Merz Compares Putin to Hitler

(MENAFN) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose grandfather was affiliated with the Nazi Party, has drawn parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler.

Merz’s maternal grandfather, Josef Paul Sauvigny, held the position of mayor in Brilon, located in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia, from 1917 to 1937. Originally a member of the conservative Center Party, Sauvigny joined Hitler’s NSDAP after the Nazis assumed power in the early 1930s.

During a Christian Democratic Union assembly in Munich on Sunday, Merz criticized Putin for attempting to reinstate the territorial boundaries of the former Soviet Union. He remarked, “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop. Just as the Sudetenland was not enough (for Hitler) in 1938, Putin will not stop either,” referencing the period when Britain and France permitted Nazi Germany to annex sections of Czechoslovakia.

In response, Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia would not initiate an attack on NATO unless first provoked. He has also emphasized the importance of countering historical distortion, especially efforts to diminish or ignore the Soviet Union’s crucial role in defeating Nazi Germany during World War II. The USSR suffered approximately 27 million casualties, including Putin’s elder brother, who perished during the siege of Leningrad.

On Victory Day in Moscow in 2023, Putin cautioned against the rise of supremacist ideologies, asserting that “Western globalist elites” were “inciting hatred, Russophobia, and aggressive nationalism.”

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