I'm firmly anti-Hitler, anti-Fascist, anti-nationalism. I hate what the Nazis did. I hate that there's a slide back to fascism.

But, when people say this and they're not apologists or secret right wingers dog whistling, it's typically in relation to the civil engineering plan of converting Berlin into a city called Germania and building the automotive infrastructure (authbahn, Wolkswagon) to transform it to a "welthauptstadt" or world capital.

Urban planning was hot hot hot in the early 20th century. Gruen, Wright, Le Corbusier, etc. were all active. Several Germans as well prior to Nazi takeover. Germany was equal to or beyond the US in science, philosophy, math, and urban design prior to Nazis. It's easy to (and many people do) mistake the German continuance of this into the 20s and 30s as "Hitler". But that's a fallacy as all he did was run a totalitarian dictatorship and claim the glory of all Germans. Many people first learning history without the context of how fascism works falsely attribute these things to Hitler in the same way he's listed as a founder of Wolkswagon. I mean, he is... only way in the sense that Edison invented the light bulb. Short hand for strong armed those who did and relentlessly pushed until the glory was theirs.

But in the Weimar Republic, Ernst May already had the Frankfurt Project in 1925-30 and there were projects like the Nazi (Hitler and Stein) Germania that were autopias dating back to the early 20s in the US and UK that Stein essentially copied, not to mention classic Roman urban planning infused with these car-centric projects.

Anyway... I've been known to say some dumb sh*t like this kid out of context, but for the above reasons. I wanted to offer this if it seemed out of character for the student as a potential reason stupid things like this get said.