I’ve been trying to keep up with the news out of the Ukraine and Russia but as with any conflict news reports change depending on who’s doing the reporting. The bottom line for me is that Putin has been using many of the tools used against the Russian people by Germany in World War II. Everyone recalls Hitler’s move into Poland by flooding the airwaves with propaganda claiming the Poles were acting against the German people’s best interests. Now I hear that Putin has been beating the old Nazi drum, claiming the Ukraine is a Nazi regime and must be stopped. As I’ve said in previous posts, I think Putin is living in a World War II fantasy land. If he’s a student of Russian history like I assume he is, has he forgotten what happened to Germany when they attacked Russian in World War II. All the games of Hitler’s regime accomplished only one thing, they all ended up dead. An intelligent man should learn from the past, not repeat the past. Here are a few quotes from the World War II era to explain it better.

• “A modern dictator with the resources of science at his disposal can easily lead the public on from day to day, destroying all persistency of thought and aim, so that memory is blurred by the multiplicity of daily news and judgment baffled by its perversion.” Winston Churchill

• “Propaganda has only one object: to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers the same is good, every means that hinders it is bad,” Joseph Goebbels

• “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.” Adolf Hitler

• “The propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator operates with the living (spoken) word.” Lenin

• “In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, the masses more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one.” Adolf Hitler

THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT?