“Mr. Speaker, the Russians are invading Ukraine. I think a history lesson is in order.”
“I take you back to 1938. Adolph Hitler annexes a neighbor, Austria. Just took them. Took them over. The West, the world, the freedom-loving people watched. He got away with that. He took them over because he wanted to, in his statement, unify the German-speaking peoples. That was in March of 1938. Then in October of 1938, Adolph Hitler just decided that he wanted part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, saying the same thing, that German-speaking people were being persecuted and that he wanted to help them, and he annexed the Sudetenland”, he said.
“The West really agreed to that. We have heard about the appeasement of Chamberlain. Agreed to it, waived his paper, peace in our time. Not long after that, Hitler decided he wanted more Czechoslovakia. Then he invaded Poland, and then World War II started, and he invaded other countries. That was in the beginning of 1938. Now take you to today. Vladimir Putin, Russia. He invades the Republic of Georgia, and he did so in August of 2008, and he took one-third of the country”, said Poe.
“I happened to be in the Republic of Georgia shortly after the Russians invaded. I saw the Russian tanks on the horizon. Remember, Mr. Speaker, Putin invaded Georgia, took one-third of the land, and the Russians are still there. The world just moved on. The Georgians are trying to figure out some way to deal with Putin’s imperialistic attitude, but the Russians were there, are there–no consequences for that action. Now that brings us to March of 2014. Of course, Georgia as we all know was a former Soviet Republic. Now Putin has his eyes on another former Soviet Republic, Ukraine. The Russian military, even though they went in with unmarked uniforms, just decided to move in and take over part of Ukraine–Crimea. That is the latest activity”, he continued.
“This is similar to what Adolf Hitler did back in the thirties and the forties. So, yes, Putin is similar to Adolph Hitler in that he has this appetite for other people’s land, and he tries to justify it some way and he just waits to see if anybody is going to do anything about it”, said Rep. Ted Poe (source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov/).