Netflix Hitler Documentary a Warning Against Electing Trump
Ignore the Parallels between the Two Men at Your Own Peril
In fairness, Trump can’t be compared to the genocidal globe-wrecking Hitler of 1945. But it is reasonable to compare Trump to the Hitler of 1932, an aspiring autocrat whose wicked worldview, unquenchable thirst for revenge and desire for domination were well-known for those not living in desperate denial.
A captivating new six-part documentary on Netflix, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, is ostensibly about the rise and fall of one of history’s most notorious monsters. But it is also a desperate call to action, begging Americans not to return Donald Trump to the White House, with the not so transparent message: Don’t let history repeat itself.
In fairness, Trump can’t be compared to the genocidal globe-wrecking Hitler of 1945. That madman was directly responsible for the death of 75 million people during World War II, the enslavement of 12 million people across Europe, the annihilation of 6 million Jews and the death of up to 8 million Germans.
But it is reasonable to compare Trump to the Hitler of 1932, an aspiring autocrat whose wicked worldview, unquenchable thirst for revenge and desire for domination were well-known for those not living in desperate denial.
Lines in the show drawing parallels between Trump and Hitler include:
“Hitler’s life mission was to “make Germany great again.”
“What mattered to Hitler wasn’t personal loyalty. The only thing that mattered to Hitler was to secure his own political survival.”
“Hitler’s temperament and the movement he represented was a “maelstrom of self-hatred, pity and resentment.”
“The Nazis have a message which is anti-immigrant, anti-globalist, highly nationalistic, highly populist. And it’s starting to resonate for the most part in protestant rural areas.”
From the nostalgic sloganeering in Nazi Germany, to the whimpering victim complex of its deranged leader, the similarities between the two malcontents and their malignant movements are jarring.
Trump wants to destroy the “Deep State” the way Hitler intended to end the liberal Weimar Republic.
Hitler decided as a political strategy you have to play within the system and then dismantle the system from within.
Both men exploit modernity, art and progressive ideas to create resentment in the hinterlands:
Outside of Berlin, large numbers of Germans are living in small communities, rural communities, where the artistic experimentation, the innovation, the sexual experimentation of Weimar Berlin is utterly foreign to them, and they are somewhat hostile to it.
It’s a group of people who feel shunned. If we want to make a contemporary analogy, we can see the sort of forgotten people in America. There is a sense that the system has dealt them a bad hand.
Trump staged his failed January 6 coup, just as Hitler tried to seize power through force in his ill-fated 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Trump deploys loyal crony judges like Aileen Cannon or Samuel Alito to evade responsibility. Hitler avoided severe punishment for his coup attempt though a crooked right-wing judge in his 1924 trial:
One of the judges was heard to say at one point, “What a splendid chap this Hitler is.”
The court grants him the lightest sentence it could possibly give him, which was five years in prison. The sympathetic right-wing judge adds to the sentence that Hitler will be eligible for parole after a mere six months. (Just enough time to write his bestselling Nazi blueprint Mein Kampf)
Some of the most chilling scenes in Hitler and the Nazis highlight the fanatical devotion of Hitler’s followers. William Shirer, a journalist and author who covered the rise of Germany’s ferocious leader, described the worshipful rallies and Hitler’s mystical magnetism:
Hitler’s communication with his audiences was uncanny, holding them completely in his spell. In such a state, it seemed they easily believed anything he said, even the most foolish nonsense.
I wonder what there was in his almost modest bearing, in his rather common look that unleashed such hysterical acclaim in the mob. They looked up to him as if he were the Messiah.
This same creepy dynamic of unrestrained adulation and idol worship can be seen on full display at MAGA rallies, where Trump even has the audacity to peddle Bibles—and supposedly born again Christians shovel out money for copies.
Like Trump, Hitler could act in morally repugnant ways that would destroy the careers of normal politicians.
In 1931, rumors abound about Hitler’s relationship to his niece Geli Raubal. She is the 23-year-old daughter of his sister and 19 years younger than Hitler.
She committed suicide by shooting herself with Hitler’s pistol in his apartment in Munich. Her suicide didn’t dent Hitler’s popularity among German voters.
Another commonality between Hitler and Trump is presenting themselves as indispensable saviors to their allegedly faltering nations:
Rather than promotion of the Nazi Party and the party program, Joseph Goebbels elevates Hitler as ‘the answer’. The man is the answer to Germany’s problems, not the man’s platform.
In 2020, there was no platform at the Republican National Convention. Trump’s grandiosity was on full display at the 2016 GOP convention when the nominee pompously proclaimed that America was on a downward spiral and, “I alone can fix it.”
Although, it’s unclear if it was the intention of the Netflix show, one can’t escape the similarities of Hitler and Trump’s vulgar mannerisms, which are, by definition, hostile to democratic systems.
This extremism, the kind of language he [Hitler] uses is not the language of a parliamentary democracy. And that, I think should have given people a clue to how untamable he would be if he got anywhere near power and how he would use it.
