School Debate - Was Hitler Insane?

[l3eater]

In my History course, my teacher has given my group and another group the task of either prosecuting or defending the actions of Adolf Hitler as he is being trialed for Crimes Against Humanity. My group chose to defend Hitler with the goal of declaring him Criminally Insane whist the later is trying to get him the death sentence.

Now, I have some knowledge on Hitler (e.g birth, liked arts etc.) but I'm not that much of an expert in this field so I ask the AH community for assistance.

These are the a few of the ideas I have, feel free to add more or expand upon them:

1. Hitler taking command of the Eastern Front when they were retreating (?) and ordering his generals to execute impossible tasks (Battle of Berlin)
2. Hitler being injured in 1918 - Hospital psychiatrists concluded that he was a "psychpath with hysterical symptoms"
3. Hitler was rumored to have mental illnesses Aspergers etc.

Anymore ideas or suggestions with be appreciated. Even more if they are with links to sites.

 

[Axeman]

I will play the devil's advocate :

Hitler was capable of a lot of coherent actions and was certainly very smart and clever politically, just not militarily. I can write very well in English and have an extensive vocabulary but I couldn't do Trigonometry to save my life.
Incompetence and failure, even if come about by extremely stupid ideas is not insanity.

Rumors? What rumors? You mean rumors like Obama was a crack addict, a Muslim, an African? Rumors cannot be substantially used as a source.

Millions of World War I casualties were injured, even by gas like Hitler was, to a very large degree. even though he was most likely left with minimal long term physiological effects resulting ONLY from the war, this does not entail insanity. PTSD, while certainly real and traumatizing, does not make someone insane.

 

[Adamanteus]

The legal definition of insanity is completely different from the medical definition. The legal definition is a person who commits a crime without the capacity to understand that it is wrong. The medical definition is none. "Insanity" does not exist as a term in any psychiatric literature. Psychiatrists simply assign a diagnosis of a mental illness based on published criteria, but a psychiatric diagnosis does not necessarily imply a lack of understanding of wrongs. Therefore, legal insanity, by definition, has a double standard against prevailing medical and scientific understanding.

So your efforts to prove Hitler criminally insane should be based on substantiating a case that he did not understand that what he did was wrong, not what anyone thought of his mental capacity. For even many mentally ill understand right from wrong, even if they are disabled in other ways. If you wish to prove that Hitler was not insane, you should point out instances where Hitler demonstrated moral understanding by his actions.

 

[The Kiat]

He was quite mad, but not so much in the crazy way. He always struck me more as mad at the world, than insane. It was kind of like having a rage burn within. No, he was not insane (though his mental state did break down during his final year), in fact, he knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[l3eater]

The legal definition of insanity is completely different from the medical definition. The legal definition is a person who commits a crime without the capacity to understand that it is wrong. The medical definition is none. "Insanity" does not exist as a term in any psychiatric literature. Psychiatrists simply assign a diagnosis of a mental illness based on published criteria, but a psychiatric diagnosis does not necessarily imply a lack of understanding of wrongs. Therefore, legal insanity, by definition, has a double standard against prevailing medical and scientific understanding.

So your efforts to prove Hitler criminally insane should be based on substantiating a case that he did not understand that what he did was wrong, not what anyone thought of his mental capacity. For even many mentally ill understand right from wrong, even if they are disabled in other ways. If you wish to prove that Hitler was not insane, you should point out instances where Hitler demonstrated moral understanding by his actions.

Adamanteus, both of your suggestions (if including the definition of insanity) are excellent ones that I would consider to add into my defense. Finding a case where he didn't understand that what he did was wrong would be tough but nonetheless a challenge.

Thank you

I will play the devil's advocate :

Rumors? What rumors? You mean rumors like Obama was a crack addict, a Muslim, an African? Rumors cannot be substantially used as a source.

Millions of World War I casualties were injured, even by gas like Hitler was, to a very large degree. even though he was most likely left with minimal long term physiological effects resulting ONLY from the war, this does not entail insanity. PTSD, while certainly real and traumatizing, does not make someone insane.

Well, Hitler's behavior is consistent with that of a person suffering from Schizophrenia (e.g paranoia - consistently afraid that someone is going to poison his food) as well, the death of his brother would have been a possible trigger of this mental illness.

 

[Abe Lincoln]

Take a look at this article. You'll have to become a trial member to read the whole thing but from what I could tell it's the account of Hitler's own doctor in which he, he being Hitler, is designated by his doctor as massively criminally insane.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-18534788.html

 

[l3eater]

Take a look at this article. You'll have to become a trial member to read the whole thing but from what I could tell it's the account of Hitler's own doctor in which he, he being Hitler, is designated by his doctor as massively criminally insane.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-18534788.html

Sucks, I want to see what I is but I don't want to sign up

 

[Magnificate]

While my suggestion might not fit into the context of your school debate I would suggest adding another venue for the defense. You might want to attempt to overturn the validity of the court with help of the arguments used against the legitimacy of Nuremberg trials.

