Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and a Stanford University professor, highlighted the controversial opinion to juxtapose Hitler’s reign with the brutality of Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine.
"One of the Russian journalists said you know there's one difference between Hitler when he was coming in and Putin. Hitler didn't kill ethnic Germans. He didn't kill German-speaking people. I think people need to remember when we are talking about cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol and Kyiv, there are large populations there up to a third and sometimes much to a half that are Russian speakers and ethnic speakers. And yet Putin doesn't seem to care about that. He slaughters the very people he's come to liberate," he announced on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.
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McFaul stated the "interesting" take came from a Ukrainian show on which he appeared shortly before the MSNBC hit.
A clip of McFaul's comments posted by staffers for The Rachel Maddow Show quickly amassed more than a million views before the tweet got removed.
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The segment drew swift criticism on social media. Some seemed stunned that the staff on Maddow's show tweeted the clip after it aired.
In response to the mounting backlash, McFaul took to Twitter Saturday to say he "slipped" and was dedicated to learning more regarding the history of Nazi Germany.
Hitler perpetrated massive state-sponsored genocide against Jews, slaughtering no less than 6 million Jews and 5 million prisoners of war throughout the Holocaust, according to the National WWII Museum of New Orleans. Many of the Jews in Nazi Germany spoke German, so Hitler killed millions of "German-speaking" citizens during the Holocaust.
Yet he further targeted disabled people, which included ethnic Germans. Roughly 70,000 disabled Austrians and Germans were killed in "Operation T4" between 1941 and 1940, per the museum. His programs further involved medical experimentation on disabled citizens — which led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code. Different targets included gay people, alcoholics, and political rivals.
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Hitler’s actions, particularly his invasion of Poland, triggered World War II. An estimated 5.5 million German soldiers and between 6.6 and 8.8 million German civilians were killed during that conflict, per the museum.
Meanwhile, This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden struggling with increasing inflation, an inability to delay Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and a hardening view by voters that the Democrats shouldn’t be in charge of Congress.
The president proceeds to get low approval ratings, and Vice President Kamala Harris, knocked for awkward performances in Europe this week, hasn’t helped to boost confidence in the White House.
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