ESPN: Grand Valley State suspends OC Morris Berger for wanting meal with Adolf Hitler

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I think Erwin Rommel had great leadership skills and by all accounts disassociated himself with the nazi party. I would have breakfast with him and pick his brain on strategy.
 

Flash30 said:
I think Erwin Rommel had great leadership skills and by all accounts disassociated himself with the nazi party. I would have breakfast with him and pick his brain on strategy.
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Probably could get away with that one if only because Rommel gets discussed relative to strategy all the time.

Not a lot of Hitler Leadership talks.... well not good ones.
 

Hitler was evil incarnate. He sucked in a lot of good people into his spell. By the time they realized what has happened, it was too late.

No coach should ever praise someone like Hitler for his murderous leadership style.

What happened in Germany can happen anywhere even in this great country of ours.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". George Santayana
 

paulser21 said:
It wasn’t brought up without prompting as I had quoted somebody’s prior comment. And although Hitler and Washington seemingly cannot be compared in the same realm of evil I was just showing that even a historical figure portrayed as good or pure can still be viewed as a villain of sorts if you look into their past.
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Wow....just wow......
 


paulser21 said:
By the time of Washington's death in 1799 his slave population had increased to 317 people, including 143 children. Of that total, he owned124, leased 40 and controlled 153 dower slaves.
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That was the weltanshauung of the day during the colonial empire days. George Washington later on in his life started questioning slavery.

George Washington was the undisputed leader who eventually defeated the British although he had more defeats than victories.

Revolutionary War

General George Washington led the American army to victory during the Revolutionary War.
www.mountvernon.org www.mountvernon.org
 
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Leadership abilities and ethics are hand in hand. Hitler had no or bad ethics, therefore cannot be considered a great leader. He did have an ability to coerce people into horrible actions.... ability to coerce in no way is leadership.
 

GopherHole Staff said:
He was issued a temporary ban not for his views defending the coach's comments on Hitler's leadership, but for telling other posters to "fuck off" and calling a poster a "fucking idiot." Those are not appropriate posts.
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Disagreed with his stance on here, but I am glad to hear he was not banned just for having an unpopular opinion.
 



I dont have to to read all the comments now.

Consider this a bookmark.
 


hungan1 said:
Hitler was evil incarnate. He sucked in a lot of good people into his spell. By the time they realized what has happened, it was too late.

No coach should ever praise someone like Hitler for his murderous leadership style.

What happened in Germany can happen anywhere even in this great country of ours.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". George Santayana
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Agree with all that. Given the right stressors, environment, dehumanizing propaganda history has shown many are capable of unthinkable atrocity. I’ve been the recipient of personal recollections from former soldiers and marines that are shocking to civilized sensibilities. It’s in us.
 
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So I am truly curious about this. I like military history. I would love to have a long conversation with many of the generals I've read about. Many of them on my list would be no-brainers like Eisenhower, Pershing, Grant, etc. But some of them on my list would be controversial. Some of them fought for causes which I would find deplorable. Some were enemies to America. Some were simply astounding in their ruthlessness. But all had great military success. From this list of names, who would I be allowed to talk with about their military accomplishments without being viewed as a supporter of their cause or a lesser human being? To be clear, I am not saying I'd invite any of them to TCF Bank Stadium to watch the game, cheer the Rouser and have a beer. Just a conversation about their collective military experience. Which ones are ok? Any of them? None of them?

Napoleon
Rommel
Robert E Lee
Genghis Khan
Andrew Jackson - known for brutality to Native Americans
Benedict Arnold (very good general until he switched sides)
 



hungan1 said:
Hitler was evil incarnate. He sucked in a lot of good people into his spell. By the time they realized what has happened, it was too late.

No coach should ever praise someone like Hitler for his murderous leadership style.

What happened in Germany can happen anywhere even in this great country of ours.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". George Santayana
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I read a book by the director of an NGO that works to help children get an education and get a meal. He had stories about famous people, good and evil and how they were raised. In the book he shared Hitler's childhood. That evil man was horribly abused by his father. One night his dad beat him up, stripped him of his clothes (naked) and threw him out in the German winter. That's just one episode. There was more horror.
The purpose of the book was to share how important caring for children is.
There is no excuse for the evil Hitler did, but his old man was the mentor as a terrorist.
That book gave me clarity about how I intended to raise my children.
Too Small to Ignore, by Wess Stafford. A fantastic book about famous people and the people who raised them. Father's, take your responsibility seriously.
 

His comment was stupid and I have no problem with the school suspending him for it.
But I also would have been okay if he apologized for it and wasn’t suspended. People have a right to say stupid things, we don’t need the speech police to regulate everything.
 


Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Rooselvelt, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein are some people I would rather have lunch with. Not Hitler, Napoleon, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jung Oon, or Momar Gadaffi.
 

It is pretty frightening to think that a person with no sort of talent or ability whatsoever was able to convince so many millions of people to do his terrible bidding and alter or end the lives of many more millions.
 

