Nothing to see here. Just the NY Times normalizing Hitler. | Sounds familiar...
What do you mean normalizing? This was 1939, a couple weeks before his outright invasion of Poland and the start of WWII as we understand it. Mind you, Hitler and Europe waged war for over two years before he declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor (we originally declared against Japan and not Germany).
Do you expect contemporary historical articles and accounts to have the same perspectives as we have today? That is an absurd way to approach history and I’m afraid will leave you very confused and disappointed.
While you're right that things would have looked very different at that date, Hitler's far-right hateful rhetoric and basically dismantling Germany's democracy was already old news by 1939. He might not have been the name people say when someone asks, "Who's the worst person who ever lived?" at that time, but let's not pretend we didn't know anything about what kind of man he was.
Right, and it is critical to see the parallels between what happened with Nazi Germany with the rise of Hitler and what is happening now. Democracies do not defend themselves. It would be nice if they did but they don't. People have to constantly fight to defend them and that is what we need to do right now.