 

[MerryPrankster]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdolfHitler

To put it in TVTropes terms, Hitler had too many "Pet the Dog" moments to have been a psychopath (one of the more dangerous variants of being clinically insane, since one is capable of planning and the like instead of just raving about snakes in people's brains).

Psychopaths/sociopaths cannot form emotional attachments to anyone. Someone who does that with one person, no matter how monstrous they are to anyone else, is not a psychopath/sociopath.

It could be that he had a conscience, the ability to form emotional attachments, etc. but simply had very warped ideas and the will to carry them out.

However, he was on a whole lot of drugs. That doesn't count as being criminally insane, I don't think.

 

[MerryPrankster]

In any event, shouldn't this be in PolChat?

 

[ArKhan]

I have to say he was insane. Simply because I don't beleve in evil.

 

[PhilKearny]

There are a bunch of standards for criminality insanity. The Wikipedia has a nice summary of the standards in the United States. Most of these standards involve examining the defendant's ability to appreciate the nature of his actions and examining the defendant's ability to conform his behavior to the law.

An example of an individual who might be found insane might be a defendant who attempted to kill the Prime Minister because said defendant believed due to a disease of the mind (such as Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type) that said Prime Minister was engaged in a massive conspiracy against him. These facts are basically the commonly accepted facts of the M'Naughten case. If the defendant acted because he suffered from paranoid psychosis that led him to try to asassinate the Prime Minister, then the question would be in most jurisdictions at this point whether the defendant either believed his actions were legal/not wrong or the defendant was incapable of conforming his actions to the law at that point.

Under most standards, Hitler most likely would be found criminally liable. Hitler, throughout his career, was more than likely able to understand the nature of his action--that they would cause great harm to others. He also was capable of controlling his actions--he was able to delay ordering individuals killed. Rather than suggesting insanity--being out of touch with reality and unable to control his actions--Hitler's history suggests Hitler was a sociopath or psychopath. Psychopathy and Sociopathy/Antisocial Behavior are not regarded as bases for an insanity defense/defence.

A better defense/defence at the end of the war might be that Hitler was incompetent to stand trial. Generally, in western legal systems, for an individual to be tried the defendant must be able to understand the charges against him and to participate in his defense/defence. The reason for this is pretty simple--it would be fair to try a man incapable of acting in assisting in his trial as he might have invaluable information. (How fair would it be to try a person in a coma?) Hitler may have deteriorated at the end of the war due to his drug use and other events to have be unable to understand the charges and/or assist in his defense/defence. On the other hand, any decline may be temporary or exaggerated. If his incompetence was temporary, upon restoration he could be tried.

 

[Dan]

Was Hitler insane? He was totally ASB.
However, in a medical or legal sense, probably not.
Insane is often a label used to deny the fact that every one of us is capable of "evil" beyond the social norm, and so any one of us that takes that step is therefore "insane". So insane is a social standard that varies from time to time.

If you have to argue the insanity defence, play it simple. If you go the complicated medical or legal route you'll end up tripping yourself up.

If being criminally insane means not knowing what you are doing is wrong the ask the following:
Did Hitler know what he was doing was a war crime? No.
Did Hitler know what he was doing was a crime against humanity? No.
Did he feel killing millions of people was wrong? No.
Did he appear to have any capacity to show empathy towards people he considered his victims? No.
Did he have any rational basis for his hatred? No.

That last question is exceptionally nasty, no one in their right mind will say yes to the last one and could be the best one to close on. No self conscious, self respecting student will stand up infront of their class and say "Yes, Hitler had good cause to hate Jews, gypsies, communists, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, or the disabled".

Any result other than aquittal on the grounds of crminal insanity is saying that Hitler was normal and so therefore what he did was normal.

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The above is playing DA immensely and is a suggested route for what |3eater is trying to achieve.

hehehe, maybe we should stage our own trial of Hitler on here in Pol Chat?

 

[DD951]

Was Hitler insane? He was totally ASB.
However, in a medical or legal sense, probably not.
Insane is often a label used to deny the fact that every one of us is capable of "evil" beyond the social norm, and so any one of us that takes that step is therefore "insane". So insane is a social standard that varies from time to time.

If you have to argue the insanity defence, play it simple. If you go the complicated medical or legal route you'll end up tripping yourself up.

