Incredible that so many people are blind to this idea.
in the sense that these actions (royal family, intoxication of petro-wealth, etc....) were too much to handle, I would say yes, it is true. But to equate this with Hitlerism is a bit of a stretch, imo.
A Hitler could spring forth from a nation that had been harshly imposed upon in the preceding versailles treaty - which in itself is the ultimate dead-end expression of French Revanchist political thought. This might be the rub of post WWI politics; not that the depression allowed a Hitler to rise, but that the peace treaty was a severe extension of the bloody war, an "act-of-war" in and of itself, and thus a continued attack upon Germany.
How are the expressed conditions - in their admittedly short-sighted support of local tyrants like Marcos but still definitively a "containment"/defensive act - thus comparable to the reasons for the rise of Hitler? Frankly, I don't think this thread of reasoning can hold water well.
The irony is that - Iran excepted - Baathism is the poor bastard Arab child of Nazism. There are historical connections between Hitler's sponsorship of the "grand mufti of jerusalem", al-husseini during wwII (SS troops made up of muslim troops who fought in Russia, and in the balkans where they were happily carting away every Jew they could find to the ovens) that show this. But there was no need for a Hitler to appear in Arab history to give vent to the virulent anti-semitism the Arab world holds and has held for millenia.
Perhaps it's a question of semantics, but I must disagree with VDH on this one... primarily because one of the things that makes Hitler so distinct is the shock that such a monster could come from (a...) Germany that was one of the leading nations in the world and was admired in many aspects... and also, i think, because the fact that such a monster did arise from a people who were "like us" accentuated that shock with a reminder that it might happen here, too.
By contrast - again semantics - VDH's comments seem to me to presuppose that the Arabs were similarly a people of firmly esconced and high values - when the opposite is true. The Arabs were not and are not the Germans, not even like the current effete viral strain that populates that northern land.
The Islam that our history books recognize as a great civilization has been dead for 700 years, and no amount of millenial memory among the people (in deference to those who suscribe Bin Laden's reference to "the tragedy of Al-Andaluz" as evidence of long-term memory in the Arab world) can replace the actual experience of a people remembering how great they were so recently, then vividly being reminded of their fall through the daily bitter taste of defeat, then bringing to power a madman who promised to slake their thirst for a return to glory.
No, this is not hitlerism in the sense of a proud and wounded civilization recently stricken down... it is simply an evil cancer that has festered for centuries.
In the final analysis though, VDH is correct; it must be destroyed - and the Arabs who have wisdom should realize how lucky they are that it is America and not one of the previous superpowers who they contend with in this great struggle... because a Rome, a Mongol Empire or a Soviet Union would utterly obliterate them, terrorists and moderates alike.
Sounds like a plan to me!