I found it interesting, that throughout all the Grindelwald / WW2 connections, the Deathly Hallows symbol would be mistaken for evil, not unlike the swastika is nowadays.

The swastika was used long before its adoption by the Nazi party in WW2, by various cultures such as Indo-Aryans, Hittites, Celts and Greeks, among others. In particular, the swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

Just a connection I found interesting, did anyone else notice this?

*Modly note*
I merged two great threads together. Please note that the topic is now changed to the other original post found here by TellAllYourFriends. This topic is going to be called under its original name in Obscurus to keep the topic broad.

~Fawkes28

Yes I did!

My knowledge of the pre-WWII history of the swastika is hazy, but I had understood that Hitler adopted it specifically because it was a symbol of power associated with Thor (I think). However, I believe he reversed it (ie in Thor's symbol, the arms spiral in reverse to the Nazi symbol), which is ironic, if true.

Oh yeah. I saw it. ot the first WWII motif I've seen in HP.

I noticed this, too - and I am glad that JKR brought up this topic.

With some luck the parallels to the swatiska will get people talking/thinking (especially when the book is published here in Germany later this year)
and I hope that the paranoid reaction to this symbol will decrease (plus: so many people fail to notice that the new Nazis already chose other symbols
to represent their ideas...)

I also thought of the swastika parallel. It is a shame that symbol has been corrupted. However, considering the most recent and horrific use of that symbol, it's also insensitive, to say the least, to call people who are averse to it "paranoid."

Grindelwald's use of the Deathly Hallows symbol wasn't as widespread (hardly anyone in England knew what it was). I don't think JKR's ultimate message here was "bring back the swastika, but, rather, that old and revered symbols can be twisted into symbols of death.

Krum's anger at Lovegood's wearing of the necklace made me like him even more than I did previously and gave him some added depth.

The whole blood-line thing is amazingly like the Nazis'. Also, Grindelwald was shut up in a tower, which reminds me of Lord of the Rings, in which the tower had a similar name. But "Nurmengard" is similar to "Nuremberg," where the war-crimes trials were held, with "gard" added, because it was a prison.



Such repellent ideas as those of the Nazis, the KKK, and LV, have to be artificially linked to something acceptable to decent people, so as to improve the chances that the twisted ideas will be adopted. The swastika was literally "twisted" in order to accomplish this. A much-loved fairy tale, evoking childhood bedtime stories, would be a good source for such a symbol of evil, too. LV took the snake and skull, which is disgusting at any rate, but he also raised the old prejudices against non-wizards, and the desire for security will appeal to decent people. Those decent people, however, will do evil things if they're willing to do anything to be safe. Because there are things far worse than death...

(I was reading quickly, so maybe I misunderstood...)

I thought Nurmengard was a parallel to concentration camps.

Nuremberg was the location of the war crimes trials held after WWII, but there was a concentration camp there, I believe, during the war.

Nuremberg was pretty important to the Nazi's in a lot of ways, they held huge rallies there, it was a sort of symbolic place to them. But mostly it's remembered now for the trials.

And yes, I did see some parallels between the Hallow's symbol and the way the swastika was corrupted as well.

Oh, THAT'S it! I knew it sounded familliar...I was trying to figure out just what it was that the name reminded me of. I think I've finally got it.

Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. This is kind of tangent, but I was recently in Greece and saw some swastikas used in the architecture of a building in Athens and on an iron fence. But anyway, I liked how DH had stuff like that, paralleling political undertones and the new Ministry with its Nazi-like ideology. I couldn't help but being reminded of the pre-Holocaust stuff, I can't for the life of me remember what it's called, but where they'd have people go in for a checkup and compare their eye and hair color to a chart or samples and declare if they were racially pure. The trials the Muggleborns were going to reminded me a lot of that. Also, I'm not sure if Jo did this intentionally since it's more American history than world or european, but the Ministry stuff reminded me a lot of the Joe McCarthy stuff and blacklisting from the 1950s against people assciated with communism.

Yes. I noticed that. Actually, it quite reminded me of "the DaVinci Code" scene where he's explaining how the same symbol can have many meanings.

