A Message to the Undecided Voter: Don't Elect the Dictator

When I learned, as an adolescent, that Hitler had been an elected head of state, I was incredulous.

I don't know how I learned this. Not from my parents and not from the nuns who taught me for 12 years of school. I was utterly ignorant about pre- and post-World War II Germany. My father had served in the Pacific. In my neighborhood, as a child, our teams were divided, for far-ranging games of war, between the Americans and the Nazis. Having never heard the word before, let alone seen it written, I imagined the bad guys as K-N-O-T-S-I-E-S, pathetic little balls of snarled string.

In college, with better information than my hometown rah-rah newspaper's, I became an anti-war activist. Ever since the Vietnam War era, I've been challenged with the question, "Would you oppose all wars/ What would you have done about Hitler?" To which my answer became, "Hitler was elected. There were plenty of chances to stop Hitler before six million Jews died and he started that war."

And now I wonder where those chances were, and what I would have done. Because I have learned how Hitler was loved by his people. And I have seen something like it in my country now.

Germany's infatuation with Hitler ended badly for everyone.

Hitler was seen by many Germans as a savior. They credited him with restoring the German economy after the Great Depression, and restoring German pride—and its army—after their humiliating defeat in World War I. They loved how he wanted to preserve the purity of German language and culture, and Christian religion. They loved how he hated the people they hated—an elite that they felt looked down on them. Professors, doctors, lawyers and businessmen were suspect. Many of them were Jewish, and Hitler easily convinced his supporters that Jews were "poisoning" German blood.

The oaths of the military and civil service were changed from loyalty sworn to Germany to loyalty sworn to Hitler. Here is the oath of Hitler Youth:

"In the presence of this blood banner which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God."

Alfons Heck, a former member, wrote of how it caused an eruption "into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria... we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil' From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul."

People gathered outside Hitler's residence to catch a glimpse of him, and women shouted their love and that they wanted to have babies with him. He got thousands of love letters a year. German psychoanalyst and author Alice Miller spent her professional lifetime analyzing "good Germans" and writing about it. They were consumed with guilt, after the war, for having allowed the Holocaust, and shame, for having loved Hitler. The trauma was inherited by the next generation, and she wrote of how that affected Germany too.

The German dictator's rule ended in suicide, in a bunker, where the generals our current presidential candidate says he wished he had told their leader the truth they'd been afraid to until it was unavoidable: he had lost the war. Germany's infatuation with Hitler ended badly for everyone.

Our would-be dictator starred on American television for 14 years, longer than any American presidency lasts. As a television actress, I know the power of the medium, and the characters we play. Every week for 14 years, people saw Donald Trump in their living rooms, impeccably dressed and made up, judging others with authoritative discernment, separating the weak from the strong, the wheat from the chaff, in elimination rounds that climaxed the drama every week: You're Fired. He was sometimes tender, being cruel only to be kind, and the contestants hopeful for his approval, bristling with Hollywood clothes and make-up, accepted his word as final.

He was never that man. The character wasn't real. And today's version is far from it. The TV star controlled his performance. The candidate can't.

He assumes the mantle of peacemaker, criticizing war. He claims to have opposed the War in Iraq. So did I. He distrusts the "Deep state"—I have done so for years, doubting everything from our rationale for the war in Vietnam to the official story of the Kennedy assassination and the denial of involvement in Central America. But for me, the stance involves study and practice of nonviolence. Donald Trump, even as he preposterously lies that he's something like Martin Luther King, foments violence. Peace comes from within. A man whose family, businesses, administration, and relationships were—and remain—in violent turmoil cannot bring world peace. He knows only how to deal with problems by making them go away, as he did on TV: elimination rounds. Certain groups, departments, organizations, individuals—and, maybe, countries—must be eliminated for peace to come. You're Fired! It seems so simple: final solutions like you've never seen before!

In Hitler's day, a lawyer with the tragically ironic last name of Frank wrote, "I can say that the foundation of the National Socialist State is the National Socialist legal system[...] since we know how holy the foundations of our legal system are to the Führer, we and our people’s comrades can be sure: your life and your existence are secure in this National Socialist state of order, freedom, and justice."

Albert Speer, author of Inside the Third Reich, wrote that, as German morale dropped, Hitler's crowds had to be organized. Spontaneity no longer drew them. Hitler also became "angry and impatient...when, as still occasionally happened, a crowd began clamoring for him to appear." This echoes ominously with the current Trump rallies, which are shrinking, where the crowd sometimes waits for hours before he appears—and then he comes bearing insults.

This is the moment, for those of you who are still undecided, when we can stop the dictator. Don't elect him.