Again, more publicity about Hitler, who yes was an evil man.
And yet again his evil is supposed to be the greatest evil.
However not a word about the evil of stalin, who managed to liquidate 20million jews. Murdered russians who had survived german pow camps when they returned home just for the crime of being captured alive and killed his generals in the purges just on suspicion.
Then the rape of eastern europe and continued occupation for which the west is guilty of allowing.
Let us stop the Hitler publicity machine and start one about how the most evil man in the world between 1926 and 1953 was Stalin. Hitler comes in second.

KS, Toronto,

As a young Jew I grew up with an overwhelming fear and hatred of that architypal portrayal of evil as Hitler. It was astonishing to me to meet and lunch with a Rabbi who said to me that whilst Hitler was evil, it is important to remember that he was also a man. The Rabbi's words struck me, how could you, a Rabbi say this? And yet as time has passed I understand the subltely behind these words. If we portray Hitler as something more than human, then we dissociate from our own and others potential capability for evil. By grating Hitler the platform of 'evil incarnate' we are in danger of relegating the Holocaust to an aberation, something of a different time and place with an otherworldy sense about it. The potential for great evil exists in all of us and that the next Holocaust is only as far off as a determined group of evil doers are given the means. If we negate Hitler's humanity, we offer the Ahmedinejan's of the world a free hand.

lex, london,

Isn't the point surely that it's just too easy to write off Hitler as a "psycho" or "evil incarnate"? That gives his erstwhile followers and voters a simple excuse. In many ways he had an ordinary life. He liked dogs, children, and fast cars. In the first world war he was a brave squaddie doing his duty. Now connecting that ordinariness to the gas chambers. There's the problem.

Peter FitzGerald-Morris, Rochester, England

It is - literally! - vital that we see Hitler in the round: how else are we to recognise his ilk while they can be stopped without gross blood-letting?

He was a man of many facets, some most certainly Stygian, but also a genuine hero, honest, personally modest and and in no way greedy, with a rare daring and hypnotic leadership, a romantic with a sense of honour he obeyed to an insane degree. Yes, he was!

Nobody follows a blatant, cloven-hoofed devil. That Hitler was so much more than one-dimensionally wicked was the reason his mass-murdering proclivities were allowed to flourish. Recognise, and fear, the good in the bad!

Noel Falconer, COUIZA, France

Adolf Hitler was evil, but of course I am happy that he lost the WW2. Can you imagine how the world would have been then? Now I live in Germany and am pleasantly surprised how Germans as a whole have changed since the war; I mean improved. They are just as courteous as any body and with few exceptions, you can get along with them well
When I was young and came to England, I noticed the deep rooted 'color' prejudices. If you as a non white moved into an area, whites picked up their bags and moved to 'white' areas. All very well, but this results in suburbs which are only black, or brown etc. You can only partially blame Bradford or Walthemstov as being 'over-flooded' with Asians, with their own ethnic stores and running around in their local attire. The evil that men do, said Shakespeare, lives after them. This is not the case in Germany, with few exceptions. Nazis hated anything not blond and blue eyes; understanding and accepting others goes a long way for a happy living together

Sharif Lone, Nidderau, Germany

The record collection wan not Hitler's. It belonged to Eva Braun!
She brought with her to the bunker from Obersalzberg in March 1945. Hitler simply put up with it because of her.

And Hitler was most definitely was a vegetarian.

You can confirm both by reading the memoir of Traudl Junge, his personal Secretary for the final 4 years. She ate with him almost every day and listened to this 'banned music' with Eva Braun and others.

Doug W, Vancouver, BC Canada

Oh that's great- worthy of The Onion.com- hilarious.

Richard, DALLAS, USA

Come, come now.

Surely you're not startled that a man who managed to murder six million men, women, and children in industrial death factories has achieved some lasting notoriety.

Our fascination with Hitler has nothing to with making ourselves feel superior.

It has everything to do with the thin pane of constraint which separates us all from the lizard within.

Only by understanding what was human about Hitler can we understand his inhumanity.

Michael Grable, Silver Spring, USA/MD

The next time someone goes on about binge-drinking being the cause of every thing that is wrong, and alcohol is soemehow undesirable, remember he was a teetotaler. And the first legislation he brought in was to try and restrict smoking.

Dave Proctor, Leeds,

I am a vegetarian too but Hitler was not. The truth is that Hitler suffered from gout and stomach problems and would go on a vegetarian diet to ease them. Once they had eased he would go back to eating his favourite Austrian sausages probably prepared for him by his Jewish cook.

Goebbels - also partly Jewish - saw an opportunity to present Hitler as being a vegetarian because he loved animals. This starteds around 1937 and the image has remained. The power of propaganda and advertising.

Hitler was also a communist when the communists took over Bavaria in 1919 before repackaging himself as a Nazi.

Alan Heaton, Frankfurt, Germany

the fact is that Hitler has achieved that super-celeb status which means that any info about him sells in the media world. Gandhi and Schweitzer didn't reach that high profile level. the nearest I can think of is elvis.
Just goes to show 'there's no such thing as bad publicity'.
In the UK this was helped by compulsory teaching about Hitler over the past decade or so. As a parent of 2 children now in their twenties, I was puzzled that the study of nazism seemed to be one of the most coherently taught subjecs at the local school. I bought a copy of 'triumph of the will' to show them the power of the nazi message.
I suspect more people of that generation know about Hitler than, say, ghandi or atlee.

andrew, cirencester, uk

It's not often I think 'I wish I'd written that'

I wish I'd written that. Outstanding.

JQ, Salford, UK

It is amazing that many individuals try to portray Hitler as having a nice side. As a vegetarian, what irritates me the most are the people who assert that Hitler was a vegetarian. So what ! Many great humanitarians were vegetarians including Gandhi, Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Albert Schweitzer, John Wesley, Ellen G. White, the founder of the Seventh Day Adventists and William Booth, the Founder of the Salvation Army. It's tenable that Hitler liked animals but he was evil incarnate in reference to humans, especially, Jews !

Brien Comerford, Glenview, United States

It's not just Hitler. In a world with few analytical skills, all political debate has degenerated to the search for hypocrisy. People are mostly unable to analyse arguments and determine whether they are valid or invalid, so instead they focus on the person, trying to see if they "walk the walk". Of course, an argument is valid or invalid independent of whether the person making the argument acts in one way or another.

For example, months were wasted nailing Labour Ministers for sending their children to selective schools, and almost no effort was put into determining whether the effects of selection are beneficial or harmful.

The underlying reason for this is that detecting hypocrisy is easy; anyone can do it. Collecting facts and analysing them to see if a policy is successful or not is very hard work.

jon livesey, Sunnyvale, CA/US