding.

What most people understand as evil is a particular type of cruel, humiliating, pointless and destructive crime that someone commits against another person when they could just as easily have chosen not to. Unlike a crime of passion or revenge, the victim is almost an irrelevance because the deed is all about the doer.

It follows that psychopaths, people who fail to empathise with others, are more at risk of crossing this threshold and getting into an evil state of mind. Hindley was psychopathic when she remained unmoved by a tortured child pleading for her life. So too was the mass murderer Dennis Nilsen when he wondered why there was such a fuss about the way he dismembered his victims. One of Adshead’s Broadmoor patients, a murderer, told her that he knew he was doing wrong but said: “I was deaf to my own restraints.”

But it does not have to be so. The residents of Jedwabne, in occupied Poland, who herded their Jewish neighbours into a barn and burned them alive, were not acting under Nazi orders and could not possibly all be psychopaths. Yet they chose to do it.

Ian Rankin, the best-selling crime author, has spent the past nine months exploring the meaning of evil for a Channel 4 documentary series. He has not reached a firm conclusion.

“What we mean by evil is very complex,” he says. “It is a protective device. We prefer to demonise certain people, put evil in a world of monsters because it prevents us confronting the fact that these people are just like us, the people next door. It lets us off the hook.”

The image of the Devil as a monstrosity with cloven hooves and horns is rooted in early pictures of pagan gods. In order to make evil something alien to humankind we made it ugly, non-Christian and not of this world. When the World Trade Centre was hit, some people claimed to be able to see the face of Satan in the billowing smoke, perhaps deriving comfort from the belief that a metaphysical force and not a human being was ultimately responsible for such a dreadful act.

Not only is evil a powerful word but we seem to believe that it can pollute us. Rankin admits that he turned down the chance of meeting Brady during the making of the programme. “Brady is as close as I get to my idea of evil. Once you meet him you cannot unmeet him and I didn’t want him inside my head.”

But psychologists argue that evil behaviour is an inherent possibility in everybody, a theme that underpins the American psychiatrist Dr Robert I Simon’s book, Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream. Rankin adds: “I believe there is such a thing as an evil act, but not an evil person. We are all capable of wicked things. Most of us have very bad thoughts, road rage for example, when you find yourself putting your fingers into the shape of a gun. Some people happen to take it a step further.”

Opinion differs wildly over what constitutes evil, or even if it exists at all. Clergymen argue that it is a void, a total absence of good, and that we can choose the path of righteousnes instead. Yet Professor Benjamin Libet, who conducted neurological tests in 1958, questioned the entire notion of personal responsibility. His work concluded that our brain controls us, not vice versa, suggesting that the sense of free will may be illusory. Darwinists, meanwhile, will argue that, by the laws of natural selection, humans must have an innate ruthless streak to have triumphed as the superior species.

Certainly humans seem more capable of cruelty if the victim does not “belong” to their tribe or race. To illustrate this, researchers at Lancaster University hired an actor to wear a Liverpool FC shirt and writhe in agony on the ground as Manchester United fans filed past. Almost all failed to go to his aid. When he switched to a United shirt, 80 per cent ran to help him.

Jedwabne shows us how, when people act in groups rather than as individuals, evil actions come more easily because the sense of responsibility is diluted. At Auschwitz, guards who were friends in the outside world were deliberately made to work together to “normalise” what they were doing. The coupling of Brady and Hindley, Rose and Fred West, produced an alchemy, a catalyst for evil deeds.

Hindley’s supporters argue that had she never met Brady she would have got married, had children and enjoyed a normal life. But Adshead questions this. Given her capacity for psychopathy, she may well have one day battered her own children. Adshead says: “I get very worried about that type of argument. How do we know that if Brady had not met Hindley, but a different woman who was appalled at the idea of killing and who said: ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’, he wouldn’t have stopped? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I see enough women who get into evil states of mind on their own.”

She asserts that by looking to places such as Broadmoor, whose inhabitants are statistically a rarity, we learn less than at standard prisons where people have committed terrible crimes but are neither mentally ill nor particularly repentant. “There are a lot of cruel states of mind out there and if you only look at the places like Broadmoor you miss all the ‘normal’ stuff.”

She cites the example of Carl Manning and Marie Therese Kauao, who beat, burned and starved Victoria Climbié to death after keeping her trussed up in a bath for weeks. “No one is suggesting they are mentally ill,” Adshead says. “Are they evil? They clearly got themselves into a state of mind where they convinced themselves this child was not real, she was just a thing they enjoyed having control over.

“What they did was just as cruel as what the Moors Murderers did. There are foster carers, mothers and fathers, out there who do this and they never get a tenth of the attention that Myra Hindley and Ian Brady got.” What people who commit such acts do have in common, however, is a sense of disconnection from the world. “What I often think about the people I work with, who have clearly been in an evil state of mind to do what they did, is how disconnected they are from the rest of the social and moral universe. Something has become lost; they are what used to be called ‘lost souls’ in theological circles.”

She cites a female patient who severely battered her child. When asked why, she replied: “There’s something between us that isn’t there.” “I think she was talking about a type of disconnection,” Adshead says. “At that moment that baby wasn’t real to her and it’s a moot point whether you want to call that illness or not.”

The vital question, of course, is what causes some people to cross the threshold and hurt others, and some not. Adshead says there is no absolute answer although an existential view of the world can be a trigger.

“If you feel that nothing matters and there is only despair then the moral walls that connect us to each other fall down,” she says. “Briefly, in a moment of cruelty, such people triumph over the pointlessness. But it is brief.”

The vast majority of people who carry out evil acts are not mentally ill, nor are they psychopaths. But circumstance can sometimes stop psychopaths turning to violence. “If someone’s psychopathic tendencies are buttressed by intelligence and wealth they may not need to carry out acts of physical cruelty to get satisfaction,” Adshead explains. “They may wish instead to invade small countries, to take over companies, to strip a pension fund and salt it away in the Caymans. If what you are interested in is treating people like dirt and yourself as special, then for those people who get into evil states of mind this creates a moment of exhilaration.”

Adshead believes that what defines evil may always be unanswerable. By their very nature, evil acts are without meaning. “It is a huge, complex question that psychiatrists can contribute to, but we by no means have the last word,” she says.

Primo Levi recalled an example of random cruelty when he first arrived at Auschwitz. A guard raised his hand and casually struck a prisoner in the face for no reason. “Why did you did that?” a shocked bystander asked. The guard replied simply: “Here there is no ‘Why?’”

That, perhaps, is as close to a definition of evil as we will ever get.
 
Understanding that people aren't just born evil is something different

I did a course at Uni which looked at terrorism, and the idea was to identify with the terrorists, and understand their reasoning, and how they became what they did. And there's some value in that, you have to understand where someone is coming from to get to the bottom of an issue

But at the end of the day, humans are defined by their actions. "Hitler is an easy scapegoat" is simply a steaming pile of bullshit. When someone has done what he has done, there's nothing rational to understand there. He hasn't been demonised, he has been judged according to his actions. Our classification for that is 'evil'. If it's to have any worth as a descriptive term, a person like Hitler has to be considered in that regard

I can't stand it when intellectuals and wannabe intellectuals get sniffy about these kinds of subjects
 
So we shouldn't look at the causes of WWII and it's consequences...just blame Hitler?

You seem like you've just read the title Bradley, and not the article.
 
