
Now that the election has finally concluded here in the United States, it is hard to neglect the similarities between the strategies that Donald Trump used to campaign for the presidency and the strategies that Adolf Hitler used when he was running for election in Germany in the 1930’s. I was able to analyze the similarities between the two using Kenneth Burke’s “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” and Ernst Lubitsch’s film To Be or Not to Be and other outside sources and articles. In Burke’s piece, he analyzes Hitler’s rise to power and explains how Hitler had the process of inspiring devotion down to a science. This provides a contrast to the depiction of Nazi soldiers in To Be or Not to Be where they are shown mostly as brainwashed puppets. Burke points out how Hitler preyed on the German peoples’ insecurities and promised to be a healer of sorts for the nation. It can be assumed that healing someone’s wounded pride would inspire devotion and Hitler inspired devotion in such a way that it seemed as though his subjects were mindless and would cater to his every whim. What I’d like to address is the fact that these people were not mindless as they are portrayed in Lubitsch’s film but instead they allowed themselves to be manipulated by a person that promised to simply make things better instead of taking steps to make things better themselves. Burke discusses how Hitler pitched himself as a sort of “medicine man” for a sick and suffering nation and how he convinced the German people that he was the person with the solutions to all of the country’s problems which I’d like to relate to current political figures such as Donald Trump (the President-elect here in the United States) and Rodrigo Duerte (newly elected president of the Philippines). These political figures gave no insight as to how they would solve the problems that their respective nation’s faced but instead played into the fears and prejudices of the people in their nation’s by blaming certain groups for their own problems and by shifting peoples’ prejudices towards one common enemy. This strategy is pointed out by Burke when he discusses how Hitler shifted the German peoples’ prejudice towards the Jews and unified them, behind him, against one common enemy. To Be or Not to Be shows the fear that many who are expected to be subservient to these leaders have about speaking out against said leaders when Earnhardt begs Tura not to tell Hitler that he had made fun of him. This is mirrored today as Republicans who disagree with Trump and his devout supporters are still for some reason unwilling to come out against the candidate for fear of political repercussions. The loyalty and fear inspired by Hitler, who proclaimed himself to be savior of Germany is demonstrated in both To Be or Not to Be and “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” and I hope to explain how that mixture of loyalty and fear has been be recreated today and seems to have caused people in the US and other nations to fall under that same spell that the German people fell under in the thirties and forties. 

One article that seems to mirror my concern is the Washington Post’s “The theory of political leadership that Donald Trump shares with Adolf Hitler”, written by Peter Ross Range. In this article, Range points out the interesting concept that both Trump and Hitler based their messages on trust. They both ask the people of their respective countries to trust them to fix their problems and they hint at the fact that they alone can fix whatever the problems might be. The concept of “trust” is what frightens me about the general state of our country. The fact that people have been convinced to hand their fate over to a person whose best reason for asking for it is “Trust me.” And “I can fix it.” is quite disconcerting. Ross says that this concept of trust led to each man gaining enough followers for them the claim that they alone could fix their nation’s problems which is where the real danger comes in. If people can be convinced that only one person could solve all of their problems, then complete control would eventually be handed to that person, as it was with Hitler. The prospect of complete control again being handed to another political figure at the head of a powerful nation (i.e. Donald Trump), even though we have an example to warn us, is what worries me and seems to worry Ross.

A frustrating thing about Trump winning over supporters, and in turn winning the presidency, while delivering messages filled with hate and “I alone can fix it” is the fact that we have Hitler to serve as an example of why not to elect people that speak that way. The fact that Trump maintained support while continuing to spew these messages has led me to the realization that people today are still able to be won over by hate filled speech. My view is supported by an article from CNN titled, “Philippines President likens himself to Hitler” by Euan McKirdy. The recently elected Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, stated that he aspired to do to drug addicts what Hitler did to Jews. "I'd be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me). You know my victims, I would like (them) to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition." said Duterte, alleging that the Philippines would be lucky to have a Hitler-like leader in charge to kill people that cause the country problems. According to McKirdy, Duterte has a history of making violent and offensive statements including “not being able to join the gang rape of an Australian missionary”, calling “both US President Obama and the US Ambassador to the Philippines a ‘son of a bitch,’”, and telling police that they can “kill drug dealers if they fight back”. Even after making this series of egregious statements, he was still elected and still followed by his people because he fueled their hate and said that he would solve all of their problems. The fact that someone could say such vile things and still be elected in this day and age worried me when thinking about Donald Trump and his chances of being elected to our Presidency, and it now terrifies me that he’s been elected. He too has made a series of offensive and outrageous statements unbecoming of a serious political candidate, yet he has been chosen as the future leader of the most powerful country in the world. 

Many of Trump’s prominent followers are highly “respected” and ranked officials within the Republican Party establishment. At the beginning of the election, many prominent Republicans paid no mind to Donald Trump, assuming that a more traditional Republican candidate would beat him to retain the nomination. Since he has won the nomination, this sentiment has evolved to the Republicans assuming that he would be defeated at the next stage. In New York Magazine’s “How Hitler’s Rise to Power Explains Why Republicans Accept Donald Trump” by Jonathan Chait, it is explained that, like I stated before, Trump has gained support because the leaders of his party didn’t truly think that he could win, so rather than support the enemy, they chose to support the assumed loser from their party assuming that there would be no problem because he would undoubtedly lose. According to Chait, this exactly mirrors the situation that transpired in Germany in the 1930’s when Hitler was running for the Chancellorship. The politicians of 1930 Germany saw Hitler as an outsider with no chance of winning so they did not dissuade his supporters. As Chait puts it, “German conservatives did not see Hitler as Hitler — they saw Hitler as Trump”. This quote is a perfect example of the mantra that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Because the Republican establishment acted irresponsibly, Trump was able to steamroll legitimate political opponents and win the presidency all while having sheepish Republican leaders halfheartedly backing him.

