Interviewing Hitler about Genocide

by An American Prosecutor

I walk into his cell and say, “Don’t worry, you’ll be treated as fairly today as your Nazi colleagues were at the Nuremberg trials.”

Hitler scowls at me and ignores my extended hand.

“Would you prefer a prompt return to what you’ve long been, charred dust buried in an isolated Russian field.”

“Ja,” he says, “send me back. I don’t want to talk to you or anyone else.”

“I said you’d be treated humanely, not that you have the option to remain silent. You’ve been briefly reconstituted for historical purposes, so remember, you’re no longer the Fuehrer.”

“If I were, the Gestapo would strangle you with piano wire hanging from a meat hook,” he says, jabbing his index finger at a barren wall.

I motion toward a chair he ignores until I order, “Sit down,” and we face each other across a small table. “Why do you think you’re so hateful and aggressive?”

“Like your leaders today, all over the world, I fought to protect my country and our racial integrity. That’s a necessary kind of hatred.”

“You went far beyond anyone before or since.”

Scoffing, he says, “Genghis Khan would disagree about that. Do you think Stalin was a gentle man? How about Mao Zedong? His Great Leap Forward led to more starvation than anything Stalin did.”

“Stalin was a monster, indeed. Why are you even more hated than he is?”

“Who says I am?”

“Damn near everyone.”

“For your edification, I’m going to quote my traitorous comrade Hermann Goering who at Nuremberg said, ‘The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused.’ If my generals and the Jews hadn’t betrayed me, I’d have conquered all of Europe and much of Asia and been celebrated as the greatest man in history.”

I examine the shriveled face and body of a vanquished conqueror and ask, “What do you think of nuclear weapons? They could blow up Nazi Germany in a single day.”

“Give me those miracle weapons, and my enemies wouldn’t survive until lunchtime.”

Peering into his luminous blue eyes, I say, “Can you imagine Hitler with nukes? You probably could’ve had them, too, but were too primitive and racist to let Jewish physicists in Germany live freely and do their work. But you rejected ‘Jewish physics.’ Do you regret that decision?”

“No. I only regret not having nuclear weapons.”

“But history shows nuclear weapons in 1945 could not have been developed without the brilliance of ‘Jewish physicists.’”

Hitler, top hand quaking on the other in his lap, says, “Ach, that was my only weakness. I couldn’t read the future.”

“Today, you’ll have another chance to look into the future as well as the past. You sent tens of millions to their deaths. I hope they’ve found some peace. Do you enjoy the hereafter?”

“When I’m dead, I enjoy eternal sleep, but when I wake I’m faced with a kidnapper like you who no doubt will ask more unpleasant questions.”

“What do you think of Donald Trump?”

“I much prefer him to Roosevelt. I think Teutonic Trump would have been a valuable member of my regime.”

“Why?” I ask.

“He wants to remove undesirables like Arabs and Latinos and Africans.”

“If he’d lived in your era, do you think he would’ve resorted to extreme violence in the Hitler style.”

“Of course. But it’s always a mistake to blame one man – like Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or myself – and say he’s the singular embodiment of evil. Evil exists everywhere. And at all times there are people who, given the power, would expel or annihilate their racial enemies. It’s their duty to do so.”

I’m silent several seconds before I ask, “Do you think that Benjamin Netanyahu is a killer like you and Stalin, for example?”

“Obviously, he’d murder or evict every Palestinian in Gaza if he could, and he’d do the same in the West Bank and southern Lebanon and parts of Syria. And he’d kill all the Iranians since they’d do the same to the Israelis if they had the chance. And someday they might. That’s why Netanyahu was obsessed with leading insipid Trump into war.”

“It sounds like you’re saying Netanyahu was to Trump as you were to Mussolini.”

“I’m telling you more than that. In 1830 your President Andrew Jackson herded Indians from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River and thousands of savages died. My duty was similar to Jackson’s. We had to build our nations by cleansing future living spaces. You surely know we modeled our concentration camps after your Indian reservations. Sometimes I publicly reminded Roosevelt of that.”

“I denounce what whites in the United States did to the Native Americans.”

Hitler lifts a wavering hand and aims all five digits at me as he says, “And do you denounce enslaving Africans and treating them as property.”

“I certainly do.”

“I would’ve supported slavery had I lived in your antebellum South.”

“I’m glad you don’t deny that.”

“Why would I? If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can own slaves, why can’t Adolf Hitler?”

“Who do you think are the most bloodthirsty Americans since you died on April thirtieth, 1945?”

“Harry Truman because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Lyndon Johnson due to Vietnam, and George W. Bush because of Iraq.”

“I just can’t see any of them being as bad as you.”

“The people they murdered weren’t white,” Hitler says. “My enemies were. That’s the essential difference.”

Hitler Here on Amazon