Understanding that people aren't just born evil is something different

I did a course at Uni which looked at terrorism, and the idea was to identify with the terrorists, and understand their reasoning, and how they became what they did. And there's some value in that, you have to understand where someone is coming from to get to the bottom of an issue

But at the end of the day, humans are defined by their actions. "Hitler is an easy scapegoat" is simply a steaming pile of bullshit. When someone has done what he has done, there's nothing rational to understand there. He hasn't been demonised, he has been judged according to his actions. Our classification for that is 'evil'. If it's to have any worth as a descriptive term, a person like Hitler has to be considered in that regard

I can't stand it when intellectuals and wannabe intellectuals get sniffy about these kinds of subjects

Stone didn't say that though.

Was Churchill evil?
 
So we shouldn't look at the causes of WWII and it's consequences...just blame Hitler?

You seem like you've just read the title Bradley, and not the article.

Don't think I ever said that Mockney, did I?

I just don't think it serves to 'humanize' Hitler, or to try to downplay his actions, on the basis that it could happen to anyone. Bullshit

You cannot rationalise with some of the things he did. He might not have been born that way, there might have been events and influences which need to be understood and prevented in future to ensure that such a thing couldn't happen again. But he was 'evil', as defined by his actions. And he deserves to be considered as such by generations to come. It's a dangerous ground to be playing on this
 
I think this line is the crucial one:
Professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the series, said the programme would not portray Hitler in a more positive light, but would describe him as a historical phenomenon rather than "somebody who appeared out of nowhere".

In our history lectures in college we're encouraged to always look how circumstances contributed to the deeds of major historical figures. A series of events come together to help a figure like Hitler come to power, otherwise he remains just some nutty, bitter creep in obscurity. I think the series is a look at those circumstances.
 
Don't think I ever said that Mockney, did I?

I just don't think it serves to 'humanize' Hitler, or to try to downplay his actions, on the basis that it could happen to anyone. Bullshit

You cannot rationalise with some of the things he did. He might not have been born that way, there might have been events and influences which need to be understood and prevented in future to ensure that such a thing couldn't happen again. But he was 'evil', as defined by his actions. And he deserves to be considered as such by generations to come. It's a dangerous ground to be playing on this

I agree than it's dangerous to soften his actions, but I don't think the film is trying to downplay his actions at all. And as for 'humanizing him'...well, he was a human. ...it's just trying to delve deeper than "Hitler did it cos he was baaad"...it's just an educational film for Americans. And they could do with a few more education films. It might help if somewhere in it he mentions there were other countries fighting WWII before they joined for example. I can't see the problem at all...i think some people seem to be under the impression it'll be a Hitler love in of some kind
 
Stone didn't say that though.

Was Churchill evil?

I'm a geographer, not a historian. I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable on the subject of Winston Churchill. As far as I know, he's not someone I think history would judge as 'evil', given he acted in self defence of human beings. That said I'm aware of his sanctioning of Dresden, and he obviously was a leader during a war time situation and hence had to sanction the killing of people. These things are often simply a case of personal opinion

But that's off the issue of this thread. Stone creating a film looking into how the second world war came to pass... well we await the film to see how well he's carried the task out, but a worthwhile endeavour. Stone making stupid, sensationalist statements about Hitler to try and get folk to watch his film... dickheadish

If someone who'd lost their parents to Hitler or something came forward and tried to argue that Hitler wasn't 'evil' or whatever... I'd listen. But wannabe intellectuals treading the same old tired controversial for the sake of it ground... no thanks
 
If anything Brad you're sensationalising his comments more than the comments themselves are sensationalist. And to slap a quick label on someone, be it "evil" or "wannabe intellectual" or "drama queen' is far more sensationalist and dickish than a mere desire to delve slightly deeper into the meaning, the reason, and the mechanics of it all

In my opinion :smirk:

doo be doo be doo be doo bee nar nar nar
 
I think this line is the crucial one:

In our history lectures in college we're encouraged to always look how circumstances contributed to the deeds of major historical figures. A series of events come together to help a figure like Hitler come to power, otherwise he remains just some nutty, bitter creep in obscurity. I think the series is a look at those circumstances.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here WP. The statement implies that they're not looking to devalue Hitler's actions but to look at whether he was a product of the culture or whether he produced the culture. Don't see how anyone could take issue with that afterall we're living in a climate that could learn a lot about the mistakes of the World Wars.
 
