Jonah Goldberg offers a most insightful perspective on President Vladimir Putin’s disturbed rationalization for Russia’s invasion of a former Soviet “republic” (“Putin trashes democracy, yet pretends his Ukraine actions are democratic,” Nov. 3).

We need to add that months ago Putin took offense at being compared with Adolf Hitler. But look at the similarities.

In the 1930s, still seething at the beating Germany had taken in World War I and in the terms of the armistice, Hitler took advantage of a docile West to ready his country for domination of Europe. Putin has taken advantage of a West preoccupied by COVID and immigration concerns to set his sights on Ukraine.

Hitler claimed the need for “Lebensraum” or “living space,” but actually sought the oil and other natural resources to Germany’s east. Putin, already having latched on to the Crimea (the West’s fault for its lack of a decisive response), covets eastern Ukraine’s industries and the country’s fertile agricultural heartland.

Hitler claimed, falsely, that the German people in the Czech Sudetenland were oppressed and needed liberation. Putin has made the same claims, unverified, about the Russian-speaking citizens of east Ukraine. The Fuhrer also stated that Austria, a German-speaking nation, was an extension of Germany, and the Austrians put up no struggle when the Nazis marched in. Likewise, Putin claimed Ukraine as historically part of Russia, although Ukrainians speak an entirely different language — and the Russians never expected such resistance as they have met there.

Hitler needed a false-flag ploy to justify Germany’s onslaught into Poland in1939, triggering World War II. Groundlessly, Putin claimed provocations by Ukraine on the Russian border to begin the Russian invasion last February.

Hitler needed scapegoats to blame for Germany’s sagging economy and the so-called “corruption” of Germany, Russia and Western nations: the Jews and how they were infecting these nations. Putin’s scapegoats, on the other hand, are the non-existent drug addicts and neo-Nazis who supposedly govern Ukraine who, strangely enough, have been imbued with the West’s democratic ideas. (Can the Russian people really be buying this?)

Hitler’s army thought nothing of not only of smashing the enemy’s schools, hospitals and public buildings but of murdering its civilians. Putin’s forces bring terror through torture and execution of Ukrainians, both young and old, when these citizens cannot point out the so-called Nazis among them.

A desperate Nazi regime resorted to V-2 rockets as final instruments of terror against Great Britain. A desperate Putin’s forces now unleash ballistic missiles against non-military targets, even housing complexes and train stations to bring Ukraine into submission.

Russia has, over the past nine months, dragged Europe and the world back nearly a century to the eve of a world war. Putin’s threats about the nuclear option — and he has a preponderance of these missiles — bring an even more sobering dimension to the situation. Our NATO membership should give Western democracies some comfort — in a conventional war. But it’s cold comfort if an unhinged Russian dictator begins to lob atomic weapons into Ukraine. How best to respond?

We can’t learn from history if we haven’t been taught it. What you just read is a bare review of two brutal tyrants who have wielded power over the last century toward their own evil ends. One caused a world war, and the other has dictated events that could spark another. Disturbingly, many Americans are so caught up with other more immediate concerns that they are unaware of international risks, or believe those risks have no bearing on their lives. Such was the case of most Americans in 1940 before we were jolted into the world war.

Our planet has grown even smaller over the last century. Like climate change, international events impact America and any of us can have our say about them. And we should because we may offer a new insight that changes the opinion of others. As John Adams said two centuries ago, “Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.” To that I’d only add, watch the news, too.

— Bruce R. Knauff, Towson