SKOOKM said:
It is pretty frightening to think that a person with no sort of talent or ability whatsoever was able to convince so many millions of people to do his terrible bidding and alter or end the lives of many more millions.
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And even more frightening that given all of recorded history from which to pick someone you’d like to learn leadership lessons from that someone would pick Hitler. Hitler was a genocidal maniac that led Germany literally down the path to hell on earth. That’s not leadership. I suppose Ted Bundy should be a life coach since he was so successful at what he did.
 

Crosby said:
So I am truly curious about this. I like military history. I would love to have a long conversation with many of the generals I've read about. Many of them on my list would be no-brainers like Eisenhower, Pershing, Grant, etc. But some of them on my list would be controversial. Some of them fought for causes which I would find deplorable. Some were enemies to America. Some were simply astounding in their ruthlessness. But all had great military success. From this list of names, who would I be allowed to talk with about their military accomplishments without being viewed as a supporter of their cause or a lesser human being? To be clear, I am not saying I'd invite any of them to TCF Bank Stadium to watch the game, cheer the Rouser and have a beer. Just a conversation about their collective military experience. Which ones are ok? Any of them? None of them?

Napoleon
Rommel
Robert E Lee
Genghis Khan
Andrew Jackson - known for brutality to Native Americans
Benedict Arnold (very good general until he switched sides)
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You are really missing the point. There is a way he could have chosen Hitler that might not have come across as badly. But as soon as you refer to someone like Hitler as a "great leader" you are going to have a tough time getting people to see your side of things.
 

MNVCGUY said:
You are really missing the point. There is a way he could have chosen Hitler that might not have come across as badly. But as soon as you refer to someone like Hitler as a "great leader" you are going to have a tough time getting people to see your side of things.
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You mean like “I’d like to have lunch with Hitler so I could jam my fork into his orbital bone.”?
 

hungan1 said:
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". George Santayana
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Ironic that you used this quote while disapproving of talking to or learning from Hitler.

Wanting to have a conversation with a person is not the same as approving of what they do. He motivated people to do things that they would have never done without him. Horrible, terrible atrocities, but things that were very clearly inspired by one man. Hitler is one of, if not the, worst human beings to ever live, but to deny that he was an unbelievable motivator, speaker and influencer and to say that there is nothing that could be learned from him is ignoring history. He was a very uniquely terrible yet influential human being.

Don't think I should have to make this clear, but apparently I do - this is in NO way an endorsement or approval of what Hitler did.
 


MNVCGUY said:
You are really missing the point. There is a way he could have chosen Hitler that might not have come across as badly. But as soon as you refer to someone like Hitler as a "great leader" you are going to have a tough time getting people to see your side of things.
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Probably just coach speak
 

Spoofin said:
Anyone have thoughts on what Kill or Claeys thought of Hitler’s leadership?
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Maybe it will now be asked of coaches generally, "Do you think Hitler was a great leader?"
 


MNVCGUY said:
You are really missing the point. There is a way he could have chosen Hitler that might not have come across as badly. But as soon as you refer to someone like Hitler as a "great leader" you are going to have a tough time getting people to see your side of things.
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Nope. Not missing that point at all. I agree with it wholeheartedly. But I think that lots of folks would disagree with you, and argue that "Hitler is off limits. You cannot wish to converse with him without it being a major character flaw." I get that point too. My point was just to test that line, and see whether it's just Hitler or whether that applies to other perceived bad guys in history.
 

I would like to go back to talk to Hitler, but only if he were strapped in a dentist chair with extra large tie-wraps. I can't imagine having a two way conversation with him otherwise, same for Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Woody Hayes.
 

Flash30 said:
I think Erwin Rommel had great leadership skills and by all accounts disassociated himself with the nazi party. I would have breakfast with him and pick his brain on strategy.
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The German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, were not directly associated with the Nazi party in WWII. Think of them as being like our current armed forces - not democrat or republican. There was a lot of dislike among the armed forces toward Hitler, up to and including assassination attempts. Rommel himself died via 'forced suicide' as he was charged with treason. The Nazi's did have their own fighting force too, the SS and although tactically they fought along side Germany's regular armed forces, those regular armed forces were not Nazi's. This is to this day a common mistake - to refer to Germany's WWII army, navy, etc. as "nazis".

Also, I am seeing a lot of comments about Hitler getting so many people to go along with his beliefs. A lot of this "agreement" was part of a sophisticated system of fear, forced nationalism, and all the other things that go along with an authoritarian dictatorship. People were literally afraid to pick up loose change in the streets for fear of it being watched and outed as not loyal to the cause. Yes, there were enthusiastic followers too but in general the "hitler youth" and things like it were mostly filled with people just trying to stay out of trouble.
 

John Galt said:
His comment was stupid and I have no problem with the school suspending him for it.
But I also would have been okay if he apologized for it and wasn’t suspended. People have a right to say stupid things, we don’t need the speech police to regulate everything.
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He is free to say the stupid thing he said, and his employer is free to discipline him for saying that stupid thing, up to and including termination.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up the "speech police" (whatever that is), as it has no bearing on what has happened here. This isn't a case of "regulation," it's a case of an employer dealing with an employee as they see fit.
 

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