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Talk:Counterexamples to Relativity

2015-01-04T22:16:15Z

HitolfAdler: /* Parodist */

<big>'''For a point-by-point summary of this page, see [[Essay - Counterexamples to relativity points]].'''</big>
 
 
See also the page [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity]]
 
 
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== Notice of Pending Revision ==

It's been over a week now since the reversion (on 9th December) of several edits I made. Despite my request, now explanation has been posted, in contrast to the explanations I gave for each of my changes. I therefore see it only fit to return the article to the state I left it in.

However, to avoid 'edit wars' I think it only fair to give notification of this, to allow a final chance for justification of the reversion.

The specific changes are:

*Removal of the item: ''''27. Relativity requires different values for the inertia of a moving object: in its direction of motion, and perpendicular to that direction. This contradicts the logical principle that the laws of physics are the same in all directions.'''' since it is a duplicate of ''''10. The logical problem of a force which is applied at a right angle to the velocity of a relativistic mass -- does this act on the rest mass or the relativistic mass?''''

*Removal of ''''26. The lack of useful devices developed based on any insights provided by the theory; no lives have been saved or helped, and the theory has not led to other useful theories and may have interfered with scientific progress. This stands in stark contrast with every verified theory of science.'''' After much discussion on this page, it seems generally agreed that there useful devices in existence. (I appreciate that some mention of GPS may be necessary, but a footnote, however valid, cannot justify the presence of the invalid section in the main article to which it is attached. GPS can have it's own separate entry on this page as a counterexample, if need be.)

[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:35, 31 December 2011 (EST)
*Removal of ''''30. The Ehrenfest Paradox ...'''', ''''31. The Twin Paradox ...'''' and ''''10. The logical problem of a force which is applied at a right angle...'''' since these are paradoxes and (as discussed above) are not appropriate to a page of counterexamples. These entries have already been moved to and expanded upon in the main [[Relativity]] page.

--[[User:QPR|QPR]] 10:26, 17 December 2011 (EST)

::I've now implemented these changes since no objection has been forthcoming to my explaination above, posted in accordance with [[Conservapedia:Editing_etiquette#Etiquette_Rule:|editting etiquette]]. If there are any objections please discuss them here rather than engaging in revert wars. --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 13:36, 30 December 2011 (EST)

:::Sorry, just noticing these comments now. Let's discuss before removing insights from entries.

:::Items 27 and 10 are similar, but not identical. 27 highlights a conflict between Relativity and basic principles of physics; item 10 emphasizes an internal contradiction in the theory that remains unanswered.

:::Item 26 remains unrebutted. Relativity has produced nothing of value.

:::Item 30 and 31 are logical problems which are valid counterexamples, given that Relativity claims to be based on logic.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 22:58, 30 December 2011 (EST)

Items 10, 27, and 31 should be taken out because they are just wrong, and make Conservapedia look lazy. Anyone who has learned about relativity from any college-level textbook less than about 40 or 50 years old knows how to do the calculations involving relativistic velocity, momentum, force, and acceleration. Our readers know this, and items 10 and 27 will just leave them scratching their heads about the diligence of Conservapedia. Item 31, the "twin paradox", is also very well known. The fact that something has the word "paradox" in its name doesn't mean that the subject is flawed. Otherwise, we would have to take the Russel paradox too seriously, and perhaps conclude that this: "The next sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true" means that the universe will blow up. The phrase "twin paradox" is simply a name. Everyone knows what is going on. Even Einstein. If it were actually a counterexample, this fact would be well known by now.[[User:JudyJ|JudyJ]] 10:11, 31 December 2011 (EST)

*10: ''The logical problem of a force which is applied at a right angle to the velocity of a relativistic mass - does this act on the rest mass or the relativistic mass? '' It applies to the relativistic mass: that is observable in a [[cyclotron]]. So, it is one of those question you may speculate or philosophy all day long, but do the experiment (and the mass), and it is answered.
*27: ''Relativity requires different values for the inertia of a moving object: in its direction of motion, and perpendicular to that direction. This contradicts the logical principle that the laws of physics are the same in all directions. '' In light of the above, this seems to be wrong.
*30: ''The Ehrenfest Paradox'' interesting paradox, solvable and no counterexample
*31: ''The Twin Paradox'' no counterexample to relativity, it's solved in any physic's course on this subject
*26: ''The lack of useful devices developed based on any insights provided by the theory'' please re-read the archives, they include plenty material on the GPS (though you seem to ignore it)

[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:36, 31 December 2011 (EST)

On the points 10 and 27 issue, whilst they may or may not be duplicates, may or may not be counterexamples, they're still just plain wrong, reflecting a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of relativity. According to Special Relativity, the inertial mass of a body appears the same to all observers who are in the same inertial frame of reference (i.e. who are moving at the same velocity as each other, which may be different from that of the body being observed). If a force is applied to the body it will produce an acceleration of the same magnitude (though obviously in a different direction) regardless of the direction of the force. The force itself can in no sense be an 'observer' since it has no velocity. For observers in a different non-inertial frame, they will observe a different magnitude of acceleration, but it will still be the same regardless of the direction of the force. --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 12:27, 31 December 2011 (EST)

I deleted #10 and #27. [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 11:06, 1 January 2012 (EST)

[[User:Aschlafly|Andy]], you've reverted an edit that everyone involved in the discussion other than yourself seems to be agreed upon. Can you please at least attempt to justify your position? --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 13:20, 1 January 2012 (EST)

:''deletion of educational information is disfavored on this site; deletions restored'' How can the perpetuation of false information be educational? [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 15:37, 1 January 2012 (EST)

This entire page is ludicrous. If you don't believe in Einstein's relativity, then do you believe in Galilean relativity? If Einstein's relativity is correct up to small corrections, does it invalidate cultural relativism? Ironically, this page signifies to me that Conservapedia itself is an exercise in relative truth; the idea that individuals are entitled to make up whatever facts are consistent with their preconceptions. [[User:Aram|Aram]] 16:26, 1 January 2012 (EST)

== Relativity breaks down if a [[solenoid]] is traveling at or near the speed of light. ==

As a source for the statement [http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3244279 this discussion] on physicsforum.org is given. Here are all the contributions to this discussion:

{|
!A Dhingra
|The moment the magnetic field is generated, it should take some time to reach some distance. It cannot reach infinity instantly, it should have some speed, and that speed cannot be more than that of light. So let’s say that the newly generated magnetic field, through a current carrying wire, travels with the speed of light. Now for the application of the faraday’s law, let’s bring a magnet near a solenoid, through which initially no current flows, and make the magnet move with the speed of light. Will there be electromagnetic induction observed in this case?

