Evil & Eviler

I got married. :) A month tomorrow, on Valentine's day. Yeehaw! // But what I'm actually going to blog about today is Hitler. Last night, the new husband and I were watching Misfits (a show we quite enjoy for it's plot and dark humor, but is full of crass-ities that you may or may not be up for - don't say I didn't warn you) Season 3, episode 4 in which the gang gets mixed up in a time warp resulting in an alternate present in which the Nazis still rule. It's quite a good episode, and it got me thinking about the all the things I've seen (or heard of) in the past 2 years or so in which the story of Hitler & the Nazis is somehow reinvented (or in which there is speculation about what would have happened if it hadn't gone down the way it did). It's not a huge list (you may be able to add to it), but it's enough to constitute a possible trend. 3 movies, apart from the Misfits episode; 1. Valkyrie (which I did not see, but Jonas said was moving; historically accurate?), 2. Captain America (perhaps not Hitler directly? I fell asleep at the drive in....) and a favorite of mine, 3. Inglourious Basterds. I feel like I may have blogged about it before, but I just have to share this little snippet from my favorite scene again, because it was so lovely.

Anywho, I don't actually have commentary about the fact that this subject may be gaining popularity in media, so much as I am interested in why Hitler is the ultimate bad guy in the minds of most of those in the West. Especially when there are worse, not to mention more current, dictators and evil dudes. I know this is hardly a subject that hasn't been discussed before, but why do YOU default to Hitler as the baddest of them all? Do you? I suspect it's because WW2 brought so many cultural global changes and we also learn a lot about Hitler  & his whole deal in school in the US. I'm just curious as to why people still want to punish him over and over and why we continue to be almost personally offended by the holocaust (I'm talking about those of us who don't have direct ties to it, of course). Really, I'm not trying to play down the tragedy, I just think there are worse things that need to be focused on instead. And for the record, I DON'T think terrorists or Middle East mischief makers are the worst out there, these days. If you think about it, I think they inflict relatively little psychical damage for all the hype and energy focused on hating them.