If being criminally insane means not knowing what you are doing is wrong the ask the following:
Did Hitler know what he was doing was a war crime? No.
Did Hitler know what he was doing was a crime against humanity? No.
Did he feel killing millions of people was wrong? No.
Did he appear to have any capacity to show empathy towards people he considered his victims? No.
Did he have any rational basis for his hatred? No.

That last question is exceptionally nasty, no one in their right mind will say yes to the last one and could be the best one to close on. No self conscious, self respecting student will stand up infront of their class and say "Yes, Hitler had good cause to hate Jews, gypsies, communists, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, or the disabled".

Any result other than aquittal on the grounds of crminal insanity is saying that Hitler was normal and so therefore what he did was normal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The above is playing DA immensely and is a suggested route for what |3eater is trying to achieve.

hehehe, maybe we should stage our own trial of Hitler on here in Pol Chat?

However, that argument could be legally objectionable on several grounds if the class is using anything resembling standard courtroom procedure and rules of evidence to structure the debate. Counsel is not allowed to make statements like that during the trial itself either during the presentation of evidence or editorializing on the statements made by testifying witnesses. If an attorney is trying to elicit such a statement from a witness, the question and/or the response could be objected to on the grounds of relevance, speculation, or attempting to get an opinion from a person not qualified to give such an opinion (only experts in a given field are allowed to offer opinions on matters.)

Someone who qualifies as an expert in a given field could make such a statement, although it could be challenged, and asking about criminal insanity in itself would be improperly asking for a legal conclusion, something that is reserved for the court itself- it is only permissible to ask the witness whether in their expert opinion, the defendant meets the elements of the insanity defense (i.e. Did the defendant suffer from a mental disease or defect at the time of the act in question? As a result of that disease or defect, are they (unable to distinguish right from wrong) (unable to appreciate the nature of their actions) (believe that God told them to do something [in some jurisdictions])).

It would be impermissible to make such a claim in opening arguments, as those are restricted to what can be argued from the evidence, and even in closing arguments, that last statement is tricky as it could be objected to as trying to inflame the passions of the jury or stretching the evidence, and if that objection were sustained, it could result in an attorney being sanctioned by the court and a disciplinary complaint.

IIRC, Canada (where the OP says he’s from) also uses a variant of the M’Naughten standard for the insanity defense, and as PhilKearny pointed out, legally speaking, it is quite possible for someone to be ‘crazy’ and acting in a grossly abnormal way, yet not be legally insane because antisocial personality disorders such as being a psychopath or sociopath are specifically excluded, regardless of them being at the root of evil behaviors. One must also remember that at a fundamental level, the criminal law is partly a reflection of society's collective judgment as to what is right, moral, and normal behavior that has a place in civilized society, and what departures from those standards are so egregious as to warrant the weight of governmental authority crashing down on the malefactor so as to protect the rest of society from that kind of misconduct

Furthermore, people are legally presumed to know right from wrong unless insanity is proven, and also to be aware of the law, so if going through accusations of war crimes, what the prosecutor would need to show was that a given act violated the customary laws of war in a certain way (i.e. X is prohibited by article Y of the 1899 Hague Convention), and that the defendant either was aware of these laws or could have looked them up if he chose to do so, which under the circumstances of WWII, would have been fairly easy.

Voluntary intoxication is not really a defense to anything, and arguing side effects of prescription medications is a bit more workable, but still a tricky one to pull off, and in an actual trial setting, one would have to find a good deal of case law to support even being allowed to make that argument in anything other than mitigation.

About the only defense strategy involving claims of mental illness that has a real shot of getting Hitler off for everything would probably be arguing that he was incompetent to stand trial.

 

[Stateless]

If I were defending Hitler, my first route would be to have him declared medically unfit to stand trial. By 1945 Hitler may have had reasonably pronounced Parkinson's, making it arguable that he would be suffering from executive dysfunction to an extent that would make it impossible to try him. A few of Hitler's contemporaries got away - and in Japan Shūmei Ōkawa probably feigned insanity to escape trial. Of course, this is Hitler and he's the big prize for the Allies (unlike Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach or von Weichs), so they'll not let him off lightly, so I'd want an ace defence up my sleeve for when the unfit for trial attempt inevitably failed.

 

[Dan]

<snip> Too much common sense</snip>

Damn you for defeating my argument with logic, common sense, reality and intelligence!

My argument was deliberately inflamatory, and has been deliberately left vague and rhetorical as possible. It's the same as the Yes Mountain sales technique, where you ask a series of questions that should elicit a positive response before closing with the "do you want to buy this product"? where the buyer is so used to saying yes, they say yes to the last one as well. It wouldn't last 1 second in a real court, in a highschool court, it stands a 50/50 chance.


Lets face it, common sense, realism or logic, or at least normal logic is not going to get this guy off the hook in any way, shape or form. To get out of this one, I think a Cochrane style defense will be needed.

