THIS HITLER NONSENSE …

regiehammblog 607 Comments
cv3yl2pueaaht1q

I am not an expert on Hitler. But my father is.

He toured post-war Germany extensively in 1957 and ’58 as a child performer. And he often recounts the stories. He befriended  teenage Lebensborn children (if you don’t know what Lebensborn children are …well …before you post anymore about Hitler you should read about them). He visited an SS widow and got a peek at her husband’s uniform and Luger (that he’d committed suicide with), she had stored in an old trunk, in the attic.

These and other intense experiences in Germany sent my father on a life-long quest to understand this sociopath (Hitler) and the country that allowed itself to be dragged into one of the darkest chapters in world history. My dad is a Hitler/Nazi buff the way Indiana Jones’ dad was a Holy Grail buff.

As the son of a man with this hobby (one might call obsession) I learned a lot about Hitler and the Third Reich just by osmosis, growing up. My father would weave WWII stories into his sermons. He would talk about new books he was reading on the subject. When I was nine-years-old I bought him a book on the battle of Stalingrad for Christmas. Not a tie or a pair of socks. A book …on the battle …of Stalingrad. Yeah …it was kinda like that.

The thing my father and I have often discussed, through the years, is the eye-rolling art of comparing American presidents to Hitler. It is such an absurdity we find it amusing …and frustrating. It’s often just a punch line. Like the Soup Nazi wasn’t really a Nazi. He was just mean. The Nazi part made it funny. You know …over-the-top. Like “grammar Nazi” or “spelling Nazi.” Nobody is really a “Nazi.” It’s our representation of something we consider jarring, strident, intractable and inhumane.

But the truth about Nazis isn’t funny at all. It’s bloody and horrible and gut churning. And it involves machine guns and butchery and inhumanity on a scale that takes your breath away. Nobody is really a “soup Nazi” …unless they served it in a concentration camp.

The idea of comparing an American president to Hitler is just as absurd …from any angle, in any context. The American system ITSELF pretty much prevents “Hitlers” from showing up. And America ITSELF is anathema to what Hitler was trying to create. An American ANYTHING or ANYONE is hard to fit into the Hitler model. It’s just not apples to apples.

There are some fundamental things to understand about Hitler:

1. He took over a small, failing state that didn’t have separated government, enumerated powers or checks and balances. It’s difficult for a guy like that to show up here, in this system.

2. His entire political career was violent from the beginning. There was always death in his wake. He didn’t just suddenly “turn” violent. It was a pattern …as it always is with sociopaths. This is THE most important thing to watch; the violence. I always keep an eye on who is rioting …breaking things …throwing rocks and bombs. It doesn’t make them Nazis. But it signals how far they’re willing to go.

3. He entered office with his own personal military construct (the SS) with allegiance to him ONLY. They would carry out things the regular military would never carry out: i.e. the murder of private citizens and political opponents. Nothing like that exists or COULD exist in America. We simply wouldn’t allow it.

4. He didn’t start out just killing Jews. He started out euthanizing people with special needs …for the betterment of the care-givers’ lives. (You can decide which side of the aisle favors the extermination of “inconvenient” people).

5. He disarmed the population, then nationalized healthcare and education. (Two-out-of-three of those are Bernie Sanders moves …But, guess what? Bernie isn’t Hitler either …not by a long shot)

The list goes on and on. But the deal is this:

Hitler was a real life murdering sociopath. He wasn’t just a charismatic speaker who incrementally fell into bad behavior. He wasn’t just a racist corrupted by unfettered power. In other words, you or I probably couldn’t end up being Hitler. A garden variety KKK leader probably couldn’t end up being Hitler either …or a community organizer …or a New York real-estate tycoon. It’s not that easy or simple.

NONE of our American presidents have ever been Hitler. But the people of Germany certainly thought FDR was a murdering dictator when B-17s started dropping bombs on them. This is why you have to KNOW what you believe and why you believe it. Good guys and bad guys are often in the eyes of the beholder. And they often look similar in the fog of conflict. I would imagine Japanese Americans in internment camps wondered if their president was Hitler-like. Nope. Horrible act …but not close to Hitler.

To that point, ironically, the American president who could’ve actually been likened to Hitler (before Hitler) in some of his methods was …wait for it …Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln broke more constitutional law than any other president in U.S history. He imprisoned political opponents without due process. He suspended habeas corpus. He was personally responsible for the deaths of six hundred thousand people.