If anything Brad you're sensationalising his comments more than the comments themselves are sensationalist. And to slap a quick label on someone, be it "evil" or "wannabe intellectual" or "drama queen' is far more sensationalist and dickish than a mere desire to delve slightly deeper into the meaning, the reason, and the mechanics of it all

In my opinion :smirk:

doo be doo be doo be doo bee nar nar nar

:lol: Perhaps I'd make a good tabloid journalist eh

I think in fairness, Stone has earnt the many derogatory labels folk cast upon him!
 
I think you've hit the nail on the head here WP. The statement implies that they're not looking to devalue Hitler's actions but to look at whether he was a product of the culture or whether he produced the culture.

And the answer is going to be that it was a combination of the two. Successful politicians are both sensitive to local conditions and able to influence people.
 
Hitler receives far too much attention and adulation from far too many.
The Nazi party were a collective of like minded people, and Adolf was far from the brains behind the operation. Reading Mein Kampf will provide you with evidence for that.

Goebbels was the sinister bastard with all the ideas. "burning books" "the big lie" and Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) were all brought into play by Goebbels.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party just established a totalitarian Political system, Thats the real source of "evil". We need to understand the circumstances that let these governments thrive and gain power in the first place.
 
:lol: Perhaps I'd make a good tabloid journalist eh

I think in fairness, Stone has earnt the many derogatory labels folk cast upon him!

In the main that's lazy criticism based on his film body of work. I've seen him interviewed several times in depth and he has a lot of interesting things to say. His films are filled with dramatic licence so are easy to tear into.

I think he'll do something worthwhile with this so-called Hitler love-in....besides, as I said before I think his aim is to skewer some American dynasties rather than apologise for Hitler
 
Hitler receives far too much attention and adulation from far too many.
The Nazi party were a collective of like minded people, and Adolf was far from the brains behind the operation. Reading Mein Kampf will provide you with evidence for that.

Goebbels was the sinister bastard with all the ideas. "burning books" "the big lie" and Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) were all brought into play by Goebbels.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party just established a totalitarian Political system, Thats the real source of "evil". We need to understand the circumstances that let these governments thrive and gain power in the first place.

It's also not known whether or not the order for the Final Solution came from Hitler. Though his writings certainly point towards that end and he put in place a situation where it became likely.

It's also worth remembering that in terms of cruelty and barbarism the Japanese did everything the Nazis did - including the most depraved scientific experiments on live human subjects - plus also created an army of forced prostitutes, and practiced cannibalism.
 
It's also not known whether or not the order for the Final Solution came from Hitler. Though his writings certainly point towards that end and he put in place a situation where it became likely.

It's also worth remembering that in terms of cruelty and barbarism the Japanese did everything the Nazis did - including the most depraved scientific experiments on live human subjects - plus also created an army of forced prostitutes, and practiced cannibalism.

..on a similar scale?
 
In the main that's lazy criticism based on his film body of work. I've seen him interviewed several times in depth and he has a lot of interesting things to say. His films are filled with dramatic licence so are easy to tear into.

I think he'll do something worthwhile with this so-called Hitler love-in....besides, as I said before I think his aim is to skewer some American dynasties rather than apologise for Hitler

It's not lazy criticism, it's valid criticism

Wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of 'dramatic licence' in this documentary either. But time will tell
 
Very true about the Japanese, Unit 731 took humanity to new depth's of depravity.
I recently tried to watch "Men Behind the Sun" and couldn't get through it.
 
It's not lazy criticism, it's valid criticism

Wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of 'dramatic licence' in this documentary either. But time will tell

Not really. Complaining that a dramatic movie is not factually accurate is daft when you think about it.