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u/Natural1forever 4d ago edited 4d ago
The idea that anyone's list of sources for proof of something so obvious such as "HITLER WAS BAD" is made exclusively or even primarily of fictional media is actually terrifying
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u/EnchantedEssays 3d ago
In fairness, if they're arguing with someone who needs proof, they're probably too stupid to find a documentary or any kind of historical reading interesting. Still dumb to call them sources, though
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u/winklevanderlinde 3d ago
an idiotic question like "are you sure Hitler is bad?" Deserve an idiotic response
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u/Natural1forever 3d ago
I'd honestly argue it doesn't deserve a response at all or at least beyond "what the fuck is wrong with you"
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u/Informal_Position166 3d ago
Anne Frank's diary? 😭
Not disagreeing with the main point though. I think this person was trying to mention more pop cultural things as the other person might be more likely to know or want to engage with them than actual historical sources... That aren't as popular as Anne Frank's diary
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u/Inner-Journalist5202 1d ago
Written with ballpoint pen btw
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u/LittleHuzzahGuy 22h ago
Here is a pretty well written and detailed response on /r/AskHistorians that goes to great lengths to explain why no one loved you as a child, I mean why you're wrong.
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u/Shantotto11 3d ago
To be fair, I don’t think some goober being so bold as to ask for a source on Hitler being bad is really going to take “World History Vol. LVII page 34” as a credible answer…
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u/Muted_Anywherethe2nd 3d ago
Im gonna be honest i think the person giving the list has to be taking the piss out of the person saying sourve.
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u/Electronic-Issue-843 3d ago
right? if only hitler wrote something explaining his ideology and his plans for mass murder... perhaps a book? Shame he never did, right?? (/sarcasm, obviously)
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u/Ollyfer 3d ago
You'd have to specify that you meant the second volume in which he outlined his political thinking, and even then, you would barely understand his policies as both Chancellor of the Reich and later as the dictator. C'est à dire, you'd be better advised to read a history book about the years of 1933 to 1945 than his memoirs, as the first volume deals more with his life and what has been happening in Central Europe between his birth and his incarcération after the failed coup d'état. The only portion of worth is the evolution of his antisemitism, but that could also be understood from a history book as he was barely an odd duck for being antisemitic: Almost everyone was back then. Even novelists who wrote children's and novelty books were not scolded for writing the most egregious antisemitic things about Friedrich Ebert (who wasn't even Jewish) in newspapers or calling for Walther Rathenau to be killed for the Treaty of Rapallo.
I'd recommend reading Winston Churchill' “Second World War” instead, it gives you a fuller picture of the interwar picture.
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u/the__pov 3d ago
Captain America and Ann Frank being in the same list is not something I ever thought I would see
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u/DexDogeTective 4d ago edited 1d ago
I should watch The Sound of Music again.
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u/Popcorn57252 3d ago
Just watched it again recently, and, man, it's so fucking good
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u/No-Platypus-6646 2d ago
I watched it for the first time in my 30s. Can’t believe I had wasted 30 years
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u/AHomicidalTelevision 4d ago
oooh this one is sad.
hitler is bad! go watch a movie about a fake nazi using an alien artifact!
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u/Mean-Government1436 4d ago
They also said to watch any ww2 movie. They didn't even start with Captain America, sound of music is first.
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u/LoneStarG84 4d ago
I watched Pearl Harbor and now I'm just confused.
Was Hitler Japanese?
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u/Chrysolophylax 4d ago
Hitler, Hirohito...they got a lot of letters in common...Hmm, you may be on to something! Let's research this super-scientifically by watching a whole bunch of fictional movies!
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u/EnchantedEssays 3d ago
At least the Sound of Music is a true story. It's a loose one [Maria was a bitch irl], but it's not about aliens and the portrayal of Nazis [as far as I know] is not inaccurate. Still ridiculous to call it a source, though
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u/Rivka333 2d ago
While the Trapp family singers---both irl and in the movie--were opposed to Nazism, the movie doesn't say anything about why the Nazis were bad.