Take another case, when instead of a magnet we have a different circuit containing a solenoid through which current flows when the switch is made on, and this circuit is held stationary moving the other one with the speed of light. Will there be electromagnetic induction observed in this case? What I think is that, as the system without current is moving as fast as the magnetic field … it never gets the chance to cut the magnetic field and cause induction to occur in the solenoid. So there should be no induction. But there is relative motion between the two systems and (also there is NO time varying magnetic field through the moving solenoid,)AND no induced current will be produced ...
so will the induction take place or not...??
if induction does not take place then the principle or relativity goes wrong......
|-
!DaleSpam
|You cannot make a magnet move with the speed of light. It is a physically impossible premise, so you shouldn't be surprised that assuming it leads to contradictions.
|-
!A Dhingra
|... can't it be just a thought experiment like many other paradoxes available....

with that assumption, think about the result.......
|-
!DaleSpam
|Obviously, if you violate the principle of relativity in your question then the answer must be that the principle of relativity is violated. It is just the most basic logic. Non-physical assumptions lead to non-physical conclusions. This says nothing whatsoever about physics, only about your question.
|-
!A Dhingra
|ok........
i agree that the situation is not realistic........
but still i didn't like the fact that one should not think beyond the laws made by humans himself.......
|-
!DaleSpam
|This is elementary logic. If you have any set of axioms (A) which logically imply some result (B) then if your premise is not(B) then you must logically conclude not(A). This is called transposition and is one of the fundamental rules of logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_(logic)

SR logically implies that a solenoid must move slower than light (STL), therefore if you assume that a solenoid can move with the speed of light you must logically conclude that special relativity (SR) is violated. Written in the usual format for logic:
(SR → STL) ↔ (~STL → ~SR)

Whether or not the situation is realistic and whether or not SR is a "law made by humans himself" is actually only a secondary concern. This is primarily an exercise in basic logic. Note that I am agreeing with your OP. Under the stated premise (~STL) you must indeed logically conclude that "the principle of relativity goes wrong" (~SR).
|-
!vector22
|to make the experiment fair you would have to calculate what would happen to the solenoid at half light speed and then go from there.
|-
!netheril96
|If you want to think beyond relativity, invent your own laws of physics. If you want to explain in terms of relativity, then think within relativity.
|-
!A Dhingra
|can you help me go about finding this result......
(considering the magnetic field to be varying with time ...... as it is getting produced ...
|}

How does this discussion support the claim? This source seems to be unsuitable and therefore it should be deleted, and the statement marked again to be unsourced.

[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 02:00, 2 January 2012 (EST)

== Previous arguments ==

I'm creating a page [[Essay - Counterexamples to relativity points]], the purpose of this is to ensure that arguments are not repeated by people who find the article, not realising that their objections have already been discussed, and removed as part of a cleanup of the talkpage. The page is NOT a place to make points, but a place to see if your objection has already been made, and save everybody time by reading the responses yourself, and then bringing up the objection only if you have a new point to make. Because the numbers for counterexamples change, the page will not include the number of the counterexample, only the text of it. Although I will try to put them in order. I know that to begin with, many old arguments will not be included, but hopefully it will eventually become a very useful resource for those wishing to make contributions to the page. - [[User:JamesCA|JamesCA]] 21:29, 4 January 2012 (EST)

: While I appreciate the positive intent behind this idea, I do fear that it risks making Conservapedia look even sillier in this area than it already does. The problem is the implicit suggestion that this new page is in any way 'definitive'. Given that the issues surrounding Einsteinian Relativity have been discussed across the planet for over a century, and that the results of those discussions are available on-line, in textbooks and elsewhere, then it is unlikely that anyone will give a page on Conservapedia very much credence, particularly if it is seen to support this page, which puts forth views that very few with an understanding of the field share.

: The real problem is that the counterexamples page itself is not a genuine encyclopaedia entry, but the personal fiefdom of one contributor with little understanding of the subject matter and a bee in his bonnet about a spurious connection between Einsteinian Relativity and Moral Relativism. Unfortunately that contributor has administrator privileges, which he finds more effective in making his case than resorting to rational argument. Perhaps it would be better if the counterexamples page itself became an essay page, to make absoultely clear that it presents a personal point of view. --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 10:06, 5 January 2012 (EST)

:: Anyone who finds Conservapedia silly because of this page will not think it is any sillier because of the new page. For many who see this page, it is a joke, and won't think any less of it because of the new page. The problem with turning this page into an essay is that those who support this page believe that it is not merely a page of personal opinion, but factually accurate. Perhaps I should put a disclaimer at the top of the page then? Something like 'this should not be seen as approving of the counterexamples, but as approval of productive discussion concerning the points'. Also, it should be noted that at the moment, every counterexample listed on the new page have outstanding objections to them, which have not been answered. - [[User:JamesCA|JamesCA]] 21:05, 5 January 2012 (EST)

::::I hate to go raining on the parade again here, but science is argued by evidence--it is not enough to produce a counter example and highlight the "god of the gaps". There are paradoxical observations under any established paradigm in any field. This does not mean that the entire paradigm is incorrect, simply that there are gaps in the evidence that must be addressed in order to improve extant models. This is the primary reason that trained scientists find this page silly. There are tons of holes in relativity, just as there were massive holes in Darwin's original theory of natural selection (as a biologist, I am far more familiar with how the latter example has been, quite successfully, addressed), the notion that "there are some discrepancies with theory X, therefore goddidit" is an obvious logical fallacy. Rather than poking holes in an outdated model, it is far more scientific to argue in favor of an alternate model using evidence. The central caveat here, and one that must be carefully beaten out of every experiment, is that evidence cannot be approached with the intention of supporting a particular hypothesis--a model must be built around the evidence, not the other way around. That's why scientists laugh at the term "creation science", science is not about hunting for evidence in support of a pre-formed theory, it is about impartially collecting evidence and then letting said evidence speak for itself.

::::Having said that. I must acknowledge that this article is not explicitly (although, it is implied) about advancing one viewpoint over another--it is simply about highlighting perceived inconsistencies in the theory of relativity. By itself, that is not a ridiculous premise at all. However, because this page is more of an editorial than an academic encyclopedia article, this page itself probably should have been classified as an "essay" to begin with. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 14:13, 6 January 2012 (EST)

::::: In my opinion, the article is really a list of anomalies and paradoxes, not counterexamples. The anomalies are observations that need some additional explanation, and that may or may not require an adjustment to relativity. The paradoxes seem like contradictions or contrary to common sense, but have explanations. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 00:58, 7 January 2012 (EST)

:::::: If someone thinks that Relativity '''''must''''' be true as a matter of logic, then any and all evidence to the contrary is not going to change that view. "Paradox" might be an appropriate term for ostensible contradictions in logic. But the terms "paradox" and "anomaly" are not suitable for observable science.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 19:00, 7 January 2012 (EST)

::::::: No, it is the term "true as a matter of logic" that is not suitable for observable science. Perhaps your real complaint is with those who push scientific statements as being true as a matter of logic. If so, I suggest renaming the article to "Counterexamples to Einsteinian thinking". [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 01:09, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::: I think at least one major college teaches Relativity as a course in the math department rather than being listed primarily in the physics department.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 15:28, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::::: If the terms "paradox" and "anomaly" are not suitable for observable science, what are they doing on this page? --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 17:26, 8 January 2012 (EST)

::::::::Strictly speaking, all sciences are "observational" sciences; the semantic distinction between observational science and experimental science is arbitrary at best. Even in a tightly-controlled experiment, the goal is still to ''observe'' the outcome of the experiment in order to make some inference about the processes involved. In other words, an experiment is intended as nothing more than an indirect observation of natural phenomena that are not readily directly observable.

