Kathrine Frich
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler tested the limits of the international order step by step.
He challenged borders, dismissed diplomatic norms, and assumed rival powers would hesitate rather than confront him directly.
Those early moves were not initially met with war, but with disbelief, accommodation, and delay. Only later did they come to be seen as warning signs of a much larger rupture.
Nearly a century on, echoes of that period are being seen again as tensions rise over Greenland and the future of Western alliances.
Historical parallel
That comparison is now being made explicitly by Cristian Presură, a physicist and researcher based in the Netherlands.
Writing on Facebook, in comments later reported by Romanian news site Ziare.com, Presură argued that U.S. President Donald Trump’s statements and actions regarding Greenland mark a dangerous turning point.
Presură said Trump’s Greenland push resembled Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which triggered the war, according to Ziare.com’s account of his Facebook post.
He also referred to Hitler’s reliance on foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, arguing Hitler believed France and Britain would not respond, only to be caught off guard when war was declared.
“And now?”, Presură wrote,
Limits of power
Presură argued the current geopolitical landscape no longer tolerates overt imperial behavior, such as purchasing territory or using threats of force to seize it.
He wrote that earlier U.S. leaders typically framed interventions through democratic language in order to justify them internationally.
“With Trump it will be the same. We no longer live in a period of imperialism that justifies buying territories with money and threatening force, or kidnapping a leader just for his country’s oil, forgetting about his citizens. American leaders before Trump had to, at least in the eyes of the world, justify their interventions with the fight for democratic values, with the “liberation” of peoples, and so on. And Americans themselves no longer live in the period of the Wild West, in which various forms of internal police could afford brutal interventions without political consequences.” Presură wrote in his post and added:
“The values of humanity are, fortunately, different, And Trump will be charged right in America for his bullying attitude. I predict that he will not finish his term on time,” he wrote.
Sources: Ziare.com
