Ecclestone under fire over Hitler remarks
Updated on 05 July 2009
Formula One boss has provoked outrage by reportedly praising Adolf Hitler's ability "to get things done".
In an outspoken newspaper interview, the 78-year-old billionaire expressed a preference for "strong leaders" like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Max Mosley, the outgoing head of Formula One's governing body.
He added: "In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.
"In the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn't a dictator."
Mr Ecclestone said democracy "hasn't done a lot of good for many countries, including this one".
He also said the West had been wrong to depose Iraq's Saddam Hussein, saying: "He was the only one who could control that country."
The Board of Deputies of British Jews called Ecclestone's views "quite bizarre" while Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said he was "either an idiot or morally repulsive".
Labour MP Denis MacShane, chairman of the all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism, said: "If Mr Ecclestone seriously thinks Hitler had to be persuaded to kill six million Jews, invade every European country and bomb London then he knows neither history and shows a complete lack of judgment."
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