I'm pretty sure the puppy video is a fake. A dog being held like that would squirm around, trying to get free. The one in this video never changed it's position--it didn't even move once. Not to mention that the "barking" sounds a hell of a lot like a sound effect added on afterwards. It's a few "barks" repeated at an interval, sounding a lot like a sound effect on a loop. I think it was a puppy doll or plush toy thrown over. It's still rather reprehensible to fake such a thing, but I don't think it's a real death.
However, because the video just started circulating, it can't be said for sure one way or the other: http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/throwpuppy.asp
As for the poster who said Hitler did a good job of putting Germany back on top...uh, no he didn't. He started the deadliest war in human history. Setting aside the tens of millions of Russians, Americans, British, French, Polish, Czech, etc. dead, the war devastated Germany, where much of the fighting took place, destroying cities, killing millions (both army and civilians), and left Germany a shell of what it was, split into two nations under the thumb of the eventual ruling powers. Germany as a whole did not fully recover from WWII until the mid-90s, once it was reunited as one country and East Germany given a chance to flourish. I'm pretty sure Germans would have preferred Wiemar-era inflation to the devastation the war caused. Especially the dead Germans.
Did Hitler keep Stalin in check? No, of course not. The Soviet Union was a large but struggling nation at the start of the war (which is why Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-agression--he didn't want to go to war with Germany). Hitler decided to break the pact and invade the Soviet Union, committing the most famous blunder there is (Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Slightly less famous, of course, is never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! A ha ha ha...plop). By the end of the war the Soviet Union was incredibly powerful, having control over nearly all of Eastern Europe--precisely the area the USSR had to cover to fight the German army back into Germany. Hitler didn't keep Stalin in check, he made him more dangerous.
Finally, the Holocaust. All of you creating excuses as to why it's understandable to commit mass genocide (9 million people) sicken me deeply. There's a difference, Flow, to saying I hate "these bastards everyday carrying guns around and throwing gang signs in public" and following such a thought up with deciding to kill all black/latino/poor/whatever people. I seriously doubt you want to kill all black people--why defend a man who was willing to make that leap?
And Zucas--that's not how evolution works. survival of the fittest/natural selection/Darwinism is focused on the ways species evolve and adapt to best take advantage of their ecological niche. Those species and/or subsection of a species that don't adapt die out because they cannot compete for natural resources. Not because they are beaten by the more "fit" species (if that were true we would only have animals at the top of the food chain left in the world--which would promptly die out due to a lack of feeding sources). What Hitler was doing was not an "enforced" natural selection or even a form of social Darwinism--it was an insane mixture of eugenics and a hatred of all those that did not conform to a certain type of beauty standards (standards he himself didn't live up to).
There is no excusing or rationalizing the holocaust. I'm as much a relativist as they come, and agree with you, Zucas, about the way Arabs and Muslims are portrayed post-9/11, but the two things don't equate. The reasons are twofold:
1. A more accurate analogy to post-9/11 assumptions about Arabs and Muslims would be to say Germans as a whole don't get a fair shake in the way they're represented circa-Nazi Germany. Comparing how an entire people are thought of to the way just one man is (especially when that man is one of history's greatest murderers) simply doesn't work as a formulation.
2. Death toll of 9/11: right around 3,000. Death toll of the Holocaust: 9 million. If any person, group of people, ethnicity of people, whatever decided en masse to kill millions of people for being different from themselves, I would have to think that, yes, that person/group/ethnicity was pretty screwed up. Take all the deaths of all the suicide bombings, terrorist attacks or whatever committed by the the extremist Arabs ever, and it doesn't equal one tenth of the number of people killed in the Holocaust. The two things cannot be equated. The only thing you can compare a genocide to is another genocide. Are you going to give Stalin and Pol Pot the same benefit of the doubt you give Hitler?
Sorry to get off on a rant, but defending Hitler in any way is just, in my opinion, absurd at best, and sickening at, well, not even worst.
Atari 7800 (Sold), Intellivision (Thrown out), Gameboy (Lost), Super Nintendo (Stolen), Super Nintendo (2nd copy) (Thrown out by mother), Nintendo 64 (Still own), Super Nintendo (3rd copy) (Still own), Wii (Sold)
A more detailed history appears on my profile.
