Was Hitler evil?

These days we think of Hitler as being the epitome of evil, right? He's like our ultimate in anti-morality and callous disregard for human compassion. It's become almost a cliche in shock value.

Even the word "Hitler" has an ugly connotation, just looking at it. You can't get any lower or morally worse than Hitler.

But I fear we are divorcing historical context just a little bit. And that's never a good idea.

Now, I'm certainly not going to come anywhere near an argument that Hitler is a tragically misunderstood good-guy, but consider it from this perspective:

At that time that Hitler was in power, Jews were generally not well liked across the world. You can bet that around and during the war that the majority of people in England would have harbored, what we would now consider, racist views about Jews. But at the time they would have been morally reasonable and sound.

I'd like to use the example of paedophiles today. There is a lot of hatred towards paedophiles in our current society.

But imagine if in a hundred years time, the distinction between childhood and adulthood has become blurred and the new moral code doesn't really see anything wrong with a relationship between a 30-year-old and a 13-year-old. By today's standard the idea is morally reprehensible, but it's the same idea with Jews.

In the 1940's Jews were considered inferior and unpleasant, not just by Nazi's but by regular people.

Jump back to present day. I'm sure you'd be able to find quite a number of normal, British people these days who would advocate a death penalty for paedophilia. Maybe they don't represent a reflective, educated person's views but they are likely to be widely held nevertheless. I concede you could argue with me on this point, but for argument's sake let's say I'm right.

So, knowing that some people think paedophillia is a just cause for the death penalty, it can't be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that there must be some people who would take that to it's logical conclusion: put all paedophiles into concentration camps and gas them to death in batches.

Note I would also accept that there is a very strong difference between a religious belief and being a paedophile (although the mischievous Atheist within me would argue that both are mental illnesses).

I'm just trying to make the point with something that general moral opinion says is bad (paedophilia) with something that the 1940's general moral opinion said was bad (being Jewish).

So, Hitler is extremely evil, we would agree certainly. He brought about the deaths of millions of Jews.

Imagine today if we learned that Germany was placing paedophiles into concentration camps. There might be outrage among some parts the Left, and intervention would be talked about. But there would certainly be a relatively strong contingent of the opinion: "well, maybe it's not such a bad idea".

Likely the outcome would be the same, however. But the point I'm making is that Hitler is only unmitigatedly evil by the terms of our modern morality (of course there are extremists who would tell you Hitler was onto a good thing, but there are always going be extremists).

But I'm not talking about extremists, I'm talking about out-of-the-mill bigots. My generation is more naturally liberal in terms of race, sexuality and religion. But would we take the same stance on paedophiles? I imagine the morality would be much more divided.

And so in a hundred years time when relationships between adults and children are morally accepted, they would look back on the German paeodphile concentration camps with horror, and they would imagine the perpetrators as the worst evil they can think of.

But by our standards a killer of paedophiles would certainly be less immediately reprehensible than, say, someone who kills black people.

Hitler is only the ultimate evil in our modern context. He was a product of his time, and was just somewhat more extreme than a majority who may have, in principle, agreed with him.

I should maybe also note that I do think Hitler is evil and will always be considered evil. I'm just using this as an example of evil could be a lot more subjective that we think.