The most troubling aspect that Hitler and Trump share is their willingness to prey upon peoples’ fears in order to gain their support. Both Trump and Hitler won their respective elections playing into the insecurities of citizens in their nations. Burke highlights this strategy in his essay. Hitler took advantage of the embarrassment that the German people felt after the loss of the first World War and the fact that they feared that their country would never be respected again. Hitler made bloated promises to reclaim Germany’s former glory and said that the only way to do so was to elect him as chancellor and give him the power he needed to change things for the better. This exact situation can be mirrored today in the US in that people have a general sense that the United States is becoming weaker and Donald Trump took advantage of that with his “Make America Great Again” mission statement. There is no strategy offered to go along with his mission of making America great again yet the fact that he said he would do so was enough for the American public to elect him to the presidency just as Hitler was elected to his chancellorship. Both Hitler and Trump warned the people of their countries that things were terrible in their nations and without each of them, respectively, their countries would continue to trend in downward spirals, but with them their countries would reclaim their former glory. The sentiment that “we were the best before so we’re entitled to be the best again” that Hitler instilled in his followers and that Trump seems to have instilled in his is a dangerous one in that it creates a sense of entitlement among citizens and also creates a dangerous level of nationalism that breeds discrimination and intolerance. We saw exactly that happen in Germany in the thirties and forties and I fear that since we have elected a xenophobic extreme nationalist to office in Donald Trump, that it may also happen here in the near future.

Another thing that worries me about our country’s future is the fact that in the past, the world has been willing to attribute following an evil leader to “brainwashing”. This takes away all of the responsibility of the follower and shifts the blame completely to the immoral leader when in truth, the follower of a bad leader is just as at fault, if not more so, than the leader himself. In Ersnt Lubitsch’s film To Be or Not to Be, the Nazi soldiers are often portrayed as mindless zombies that follow every order that a commanding officer or Hitler (sometimes a Hitler imposter) gives to them. Though this may be a comical way to portray an enemy, it is a dangerous thought to put into the mind of the general public because it implies that the soldiers have no control over their actions when Hitler or a commanding Nazi officer tells them what to do. I fear that years from now, followers of Donald Trump will claim that they were “brainwashed” into supporting him once it is pointed out how terrible of a leader he was. The United States must instead take responsibility immediately for having elected someone that preaches hate. Instead of just going along with whatever he says and acting helpless, we as a society must combat his policies if we see something wrong with his leadership (which I assume we will). The German people were humiliated by Hitler’s xenophobia and intolerant leadership and many claimed that they were “just following orders” when referring to helping make Hitler’s plans a reality. I fear that when the time comes, people will play the role of helpless follower, as Nazi soldiers were portrayed in Lubitsch’s film, instead of standing up to Trump’s awful policies. I hold the opinion that every person has a choice, and every person knows when something is wrong. Lubitsch was completely wrong to suggest that there is such a thing as brainwashing because people can use that as an excuse to escape responsibility. The followers of Hitler knew what they were doing and were either too afraid to speak up or too evil to care and I hope that our citizens can be more brave and hold themselves to higher morals while Trump is president. 

Hitler inspired such passionate devotion from his followers because he had them convinced that he alone could offer the solutions to Germany’s problems and without him specifically, Germany was doomed to a permanent existence of mediocrity. In Burke’s essay “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” he refers to Hitler as a “medicine man” because he offered up ailments to a “sick” nation in pre-Nazi Germany. To gain support, Hitler pointed out flaws within the country and simply said he would solve every one of them. The exact “medicine man” strategy was used by Trump and he, like Hitler, won while offering little to no details about how he would fix the country’s ailments. What worries me about this is that it shows that people in the US either felt to helpless or were to lazy to enact their own change so they elected the person that offered to do everything for them. The dangerous thing about this is that to change everything, one would have to have complete control of the country (which Hitler was able to gain in Germany). It worries me that the same people that we desperate enough to elect Trump to the presidency would be willing to hand him more powers than he should be allotted in order for him to “get things done”. Hitler was able to convince Germany to hand him an absurd amount of power in their desperation and to those who say it wouldn’t happen again, I would point to the fact that the US was desperate enough to hand the presidency to a person that, like Hitler, ran on a platform of fear and hate, so why would they not be desperate enough to give him extra power once he’s in office? 

The similarities between Hitler and Trump’s campaign strategies are too apparent not to point out and as one who loves and studies history I feel as though it is my duty to point something like this out. There is an old saying that “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it” and by electing Donald Trump, a man who used the same tactics as Adolf Hitler to gain power, it seems like we might be on our way to repeating one of the worst mistakes made by a nation in the history of modern civilization. I’m not saying that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, but he used the same effective strategies to rise to power in his country that Hitler used to rise to power in his country. Both ran campaigns predicated on hate and xenophobia. They both convinced their followers that they alone could solve the problems of their countries, and they both directed the hate of the masses onto minority groups within their respective nations in order to create unity. Since we have elected someone with strategical similarities to Hitler to be our president, we must now make sure that he does not attempt to seize more power as Hitler did or commit atrocities such as Hitler did. We cannot be the soldiers from To Be or Not to Be, but instead well informed, and aware citizens ready to check the power of our government. Through Burke’s analysis of Hitler’s rise to power, it is obvious that these strategies still work on people today but we must hold ourselves to a higher moral standard then the people of Nazi Germany. Hopefully citizens of the United States will recognize the similarities between how Burke describes Hitler’s rise to power and how Donald Trump was able to rise to power and will use that information as a warning to keep an eye on our president-elect.  
