Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan

Spiegel
By Hasnain Kazim in Islamabad, Pakistan
03/17/2010

Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe.

Pakistan is the opposite of Germany. The mountains are in the north, the sea is in the south, the economic problems are in the west and the east is doing well. It's not hard for a German living in Pakistan to get used to these differences, but one contrast is hard to stomach: Most people like Hitler.

I was recently at the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn't resort to electric clippers. All he has is creaky pair of scissors, a comb, an aerosol with water. He did a neat job but I wasn't entirely happy.

I said: "I look like Hitler."

He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: "Yes, yes, very nice."

I decided not to challenge him, went home and tried to get rid of the strict parting he'd given me.

Embarrassing Moments

I was glad I avoided the usual Hitler conversation. Pakistanis always hone in on that topic whenever they talk to Germans. "We're Aryans too," they say, because there was an Indo-Germanic race, the Aryas. Besides, Hitler was a military genius, they add.

Sometimes it's better to keep quiet about one's German origins. It's embarrassing because people here think they're doing you a favor by expressing their admiration for the Nazi leader. I suspect most Indians and Pakistanis have no idea what this man did. They see him as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans.

In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role. Conversations with German visitors rapidly turn to the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians who were robbed of their land.

The Desire to be Swallowed up by the Ground

One can try to cut such conversations short, like a German acquaintance of mine did recently. He told a taxi driver in Iran he should stop talking nonsense because he as a dark-skinned person wouldn't have survived long in Nazi Germany. The taxi driver looked at him surprised and said: "But I'm Aryan!"

The alternative is just to wish the ground would swallow you up, like when German friends visited us while we were staying with our Pakistani relatives in London. Out of the blue, one uncle started talking admiringly about Hitler, his supposed military feats and how he led Germany out of economic misery. Our friends just sat there stony-faced and didn't know what to say. Later on my parents apologized to them.

I don't know where this fascination comes from, not just for the Nazis but for all things German. Most people don't realize that today's Germany is very different from the Third Reich. It's not surprising. Many have never even been to the next big city in their own country, so how should they know what things are like in Germany these days?

"I Like Nazi"

As a result, many Pakistanis easily switch from Hitler to Mercedes ("Very excellent car, but a little too expensive"). A few days ago a white Mercedes built in the 1970s was driving ahead of me in the center of Islamabad carrying a family of seven. On the back was a sticker bearing a black swastika in a white circle. Underneath it read: "I like Nazi."

It's not just Muslims who maintain this Nazi cult. A few years ago, a Hindu businessman in India opened a restaurant called "Hitler's Cross," complete with a portrait of the Führer at the entrance. Another Hindu sold bed linen emblazoned with swastikas that had little to do with the Hindu swastika symbol for good luck. The sheets, pillow cases and bed spreads were advertised as being part of "The Nazi Collection." English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.

Once my wife and I visited the cafe in the beautiful Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. It has a garden lined with palms, excellent tea and friendly waiters in uniforms that recall the colonial era. A young man served us. The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.

The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.

Fittingly enough, since the US is on its way to become the poodle of India, shows its admiration for one of Hitler's poodle:
There are several Petain street or avenues in the US!

ASians, muslims and africans all like Obama, hitler, stalin and Obama

Big_Pacific wrote:

ASians, muslims and africans all like Obama, hitler, stalin and Obama

LMAO! What a fucked up world

I learned about Hitler and Mussolini in school and from my parents and that was the end of it until I was talking to a muslim and he mentioned both men with great admiration as if I was suppposed to feel flattered at the mention of Mussolini. I asked him why did put them on a pedistal and he said that he learned in school these things and he also hated the jews. I said who, do you know one? He said no, they are our enemy. I said you're crazy.

When I worked in the computer industry in Silicon Valley, I watched in horror as the whites were driven out due to influx of cheaper engineers from India, Pakistan, China, and so forth. I tell you, there is enormous admiration for Hitler, and among some of the Han Chinese (of all people!) a nostalgia for Tojo and the Japanese Emperor. ("At least he fought the British.")

