It’s the American way to make things about themselves. So it has been that the man who remains the most nefarious in modern history, even to this day, Adolf Hitler, has been the benchmark comparison used by Americans for what Trump embodies. This, of course, remains highly affronting to anyone who lived through Hitler’s wrath (especially the last handful of Holocaust survivors remaining, including, ahem, Roman Polanski). Say what you will about the Orange One, but he never rounded anyone up in death camps (and no, the detention centers at the border don’t exactly count as the same thing).
Hitler’s birth into a working class family, of course, immediately distinguishes him from Donaldo right out the gate. Financial circumstances aside, both would have fraught and contentious relationships with their patriarchs, seeming to be the automatic harbinger of cultivating a psychopath. Unlike Hitler, however, Trump would not fight against going in the family business, seeing it as a means of gaining Daddy’s approval (plus, what other “talent” did he have?). As for Hitler, it was with Daddy’s “sudden death” (maybe Adolf slipped him a bit of poison) that he found freedom in his choices, opting to go to art school on orphan’s funds and a bit of financial assistance from his mother. The problem was, art school didn’t want him, with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejecting him twice. That’s almost Rudy-level for a German (or Austrian, based on the geography of the time). By eighteen, his mother had died, and Hitler was left with few options due to his poor academic record. Thus, he lived a life of homelessness intermixed with erratic claims to being “bohemian” as he painted street landscapes.
The anti-Semitic rhetoric in Vienna was alive and well thanks to the increasing “Christian” paranoia about Eastern European Jews “infiltrating” “their” territory. In short, Hitler’s “brand” was a result of a confluence of “right place, right time”–just as it was for Trump. After a glorious eight years of peace and tranquility, it seemed there was a certain faction of Americans who still wanted to punish Obama for being a Black man in power. To them, it appeared to signal something sinister rather than natural. Trump, in their estimation, was a more than subconscious form of retribution. “Tipping the scales back” in favor of white power. While Hitler was motivated by his personal failures, Trump was still motivated by the idea of getting Daddy’s approval (and unlike Hitler, he’s far too narcissistic to acknowledge failure). But the fact that Frederick Trump was more diabolical in many ways should have signaled to him that this wasn’t a man capable of showing anything like affection or “approval.” The Trumps’ (formerly Drumpf) own ties to Germany also bring the Hitler comparisons to another peak, with Frederick himself being conceived in Bavaria, where Hitler spent his formative years, hence his famed accent. Fred’s father, Friedrich, would also, ironically, die as a result of the 1918 Spanish flu, some eerie portent of the Trumps and their devil-may-care relationship with pandemics.
While Hitler was stewing in the bitterness of Germany’s World War I defeat, Fred was stewing in the perceived “stab-in-the-back” against “native-born Protestant Americans” by “Roman Catholic police.” Again, irony, considering his son’s later alliance with the “men in blue.” This rage of Fred’s and others like him (read: Klansmen) turned into a KKK rally on Memorial Day in 1927, whereupon Fred was arrested. His Aryan agenda evidently needed to be calmed down with the rise of America’s involvement in WWII, with Fred subsequently denying any knowledge of how to speak German (he was well-versed) and feigning that the family was of Swedish ancestry (not that Sweden wouldn’t prove itself to be anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner over time).
While Hitler’s numerous parallels to Fred were happening in the same epoch, it was after Hitler’s time that old Donnie boy would start to resuscitate the Hitlerian tricks of the trade: demagoguery, scapegoating and the closest acceptable form of ethnic cleansing in America (policy-making). In some senses, however, Hitler’s behavior embodied more of a current Trumpian follower than that of Trump himself. After all, this was the man responsible for staging a failed coup on November 8, 1923 (ninety-three years before Trump’s “election”). That’s right, Hitler led the Nazis’ paramilitary outfit, the Sturmabteilung (SA), to the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall where political rallies were often held (hence the incident later being referred to as the Beer Hall Putsch). They were soon able to overtake police forces and an overnight standoff commenced. With this being an early indication of what was to come in terms of Nazi Party violence and force, it was a shame that after being tried and convicted of high treason, Hitler was released from prison after less than a year–ample time to write the manifesto that would further launch him into public favor, Mein Kampf. The striking similarities to Hitler using the sixteen Putschists who died as “blood martyrs” of the Nazi party also echo what the Trumpian/QAnon crew is doing with Ashli Babbitt’s death at the Capitol riots.
It was during Hitler’s brief flight from authorities after the failed coup that thoughts of suicide crept in. And certainly, the world would have been better for it. But no, Hitler persisted, coming out the victor as a result of the publicity the event generated for the Nazi Party. Trump’s own right-wing populist views would also garner plenty of free publicity based on “scandal factor” alone. The more outrageous and untruthful his statements, the more the media seemed to glom onto them. This, of course, turned out to be highly beneficial to Trump, and despite all his claims that the media was against him, it was the very thing that aided him in rising to political power. Historian Ian Kershaw once remarked of Hitler, “Never in history has such ruination—physical and moral—been associated with the name of one man.” That is, until Trump came along. But again, Trump did not commit even half the ignominious acts Hitler did. Indeed, is not actually motivated or shrewd enough to. It is, in the end, the followers he hath wrought that will be his legacy.
When Hitler killed himself in that bunker (one interpretation of the literal meaning of Hitler is “one who lives in a hut.” It’s not that far off from “one who lives in a bunker…” before offing themselves in shame and disgrace), many likened it to “a spell being broken.” As though Nazism was simply wiped clean from the country. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? For it seemed to reanimate in the form of the neo-Nazism that has come to roost many times over in America. And it’s very likely that whatever dormant political forces of the moment remain (still feeling slighted by what happened thanks to Trump’s repeated lies about the election being “stolen”), they will not stay underground forever. Just as it was after World War I in Germany, those made to eat shit will soon spit it right back out at the world tenfold.
Would that Trump was as self-hating as Hitler. But the Narcissistic Personality Disorder he harbors is quite real, and would never allow him to take his own life. Although both are men of “a certain age” (Trump now seventy-four and Hitler fifty-six at the time of his death), the Orange One is going to ride this wave called living until the bitter end. And one can’t avoid the thought that Florida might soon very well become its own country with Trump retreating to his Mar-a-Lago bunker. The difference being, he’s very capable of still continuing to try to “guide” his followers from that ensconcement. In other words, Hitler–even Hitler–had a breaking point when he knew when to say, “Uncle.” It’s not likely that Trump ever will. Call it… German perseverance (or, living in a time with the internet).
