Comparing Trump to Hitler is Unfair to Hitler

 (Trump asking a reporter where he is.)

     Readers of this forum may have noticed that I make frequent references to Nazi Germany, especially during this cover band of the Third Reich posing as a presidential administration. Sometimes, the comparisons are arbitrarily made by me, other times, they cry out for historical comparisons and would be tantamount to journalistic malpractice to not make those associations.

     While not a historian in any accredited academic sense, I'm nonetheless a keen student of history, something augmented by my research for my historical fiction. 1933-1945 Germany in particular fascinates me. One of my favorite Youtube channels is run by Dr. Mark Felton, the British historian who's one of the world's foremost experts on WWII.

     Having said that, comparisons between Trump and Hitler are all but inevitable and, in many cases, Trump only has himself to blame. It all started in the 90s when Ivana Trump told a journalist that her husband slept with Hitler's speeches next to his bed (before disavowing having said so). Then there was the 2024 campaign in which he channeled Hitler and other Nazi leaders by referring to his enemies as "vermin".

     The ideological similarities were on full display  Like Hitler with the Jews, Trump tapped into a virulent Nativist sentiment that's always been a part of the American psychology by Otherizing Hispanics and other immigrants, something he began doing moments after coming down that escalator. Then, also like Hitler, he tapped into a smoldering national grievance and stirred peoples' anger without pointedly offering any real solutions for redress.

     Looking back with 11 years of hindsight, it was a miracle it ever worked. Hitler at least had a real historical backdrop as his canvas: Germany's crippling loss of WWI. He also blamed the Jews for the tanking German economy in the Weimar Republic.

     We never lost a world war so our grievance was inexplicable. And Trump inherited a pretty strong economy from Obama, which he wasted no time destroying by adding trillions to the national debt through tax breaks for the hyper wealthy and by essentially ignoring the pandemic in 2020. 

     But one must admit that, for much of the 12 years of his dictatorship, Hitler was far more successful than Trump ever would be. In 53 days, the German chancellor completely subsumed the government. Even Hitler himself was surprised by how easily and quickly the transition had gone. Unlike Trump, he brought the mighty Catholic Church to heel. He would go on to conquer much of western Europe, occupying Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and other nations. That was because, unlike the drunken pack of jackals Trump has under him, Hitler, clearly insane, nonetheless had ruthless, competent military leadership to actuate his agenda.

     And wartime Nazi Germany wasn't nearly as powerful as the latter--day United States, yet for a time it looked as if Hitler was going to conquer the world (although, again, it must be said that Hitler suffered through little pushback. France offered no resistance except through the French Resistance and Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and other nations fell like dominoes).

     Trump can't even bring Iran to heel.

     Granted, in Middle East terms, Iran is a superpower, a nation of 90,000,000 people with a significant military and logistical leverage. They're also one of the three nations with the largest oil reserves. We'd bombed Iran's plutonium enrichment sites last summer, and Trump crowed like a rooster that we'd destroyed them. Then months later, on February 28th, sans Congressional approval, we bombed Iran again on the pretext they were enriching uranium for a nuclear arsenal. Over 165 Iranian schoolchildren were killed, in and of itself a war crime..

     Again, he declared victory. But Iran immediately closed down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's energy is shipped, making energy prices skyrocket, hence the price of virtually everything else. It was Iran's strongest response and they've leveraged that quite effectively. Allied nations are now saying they have about six weeks of reserve jet fuel before they run out, thereby grounding their air forces.

     And, from the start, elected officials began asking where the exit strategy was, what the goal was, what the real reason was for bombing Iran in the first place. And Trump and his cronies had as many ready answers as McDonald's has chicken nuggets.

     There have been two ceasefires, which were immediately broken. The Strait was closed, then it was open, then it closed again. Our marathon 21 hour round of negotiations led by JD Vance and two real estate developers in Pakistan crashed and burned while Trump took Rubio, who should've been there, to a UFC card. Later, he shrugged he didn't care that the negotiations failed, making the rest of us to scratch our heads wondering why have them to begin with.

     He threatened to exterminate the entire Iranian population, nearly 100,000,000 people. He demanded NATO help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, then huffed that we didn't need them before going back to berating NATO for not helping us. 

     He's hallucinating deals and phone calls that never happened. The Iranians are trolling Trump with comical deepfake videos featuring him. And, at the bottom of it all, everything Trump has done with Iran seems to be predicated on Israeli security objectives.

     We thought that Bush mismanaged his wars against Iraq and Afghanistan (And, believe me, he did). But Trump is putting on a master class of how to mismanage an illegal war in record time. So, while comparisons to Hitler are certainly understandable, it's unfair to Hitler. While he nearly destroyed Germany, for a while, Hitler actually got results.