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Oliver Stone: 'Hitler Was a Scapegoat'

Maybe Stalin wasn't so bad, either, says Hollywood bad boy

By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff

Posted Jan 11, 2010 3:29 AM CST | Updated Jan 11, 2010 6:30 AM CST

(Newser) – Bad boy lefty film director Oliver Stone is stirring up the pot again, this time with his controversial comments that Adlof Hitler was a "scapegoat." Hitler "is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," he said at a press conference with critics where he discussed his new 10-hour Showtime TV history series. He believes "we can't judge people as only bad or good" and that Hitler was merely "the product of a series of actions."

Stone also seems prepared to revise the conventional perspective on Josef Stalin. "Not to paint him as a hero, but he fought the German war machine more than any person," Stone said. Prepare for more of the same. His series, Oliver Stone's Secret History of America, is intended as an antidote to the biases he believes exist in the history presented in US schools and mainstream media.

Oliver Stone prowls the streets of the packing district in New York.
Oliver Stone prowls the streets of the packing district in New York.   (AP Photo/Donald Traill)
Director Oliver Stone speaks at a presentation for the new documentary series Oliver Stone's Secret History of America at the CBS Showtime CW Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.
Director Oliver Stone speaks at a presentation for the new documentary series "Oliver Stone's Secret History of America" at the CBS Showtime CW Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.   (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 53 comments
Nwambe
Jan 12, 2010 12:04 PM CST
Funny... By that logic, Stone should take responsibility for the shitty movies he's foisted on the public and apologize - "Sorry guys, they were just a product of my actions." Dumbass. Let's see him say that after he visits Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, or any of the other concentration camps.
lonewolf17
Jan 12, 2010 6:39 AM CST
He's kind of right...Hitler was a product of right wing fanaticism and supported by the rightist Prussian aristocracy which wanted its power back. The seeds for an authoritarian facist movement were planted and well rooted. He didn't create the funamental conditions required for him to seize power, he simply fanned the flames and harnessed the predictable results. Had it not been Hitler, some other person like him would have filled the void that was present in inter-war, post-Crash Germany, like rain fills the cracks of the sidewalk.
Eleutherius
Jan 12, 2010 6:31 AM CST
Stoned... what a moron.
 

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