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…Hitler was able to touch something about the Germans that he himself understood - ‘cause I think, truthfully, he himself felt the same way - and, like a great salesman, find what motivated and moved the German people. And the German people were ashamed. They had, in a very short time, fallen from exalted positions - and the Germans were a proud people - to impotency. To a nation that was falling apart. To riots in the streets… They were mad. And along comes this, as we said, demon-possessed, original nobody who all of a sudden has found the power to speak. And he knows what moves them…

I remember I took a course my first year in college, and it was on political science, and it was taught by a German gentleman who I found out later had been a soldier in the War, and he was talking about the Nazis and showing us some films, and I remember that there was a lot of snickering in the class… And some of the students were laughing at the naiveté of the Germans, and saying that, “Y'know, no one in our country would ever fall for some funny little guy with a mustache who talks so funny and gets red in the face." 

And our professor, who had obviously lived through this before, had an interesting comeback. He said, "You’re right.” He said, “You’re never gonna have German fascism in this country. Fascism ties itself to the national roots of the nation. It weaves itself through the myths of who a nation thinks they are, and weds itself to them. Fascism worked in Germany because it was German fascism,” he said. “If it ever happened in America, it would be American fascism.” It would be wrapped up in our national heritage and in our national beliefs, and John Wayne would be the demagogue president, not Adolf Hitler.