The mature Rawls viewed St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae as a “magniicent” achievement. Just as Leibniz rendered the scientiic discoveries of the seventeenth century compatible with Christian orthodoxy, Aquinas (1225–1274) confronted the new Aristotelianism of the thirteenth century so as to restate Christian theology in Aristotelian terms (LHMP 12, 106).

This praise of Aquinas contrasts with the very early Rawls, who opposed the naturalism of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas to Christian personalism. Rawls defended the latter and denigrated the former. By “naturalism” Rawls did not mean “materialism.” Rather, naturalists like Aquinas were those who saw human beings as essentially oriented toward an abstract good instead of toward a personal God (and toward human persons). The danger, he thought, was that naturalists like Aquinas turned God into an object and, because of this depersonalized character of naturalism, encourage egoism and hence the destruction of community (BIMSF 119–120, 161–162, 178, 182, 189, 209, 217, 220–221).

Both the very early Rawls and the 1997 Rawls of “On My Religion” opposed the predeterminism of Aquinas (alleged to be every bit as severe as that of Calvin) as well as Aquinas’ effort to offer rational proofs for God’s existence. Throughout his life Rawls seemed to remain a ideist (BIMSF 224, 247, 263–264).

Political legitimacy does not figure in Rawls’s early work, notably in A Theory of Justice. In Theory he does make use of the broader idea of “legitimate expectations” that citizens come to have when they participate in a social practice, but his main concern is to specify the principles of justice to which the basic structure of society, including the structure of political authority, must conform. Not surprisingly, legitimacy is a major theme of his later work, in which he develops his account of political liberalism. Legitimacy figures in two principal ways: one is the idea of “legitimate law,” and the other is the “principle of legitimacy,” or what he sometimes calls the “liberal (or democratic) principle of legitimacy.” Both of these uses are related to the conventional notion of a legitimate authority as having the right to exercise political power to make a law or decide policy, with those subject to that authority having at least a presumptive obligation to obey. For Rawls, legitimate law results from a properly constituted political process, and “is politically (morally) binding on [one] as a citizen and is to be accepted as such” (CP 578). Such a properly constituted process must accord with the principle of legitimacy.

The principle of legitimacy arises directly from the defining problem of political liberalism, which is to explain how a society can be well-ordered by a conception of justice when its citizens adhere to conflicting comprehensive doctrines, each of which may give rise to its own conception of justice. Political liberalism solves that problem by proposing a political conception of justice that all reasonable citizens may accept because it is not based upon the concepts or principles of any particular comprehensive doctrine.

Altruism is the sacriice of one’s own interests or good for the benefit of others. Egoism, concern for one’s own good alone, is its opposite. In general, altruism does not require that one promote the interests of others equally, so an altruist may, for example, sacriice her own interests for those of the members of an exclusive group such as family or community members. Rawls says that classical utilitarianism “is the ethic of perfect altruists” (TJ 165). The suggestion is that a “perfect” altruist would be a perfectly impartial altruist, although as a technical matter, utilitarianism allows one’s own interests to count on equal terms with the interests of others.

Any moral doctrine that requires individuals to sacriice their own interests for those of others will incorporate altruistic elements, although not necessarily raised to a irst principle. Justice as fairness certainly may require individuals to make sacriices, but it does so in accordance with an ideal of reciprocity. Reciprocity, Rawls holds, “lies between the ideal of impartiality, which is altruistic (being moved by the general good), and the idea of mutual advantage understood as everyone’s being advantaged with respect to each person’s present or expected future situation as things are” (PL 16–17). He also associates reciprocity with the idea of the reasonable: “Reasonable persons, we say, are notmoved by the general good as such but desire for its own sake a social world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept” (PL 50).

