Its not the fact that if he was a good leader.. its the fact if he was a good manipulator or not.. and i believe he was..

Hitler was a raving lunatic and responsible for the horrific death of millions of people. Good leader? If so, then Saddam, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and the rest would have to be included.

He was a very dynamic and powerful public speaker, which is what got so many to follow him. I will give him credit for that and that's about the only thing good I can say about him.

I can see were cmb71129 is going with this question and to me there is only one answer yes. Call it leadership, being able to manipulate or what ever you can't get millions of people to follow you if you lack leadership skills.

Hitler was a great leader. He managed to convince the vast majority of Germans to follow him and his destructive philosophy. Hitler was evil, but he was also very charismatic. He was able to inspire his followers to gladly follow him to their deaths even when it was obvious that their cause was lost. It is just a shame that Hitler didn't use his influence in amore positive way. Had he done so, he probably could have been remembered and loved for the way he improved the world rather than being reviled as a personification of evil. ***************** David, I don't deny that Hitler was evil. However, I don't think that his leadership skills were dependent on his evil. Yes, Hitler was an anti-Semite from well before he gained power. However, he did not have to be. He could have chosen a different path in life that would have lead him to greatness without the evil attached to his name. However, I think that you can make a case that, without the absolute power that came from being a dictator, he may not have been as effective. So, had he not been the megalomanic that he was, he may not have gotten as much done, but he still could have been remembered for what good he did do rather than the evil that he actually did. *************** "DavidHume: Glenn, pardon my crudeness, but you remind me of a saying we have here; 'If my ma had balls, she'd be my da'" The difference is that a person has no choice as to what sex they are born. Hitler, just like everyone else, had a choice as to how he lived his life. He chose evil. You sound as if you think he was predestined to be evil and, therefore, really had no choice in what he became.

He had millions following him didn't he? I think that makes him an effective leader not necessarily a good one.

He must certainly have had enormous charisma to persuade so many (including political figures in other countries, as well as his own electorate) to support him. However, in my opinion it is impossible to separate his personal magnetism with his poisonous racism and utter ineptness as a military strategist as they were so intimately tied in with the person he was. If you ask youreslf whether it was a wise move for him to attack the USSR and declare war on the USA, while he still faced an undefeated Britain, the answer should make it obvious that, no, he was not a good leader at all. If you ignore the moral dimension of his genocide of the Jews and other minorities in the lands he occupied, simply the deliberate liquidation of 6 million productive citizens while he was facing a war, was deeply unwise. For a very good (and not entirely unsympathetic) treatment of Hitler, you might want to watch the film Downfall, which was based largely on surviving eye-witness accounts of people who knew him. To sum up he was warped far more than he was talented. He was a lousy painter too.

For the time he lived in, which I can only speculate on, he was able to offer something to the masses that made them respect (or fear) him. So he was convincing, if nothing else.

As far as leadership skills go, anybody who could energize millions of people to follow him is a good leader. Hitler was also a good leader because he was able to surround himself with people who were good leaders as well. Hoering, Himmler, Albert Shpier, Guderian, Manstein were just a few who could lead and were also skillful organizers in their respected areas.

Without doubt Hitler was a truely 'great' leader. However, this does not stop him being a terrible human being. Having studied Hitler in GCSE and A-level history, I have to say that he really knew what he was doing. He only made one major mistake in trying to gain power (The Munich Pustch), but even managed to turn that around. The methods he used were carefully considered, planned well in advance, but he was also spontaneous. He also manipulated groups- made the Hitler Youth Organisation, twisted the education system and made sure the church kept disagreement quiet (he didn't destroy the Church as it would upset too many people and Hitler himself was a christian, despite what many people think). He turned Germany from a ruined, fragmented country after WW1 to one of the worlds great powers in 20 years. During the WW2 his invasion of the USSR probably cost him the war (only Gengus Kahn has ever successfully invaded Russia), had he not done this most historians agree he probably would have won. I'd like to make it clear that I do not support what Hitler did in any way, shape or form. However, the question asked whether he was a good leader, and that is what I refer too. I believe that he was cruel and ruthless beyond comprehension. To conclude, whether you think Hitler was a good leader depends on your definition of leader, however, we can all agree that he was one of the most able dictators the modern world has seen. In my opinion second only to the Bolsheviks, now they knew how to get power!

