On November 5, 2024, Americans faced a monumental choice: Save their democracy by electing Vice President Kamala Harris, or speed its destruction by re-electing former President Donald Trump.
They chose Trump—and democracy’s destruction.
This despite:
- His egomania and vindictiveness;
- His 34 criminal convictions for falsifying business records;
- His plans to gut the American healthcare system; and
- His having tried to violently overturn a legitimate Presidential election.
Eight years before the 2024 election, liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields and conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks had reached some disturbingly similar conclusions about the character of Trump, then the Republican Presidential front-runner.
They did so on the March 25, 2016 edition of The PBS Newshour, to review the week’s major political events.
Mark Shields and David Brooks
Eerily, their conclusions about Trump echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about the character of German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Heinz Guderian
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-139-1112-17 / Knobloch, Ludwig / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Moderator Judy Woodruff opened the Newshour discussion by alluding to the blood feud then raging between Trump and his fellow Republican, Texas United States Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Both were ruthlessly seeking their party’s Presidential nomination.
Cruz accused Trump of being behind a recent National Enquirer story charging him with having a series of extramarital affairs.
An anti-Trump Super PAC posted on Facebook a photo of a scantily-clad Melania Trump–-his wife. The photo had been taken 16 years ago when, as a model, she posed for British GQ.
Its publication came just ahead of the primary caucuses in sexually conservative Utah, which Cruz won.
Trump quickly responded on Twitter, accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the photo, warning Cruz: “Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”
Cruz struck back, defending his wife, Heidi, and calling Trump a coward. The next day, Trump retweeted an unflattering image of Mrs. Cruz.
Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz
This “war of the wives” had cost Trump dearly in his standing with American women. In March, 2016, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 64% of women felt highly unfavorably disposed toward him.
DAVID BROOKS: The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat.
Donald Trump
It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again.
But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his—even his misogyny is a childish misogyny….
He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: As Hitler’s self-confidence grew, and as his power became more firmly established both inside and outside Germany, he became overbearing and arrogant. Everyone appeared to him unimportant compared to himself.
Previously, Hitler had been open to practical considerations, and willing to discuss matters with others. But now he became increasingly autocratic.
Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields if the uproar over Donald Trump’s disdain for women could really hurt his candidacy.
MARK SHIELDS: The ad featuring a scantily-clad Melania Trump elicited from Donald Trump the worst of his personality, the bullying, the misogyny, as David has said, brought it out.
But I think it’s more than childish and juvenile and adolescent. There is something creepy about this, his attitude toward women.
Take Megyn Kelly of FOX News, who he just has an absolute obsession about, and he’s constantly writing about, you know, how awful she is and no talent and this and that.
Megyn Kelly
And I don’t know if he’s just never had women—strong, independent women in his life who have spoken to him. It doesn’t seem that way….
She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler’s most outstanding quality was his will power. It was by this that he compelled men to follow him. When Hitler spoke to a small group he closely observed each person to determine how his words were affecting each man present.
If he noticed that some member of the group was not being swayed by his speech, he spoke directly to that person until he believed he had won him over. But if the target of his persuasive effort still remained obstinate, Hitler would exclaim: “I haven’t convinced that man!”
His immediate reaction was to get rid of such people. As he grew increasingly successful, he grew increasingly intolerant.
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TRUMP AND HITLER: PARALLEL LIVES: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 14, 2025 at 12:10 amSyndicated columnist Mark Shields (now deceased) and New York Times columnist David Brooks appeared every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields—a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative—came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about Donald Trump.
Eerily, their conclusions echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
Heinz Guderian
Guderian thus enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
On the PBS Newshour, moderator Judy Woodruff noted that “polls show Trump’s standing with women voters had worsened in recent months.”
Judy Woodruff
Mark Shields noted that Trump clearly had an obsession with Fox News Correspondent Megyn Kelly.
MARK SHIELDS: But there is something really creepy about this that’s beyond locker room. It’s almost like a stalker….It actually did the impossible. It made Ted Cruz look like an honorable, tough guy on the right side of an issue.
Donald Trump
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Once in power, Hitler quickly—and violently—eliminated his opposition. He make no attempt to disguise this aspect of his character, because the opposition was weak and divided and soon collapsed after the first violent attack. This allowed Hitler to pass laws which destroyed the safeguards enacted by the Weimar Republic against the dangers of dictatorship.
MARK SHIELDS: And I don’t know at what point it becomes…politically, he’s still leading. And I would have to say he’s the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler promised to “make Germany great again” both domestically and internationally. And this won him many followers. In time he controlled the largest party in the land and this allowed him, by democratic procedure, to assume power.
DAVID BROOKS: The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: [Hitler] was isolated as a human being. He had no real friend. There was nobody who was really close to him.
Adolf Hitler
There was nobody he could talk to freely and openly. And just as he never found a true friend, he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman.
DAVID BROOKS: And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Everything on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals—friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one’s own children—all this was and forever remained unknown to him.
DAVID BROOKS: And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: He lived alone, cherishing his loneliness, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may seem to contradict what I have written. But it is obvious that she could not have had any influence over him. And this is unfortunate, for it could only have been a softening one.
* * * * *
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
On November 5, 2024, 77 million ignorant, hate-filled, Fascistic Americans catapulted Donald Trump—a man with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”—once again into the Presidency.
Appeals to their hatred, racism, misogyny and greed proved far more seductive than preserving America’s 248 years of democratic traditions.
They ignored the 400,000 American deaths in 2020 by his ignoring the dangers of COVID-19 and alienating America’s longtime allies like England and Canada while clearly showing preference for its mortal enemies like Russia and North Korea.
Future historians will similarly and harshly condemn those Americans who, like “good Germans,” joyfully embraced a regime dedicated to
This should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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