The parallel between Napoleon and Hitler has always intrigued me: they were both launched in wars that did for their time an unprecedented number of victims, they have dominated Europe and rose to fame before knowing final defeat. Dictators come to power by means of "almost" legal, they have committed crimes against humanity that have not hindered their popularity alive.
course, and for reasons I can not explain fully the many crimes of Napoleon did not stop to find a posthumous popularity in France and assumed: forgot to return slavery, sacked the rebel colonies, banishment of General Dumas - father of the writer and hero of the revolution - the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, the atrocities of the English war, 2 million ( yes you read correctly) during the thousands of deaths in battles throughout Europe for nearly 15 years (3 times the length of the second world war!).
I am well aware that despite that such a comparison may shock, though a documentary last night on Arte (a Franco-German channel would like) about the Battle of Trafalgar made me tilt. Of course, like everyone else I knew the story of the death of Admiral Nelson during its greatest naval victory. But there are many other things!
First, when Napoleon gathers his great army camp at Boulogne (200 000 men) and distributed in a unique ceremony for more than 2000 times legions of honor with great fanfare, it closely resembles the raising of force Nazis.
Then his crazy plan to use the Navy - without warning - for use as bait in order to expel the British fleet to invade England, a plan that will only deplete our young navy by crossing the Atlantic. Instructions doubly stupid then first replace Admiral Villeneuve - accused passivity - while leaving time to re pair (he had taken refuge with the Franco-English fleet in Cadiz in Spain) to follow an instruction that aberrant he (Napoleon) preferred a losing battle for glory in prudence too large, while the English were masters of the seas. Result: suicide of the French fleet (5000 sailors dead, the survivors almost all prisoners, the end of the French navy) ...
Really, it looked like Stalingrad before the hour: a predicted defeat for the glory that finally condemns his army to the final defeat.
Ah yes, Napoleon does not grow out of this documentary Arte!
And Hitler, so superstitious, knowing all the details of the retreat from Russia of his illustrious elder, and finally chose the same day his troops to launch an assault: June 22, exactly 129 years later, and will meet the same throes of winter and generally the same final defeat.
NB: A quick overview of the site "Napoleonprisonnier" I read, check the English war: about 50,000 foreign soldiers, French soldiers and 200 000 250 000 Spain - direct victims of military and civilian - and 650 000 including the dead of starvation. Scary!
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