People will ask this question in a few years when Fidel Castro is dead.

Well Time made him their man of the year in 1938, so I suppose he was a "good" leader at one point. I mean you'd have to have some sort of skill set to get a a nation to do what he got them to do.

why Hitler isn't bad?

I believe that he was a brilliant leader. He could have been one of the most important and glorious historical figures. His charisma was undeniable. It can be seen in his speeches that we can watch today. However, he had a little problem. He was a megalomaniac and he plus his henchmen are amongst the few I would actually call "evil". I believe that he could have pulled Germany out of its depression without resorting to the means he did. It would have taken time but it could have been done. Instead he used the Jews, Gypsies, and all the others as a stepping stone: he used them to galvanize the German people against an internal foe and, despite his protestations to the opposite, I believe that all of the money seized, especially from the Jews, went straight into Nazi coffers.

Horribly flawed genius. A superb leader initially and an evil man.

Yes. He was brilliant in that sense. He took an impoverished war-torn depression- era- Germany and made it into a world power in a few short years, threatebing to conquer the world. He was a few short steps away from world domination.

No, just because one sheep can get all the rest to follow it over a cliff to their deaths, doesn't make that led sheep a good leader. A good leader keeps you out of trouble and safe. A good leader provides for it's followers. A good leader sets by good example and is someone or something to emulate. Hitler was none of those things.

In a way yes, but he was also terribly evil. I also think he was a coward. I mean, when he went to one of the concentration camps to see that everything was in order. He watched as the SS soldiers shot one Jew after the other. Well, what ends up happening is one poor soul gets shot in the head and his brain hits Hitler right on the face. He has to be led away and is very shaken. You'd think after he experienced this, he would stop the killing. But he didn't.

I would not use the word "good" because of the good/evil comparison ... but I would say he was a great leader, he even had a few very "good" ideas, like building a highway system wide enough and smooth enough to be able to race tanks around Europe, or like a united Europe ... of course his bad and evil ideas vastly outnumbered his good ideas, but he was still able to influence many to willingly follow him, so I would have to say he was an effective leader.

Not for the reason you listed. In some ways he was great for his country. BUT!!! the evil he inflicted on the world and humanity far outweighs his results in the daily lives of Germans. I had a German teacher that lived under Hitler. As an ordinary citizen unaware of the darker side of her country's activities, her life was better than it was Post World War I. Let us not forget the devastating effect the Versailles Treaty had on Germany and her people. This is why such a treaty has never again handed to a nation. It was this treaty that allowed a monster like Hitler to rise to power. This in NO WAY EXCUSES was evil this man and his government did. While he may have lifted the injustice of Versailles off the back of Germany, the methods he used to do so are beyond all measure of cruelty previously known to man. Such evil outweighs any measure of good that comes from it.

I think that Hitler's racist and anti-jew ideas were truly disgusting. However, yes, he was skilled as a leader. Not any old dummy could possibly get that many people to go along with insanity.

HEIL HITLERRR !!!

He was certainly an effective public speaker. +3

I think people should be able to put apart their respectitve feelings no matter where they come from. I can understand the back graound of those putting everything in one pot.If someones background is Jewish, then i will understand where that person is coming from.However the mistake this person will be doing is not understanding the semantic of "good Leader". The word good is itself very subjective and therefore difficult to define. therefor people will define "good leader" using other words to support this. For exmple if i am looking at the transformational side of a good leader, then yes i will say he ( Hitler )was a goolder because he manage to trnsform noit only the you in germany( but even in the 21Century ) "white youth" around the world to believe in his ideology.Almost 70 years after his death, the influence of Nazism and anti semitism is omnipresent in our society and this is a fact. And just to go back in history, before Hitler was borned, the "Ku-KLUX-KLAN" has aleady been doing similar job in the US but this time with people of colour. Their leaders nevr succeded in spraying their ideology in the world. Today in the cercle of some remaining segments of the KKK in the US, people use the nazi cross which by the way is a religious sign in the osuthern asian continent. Hitle was also has a charima. he was able to gather volks from Italy to Japan passing through many other part of the world. And if today someone say to that the US president has charisma and is a good communicator,then i will say to that person, like wise Hitler because he had the same charisma and was a good communicator.