I teamed up with a guy from India to write and publish software books, which we did. I was astonished when he told me (over lunch at a German restaurant in San Jose) that India and the United States would have been great allies against the British, and, too bad Hitler lost, he would have been a great ally too.

My response was as follows. I have greenish-blue eyes, and I pointed to my eyes and said, dude, you haven't got these. And without them, you'd end up as a lampshade or a bar of soap eventually." He thought I was joking. He never recanted, BTW.

Pakis are just a bunch of dumb ass apes.

I had a classmate from China one time when I was studying in Germany. He told me he thought the Germans really admired Hitler...just that they didn't want to say it publicly because everybody else around them hated him. I tried to explain that on top of being a maniacal tyrant who was brutal to his own people, he also started a world war that resulted in 10's of millions of deaths, including 8 million Germans and resulted in Germany losing about 1/4 of its territory and being utterly destroyed and divided for almost 50 years not to mention that his crimes against humanity saddled the country with a legacy it still hasn't gotten over. His response? Well....sure they regret losing but deep down I think they're really proud of him."



Some men you just can't reach......

Trever wrote:

My response was as follows. I have greenish-blue eyes, and I pointed to my eyes and said, dude, you haven't got these. And without them, you'd end up as a lampshade or a bar of soap eventually." He thought I was joking. He never recanted, BTW.

you are aware that in nazi-racism-theory aryan people were also able to have brown eyes and black hair?
but well propaganda always exaggerates, so how could you know better?

look at the last one. in the theory of the nazis this was a real german aryan (and also some others with black hair and brown eyes).

I know the winner writes the history, but please try a bit logic: if only the blondes and blue eyed would be aryan than hitler wouldn't have been one..


anyway I also experience it quite often, especially in the middle east and arab region, that being german is associated positively with hitler, because he killed the jews.
but it is still a bit absurd when a black person praises about hitler and what a great man he was (experienced first hand)..
the japanese are sometimes more funny: "WW3 will be japan and germany, BUT NOT ITALY" lol.. I had to laugh about that one.

it's weird how many friendly opinions about the nazis are, when one is not in the russian or american influence-sphere. probably because the nazis pissed off both: russians/communists and americans/capitalists

MichaelE wrote:

I had a classmate from China one time when I was studying in Germany. He told me he thought the Germans really admired Hitler...just that they didn't want to say it publicly because everybody else around them hated him. I tried to explain that on top of being a maniacal tyrant who was brutal to his own people, he also started a world war that resulted in 10's of millions of deaths, including 8 million Germans and resulted in Germany losing about 1/4 of its territory and being utterly destroyed and divided for almost 50 years not to mention that his crimes against humanity saddled the country with a legacy it still hasn't gotten over. His response? Well....sure they regret losing but deep down I think they're really proud of him."

Some men you just can't reach......

Where is lord hee haws response? lol

Trever wrote:

("At least he fought the British.")

that is one sentiment I can really grasp.
those brits, who always tried their best (since shortly after the crusades) to help invaders from outside europe to conquer it.
turks, huns, russians, arabs.. no matter what kind of non-european invader it was, they could (and still can today) always count on the help of the brits.

luckily today britian is as easily to reach as the rest of europe, so they will get their price directly, with lots of pakis and muslems .
I wish them lots of immigrants from all those countries, whom they tried to help to invade europe..

it was one of the biggest mistakes of hitler to see "brothers" in the brits (the biggest was to get greedy and demand polish land).

TheCrazyKraut wrote:

I know the winner writes the history, but please try a bit logic: if only the blondes and blue eyed would be aryan than hitler wouldn't have been one..

Funny you mention that.....there was a great cartoon somebody did before the war saying "Aryans are tall (shows picture of Goebbels), Blonde (shows picture of Hitler) and Thin (shows picture of Goering). LOL!