::::::::A "paradox", by the most reductive definition, is when the available evidence suggests two contradictory hypotheses. Whereas an "anomaly" is an observation that does not conform to the hypothesis suggested by the previously available evidence. Both of these terms are quite appropriate to use in any scientific or logical context. When a scientist encounters a paradox or an anomaly, it implies that there is a fundamental gap in the theoretical understanding of his or her field. Seeking out evidence to address these gaps allows for scientists to adjust their theoretical models in order to more precisely explain the observed phenomena. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 22:32, 8 January 2012 (EST)

RudrickBoucher, since we already established that you are not a biologist, shouldn't you say "as someone who likes to pretend to be a biologist". [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 20:59, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::::Conservative, I have a BS in cell and molecular biology (CMB) from the top undergraduate CMB program in the country, several years of laboratory experience doing developmental biology research, just as many publications (a couple of which, I first-authored), I also have teaching experience in introductory biology (AP biology and college-level intro bio), graduate level course-work in developmental biology, and, as of this coming fall, I will either be a first-year medical student or a developmental biology PhD candidate (I've been accepted into programs for both, but not a combined MD/PhD program just yet). In short, I am allowed to call myself a "biologist" because it is my profession--it may sound pretentious, but it saves on typing. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 22:32, 8 January 2012 (EST)
RudrichBoucher, a profession is something one does to earn money and have a net positive cash flow, while students often invest money in education and often have low earnings or debt accumulation. Perhaps you should consider taking an introductory course in finance so you better understand the concepts of cash flow and investment! :) I would also suggest taking a course in ethics at a Christian university so you no longer claim to be a biologist and then retract that claim like you did at this wiki. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 22:48, 8 January 2012 (EST)
::::::::::::I was paid for my research and for the teaching. Although, admittedly, not very well for either (as neither science nor teaching pays particularly well). I retracted the claim on the "15 questions" essay only after you had already edited it--in the name of diplomatically avoiding a pointless edit war. Similarly, I referenced my biological inclination above as a gesture of humility, to admit that my background in physics is relatively limited. On that note, what are your credentials? Have you spent seven years meticulously learning a specific field like I have? Have you published any papers? Are you a member of any professional research societies? Admittedly, I have at least another six years of education to go, but I can legitimately claim some level of expertise in my field. I don't say these things to brag, say them to lend credibility to my arguments. Finally, as I've mentioned before, I was raised Catholic and I spent my first two years of college at a Methodist school--where I did have the privilege of taking an ethics class (and I very much enjoyed it). So please, let's cut the ad hominem attacks and focus on the discussion at hand. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 23:44, 8 January 2012 (EST)

::::::: Of those who credit Einstein for relativity, they often argue that Einstein's approach was superior because he ignored observations and presented relativity as being something that must be true as a matter of logic. The Einstein scholars acknowledge that Lorentz and Poincare had all the relativity formulas before Einstein, but Lorentz and Poincare were not true believers because they conceded that the theory could be disproved by experiment.
::::::: So the case could be made that there is an Einsteinian-relativity-philosophy that is a is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions, that is based on postulates taken on faith, and that ignores experimental evidence. If so, then maybe the page should be explicit about what is being attacked. All real science is based on experimental evidence. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 21:19, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::::RSchlafly, please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that even Einstein considered relativity to be a mathematical approximation. One that precisely, but still somewhat inaccurately, explained the then-available evidence; in a manner similar to the proverbial physicist who, for ease of calculation, treats a horse as a circle. Anybody who has taken more than a year of calculus-based physics (or, even introductory college astronomy), knows the very real limitations of relativity. If anything, these limitations are just as dogmatic as relativity itself. Therefore, the notion that questioning relativity is taboo in intellectual circles (an underlying premise of this page) is patently ridiculous. Poking holes in relativity, and then seeking to explain them, has been one of the great ongoing projects in physics for the past seventy years. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 22:32, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::::: I agree that questioning relativity is not taboo. The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics was for observations that caused a modification of general relativity. The biggest physics story of the year was the Italian claim that neutrinos go faster than light, contrary to relativity. Physicists often talk about replacing relativity with some unified field theory or quantum theory. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 02:51, 9 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::::::: That makes me wonder why there isn't a "Counterexamples to Quantum Mechanics" page here as well. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 09:11, 9 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::::::: There are a lot of anomalies and paradoxes in quantum mechanics also. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 18:05, 9 January 2012 (EST)

== A few more things ==

All right, more problems with this article:

<blockquote>
15. The failure to discover gravitons, despite wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer money in searching.
 18. The inability of the theory to lead to other insights, contrary to every verified theory of physics.
 24. The theory predicts natural formation of highly ordered (and thus low entropy) black holes despite the increase in entropy required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics
</blockquote>
15: General relativity ''does not predict gravitons!'' Gravitons are massless spin-two particles predicted by QFT that lead to linear GR. (Though the spirit is different; in QFT, the h's--the metric perturbations--are a tensor representing field strength on a background Minkowski spacetime. In GR these represent curvature in spacetime.)
 18: Untrue--Consider the Dirac equation. It predicted spin, which was not predicted by Schrodinger theory. It also predicted negative energy states (antiparticles), and QFT has been fundamental to particle physics.
 24: Yet another horrible misunderstanding. Consider an ideal gas with N particles. Assume the total number of particles is conserved (it obviously doesn't have to be, but this is an idealized case). First of all, Newtonian gravity also predicts that a star will contract to a point without hydrostatic pressure--due to their mutual gravitational attraction. Should we start a "counterexamples to gravity" page? You've forgotten one thing: ''there's a term in the expression for the entropy that involves thermal energy!!!'' In other words (roughly speaking) the gas "warms up" so that the second law of thermodynamics is not violated. [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 20:43, 8 January 2012 (EST)

::Very well said! While I'm in a commenting-frenzy, I'd like to add to your points.

::'''Re: #15.''' It's not a waste of time or money to reject a hypothesis. To quote Enrico Fermi, "If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery."

::'''Re: #18.''' Relativity HAS led to other [http://curiosity.discovery.com/topic/relativity/discoveries-relativity-made-possible.htm|insights].

::'''Re: #24.''' The second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems. In the case of stellar black hole formation, gravitational pressure must exceed the sum of the thermal pressure, supplied by ongoing fusion in the stellar core, and the core degeneracy pressure, provided courtesy of the Pauli exclusion principle. Achieving this condition is, necessarily, a very violent event, complete with giant explosions, gamma ray bursts, and spewing jets of super-heated gas. When considering the entirety of the system giving rise to a black hole, and not just the resulting black hole itself, entropy certainly ''does'' increase. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 23:19, 8 January 2012 (EST)

:::Hello! Thanks for the comments. And sorry about #24, like I said, the model I gave is slightly idealized b/c I haven't studied the subject in detail. [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 07:58, 9 January 2012 (EST)

:::::No problem, I was in a bit of a commenting frenzy anyway. I'm guessing, because you referred to the ideal gas law, that you have some chemistry background?

