There's another controversy about whether former President Donald Trump praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in private. In a New York Times interview published Tuesday, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelley claimed that Trump said, "Hitler did some good things." The same day, The Atlantic reported that Trump said, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," citing anonymous sources. Trump's campaign has denied both reports. These allegations, which have come up before, fit a liberal argument that Trump is a dangerous would-be dictator in the making.
Whether or not the specific reports are true, the discussion often misses an important historical fact. A large part of the Nazi political program was about revenge for losing a past war. Germany and its allies not only turned their guns on their own people, but focused heavily on military glory through conquest. Anyone concerned with the danger of fascism today has to understand the role that militarism played back then.