He invaded countries that had declared their own sovereignty and forced them back into a union they didn’t want to be a part of. He unilaterally annexed Nevada, without 60 thousand residents, (a pre-requisite for becoming a state) in order to carry it and win the 1864 election. In other words, he pretty much rigged it.

And when he was killed by the highest paid and most famous actor of his day (ironic …don’t you think?), the actor screamed “death to tyrants!” (in latin) because the man thought he was being a patriot for ridding the world of a dictator. But he wasn’t …and he didn’t.

Lincoln did all of those things to end and win the Civil War. And today we love him for it …as we should. Because in the end, his vision was right …even though his methods were suspect in the heat of the moment.

When people think they’re seeing a Hitler, they might actually – sometimes – be seeing something closer to a Churchill. Before WWII everyone thought Churchill was the big bad wolf. His own people hated him and thought he was a Hitler type character (again …pre-Hilter). But he just kept saying, “guys …I’m telling you. This Hitler guy is the real problem. Not me.” And he turned out to be right. There’s a difference between an abrasive leader who makes you uncomfortable …and a despot.

Now, people are comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. And the countdown has officially begun, to …well …I don’t know …but something really bad. I get that someone who is combative with the press and who wants to vet refugees and shut down open immigration fits the bill some are always looking for when it comes to finally getting their “Hitler” villain.

But if you study enough about it, you realize the guy vetting and banning refugees is probably not Hitler …the guy CREATING refugees probably is.

If we keep looking for Hitler in every United States president we disagree with, we’re not going to recognize the real one when he actually shows up …in a different country.

R

607 thoughts on “THIS HITLER NONSENSE …”

  4. It was all going so well until German forces hit Stalingrad. When you make incredibly bad decisions, it will eventually get you. Trump has that potential. He wants to make war on Iran. Israel is pushing this. America needs to say ….NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Whatever else Trump does, he ain’t gonna go to war with Russia. Clinton, on the other hand, wanted to establish a no-fly zone over Syria, the enforcement of which would have involved shooting down Russian planes. Just one of many reasons I’m a lot less scared of Trump than I would have been of Clinton.

      Liked by 10 people

      Reply

    • Where has it been said that he wants to make war on Iran? By closing travel for 90 days from the hot spots that the Obama administration declared as having the highest potential of terrorist actively traveling from those locations? A 90 day hold so that the US can put into place a system that will vet people traveling from those hot spots to America? The only problem was it was poorly implemented. I’m pretty sure that isn’t a call to war! It’s a leader doing exactly what he vowed to do when he took office. Protect and defend our country from enemies both foreign and domestic. A little more thinking and less listening to CNN and the left… you would see the common sense of his actions! He’s going to war on terrorist.. and I back him 100%!

      Like

      Reply

  5. Hi. Someone just posted this on FB. I am blown away! This is brilliant. It’s kind of shocking to see someone so young and so wise… Not sure how you escaped the brainwashing in universities… Thank G-d for young people like you. You should submit these piece to major publications…

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  7. I have to agree with you that comparing Trump to Hitler is absurd. While some people are making the literal comparison, I believe some are using “Trump is like Hitler” as shorthand for comparing his presidency to Fascism. It’s probably too early to make such a claim.

    You say, “America ITSELF is anathema to what Hitler was trying to create.” While this is probably true, it does not mean that a U.S. President can’t take America, as it presently stands, towards something that is the antithesis of what America is. From today forward it is conceivable that a U.S. President can take America towards Fascism, Socialism, or whatever-ism that can be conceived by humans.

    I disagree with #1. While the U.S. Government does have separation of powers and “checks and balances”, I don’t think I would exclude the possibility of someone or some group of people overriding those checks and balances. We’ve already seen U.S. presidents in the 20th and 21st century exercising more power through Executive Orders. Two weeks into Trump’s presidency, we’re at 20 Executive Orders.

    You said that Hilter entered government with his own military construct and that “Nothing like that exists or COULD exist in America…we simply wouldn’t allow it.” One thing to remember is that he continued to maintain his own private security detail when he became President-Elect. While this may not be a force like Hitler, it doesn’t seem beyond President Trump’s financial means to build out this security detail when he’s inside the White House. He has made some unprecedented moves (e.g. no tax returns, ethical conflict rules, nepotism rules) so it seems that there are things we are allowing that “we simply wouldn’t allow” in the past. The bricks keep falling off the checks and balances wall.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Thanks for your thoughful comment, Michael.

