During the Nazi era,
Adolf Hitler was frequently compared to previous leaders including
Napoleon,
Philip of Macedon, and
Nebuchadnezzar. The comparers wanted to make Hitler understandable to their audiences by comparing him to known leaders, but according to historian
Gavriel Rosenfeld the comparisons obscured Hitler's
radical evil. When Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Hitler was compared to Napoleon by The Brooklyn Eagle and Middletown Times. The
Night of Long Knives was compared at the time to such events as the
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a 1572 massacre of
French Huguenots by
Catholics. The comparison between Hitler and Philip of Macedon was used by some American journalists who advocated the United States's
entry into World War II. Others felt that this did not go far enough and used other metaphors such as Nebuchadnezzar and
Tamerlane: Harold Denny of The New York Times visited
Buchenwald and later stated that "Tamerlane built his mountain of skulls ... Hitler’s horrors … dwarf all previous crimes".[2] In a public radio broadcast of 24 August 1941,
Winston Churchill compared Nazi war crimes in the Soviet Union to the
Mongol invasion of Europe, saying "There has never [since] been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale."[3]
Nazism has come to be a metaphor for evil, according to academic Brian Johnson, leading to Nazi comparisons.[4] The
Anti-Defamation League suggested that the Nazi era had become the "most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong."[5] Rosenfeld noted that Hitler "gained immortality as a historical analogy" and that he became:[2]
... a hegemonic historical analogy. He did not so much join the ranks of earlier historical symbols of evil as render them unusable. Indeed, perhaps because Western observers became convinced that wartime analogies had underestimated the Nazi dictator’s radicalism, they began to employ Hitler as the baseline for evaluating all new threats.
Legal issues
According to the
ACLU, calling someone a Nazi is protected
free speech under the
First Amendment to the
United States Constitution.[6] In 2008, British radio presenter
Jon Gaunt called a guest a Nazi on a BBC radio, for which he was fired. An
Ofcom complaint against
TalkSport, his employer, was upheld by the United Kingdom
High Court of Justice in 2010.[7][8] In 2019, the Ukrainian
S14 group won a
defamation suit against
Hromadske, a newspaper which had labeled them neo-Nazi, despite such a characterization having been used by
Reuters and The Washington Post.[9] In Israel, a law was proposed in 2014 that would make it illegal to call someone a Nazi or use symbols associated with the Holocaust (such as striped clothing or
yellow stars), in order to respect Holocaust survivors.[10]
Fallacies
Reductio ad Hitlerum, first coined in 1951 by
Leo Strauss, is a
logical fallacy which discounts an idea because it was promoted by Hitler or Nazis.[11]Godwin's law, coined in 1990 by
Mike Godwin, asserts that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".[12] A related convention is "Whoever mentions Hitler first, loses the argument."[5][13][14] However, Godwin has said that not all Nazi comparisons are invalid.[15][16]
Several individuals and groups have drawn direct comparisons between
animal cruelty and
the Holocaust. The analogies began soon after the end of
World War II, when literary figures, many of them
Holocaust survivors, Jewish or both, began to draw parallels between the treatment of animals by humans and the treatments of prisoners in Nazi death camps. The Letter Writer, a 1968 short story by
Isaac Bashevis Singer, is a literary work often cited as the seminal use of the analogy.[17] The comparison has been criticized by organizations that campaign against
antisemitism, including the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, particularly since 2006, when
PETA began to make heavy use of the analogy as part of campaigns for improved animal welfare.[18]
Public health measures adopted since World War II in order to reduce smoking have been compared with
anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany, which is considered by proponents of anti-smoking measures to be a fallacious reductio ad Hitlerum which often exaggerates how much the Nazis actually opposed smoking.[19][20] Historian of science
Robert N. Proctor speculates that Nazi associations "forestall[ed] the development of effective anti-tobacco measures by several decades".[21]
Bioethics
According to an editorial by
Arthur Caplan in Science,
bioethics questions including "stem cell research, end-of-life care, the conduct of clinical trials in poor nations, abortion, embryo research, animal experimentation, genetic testing, or human experimentation involving vulnerable populations" are often compared to
Nazi eugenics and
Nazi human experimentation. According to Caplan, the Nazi analogy has the potential to shut down debate and its capricious use is unethical.[22] Similar arguments were made by
Nat Hentoff in 1988, writing for The Hastings Center Report.[23]
While qualified comparisons between
Hitler's rise to power and the victory of
Donald Trump in the
2016 United States presidential election have been made by some historians,[34][35]NeverTrump Republicans, and Democrats,[36] the comparison is opposed by other scholars and commentators who cite reasons such as Trump lacking a coherent ideology, not supporting a dictatorship or political violence, and his rejection of interventionist foreign policy.[37] According to Rosenfeld's research, the frequency of comparisons between Trump and Hitler in the media peaked in 2017 and the number of internet searches for "Trump and Hitler" has also decreased from a high point between mid-2015 and mid-2017.[38]
Whether comparisons between
Israel and Nazi Germany are intrinsically antisemitic is disputed.[50] The Jewish
Anti-Defamation League considers the comparison to be inaccurate and antisemitic,[51] and is part of the
