Many policy makers and political analysts have compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory – Crimea – with Hitler’s aggression against Czechoslovakia and the 1938 Anschluss of Austria. An analysis of the unprecedented actions of Putin in modern European history demonstrates the striking similarity between the strategy of the Nazi Führer and the current leader of the Kremlin, notwithstanding differences in time periods and circumstances.
HITLER’S THEORIES…
In 1940, by which time the flame of the Second World War was burning strong, and still when Stalin was an ally of the Führer, a book was published in London titled “Hitler Speaks.” A year later a new book was published, “The Beast from the Abyss.” The author was a brilliant German writer, musicologist, formerly well-known Nazi, and president of the Senate of the “Free City of Danzig” from 1933-1934 - political emigrant Hermann Rauschning. The first book consists of well documented accounts of the author’s discussions with Hitler, who, trusting Raushning, shared with him his intimate ideas and plans, which even today, after 80 years, have not lost their relevance – as is demonstrated by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
The second book – an analysis of Nazi actions – shows how they took advantage of the weakness and disunity of the Western democratic powers to effectively undermine “old Europe” and its values.
The pages of Rauschning’s book portray a “different Hitler” – not the image of a crazy fool or distraught psychopath that we are used to, depictions given from primitive propagandistic films, but rather an evil genius, Satan – an innovative, creative inventor of the modern, destructive political and military technologies that allowed Hitler to capture half of Europe via deceit and threats, using the “soft” national power of the German diaspora and the hard power of Wehrmacht armoured divisions – facilitated by the confusion of Western democratic governments.
The reader can decide for themselves the degree to which Hitler’s ideas resonate with Putin’s modern-day worldview (cited below are excerpts from both of Raushning’s books, published in 1939 and 1941 respectively):
“I am prepared to guarantee all frontiers and to make non-aggression pacts and friendly alliances with anybody. [...] There has never been a sworn treaty which has not sooner or later been broken or become untenable. There is no such thing as an everlasting treaty.” (Hitler Speaks, 114)
“If Germany is to become a world power, and not merely a continental state (and it must become a world power if it is to survive), then it must achieve complete sovereignty and independence.” (Hitler Speaks, 125)
“Political successes, for which I have to fight, always depend on the planned decay and corruption of owners and those in power. Economic wars, lobbying games and ambition – that is, a desire to dominate – these are the three major spectrums.”
“How shall I press my will upon my opponent? By first splitting and paralysing his will, putting him at loggerheads with himself, throwing him into confusion.” (Hitler Speaks, 211)
“Our principal war ... should end before the outbreak of military actions.”
“When I wage war [...] in the midst of peace, troops will suddenly appear [...] in Paris. They will wear French uniforms. They will march through the streets in broad daylight. No one will stop them. [...] They will march to the headquarters of the General Staff. They will occupy the ministries, the Chamber of Deputies. [...] But I shall long have had relations with the men who will form a new government – a government to suit me.” (Hitler Speaks, 17)
“We shall have enough volunteers, men like our S.A., trustworthy and ready for any sacrifice. We shall send them across the border in peace-time. Gradually. No one shall see in them anything but peaceful travellers. [...] Perhaps we shall land at their flying-fields [airfields]. [...] Our strategy, [...] is to destroy the enemy from within, to conquer him through himself.” (Hitler Speaks, 17-18)
“The place of artillery preparation for frontal attack by the infantry in trench warfare will in future be taken by revolutionary propaganda, to break down the enemy psychologically before the armies begin to function at all. The enemy people must be demoralised and ready to capitulate, driven into moral passivity, before military action can even be thought of.” (Hitler Speaks, 19)
“We shall have friends who will help us in all the enemy countries. [...] Mental confusion, contradiction of feeling, indecisiveness, panic: these are our weapons.” (Hitler Speaks, 19)
“When the enemy is demoralised from within, when he stands on the brink of revolution, when social unrest threatens – that is the right moment. A single blow must destroy him.” (Hitler Speaks, 20)
“I shall shrink from nothing. No so-called international law, no agreements will prevent me from making use of any advantage that offers.” (Hitler Speaks, 21)
...THE FÜHRER’S PRACTICES
The “classic repertoire” of Hitler before World War II (1939) includes the seizure of an independent country, a member of the League of Nations – Austria (1938), a section of an independent country (the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia – 1938), and an attempt to capture the “the city of German glory,” Danzig (Gdansk) – 1938-1939, which, actually, formally began the Second World War.
