There's a joke that says every internet conversation brings up Hitler within 15 posts. With that in mind, I recently read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in hopes of getting some understanding of the reality behind this frequently evoked historical bogeyman. I found out that these tired comparisons of Hitler and Chamberlain to everything that happens today need to be brought back to reality with some actual historical facts.
We already have more weapons than almost all the rest of the world put together. Hitler rebuilt his military over a period of several years, while Britain stood by, until Hitler's army was several times the size of England's There is no one like Hitler one the world scene at the moment, despite some people's willingness to see him everywhere. If another Hitler appeared, there would be plenty of time to build a larger military in response to his build up. That's all that Churchill was asking for, and if Britain had done so, Hitler would never have had a chance of conquering England. Even after the long irresponsible delay caused by Chamberlain's naivete, Britain still managed to hold off Hitler's army, and eventually beat him. It is ridiculous for the US to maintain an army of this size when there is no immediate danger, and compare this situation to Hitler and Chamberlain
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A poster on the NYtimes webpages cites some facts about the Nazi's love of "blood and soil" rhetoric, and concludes with this comment:
"It is not that difficult to imagine that the German Jews in the 1930s could have easily been given the moniker of "denier" for their failure to embrace the the anti-industrial and anti-commerce views of the Nazi greens."
In fact, it's not that difficult to imagine almost anyone being on the side of the Nazis, if you cherry-pick your facts carefully enough. One aspect of Hitler's genius was his ability to combine contradictory ideologies under a single flag and thus unite many warring factions. He had socialist factory workers and industrialists both convinced that he was on their side. He also used Christian imagery in his propaganda, along with the Anti-Christian ideology of his intellectual stooge Rosenberg. Today anyone can quote either side of these conflicting ideologies, ignore the other side, prove that anyone they hate is a quasi-Nazi. The only thing everyone agrees about today is that Hitler was a bad Guy. All our disagreements are framed in terms of who resembles Hitler the most.
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