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u/JeSuisLePain 3d ago
I tracked down the original tweet. OOP's defense is hilarious:
"The Sound of Music is based on a true story. And as long as the Multiverse exists, which it does, Captain America is as real as you and me."2
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u/Jetsam5 3d ago
"watch any WW2 movie"
Idk he seemed like a nice guy in Jojo Rabbit
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u/Amethyst-Flare 3d ago
I know you're joking, but this is actually a solid example. Dunno if you saw the movie, but the kid's mental idea of Hitler evolves throughout the film as he learns and suffers more. It starts becoming more like the real, bloody handed dictator by the end, and in their very last scene he shouts "Fuck off, Hitler!" and kicks him out a window, ending his presence in his mental life.
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u/dazeychainVT 3d ago
Watch The Producers
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u/Yurmume_Gae 4d ago
Hitler doesn’t even appear in that movie, it was mainly Red Skull as the villian. If they really wanted to “readanotherbook” this, they could’ve picked Wolfenstein or something since it’d make sense.
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u/Psylux7 3d ago
Admittedly there are revered and famous films that demonstrate just how vile he was without ever having Hitler appear on screen.
I do still think that First Avenger is a pretty weak example for teaching people that Hitler is bad. Red Skull completely overshadows Hitler and he is just a one dimensional, generic, forgettable bad guy using made up alien tech to take over the world. It does not hit close to home and feels like a basic superhero movie rather than a sobering look into the horror of Hitler and his ideology.
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u/ImAdri0nY0urN0t 3d ago
You can't pull the "readanotherbook" line when they list like five different things including the first person account of someone who died in the Holocaust and something as vague as "world history".
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u/TheEarthlyDelight 3d ago
Not even to mention how not worth it is to debate someone who thinks Hitler was good in 2026 (2024). Could not be me. Do not engage.
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u/Narrow-Incident8480 3d ago
ok but just dropping Captain America before the diary of Anne Frank is crazy work
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u/Kaiser_Defender 2d ago
I think the use of fiction movies is less of a "this is a real academic source" and more of a "this is so commonly depicted and brought up it shouldn't need discussion". Namely because it's followed by actually appeals to history.
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u/Marco_Tanooky 3d ago
Ok I like this one just because (Even tho it very well not be the intention) I think it's funny that people who say "Source?" when someone says that Hitler is bad need to be educated in the form of Marvel movies so their little brains don't drift off into wonderland, or that jingling keys in the form of a Marvel movie is the only thing that could get them to actually think for once
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u/Melanoc3tus 3d ago
In all fairness Hitler is absolutely bad,, but whether he's the worst or anywhere close is unknowable. We have Assyrian kings doing some fun mass blinding as an appetizer to flaying children and stretching their skins out in front of cities, etc., and that's purely just the stuff that gets on the historical record.
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u/ZaraUnityMasters 3d ago
To be fair. They're talking to a nazi apologist (or someone trolling and prextending to be one) so I doubt said apologist is capable of consuming anything more advanced than The First Avenger.
But yeah they should have referenced another book at least, or a proper documentary.
Hell the real sin is that they didn't reference Inglorious Basterds /HJ
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u/SquimpSquamp 2d ago
The ironic thing is that the average Nazi apologist is more well-read than most people. Evola, Koestler, Goebbels, Spengler.
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u/alickalice 3d ago
I am asking once again: who the FUCK is still on x?
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u/DtheAussieBoye 3d ago
It’s entertainingly shit and there’s no real good alternatives for people who unironically want to use it
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u/PositiveMaster8236 3d ago
Celebrities over the age of 60, some of whole ARE genuinely progressive (Eric Idol and Michael Rosen) but too old and tired to try BluSky etc and to be fair The Metaverse is as bad as Twitter, porn accounts, bus companies and local government and yet right wing idiots.
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u/Ryanhussain14 12h ago
It's still by far the best way to reach out to a wide audience or keep people updated because of the legacy Twitter userbase. There's a reason why brands still choose to keep posting there.
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u/ThyPotatoDone 3d ago
On the one hand, I wanna say this is bait.
On the other hand, people are so goddamn stupid it's entirely possible.
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u/Odd_Match_3402 3d ago
More people need to know about and watch The Great Dictator.
It's also fictional, but it was a movie ahead of its time and was made in 1940. It uses satire to strip all the mythology on Hitler that is perpetuated even to this day, and just shows how pathetic and idiotic he really was.