AUSTRIA
Even before the Anschluss, in 1936 Mussolini declared that the German character of Austria required the country to become a satellite of its older brother.
February 12, 1938 – Hitler told Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg, “I consider myself the leader of all Germans, not only in the Reich, but in the whole world.” He put forward a plan for a German-Austrian customs union, demanded the creation of a military alliance, and the subordination of Austrian foreign policy under Germany.
Speaking on February 10, 1938 in the Reichstag, the Fuhrer declared, “Germany cannot be indifferent to the fate of 10 million Germans who are living in two neighbouring countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia). The German government will strive to unite all of the German peoples.”
Nazi soldiers in Vienna and other Austrian cities provoked bloody clashes. Pro-German demonstrations took place under the slogan “One people – one nation!” Youth in SA and SS uniforms hung banners with swastikas, destroying Austrian state symbols. To prevent the plebiscite “For a free German Catholic Austria” announced by Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg from going forward, Hitler announced an ultimatum demanding that the plebiscite be postponed, the Nazi Party be legalized, and the SA and SS be acknowledged as support unit subdivisions of the Austrian police. In Austria Hitler had his henchman, Seyss-Inquart – just as in Crimea Putin has Konstantinov and Aksyonov.
March 12, 1938 – one hundred thousand Wehrmacht troops, 800 tanks, and 700 aircraft invaded Austria. In his final address to the Austrian people Chancellor Schuschnigg said, “We are standing down under the pressure of force. We do not want to spill German blood (!). That is why the army was given the order - not to resist.”
In his address to the Austrian people, Hitler quoted Goebbels, saying, “The tank units, infantry divisions, the formation of the SS and German aircraft squadrons, invited by the National Socialist government in Vienna [that is, the impostors – Y. S.], guarantee the Austrian people the opportunity of free (!) choice, resolving the question of its future by means of a real (!) plebiscite.”
The “plebiscite,” which took place in occupied Austria, showed a result even higher than the “referendum” in Crimea: 99.7% of voters voted in favour of the Anschluss (!). The “original” plebiscite question was, “Do you acknowledge our leader Adolf Hitler – and thereby the reunification on 13 March 1938 of Austria and Germany?”
SUDETENLAND
The Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia was inhabited by 3.5 million Germans. In total, within the country there were 6.8 million Czechs, 2.7 million Slovaks, 700 thousand Hungarians, 470 thousand Ukrainians, 160 thousand Poles. Not surprisingly, Hitler developed a plan to destroy Czechoslovakia in two stages. 1) The seizure of “fraternal” Sudeten. 2) The destruction of the entire Czecho-Slovak state.
March 25 1938 – Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten Germans pushed for the idea of... what do you think? Correct: the demand for the restructuring of the Czecho-Slovak state, recognizing its territorial autonomy (read: federalization).
Just as Putin does not consider Ukraine to be a sovereign state, so did Hitler call Czechoslovakia an “ephermal, temporary artificial entity,” which is about to collapse. Members of Henlein’s German party had 55 seats in Czechoslovakia’s lower house of parliament, and 26 in the senate. In the German-language press crocodile tears were shed over the “miserable fate” of the Germans, “oppressed” by the Czechs, calls for the “liberation” of their “suffering” Sudeten brethren became widespread. Through the regions of Bavaria and Austria which adjoined the Sudetenland, in the direction of the Czecho-Slovak border, armoured and mechanized forces, artillery, infantry units, and reinforcements were moved. Of course, the Wehrmacht command denied the concentration of troops.
When the Czechoslovak government, in response to the German military provocation, announced partial mobilization, Hitler made the following demands:
• Proclamation of territorial autonomy of the Sudeten Germans;
• Conducting a plebiscite in Czechoslovakia regarding other national minorities;
• The neutralization (!) of Czechoslovakia based on the example of Switzerland, or the annexation of Sudeten territory to the Reich.