Hi,
I was shocked how strong the genocide theme was, was anybody as shocked as I was with this treatment, or should I have expected it from the earlier books. It was a very very strong parallel.
j

I didn't. When I read the thing about the muggle bones at the ministry, that shocked me.

It was very strong but very real.

I always equated Voldemort's cruelty, fanaticism and hypocrisy with Hitler, but I never thought it would be explored as deeply as this.

I'm betting lots of other people noticed Dumbledore's childhood friend Grindelwald. The man was a famous dark wizard, obsessed with purity of blood and dominating the human race. He also wanted to collect sacred objects to make himself live forever. Dumbledore stood by as the world grew darker until he could wait no more, and defeated Grindelwald in 1945. (Even though Grindelwald hadn't reached British soil the way he had with other countries). The name, the name of his prison (Nurmengard), and his connection with Durmstrang all have a rather German sound. JKR has considered doing a biography of Dumbledore. I definitely think his battle for England in WWII would be an exciting tale, as we delve into Hitler's alliance with the most evil dark wizards of the time, before Voldemort rose to power.

great connection. i was picking up a little hitler-esque style with grindelwald and his obssesion with "pure blood" and "our race ruling". i dunno about a grindelwald-hitler alliance but its a striking idea. haha. cool.

I did catch the whole Hitler-Voldemort thing, but really the 'Purifying the Race' theme has been there since CoS. It has just gotten more pronounced further into the series.

The swastika symbol connection is interesting, but at the same time, the Deathly Hallows aren't inherintly evil. Dumbledore let Harry know that the items would be safe with him, much like the Sorcerer's Stone. Quirrel couldn't get it because he wanted it for evil, but Harry could because he wanted to protect and not use it.

Theres at least three other posts on this subject if you go further back on the boards .....
I've commented on one of those so noted the similiarities and a few others

Yes, the deathly hallows aren't inherintly evil, but the allusion is that they were used as a symbol by someone evil.
The swastika isn't inherintly evil, either. It was used by an evil regime that did evil things. When I was doing my MA, there was a chinese student who had a beautiful jade necklace that just so happened to have a swastika on it. For all her life it had been a symbol of luck. When one of the other students explained what it signified in western culture, she never wore it there again.

My problem with making the Hallows connection, is that we are not given nearly enough info. If Grindelwald had used that exclusively as his symbol, it would be in the history books and more of the wizarding world would know about it.

Hi. I've been thinking about this a lot after rereading HBP and reading DH. There are so many similarities between the second war (in the wizarding world) and WWII!

Like Voldemort's rise to power and Hitler's
Or the antisemitism and the lack of tolerance for the muggle borns
The Death Eaters and the secret police

Has anybody else noticed this too?

Yes, I especially noticed Allusions to the Nazi belief about pure, Aryan blood being superior to the 'dirty blood' of the Jews and undesirables.

I was impressed that JKR would have brought such a sophisticated theme to the series. It's never too early to teach young people about the dangers of racial intolerance and discrimination! I'm sure that the use of the word "undesirable" was particularly a deliberate allusion to the dehumanizing language the Nazis used. The most chilling image from Deathly Hallows was the "Magic is Might" statue with the wizards sitting on top of the bodies of muggles. The description of it reminded me of fascist art and architecture from the 30s and 40s. Shivers.

Well in the opening chapter when Snape and Yaxley raised their arms in a seeming salute to pass through the gate at Malfoy Manor I thought that was quite evocative, Hail Voldermort?

It was also interesting that he wound up doing himself in and if you'd like to take the comparison further, Hitler died at his own hand by two methods. Poison and gunshot wound. Grindelwald (who was defeated and sent to prison in 1945) was murdered by Voldermort and Voldermort was murdered by Voldermort (when his spell backfired yet again!

To be honest I have always though that one thing that was overdone to the point of being obvious rather than analogy was the mudblood ethnic cleansing issues and the rise of the third reich

I was waiting for the trial of Umbridge to be honest and her saying "we were only carrying out our orders"

Rowling was originally going to name the Death Eaters the Knights of Walpurgis. Walpurgis Night, in Teutonic myth, was held on April 30 or the night before Beltane (May Day). Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945.

