"As for Lincoln's dictatorial tendencies, he centralized the government of this country like no one before, and no one since."
Precisely why Hitler praised him in Mien Kampf. German was a republic of states prior to rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler looked upon Lincoln's example of subjegating a republic of states into "one central govt" as you say.
I double-dare anyone to look that one up.
You're on. Here's the actual relevant text from Mein Kampf:
By a federated state we understand a league of sovereign states which band together of their own free will, on the strength of their sovereignty; ceding to the totality that share of their particular sovereign rights which makes possible and guarantees the existence of the common federation.Now, you find me where Hitler actually mentions the name of Lincoln or praises him for consolidating government. This is yet another of those allegedly smoking guns that Lost Causers are so fond of waving, which turns out on closer examination to be more like a cold pickle.In practice this theoretical formulation does not apply entirely to any of the federated states existing on earth today. Least of all to the American Union, where, as far as the overwhelming part of the individual states are concerned, there can be no question of any original sovereignty, but, on the contrary, many of them were sketched into the total area of the Union in the course of time, so to speak. Hence in the individual states of the American Union we have mostly to do with smaller and larger territories, formed for technical, administrative reasons, and, often marked out with a ruler, states which previously had not and could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that had formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states. The very extensive special rights granted, or rather assigned, to the individual territories are not only in keeping with the whole character of this federation of states, but above all with the size of its area, its spatial dimensions which approach the scope of a continent. And so, as far as the states of the American Union are concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of their constitutionally established and guaranteed rights, or better, perhaps, privileges.