John Bos has several interesting parallels between Hitler and Trump. However, a few key point are overlooked.

First, Hitler was a revolutionary. He and his own party wanted to take over and change the government. In fact, he went to jail for it. Trump advocates nothing of the kind.

The German republic was less than 15 years old, the country was devastated, and other violent revolutionary groups existed. Our government is stable.

Hitler managed to get absolute dictatorial power through “legal” manipulation. German soldiers pledged an oath to him, not the German government. Such a thing would be laughable here.

Hitler created his own police forces and judges to enforce his policy and more later in time. Adolf used the fear of communist takeover to declare him and his party the sole rulers of Germany. All opposition was eliminated and made illegal. Changes not even thinkable here.

And Donald Trump has nothing even approaching a military force.

Donald Trump is just a talker expressing views of a lot of people who want change of sorts. Such change indicates a feeling of some citizens feel the government is abandoning them. Not a call to overthrow it.

As for the Holocaust or something even close to it happening, we are really getting carried away. The request to keep illegal aliens out and better screening of Muslim people is racial profiling (maybe). To some it may seem unfair, but nowhere does it even hint at a desire to create mass prisons where executions are commonplace.

If such a thing were to happen here, it would have been around 1930. Our country was in bad financial shape (as was everyone else) and we could have used a scapegoat. The best scapegoats would have been blacks and recent immigrants and the beginnings of the SS would have been the KKK and similar groups. But comparatively little happened.

Mass murders have happened several times since WW II. Notable examples are Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. As well as many killed in the USSR and China. All of which were under conditions quite unlike the U.S.

So John is correct in that the Holocaust could happen again. It has. But not in the U.S. and certainly not under Donald Trump.

ALAN OWSEICHIK

Greenfield