Editor, The Beacon:

The reference to Adolf Hitler and his tactics by Mr. Sloss in his Letter to the Editor was apt and very applicable to his point, and relevant to today’s America, despite the later criticism. Historical facts and comparisons stand on the side of Mr. Sloss and The Beacon.

Adolf Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” began their political attacks in 1923, very early in the process to gain power in Germany. That was a full 10 years before Hitler was made chancellor of the country, and 16 years before he started World War II by invading Poland. Stealing power takes time and many small steps.

Years of verbal abuse and imposing of unfair laws were heaped upon minority groups — including Jews, homosexuals, political leftists, intellectuals, etc. — well before the death trains ran to Auschwitz and the gas chambers.

Initially, the Brown Shirts were accumulated from the poor and poorly educated of society and molded into bands of political thugs. Their early efforts focused on criticizing, bullying, harassing and intimidating minorities. (See “The Night of Broken Glass,” Kristallnacht, during this period.)

With the encouragement of Hitler, his supporters later expanded and increased their violence, resulting in the extermination of millions as we know today.

However, the point here is that it all began by picking targets, alienating powerless groups, and blaming societal problems on them. Banning and burning books, rewriting history, demonizing people and ideas, and fostering an “us vs. them” environment were their early methods … and those small steps are sadly similar to the ones we see today in Florida and reports from across the nation.

All of this does not mean that America will descend into the pit that Germany ultimately became in the 1930s and 1940s, but the very early parallels cannot be denied. The world has seen this anti-LGBTQ+, anti-elitist, anti-“woke,” racist, ethnic-cleansing propaganda before.

We need to keep that in mind, even as our own history books are being rewritten. Thank you, Mr. Sloss, for the reminders, and thank you to The Beacon for the well-grounded platform to do so.

Greg Heeter

DeLand