      “The bricks keep falling off the checks and balances wall.”

      The intent of the Constitutional checks-and-balance system was to ensure that America’s government never become the tool of an autocrat. We definitely now have someone trying to make the system serve his autocratic purposes. We’ll see how good a system the founders devised.

      Like

      Reply

      • Only if you have not been paying attention to 20+ years of illegal “pre-emptive” war and “regime change” in places like Yugoslavia (Clinton), Iraq (Clinton and Bush), Libya(Obama) and Syria(Obamaand Clinton) and 20+ years of an increasing surveillance state and erosion of civil liberties could you possibly be idiotic enough to think Trump is the autocratic one.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

      • We’ve already had someone doing that for the past four years (if not eight). It’s just that the major media and the left in general (but I repeat myself) practically worshiped him and didn’t bother to help the public get riled up about it.

        For better or worse, Trump is using the same toolkit that previous presidents assembled and Obama weaponized. Expecting him not to use it is futile. All we can do now is hope he uses it well and wisely (from my perspective, so far, so good).

        Liked by 3 people

        Reply

      • Paranoid much? I’m going to guess that you cried when Hillary didn’t become the POTUS.. for 8 years American has been ignored, lied to, mis led, robbed, and society in general has been used against the American people. Race baiting, class baiting, hate and turmoil was used to steal our money, safety, choices and our future. The only time Obama was on TV speaking to the American people… it was about race, social class, police violence or shutting down the country because he couldn’t get what he wanted.. NOW after Obama made sure he is part of the elite 1% he touted to hate so much… NOW we have a LEADER that’s not hiding what he is doing. I’m pretty sure that giving up his billions and moving into the White House has been a picnic for him! Then to deal with the whining, crying, idiocy of the Democratic Party who is doing everything to stop any progress… they can’t conceive of an America that is fed up! So they refuse to do their job in any way?? Our country needs to get its act together. Congress needs a swift kick in the ass to do what they are paid for or get kicked out of office! Period. Trump has 8 years of a complete train wreck to clean up! Let him do his Job!

        Like

        Reply

  11. Interesting article, the validity of you conclusions on Hitler, Lincoln and others leaders mentioned should not be judged on what they had to do to move their country to a better political state, but what their envisioned objective was to preserve their county’s culture or to force cultural changes. I am curious as to what you like America to demographically look like in the future. I could then see better where you are coming from.

    Like

    Reply

  12. The reason this author can write an article such as this is because we DO have the Hitler role model to look back upon. His references to Lincoln and Churchill were PRE-Hitler, and their actions turned out well. We need to be ever vigilant, as Trump and his minions are doing everything they possibly can to turn the clock back to some very dark days. And…one of the reasons Hitler was successful in his goals was because there was little resistance. Thank goodness, not so now! RESIST!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

      • Interesting that it is the Trump supporters who don’t know fantasy from reality, don’t care enough about any cause to get up off their asses, constantly insult the other side with infantile playroom comments and repeated nonsense and cry and barf all over the place when they think they are being insulted by having the truth thrown at them.

        Like

        Reply

    • It helps to look at what people are actually DOING. Which side is forming mobs that perpetrate violence against individuals who have made the mistake of wearing a certain hat or wanting to listen to someone give a speech? Maybe we should try to resist that.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  13. Regie,

    You had me nodding my head vigorously and eager to share this post until you got to the part about Lincoln.

    “Lincoln … imprisoned political opponents without due process. He suspended habeas corpus.”

    Who are you referring to here? The Civil War era featured robust criticism of the president and great success for the opposition party in numerous free and fair elections held during the conflict. Are you talking about Clement Vallandigham? Not jailed. You should read more about what happened there and General Rosecran’s role in causing his ultimate exile. Suspending habeas corpus is in the Constitution for a reason: when the capital is surrounded by enemy forces and undefended some would argue that’s a pretty good time for it. You act like it was arbitrary and unjustified and the truth is more complicated.

    “He was personally responsible for the deaths of six hundred thousand people.”

    Abraham Lincoln is responsible for every death in the Civil War? So FDR is responsible for every American death in World War II and every death Americans caused in the war? This is a strange and severe allocation of responsibility.

    “He invaded countries that had declared their own sovereignty and forced them back into a union they didn’t want to be a part of.”