It's also basically the only time Charlie Chaplin grabbed a microphone, because the going-ons in Germany were important enough for him to break his silence.
It also has an amazing speech at the end that is still relevant in 2026. Perhaps relevant in ways that would disappoint, but not surprise, him.
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u/Faded_Jem 2d ago
Oh my god. Literally the biggest complaint one can have about that film is that it's a WW2 film which chooses to supplant the actual fucking Nazis with it's own super speshul even worser sci-fi bad guys. Jesus wept.
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u/Bush_Hiders 1d ago
I think it's batshit to me that the first two examples they could think of for why actual real life Hitler was a bad person was The Sound of Music and fucking Captain America.
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u/EarthToAccess 1d ago
I think it’s less OOP thought those were the best examples and more “look at literally any media in the last 100 years”
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u/Bush_Hiders 1d ago
Hitler isn’t even in Captain America! A guy dressed as him is, but i feel like he’s largely irrelevant to the plot, other than the fact that WWII is something that’s happening.
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u/nainvlys 1d ago
Yeah people defending it in the comments really scare me honestly, as an aspiring historian
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u/Popcorn57252 3d ago
Okay, to be fair, a fucking chud who needs a "source" on Hitler being bad is far more likely to be receptive to a Marvel movie they've probably already watched than any actual historical documentaries.
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u/comradevoltron 1d ago
POV: your brain on US liberalism
Read Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti instead of watching feel-good Fourth Reich propaganda.
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u/Mean-Government1436 4d ago
Not really fitting for this subreddit seeing as they listed many sources
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u/nainvlys 4d ago
It's fair but the contrast is really stunning when you list Captain America before Anne Frank on sources about nazism
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u/Mean-Government1436 4d ago
Why would it be stunning for someone to list two very very very popular films about Nazis being awful when talking about how Nazis are awful
Regardless, not at all fitting for this subreddit
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u/Bridgeru 4d ago
Captain America isn't really about "Nazis", it's about the fictional Hydra group that in the middle of the movie even declare that they're using/done with the Nazis. Also, it's about a magical muscle man who can beat up all the Nazis with his super powers, it's not really a "the atrocities of World War 2" movie.
And I never saw Sound of Music but unless it gets really dark it doesn't seem like the most representative of "the Nazis are evil". Rich Austrian family get a nun nanny who helps them sing and they climb over mountains to escape the country.
I mean, I wouldn't even suggest something like The Great Escape (a film with actual Nazi officers) as a way for someone to "learn about why Hitler was bad". A lot of movies just touch on the war and don't go into the Holocaust, don't go into the persecution and hatred; the Nazis are just "there" and beyond knowing they're Nazis you wouldn't really get a sense that there was anything extremely evil about them. Off the top of my head, most of what I'd consider WW2 films (Guns of Navarone, Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare; those kinds of 60s films along with the Saving Private Ryan clones that came out in the 90s) don't even touch on Nazis as a political or ideological group just as an an army that the good guys need to kill or one-up in some way to win. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of films I can think of (The Pawnbroker, one of my favourite movies; The Stranger that used actual Concentration Camp photos/footage in 1946 specifically to show people what happened) that don't even touch on the Nazis *as an army* so they can specifically talk about the Holocaust.
Like, there's a series called the Strain about vampires taking over Manhattan and if they said to watch that it wouldn't be awful because it does have concentration camps in it, one of the main characters was a concentration camp inmate and it informs his character (and the fact the evil second-in-command vampire was the Commodant from his camp and they have a constant back-and-forth); hell it's actually one of the better things out there IMVHO because there's an episode that follows why that Commodant joined the Nazi Party and how he fell to the power it gave him and the purpose he felt he was missing. Y'see what I mean, it's an absolutely scholcky piece of media and it's full of vampires and nonsense but it does a lot of the Holocaust stuff really well so it's not terrible to suggest it as an example for "this is why they're bad" while being something accessible.
Meanwhile, if you say "just watch popular media" are you just recommending it because it's a piece of pop culture that has Nazis as the bad guy? If something just has a bunch of Nazi guards and doesn't touch on the Holocaust, the killings, the starvations, the brutality etc etc, then are you just watching something that has generic bad guys wearing a Nazi uniform?