MichaelE wrote:

Funny you mention that.....there was a great cartoon somebody did before the war saying "Aryans are tall (shows picture of Goebbels), Blonde (shows picture of Hitler) and Thin (shows picture of Goering). LOL!

yes, that was quite some misinformation.. but who cares, it's all history anyway.
and I understand the need of exaggeration in propaganda.

I bet many americans have thought: "wow i thought the germans were smart people, why didn't they see that their beloved führer was not a blond-haired aryan himself and thus a untermensch"
but they will just come to the conclusion that germans are not that smart at all, or that fascism would have supressed this thought.
but the fact is, that aryans have never been only blond and blue-eyed in nazi-ideology.

TheCrazyKraut wrote:

yes, that was quite some misinformation.. but who cares, it's all history anyway.
and I understand the need of exaggeration in propaganda.

Germans are horrible people.

There should be regular reoccurrences of the bombing of Dresden all throughout that wretched country.

KrazyKraut,

I know the winner writes the history, but please try a bit logic: if only the blondes and blue eyed would be aryan than hitler wouldn't have been one..

However, human behavior does not have logic as its motivator. I don't know how many books I've read about the Third Reich, too many I suppose. But it's clear to me that Hitler secretly hated his own appearance. He wasn't stupid, he knew that he was a homely little man with possible Jewish ancestry.

It's in the nature of people to obsessively persecute, in others, traits that they see and despise in themselves.

Hitler was an extreme, but by no means rare, example of this. That he happened to climb the greasy pole of German politics during the fall of the Republic and during the Great Depression (which afflicted the whole world) is one of the perverse things that history dishes up from time to time.

Hadrian,

Germans are horrible people.

There should be regular reoccurrences of the bombing of Dresden all throughout that wretched country.

The Germans are complex. That is about as critical as I feel like being tonight. Thumbing through some old articles, I found this by Heinrich Heine:

"Denk ich an Deutshland in der Nact,
bin ich um meinem Schlaf gebracht!"

["When I think of Germany in the night
I am robbed of my sleep!"]

Also, here's another gem (glad I found it) by Nietsche:

"The German soul has corridors and interconnecting corridors in it, there are caves, hiding‑places, dungeons in it; its disorder possesses much of the fascination of the mysterious; the German is acquainted with the hidden paths to chaos."

MichaelE wrote:

I had a classmate from China one time when I was studying in Germany. He told me he thought the Germans really admired Hitler...just that they didn't want to say it publicly because everybody else around them hated him. I tried to explain that on top of being a maniacal tyrant who was brutal to his own people, he also started a world war that resulted in 10's of millions of deaths, including 8 million Germans and resulted in Germany losing about 1/4 of its territory and being utterly destroyed and divided for almost 50 years not to mention that his crimes against humanity saddled the country with a legacy it still hasn't gotten over. His response? Well....sure they regret losing but deep down I think they're really proud of him."



Some men you just can't reach......

that's true

you can still see the old soldiers marching on ANZAC day and talk to trhem in the pubs after

The common these has been " Pity about Hitler and the Jews as he did such great things for germany"

Gia wrote:

I learned about Hitler and Mussolini in school and from my parents and that was the end of it until I was talking to a muslim and he mentioned both men with great admiration as if I was suppposed to feel flattered at the mention of Mussolini. I asked him why did put them on a pedistal and he said that he learned in school these things and he also hated the jews. I said who, do you know one? He said no, they are our enemy. I said you're crazy.

Gia, the history must be understood here. Islamists, like traditional Christian teachings are against usury. Muslems in India for example were screwed by Hindu usury, this is the basis of the hate there and why Pakistan became a nation

Hitler got rid of the banking thieves and this is where the admiration comes in from Muslems for Hitler. It should also be said, until the balfour declaration, Muslems were favourably disposed towards the british Empire

To be candid about this subject, I say this. As a White man, I find it discouraging that Hitler is the best example of White leadership that people of other races can pull out of their historical memories. Why Hitler?