 

[Stateless]

Maybe you should go for the "If it's a crime" defence.

"If it's a crime to love your country, then my client is guilty. If it's a crime to want what's best for the citizens of your country, then my client is guilty. If it's a crime to violate the sovereignt- wait, forget I said that bit."

 

[DD951]

Damn you for defeating my argument with logic, common sense, reality and intelligence!

My argument was deliberately inflamatory, and has been deliberately left vague and rhetorical as possible. It's the same as the Yes Mountain sales technique, where you ask a series of questions that should elicit a positive response before closing with the "do you want to buy this product"? where the buyer is so used to saying yes, they say yes to the last one as well. It wouldn't last 1 second in a real court, in a highschool court, it stands a 50/50 chance.


Lets face it, common sense, realism or logic, or at least normal logic is not going to get this guy off the hook in any way, shape or form. To get out of this one, I think a Cochrane style defense will be needed.

Hey, IRL, I am an attorney licensed to practice in the State of Washington, so I can't help but think about legal issues that way.

But seriously, I agree that other than getting him declared incompetent, or the real long-shot of challenging the legality of the tribunal, just about any defense strategy permitted within the rules of evidence and courtroom procedure which wouldn't be ethically questionable is going to require ASB assistance to make work. Especially if tried before judges and not the sort of clowns a jury pool might spit out (even assuming that it would be possible to find a sufficiently impartial jury to try Hitler...)

 

[Draco]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdolfHitler

To put it in TVTropes terms, Hitler had too many "Pet the Dog" moments to have been a psychopath (one of the more dangerous variants of being clinically insane, since one is capable of planning and the like instead of just raving about snakes in people's brains).

Not true psychopaths tend to fall into extremes when dealing with animals some do certainly fall into the "likes to torture, maim, and kill small creatures" category others actually have been known to become quite attached to animals even if they can't form similar bonds with other humans. IIRC this was even brought up during a discussion by two shrinks during an episode of the Sopranos. There is even a third option to factor in as most successful psychopaths tend to learn how to mimic normal human emotional responses even if they don't truly feel them.

Psychopaths/sociopaths cannot form emotional attachments to anyone. Someone who does that with one person, no matter how monstrous they are to anyone else, is not a psychopath/sociopath.

Also not entirely accurate what they tend to not be able to do is feel empathy for anyone which does certainly limit ones ability to form attachments. However there are many cases where people with the aforementioned disorders will form attachments to individuals however these are rarely healthy social bonds and more often than not reach levels were they can be described as obsessions. And again you do have those individuals who simply appear to form attachments in order to better mimic normal human behavior in order to camouflage themselves. I think you might be accidentally lumping other disorders with extreme Narcissism which is easy to do as they are often found together but not always.

It could be that he had a conscience, the ability to form emotional attachments, etc. but simply had very warped ideas and the will to carry them out.

I can't speak for elsewhere but in the United States typically to be found innocent by reason of insanity you have to demonstrate that an individual was totally incapable of acting in a way other than they did. For instance even in a case where a person displays extreme paranoia if they were to have visted a doctor and been prescribed anti-psychotics to manage their condition but refused to take them they likely will still be found guilty. Over here more often than not an insanity defense is a crap shoot that you only try because you lack anything better as they rarely succeed.

However, he was on a whole lot of drugs. That doesn't count as being criminally insane, I don't think.

Again speaking about the American legal system it could result in a finding of diminished capacity but that typical only effects sentencing not guilt or innocence. However in Hitler's case being that they were administered by a doctor it might be a fruitful avenue to explore for a defense.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Not true psychopaths tend to fall into extremes when dealing with animals some do certainly fall into the "likes to torture, maim, and kill small creatures" category others actually have been known to become quite attached to animals even if they can't form similar bonds with other humans. IIRC this was even brought up during a discussion by two shrinks during an episode of the Sopranos. There is even a third option to factor in as most successful psychopaths tend to learn how to mimic normal human emotional responses even if they don't truly feel them.

"Pet the Dog" is a TVTrope for a villain doing nice things. I was mostly thinking about his relationship with his secretary--apparently he was a surrogate father to her--than anything involving a real dog.

I'm also not convinced Tony Soprano and his ilk are -paths either, although I'm not familiar enough with the show and the characters to make any kind of substantive judgement. IMO violating social standards aren't enough, since in the antebellum South, one could claim abolitionists were psychopaths based on that alone.

(And slavers did create an entire mental illness to explain why slaves kept running away--"drypsomania" or something like that.)

About the "third option," by that standard ANYONE could be a psychopath who's gotten good at "pretending." The only one who could objectively say someone is a psychopath or not is a telepath (who can see into their mind) or God Himself (who knows all things).