New America Media: Hitler's Ghost -- Russia Becomes Fertile Ground for Neo-Nazis

PNS editor Franz Schurmann looks at contemporary events through the historian's lens. In Russia today, the nation's growing ethnic and foreign-born population increasingly suffers brutal attacks from more and more neo-Nazis, while Russian politicians crack down on dissent. It's fertile ground for fascism, writes Schurmann, emeritus professor of history and sociology at U.C. Berkeley and author of numerous books. Are Russians destined to be the successor to Adolph Hitler's Germans? Hitler died by his own hand in April 1945, but now his spirit has come back in the form of young Russian neo-Nazis, who could number 50,000 or more, according to the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights. When he was only minutes away from death, Hitler reportedly said, "The German people were not worthy of me." The 50,000 Russian Nazis who salute the swastika and intone the "Hail Hitler," on the other hand, might be. They ignore their grandfathers and grandmothers, who sacrificed their lives to destroy Hitler's hordes. Race was the issue that propelled Hitler into supreme power in January 1933. The year 1932 was horrendous because too many jobs vanished, while those jobs that were available went to those whom Hitler considered "foreigners," in good part Jews. Hitler preached that the Germans and other Nordic peoples (including the British) were a super-race of warriors and geniuses that could fight through any challenge.