Hitler among ‘true heroes of history,’ Michigan GOP official says. Party slams remarks
Republican officials in Michigan have condemned comments made by a county delegate, who referred to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a hero.
“Adolf Hitler is one of the true heroes of history,” Ottawa County Republican Party precinct delegate Ryan Anderson said in a widely-shared Facebook post.
In a separate post, the Chester Township representative said “the Holocaust didn’t happen.”
Anderson doubled down in comments to multiple local news outlets, but he said he is “not a Nazi” and doesn’t “hate anybody.”
“Adolf Hitler heroically fought against the Russian Bolshevics, who, under Stalin, murdered millions of Christians and were mobilizing to invade and conquer western Europe to impose global communism,” Anderson told WZZM.
“As for the alleged Holocaust, I simply believe the official reports by the Red Cross, whose inspections of the labor camps concluded that fewer than 300,000 souls tragically died, and these largely from starvation and disease near the end of the war when food became scarce,” he added.
However, Red Cross documents do not prove his allegations of fewer than 300,000 Jewish people killed in the Holocaust, according to a fact check by the Australian Associated Press.
The document, which is cropped and only shows numbers for death certificates from a select few concentration camps, is “popular among Holocaust deniers,” Dr Ran Porat, an expert on Jewish history at Monash University, told the AAP. Another researcher said the literature is “selectively used” to suit an agenda.
It’s commonly accepted that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust under Hitler’s regime.
Delegate’s comments called ‘abhorrent’
In response to Anderson’s Facebook posts, the executive committee of the Ottawa County Republican Party said it “unequivocally condemns” his statements.
“These statements are not only abhorrent and historically false but also wholly inconsistent with the beliefs and values of the Republican Party,” the group said in a Feb. 26 Facebook post.
The committee said Anderson’s comments would be reviewed and “appropriate action” would be taken.
“We reject any ideology that aligns with the regime responsible for the Holocaust and reaffirm our steadfast commitment to truth, justice and the foundational values of our nation,” according to their post.
Ben Genser, a Jewish member of the Ottawa GOP Executive Committee, said he took Anderson’s comments personally. In a Facebook post, he wrote that he was “proud” of the committee for holding Anderson accountable.
Anderson was elected as the Chester Township Precinct 1 Republican delegate in August 2024, according to WXMI.
Ottawa County is about a 25-mile drive west from Grand Rapids.
Anderson not alone in his beliefs
While controversial, Anderson is far from the only American who has praised the former Nazi leader.
About 11% of American adults polled by YouGov in fall 2024 agreed that Hitler was “a good person or an equally good and bad person.” The survey found 17% of polled Republicans shared those beliefs.
But support for Hitler has dwindled since the end of World War II. Only 11% of Americans polled by YouGov said any of Hitler’s ideas were right, compared to 25% when Gallup asked the question two years after his death.