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It's plenty remarkable for a lot of reasons. First, the soap-opera drama of the Nazi rise is just incredible. If it weren't so horrifying, you could make a dozen comic soap operas out of it. Second, the remarkable run of wild success that Hitler's early-career gambles met with is fascinating. There were generals locking themselves in their offices with nervous breakdowns over the Anschluss, the handling of the Sudenten crisis, the invasion of the rump Czechoslovak state, Fall Weiss, and Fall Gelb...and somehow each one worked out fantastically in Hitler's favor. Even the amazing success of the Wehrmacht at the beginning of Barbarossa was down to ridiculously good timing (catching the Soviets forward-deployed for an invasion to the West...but not yet on a war footing) and a shocking case of the normally-wily Stalin suddenly grabbing onto the idiot-ball of world-history with both hands. Third, the speed at which things broke down for the Nazis is just as vertiginous, and makes an equally-interesting story. And of course fourth, the sheer industrial scale of the killing achieved through bureaucracy is itself a modern marvel, and a sobering reminder to western, advanced, industrialized nations that we are not exempt from the blood-lust we might otherwise be tempted to put down to the savagery of less-enlightened souls (the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan Hutu, the Young Turks, etc.)
Napoleon has all of these. It's arguable which one tops the other on either point but they are compared often for a reason.
The scale of the industrical killing is also very comparable to Stalin's.
Napoleon is one of the most noteworthy figures in history.
Yes, the forced resettlement of millions and the complete subjugation and remaking of the USSR under Stalin is also one of the most notable and interesting (though macabre and sinister) phases in modern history.
Hitler was not Franco, or Mussolini, or Vargas, or any of the other tin-pot dictators of the period. He was, no matter how you slice it, one of the Great Horrors. Perhaps, with the passage of enough centuries, he, Stalin, and Mao will be remembered like we remember Tamerlane or Ghengis Khan, the bloodiness of their deeds overshadowed by the alien, bygone nature of their world. But they will be remembered as Great Horrors all the same.
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And when writers and producers deign to visit the era, we end up with some quality fiction!
Don't remind me of Ridley Scott's decline, please. I rewatched Blade Runner recently and it seems impossible that the same man made that dreadful movie that's all about Joséphine.
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