OPINION: What Hitler Tells Us About Putin

Democracy in the world has declined every year since 2005, according to authoritative Freedom House, while democracy progressed from 1974 to 2004 in Samuel Huntington’s famous “Third Wave.” Unfortunately, this time looks more like the 1930s, which makes many scrutinize why it went so bad then. Then, the greatest advocate of dictatorship was Adolf Hitler. Today it is Vladimir Putin. A study of Hitler can actually tell us quite a lot about Putin and today’s Russia?

A seminal book about German politics from 1933 to 1945, is the 1987 book Der Führerstaat by the German history professor Norbert Frei. [Norbert Frei, Der Führerstaat: Nationalsozialistische Herrtschaft 1933 bis 1945, München: Beck, 2013.] The further time proceeded, the more similar the rules of Hitler and Putin appeared.

Both Hitler and Putin were clever politicians who had been widely underestimated. They started their rule with broad appeals and consolidated power in steps rather. Both made sure to make the legal system and parliament dysfunctional at an early stage. They acted hard and fast, and they exploited three sources of power – the street with popular support, hardcore propaganda, and state repression.

Their economic strategies were quite similar. Politically, Hitler appealed to small business, but just like Putin he swiftly turned to big businessmen (as long as they were not Jewish). Both co-opted the oligarchs and did not care about the small businessmen. They thrived on early economic successes, but they did not really care about the economy, and they suffered no loss of popular support from later economic failures.

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The 1930s was a time of great regulation and protectionism, so early rationing and price controls were natural in Germany. Remarkably, neither Russian nor Ukraine have been forced to introduce rationing or price controls, since the free market and modern logistics function so well. This makes the war more bearable.

Big businessmen did well under Hitler, so they did not oppose him. The same is true of big business under Putin. They have far too much to lose. Despite all the Allied bombing of Germany and its arms factories in World War II, German arms production peaked in July 1944. Conversely, Western sanctions are not likely to stop Russian arms production, though they may reduce its quality and volume.

In his speech motivating his war on Poland, Hitler sounded apologetic: The Poles were so terrible that they forced him to this war, which they provoked with the Gleiwitz incident. Similarly, Putin claimed that he did not want to invade Ukraine, but the evil Ukrainians forced him to do so. Frei explains Hitler’s rhetoric with war being unpopular in Germany in 1939, unlike in 1914. Presumably, the Kremlin had a similar understanding of the Russian people’s attitude to war in 2022.

After the start of their wars, the nature of the regimes of Hitler and Putin appear to have converged. For Hitler, ideology and propaganda were always central. For Putin, they have increasingly become so. Hitler enthused about a mythological thousand-year Reich, although the German Reich had only existed since 1871.

Similarly, Putin raves about a mythological thousand-year Russia, disregarding that Rus was Ukrainian and Peter I established the Russian Empire only in 1721 and the Russian Federation was announced in 1991. While Hitler called for Lebensraum, Putin cherishes an imperialist russky mir. Their common problem is imperial hangover.

Hitler was always antisemitic, but only in January 1942 at the Wannsee conference did he declare the elimination of the Jewish nation as the goal. Similarly, Putin stated that Ukraine was not a nation at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, but just recently he has called for the elimination, that is, the genocide, of the Ukrainian nation. In both cases, the idea of genocide as the ultimate goal developed gradually.

Hitler and Putin had always similar dismissive attitudes to their military. Hitler proclaimed himself commander in chief in 1938 before the war, and in practice Putin has done so as well. Both considered their generals cowards and ordered more daring operations. They utilized their wars to seize the property of their enemies and increase repression. War became an essential part of their increasingly shaky legitimacy. Putin exclaims that his war is existential. Yes, probably for him, but for Russia his war is harmful.

As World War II turned against Germany from 1942, those who had failed in the war, such as Hermann Göring, the chief of the air force, lost influence, and Hitler himself lowered his profile. The big winner was the chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who could not possibly be embarrassed by any defeat from Stalingrad to Kursk. Aren’t we seeing the same phenomenon today when Russian media elevate Peskov, Soloviev, Simonyan, Kiselyov and other genocidal propagandists – the more outrageous the better? They have learned their Goebbels.

German historians struggle with why there was no uproar against Hitler. Instead, an empty resignation ruled. Frei offers a plausible explanation: “The silence was not only an expression of boundless disappointment and bitterness; sometimes it was also a sign of shame.” Germans under Hitler, just as most Russians under Putin, had made many personal compromises with the regime, so they felt their personal guilt.

An odd source of legitimacy for Hitler which probably applies also to Putin was that many thought that only Hitler had the authority to end the war. I hear far too many foreign policy experts here in Washington who think the same about Putin.

This simple comparison offers useful conclusions. Putin did not think the war would be popular, so he presented Russia as a victim rather than as an aggressor. His advocacy of Ukrainian genocide is a desperate afterthought. Putin realizes that the war is going poorly, so he relies more on propagandists than on generals. He does not care much about the economy but trusts the oligarchs to keep arms production going until the bitter end.

Hitler was no winner. Nor does Putin sound like a winner.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.