Walpurgis Night eh... that's oddly appropriate somehow, guess you've got to pay the piper at some point!

During book 5 the MOM was in total denial that Voldermort was coming back, for political reasons (notoriously shortsighted) they did a bit of a Neville Chamberlain, didn't they?

Yeah, there are a lot of similarities between the HP war and World War II. A lot of the death eaters were just looking for a leader, like the nazis...
Hitler=Voldemort
Death Eaters=Nazis
Muggle borns/blood traitors=Jews
Malfoy manor/azkaban=concentration camps

Yep =D And this is why I get annoyed when people say HP is just a kid's book. It is not, and this is one of those reasons

Unfortunately though this is where it starts to fall down as she doesnt seem to have picked a subtle writers touch of pulling this off, which makes them over the heads of children when needed to be, yet to the adult reader the analogys are childlike in there naivity

yeah i always thought that voldemort was a lot like hitler.

I think the links are undeniable. The dead muggles in the ministry were like the dead jews presented at the front of concentration camps.

The other similarity between Hitler and Voldemort is the irony of their beliefs, it is widely believed Hitler was part-Jewish, and Voldemort half-blood.

The thing that bothers me is that this wasn't Voldermort's first go around. He'd suffered his first major defeat when he tried to kill Harry, in the books someone said (Sirius said it in the movie) that the disappearances were how his reign of terror had started before. Rather from learning from history that was less than two decades old, the MOM chose to deny what was right in front of their faces. Of course the point cannot be ignored that what was right in front of their faces made the voting public uncomfortable and besides, there were the presumed campaign contributions by the likes of Lucius Malfoy to think about!

Hmm, you could say that Voldemorts attempt to kill Harry could be the Beer Hall Putsch, when Hitler and other Nazi Party members tried to gain control of the government but failed. Also, I noted some more simalarities with Hitler and Voldemort, they both had bad childhoods and both were anomalies in their ideological beliefs. Voldemort was a half-blood who believed in pure-blood domination and Hitler was a black-haired, browned eyed man who believed in the blue eyed, blond hair Aryan race superiority.

There was a similarity between Dumbledore and Grindlewald and many of the leaders of what become Allied Nations in World War II. Many leaders considered a large number of minorities, including Jews represented a threat or an assimilation problem. There was also a class struggle because of industrialization, migration, and persecution in Europe and parts of the US.

And before Hitler showed his true colors and that he was a sociopath there were those Western Leaders who saw Hitler and his regime as a partner in the fight the spread of communism. It is telling that the leaders feared communism more than mass persecution of a group of the world's citizens. Scary too...

Hitler didn't invent anti-Semiticism --he just played upon the racism already in his society, which is why few western leaders who shared his racism were quick to condemn him. Germany was not the first European nation to institute ethnic cleansing against non-Christians, or non-Europeans. And even before the war there was fear in Western countries of the people who were fleeing persecution and poverty in other countries.



http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server...mationRecord.35

It seems as if Jo did her homework. It also seems as if Jo is suggesting with Grindlewald and Voldemort is that we do forget, or in our relief that a long and bloody conflict is over we do not bother probe any deeper into the reasons for the conflict that one villian.

Hitler could not have come into power if there was intolerance towards certain ethnic groups, fear of immigration, different faiths, and customes didn't already exist. And this is true of Voldemort. Voldemort's first supporters were probably the children very people who looked down their noses at him in school for his lack of background.

I meant to post this earlier, but I totally forgot.

Grindelwald's sigil and the whole Hallows thing is very reminiscent of Hitler's thirst for any "occult" objects, the Grail items in particular. He was rumored to have possessed the Spear of Destiny until Patton captured it on Walpurgis Night, April 30, 1945. Hitler, according to legend (it's not a fact as far as I know), committed suicide 90 minutes later.

