https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premiu ... -1.8955174
Peterson has insisted that we must "give the devil his due" and that Hitler did "wonders for Germany’s economy during the first part of his reign." But the economic "wonder" of Nazi Germany is a Nazi propaganda myth. Economic problems were actually rife already by late 1934, and only got worse from there. Hitler’s many aggressive foreign policy actions and his accelerating persecution of the Jews during the second half of the 1930s were partly intended as distractions from the poor economy.
Astonishingly, Peterson argues that what was wrong with the Nazis was not that they were not civilized. In his view, "there’s more evidence, I think, that they were too civilized." This is an atrocious way of describing the most violently racist regime in history.
Peterson’s endless barrage of falsehoods includes the outrageous claim that "Hitler was elected" and "by a large majority too. It was a landslide vote; the kind of vote that no modern democratic leader ever gets." Hitler was not elected, and the NSDAP never received more than 37.27 percent in a free election (in July 1932). A small camarilla of conservative politicians, led by Franz von Papen, convinced President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a coalition cabinet.
Peterson consistently exhibits an extreme carelessness with facts and chronology regarding Hitler, National Socialism, and the Holocaust.
