Back during the Bush administration’s marketing of the Iraq war, a recurring argument was that Saddam was the new Hitler. Ignoring his terrifying threat to world peace, Bush said in one 2002 speech, would repeat the mistake Europe made when it tried to appease the Fuhrer by allowing him to conquer just a little bit of Europe.
As it turned out of course, Saddam, loathsome and evil though he was, was no Hitler, just one more malevolent despot not much different than the tyrants in Myanmar or the former Yugoslavia and about as big a threat.
Now we have Norman Podhoretz, Rudy Giulani’s foreign policy adviser, claiming that it’s Iran that represents the Nazi threat and that countries and parties that don’t think we should invade are “comparable to the denial in the early ’30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough.”
In the first place, Podhoretz, like his fellow warmongers, was wrong across the board about the threat Saddam posed, about how brilliantly the occupation was going and pretty much everything. I’m strangely disinclined to believe he’s become any smarter.
In the second place, the assumption that the only alternative to World War II and the Holocaust was regime change is just wrong. Everything I’ve read about the rise of the Nazis points out how big a role the end of World War I played: The other European nations insisted on levying crushing reparations and other restrictions on the post-war German government, leaving it with an unstable economy and a sense of persecution, both of which fed into the growth of the Nazis.
Maybe a better draft of the Treaty of Versailles would have left Germany some sort of stable government and Hitler would have remained a mediocre painter all his life. Maybe not. But Podhoretz’ enthusiasm for another war doesn’t mean that’s the best solution to our problems with Iran.

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