Hillary Clinton is only the highest profile figure to compare Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine to Hitler's expansionist policies prior to World War II. This week, as The Washington Post helpfully lists, we’ve heard other versions of the Hitler analogy from John McCain, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Garry Kasparov, and many others. As Nazi analogies go, this one is not as absurd as, say, those spouted by Jonah Goldberg and Tom Perkins. Putin’s declaration that “Russia reserves the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers” living in Ukraine is similar to Hitler’s justification for his incursions into Czechoslovakia and Poland, ostensibly to liberate German-speakers in those countries. Saying so shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed as another instance of Godwin’s Law.
In practice, however, Nazi comparisons are unhelpful.
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