Agreed. Nothing should be hated to such a passion that words can result in crime. Freedom falls with every charge.

Based on past experience, I think the church will likely cover it up and move the bishop to another country.

What do you mean, no unlimited free speech? What would be limited, who would determine that? What would it matter? It wouldn't change anything.

If protecting one person endangers the freedom of another(especially more than one other, as in this case), then that protection should be withdrawn. Noone is more important than anyone else. Victim or not. Everyone is a victim of something or another. If every victim were to be permitted to limit speech then we'd no longer be able to speak.

...So, peppermint, in your opinion we should champion the protection of any ideas - regardless of their worth, content or intent? Bear in mind that lying about the Holocaust isn't some form of self-expression or information exchange.

If I were to start spreading rumors about you being a child abuser or a thief, for example, should my right to freedom of speech protect me?

It's also interesting that you brought-up totalitarianism; Iran, for example, actively uses Holocaust denial as part of the state propaganda to brainwash school children into hating the Jews.

I don't agree with the German Nazi censorship laws or Holocaust denial laws. That being said:

That's what was left of the country after Hitler was done running Germany into the ground.

Dare I say that I can't blame the leadership for going rather overboard in an effort to prevent a repeat of the past.

I say that ALL ideas should be expressed freely.

Silencing holocaust denial isn't going to make them accept the holocaust. You can't have open dialogue with somebody if you censor their ideas.

If somebody thinks I'm a thief, then by expressing it, I can show that I am not a thief and that person can change their mind. However, if I just told them to shut up, they're still going to think I'm a thief.

And as for trying to avoid repeating the past, you might as well get rid of all forms of German nationalism while you're at it.

This is wrong. Only the French were really prepared to enforce Versailles and the it was in the interest of the British and Americans to pare it down and bring Germany back on its feet (from the British perspective it would be an economic boon and the Americans were promoting the agenda of Wilson's Fourteen points). As demonstrated by the Dawes Plan and the treaties of Locarno and Rapallo, the Germans were getting back on their feet by the mid to late 1920s with the help of who had previously been the Entente powers. As a consequence, the power of extreme ideologies such as Nazism waned. It was the Wall Street crash that brought them roaring back and brought Hitler to power. Had it not occured, Nazism would have died away.

The British and Americans were fully prepared to relax terms of treaty as was clear at Locarno and Rapallo. The French probably would have been as well if they had a military guarantee from Britain as they had desired in 1921 but as it was, they were commited to pursuing an aggressive policy in the Ruhr and maintaining control over the Saar region and demanding the full repayment.

This is dead wrong. One of the reasons that WWI broke out was because of clandestine diplomacy also known as intrigue. As a consequence Versailles was essentially an "open treaty", as a consequence, politicians of the Entente powers were under tremendous pressure from their citizenry. The Entente powers were hardly a united front on this matter. France was pushing an agenda to squeeze Germany "until the pips squeaked". Both their leadership and their citizenry were fully in favor of this, as it was in France's best interest to castrate Germany militarily and economically. The problem facing Lloyd George and Wilson was that their own citizenry felt precisely the same way. Woodrow Wilson felt exactly the opposite. He drafted his fourteen point agenda on the basis that the path being pursued by Clemenceau was precisely this sort of diplomacy that had led to WWI in the first place. As a consequence the three leaders started to fragment, Clemenceau developed a deep dislike for both George and Wilson. In the end, the French got what they wanted. The treaty was not based on idea of creating peace in Europe, but was instead driven by public pressure in Britain and France, whose citizenry desired severe punishment for the Germans (a sentiment echoed by French leadership). The national delegations had different self interests. The Americans were most interested in a satisfactory European peace settlement, because that would be in their best interest from an economic and political standpoint. In this case, a “satisfactory European peace settlement” and “self interest” are two sides of the same coin to the Americans. The Old Europe was fundamentally unstable. If the Americans could help to construct a new order, it would benefit them enormously. The French were most interested in watching the Germans suffer, and the British were most interested in maintaining their empire and their naval dominance. The actions of the Entente in Versailles indicated that they were primarily responding to a combination of economic interests, self-interests and public pressures.