The Spear of Destiny sounds just like the Wand of Destiny, which Voldemort killed Grindelwald over. Not only is the Spear of Destiny the spear that supposedly pierced Christ's side at the Crucifixion, it was also one of the Four Hallows of the Tuatha de Danann of Irish legend.

What Dumbledore and Grindelwald were involved in sounds a lot like a secret society, which were rampant in Germany despite Hitler's (supposed) attempts to wipe them out.

We have an older thread on this subject in Magical Theory if anyone is interested:

Secret Societies and Political Power: The Search for Grindelwald

As I understand it, Hitler made his decision fairly early the previous day after suffering a nervous breakdown. He put his affairs in order, married his fiance, had his wedding night, and then both he and his new wife committed suicide the next day. The legend about the spear is intriguing though, and certainly fits better with a story about magic and wizards!

In Germany round about 1932 when Hitler's National Socialists won their first majority in the July election, there was another politician named Bruning who might be a parallel for Fudge. Bruning was in the midst of staging a coup, attempting to change the constitution and dump off the reparations Germany was paying for WWI. He horribly underestimated and misjudged the character or Adolph Hitler, tried in fact to use him to his own ends! Hitler instead took advantage of all Bruning had done and the mud he'd managed to cast upon himself, swooped in and took over! It's a toss up between Bruning and Chamberlain IMO, any thoughts?

During the Nazi party's rise to power and after it became the ruling power in Germany, it held party rallies and political assemblies in Nuremberg, including the 1935 Reichstag session that passed laws stripping Jewish German citizens of their rights. In the early and mid 1940s, it was best known as a Nazi center--and the Allies help the war crimes trials there as a response to that. Wikipedia contains a lot of information on Nuremberg, including its significance under the Nazis, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg#Nazi_period

I, too, thought of the swastika in comparison with the deathly hallows symbol. I agree that the appearance of the hallows symbol, and the different reactions people have to it, are a parallel example of how an existing pattern or symbol can be used as the emblem of a person or group that were quite separate from its origin.

"Nurmengard" immediately made me think "Nuremburg" - as in the Nuremburg trials, where Nazi war criminals were tried (and found guilty.)

It's interesting - if you are inventing, as JKR did, a Big Bad - what's the job description? It's hard to find a bigger bad than Hitler in modern Western history. Stalin would be in the running - and Voldemort certainly shared his penchant for purges.

I always thought of Grindelwald as Hitler and Voldemort as Himmler, but they were never associated with each other so that doesn't hold up.

As I said about the legend, it's just that as far as I know. A legend. But the thing about the Spear of Destiny is that if you lost it, you would die. It's a similar theme with the Elder Wand, except that you merely had to be disarmed, not killed. So Hitler lost it to Patton and then died an hour and a half later, although in reality, like you said, he'd already made up his mind.




Nowgirl, I too thought of Nuremburg when I read Nurmengard. That cannot possibly be an accident.

I figured Grindelwald was Hitler too, had no idea who Voldermort was, but with all the allusions to the third Reich I think Jo must have split him into two characters.

I wondered if there might be something of Rommel about Snape. Hitler did force Rommel to commit suicide because of some stupid idea he had in his mind and Rommel really was an exceptionally capable general, but I think Voldermort is pretty much without Hitler's high command. He had Bellatrix, she doesn't seem particularly Himmler-like but maybe she and Snape split up the traits of Rommel and Himmler (?).

What is interesting about all of this is the amount of time Jo spent on the events leading up to Voldermort's takeover. When I finish with my current mountain of books I'm going to go digging back through book 5.

I think you are on the money with the Spear of Destiny being the Elder Wand, although an argument could be made that the German scientists were racing for the bomb, but the Americans beat them to it!

I don't think that we should seek such a straight analogy in which every character is related to a unique historical figure, otherwise we will have to seek analogues for Dumbledore, Harry, etc, which would be quite a stretch. It is possible that both LV/Tom Riddle and Grindelwald represent Hitler in one way or another (though Grindelwald showed remorse before his final hour came).



