She without whom I would be Ruthless — my incredible wife Ruth — and I are readers. Lately, entirely by happenstance, we’ve both been reading several books on wars.
Currently, I’m engrossed in James Douglass Hamilton’s "The Truth About Rudolf Hess," Hitler’s deputy führer, and Ruth is deep into Yaroslav Trofimov’s "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence."
Recently, we both read Lynne Olson’s "Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain In Its Darkest, Finest Hour."
As we cringingly watch the evening “news” — as it were — we are stricken with uncomfortable similarities between the build-up to and the prosecution of World War II and today’s Russian and Ukraine, and Palestine and Israel wars.
Discomfiture comes with the ominous question: Are we blindly marching into a devastating war and a serious risk of losing our democracy?
With the 2024 presidential election on our political horizon, American voters are well advised to consider parallels between former President Donald Trump and Adolph Hitler. Many have an understandable kneejerk reaction to protest the comparison.
No. No one needs to fear that Trump would order anything approaching the size or nature of Hitler’s Holocaust (Shoah is the Hebrew word). However, there are many cogent reasons, in his own words, to fear that he will attempt to exercise dictatorial powers. That’s where legitimacy lies in comparing him to Hitler.
He helped create the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) in 1920 and was elected its führer (leader) in 1921. In 1923, Hitler led an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected regional government of Bavaria: The Beer Hall Putsch.
Unsuccessful, he spent a year in Landsberg Prison.
President Trump attempted to overthrow the election of President Joe Biden in 2020. Whether he also will spend time in prison is yet unknown, and there is significant risk that if he is convicted, his hand-picked Supreme Court will rule that illegal acts to overturn an election are part of a president’s constitutional duties and therefore cannot be prosecuted.
Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 and quickly became an absolute dictator, serving until his suicide on April 30, 1945.
With the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, he led Germany and the world into what became World War II.
Trump didn’t create the Republican Party, but he hijacked it and refashioned it into a new party that doesn’t remotely resemble the party of Lincoln, or that of 17 other GOP presidents, including Ronald Reagan.
Having commandeered the GOP, refashioned it in his own image, and led it far astray, Donald Trump is a Republican in name only.
Trump pervasively uses the Big Lie technique that Hitler used so effectively to become Germany’s dictator.
Hitler is credited with using the term Big Lie (große Lüge) in his book, "Mein Kampf," published in 1925. It was first used to malign Jews as Germany’s enemy.
The American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology defines the term as “a propaganda device in which a false statement of extreme magnitude is constantly repeated to persuade the public. The assumption is that a big lie is less likely to be challenged than a lesser one because people will assume that evidence exists to support a statement of such magnitude.”
Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels used the technique to promote the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany.
The Big Lie also involves not only an outlandish falsehood, but on its frequent repetition.
This is precisely what Trump is doing with perilous effect.
His biggest lie (he uses several Big Lies) is that he didn’t lose the 2020 presidential election, but that it was stolen from him.
That is the modus operandi of all dictators, and Trump puts himself in their company with continuing and frequent claims that he didn’t lose the 2020 election to Biden, and is working hard to set the stage to try to overthrow the 2024 election if he loses. Indeed, he is trying to rig it to hinder, if not deny, voters the ability to cast ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Day has lived in Pullman since 1972. After an 11-year career in journalism, he served on the Washington State University faculty for 32 years as a science communicator. He enjoys email at terence@moscow.com, pro or con.