Both Hitler and Trump use subterfuge to disguise their real aims when the truth threatens their power. In 1936, Hitler sought to use the summer Olympics in Berlin to soften the Nazi regime’s image. To fool the world, the Fuhrer ordered anti-Jewish signs to be taken down and decreed that Jews not be openly persecuted during the Games. The tactic worked on American dupes of the time, such as famed pilot and America First promoter Charles Lindbergh.
Donald Trump is desperately trying to cover-up his key role in Project 2025, a detailed 900-page right wing blueprint, that plans to use a new Trump presidency to turn America into an Orwellian totalitarian state, which monitors and controls every aspect of our lives.
When confronted with his ties to this dictatorial document, the former president said, “I have no idea who is behind it”.
Trump is clearly lying about Project 2025, a scheme so radical it very well could cost him the election:
At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch….Watchdog groups say around 80% of Project 2025 contributors are former Trump staffers.
NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard shared a clip of Trump praising the Heritage Foundation, the group spearheading Project 2025, at an April 2022 event. From the podium, Trump declared:
“This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming, that’s coming."
I’ve been advocating for Biden not to run for reelection, but the media should be focusing twice as much energy on Trump’s Project 2025 cover-up than they are on Biden’s political predicament. No matter what Democrat is nominated, he or she will support individual liberty and democracy, while Trump is concealing his sinister scheme to steal our freedom.
Trump is also like Hitler in his affinity for violence to advance political aims. Hitler used SA Brown Shirt thugs and Trump used the Proud Boys, who roamed the streets of my Philadelphia neighborhood as the 2020 election neared.
Both Hitler and Trump exploited lost young men to do their dirty work:
“For a young man…that wanted violence and excitement, it’s something that you have instant comradeship. You join a unit where you have friends. All you have to do is beat up communists, beat up other political opponents.”
beat up other political opponents.”
This brings me to a point that is important for people to internalize. Donald Trump repeatedly and falsely asserts that Democrats are communists. In my decades in the progressive movement and Democratic Party, I’ve only met a handful of real communists. I suspect that the slanderous assertions by Trump are deliberately intended to dehumanize opponents so he can justify unleashing brutal force if he is reelected. Like Hitler, invoking communism (though a real threat in Hitler’s day) offers a green light to silence critics.
Perhaps, the most disturbing part of the documentary is the mirror it places on contemporary society. If Trump destroys our nation, or even the world, it will be due to misguided voters handing him power on a silver platter. The Nazis were also elected, receiving 38% of the national vote in 1938, making them the largest party in the Reichstag.
Hitler gained power when he was appointed German Chancellor in 1933, but his rise began in 1914 when he enlisted in the German army at the outbreak of World War I. The documentary describes the frivolous mood at that fateful time.
When World War I breaks out there is a general sense of excitement. There was this idea that it was just a big, fun, sports event.
Young men sign up all over these countries, so they won’t miss out on the adventure. Nationalism becomes very important in the European psyche. Suddenly, everyone says we’re in this together.
(40 million people died in the meat grinder of a conflict, largely fought in filthy trenches)
Like Europe in 1914, we are in a precarious moment with the world order in flux. A less charitable way of defining our times is to say we live in an Age of Idiocy, where people believe there are no consequences for their actions. They troll online and protest with firearms, as if this is normal. There are even wealthy people, comfortable and secure in their daily lives, pushing for Civil War, seemingly unaware of war’s dreariness, destruction and daily deprivations.
Exhibit A of this flippant and depraved worldview is the Heritage Foundation’s leader, Kevin Roberts, an architect of Project 2025, who recently told Steve Bannon, on his podcast, that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
In the real world, people will fight for their freedom and resist being subjugated. I’m sure if Roberts and his fundamentalist goons try to enact their sick, twisted vision by force, they will be as surprised as Germans in Dresden when the allies bombed the city to rubble. Roberts, and his churlish ilk, are unserious jesters, living in a right-wing fantasy bubble, during the most serious of times.
Finally, Shirer, the famed chronicler of Nazi Germany’s rise, starkly warns us to believe aspiring tyrants when they reveal their demagogic plans:
My own naivete in regard to Hitler’s designs was greater than I realized. But no one can say that Adolph Hitler did not give full warning of the barbarian world he intended to make.
Trump has made his vindictive vision abundantly clear too. His apologists dismiss the former president’s bigotry and bombast as, “Trump being Trump.” With the Supreme Court having recently given Trump immunity from future consequences, however, we may soon learn the true horror of what Trump being Trump truly means in its rawest, most animalistic form.
Shirer’s granddaughter offers us wise counsel on how we must proceed: “My grandfather would sit there at the dinner table, and he made sure to tell us, ‘what happened there can happen here, and you have to be vigilant. You cannot be complacent.”
In a matter of weeks, it will happen here, unless we act together to prevent the nightmare from occurring and civilization from collapsing.