Now, before I state anything, I want to make something clear: I am not calling Donald Trump any names, I am not slandering him, nor am I calling him a radical. This is simply looking at Trump’s psychological tendencies and comparing them with other people’s.

Donald Trump has been a newsworthy name for quite some time now. This Republican presidential candidate may be best known for his strict stance on illegal immigrants in the United States; mainly those of Mexican origin. Trump states that he will have all illegal immigrants deported and that he will construct a wall on the border of the United States of America and Mexico to stop further illegal acts of immigration. He has also, on several occasions called out people of Mexican origin, stating that they are biased and cannot do their job correctly. Trump also is a believer of age old stereotypes, like Mexicans being notoriously lazy. Some people might wonder why this man would think like he does. Some just wave it off as his process on attempting to “make America great again”. Others, like myself, think otherwise. Perhaps this man’s thought processes aren’t too far off from someone like Adolf Hitler. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Well that seems rather farfetched. I don’t think Trump and Hitler think alike at all!” And it is fine that you believe this. In fact, that thought is probably true. However, I would like to draw comparisons in the thought processes between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and the former Führer (leader) of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, among other high ranking Nazi officials.

Douglas M. Kelley was a California raised psychiatrist who is most well known for being the chief psychiatrist at the Nuremberg War Trials in 1945 and 1946. These trials were set up to serve justice to the top ranking Nazis that the Allied powers captured. Some of these men were Joachim von Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany), Karl Dönitz (Commander in Chief of the German Navy, later Hitler’s successor), Herman Göhring (commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (air force)), Rudolph Hess (Deputy Führer) and others. Kelley would later write a book about his experiences there, titled "22 Cells in Nuremberg", detailing what he experienced and what he had learned from a psychological standpoint about the minds of the Nazi leaders. Kelley spent multiple months with the Nazis there, and had a firm stance that the Nazis were not psychopaths. “Insanity is no explanation for the Nazis,” he wrote. “They were simply creatures of their environment, as all creatures are”. After looking at the Nazis at Nuremberg, he found that not only in Germany, but in the United States as well, there is an alarmingly high number of people who could easily become someone similar to a Nazi. This frightened Kelley; therefore, he wanted to inform the world about his ideas. This way, people could understand what exactly brought these Nazis to the forefront of Germany and allowed them to commit the atrocities that they did.

I believe that these Nazi defendants and Donald Trump share more ideals than you think. One is that both devoted a large quantity of energy and time to their respective work fields. Now, this might not seem like a lot at first, but let me explain. Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, in an interview, considered his father a “workaholic”. He stated that he had never seen is father go on a vacation because he is always working and striving for his goals. Kelley, when observing the Nazis, noted that “they all worked for incredibly long hours, slept very little and devoted their whole lives to Nazifying the world”. Both of these groups of men needed this quality in order to achieve their goals. If they did not, then someone else would beat them to it. Kelley also observed that the Nazis focused intently on the goals of their works and did not much care for the means for which they were achieved. As for the correlation to Trump in this aspect, Trump intends to deport all illegitimate non-Americans and to build a wall, towering over 50 feet, between the US and Mexico to stop them from crossing illegally. How does he envision paying for this? He plans to have the Mexican government pay for it. Of course, this is an extremely tall order; one which seems to be out of a fantasy. This remark shocked the world and, quite frankly, most of the world does not believe this to be feasible. Most people also believe this to be a project of a grand scale, and somewhat going overboard to get this job done. Donald Trump wants to make all of this a reality nonetheless. He does not care much about the means (wall building and mass deportation), but rather, focusing on the goals. This is one aspect Donald Trump and the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials shared.

Another similarity is that Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler both had a conviction of their own authority and power. Trump believes he is the only one who can make America great again. He also believes that America is in trouble, and offers salvation from this. The same thing happened in Germany with Hitler and the disgruntled Germans. Similar to this, Trump and Hitler may have/have had borderline megalomania. According to dictionary.com, megalomania is “1: asymptomofmentalillnessmarkedbydelusionsofgreatness,wealth,etc. 2: an obsession with doing extravagant or grand things”. On top of that, both of these men are also narcissistic. Trump obviously has a sense of entitlement and considers himself to be greater than he actually is. According to LATimes, “Trump's sense of entitlement has been affirmed throughout his life. In 1987, at a party marking the publication of Trump's book "The Art of the Deal", boxing promoter Don King turned to the crowd and proclaimed the arrival of Trump and his then-wife Ivana by saying,"‘Here's the king and the queen!". A few years later, when he appeared at an event at one of his Atlantic City casinos, an announcer bellowed, 'Let's hear it for the king!" — And Trump burst through a large paper screen. When he visited the humble village of his Scottish ancestors he told his relatives that because of his TV show “The Apprentice,” he was American royalty. ‘If you get ratings, you're king, like me. I'm a king. If you don't get ratings, you're thrown off the air like a dog.’” (LATimes). Hitler also believed himself to be greater than he actually was, but took it even further. He expressed this in his book Mein Kampf, “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord”.

The final similarity I am going to point out is the racial beliefs between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. While one of these men obviously went to much greater lengths to express their hatred of a minority, it could easily reach a higher conduct if Trump is allowed to enact such racist and bigoted laws such as the ones he talks about daily. According to Douglas Kelley, “there is little in America today which could stop the establishment of a Nazi like state. Even worse… bigotry already riddles American culture. I found the same anti-minority feelings shot though the American population”. We have already seen racist laws, sometimes brutal laws, enacted her in the USA: Jim Crow laws, slavery and Japanese concentration camps are among only a few. Kelley warned to keep political bigots from gaining any control in the United States, or it could spell disaster for our country. Our country already has African American, Chinese, Japanese, Korea, Vietnamese and German to the list of nationalities we have persecuted. Apparently our population also wants to add Hispanics to this list as well. Kelley also would urge his countrymen to refuse to vote for candidates who gained any sort of popularity due to another group’s race or religious beliefs.

In conclusion, Donald Trump and high ranking Nazi officials like Hitler and Hess have quite a bit in common, psychologically speaking. Both groups believed themselves to be greater than they actually are, devoted time into making their morally questionable goals a reality, and that both groups used racial propaganda to gain power. I am not saying that Trump will ever go as far as the Nazis, but who will stop him when he enacts law after law, restriction minority’s rights? Maybe people believe that something like a Nazi regime could never happen here in America. This is what Doctor Kelley had to say on the matter. “The qualities that led the top Nazis to commit and tolerate acts of horror exist in many people, living in many places. True, the Nazis rose to power partly because of their cultural training, but they are not unique people. There are people who exist in every country of the world; their personality patterns are not obscure. But there are people who have peculiar drives; people who want to be in power. And you say that they don’t exist here, but I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half the American public if they could gain control of the other half. And these are the people who today are just talking, who are utilizing the rights of democracy in anti-democratic fashion”. Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Streicher, two Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, warned Kelley of impending racial segregation and persecution in America in the coming years. Well, they weren’t wrong…

For further reading on the subject:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1203-dantonio-trump-race-horse-theory-20151203-story.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34903577

https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Psychiatrist-Hermann-Douglas-Meeting/dp/161039156X