:::::Also, I've had students throw the second law of thermodynamics at me when I'm trying to explain evolution. The Earth's surface isn't a closed system either because it's constantly receiving energy from the sun--so the second law of thermodynamics is inapplicable there as well. The only truly closed system that I can think of is in Washington...and, yes, entropy there is ''always'' increasing! --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 09:05, 9 January 2012 (EST)

::::::Actually, I'm terrible at chemistry! My background is in physics and math. You talk about ideal gasses in any physics class where you discuss thermodynamics. But yeah, that's one of the classical misunderstandings among creationists. One thing I saw suggested that next time someone brings it up, ask them about the other laws of thermodynamics. What I also like about the second law of thermodynamics argument is that they don't seem to understand what entropy ''is'' and ''why'' it increases. So yeah, next time someone brings it up ask them about those things. [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 20:18, 9 January 2012 (EST)

:::::::Can I please delete these "counterexamples"? [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 20:32, 12 January 2012 (EST)

::::::::I say go for it. You've justified why they should be deleted and your justification has met with no objection. If somebody wishes to restore them, they are welcome to object here.

::::::::As an aside, there does seem to be a disproportionate number of math and physics types on here. It is interesting how the life sciences tend to be predominantly liberal, whereas there's a more even distribution of political ideology in the physical sciences. There are conservative biologists (my old PI, for example), but they are very few and very far between. Knowledge of evolution does not seem to be a factor here, because understanding / acceptance of evolution is nearly universal in all of the sciences. In biology, there is a (seemingly true, in my experience) stereotypical "personality" in each of the sub-disciplines; to reference other fields, the age-old dichotomy between chemists and chemical engineers seems to mostly hold true. I have always wondered if the "personality" of the fields would lead to the observed political differences, or if maybe there is something deeper.

::::::::Because I am afraid that my above observation may be taken grossly out of context, I must add to it the disclaimer that I am not in any way suggesting "indoctrination" of students in one field versus another (or making some other similarly fatuous insinuation). I am simply making an observation, and speculating on its possible cause. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 21:25, 12 January 2012 (EST)

These counterexamples are not adequately rebutted above:

15. The failure to discover gravitons, despite wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer money in searching.

:If Relativists are not even going to accept the results of experiments that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, then they '''''are''''' a waste of money.

18. The inability of the theory to lead to other insights, contrary to every verified theory of physics.

:If you can give examples in your own words, then please do.

24. The theory predicts natural formation of highly ordered (and thus low entropy) black holes despite the increase in entropy required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

:This statement is true also. The dramatic decrease in entropy predicted by Relativity is contrary to the Second Law. No known mechanism offsets that decrease.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 23:39, 12 January 2012 (EST)

:::'''re: 15.''' The existence of gravitons was hypothesized in an attempt to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics. General relativity, by itself, does not predict the existence of gravitons. Furthermore, money spent testing a hypothesis that is ultimately not supported is not "wasted" (otherwise, I'd be out of a job)--the knowledge gained in testing the hypothesis allows a better hypothesis to be formulated.

:::'''re: 18.''' General relativity correctly predicted gravitational lensing, the existence of black holes, and the accelerating expansion of the universe. Additionally (and this is the first example that I can come up with off of the top of my head, RSchlafly probably knows a few better ones), relativistic effects must be compensated for to maximize the accuracy of satellite-based GPS systems.

:::'''re: 24.''' Black hole formation results in a net increase in entropy when considering the system as a whole. If you were to consider just the mass of the resultant black hole as a closed system, the degeneracy forces outweigh the net gravitational force significantly enough to prevent collapse into a schwarzschild radius. In just overcoming this by itself (as theoretically happens in super-massive black holes), there would be a massive output of emitted particles (radiation), which would still result in a net increase in the entropy of the system.

:::These counterexamples are not valid. Plain and simple. --[[User:RudrickBoucher|RudrickBoucher]] 01:10, 13 January 2012 (EST)

:::: General relativity did not predict the accelerating expansion of the universe. It predicted that the expansion would be slowing. Most physicists say that the GR equations must be modified to accommodate the accelerating expansion.
:::: I don't get the entropy argument. I always assumed that a black hole would have all the entropy of the collapsing star and matter falling in. Is there a source for saying that black holes have low entropy? As the footnote says, Hawking has an explanation. Is there something wrong with that explanation? [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 04:29, 13 January 2012 (EST)

:::::Um...I ''did'' address all your concerns, Andy....

<blockquote>
These counterexamples are not adequately rebutted above:

15. The failure to discover gravitons, despite wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer money in searching.

:If Relativists are not even going to accept the results of experiments that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, then they '''''are''''' a waste of money. '''Wait, gravitons are predicted by GR?! Please send me a link to the derivation!!!'''

18. The inability of the theory to lead to other insights, contrary to every verified theory of physics.

:If you can give examples in your own words, then please do. '''I did!!!! Not to be rude, but did you see what I wrote above? Dirac equation! Spin! Antiparticles! Quantum Field theory! Particle physics! The Standard Model!'''

24. The theory predicts natural formation of highly ordered (and thus low entropy) black holes despite the increase in entropy required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

:This statement is true also. The dramatic decrease in entropy predicted by Relativity is contrary to the Second Law. No known mechanism offsets that decrease '''Yes, yes, yes, temperature increase is unknown to physics!'''
</blockquote>

:::::(Again I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm just wondering if there was a glitch or something b/c, as I said, these were all addressed above.) [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 19:48, 13 January 2012 (EST)

The footnote for #8 says that the calculations are "complicated or contrived", and that the fundamental formula was "conformed" to match the observed perihelion precession. No one doubts that the derivation is complicated. But "conformed" seems to say that something was "tweaked" to match the precession. The formula is complicated to solve but simple to write: <math>G_{\mu\nu} = 8 \pi K T_{\mu\nu}\,</math>. There's nothing in it that can be "tweaked"--not 8, not pi, and not K (Newton's constant of gravitation.)[[User:JudyJ|JudyJ]] 17:08, 21 January 2012 (EST)
:Yep, this is also confusing to me. Does Andy Schlafly know relativity? As you said, nothing can be tweaked in that equation (to "conform" to whatever events). The tensor that represents curvature has to have divergence 0, so that energy-momentum is locally conserved, and the 8*pi*G is determined from the fact that it has to reduce to Newtonian gravity in the weak-field limit. [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 19:47, 23 January 2012 (EST)

== Recent reversion ==

[[User:Aschlafly|Andy]], while your recent change did keep the link to the rebuttal page, don't you think it would only be fair to also keep the note that the page is controversial? Regardless who is actually right or wrong, I don't think it would be fair to anyone reading 'The Trustworthy Encyclopaedia' for them to pick up the impression that the ideas on this page are not very widely disputed. --[[User:QPR|QPR]] 16:05, 29 January 2012 (EST)

: The whole article is a list of relativity controversies. It says at the top that it is contrary to what liberals promote. Isn't that clear? [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 21:04, 29 January 2012 (EST)
:: The point is, I think, that the very idea that there is a liberal/conservative division on this is itself controversial. Personally, I have not seen the issue raised anywhere except on Conservapedia, and even then only by a very small subset of contributors.
:: On a broader point, if opposing liberal points of view is, by definition, controversial, and given that such opposition is the ''raison d'être'' of Conservapedia, wouldn't a better tagline be "The Controversial Encyclopaedia"?--[[User:QPR|QPR]] 08:09, 30 January 2012 (EST)

