Posted on 04/21/2014 5:27:06 AM PDT by BCrago66
Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, compares the behavior of Vladimir Putin in Crimea to Adolph Hitler in World War II Europe. Topics include comparing the Treaty of Versailles to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany’s blitzkrieg as a sign of weakness, and Japan and Germany declaring war on the United States.
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ping-aling-aling-aling!
Or maybe Putin, as a leader of nation that was victim of Hitler does see that NATO and EU are Hitlerite threat to humanity and wont let them get his country?
That wouldn't work. Only targets of the Globalists are allowed to have the weekly New Hitler moniker.
Ukraine’s Fault™.
Victor Davis Hanson, a globalist. CFR membership on the way.
OK, you made your conclusion based upon little evidence or thought. No need to listen, then. (Plus he’s a member of CFR, which I believe conspired with the Queen of England to bring down the twin towers.)
Whoops.
Except that Putin is not a Nazi, and has committed no massacres.
Sorry, our FRiend from Serbia, but anyone who would believe such rubbish is seriously disconnected from reality.
Putin is today's "Hitler".
O'bama & EU are today's Neville Chamberlains.
Chamberlain was a very slow learner.
Hitler occupied or invaded five territories (Rhineland, Saarland, Austria, Czechoslovakia & Poland) before the Brits finally figured out what he was up to.
Putin has now done two -- Georgia and Crimea -- so how many more before the west catches on?
Is O'bama a faster learner than Chamberlain was?
Everybody here says "yes", but then there's this recent study saying big-time pot-smoking as a youth can reduce IQ in adults... so now I wonder...
How many more countries does Putin have to invade before the west gets serious about stopping him?
Putin is exactly equivalent to democratically elected Chancellor Hitler in, let's say 1938, minus the anti-Semitism, which in those days had not yet reached the level of mass-murder.
Hitler's treatment of Jews in 1938 might be reasonably compared to Putin's treatment of, oh, say, Chechens.
The only problem with this theory is that the people of Crimea willingly voted to join the Russian federation. Has Victor Davis Hanson ever heard of self determination?
The Hitler comparisons are ridiculous. Hitler invaded countries killing millions. How many people have the Russians killed in Ukraine?
Someone should make a movie about czarist Russia so that people like Victor Davis Hanson can extend his historical knowledge beyond Hitler and the second world war.
Russia doesn’t ‘occupy’ Georgia, where did you get that idea?
Obviously, somebody here is woefully defective in their understandings of history, but it's not Victor Davis Hanson.
Hitler invaded five different territories before Neville Chamberlain figured out what he was up to.
In four of those territories, Hitler's armies were wildly welcomed by majority-German populations: Rhineland, Saarland, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Each time the western allies backed down, did nothing, negotiated for "peace in our time".
So Hitler reasonably got the firm conviction that he could go anywhere, do anything, and the allies were "worms".
He was therefore genuinely shocked -- yes, shocked! -- when they declared war on Germany just for invading Poland.
But by then it was far too late to stop Hitler, and the Second World War was on.
Putin today, like Hitler in 1938 has two territories under his belt -- Georgia and Crimea -- and is working on his third, Eastern Ukraine.
So the question is: where will the West draw a serious line to stop him? After his second territory? Or the third?
Or do we give Putin, like Hitler, four countries before we draw the line at the fifth?
BarnacleCenturion: "The Hitler comparisons are ridiculous.
Hitler invaded countries killing millions.
How many people have the Russians killed in Ukraine?"
No, FRiend, it's you who are woefully defective in your understandings of history.
Putin today is precisely equivalent to democratically elected Chancellor Hitler in, say, 1938 -- he merely claims to occupy what is "rightfully" his.
And the West today, like Chamberlain in 1938, negotiates & negotiates to achieve "peace in our time".
Dear FRiend, I understand that you live on the far-side of the moon, and have no clue what is going on here on Planet Earth (by which I mean, you watch main-stream media), but the Internet is really easy to use, and you can look this up yourself:
Here is one summary of Russia's invasion of Georgia (yes, fool, I mean the country, not the state!
Russia briefly encroached on Georgian territory in 2008 to stop their government from conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign against dissident populations.
The Russians didn’t topple the Georgian government in 2008, they didn’t even enter the capital city of Tblisi, and they moved back to the border after securing the safety of the dissident ethnic civilian populations.
You may not like the fact that the Georgian military ran like scared rabbits from the advancing Russian troops, leaving behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shiny new tanks, weapons and gear, but the fact of the matter is that Russia didn’t ‘occupy’ Georgia then and more importantly doesn’t ‘occupy’ Georgia today in any conventional sense of the word and certainly not in any way comparable to Hitler’s Germany.
Russian propaganda nonsense, equivalent to Hitler's claims to be protecting ethnic Germans in, say, Czechoslovakia.
Furthermore, Russians not only did not withdraw from the occupied territories of Georgian Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia (along with Venezuela and Nicaragua) declared them independent countries!
I didn’t have time to listen to Hanson’s lecture, but I do have great respect for him and will make time to do so later.
Some initial observations:
There are aspects of Hitler and Putin that are parallel and some that differ, so it’s best to go down the list.
1. Assumed power legally according to the Constitution in effect at the time: Hitler: yes. Putin: Yes.
2. Assumed total dictatorial control within the legal framework of the state: Hitler, yes. Putin; well on his way.
3. Used a manufactured domestic crisis to extinguish civil liberties and political opposition: Hitler, yes. Putin; no.
4. Ran a domestic fascist economy based on nominal private enterprise with real control residing in central bureaucratic organs: Hitler: yes. Putin: yes.
5. Sought to re-unify national ethnic populations outside their borders within their own country: Hitler: yes. Putin: yes (that’s kind of what this discussion is all about).
6. Took advantage of weak international opposition to accomplish goals: Hitler: yes. Putin: yes, times two.
7. Sought to return or establish their nation to it’s “rightful place” in the international order. Hitler: yes. Putin: yes.
8. The combination of all of the above triggered a global military and diplomatic catastrophe: Hitler: yes. Putin: ?
9. Sought the extermination of distinct ethnic minorities through a program that began with persecution and ended with industrial scale mass murder: Hitler: yes. Putin: No.
10. Failed to develop a philosophical/constitutional framework that would perpetuate the concept of their state beyond the time of their own rule. Hitler: yes. Putin: ? but current indications are yes.
I do see distinct parallels on a simple checklist basis, but also see large distinctions. Numbers 7 & 8 are probably subject to much further discussion. Hitler’s war was a miscalculation on everyone’s part. In fact, the two major wars of the 20th century were the product of miscalculations, and they were mutual to both sides. Not sure if that will happen again. Also, while both Hitler and Putin sought/seek to restore a sense of injured national pride, there are different underlying factors at work. I don’t believe Putin ever publicly stated he wanted “Lebensraum” at the expense of other nations; instead, he wants to put the USSR back together under new management.
Further discussion welcomed.
“In four of those territories, Hitler’s armies were wildly welcomed by majority-German populations”
Is the Russian army in Ukraine right now?
That’s the slight difference between both situations that you and Victor Davis Hanson seem to be ignoring.
Russia did not take Crimea by force.
When the Russian army begins crossing borders and holding territory you might have a point. Until then the comparisons don’t make any sense.
This conflict was caused by the overthrow of the Ukrainian government earlier this year. Russia is only reacting to defend itself.
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