I never said he was a "genius". You used that word. I said he was a clever and capable and successful politician.

He was phenomenally successful up until, as I said, he bit off more than he could chew. His fatal mistake was attacking Russia in 1941, and it was a decision that no one else in the German Wehrmact high command thought was a good idea at the time. They all felt that to get into a 2-front war was inadvisable, and they were right.

He had nothing but success after success, as a matter of fact astounding successes...from the building of the Nazi Party to the chancellorship of Germany to the reoccupation of the Rheinland to the re-armament of Germany to the revitalization of the economy to diplomatic coups that allowed him to gobble up Austria and Czechoslovakia, to his shockingly quick and decisive victories in western Europe over Poland, France, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Greece....

Sheesh! You don't call that "success"???? Why do you think all those millions of loyal Germans had such confidence in him at the time?

The first notable reverse suffered by Hitler was the failure to win the air battle over Britain in 1940. It failed in its objective to break the back of the RAF. In military terms it was a draw...inconclusive.

Look, Number 6, no one is successful forever. People eventually die, even if nothing else brings an end to their "success", but you can't deny that Hitler was extraordinarily successful up until approximately the time of the Battle of Stalingrad which occured in the summer of 1942 through to the early months of 1943. That was the real turning point. That was when he began to lose the war.

Would you rate Julius Caesar as "successful"? I would. How about Lincoln? Gandhi? Successful! But...Caesar and Lincoln and Gandhi still died at the hands of assassins, didn't they? The fact that they eventually fell does not change the fact that they were for a long time very successful. This was true of Julius Caesar, it was true of Lincoln, it was true of Gandhi, it was true of Attila the Hun, and it was also true of Hitler. They were all successful...until their time ran out.

WE REMEMBER such people because they were successful! If they had been failures, people incapable of accomplishing anything, you'd never even have heard of them. The only reason you even know about Hitler at all is because he DID succeed in becoming the leader of a very strong and dangerous Germany between 1933 and 1945.

Success is always temporary, because we are mortal beings and we all face our own destruction eventually.