Marge Schott is the owner of the Cincinnatti Reds who got herself in trouble with the statement that "Hitler was good at first, but then he went too far." Now I'm no fan of Marge Schott or Hitler, but there are angles to this that I don't think have been discussed.

The obvious question is why was what she said so bad? Do people think that she meant that harrassing Jews was all right, killing a few hundred thousand wasn't too bad, but killing several million was "too far?" I don't think so. Does her statement automatically condemn her as anti-Semitic? Not necessarily. If you wish to debate that she is a racist you would easily win, but not with that statement alone.

I think the problem is that the word Hitler has actually expanded in meaning beyond the historical person, to be a synonym for evil. Whenever discussions are held that require an over the top example of pure evil, the name of Hitler is invoked. Saying anything "good" about Hitler is tantamount to declaring that pure evil has some good, and you might as well say you worship the devil as say Hitler wore clean underwear. Atheists might appreciate this subtlety, it is similar to saying one doesn't believe in God, regardless of how the word "God" is defined it engenders a strong emotional image of whatever one believes is good and true. Hitler has a stronger connotation than even the name of Satan in modern culture. We can use Satan in movies and books as a kind of smart-alecky adversary, good-naturedly tempting us while cracking jokes, but if you wish to use the ghost of Hitler as a literary device you better make sure there is no doubt about your sympathies.

Quite a while back growing up in Southern California I remember there were some kids who refered to themselves as "surf Nazis." Their point was simply that they were fanatical about their hobby. Many people of the "older" generation that remembered the real Nazis were horrified. The younger set was oblivious to the fact that the term had such a strong connotation that simply using the word was shocking. Remember Sidney Poitier telling the Mother Superior that she was like Hitler in the movie Lilies of the Field? The poor nuns felt violated, almost as if they had been physically assaulted.

Beyond this well accepted cultural taboo that Mrs. Schott violated, one needs to ask the question of did Hitler actually do any good? There is the personal question with regards to basic human nature, that surely at some point in his life, as a little boy perhaps, he must have helped his mother set the table, or studied hard for a test, maybe he scratched a dog's ear. When one admits that each of us developed from a helpless infant into the human being we are, one must wonder about the young Adolph, innocent at some point in his life, transforming into the tyrannical murderer. Was he totally responsible for his own metamorphisis? Of all the snot-nosed toddlers laughing and playing at the park would you be able to pick out the "evil" ones?

And even in his public life, was he so easy to identify as the prototype of wickedness? Remember people actually voted for him, there were many people who followed him willingly. Germany was in turmoil and he offered hope. Was the whole country so evil that it would do anything to restore its stability and pride? Was the average German citizen any worse than the average modern American? There were definite improvements in the average German citizen's life due to his leadership. It's almost too easy to dismiss him as an aberration when I doubt that any of us would have been able to predict what was going on in the death camps. The whole world was willing to acquiesce to his insufferable demands because no one was willing to understand just how horrible his intentions were.

The whole reason we need to understand Hitler and the society he sprang from and lead is so we can recognize the Hitlers of today. Was he just an unfortunate blip in the annals of history or should we be concerned about his return? Modern Nazi hunters claim their motivation is to prevent a reocurrence of the Holocaust. But has that goal been achieved? Have Bosnia, Ruwanda, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, China, Russia, anyone else benefitted from the removal from planet Earth of 80 year old men whose worst deeds were fifty years ago? Remember the flack Ronald Reagan got when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire?" Are we so tolerant that we need to wait fifty years before we can recognize evil, and then insist it be recognized only in hindsight?

So Marge Schott's comment is more one of ignorance, ignorance to be eliminated through education, not punishment. To increase understanding we need discussion of ideas, no matter how stupid, because for every ignorant thought expressed there are uncounted ignorant thoughts merely kept in the mind, behind steely gazes, shut out from controversy and safely coddled.

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