Ivan Sichen
The beginning of this year has become the greatest ordeal for Ukraine, comparable only to the attacks on it by Muscovy in the 17th century, Lenin’s (Bolshevik) Russia – in 1918, and Hitler’s Germany – in 1941. The features of all these events are well known, so it makes no sense to repeat them again.
Therefore, we simply compare the Hitler and the Putin regimes as the most known aggressors in recent and modern history. At this, we will pay attention to both common and opposite features of the mentioned regimes. Surprisingly, there are also differences between them, although not in favor of Russia.
So, as noted above, let’s look at the common and opposite features of the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin.
Basically, both of them are quite similar. So:
- both A. Hitler and V. Putin were and are outright paranoids with a mania for greatness. The fact of Hitler’s mental decay was determined by specialists before the First World War and confirmed after it. The same diagnosis was made by American psychiatrists about V. Putin. Although it was clear without them. Who else in their right mind would threaten the world with nuclear weapons solely because of their own ambitions? Moreover, he openly agrees that his own country will be destroyed as a result;
- the leaders of Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia have created in their countries purely totalitarian regimes with all their inherent features, including: complete usurpation of power; violation of all basic human rights; suppression of freedom of the press and its subordination to its interests within the framework of mass disinformation campaigns; establishment of state control over the important sectors of national economies;
- the main content of the foreign policy of both regimes was to conduct an aggressive expansion with the use of military force to achieve their goals. As with A. Hitler, V. Putin’s main such goals include the division of the world on the spheres of exclusive influence. However, if A. Hitler did it under the slogan “building a greater Germany”, then V. Putin is trying to achieve his goals under the slogans “revival of greater Russia” and “expansion of the Russian world”;
- the implementation of these plans was carried out by A. Hitler on the basis of the ideology of Nazism. Putin’s ideology is even more Nazi one, being, in fact, outright racism. Both of them have shown and continue to demonstrate the “superiority” of their races and superiority towards other nations and peoples. Based on this ideology, A. Hitler justified, and V. Putin is now justifying his “rights” to aggression against other countries and the destruction of their populations;
- when World War II broke out, A. Hitler completely disregarded all norms of international law, his treaties with other countries and universal norms. In this regard, we can call only the bombing of peaceful settlements by the German army and the mass extermination of civilians by the Gestapo. V. Putin did the same. And the Russian army, Russian Guards and special services operate in Ukraine in exactly the same way as their fascist predecessors did before;
- a common feature of the Hitler and the Putin regimes was their de facto international isolation after the start of the above-mentioned wars. At this, their only allies were the same totalitarian regimes related to them. As you know, for Hitler’s Germany, the main allies were the regimes of Mussolini in Italy and Emperor Hirohito in Japan. For Putin’s Russia, it is the Lukashenko regime in Belarus;
- Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, on the eve of the Third Reich’s final defeat in World War II. And his accomplices were brought to the Nuremberg tribunal. The same is obviously expected of V. Putin and all those responsible for the war against Ukraine. No wonder V. Putin himself is hiding in a bunker in the Urals, and his inner circle of Russian oligarchs has begun to abandon him. Not to mention that the International Criminal Court in The Hague has launched an investigation into Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
However, there are significant differences between the two regimes. In particular:
- Hitler’s Germany had a powerful and developed economy at that time, able to provide a high standard of living for its population and produce the full range of military weapons. At this, it was not inferior, it was superior to weapons of opponents of Hitler’s Germany. Putin’s Russia does not have all this, which was once again confirmed by its war against Ukraine;
- the German Wehrmacht was one of the most effective armies of the Second World War and really fought “not in numbers but in skill”. For example, during the war with the former Soviet Union, there were ten Soviet soldiers per one German soldier killed, five Soviet tanks per one German tank were destroyed, and up to seven Soviet planes per one German plane were downed. Like Soviet leaders, V. Putin is trying to crush Ukraine with the numbers of its military power. And like Soviet leaders he does not care about the human losses of the Russian army in the war against Ukraine.
What conclusion can we draw from all this? The conclusion is one and only and quite understandable: V. Putin is A, Hitler of today. That is how he should be seen. By the way, even those who in 2014 spoke about “Russia’s having nothing to do with the conflict in the Donbas” have realized this.