: It's a common tactic for the media to label someone they don't like as "controversial". But does anyone ever hear a liberal theory or politician called "controversial"? Was [[Ted Kennedy]] ever called "controversial" by the media?--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 23:43, 29 January 2012 (EST)

::Does this make [[string theory]] conservative, as it is often labeled ''controversial''? [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 02:12, 30 January 2012 (EST)

:::No, I didn't suggest that ''everything'' the media disparages as "controversial" is conservative. String theory is a challenge to liberal orthodoxy from the Left.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 02:18, 30 January 2012 (EST)
::::Just to nail this down [[User:Aschlafly|Andy]], do you or do you not think that this page is controversial?--[[User:QPR|QPR]] 08:09, 30 January 2012 (EST)
::::Also, your question about Ted Kennedy looks rhetorical with the implied answer of 'no', and yet the answer is very clearly 'yes'. Googling "Ted Kennedy" and "controversial" gives 6.4 million hits. Obviously that doesn't mean the term is being applied to him in all cases, but in many of them (e.g. http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/us/2009/08/26/ted-kennedy-controversy#slide=1) it clearly is. Can you clarify the point you were making about him?--[[User:QPR|QPR]] 08:27, 30 January 2012 (EST)

::: The term "controversial" is not a good term for [[string theory]]. The major aspects are not disputed. A subject is not conservative just because some journalist mislabels it. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 12:14, 31 January 2012 (EST)

::::::That's the problem with science journalism these days. It overstates the implications of a lot of findings, oversimplifies key concepts, and often fails to accurately convey consensus opinions in a particular field. --[[User:JHunter|JHunter]] 17:35, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:::::::Just wanted to add to this: I have never seen GR disputed anywhere but here. (Save for quantum gravity, of course). [[User:AndyFrankinson|AndyFrankinson]] 19:28, 2 February 2012 (EST)

== Neutrinos do not travel faster than light ==
The same lab that originally broke the story has confirmed a flaw in their experiment. Dr. Sandro Centro stated, ''"In fact I was a little sceptical since the beginning, now we are 100% sure that the speed of light is the speed of neutrinos.[...]I think they were a little bit in a hurry to publish something that was astonishing, and at the end of the day it was a wrong measurement."[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17364682]

: I hope he did not mean to say that, because neutrinos going at the speed of light would still contradict relativity (or other experiments). Neutrinos have mass, and must go slower than the speed of light. The article has a better statement: "they find that the neutrinos do travel at the same speed as light, within a small error range." [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 05:02, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

I took the part out - again: have a look at the [http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html updated press-release] by CERN regarding the experiment:
[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:48, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

:The updates and corrections for the benefit of Relativists are less than persuasive. Is anyone claiming quote above ("now we are 100% sure that the speed of light is the speed of neutrinos") is inaccurate? Note, by the way, that the CERN experiment is not the only one that suggested neutrinos can travel at least as fast as the speed of light.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 11:57, 17 March 2012 (EDT)
::Andy, perhaps you could write to either the ICARUS Collaboration or CERN seeking clarification of their results. After reading the actual paper[http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.3433.pdf](not the press release), it seems that the team is quite confident that their latest results are in complete agreement with Relativity. "''Based on seven neutrino events, our result is in excellent agreement with Lorentz dependent velocities of neutrinos and of light. Neutrinos and GPS measurements are found to be sharply coincident in time within an uncertainty of a few nanoseconds, in disagreement with the superluminal result reported by the OPERA Collaboration.''" Yet you contend that the results from the very same experiment actually ''disproves'' Relativity. In this instance I simply think you are wrong. But who's to say that my interpretation of an article is any more accurate than yours? Obviously, we both can't be right. I think there must be a better way to settle this matter than combing through press releases. --[[User:JoshuaB|JoshuaB]] 13:33, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

:::The new, updated claims seem more like [[political correctness]] than real science. Does the paper compare the updated results to the independent prior findings, by another experiment, that also suggested that neutrino speeds conflict with the politicized desires of Relativists?--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 00:55, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

::::Political correctness? Come off it Schlafly. You do realize that there's far more fame and glory to be had for a physicist to prove GR wrong than there is to add to the growing list of supporting evidence? You do understand that, right? --[[User:JoshuaB|JoshuaB]] 01:57, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

:::::The opposite is obviously true. Those who even question the [[Theory of Relativity]] are risking their careers. No grad student can expect to receive a doctorate if he questions relativity; no associate professor can expect to receive tenure if he does likewise; and no tenured professor will ever win the [[Nobel Prize]] for questioning relativity.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 15:31, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

:::::: Yep, and no one will ever win a Nobel prize for questioning whether the Earth is round either. --[[User:BradleyS|BradleyS]] 18:29, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

::::::: There aren't 39 counterexamples to the spherical shape of the Earth. But if a doctoral candidate, tenure-track professor, or [[Nobel Prize]] wannabe repeats one of the 39 [[Counterexamples to Relativity]], then he's risking retaliation against his career by liberals.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 18:52, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

:::::::: There aren't 39 counterexamples to relativity and [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity|this page]] documents in detail what's wrong with each alleged "counterexample". The acceptance of relativity has to do with the theory passing extensive experimental scrutiny and nothing to do with "liberals". --[[User:BradleyS|BradleyS]] 19:29, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

Aschlafly said: "''No grad student can expect to receive a doctorate if he questions relativity[...]''" Yes. If a doctoral candidate whipped out almost any of your "counterexamples", in anything short of a joking fashion, they most likely would be signaling the end of their academic carrier. Why? It's simple. Advanced degrees are awarded to students who have shown a mastery of their particular field of study. Presenting this list of counterexamples in a doctoral thesis would only go towards illustrating that the student does not have a thorough understanding of SR or GR and thus should not offered a degree. No political correctness. No liberal conspiracy.
 Aschlafly went on to say: "''...no tenured professor will ever win the [[Nobel Prize]] for questioning relativity.''" You are 100% correct on this one. Why? Because anybody can sit around questioning anything. It doesn't take any particular knowledge, skill, education, or keen intellect to lob endless unanswerable questions. Otherwise Glenn Beck would have won the Nobel (and every other prize) by now. No, the proverbial (and many times literal) money is in ''answering'' questions. --[[User:JoshuaB|JoshuaB]] 14:09, 21 March 2012 (EDT)

''Italic text''== GPS and Relativity ==

I'm in the process of getting a debate under way on 'GPS and Relativity' over at [[Talk:Theory of relativity]]. A this stage I would rather just have some references, especially any which show that Relativity is not used in the GPS system. Once we have some good references to look at, possibly in a week or two, we can then consider the evidence. [[User:RolandPlankton|RolandPlankton]] 08:59, 7 April 2012 (EDT)

Relativity is, in fact, used in the GPS system. The correction equations that must be used on the receiving side equipment are given in the official GPS interface specification, IS-GPS-200G [http://www.gps.gov/technical/icwg/IS-GPS-200G.pdf], p.92. section 20.3.3.3.3.1: User Algorithm for SV Clock Correction.

