MARCH 8, 2014

     Is Vladimir Putin much like Adolf Hitler?  I don't think that ever occurred to me until I saw that Putin liked to be seen bare-chested and macho.  I don't know that Hitler did, but it does suggest that both men like glory, military glamor - strutting and all that.

     Hitler cleverly invaded, one at a time, a series of countries his Germany could conquer--Holland, France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Poland and so forth.  The list is long – too long.  By the time he invaded the Soviet Union he'd lost that perspective or simply gone bananas or something.   Russia was much vaster than Germany in area and population.  There was no way a small state like Hitler's could compete with it.

     Now here's Putin.  Can his Russia conquer Ukraine?  Probably. The rest of Europe if we and they unite against him?  Probably not.

     The great mistake, as Hitler's early victims proved, would be to let him get started.