The League of Nations was not commited to enforcing the treaty of Versailles. Only the French were interested in it in the early 1920s as evidenced by their invasion of the Ruhr. They expected the support of the British in this endeavor to enforce the treaty, but were cold-shouldered by the League and forced to withdraw. This effectively signalled that the British were uninterested in pursuing this path of diplomacy, and since the Americans had withdrawn into isolationism they didn't care by this point anyway (they weren't even league of nation members)

You are strawmanning my argument. It was clear that a combination of factors brought Hitler to power but had not the Wall Street crash occured, the Nazi party would not have risen. With the success of the Dawes plan, the Germans were turning away from the extreme flanks of the political spectrum in the late 1920s. Hitler was powerful in 1923 precisely because of Germany's economic and political misery. He decided he had sufficient power to initiate the putsch. It was his time in Landberg where he decided to "go by the ballot box". As a consequence, the Nazis did poorly in the parlimentary elections, at least until 1929, and by 1932 were the largest party in the Reichstag through a combination of popularity, clandestine intrigue and violence.

You are trying to appeal to "you have your opinion and I have mine" in the face of very solid historical evidence. As is well known, the Nazis went through two cycles of popularity. The latter was what brought them to power and it was radically different to the former. Initially, the Nazis began as a revolutionary party in the sense that they were determined to enforce their principles by means of seizing power through coup d'eta. After Hitler’s prison time they became a party which attempted to use the machinery of Parliament to seize power. This radical change of direction was a consequence  of the failed coup in Munich. However, initially the Nazis did badly in their attempts to gain power in this way as you can see from this table below. The reason for that is the time during and after Hitler’s prison stint coincides with the era of conciliation, in which Germany was economically revitalizing and the crisis was easing, at least until 1929.

Yes. This is common historical knowledge. What is also common historical knowledge is that Hitler's power was eroding rapidly in the late 1920s. This is a very well established factorial analysis.

This shows the cycles of Hitler’s power. Hitler began to move by the ballot box after his time in Landsberg prison, as per the new strategy he had decided upon. Nazism was an extremist ideology. As such, it appealed in times of economic, political and social crisis. The years of 1919-1923 was the first period of crisis. That is why Hitler was sufficiently powerful during this time that he decided his party was capable of enacting the Munich Putsch. The crisis was why people moved toward the flanks of the political spectrum. As Germany’s economic revitilization occured during the era of conciliation (1923-1929), the popularity of extremist ideology faded. The economic, social and political crisis of the early 1920s was the oxygen of extremist ideology. Had the crisis continued to relax by 1929, so too the power of extremist ideologies would have faded. Think of it this way. The initial crisis in Germany, primarily caused by the Treaty of Versailles, was what forged the Nazi Party and established them as a well known political party by 1923. The second crisis, the Wall Street Crash, brought them to power after a period of waning.

That's fantastic, but you haven't provided any historical evidence whereas I have cited three key pieces of historical evidence to counter this claim. The treaty of Locarno, the French invasion of the Ruhr and British response, and the Dawes plan. History is not a subject of opinion. It is a subject where analysis is backed by fact. It is common historical knowledge that the British were pushing an agenda to allow Germany back on the world stage, and the French found themselves increasingly alone in their desire to push for enforcement of the treaty and eventually they had to abandon this policy. This began  period which was known as the period of conciliation. After the French were forced to withdraw from the Ruhr, the European powers were increasingly committed to a Europe in which Germany was rebuilt. As a consequence, the Dawes Plan was enacted and the Young Plan afterwards. The former was designed to settle the "question" of reparations. 

