"Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It." BUT How To Use It Right?

People can use the bible to support slavery (and oppose it.)  Or justify male domination over women.  Until Luther, the quote about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, was used to condemn the rich until Luther made being wealthy godly.

And so with learning from history.  We can learn the wrong thing if we choose the wrong event, or interpret it inappropriately for today's situation.   People, including myself, have made comparisons between what is happening in the US now with the rise of the Third Reich in Germany.  There are areas where comparisons are justified - such as how to use the media for propaganda.  We can learn something useful today about that.  But that doesn't mean that the writer thinks Trump is going to copy everything else Hitler did, like set up concentration camps, as some people assume.

I got to thinking about this when I read a passage about Hitler's plundering of art and jewels the other day.

Sergeant Major von Rumpel is a gemologist in Anthony Doerr's All The Light One Cannot See.  

"Because of the war [WWII], his job has expanded.  Now Sergeant Major von Rumpel has the chance to do what no one has done in centuries - not since the Mogul Dynasty, not since the Khans.  Perhaps not in history.  The capitulation of France is only weeks past, and already he has seen things he did not dream he would see in six lifetimes.  A seventeenth-century globe as big around as a small car, with rubies to mark volcanoes, sapphires clustered at the poles, and diamonds for world capitals. He has held - held! - a dagger handle at least four hundred years old, made of white jade and inlaid with emeralds.  Just yesterday, on the road to Vienna, he took possession of a five-hundred-and-seventy-piece china set with a single marquise-cut diamond set into the rim of every single dish.  Where the police confiscated these treasures and from whom, he does not ask. . .
"Rumor is that the führer is compiling a wish list of precious objects from all around Europe and Russia.  They say he intends to remake the Austrian town of Linz into an empyrean city, the cultural capital of the world. . .
"The document is real, von Rumpel has heard.  Four hundred pages." [emphasis added]

While All the Light One Cannot See is fiction, Hitler's plan for museum in Linz was real.  And the plundering of art and other valuables was real.

I don't see Trump with plans to plunder art, but it would probably  be safe to say he has his eye on prime real estate around the world for Trump hotels and towers.   His website shows fourteen Trump hotels, half of which are in the US. That leaves lots of countries without Trump hotels yet.  The Washington Post, for example, says he'd like 20 - 30 in China alone.  

As president of the US, he won't have have to steal them, he can just trade American favors for them.  "Sure, we can sell you some jets.  That means jobs for Americans and, I'd sure like that historic castle to be a Trump hotel."

I'd note that Wikipedia says that Hitler didn't steal everything he collected.  He sent one of his art experts

"on trips to Italy and France to buy artworks, which Hitler paid for with his own money, which came from sales of Mein Kampf, real estate speculation on land in the area of the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat on the Obersalzberg, and royalties from Hitler's image used on postage stamps.[28] The latter, which was divided with his official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, amounted to at least $75 million marks over the course of Hitler's reign.[29]
This, however, was not the primary method used to build up the collection."

Did you skip over that quote?  If you did, you missed the part about him getting royalties from having his image on postage stamps!  Wow. Trump's picture on forever stamps.  With him getting royalties for each stamp.  Now that's something to look forward to.