I agree the the best way to try to avoid another Hitlerian experience is by learning from it. We need to be able to notice the signs early enough so that we can detect it and prevent it from happening again.

I think that it is inevitable that there will be leaders in the future (and there are some right now) that would love to dominate the world in a brutal way such as Hitler did. This is why the United States, along with other countries, need to be firm and aggressive when dealing with these kinds of countries.

In addition, there are many countries who believe that their culture is the only culture that should exist in the world. They believe that all others should be demolished. This is why we need to spread the concept of acceptance, especially when it comes to accepting people who are different from ourselves.

It is also important to note that we have not entirely avoided other "Hitlerian" experiences, as dictators have taken over numerous countries since and perpetrated war and genocide both.  So it may be impossible to avoid it entirely.

But one way to avoid a repeat of history is to study and remember it.  We do a fairly good job of that where Hitler is concerned, and for World War II in general.  We don't do as well at highlighting the events in places like Rwanda or Darfur, and therefore we endure repeated tragedies.

Another way to avoid a repeat of that catastrophe of a human being is for the world to commit to, and react to the future Hitlers of the world who take power and aggression.  Hitler was appeased in Czechoslovakia, and it failed miserably.  We should be careful not to repeat that mistake when a true threat, a real Hitler, rises to power.

To put it simply, if we could teach students to "not believe the hype" and encourage the kind of open and honest debate that we've often thought was part of our national discourse, it would be easier to avoid something like that in the future.

One of the difficulties that will make it easier for men like Hitler to grab power is the fact that we are pushing towards a great deal of standardization in everything we do, particularly in schools.  We want to train teachers the same way, we want to train kids the same way, we want to be able to predict the way that people will react, something that will make it much easier for someone to manipulate them.

When you look at the fact that there are very few strongly dissenting groups of people, particularly groups that aren't spouting some version of the main stream media's talking points, it is not hard to believe that it will not be really difficult for someone to take advantage of that fact and rise to power by pushing the right buttons.

Again, to prevent that, we need to change the way we look...