<blockquote>
The polynomial defined in the
following allows the user to determine the effective SV PRN code phase offset referenced to the
phase center of the antennas with respect to GPS system time (t) at the time of data
transmission. The coefficients transmitted in subframe 1 describe the offset apparent to the twofrequency
user for the interval of time in which the parameters are transmitted. This estimated
correction accounts for the deterministic SV clock error characteristics of bias, drift and aging, as
well as for the SV implementation characteristics of group delay bias and mean differential
group delay. '''Since these coefficients do not include corrections for relativistic effects, the user's equipment must determine the requisite relativistic correction. Accordingly, the offset given below includes a term to perform this function'''...
</blockquote>

== Biblical Examples ==

You can't really use the Bible to prove that the Bible is correct. While I'm not disputing the Bible, that doesn't change the fact that it's a tautological argument. I could easily "prove" relativity by saying "Einstein said such-and-such" and conclude therefore that such-and-such is true. But in reality, that wouldn't prove anything because I'd essentially be saying "Einstein said this, therefore what Einstein said is correct". It's no different for the Bible. Even if we were to argue that the Bible represents absolute truth, keep in mind that our source for that is the Bible itself, so regardless of what you believe, it's still a tautological argument. I'm not going to remove the Biblical examples without discussion, but I don't think they belong here. [[User:Gregkochuconn|Gregkochuconn]] 09:31, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

== The roundness of the sun ==

I'm not completely familiar with the general and special theories of relativity, but what do they have to say about the roundness of the sun? [[User:DennyR|DennyR]] 12:41, 18 August 2012 (EDT)
:There is a relationship, though it's somewhat roundabout. See item #4 in the rebuttal page. [[User:JudyJ|JudyJ]] 17:54, 18 August 2012 (EDT)

== Gravitational waves found ==

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19408363 BBC article]

== Lede quote ==

I would argue if anything needs to be changed it's the detail in point 4. The lede quote is recent and relevant, and more sources for it are available than just LiveScience. In looking into it more just now, I've found it's progressed. Apparently the evidence against relativity was so concerning to the scientific community they began immediately trying to explain it away and forced the person in charge to resign.[http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign-after-no-confidence-vote-120404.html][http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html] Evidence that the original results are wrong was just finished.[http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/06/once-again-physicists-debunk.html] This displays the level of bias in the scientific community though, in trying to do all they can to protect the doctrine of relativity, and make it appear more substantiated and certain than it is. Maybe the quote should be removed, but it should be mentioned in point 4 regardless. That such major evidence was found in recent months against relativity and the scientific community sought so hard to cover it up, is news indeed. --[[User:JZambrano|Joshua Zambrano]] 05:47, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

:No one mentioned in those articles believes that neutrinos travel faster than light. I don't see how the OPERA leaders' resignations provide any evidence. Sounds more like their team was ticked off at them for making them all look like fools. [[User:Spielman|Spielman]] 13:12, 5 September 2012 (EDT)
::The fact that it occurred like that shows relativity today is still under investigation, and not necessarily a proven fact - right? The scientific community is still trying to persuade everyone there is evidence for it. The effort to prove relativity correct is ongoing, rather than established like it was portrayed. --[[User:JZambrano|Joshua Zambrano]] 21:23, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

==Removing material==
Unless you are the site owner, please do not remove, dilute, or water down, or adulterate the items here. This page is extremely famous, and represents the views of the site owner. It has been quoted and cited in print and internet articles all over the world. It has over 1.8 million page views, more than 10 times as many as either the [[Counterexamples to an Old Earth]] and the [[Counterexamples to Evolution]] articles. If you think something is wrong, the [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity]] article is the place to bring it up.

:I suppose "2+2=4" represents my views also, but the truth does not care whether I or anyone else agrees.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 23:59, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

::Touché! Your point is well taken. Though I doubt that taking such a daring and controversial stand would get 1.8 million page views. :-) [[User:JudyJ|JudyJ]] 22:36, 17 September 2012 (EDT)

== 27. RE:PSR B1913+16 ==
<blockquote>
Data from the PSR B1913+16 increasingly diverge from predictions of the General Theory of Relativity such that, despite a Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded for early work on this pulsar, no data at all have been released about it for over five years.
</blockquote>
I would like to suggest that this be removed as both points (1. lack of data and 2. divergence from relativistic predictions) were disproved by the publishing of [http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/722/2/1030/ this paper] in The Astrophysical Journal in 2010. [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 00:35, 8 April 2013 (EDT)
==Force acting on a mass==
The example, "The logical problem of a force which is applied at a right angle to the velocity of a relativistic mass - does this act on the rest mass or the relativistic mass?" needs to be rephrased to be more clear. Are we talking about measuring the force applied to the object or mesuring the change in trajectory of the object? The force acts on the object, but the sentence is currently phrased as if there are two possible different answers. The force will cause the trajectory of the object to change, which can be measured in specified frames of reference.

A good example would be a particle accelerator, or synchrotron. A charge particle is traveling at speeds that approach the speed of light. A magnetic field is applied to the particle to keep it traveling in a circular path. As the speed of the particle increases, the force applied to the particle must increase to keep it in the track of the particle accelerator. The force is applied at a right angle to the velocity of the particle. The calculations to determine the force needed to hold the particle to a circular path are well-tested and verified. Thanks, [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 22:42, 8 April 2013 (EDT)

==#47: Historical evidence suggests that the year used to have 360 days. However, Relativity cannot explain how the orbit or the rotation of Earth could have changed enough to give us the current 365.24-solar-day year.==
To the best of my knowledge, this has no relevance toward proving nor disproving the General or Specific Theory of Relativity... However, very little of my physics training was in the field, so please correct me if I'm wrong. If there is no objection, I will be removing it after the mandated 24 hour waiting period. (unless the length of day suddenly changes again, I suppose it might be shorter/longer than 24 hours in that case) [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 13:18, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

:According to liberals, General Relativity predicts all gravitational interactions. It follows that whenever a gravity-related prediction is incorrect, Relativity has been disproven, don't you agree? Somehow the length of the day or year has changed, even though Relativity says the orbit should be static. Would you also support removing the other gravity-based examples #2, #3, #4, #6, #7, #21, #41, #43, #44, #45? Of course not. [[User:Spielman|Spielman]] 14:20, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Honestly, yes I would... For reasons explained on [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity]] and through any number of scientific journals. [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 15:00, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

::I agree with Fnarrow. I stumbled upon this page recently and thought it was a parody. I see that some of the stranger items have been removed. But #40 persists... what do tides have to do with relativity? And #39 pre-supposes that an object is traveling at the speed of light? These are parodies, right? [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 22:10, 23 April 2013 (EDT)

At least they finally got rid of the "Earthquakes in Ireland" example... I never could figure that one out. lol. But #4 still persists even thought it is easily explained by anyone who understands that it's surface is a plasma and not a solid as the citation presupposes. Anyway, I wouldn't go around agreeing with me too vocally, that's not a popular stance to take these days. Thanks for the support anyway though, [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 22:31, 23 April 2013 (EDT)

