h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a really well-researched entry (makes mine look rather poultry). Donitz is someone I hadn't even heard of and there is quite a lot of new information here for me. It's a shame you don't want to add anything else but I can see why this is enough nazism for a few months yet.

I didn't know a lot about doenitz before I started this, that's the joy of researching! This isn't the main reason I'm a bit jaded about writing about the Nazis, it's the entry on Josef Mengele that was really hard to write.

A2875368 there you go. I don't even like reading it back myself, and re-visiting that facet of history, which would have to be done in any entry about Hitler doesn't appeal to me at the moment.

Yes this is a difficult area to write a comprehensive entry on, and it's impressively detailed. I'm interested that you choose to use what you warn are some fairly graphic descriptions (especially the injections into eyes stuff). Did you think that it was important to have these scenes included in a biohgraphy of Mengele rather than just make the more general point about the nature of his experiments? Have you got any thoughts about future entries? Something a little friendier? Mary Poppins, or perhaps Mother Theresa?

I didn't want there to be any illusions about just what this 'Doctor' did. You can make vague references to the awful points of life, but if it's there in its entirety then it has a bigger impact on the reader. If just one kid thinking of joining the National Front reads that and thinks "hang on, maybe this right wing, racist, anti-semetic organisation isn't the right choice for me to make. I want nothing to do with extreme politics!" then it'll be worth the effort that went into writing it.

Fair point. It's difficult to tread a line between informing and trying to sway a reader with your own opinions, but with a case as clear cut as Mengele the facts speak very well for themselves. As for Hitler, I think there is a different issue. Obiously there is less action to be referred to (as he was not a practical man as such) but rather in what he said (something about hanging every Jew in Germany, for example) which leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions about how to judge him, which is perhaps unsatisfactory.

That's where I've gone off the Kershaw analysis (which you may have noticed is the crux of this entry) as it portrays Hitler as disinterested and random in his desires up to the point that some of the blame is transferred to the Party elite.

I must admit my impression has always been that he is fervent about some things (Jewish Extermination, Eastern Expansion etc..) but that other areas of doctrine, as well as running the country generally, were left, as you suggest in your own entry to others. I don't have any doubt that he must take partial responsibility for the Holocaust but I think things such as eugenics (sterilising the disabled and stuff) may have been the sadistic whims of others (such as Mengele).