As antiwar sentiment spread across the country in the early 1970s, a young Bernie Sanders accused the United States of committing atrocities on par with those of Nazi Germany, saying U.S. military action in Vietnam was “almost as bad as what Hitler did.”
Speaking to a class of ninth graders during his 1972 gubernatorial run in Vermont, Sanders accused the United States of committing atrocities the students would not believe and defended the communist North Vietnamese fighters, according to reporting in the Rutland Herald, a Vermont newspaper. Sanders compared U.S. actions in Vietnam to those of Adolf Hitler, who murdered some six million Jews.
The American military undertook actions that were “almost as bad as what Hitler did,” the paper quoted Sanders as saying to the class of around 30 students at Rutland Junior High School.
Sanders, who declared himself a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, said during his remarks to the class that the North Vietnamese were not his enemy. “They’re a very, very poor people. Some of them don’t have shoes,” Sanders said. “They eat rice when they can get it. And they have been fighting for the freedom of their country for 25 years. They can hardly fight back.” – READ MORE