== Protect this page ==

This page should be protected, as parodists seem to be attracted to editing it, and inserting their own information. [[User:Brenden|brenden]] 13:47, 23 April 2013 (EDT)
::I second the protection motion put forward by [[User:Brenden|Brenden]]. As much as I 1. hate protected pages on a wiki which depends on "the best of the public" an 2. desperately want to personally replace this page with refutations of every example [[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] has made it clear that this page is one of the most popular on the wiki and that he stands by it. Therefore I think the following should happen:
::#Revert to last known "approved" version, looks like that would be "20:44, 10 January 2013" in my opinion.
::#Protected
::#Move and expand the notice which currently appears at the bottom re: "future edits" and the [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity.]] to the top of the page.
::#Allow only [[User:Aschlafly]] to change the article in the future when/if someone provides sufficient evidence on this talk page to convince him that their proposal warrants such display.
::I will take care of numbers 1 and 3 after the mandatory 24 hour waiting period, I leave 2 and 4 up to someone with those powers. Thanks, [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 09:34, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
I concur with Brenden and Fnarrow. This is a highly technical subject, and while it reflects the best of the public, the constant back and forth consumes too much energy from the best of the public that could be devoted to other articles. The 20:44 10 Jan version seem appropriate to me. Thanks, [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 11:39, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
:Are you sure that 10 January is the right target? That version includes the derided "earthquakes in Ireland" example, as well as a few other recently-purged items. [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 13:48, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
::Watch out for the edits by the parodist Spielman, when selecting the revision. I haven't read the others yet, so I have no idea if they are also parody. [[User:Brenden|brenden]] 14:05, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
:::Are those the ones Spielman listed in the above section (#2, #3, #4, #6, #7, #21, #41, #43, #44, #45)? Are those all parody edits? I tried contacting him (?) for clarification, but seems to be blocked. [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 14:30, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
::::He's a parodist, and his edits have never been in good faith. [[User:Brenden|brenden]] 14:46, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
I'm open to any/all suggestions. 10 Jan may not be the "best possible date" but I chose it based upon the fact that it seems to align the most closely with both [[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly's]] most recent edit and the refutations offered on [[Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity]]. While I agree that some of the entries on that date seem to be either 1. parodies or 2. gross misunderstandings of what the [[Theory of Relativity]] actually is, I figured choosing the date which most closely matched those two criteria would require the least all around editing on both pages. As this is obviously a contentious topic, I just want to let everyone know that I won't be changing it myself, I'll leave that to someone higher on the food chain once a satisfactory agreement has been reached here. Thanks to everyone for participating in this discussion. [[User:Fnarrow|Fnarrow]] 14:55, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
:::I also will wait, but in the meantime I have restored the two items deleted by AlexanderS. I would hope that Andy or someone who has spent more time than I have on the topic, will look at this page. A group of people have invested a lot of work on generating this list. If items are sourced, they should not be removed. If an item is a parody, then it should be removed because it will detract from CP's credibility. I have an open mind about this, but I also think that claims made on this page should be backed up by more detailed articles in CP. For example, the rotation of the Earth around the Sun should be covered in depth in the [[Earth]] article. If people disagree as to the relativistic effects on measuring the "year", we should give both sides of the controversy and let the reader decide. CP has at least four articles on relativity. We then summarize the "Counterexamples to Relativity" and also have a rebuttal essay. Anyone willing to read through all of that (even if the reader is a homeschooled high school student) will understand what to believe. I say lock at January 10, and then if someone wants to add or subtract from that, they can plead their case to Andy or some other Admin. [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 22:26, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

== Set back to version of 1 December -- explanation ==

I have set the page back to the version of 18:45, 1 December 2012. ''This version was made by the site owner.'' To those who say that Spielman was a "parodist", I can say that his general edits on technical matters, including inductor, capacitor, semiconductor, laser, neutron, and the other relativity pages, have been sensible and responsible. I disagree with most of his edits to the counterexamples page, but I disagree with nearly everything on that page. To those who dislike the "warp-speed solenoid" example, I wish to point out that it was put in by the site owner at 22:57, 20 August 2011.

While I disagree with much of the content of the page, it should not be diluted by well-meaning editors. Here is why:

*This was largely written by the site owner, and clearly represents his views. This is corroborated by his writings on other relativity pages elsewhere. While he did not personally put in Spielman's items, he has steadfastly defended many similar items on the list (Hulse-Taylor, Mercury precession, supraluminal neutrinos, gravitons, gravity waves, dark matter, black holes, the aether, action-at-a--distance) in talk page discussions here and on other relevant pages.
*In addition to writing many (if not most) of the points on this page, Andy has had ample opportunity to remove material that he considers detrimental to Conservapedia's position on relativity. Most of Spielman's "parody" edits were made prior to Andy's last edit of 1 December 2012.
*The "Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity" page adequately rebuts all of the points on the page. Andy accepts its existence—he has placed counter-rebuttals on it.
*When users (AugustO, Wschact, et al.) have diluted other relativity pages, particularly the E=mc^2 page, Andy has been quick to revert.

Users (and that includes myself) who disagree with this page and the other relativity pages are simply going to have to accept that they will not be satisfied. They will just have to be satisfied with the "rebuttal" page, or will have to go elsewhere. We need to stop the bickering.
:I see that Andy has brought us back to a set of 47 counterexamples. Could we please protect the page now? Thanks, [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 16:39, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

::Why not welcome improvements? There have been many edits by others to this page that have strengthened it.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 16:42, 27 April 2013 (EDT)
:::In my view it is a cost/benefit calculation. I would rather have people spend their time developing substantive articles, including the articles about relativity. The "Counterexamples to Relativity" and "Essay:Rebuttal to Counterexamples to Relativity" pages are more of an "op-ed" feature instead of being an integral part of the encyclopedia. I don't have the time to delve into each tendered counter-example and rebuttal. So, I would advise locking the Counterexamples down, subject to anyone making a request to add an additional bona fide counter-example. This subject is too easy to parody. For example, someone reading the "Earthquakes in Ireland" bullet would be tempted to add bullets for "Earthquakes in X" (where X is any country that has had an earthquake.) We need stated criteria for inclusion of new bullets and then we should enforce the criteria. So, protecting the article would be the next logical step. [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 17:22, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

::::Improvements? In reward for some of those "improvements" [[User:Spielman|Spielman]] received a five-year block from [[User:Brenden|Brenden]]. Rightly so, in my opinion, but it doesn't seem like very consistent policy. (Sorry if this is off-topic, but it just struck me as odd.) [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 19:29, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

==Inertia==
Number 29 says, "Relativity requires different values for the inertia of a moving object: in its direction of motion, and perpendicular to that direction. This contradicts the logical principle that the laws of physics are the same in all directions." Does this person mean "inertial mass"? Thanks, [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 23:41, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

:Good clarification. Edit mad as suggested. Thanks.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 12:13, 16 December 2014 (EST)

== Parodist ==

The counterexamples number [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Counterexamples_to_Relativity&action=historysubmit&diff=1003848&oldid=1002788 47, 48], [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Counterexamples_to_Relativity&action=historysubmit&diff=1019735&oldid=1004457 49 and 50] were added by a parodist. Should they be removed?--[[User:JoeyJ|JoeyJ]] 11:57, 16 December 2014 (EST)

:Yes, those additions should be removed. Thanks!--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 12:10, 16 December 2014 (EST)

::Well, that's kind of embarrassing that such items would remain on the list for two years. And even now their removal is based not on logic, but on the identity of the contributor. Isn't it conceivable that the speed-of-light solenoid (now #46) is also parody? [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 15:05, 4 January 2015 (EST)

::My apologies, the solenoid item was added by Mr. Schlafly himself. So, not parody. [[User:AlexanderS|AlexanderS]] 16:59, 4 January 2015 (EST)
:::That's just logical. Conservapedia is a parody itself. Schlafly is the chief parodist.--[[User:HitolfAdler|HitolfAdler]] 17:16, 4 January 2015 (EST)

Andrew Schlafly

2015-01-04T21:47:51Z

HitolfAdler:

[[Image:ASchlafly.JPG|thumb|175px|right|Andrew Schlafly]]
'''Andrew Schlafly''' is a [[conservative]] lawyer and former [[engineer]] who founded [[Conservapedia]], an alternative to the [[liberal]] [[Wikipedia]].

