courtesy of washingtonpost.com

There’s no question that the Russian invasion of Crimea has been an extreme turn of events.

But how would you say it compares to Hitler’s aggressive expansions in 1930s Europe?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and early frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, thinks the comparison is valid. Speaking in Los Angeles Tuesday night, Clinton said:

Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s. All the… ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.

Regardless of the appropriateness of the comparison between Putin and Hitler, it seems to come from a long tradition of American leaders comparing foreign rivals to Nazi Germany, as the Washington Post documented.

President Johnson on Vietnam:

Nor would surrender in Vietnam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.

President Clinton on Yugoslavia:

What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? How many people’s lives might have been saved?

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Iraq:

Think of the prelude to World War II. Think of all the countries that said, ‘Well, we don’t have enough evidence.’ Mein Kampf’ has been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. Maybe he won’t attack. Maybe he won’t do this or that. There were millions of people dead because of the miscalculations.

President Obama on Syria:

I’m not drawing an analogy to World War II, other than to say when London was getting bombed, it was profoundly unpopular, both in Congress and around the country, to help the British. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Do you think the current situation is reminiscent of the 1930s? Or are we suffering from a nauseating number of Nazi comparisons?