How Putin is following Hitler’s playbook

Like many rulers of Russia before him, especially Stalin, Vladimir Putin is a keen student of History. Judging by his current actions, it seems as though he has been particularly brushing up on the story of 1938, when another dictator, one Adolf Hitler, deliberately provoked the destruction of an independent European state – Czechoslovakia – by inflating the grievances of an ethnic minority within its borders to undermine and eventually obliterate it.

So has Putin been following Hitler’s playbook in his confrontation with Ukraine? It looks very much like it. Consider: on 28 May 1938 Hitler told a meeting of his top generals: 

‘I am utterly determined that Czechoslovakia should disappear from the map’

Similarly, Putin has openly expressed the view – not just once, but frequently – that Ukraine is an integral part of a greater Russia that has been torn from the bosom of the Motherland and must be restored, either peacefully or by naked force.