Yes, Trump can be compared to Hitler, since history shows both used the same methods, means and rhetoric to achieve their ends.
Aside from reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I've read numerous other books and publications about the Nazis, including all of Albert Spier's books. Spier was his architect and then a minister in charge of production in Hitler's government.
So to begin documenting the similarities, let's start with Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in the early 1920s when he led his private militia in an armed attempted take-over of Munich's government, which failed when the Army fired on the insurrection. Hitler was up front with a pistol, unlike Trump, who watched his January 6 insurrection on television like the man of action he is. Trump let his private militia, the Proud Boys, attack the Capitol with his attendance, but they were armed and it was violent. If only the Capitol Police had fired on the Trump supporters we might not be in this current dilemma. Hitler went to prison for his insurrection: Trump is charged and due to the rule of law we abide by, might never be imprisoned, since the rule to law is being horribly manipulated by Trump.
After Hitler was released from prison, he went mainstream. He wrote Mein Kampf, his outline for what he would do, while in prison, while Trump had the members of his first administration write Project 2025, which details his repressive plans for a second term, God forbid. Hitler manipulated the levers of power in German to become part of the government and many Nazis, but not a majority, were elected to the Reichstag, just as many conservative Republicans and election deniers have seized government posts. In an election with an unclear majority for Nazis, Social Democrats and communists, Paul von Hindenburg, Germany's president and venerated general from World War I, chose Hitler to be Premier, to his everlasting damnation. He and the other top leaders of Germany's government believed they could control Hitler and the Nazis: they were proven wrong. Hitler never won more than 33 percent of the vote, but ruled as a ruthless dictator from Day One, just as Trump has promised to do.
Once in power, Hitler made good on his pledge to rid Germany of the Jewish population, just as Trump has promised to rid the United States of immigrants, after blaming them for problems that don't exist, just as Hitler blamed the Jews for the imaginary problems he instilled in his followers minds. Hitler started his mass deportations of Jews, which turned out to be deportations to death in concentration camps. After all, the cost of deporting millions is astronomical. He decided gassing and burning in ovens was much more cost-effective and what he wanted to do in the first place. Why has no one asked Trump what it will cost to deport 11 million people and how he plans to do it? As a businessman, he will most certainly take the cheaper alternative.
Hitler, as Trump plans to do, also "took care" of his political enemies once in power. One of the great heroes, in my eyes, of the 20th Century, was German Jewish lawyer Hans Litten. Litten believed greatly in the German legal system and after a demonstration in which Hitler's thugs, like the Proud Boys on Jan. 6, killed members of the opposition party, he put Hitler on the stand and so badly grilled him that Hitler was shaken for months afterward and never forgot it.
Hitler devised the Reichstag fire and blamed the communists for it, which gave him the excuse to declare emergency powers, which he used to arrest and round up his opponents. Han Litten was one of those arrested. Litten was never charged but spent over two years in concentration camps, where he was brutally tortured and starved, until he committed suicide. His example should always be remember as what happens when political opponents are arrested without cause or without having broken any law.
And we say ho-hum when Trump says he wants to be a dictator on day one?
We must say, "Never again!"
I could go on and on about why Hitler and Trump must be seen as one and the same, for the similarities are too great not to. Hitler was thought of as a clown, taken lightly, just as Trump is described as all talk and rhetoric. Talk and rhetoric turn to repression and tyranny, as will happen with Trump if he is elected, and as did happen with Hitler.
Once you learn the history and see the similarities between the two, you can not help but shudder about what might happen to the United States should Trump be elected.
