There’s an old internet maxim: Don’t compare anything to Adolf Hitler, lest you want to make yourself look like an ass. People on the Left seem intent upon comparing Vladimir Putin and Hitler. Are you a supporter of such attempts? It’s just not possible. Don’t try to make Hitler sound better to make Putin look worse.
Lloyd Blankfein, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, is the latest participant in this Very Bad Takes Sweepstakes.
Worth noting even Hitler didn’t permit his military to use chemical weapons, though he had them. https://t.co/jG25woB8kl
— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) March 24, 2022
“Worth noting even Hitler didn’t permit his military to use chemical weapons, though he had them,” Blankfein tweeted.
First, let’s just note how historically wrong this is. I guess you could try to play games with whether the SS was “military” — they were certainly used as military units (although distinct from the regular Army units of the Wehrmacht). The death camps were run by the SS, as was the gas chambers. Chemical weapons could be used in military operations. But even with the military in the field, the Einsatzgruppen — the SS group that was frequently the first unit into a country to take out the political opposition and kill the Jews — had mobile gas vans that they employed in the field. And yes, gas is a “chemical weapon.” They moved on to the death camp idea because they found this killing in the field too inefficient for their purposes. It is not true that Hitler tried to stop chemical weapons being used. “At least 1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million Holocaust victims died in mass shootings or gas vans in Soviet territory,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. And that’s not even counting the millions who were killed in stationary gas chambers or death camps.
But then, what’s the point in this? What’s the point of trying to make Putin seem worse or Hitler look better? What’s the point of this effort besides it being disgraceful and historically wrong? Blankfein isn’t the first person going down this road. Similar comments were made by Michael McFaul (ex-ambassador to the United States in Russia), as I reported previously.
Putin invaded his neighbor — that’s wrong enough. You don’t need to invent things to make him sound worse. You can also be legitimately concerned about where Putin’s actions might go next and the threats he’s been tossing around, but that still doesn’t make him Hitler. So I have to wonder about what people are trying to push when they jump to such extremes — why do they need to make him worse?
No. Not it’s not worth noting.
He gassed Jews. https://t.co/S7hx5hjGrI
— Kron (@n0th1ngm4n) March 25, 2022
The people who had used to label Hitler everyone began to recognize his redeeming traits. https://t.co/6wWobVUf9w
— Rising serpent 🇺🇸 (@rising_serpent) March 24, 2022
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