The only really remarkable thing Hitler did well was to ferret out certain insecurities and humiliations suffered by post-war German society, and to make political hay out of it. As a Commander-In-Chief, he was clearly incompetent. Else, why the utter destruction of Germany? And why is Germany doing so well now, without Hitler, by contrast? It's sad for the Germans especially, this peculiar nostalgia for a strong boss.

The "nostalgia for a strong boss" syndrome is too common now, and so even people without a drop of Germanic blood are indulging themselves with a lot of revisionist bullshit regarding Hitler.

Trever wrote:

To be candid about this subject, I say this. As a White man, I find it discouraging that Hitler is the best example of White leadership that people of other races can pull out of their historical memories. Why Hitler?

The only really remarkable thing Hitler did well was to ferret out certain insecurities and humiliations suffered by post-war German society, and to make political hay out of it. As a Commander-In-Chief, he was clearly incompetent. Else, why the utter destruction of Germany? And why is Germany doing so well now, without Hitler, by contrast? It's sad for the Germans especially, this peculiar nostalgia for a strong boss.

The "nostalgia for a strong boss" syndrome is too common now, and so even people without a drop of Germanic blood are indulging themselves with a lot of revisionist bullshit regarding Hitler.

the fact is he is the only person, regardless of any negatves that got to the root of the trouble for people and that's what got hin the ire of others

Suffering from and getting your nation out of hyperinflation and literall, starvation is no mean feat. He did it. Within 6 years germany was an economic power and had the best living standards on earth, literally, while we were still in, or coming out of a deptression

He became an economic competitor to the British Empire and that is what got him into trouble. No free trade then as now. So they decided to destroy germany. Funny thing is, the U.S was not our friend either, as they hated the Empire as they were free traders and the Empire a trading block, and the Americans were happy to see the Empire broke and destroyed. There is no friends in war, just conveniences

You know, the lefties alway go on about Che guavara and all those marxist clowns fighting for the common man. Well, one bloke did. Trouble is he succeeded, an the money powers were having none of it

God Damn thats why I can't read Der Spiegel. I swear everything is about WWII and the Jews. Yes it was a horrible tragedy but you would think after 70 years people would be off the subject. I can't believe people still subscribe to the magazine. Talk about beating a horse to death.

AlaskaDude wrote:

God Damn thats why I can't read Der Spiegel. I swear everything is about WWII and the Jews. Yes it was a horrible tragedy but you would think after 70 years people would be off the subject. I can't believe people still subscribe to the magazine. Talk about beating a horse to death.

In case you havent noticed AlaskDude, hee haw is from stormfront and has the brain of a gerbil. He's a davey duke fan and a whipping boy. He's a laughing stock on his own site.

AlaskaDude wrote:

God Damn thats why I can't read Der Spiegel. I swear everything is about WWII and the Jews. Yes it was a horrible tragedy but you would think after 70 years people would be off the subject. I can't believe people still subscribe to the magazine. Talk about beating a horse to death.

history lesson in 11th grade (I think) is all about WW2.. there is a whole years just for the war, and 30% of the time is about yews.
+ excursions to various deathcamps and so on..

it's still a dominant part in german history education. I think I saw (and understood) the first dead-yew-pictures with 8 years old.
they shocked me deeply, when I was a kid.

with that kind of education people will still be shocked about it in 200 years or more in germany (ok maybe not if most germans have been exchanged with yew-hating muslems).. and there is a idea behind this. the idea is to "never forget"

the worst part is these jews today always putting it up in our faces as though present day jews were the victims. You'd think we did it to them the way they carry on

Profiting from the memory of the dead

Lord_Haw_Haw wrote:

the worst part is these jews today always putting it up in our faces

By "our faces" i'll presume you are a himmler relative?