Originally mocked, subsequently feared, posthumously vilified, Adolf Hitler today is becoming normalized. Throughout the Western world, the Nazi dictator has long been regarded as the epitome of evil. But since the turn of the millennium, he has been increasingly transformed into a more ambiguous figure. Nowhere is this transformation clearer than on the Internet. Anyone who conducts a simple image search of Hitler on the World Wide Web will encounter an eclectic array of representations, ranging from archival photographs documenting the dictator’s role in the Third Reich to digitally altered images that spoof him for laughs. The diversity of images is striking, but what is most notable is how the line separating them is beginning to blur. As discerning web users probably know, certain photographs of Hitler are now doing double duty, serving the purpose of both documentation and exploitation.

Consider Figure 1. Originally taken by Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, in his Munich studio in 1927, it is one of a famous series of photographs that portray the then struggling Nazi party leader meticulously practicing his oratorical choreography. The photograph depicts Hitler in a pose of fanatical intensity, his fists clenched, his face contorted in an expression of fury about what we can only imagine was one of the countless grievances that fueled his political agenda. As a document of history, the photograph is significant for showing how Hitler methodically rehearsed what were widely thought to be “spontaneous” gestures, a fact that explains why the Nazi party leader, eager to protect his image as a “naturally” gifted orator, forbade the image – and the entire series of which it was part – from being shown to the German public during his lifetime.

Since the turn of the millennium, a major revisionist offensive has been launched against the longstanding belief that the Second World War in Europe was a “good war” waged against Nazi evil. The offensive has struck many of the countries that participated in the conflict. It has rolled through Germany, where attention has shifted from the Nazis’ perpetration of unprecedented crimes against Jews and other Europeans to the suffering of German civilians at the hands of the Allies. It has also struck Eastern Europe, where Poles, Russians, and the citizens of the Baltic states have battled over claims that Joseph Stalin was just as responsible as Adolf Hitler for causing the war and committing comparable atrocities. But it has been in Great Britain and the United States where the revisionist trend has recently been the most apparent. As is shown by British historian Norman Davies’s assertion above, growing numbers of Anglo-American historians and journalists have explicitly challenged World War II’s reputation as a good war by re-evaluating its origins and consequences. Some of the revisionists have alleged that the conflict erupted not so much from aggressive German expansionism as reckless Allied interventionism. Others have decried the Allies’ manner of waging war, arguing that their brutality differed little from that of the Nazis. Still others have counterfactually suggested that history would have turned out better if the Allies had abstained from fighting the war entirely.

Anyone using the Internet to learn about the history of the Third Reich had better beware. Typing key words associated with the history of Nazi Germany, such as “Hitler,” “Nazism,” or “Holocaust,” into search engines like Google or Yahoo instantly yields a cacophony of results. The first hits appear on largely reputable websites, such as Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Answers, as well as sites connected to major research institutions, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. A few more clicks, however, bring the unsuspecting web user to extreme right-wing sites, such as Stormfront, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, and Institute for Historical Review. Still further clicks lead in a more humorous direction: to Uncyclopedia, which offers mock entries about Hitler and Nazism; to Hipster Hitler, which features comic strips of the bespectacled Führer wearing ironic, Nazi-themed T-shirts; and to YouTube, with its innumerable video parodies of the Führer. Finally, the intrepid web surfer will arrive at sites that can only be described as bizarre, such as Cats That Look Like Hitler, which displays adoring photographs of fascist-looking felines, and – taking things a step further – Things That Look Like Hitler, which purports to detect the Führer’s face in photographs of random objects, ranging from smoke detectors to fried zucchini.

