Putin and Hitler Parallel?

Putin and Hitler are similar in that both were tasked with a nationalistic revival of a damaged culture. But the nature of the damage and the circumstances of cultural revival for the two leaders are very different.

In the wake of punishing WWI reparations on Germany, Hitler, feeling that the "superior Aryan race" of Germans had been unscrupulously betrayed when "weak" German leaders acquiesced to the Armistice, unleashed his inner megalomanic. Initially, using "German people reunification" as his rationale, Hitler invaded the heavily German populated Sudetenland. But then, by later invading Poland, northern Europe, and Russia, exposing his true intent at world domination, he used lebensraum, rather than tribal consolidation, as his legitimating premise for taking territory.

Putin leads a dying nation, not weakened by war as was the case with Germany in WWI, but morally suppressed by eighty years of communist rule. 1930's Germany was like a powerful, but stalled locomotive, with the Western nations putting obstacles on the track (war reparations, debt repayments etc.) to keep it from moving forward. Russia today is culturally moribund. Half the Russian men are drunk at any given time and Russian population losses exceed one million a year. Putin, to revive the Russian culture he loves, sees the need to culturally defibrillate his dying nation. He does this by building a national consensus to revive Russia from its current torpor by consolidating "Russian" areas outside of current Russian boundaries. Ukraine, obviously, taking this viewpoint, with its food producing capacity, is a good place for Russia to start its Russian cultural revival. Unlike, Hitler, Putin has no global conquest aspirations. He has little interest in attacking nations where there is no historic Russian tribal presence. There is a question about the Baltic states where minority Russian populations exist (particularly Estonia), which are NATO members, but that's where a European led NATO has to step up and draw a hard red line. Also, unlike interwar Germany, Russia, today, does not have the economic and technological strength to mount a global threat beyond regional tribal consolidation.

US quasi support of Ukraine in its war against Russia provides enough dollars and material to sustain a protracted war of attrition but not enough support for Ukraine to win the war. This is a morally reprehensible stance. Under such circumstances, because of its historical ability to suffer and because of its larger size, Russia is likely to come out victorious, having gained much experience and enhanced knowledge about fighting a war... not to mention the likely Russian cultural revival that such a victory brings about. Better for the US to get behind a negotiated peace that gives Ukraine minus eastern provinces national integrity and doesn't let Putin get away with a major win, while diverting US efforts to US border control and to Taiwan, where national and economic interests mean something. While I do not support a US backed war of attrition, engaging in a war to win by ramping up support to Ukraine, including NATO/US advisors and troops on the ground, would be a better strategy than the immoral bloodletting strategy being pursued today.

Tribal consolidation seems to be the rage today as China continues to push forward to bring together what it considers to be greater China, with Taiwan being the principal target.