A month before Munich, Britain and France meekly agreed to these demands.
The government of Czechoslovakia made great concessions, particularly on the language issue, by adopting the so-called Minorities Statute. In addition to the Czech language, in government institutions and the courts it was allowed to use the languages of those minorities which constituted no less than 15% of the territory’s total population. Germans were allocated 28% of the positions in the civil service. These proposals were rejected and pushed for eviction at the request of the Sudeten Czech population. Detachments of the SS, SA, Gestapo, and a branch of the Nazi Party were created in the Sudetenland. Today’s immigrants from Crimea can imagine the tragedy of the Czechs, who had to leave their native homes and lands, where they were born.
At the party congress in Nuremberg in September 1938, Hitler said, “Providence did not create 7 million Czechs to repress 3.5 million Sudeten Germans! We will not allow the Sudeten Germans to perish!”
A few hours after this performance of the Fuhrer began an armed uprising in the Sudetenland. Mass demonstrations were accompanied by gunfire and violence, and everywhere were hung flags with the swastika.
The slogan was moving (and was repeated in Crimea in its Putin vs. Ukraine version): Lieber Hitler, mach uns frei von der Tschechoslovakei! – “Dear Hitler, free us from Czechoslovakia.”
An hour of shame and tragedy pierced the liberal-democratic Czechoslovakia – and at the same time it was an hour of shame for Britain and France, a grim prelude to the Second World War.
DANZIG (GDANSK)
The final act in the “peaceful” European tragedy was Hitler’s demand of Poland – to connect Danzig to the Reich. The program of the Nazi Party became ideologically based, written under the dictation of Hitler, “We demand the unification of all parts of Germany with the goal of creating a great German state. All people who have German blood flowing through their veins, even if they now live under Danish, Polish, Czech, French, or Italian rule, should be included in a single German Reich.” The methodology for realizing this program was simple: first push for demands of cultural and linguistic autonomy, then – territorial, the bounds within which began to operate local storm troopers – so-called self-defence units, subunits of the SA and SS. Hitler called German organizations abroad “the front line of the German struggle.” Addressing the German fifth column, he said, “You are the first representatives of our army. You must disguise our preparations for the attack.”
Already during the years of the Second World War, assessing the compromising policy of his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, regarding the appeasement of Germany, Winston Churchill wrote, “England needed to choose between war and shame, her ministers chose shame, only to soon get war.”
PUTIN AS A STUDENT OF HITLER
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble compared the annexation of Crimea to the seizure of the Sudetenland in 1938, which aroused the discontent of Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is understood, that knowing her “buddy Vlad” well, Merkel cannot compare him, corrupt billionaire, play-boy, cool, macho, and mediocre Chekist (KGB) of the Andropov era with a figure of giant ominous Satanic Teutonic proportions, who organized the Holocaust, spilled rivers of blood, and brought catastrophe upon Germany. Truly are these figures and their significance in history incomparable.
But diminishing today’s world leaders by comparing them to the 1940s does not mean that some of them are not quietly trying on Stalin’s overcoat or Hitler’s cape.
There is a hard logic in dictatorships, a common algorithm for aggression and the seizure of foreign territories, the unlawful redistribution of state borders and the destruction of the sovereignty of independent countries.
Putin - well on the path to building his own dictatorship in Russia, placed in front of himself the obsessive goal of restoring the Russian-Soviet Empire (or a caricatured, amputated version of it), proclaiming the right of the Kremlin to revise borders and unilaterally denounce international treaties and agreements - resembles Hitler, or, as the Russian writer Borys Sokolov clearly and succinctly stated, “Putin – is Hitler today” (Hrany. Ru. 25.03.2014).
Putin’s assertion that the Russian nation is “the most divided nation in the world” (!!) (why not Korea? – Y.S.), fully repeats Hitler’s rhetoric and creates a dangerous precedent for the Baltic states, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other countries, not to mention Ukraine, where a militant Russian minority can start (with the consent and help of the Kremlin) a war for “self-determination,” as we have seen happen in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Putin’s threats to “national traitors” (i.e. Russian opposition) repeats verbatim Hitler’s tirades regarding National verrater (National traitors) from his “Mein Kamf.”
