The Uses of Hitler

In a recent youtube debate in South Carolina, John McCain, while responding to Ron Paul, a fellow Republican candidate, seemed to have gotten into a little trouble when he said this: "I just want to also say that Congressman Paul, I’ve heard him now in many debates talk about bringing our troops home, and about the war in Iraq and how it’s failed. And I want to tell you that that kind of isolationism, sir, is what caused World War II. We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement."

That is an interesting view, especially if you have a feeling for the years between the two world wars, in which, in the first Hitler was a mere corporal and by the time of the second, after just 20 years, he had gotten himself to the point where he managed the astounding feat of being the main one to instigate a reawakening of that monster of war and getting it to rolling again, on a much larger scale and with dire results that still confront us today, 60 years later. How Hitler and his people staged that is always worthy of study that shouldn't be denied to anyone at any time.
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The reports I read said that the audience booed, in strong disapproval of McCain's remark.

But I wonder. Was that why? . Did the reporters know that for sure? The audience, after all, was Republican, and it's hard to imagine them having that much historical acumen and decency. Could the booing have been done instead to condemn the actions of the U.S. leadership in those days? That leadership was largely Republican before Hitler became the German Chancellor, but through most of the ensuing 1930's and into the 40's the Democrats were in charge.

I read more than one comment that attacked the mere act of McCain or any other candidate bringing Hitler into the current electoral debates..The commenters didn't say why it was wrong. Instead they just assumed that we all know why. But that "we" doesn't include me. I would very much like to know why McCain's statement, as shot full of holes as it was, couldn't have been made, whenever one wanted to make a particular point.
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Despite the incredibly deep and widespread misery that the actions of the forces led by Hitler inflicted on large slices of humanity, Hitler has his uses. He and the Germans of his time serve us as the most valuable object lessons that we've ever had, and their value is increased by the fact that they weren't contemporaries of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, or Attila the Hun. Instead their heinous misdeeds happened in our time, or at least mostly in mine. Their "work" reminds us that humanity, in spite of all its technical and scientific advances, has not yet gotten anywhere near losing the ability to indulge the beast that also lurks in its soul, and not very deep inside either.

Therefore I can't see how anyone, including those belonging to the groups that were particularly singled out by the Nazis for imprisonment and extermination, can have exclusive rights to invoking Hitler's name and recalling the countless crimes of the many who were at his beck and call.
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