Opinion

By Michael Berenbaum
No one compares to Adolf Hitler. He was incomparably evil. Nothing in American politics compares to Nazism. Nothing, not now — and hopefully never!

And yet, I am grateful to Donald Trump because he has made my job of explaining the rise of Nazism and political support for Hitler so much easier.

Permit me to explain:

When I would tell my students that many of Hitler’s supporters did not regard themselves as antisemites or racists, they would look at me quizzically.

“How could they not?” they ask. After all, Hitler made no secret of his antisemitism. He spoke of it openly, directly and repeatedly. He did not use dog whistles, but said what he meant and meant what he said.

When I would mention that many did not believe that he would carry out what he had been saying, they were skeptical.

After all, he had repeated his threats against the Jews time and again; how could they believe that once in office he would not follow through?

My students would protest when we would learn that some of his voters were put off by his antisemitism but liked other parts of his platform such as his strong nationalism, his return to national pride, his attacks on the ineffective Weimar Republic and their leaders, his anger at German humiliation with the defeat of World War I and the foreign imposition of the Versailles Treaty. They craved his projection of strength and decisiveness after what many had viewed as ineffective leadership from the German political class.

But he was antisemitic and racist, my students would say. And you are telling me that his supporters did not regard that as disqualifying? They roll their eyes when I tell them that had he not have been an antisemite, he might have gotten even more support.

My students would protest when I would mention that Hitler came to power with a minority of seats in a coalition cabinet and his political partners assured one another and the president that once in office, he would be forced to moderate and move toward the center. They would whisper: “he knows nothing and we are men of experience, seasoned, reasoned, disciplined and informed, we can control the man and force him to bend to our will.”

They would look skeptically at me. Given what they know happened shortly after Hitler took office, my students wondered: how could they be so sure, how could they be misguided?

When I would describe the reasoning of Germany’s conservative political leadership — better to bring this angry man and his angry hordes inside the tent looking outward than outside the tent continually raging — my students would throw up their hands in frustration: how could they be so naïve as to imagine that the rage would not continue, and once in power become institutionalized, bureaucratized, legalized? Couldn’t they understand that power would only embolden them and that such power would only entice them to use it effectively and cruelly?

And finally, my students would protest when I would say that no one in his inner circle could stand up to Hitler, could tell him to stop and cut it out, change direction, or that Germany did not have — at least not after the Emergency Decrees of March 1933 — the checks and balances and the separation of powers that restrained the exercise of power.

I would show them two pictures, one of Hitler receiving a briefing from his generals in 1939 — when the wars were proceeding well for Germany he listened attentively to what they were telling him — and another in 1942 when

Hitler was making decision after decision that would bring them to defeat, the generals listened obediently to what he was instructing them.

My students would ask timidly, did the man have no friends, could no one tell him the truth?

Again Hitler was Hitler and Trump is Trump. No equivalence is possible. Trump does not have a coherent vision positive or negative to implement. He only has himself and his sense of self-aggrandizement.

And yet now my students now will have a much easier time understanding that while everyone has heard Trump’s tirades against Muslims and Hispanics, Mexicans in particular, his promises of exclusion and deportation, for many that simply is not disqualifying.

They do not regard themselves as racists and could not imagine themselves to be and are uncomfortable if not distraught by his racism, but other aspects of his program appeals to them: America First, the “lousy” trade deals, the reversal of globalization, the restoration of American greatness, the hatred of the political class — Washington that evil, awful place — and the promise of American jobs.

My students will now be able to see firsthand how the wise men of Germany could be so mistaken.

I suspect that the presidential nominee of the Republican Party believes that he will bend Republicans in Congress to his will just as he broke 15 other candidates for president and made the toughest of them, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, appear like a lap dog, taking scraps off the master’s table.

While I have no confidence in Republican leadership who are deluding themselves and the nation with the notion that they will triumph in a contest of ideas, and while I am appalled by the so-called “religious leaders” who want to make the nation more Christian — Jesus preached a gospel of compassion and human dignity, gratitude and grace, he reached out to the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the dispossessed — while they support a man who is the embodiment of values antithetical to religiosity, I do have confidence in the American people who, no matter how angry, will reject the politics of exclusion and bigotry and vote for inclusion and decency. I pray that I am not deceiving myself.

Let me conclude with a story: many years ago Steven Spielberg and I met with a man who spent the meeting telling Spielberg how important he was. When the meeting concluded and we stepped outside, Spielberg turned to me and said:

“What was that about?”

“He wanted to tell you how important he was,” I answered.

He said: “I know he was important, otherwise I could not have met with him.”

I said: “he has a big ego.”

Steven corrected me immediately. “No, he has a small ego in need of enlargement. I have a big ego and need not enlarge it at another’s expense.”

I keep remembering that story whenever I hear Trump speak of size of hands, of private parts, of height and or fortune. Only a man with a small ego in need of enlargement would become obsessed by size.

Beware of such man and most especially such a man preaching such a philosophy.

Michael Berenbaum, director of American Jewish University’s Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, served as project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, director of the USHMM’s Holocaust Research Institute, and as president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

To read the complete November 2016 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.