    Wrong again, on two counts. First, many of the delegates who attended state secession conventions were elected on platforms of maintaining the Union. In Tennessee, a referendum had declared against convening a secession referendum. The state was effectively captured by its civil government and fused to the Confederacy against the will of the people. Oops!

    Moreover, on the issue of public opinion, the attack on the American flag and American service personnel at Fort Sumter was done because the Confederate Cabinet had been briefed that public opinion had cooled and even Alabama was ready to return to the Union.

    Second, the CSA were not “countries.” The Articles of Confederation were understood to be a “perpetual union.” Name an instance where the Constitution provided less cohesion and durability than the Articles. You can’t. Likewise, the only way a state can leave is by amending the Constitution.

    “He unilaterally annexed Nevada, without 60 thousand residents, (a pre-requisite for becoming a state) in order to carry it and win the 1864 election. In other words, he pretty much rigged it.”

    You just kind of made this one up. The land that became the Nevada Territory was acquired from Mexico when Lincoln was a member of Congress. Nevada may have hastened to statehood to have their opinion count in the 1864 election (kind of an important one, not sure why their participation is seen as a bad thing). A simple consultation of the Electoral College results will show you that Nevada’s didn’t matter.

    “Lincoln did all of those things to end and win the Civil War. And today we love him for it …as we should. Because in the end, his vision was right …even though his methods were suspect in the heat of the moment.”

    So Lincoln did all these awful things but you agree with it? I think this part of an otherwise really strong article would work so much better if you simply focused on the contemporaneous criticism of Lincoln (which was extreme). Better yet, excise him entirely.

    An article that claims to be against hyperbolic and ahistorical comparisons should not mention Lincoln in the same article with any of our modern leaders.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Lincoln is one of my heroes. He did what he had to do to preserve the last, best hope for mankind. I believe sometimes only he, himself knew that. And the fortitude to keep pressing on when the whole world around you thinks you are insane …but YOU know you’re right …is something unique and genius in history. I’m simply painting Lincoln as one of his detractors might …from the surface …without context.

      It’s not always the “how’s,” “whos” and “what’s” that natter. Understanding the “why’s” is the most important part.

      Like

      Reply

  14. Very well written treatise. The problem we have today is that it is hard for some people to shake the last eight years of Obamaism. These same people cannot comprehend the concept of progression and leadership. Something we haven’t had since President Carter took office.
    Suddenly America has a different set of morals brought on by the news and social media that we must contend with.
    I agree that America could never have “Hitler” for a leader, but the left side of Congress, the Democratic Party, and the leftist supporters have been building (for the last eight years) socialist country far worse than the Eastern Communist Bloc countries fought for years to tear down.
    The bricks of the checks and balances wall will endure the test of time and strife as they have since the wall was erected.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  15. A few problems with this article…1) WE are creating many of the refugees…so when he says talk to the person creating the refugees, that is us. 2) tRump/Bannon are implementing strategies similar to Hitler’s. Of course it’s not exactly the same, but the number of parallels is alarming. Given that Hitler’s speeches are tRump’s favorite bed time reading, and Bannon is a white nationalist, I’d say that the person whop wrote this article is in massive denial.

    Like

    Reply

  17. You pretty much lose all credibility when you make ridiculous claims that Hitler nationalised healthcare and education, and disarmed the population.

    This is just more alternative facts, written to claim that Hitler somehow bears more resemblance to the Democrats than to Trump.

    So basically you’re a liar, and your attempts to draw away attention from the very real similarities between Hitler and Trump, are clearly not a good faith discussion.

    Mind you, there are frightening similarities, but there are a lot of differences as well.

    Like

    Reply

    • Well – Dude, Hitler DOES – if one wants to compare! Consider: the Dems want to disarm the people; they expect the govt. to take care of healthcare and education – even to the extent of defending a public school system with one of the lowest achievement levels in the world; but if you really understand the young man’s treatise here, he DID emphasize several times that a Hitler could not possibly come out of our system, an assertion from which only a sensationalist could conclude that he’s comparing Hitler to the Dems. But chill, Dude; Hitler didn’t bear THAT much resemblance to the Dems – after all, he returned Germany and its lands lost in the First World War to Germans, and jobs to Germans, and welcomed only the well educated and those with work skills: NOT what the Dems want to do! And you close YOUR piece by comparing Trump -whose daughter married a Jew- to Hitler; I think Adolph would be apart from that parallel, and when you make such comparisons, give EXAMPLES! Didn’t you learn this in composition classes in high school or college? Methinks you need a course in the theory of national socialism.

