Who was the "smartest" man in Nazi Germany

Speer. Smart enough to prevent the complete self destruction of Germany that Hitler ordered. Smart enough to basically admit his crimes and settle in for a full prison sentence. Smart enough to relaunch a new life for himself afterwards.
Smart enough to admit some of his crimes, and throw one of his subordinates under the bus so they got hanged in his place for the rest!
 
What ideas?

Considering Hitler would go on to be responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, Poles, Slavs, gypsies etc they must have been some ridiculously evil ideas to be regarded by Hitler as too much

Well, he once wrote in his paper that all people who were friends with Jews or ever had sexual relationships with jews should be hanged or killed in a gruesome way, because they were tainted. Since this would not only have included a good part of ordinary Germans but even people like Göring, Göbbels and a punch of other important people, Göbbels ordered the Newspaper banned and Streicher was nearly demoted in the NSDAP rank system.

After Hitler intervened personally and told Streicher to be a bit less ... radical, Göbbels had to unban the paper and Streicher could publish his shit again.
 
Churchill also had a horrible issue with deciding something on a whim, becoming attached to it and not letting go. See Gallipoli, Norway, Greece, Second BEF, Italy... and those are just the ones he succeeded in forcing through. Alan Brooke apparently was fighting a second war in Churchill's bunker throughout the conflict shooting down bad ideas sometimes at length because Churchill refused to let go.

Then there were the political misjudgements unrelated to the war such as the gold standard and India.


I think that IQ is a very poor way to judge intelligence beyond the theoretical.

When you think about it Churchill displayed many of the characteristics associated with an autistic genius.

Oh and start here
http://www.eoht.info/page/Genius+IQ+candidates
I admit the sources are sketchy ... but aren't all those for historical figures?
 
IQ definitely should be considered but only alongside other intangables such as cunning, political tact, etc.

Anyone think reinhard heydrich deserves consideration?

P.K. Dick did, for what its worth. He placed him on the centre of Nazi politics post WW2 victory.
 
Well, he was often doped up to his eyeballs...


I actually don't see the relevance of this being the first thing mentioned when talking about Goring. Might as well mention every time Churchill's name falls that he had a lisp, and that FDR was terribly sick. You know how many great philosophers where raging alcoholics? It affects the way he works perhaps a bit, but not so much as to see it as a crippling handicap.

I mean i don't want to defend the monster Goring, but i think people need to see there is more to him than an addict and closet transvestite.
 
One can be intelligent and misguided pretty easily. In fact intellectual ideology is a common problem with highly intelligent people. Believe it or not German university scholars voted for the Nazis in very high numbers in '32/'33.

Even when the man on the street seems to get carried away in nonsense its mostly an emotional/social assent for him. Not a fully intellectual one. Of course that's true of intellectuals as well, but its they who sometimes actually come up with the rationalizations to buy into various crazy "systems".

Oh yes. As one keen observer said of another collection of ideologues:
One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. -- George Orwell
 
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