Is Hitler being disowned by Germany something unprecedented in history?

by Bob9999999999999

Normally, conquerors are loved by their own country and hatred by the countries they conquered. This seems to occur even when the conqueror is ultimately defeated. After Waterloo, many French still loved Napoleon. But this didn't happen with Hitler. So, are there any other times in history when a conqueror came to be hated by his own country (excluding other Axis countries from World War II, of course)?

Doe22

This may not exactly match your question, but the Assyrian king Sargon II was sort of disowned by the kings that followed him because he died in battle. This was because, "...death in battle was not considered to be honourable but a sign of divine punishment for some act of hubris."

Sargon's successor, his son Sennacherib, never mentioned his father by name in any inscriptions and abandoned the capitol Sargon II had begun construction on.

The above quotation and information comes from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick, which references Court Poetry and Miscellanea by Alasdair Livingstone.

Microchaton

Since there's a lack of direct answers to your question, I'll mention some things that are quite close. I'm thinking of the process of Damnatio Memoriae, familiar to anybody who studied ancient Rome, which consisted in recognizing that someone was so vile that his existence is to be erased and denied forever, resulting in the destruction of his history, role, various archives, and notoriously the defacement/destruction of any art representing him. This process was hardly exclusive to Rome and I won't mention everyone, but the emperors Domitian and Maximian were notably "deleted" from the public memory in that way. More surprising is the fact that more infamous people like Caligula or Nero didn't end up that way.

Other notable examples in History are Alexander VI and Stalin's political opponents during the Great Purge, although it has less to do with the people being universally recognized as "vile" like Hitler in Germany, and was used by individuals.

Various forms of damnatio memoriae appear in popular novels such as George Orwell's 1984 or Milan Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

For ex-leaders hated by their people, there are a lot, as you could tell recently if you looked at threads related to Margaret Thatcher, but the English were always notorious for hating their kings, I can think of numerous examples like Edward II, William I or Mary I. Then you can mention the famously "crazy" roman emperors, or people like Elizabeth Bathory. For non-obvious examples recent leaders that are for the most part hated by their own country, you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Jaruzelski for Poland. In France, Pétain is nearly universally despised by the people, and his apologists are generally considered like germans would consider Hitler apologists, despite the fact that Pétain certainly had excuses.

On a side-note, this made me curious about how mongols currently view Gengis Khan. I'm french and I can tell you that Napoleon is viewed in a largely positive light by the vast majority of the population.

brigantus

To clarify: OP is asking for historical parallels to Hitler's "disownment" by Germany. Why Hitler was rejected by the German people is another question, so we'll be removing answers that address that rather than the topic at hand.

Although if anyone's interested in the why question they are of course free to ask it in a new thread!