      Like

      Reply

    • You have some googling to do my friend. The Nazis were in fact the creators of nationalized healthcare. No one who supports nationalized healthcare is going to want to admit this but it is in fact 100% true.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • Just because someone wants to nationalize healthcare doesn’t make them Nazis.

      My only point in the piece is that we often try to overlay our own political bias on top of NAZIS. But does anyone in their right mind believe that Trump or Obama or Bush or any American president wants to commit genocide or conquer the world by force?

      All I have said in this piece is find a different comparison. Trump has a basket full of issues. But I don’t believe he’s killed any political opponents so far. By the time Hitler had been in office for two weeks he’d killed several along the way.

      Hitler is his own can of worms. Let’s not constantly open it to discredit our modern political opponents.

      Like

      Reply

  18. A very articulate piece – your father gave you much. When I hear Hitler nonsense about Trump and the oft-used “Nazi” label assigned to him early in the campaign , I just ask the snowflake or millennial crybaby or older Woodstock refugee-hippie who is glibly and ignorantly throwing the term around what self-respecting Nazi would permit his daughter to marry a Jew; usually they say no more – perhaps because a little light comes on in their video-tired brain and they realize they really don’t understand what a Nazi is nor what Hitler really was – as you illustrate here. Thanks!

    Like

    Reply

  20. So, you’re telling me that someone is being compared to Hitler? On the Internet?

    How can this be?!?

    You must invent a time machine, Mr Hamm. (Being a musician, I recommend you build it out of a Hammond B3 organ, a Theramin, and a Marshall stack.) Then you must use that time-machine to go back to 1989 and alert the world to this appalling form of rhetorical malpractice.

    (As undeniably tempting as it may be, you must resist the urge to attempt to go back in time and actually kill Hitler. Any fan of Doctor Who will tell you, Hitler’s death is a fixed point in time. You will be crushed by the the Timey-Wimey Ball before you can even try to kill Hitler. Although you could get away with punching him, if you saw fit.)

    So (after punching Hitler) you must go back to 1989, because in 1990 a fellow named Godwin will have already described this phenomenon and it will go down in history as Godwin’s Law:

    “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.”

    If you can beat Godwin to the punch, history will instead remember this as Hamm’s Law:

    “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1… and while I’m on the subject, remember that Donald Trump is not Hitler. So, don’t compare Donald Trump to Hitler, okay?”

    Sure, it will be weird for the first… twenty six years… but when Trump is elected in 2016 you will be hailed as a visionary. And also, anonymous trolls on the Internet will know better than to do to Trump what they do to… pretty much everyone else in every online platform ever.

    Congratulations, you’ve just brilliantly destroyed a strawman that was so common and so trite for so long that it was actually obliterated over a quarter of a century ago.

    Tell me, what is your position on Milli Vanilli? Will their music stand the test of time?

    Like

    Reply

  21. My mother was a Lebensborn child. She suffered throughout her life because of this. It scarred her for life and had a tragic impact on not only her but her children too. I have her diary and pictures of her in what I always referred to as “the breeding camp.” So when people refer to people as being Nazi’s so freely I know that they “KNOW NOT WHAT THEY SPEAK ABOUT.” Come take a walk in my childhood and listen to the grief that it left my mother. Yep, it is insulting to those who truly suffered under Hitler and they weren’t all Jews. Hitler practiced gassing the German people before he started on the Jews. The ironic thing about it is that the woman Hitler made my mother into would have been gassed in Hitler’s Germany.

    Like

    Reply

  22. I do agree – Hitler and his commie buddies, in hell , have raised the bar almost impossibly high for the normal, everyday, despot to pass.

    The bad news is that there a lot (I do mean a lot) of people like – Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann, Speer, Ribbentrop, etc … that are waiting/acting in the wings … and the bar isn’t as nearly high.

    BTW: Tell your father “good job”.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  24. This is garbage with some truths and a lot of slanted truths. The entire purpose of this shit is for Trump lovers to justify their existence. The true comparison is in the methods and personalities of the 2 “men”. They are almost alike, and look at how much has happened in 14 days. What do you have to see in order to believe that Trump will far surpass the evils of Hitler if he gets time?

    Like

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s