Having broken down the whole system of European security, destroying the Westphalian, post-Yalta, and post-Helsinki world order built on the principle of the inviolability of state borders, Putin, like Hitler, opened Pandora’s Box – for both Europe and the world, and for Russia.
Amid the tumultuous global protests and Russia’s failed vote at the UN, when the General Assembly condemned Putin’s aggression with 100 votes to 11, in Moscow there was a movement to defend Hitler. It must be acknowledged what this is – a new word in the post-Soviet “hitlerism,” a more than convincing approving comparison between Putin’s gathering of “Russian” lands with Hitler.
Below is a quotation from the article “Our Gatherer of Lands” by the famous Ukraine and Georgia hater, Andranik Migranyan, now the head of the New York offices of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation (!), published in the newspaper “Izvestia” (3.04.2014) – an organ of “Gazprom” (that is, the Kremlin):
“It is necessary to distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939… While Hitler was occupied with gathering lands…and if he…was only renowned for having united Germany with Austria, the Sudetenland with Germany, Memel with Germany, all without a single drop of blood – practically finishing that which Bismarck had failed to do - and if Hitler had stopped at this, then he would have been remembered in the history of his country as a politician of the highest class… it is no secret that in the history of every country gatherers of lands figure in honourable, important positions in the national pantheon of heroes.”
I would like Mrs. Merkel and the whole German nation to read these words and think about what is happening today with Russia and its leader, who together with Hitler claims “a place of honour in the national pantheon of heroes.”
THE BEAST FROM THE ABYSS. MEMORIES FROM 2001
...In August 2001 I came from Canada to Kyiv for a few days to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. I accompanied the official Canadian representative for this holiday – the former Governor General (head of state), Canadian Ukrainian Ray Hnatyshyn.
The evening before the holidays I went out on the balcony, from which you could see part of Khreshchatyk [street] and Bessarabsky Square. The gentle pre-autumn twilight foreshadowed bright colours of a sunny day – and in these shadows one could clearly see a group of nine or ten men in black suits, who quietly moved up the middle of Khreshchatyk in the direction of Bessarabsky Square. In the centre of the group was a short man, accompanied by Viktor Chornomyrdin.
This was Putin.
There was something ominous in the way they walked (although at the time the former lieutenant colonel of the KGB had not yet revealed anything particularly significant about himself), slowly, masterly-like, looking over the main street of this “mother of Rus cities.”
The next day I again saw Putin on Independence Square, where he stood in the grand stand, attentively watching the course of the military parade and the festive, colourful Ukrainian concert on Khreshchatyk.
An ominous historical metaphor: Putin stood and walked where in February 2014 there were bloody battles in which insurgents fell, killed by the shooting of Putin’s fifth column.
This Beast from the Abyss was on the Maidan. He seeks to return. This “gatherer of lands” wants to take Maidan away from us, to take Ukraine away, to destroy our nation. He will not rest, he will not accept defeat. He fiercely hates us and wants to grind us away. We have no illusions – he is preparing for a new leap.
But let’s remember the words of Ivan Bohoslov, on which Hermann Rauschning referenced in his book, “The beast which you saw...must come from the abyss, and is headed to ruin.”
EPILOGUE (by the editor)
“He had been discussing the mastery of the masses, but propaganda meant the defeat of opponents. The two had one thing in common: both must eschew all discussion of reasons, all refutation of opinions – in short, there must be no debating or doubting.” (Hitler Speaks, 211)
“The instrument of terrorism was indispensable, less for its direct effects than for its undermining of the opposing will.” (Hitler Speaks, 211)
...as Putin is trying to demonstrate in Eastern Ukraine.
References:
Rauschning, Hermann. Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1939.
Rauschning, Hermann. The Beast from the Abyss. Trans. E. W. Dickes. London, Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd., 1941.
Translated from Ukrainian and edited for the English version by Kalyna Kardash, B.A., M.A. Researcher for the League of Ukrainian Canadians, Toronto, Canada.
