Sean Spicer, Massive Dingus, Claimed Hitler Never Used Chemical Weapons

By

James Hennessy

Published

Here’s a little tip worth contemplating: if you ever have the inclination to point towards something done by a political leader in 2017 and say “Even Hitler wouldn’t have done that!” it’s probably much safer to just not say anything at all. 

Terminally gaffe-prone White House press secretary Sean Spicer found today that injecting his addresses with rhetorical flourish by referencing Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust often doesn’t work out so well. Referring to last week’s chemical attack in Syria – which has been blamed by many on the government of Bashar al-Assad – Spicer tried to make the claim that not even Hitler used chemical weapons.
“Someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “You have to ask yourself if you are Russia, is this a country and a regime you want to align yourself with?”

Well, that’s not really remotely correct no matter which way you look at it. First of all, Hitler obviously used chemical gases including Zyklon-B and cyanide during the Holocaust, leading to the deaths of millions of European Jews.

Even if you charitably interpret Spicer’s remarks as referring exclusively to battlefield deployment of chemical weapons – a distintion I don’t really see the point in making – he’s on shaky ground. Some accounts claim that the Nazis used poison gas on Russians who refused to surrender after the Battle of Kerch.
He’s right that there’s no evidence they ever used them on Western forces, but at that point it’s really just semantics. Which he obviously realised, as he tried to walk back the unseemly implications of his remarks when it came to the Holocaust.

Transcript here:
When it comes to Sarin gas, [Hitler] was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. I understand your point. Thank you. I appreciate that. He brought them into the Holocaust centres, I understand that. I was saying in the way that Assad used them where he went into town, dropped them into the middle of town. I appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.

210,000 German and Austrian jews were murdered in the Holocaust, many with chemical weapons. I don’t think one has to be particularly charitable to call that ‘using the gas on your own people’.

He issued a later statement to NBC further clarifying:

Well, it’s about the planes then. Point well made, Sean.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Getty Images.

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