In fact, the policy of reparation had been in total crisis since 1921. The victorious powers were divided on the course of action. The British desired a postponement on payment and a decrease in the amount demanded by the French. In December 1921, the Germans announced they could not pay their next installment and in July 1922, the Germans requested another postponement The British were sympathetic to the German plea for several reasons. They were concerned about a Russo-Germanic alliance and wanted to block Russian influence into a key European nation and an economically impotent Germany benefited only the French. France held steadfast and refused to allow any compromise. At the Genoa conference in 1922, they vetoed plans to revise the reparations. The Germans held equally steadfast and refused to pay. It was clear that the French would respond militarily, as promised. Thus, in order to claim payment, French and Belgian troops invaded the Ruhr region. The Germans were deeply nationalistic and refused to work knowing their economic productivity would fund the French. Thus, there were mass strikes and economic productivity shut down. As a result, the Mark depreciated and the government had no choice but to print more money. This policy was soon out of control and by 1923, the mark was trading at nearly 1 trillion to the US dollar. The British refused to support France and it was clear they would have to back down (which they did, 9 months later)

In the wake of the Ruhr crisis, the Dawes Committee proposed that German reparations should be relaxed. A less radical French PM (Poincare) helped reach an agreement (in 1924) where the German reparations would be relaxed, and they would receive American money to help them. The Germans in turn agreed to the new reparations. It was clear by this point that the result of the Ruhr crisis signalled that the Entente powers were not prepared to enforce Versailles. Certainly not Britain or the USA. After their failed incursion, even the French had to rethink their position.

Not entirely. Hitler made the decision to exploit the democractic process ("go by the ballot box" as they put it) in Landsberg prison, which is also where he wrote Mein Kampf. But I would agree that it wasn't just the Wall Street crash that brought Hitler to power. There is one key factor missing from both analyses. A key factor in the rise to power of the Nazis was the "spectre" of communism. Marx would have been suprised that the first communist state was the USSR. For a backward, agrarian nation like Russia to make this move before industrial nations like Britain and Germany would have confounded his analysis. He expected the reverse to occur. In the wake of WWI, the German KDP gained significant strength, and took Berlin as their own in 1919 before the uprising was crushed by the Freikorps. During the initial rise of Nazi popularity in the early 1920s, the combination of the Weimar democracy and economic instability gave birth to over 50 political factions in Berlin alone, but only the NDSAP (The Nazi party) and KDP (German communist party) emerged as powerful movements. As a consequence the early years of the 1920s saw the battle between the flanks of the political spectrum. In the same way, in Italy before Mussolini took power, the Italian Communist Party was significantly stronger than Mussolini's party initially (which, in fact, started out as a socialist party until the "shift to the right" as per Mussolini's strategy). In both Germany and Italy, the right wing eventually won out. Fear of the KDP and communism in general was a key contributer to Nazi victory. Unlike in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, there were very large swaths of the German population who feared communism. The farmers feared their land would be collectivized. The skilled workers feared their wages would be equalized with the unskilled workers. The middle class and small business owners (which constituted a significantly larger portion of the German population than Russian) feared their businesses would be destroyed etc. etc. This fear was exacerbated by the fact that Germany had already allied itself with the USSR at the Treaty of Rapallo. In many ways, the two states were basically propelled into each other's arms. They were both pariah states at the time. Russia, fearful of encirclement by capitalist powers, needed an ally, and Germany, in the midst of economic collapse, needed a trading partner (and a place to violate the Treaty of Versailles in secret by training an armed force). This is also a reason the British were reluctant to bring the iron fist down on Germany, as it would just propel it further toward the USSR. The failure of the Weimar government to ease the economic collapse ensured people would flock to the political flanks, as people became disillusioned with democracy and liberalism in general, and the social strata of Germany made it likely that the right would triumph over the left (which it did). Ideologically, Hitler did not make any clear alterations in the interval years 1924-1929. His party had always been a nationalist, anti-semitic, anti-communist  party on the far right of the political spectrum. It was his method of seizing power the second time around, which proved crucial.