Adolph Hitler as a Serial Killer?

Wetting the bed is a sign of a serial killer?:confused: Then pretty much every person I know is a potential serial killer.*


*I should note that they did this when they were kids, not at the moment...

Wetting the bed over the the normal age when most children stop is a comon trait among many serial killers. Correlation does not equal causation, but nonetheless.
 
Personally, I suspect Hitler might be too squeamish to actually murder someone personally. From what little I've read, he was not prone to direct personal physical violence. Like many tyrants, he was a "big thinker" who lived in a world of vast impersonal schemes with the deliberate effect of murderng millions. It is known that as Furhrer, he personally intervened on behalf of his dead mother's doctor (who was Jewish) to make sure he and his family had a visa to leave Austria after the Anschluss. This sounds like a guy who might be unlikely to physically murder anyone he actually knew, but I guess the range of psychopaths and sociopaths out there is pretty big.

As noted by another poster, if Hitler was prone to serial murder, it makes more sense that his targets would not be people he publically hated such as jews or slavs, but "imperfect" aryans, probably women prostitutes etc upon whom he could act out whatever wierd sexual repressions he obviosuly had.
 
Assuming the book's thesis is accurate, the article doesn't say he was never in danger but that he and his allies exaggerated it.

The fact Stalin inflated his Polish-Soviet War exploits doesn't mean he never saw combat.

If anything Stalin's actions in that war were deliberately underrated due to Trotsky's smear campaign against him, dramatically aided by Stalin being a monstrous dick which made it easier to believe all these things. Had Stalin died in 1923 he'dve been as essential to the Bolshevik regime as all the others and his death would have been greatly mourned.
 
I really don't see any version of Hitler whose personality is recognizable becoming a serial killer. A serial killer Hitler is someone whose background and problems would be sufficiently different to the point that serial killer Adolf Hitler would be a Ted Bundy/John Wayne Gacy figure at most. Meaning infamous and obscure.
 
SLA Marshall claimed that maybe a quarter of American troops did during WWII, but I think his studies were called into question.

I haven't read Dave Grossman's book, but from what I've heard he completely blasts that out of the water. SLA Marshall's methodology was horrible to say the least.

From what I've heard, if SLA Marshall is right in his numbers, it had less to do with soldiers having no desire to fire their rifles and more to do with the tactical situations they found themselves in.

In Vietnam, it was estimated that 90% of troops in combat used their weapons. In Iraq it's been estimated to be 98%. But those are numbers I got from a WW2 history forum.
 
His response to his girlfriend's suicide was way over the top. It really doesn't fit the serial killer profile well though.

Hitler saw himself as a superman type. That really does not fit the profile of most serial killers, who are extremely weak and kill to compensate for their inadequacies. Hitler's problems were not a feeling of being inadequate.
 
Studies show, IIRC, that about 2% of soldiers in WW1 fired their weapons with deadly intent, though I couldn't vouch for their methodology. Huge numbers, possibly a majority, mostly didn't fire their rifles during fighting, that's for sure.

My question, and I'm not demanding you post the numbers, just being rhetorical, but I wonder how many soldiers even got the opportunity. Artillery and machine guns did (and do) most of the killing anyways, and I think it would have been exceptionally rare to see your enemy.
 

The problem is that Hitler occupied a non-combatant position that was rather extremely dangerous if from nothing else other than the simple quantity of artillery and how random a killer artillery was. Now, Hitler did exaggerate to ludicrous degrees what he actually did, but he was never not-in-danger and WWI messengers did not as a rule live very long as artillery didn't exactly kill only combat soldiers.
 
My question, and I'm not demanding you post the numbers, just being rhetorical, but I wonder how many soldiers even got the opportunity. Artillery and machine guns did (and do) most of the killing anyways, and I think it would have been exceptionally rare to see your enemy.

Not to mention the important soldiers to sustaining armies who can spend an entire war without ever so much as hearing a shot fired in anger, much less shooting one themselves. Serving in logistics or the quartermaster corps still counts as military personnel and depending on how one does it could lead to the argument that increasing numbers of modern soldiers don't shoot at other soldiers simply because increasing numbers of modern soldiers aren't in combat positions in the first place.
 
My question, and I'm not demanding you post the numbers, just being rhetorical, but I wonder how many soldiers even got the opportunity. Artillery and machine guns did (and do) most of the killing anyways, and I think it would have been exceptionally rare to see your enemy.

Artillery was the big killer, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of nasty close-quarters fighting. I'm not sure whether 'see your enemy' is meant in a broader sense or to mean being aware of the particular human being you're fighting, but the former was usual and the latter hardly unknown. Those sharpened shovels weren't for show.

To clarify: I've never heard figures saying that such large numbers of troops didn't use weapons. That would be remarkable. The study was saying rather that 2% of the soldiers 'polled' said that they were motivated in combat by a desire to kill the enemy. That large numbers probably didn't use their weapons at all was just adding some context to that.

Not to mention the important soldiers to sustaining armies who can spend an entire war without ever so much as hearing a shot fired in anger, much less shooting one themselves. Serving in logistics or the quartermaster corps still counts as military personnel and depending on how one does it could lead to the argument that increasing numbers of modern soldiers don't shoot at other soldiers simply because increasing numbers of modern soldiers aren't in combat positions in the first place.

It's a good point, but I'm reasonably sure it was combat roles, since the question of what motivates you in a fight rather implies a fight.
 
Artillery was the big killer, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of nasty close-quarters fighting. I'm not sure whether 'see your enemy' is meant in a broader sense or to mean being aware of the particular human being you're fighting, but the former was usual and the latter hardly unknown. Those sharpened shovels weren't for show.

To clarify: I've never heard figures saying that such large numbers of troops didn't use weapons. That would be remarkable. The study was saying rather that 2% of the soldiers 'polled' said that they were motivated in combat by a desire to kill the enemy. That large numbers probably didn't use their weapons at all was just adding some context to that.

Well, John Keegan isn't the best source on WW1 (Too generalist), but he actually had a breakdown of what caused the most deaths. Interestingly, I think melee was less than 5% of all casualties. Still, I can't imagine what it would be like.
 
Well, John Keegan isn't the best source on WW1 (Too generalist), but he actually had a breakdown of what caused the most deaths. Interestingly, I think melee was less than 5% of all casualties. Still, I can't imagine what it would be like.

Remember, most days most troops weren't in combat. But combat involved rifle-shot contact with the enemy.
 
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