In two separate (unrelated) freelance writing assignments, I’ve covered a historical overview of The Vienna Academy of Arts and also the history of air ambulance services. Intersecting those two histories, interestingly enough, is Adolf Hitler.
In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler (a semi-gifted artist who was once popular in the local Vienna art scene for his landscapes of the city) tells the story that he was twice rejected for admission to the city’s art academy because his landscapes “lacked people.” While this was true of his work, he suspected that the entire governing board of The Vienna Art Academy were Jews; since a Jewish doctor was responsible for the misdiagnosis of his mother and caused her subsequent death, he felt betrayed by the race. This is where I write the obligatory sentence that this in no way condones his actions or his hatred, et cetera, et cetera.
On a seperate but related note, the idea of air ambulances was first used in World War I by the English, but were deemed by the Crown too unreliable and costly, and the idea of using air transport to fly the wounded out of battle was regarded as absurd until 1936. This is when Adolf Hitler began supplying the Spanish Army with Nazi Germany-made air ambulances; the wounded were flown from Spain to hospitals in Berlin. Aware that the Nazis resurected this technology, the English refused to use it in World War II, even as Hitler did. But enter the Korean War: The United States adopted this technology for use beginning in 1950, and it has saved thousands of lives in wars all around the world ever since. The nation with the most high-tech air ambulance technology to date? Israel.
This really begs the question: what would the world be like if Hitler had been accepted to art school, or if the Academy’s board and the doctor would have been of mixed ethnicities, or what if Nazi Germany had thrived, but used it’s power for good instead of evil? Of course, this is relatively impossible to consider, seeing as how a study of Hitler would reveal that he pursued whatever made him popular – unfortunately, at the time, it was alignment with antisemitic friends after his rejection from art school; he rose to power as the result of intimidation and violence, not great oratory skill as commonly discussed.
It is grossly unpopular to label Hitler as having contributed to society in any positive way, his atrocities so horrid. The man was no doubt evil, but the scientists and engineers he had working for him created some amazing things that have altered EVERY SINGLE DAY of our existence, whether we choose to recognize them or not. Some examples:
-Volkswagon (a company personally created by Hitler, allowing his people to have cheap mass-produced cars).
-Rotary engines
-Stealth technology
-Microwave ovens
-Seismic weapon detection
-Autobahns (the organized precursor to America’s beloved freeway system)
-Jetplanes
-Weapons such as the automatic rifle and anti-tank missiles
-Missile-guidance technology (expect in the case of laser-guided missiles, this is still used today)
-Magnetic audio tape
-The process of creating synthetic fuel from coal (this isn’t a new thing, hippies)
-The science first linking smoking and lung cancer
-The first effective television broadcast
-The smoke detector
-Inflatable “pleasure” dolls (for his troops, to keep them from chasing women)
-Atomic microscope
-The first space rocket occupying a man (it failed, he died)
-Pesticides
-The science linking mesothemola to asbestos inhalation
This is not to include numerous propaganda techniques, best-model business practices, and organizational structures employed by our government and American companies everyday.
Ironically, there is one technology that Nazi Germany did NOT invent, but was perhaps the most important in their use of mass-collecting data of the Jews, categorizing them, and systematically killing them. Nazis did not randomly murder Jews; it was a very organized process and every person put through their mass-killing machines were processed accordingly. The processing was controlled by a new data punch-card system; without this system, it would have taken the Nazis MUCH longer to kill the Jews in the detailed methods they desired. Who invented, and knowingly leased this unit processing data machine technology to Nazi Germany? International Business Machines Corporation, otherwise known as IBM, based out of New York.
Sharoute 