Working Definition of Antisemitism.[52] However, some Holocaust survivors have made that comparison themselves, mirroring their experiences to those of Palestinians.[53]
LGBT issues
The
AIDS–Holocaust metaphor can be controversial.[54] While
Susan Sontag said that "It's wrong to compare a situation in which there was real culpability to one in which there is none", it is also the case that homophobic views resulted in dismissal of the suggestion of research and treatment being supported, severely exacerbating the epidemic.[55][56]
In 2017,
Patriarch Kirill, the highest authority in the
Russian Orthodox Church, compared
same-sex marriage to Nazism because in his opinion both were a threat to traditional family.[57] In 2019,
Pope Francis criticized politicians who lash out at homosexuals,
Romani people, and Jews, saying that it reminded him of Adolf Hitler's speeches in the 1930s.[58]
The term "second Holocaust" is used for perceived threats to the State of Israel, Jews, and Jewish life.[67] In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said "Iran wants a second Holocaust" and to "destroy another six million plus Jews", after his Iranian counterpart described Israel as a "malignant cancerous tumor".[68] In 2019, Israeli education minister
Rafi Peretz compared
Jewish intermarriage to a "second Holocaust".[69]
Various historians and other authors have carried out a comparison of
Nazism and
Stalinism, with particular consideration to the similarities and differences between the two ideologies and
political systems, the relationship between the two
regimes, and why both came to prominence simultaneously. During the 20th century, comparisons of Nazism and Stalinism were made on
totalitarianism,
ideology, and
personality cult. Both regimes were seen in contrast to the
liberal democratic Western world, emphasising the similarities between the two.[70]
Comparisons have been made between Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler especially during the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
Wealth
In 2014, venture capitalist and billionaire
Thomas Perkins wrote to The Wall Street Journal to compare what he called "the progressive war on the American
one percent" to what Jews faced during Kristallnacht. According to Jordan Weissmann, writing in The Atlantic, this is "the worst historical analogy you will read for a long, long time".[71][72] Perkins was also criticized on Twitter, with The New York Times journalist
Steven Greenhouse writing, "As someone who lost numerous relatives to the Nazi gas chambers, I find statements like this revolting & inexplicable".[71] Perkins later apologized for the comparison.[73]
Criticism
According to a press release of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Careless Holocaust analogies may demonize, demean, and intimidate their targets."[74]Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that "misplaced comparisons trivialise this unique tragedy in human history... particularly when public figures invoke the Holocaust in an effort to score political points."[5]
In 2017, the German journalist
Pieke Biermann argued that Nazi comparisons were undergoing a process akin to
inflation due to their increased and inappropriate use.[75]
Amanda Moorghen, a researcher for the
English Speaking Union, said that Nazi comparisons were not often persuasive: "Wielding accusations of
fascism as an insult doesn't help to get your audience on side - instead, you raise the stakes of the debate, forcing a polarisation between 'good' and 'evil' into a discussion that may have reasonable positions on both sides." Instead, she recommended criticizing the opponent's argument directly.[5]
^Hentoff, Nat; Callahan, Daniel; Crum, Gary E.; Cohen, Cynthia B. (1988). "Contested Terrain: The Nazi Analogy in Bioethics". The Hastings Center Report. 18 (4): 29–33.
doi:
10.2307/3563233.
ISSN0093-0334.
JSTOR3563233.
PMID3065286.
^Droumpouki, Anna Maria (2013). "Trivialization of World War Two and Shoah in Greece: Uses, Misuses and Analogies in Light of the Current Debt Crisis". Journal of Contemporary European Studies. 21 (2): 191.
doi:
10.1080/14782804.2013.815463.
S2CID145093418.
^Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (9 January 2019). Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization. Indiana University Press. p. 175-178, 186.
ISBN978-0-253-03872-2
^"Response To Common Inaccuracy: Israel Acts Like Nazis". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved 28 April 2020. To make such a comparison constitutes blatant hostility toward Jews, Jewish history and the legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel.
^"Corbyn apologises over event where Israel was compared to Nazis". The Guardian. The main talk at the event, called Never Again for Anyone – Auschwitz to Gaza, was given by Hajo Meyer, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He repeatedly compared Israeli action in Gaza to the mass killing of Jewish people in the Holocaust.
^Stein, Arlene (2016). "Whose Memories? Whose Victimhood? Contests for the Holocaust Frame in Recent Social Movement Discourse". Sociological Perspectives. 41 (3): 522.
doi:
10.2307/1389562.
JSTOR1389562.
S2CID147317075.
Rosenfeld, Gavriel (2019). The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN978-1-108-49749-7.
Further reading
Adam, Heribert (1997). "The Nazis of Africa: Apartheid as Holocaust?". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 31 (2): 364–370.
doi:
10.2307/486185.
ISSN0008-3968.
JSTOR486185.
Bourdon, Jerome (August 2015). "Outrageous, inescapable? Debating historical analogies in the coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict". Discourse & Communication. 9 (4): 407–422.
doi:
10.1177/1750481315576835.
ISSN1750-4813.
S2CID145056540.
Smeekes, Anouk; Van Acker, Kaat; Verkuyten, Maykel; Vanbeselaere, Norbert (14 November 2013). "The legacy of Nazism: Historical analogies and support for the far right". Social Influence. 9 (4): 300–317.
doi:
10.1080/15534510.2013.855141.
S2CID145131946.