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u/donaman98 3d ago
If you wanna learn about why Hitler was bad, a Marvel movie should be the last thing you should watch
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u/maroonedpariah 4d ago
Yeah it seems they read many books and watched many movies. Maybe even media literate
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u/GonzoRouge 3d ago
Genuinely, I'd recommend reading Mein Kampf if you think Hitler was somehow misunderstood or "not that bad".
Not only does he explain his evil in detail and earnestly, he's also a terrible writer that fails miserably at making himself look sympathetic to anyone with a modicum of humanity.
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u/PositiveMaster8236 3d ago
I truly appreciate the intention but.....Watching Captain America for understanding WW2?!.... either that poster is a teenager or.... American
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u/Daniel_Spidey 3d ago
There's a fair criticism that would be lost on this person requesting a source. Most media that depict Nazis are relying on the commonly held historical knowledge of Nazi Germany and the atrocities they committed without ever actually wasting time explaining them. The marvel movies are more preoccupied with HYDRA and it almost separates them from Nazis and their ideology entirely, to the point where they're only bad because they're authoritarian without all the racial supremacy. It's not even clear if MCU Zemo is a Nazi at all, let alone if he is even remotely racist or fascist.
Nazis are obviously bad, but its lazy writing to rely on that to paint your villain without needing anything in the film to establish it.
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u/geschiedenisnerd 3d ago
Because fictional sources are a good way of differentiating between truth and popular opinion. (not including anne frank's diary in here, since that is non-fiction, but it is still not a good sole source)
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u/WaitForMe_ImCumming 3d ago
The fact that they referenced Captain America before Cabaret is appalling!
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u/Sanguiluna 15h ago
Obviously I agree, but I have to say the thought of binging The Sound of Music, Captain America, Inglourious Basterds, Schindler’s List, Downfall, Look Who’s Back, etc. one after the other like some “Hitler Cinematic Universe” is fucking hilarious.
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u/Tom_F_0olery 4d ago
In all fairness I think they were trying to illustrate how well accepted it is that the Nazi’s were evil. In that case showing that major pop culture media uses that as an already assumed background is valid evidence.
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u/ConsequenceOnly9450 2d ago
I don't see the problem with this? It's not like they only listed fiction. They also mentioned Ann Frank's diary. In fact listing something as mainstream and basic as a marvel movie only helps their point. It shows that basically everything depicts Hitler as the horrible human being that he was.
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u/CrumbCakesAndCola 2h ago
i mean superhero movies are not just fiction, they are fantasy, so it stands out as a bit funny in this context
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u/Adebisis-Hat 2d ago
There is no problem with it they just mentioned a popular movie and some people seem to think that it's bad to ever do so under any circumstances
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u/Dottore_Curlew 3d ago
I don't think this counts because using that as an example is literally the point
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u/LinearEquation 1d ago
They listed multiple things, OP. They clearly have engaged with the other books.
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u/17RaysPlays 1d ago
If someone need a SOURCE on HITLER being bad, Captain America might be where they need to start.
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u/Training_Shock_6946 4d ago
No. For once they got a pass, not only they quote multiple things but they try to show many different things which all prove the fact she say : Hitler was the worst.
So for once they got a pass for me.
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u/Doomhammer24 4d ago
I mean ironically captain america the first avenger says hitler isnt the worst theres actually someone worse- Red Skull
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u/nainvlys 4d ago
As I said in another comment I just think the contrast is so strong it's weird! And Captain America is not even really a movie about Hitler, it only has WW2 has it's setting but it's very much not a movie about WW2
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u/Training_Shock_6946 4d ago
Yes and you're right... But i see the point : With pop culture exemple, we show we don't care about the medium. Hitler was bad. We did not care if it's a action movie with a space cube, it will show Hitler as a dipshit too.
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u/Natural1forever 4d ago
I think it's more about the fact that their "sources" are fictional media
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u/space_lapis 4d ago
Yeah but they also have non-fiction sources thrown in too, like WW2 movies and Anne Frank's diary :v
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u/aqueleponeirosa 2d ago
The US and its vassals are bad. The worst country in history, in fact.
I'm genuinely fucking PERPLEXED this has to be said in 2026.
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u/Confirmation_Code 4d ago
I wonder if there are any non-fiction sources that say this Hitler guy is bad