In the ongoing discussion of how to end the Russo-Ukrainian war, some observers have compared Russian president Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, and Russia to Nazi Germany. Such comparisons are so obviously inflammatory that many people reject them out of hand. For all his aggressive warmaking, they argue, Putin is not out to conquer the world — only those territories he believes belong to Russia. And while he continues to kill Ukrainians, he does not espouse a racist ideology.
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And yet, such obvious differences between Putin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany obscure some similarities that provide a key to the nature of the problem, as well as to its possible solution.
These similarities are both ideological and military. Like Hitler, Putin is an extreme nationalist. Like Hitler, he believes that his nation has lost its former greatness through a series of historic wrongs inflicted by the powerful nations of the West. Hitler blamed democrats, socialists, and Jews for Germany’s descent from the great empire of Bismarck to the defeated, weakened, and truncated Weimar Republic. Putin mourns Russia’s loss of imperial territories after the 1917 Revolution. And he blames the West for reducing the vast and powerful USSR to a weakened Russian Federation. Like Hitler, he wants to make his country great again — at the expense of its neighbors. And like Hitler, he knows who stands in the way. For Hitler it was the Jews. For Putin, it is the Ukrainians.
The final element is ideological reform. Germany underwent de-Nazification…. Russians will have to de-Putinize.
Both men set forth their ideas in print. Hitler’s My Struggle (Mein Kampf) was published a century ago. Putin’s essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians came out in July 2021 and was later issued as a book. While Hitler argued that Germany needed to expand to give its people “living space,” Putin claims that the Russians are the rightful heirs to a vast “Russian world” which the West has long sought to divide and conquer by inventing fake nations like Ukraine. Hitler’s tract was a prelude to World War II and the Holocaust. Putin’s was an overture to the February 2022 intensification of the war he had begun eight years before. It was followed in April of that year by Timofei Sergeitsev’s chilling diatribe “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine,” published by the state news agency RIA Novosti. It called for destruction of both the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian national identity. Its publication coincided with the discovery of over four hundred bodies of civilian victims of the Russian occupation in Bucha near Kyiv. Deliberate targeting of the civilian population has continued ever since. Some observers concluded that Sergeitsev’s article, like Mein Kampf, was a preamble to genocide.
In 21st-century Russia, as in 1930s Germany, the ideological preparation of nationalist propaganda, militarism, and youth indoctrination was accompanied by a build-up of military capacity. In both cases, this made possible a series of annexations. Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria in 1938-39 before attacking Poland with a blitzkrieg in 1939. Russia occupied a part of Moldova in 1991-92 and of Georgia in 2008, before seizing Ukraine’s Crimea and part of the Donbas in 2014, then attempting a blitzkrieg against the country’s capital in 2022.
But these military and ideological parallels also suggest a solution — one which we desperately need to stave off yet another world war. For the solution to the Russian problem is basically the same as was that of the German problem. It comprises four principal elements necessary for peace.
The first is defeating the aggressor. Those who balk at this should ask themselves whether a peace deal with Hitler would have been advisable in, say, 1939, or 1941, or even 1944. True, that was before the atom bomb. But military defeat of Russia does not require nuclear war. Nor does it necessitate invading Russian territory. The U.S. lost in Vietnam — and the USSR in Afghanistan — without either scenario.
The key to victory in modern industrialized warfare is logistics. The Wehrmacht fought well, but it ran out of fuel. Today Russia, with its hordes of volunteers, convicts, and mercenaries, soon to be joined by a mass of draftees, can keep fighting as long as it has money and materiel. While Ukraine fights back, the West can best defeat Russia by seizing assets, blocking oil and gas exports, and cutting off military technology and supplies.
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How can Americans contribute to this effort? The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which passed the Senate and which Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas) introduced in the House with bipartisan support on August 10 as HR 10076, is one example. Democrats who opposed the bill argued that it increases the president’s power to erect tariffs. But this consideration is outweighed by the urgency of ending a disastrous war that threatens Europe.
Those who fear that military defeat would dangerously destabilize Russia should remember that its defeat in the Crimean War prompted the reforms of the 1860s and 1870s, while the liberalization after 1905 followed Russia’s failed war against Japan. Only three years after its defeat in Afghanistan in 1988, the USSR peacefully abandoned communism and separated into its constituent states.
The second element of peace is regime change. This does not, of course, mean a dramatic Special Forces raid on the Kremlin. Only the Russians can change their regime. This should not involve foreign intervention and occupation, as in postwar Germany and Austria. That would only feed traditional Russian paranoia. Nor would complex border adjustments and forced population transfers be necessary: a return to the internationally recognized borders of 1991 would suffice. Regime change would, however, require the participation of Russian political exiles and domestic dissidents, who could assume power in a peaceful and orderly manner. Postwar Germans were able to elect non-Nazi politicians of integrity and ability. If they wish to become once again a respected nation, Russians must do the same.
The third element of peace is justice. Prisoners of war must be returned, reparations paid, and kidnapped children brought home. An international tribunal, similar to Nuremberg, should prosecute the crime of aggressive warmaking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The final element is ideological reform. Germany underwent de-Nazification. Fascist ideology was thoroughly discredited. Similarly, the Russians will have to de-Putinize. The “Russian world” ideology must be exposed as a pseudo-historical fraud that made Russia a pariah among civilized nations. That will take a lot of soul-searching.
This does not mean, however, that the West should impose its ideas of government on a country with very different political traditions. How the peoples of the Russian Federation choose to govern themselves is their business. But how Russia behaves in the international forum is a matter of concern to all nations. If you want a seat at the table, you need to mind your manners. Russia will therefore have to renounce its tradition of expansion and imperialism — much as Germany had to renounce Prussian militarism, racial superiority, and Lebensraum.
If the problems of 1940s Germany and 2020s Russia run parallel along with their solutions, would the results also be similar? Germany has become a peaceful and responsible member of the international community. Russia will have to do the same. Peace requires nothing less.
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