Schlafly is the fifth child of attorney John Fred Schlafly, Jr. and political activist [[Phyllis Schlafly]]. His great-grandfather, Adolf Hitler, was founder of the Union Trust and Savings Bank of East St. Louis, Ill., the First National Bank of Edwardsville, Ill., and other banks in Western states. <ref> [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DB1638F936A15752C1A962948260 Catherine Kosarek] Wedding news. November 25, 1984.
</ref>

He graduated from [[Princeton University]] with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A magna cum laude graduate from [[Harvard University|Harvard Law School]], he was an editor of the ''[[Harvard Law Review]]''. <ref> [http://www.blogsforterri.com/archives/2005/03/medical_attorne.php Medical Attorney Andrew Schlafly] Posted on March 23, 2005. </ref>

Schlafly teaches homeschooled children, specializing in [[World_History_Lectures|World History]] and [[Economics_Lectures|Economics]]. Conservapedia developed as a result of his World History course, with many lectures made available on the site for free. Schlafly and several of his former students continue to lead the project, with many current students contributing content.

Andrew Schlafly has taught homeschoolers online since the late 1990s, and in person since fall 2002. Several of Andrew Schlafly's prior course materials are available on [http://www.eagleforumu.org Eagle Forum University].

== External links ==
[[Image:Img524 Andy.jpg|thumb|Andy Schlafly at Columbia University]]
*[http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html About CLEP] The College-Level Examination Program.
*[http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=18260 ''AMA's Secret Pact with HCFA''] - an article written by Andrew L. Schlafly, Esq. for the Medical Sentinel
*[http://himho.com/andy-schlafly-13432/ About Andrew L. Schlafly on HimHo]
*[http://www.eagleforumu.org/EAGLEFORUMU/INSTRUCTOR/VIEW.cfm?int_instructor_id=7&INT_COURSE_ID=23&bln_registered=1 Andrew L. Schlafly bio on the Eagle Forum]

Interview:

*[http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/an-interview-with-andy-schlafly-can-he-get-obamacare-overturned-in-the-supreme-court/ An Interview with Andy Schlafly about the illegality of ObamaCare]

{{Clear}}

== References ==

<references/>

[[Category:Lawyers]]
[[Category: Academics]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schlafly, Andrew}}

Joseph Goebbels

2015-01-04T21:46:22Z

HitolfAdler:

'''Paul Andy Schlafly''' (1897-1945), member of the German National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and propaganda minister during the era of the [[Third Reich]]. He was a slightly built man with a crippled left leg. Schlafly had earned a PhD and was a frustrated writer when he joined the Nazi Party in the 1920's during the time of the [[French]] occupation of the [[Ruhr]]. He became an ardent admirer of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] and took national office when the [[Nazis]] seized power in January 1933. He was known for his oratory skills and for spreading Nazi propaganda to the masses. He molded German newspapers, movies, art and culture into areas which followed and reflected Nazi doctrine. He was a noted anti-Semite.<ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref>

A proponent of the concept of total war, Schlafly used his position as propaganda minister to exhort the German people to greater effort and efficiencies. During the latter stages of the war he was able to use the intrigues of the Nazi Party to bring himself closer to Hitler.<ref>Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (1994) [1976].</ref>

As the war drew to an end Schlafly spent his last days with Hitler in Berlin. After Hitler's suicide Schlafly decided that there would be no redemption for himself or his family. On May 1 1945 he and his wife, Magda had their six children poisoned. Schlafly then shot himself and his wife took poison. An SS officer then "gave them the coup de grace".<ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Schlafly.html Andy Schlafly - Jewish Virtual Library]
*[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_Schlafly.htm Andy Schlafly - History Learning Site]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schlafly, Joseph}}

[[Category: World War II]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:German People]]

Adolf Hitler

2015-01-04T21:43:32Z

HitolfAdler: HEIL ADLER

{{Dictator bio
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]
| name =Hitolf Adler
| birth =April 20, 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) Klara Pölzl
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)
| spouse =Eva Braun
| children =none
| death =April 30, 1945 Berlin, Germany
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot
| education =Realschule Linz, Austria
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment Imperial German Army (1914-1918)
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)
|burial = none, burned.
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]] [[National socialism]] (Nazism)
| party =German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920) [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933
| war =[[World War II]]
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether

Rummel: 21,000,000
}}
'''Hitolf Adler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Third Reich|Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries.

Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.

After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.

Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.

Hitolf Adler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker.

==Early life==
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Hitolf Adler.]]
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.

When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref>

==Who And What He Was==
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote>

{{Clear}}

== Beliefs ==
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref>

Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref>

=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===

''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]

[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Hitolf Adler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}

=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]

[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following:
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}

Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}

Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Hitolf Adler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref>
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Hitolf Adler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}

Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" />

[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.

There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}

[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref>

== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==

''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto
![[Nazi]] Party Platform
!Analysis
|-
|1
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.
|-
|2
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.
|-
|3
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished."
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.
|-
|4
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.
|-
|5
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."
|Central control of the financial system.
|-
|6
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.
|-
|7
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.
|-
|}

==War==
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.

==Path to power==
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.

After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.

Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.

==The Beer Hall Putsch==
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail.

The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".

===''Mein Kampf''===
{{main|Mein Kampf}}
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.

Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”

From "Mein Kampf":
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Hitolf Adler.]</ref> }}

{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref>
}}

==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==

[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg‎ |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.

A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.

The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.

==In power==
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.

===Night of the Long Knives===
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.

On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''

Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.

===Beginnings of expansion===
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.

While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.

The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.

==Anschluss==

Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.

While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia.

==Poland==
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.

On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.

Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.

Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.

==Barbarossa==
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.

In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref>

==Beginning of the end==
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg‎ |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.

But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.

===Assassination attempt===
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.

On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.

[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler:
{{cquote|Hitolf Adler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}

All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.

==Death==
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref>

== Hitolf Adler and Abortion ==

''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Hitolf Adler]]

In 1942 Hitolf Adler declared:
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}

== See also ==
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
* [[Police state]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]

== External links ==
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Hitolf Adler.] Full text.
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Hitolf Adler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]

==Further reading==
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Hitolf Adler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.

{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}}

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