A former US ambassador to Russia was blasted for comments which favorably compared Adolf Hitler to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Michael McFaul, who is also a professor of International Studies at Stanford, made the remarks during an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Friday evening.
“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,” McFaul said on the program — repeating what he said he was told by a Russian journalist.
“I think people need to remember that we’re talking about cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol and Kyiv, there are large populations there, you know, up to a third and sometimes as much to a half that are Russian speakers and are ethnic Russians,” he continued. “And yet Putin doesn’t seem to care about that. He slaughters the very people he said he has come to liberate.”
The comments were posted to the Maddow Blog Twitter account late Friday where they swiftly drew condemnation across the web. The post was deleted Saturday morning.
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“I’d like to apologize for what an utter s—tshow @msnbc has turned into. To let this air, without any correction – and THEN tweet it? Shameful,” said former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.
The Auschwitz Memorial also offered a critique.
“On a factual note: Hitler did kill ethnic Germans & German-speaking people: those who opposed the Nazi regime, those who resisted, those who did not fit into the ‘Weltanschauung’. He ordered the murder of people with different disabilities & finally the murder of German Jewry,” their official account said in response.
McFaul told The Post he was “not expert on World War II” and offered an apology on Twitter.
“After a long of commentary that started with ‘Morning Joe’ and end with Maddow, I slipped late last night and violated an unwritten taboo– never compare Hitler with anyone. I agree. He was incomparably evil. I won’t do it again,” he said. “To those who wrote to me to explain that Hitler committed the same atrocities against ethnic Germans that Putin is committing against ethnic Russians today in Mariupol and Kharkiv, please suggested to me the best scholarly readings on this history. Im eager to learn.”