Hitler was extremely charismatic, an effective speaker and a clever politician. He was a terrible commander, compounded by his inability to acknowledge and account for that weakness, but in the run-up to the war and in the opening phase, he correctly estimated and effectively capitalised on the other powers’ reluctance to fight another war.

In Musk and Trump, you can observe a similar phenomenon: the ability to hit the right notes with the right people in order to rile them up and seize the moment before their opponents manage to effectively rally and organise a resistance. Whether by blind luck, intuition or cunning calculation, their results aren’t those of fumbling idiots. However idiotic they may seem to us, their success (so far) proves they got something right.

But the story isn’t over yet. If I’m wrong and they do end up fumbling their big chance, I’ll happily rescind those words. But as it stands now, I’d rather not underestimate their cunning.

There were resistance movements, some of which got quite famous. Most well-known to me would be Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian who was quite vocal about his opposition to the Nazi regime and eventually participated in plans to assassinate Hitler. It failed, as we know, and he was sentenced to death for his role. He very much grappled with the question of whether murdering a tyrant was a sin, but eventually came to the conclusion that it had to be done either way.

He also petitioned the allies to differentiate between Germans and Nazis once the war was over, pertinent to your post.