German Jewish art dealer Max Rothman’s exasperated remark to the struggling artist, Adolf Hitler, in the 2002 film, Max, highlights an important new trend in recent cinematic representations of the Nazi dictator. Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a notable surge of films featuring Hitler. Directed by an array of American and European filmmakers, these films have focused on several aspects of the Führer’s life. Some, such as Hitler – The Rise of Evil (2003) and Mein Kampf (2009), have followed the lead of Max and concentrated on Hitler’s early years. Others, such as Downfall (2004), Mein Führer (2007), and Inglourious Basterds (2009), have portrayed Hitler’s last days, examining the circumstances that precede his death. These films have differed substantially in style. Some have aimed for documentary authenticity, while others have embraced historical fiction. Some have adopted the narrative trope of tragedy, while others have pursued the path of comedy. No matter how much they have varied in their subject or method of representation, however, most of the films have been linked, to one degree or another, by their attempt to humanize Hitler. Like Max Rothman, the directors of these films have tried to overcome their distaste for the Nazi dictator in order to understand him.

British writer Guy Saville’s ominous portrayal of Nazi-ruled Stanleystadt, the new capital of the former Belgian Congo, in his recent novel, The Afrika Reich (2011), highlights the enduring appeal of imagining how the history of Nazi Germany might have turned out differently. In the half-century after World War II, scores of alternate histories were produced on the subject of Nazism. The appearance of new accounts since the turn of the millennium once more confirms that “what if?” questions about the Third Reich continue to spark the imagination of writers, scholars, and filmmakers throughout the Western world. Recent alternate histories have appeared in many countries – the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, in particular – and have assumed a variety of forms, including novels, short stories, historical essays, films, television programs, and comic books. They have also tackled a variety of counterfactual questions: what if the Nazis had won World War II? What if Hitler had been assassinated? What if the Führer had survived the war? What if the Holocaust had never happened?

Well, maybe not everyone. But it sometimes seems like it given how frequently people these days are compared to the Nazi dictator. Since the turn of the millennium, Hitler comparisons have multiplied all over the world. In the United States, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been repeatedly likened to Hitler, as have countless other politicians, ranging from prominent national figures like Sarah Palin, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton to more minor local officials. Various world leaders have come in for similar treatment, whether European heads of state, Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, and Vladimir Putin; Middle Eastern leaders, Ariel Sharon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Bashar al-Assad; and non-Western political figures, such as Hugo Chavez, Hu Jintao, and the Dalai Lama. Beyond politicians, many other prominent people have been likened to Hitler, including religious leaders, comedians, sports figures, and Hollywood directors. So common have such comparisons become that the Internet now boasts multiple lists of “People … Who Have Been Compared to Hitler.” To be sure, these lists do not include “everyone,” as asserted in Uncyclopedia’s satirical claim. But they are extensive enough to suggest that it is only slightly off the mark.

Besides often being false, syllogisms can sometimes be offensive. To suggest, as – collectively – the above counterfactual quotations do, that Adolf Hitler should be hailed as the creator of the State of Israel is clearly both. Highlighting this fact, however, helps to explain why counterfactual speculation has long been viewed with suspicion. For generations, historians have dismissed the use of counterfactual reasoning in the writing of history. From E. H. Carr’s and E. P. Thompson’s classic put-downs to more recent critiques by Richard Evans, counterfactual thinking has long been viewed as an amusing diversion at best and, at worst, a complete waste of time. It would seem inappropriate, therefore, to apply such reasoning to a subject as serious as the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, in recent decades, counterfactual reasoning has become an important feature of Holocaust historiography. Beginning in the early 1960s and increasing up to the present day, historians and other scholars have discussed many “what if?” scenarios in writing about the origins, course, and legacy of the Nazi genocide. Some have examined the origins of the Final Solution, inquiring whether it would have happened at all, or in the same way, without the figure of Adolf Hitler. Others have explored the conduct of the victims and bystanders, speculating about how greater Jewish efforts at resistance and Gentile attempts at rescue might have helped avert the Holocaust or mitigate its effects. Still others have examined questions pertaining to the Nazi genocide’s legacy, most notably: how its uniqueness would have been affected by a Nazi victory in World War II; how the Final Solution might have been averted if the Western Allies had remained neutral in the conflict; and whether the State of Israel would have been created had the Holocaust never occurred.