Mediaboss Marketing

The toppling of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and the takeover of the Crimean region by Russia has captured headlines around the world.

Western nations including Australia have condemned Russia's moves. At a function on March 4, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told the audience that "if this sounds familiar, it's what Hitler did back in the '30s".

Ms Clinton spoke again on March 5, telling attendees at a lecture that the "claims by president Putin and other Russians [are] that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian 'minorities', and that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe".

ABC Fact Check investigates Ms Clinton's claim of reminiscence. A separate fact file examines Ukraine, its ethnic diversity and what Russia may do next.

Fact Check has delved into the history books to get an accurate picture of what, in Ms Clinton's words, "Hitler did back in the '30s".

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party came to power in Germany in 1933. From the start the regime took issue with the European boundaries set by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World World I. Under the treaty, Germany lost a large amount of land to neighbouring countries including Poland. The city of Danzig (now Gdansk), with a mixed German and Polish population, became a "free city" under control of the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations). Germany was prohibited from uniting with Austria. It could not station troops in the Rhineland region near the French/German border. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire led to the establishment of new independent countries such as Czechoslovakia.

The treaty left a significant German population living in other European territories. According to the late historian A J P Taylor, by the late 1930s there were around 6 million Germans living in Austria, 3 million in Czechoslovakia and 350,000 in Danzig.

In 1936, Germany moved military forces to the Rhineland, in breach of the treaty. Historian R.H. Tenbrock said "the Western Powers responded with nothing more than a weak protest".

The next step was Austria. In 1936, Germany said it recognised the "full sovereignty" of Austria, however by 1938 missteps by the Austrian government gave Hitler an opportunity. Austrian Nazis stirred up tension and after the Austrian chancellor was forced to resign, Germany offered to restore order. It invaded Austria on March 12, 1938. A referendum was held in Austria in April 1938, after the annexation had already happened, and the official result was that 99.7 per cent of voters were in favour of joining with Germany. Even though the Treaty of Versailles did not allow it to happen, Austria became part of Germany.

Then there was Czechoslovakia. In the late 1930s, Czechoslovakia was a democratic country made up of several ethnic groups including Czechs, Slovaks and Germans (many of whom were located in the Sudetenland region bordering Germany). In later 1938, Hitler made speeches claiming the Sudetenland Germans were suffering discrimination. In a telegram to US president Franklin Roosevelt on September 27, 1938, Hitler referred to a "revolting Czechoslovakian regime of violence and bloodiest terror". He said "political persecution and economic oppression have plunged the Sudeten Germans into extreme misery". However, there was no evidence supporting Hitler's claims. Historian Taylor suggested that Hitler was "also concerned, in more practical terms, to remove the obstacle which a well armed Czechoslovakia allied to France and Soviet Russia raised against German hegemony".

See the article here:

Hillary Clinton's comparison of Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler checks out