Sixty years ago tomorrow gasoline fumes jolted Adolf Hitler and his new bride Eva as they exited their suite to walk a solemn line.\u00a0 Staff members shook hands with the mentally and physically shattered Fuehrer who was unable to speak.\u00a0 Eva took each man\u2019s hand and hugged the women, urging one to try to get away from Russian troops already advancing near the bunker in Berlin.\u00a0 The couple returned to their suite where Eva, never interested in life without the man who obsessed her, took cyanide and was followed in that act by her husband.\u00a0 A valet then entered and, as ordered, fired a bullet into Hitler\u2019s head not only to make sure but to try to convince the world he had died a soldier\u2019s death.\u00a0 His last deception would not work.\u00a0 Gasoline was scarce, the bodies burned slowly and, as Russian artillery fire intensified, they had to be abandoned, charred but unconsumed, in a shallow grave.\u00a0 The Russians were thus able to perform an autopsy on the last man who will ever conquer vast territories in the manner of Alexander and Napoleon.\u00a0 Atomic and nuclear weapons have permanently moderated even immoderate rulers of powerful nations.<\/p>\n
What, then, should be most noted about Hitler on the sixtieth anniversary of his death?\u00a0 Certainly, it is that he slaughtered millions of civilians, and was neither the first nor the last to do so.\u00a0 His name therefore echoes it could happen again, but it won\u2019t if unified nations respond wherever people are imperiled by serial killers who, by bizarre coincidence and obscene luck, have ended up running nations.\u00a0 Think less about oil and more about blood.\u00a0 Next time, intervene rapidly and build a democracy in Rwanda.<\/p>\n
There is another reason to remember history\u2019s most infamous man: it is called the Contra-Hitler Factor.\u00a0 When crises loom, ask what Hitler would have done, then do the opposite.\u00a0 What would Hitler have done about the massive migration of darker people from the South to Germany and other countries?\u00a0 He would have blamed them for every imaginable problem \u2013 especially those existing only in his mind \u2013 then rounded them up and killed them.\u00a0 Promised deportations would only have been sealed journeys to death camps.\u00a0 That\u2019s not going to happen in the democratic world where no leader dares, or even desires, to be like Hitler.<\/p>\n
What about undemocratic countries?\u00a0 What would Hitler do if he were the eternal leader of North Korea?\u00a0 It\u2019s impossible to imagine him having nuclear weapons without using them.\u00a0 That would be suicidal, but Adolf Hitler was a man who most of all craved self-destruction.\u00a0 The in-every-way diminutive Kim Jong-il is different.\u00a0 His greatest passion is cavorting in luxury while the North Korean people starve inside a national strait-jacket.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t going to attack anyone. \u00a0He just wants to show he could.<\/p>\n
What would Hitler do if he were Chinese?\u00a0 He\u2019d certainly take Taiwan by force if he couldn\u2019t get it free after a campaign of lies, threats, and military mobilizations.\u00a0 Then he\u2019d declare war on the United States, as he did in December 1941 despite a majority of his troops already being in a frozen bloodbath on the Eastern Front.\u00a0 The Chinese aren\u2019t going to respond like that.\u00a0 Of course, the Taiwanese aren\u2019t going to provoke them, as Hitler would if he were their leader, by declaring themselves forever independent.<\/p>\n
What would Hitler have done in Saddam Hussein\u2019s position?\u00a0 He too would\u2019ve battled Iran and used poison gas there as well as against the Kurds in Iraq, and doubtless would have invaded Kuwait.\u00a0 But instead of withdrawing in defeat in 1991, the Fuehrer would\u2019ve continued pointless resistance against a far larger and more destructive force than the one currently fighting in Iraq, and taken cyanide in a Baghdad bunker prior to being shot in the head by a dutiful valet.<\/p>\n
Editorial note: George Thomas Clark is the author of the biographical novel “Hitler Here,” which has been published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sixty years ago tomorrow gasoline fumes jolted Adolf Hitler and his new bride Eva as they exited their suite to walk a solemn line.\u00a0 Staff members shook hands with the mentally and physically shattered Fuehrer who was unable to speak.\u00a0 Eva took each man\u2019s hand and hugged the women, urging one to try to get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,38,19,20],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n