As for Nurmengard - in the book we have the same irony that happened in history. The trials that had to condemn the crimes against humanity had to be held in a building large enough to hold all the people connected to the case. Ironically, in Nuremburg there was only one building that huge that had survived, which was the place where some of those very crimes, the passing of the first anti-Semitic laws (the "Nuremburg Laws"), were commited. In the same way Grindelwald was imprisoned in his own prison. By the way, may I ask any German-speaking Potter-fan if Nurmengard means something in German ?

I do think Grindelwald was meant to correlate to Hitler. But I suspect that with Voldemort, JKR was making the point that violent racial prejudice did not die with Hitler, but is continually reborn as children grow up damaged.

Nurmengard when put through babelfish means "Only mixing pool of broadcasting corporations". So does that mean that the MOM had the media locked down to state sponsored media only?

Some sources assert that World War II was actually one fought on the principles of Fascism versus (true) Socialism. The Fascist parties were commonly referred to as the Axis (definition: the line about which a rotating body turns) Powers, and the Socialist members were the Allies (definition: a person who associates or cooperates with another). In both WWI and WWII, the sides "coined" the Allied Forces, win the war, indicating that by working together in a unified group, a self-centered force can be dismantled, opening the way for mutual understanding.

Fascism was actually "organized" by Mussolini, who

QUOTE:
" By February 1918, he was calling for the emergence of a leader "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep.".

Perhaps Jo had this quote in mind when she named one of the broom brands Clean Sweep! lol

Anywho, the way I see it, Grindelwald was more like Mussolini, and Voldemort was more patterned after Hitler, who was influenced by Mussolini and together, they were closely allied during the war. According to what I learned as a youngster, the reason why Hitler chose suicide was because he didn't want to end up like Mussolini, who was captured, shot, and killed, then the corpse was hung for public ridicule. It is significant that Voldemort actually did commit a sort of suicide, since it was his own spell that backfired on himself.

I think Dumbledore represented people like Mendal and Darwin and even Disreali and Churchhill other thinkers, politicians, and scientist whose works and ideal were adopted, twisted, and perverted by other lesser or more opportunistic men of their time period. Dumbledore's assumption that seemingly superior intellectual or industrial ability or technology give any one person or group of people the right to dominate another comes right out of the justification for Imperialism in Great Britain and the USA's Manifiest Destiny. There is an infamous letter from Jefferson to the Cherokee nation where Jefferson calls the Indian leader Little brother, and explains why the Cherokee and other nation should give up their land and move quietyly west...

Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini didn't appear in a vaccum but stood I think to show why certain theories about government, ethnicity and ability were doomed to fail.

I think that, while Voldemort may have had influence from Hitler and drawn from his story, we shouldn't be looking for connotations for everything .

Grindelwald's first name, btw, confirms my original suspicion on the location of Durmstrang. Gellert is a Magyar(Hungarian) name. Might Durmstrang be located in the mountains of Slovakia? It is very cold there in the winter(only about 75 in the summer, normally). It also has a blend of German and Slavic names.

Perhaps Albert Einstein might be included in that company. There is a rumour/legend that he discovered Nuclear Chain Reaction but that he recognized quickly the destructive potential and sat on that particular piece of information. His former student Leó Szilárd was credited with the discovery in 1933. If Einstein did make the discovery and chose to not pursue it, that would be similar to Dumbledore trying to take the Elder Wand to the grave with him.

Einstein co-authored a letter with Szilárd to the President when it was learned from a trio emigrating scientists (Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner) that the Germans were working on an atomic bomb. The President acted on the information and the Manhatten Project was begun, the fact that it was Einstein who made Roosevelt sit up and take notice was not revealed, and he was excluded due to being viewed as a leftist! This treatment of Einstein bears some similarity to the treatment of Dumbledore by the MOM!

That is really scary, because I was thinking the exact same thing when i was reading the book.

I wrote my senior paper on the Manhattan Project and the one thing that was stated right up front was the Einstein was the one who got Roosevelt to listen.

"Nurmengard" sounds Scandinavian to me, not German. I think JKR just shifted some of the letters around to make it NOT sound like "Nuremberg". Yet the connection is there.