President Bush says a look at history will back up his suggestion that Saddam Hussein is a barbarian surpassing Adolf Hitler, but experts on the Nazi era disagree with him. ``We don't see the kind of atrocities being committed in Kuwait and Iraq that would match those of Nazi Germany,'' said Richard Breitman, a professor of history at American University and a specialist in the Hitler era. ``No one yet, and I hope no one ever will, match up to the systematized brutalities and racist policies that Adolf Hitler committed,'' said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The center is devoted to the study of the Nazi Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million Jews were killed, and its contemporary implications. Bush, speaking at a Republican rally in Mashpee, Mass., Thursday, said Saddam's Iraqi invaders ``have committed outrageous acts of barbarism. Brutality - I don't believe that Adolf Hitler ever participated in anything of that nature.'' Later, at a news conference in Orlando, Fla., Bush said, ``I don't think I am overstating it. I know I am not overstating the feelings I have about it. ... I think the American people are as outraged as I am about the treatment of the people in our embassy, for example, and I think it is important that they know my concerns on this subject.'' ``I was told that Hitler did not stake people out against military targets,'' the president said. ``He did respect the legitimacy of the embassies, so there are some differences.'' He added, ``I see many similarities between the Iraqi behavior in Kuwait and the way the Death's Head regiments behaved in Poland. Go back and take a look at the history and you can see why I'm as concerned as I am.'' '' The Death's Head units were notorious blackshirted SS troops that began as Hitler's personal bodyguard. They were blamed for many atrocities during the German invasion of Poland. Breitman said many of the specific points Bush made were correct and could make Saddam appear worse than Hitler in some respects, ``but I don't think the overall record would show that to be the case.'' He said that at the outbreak of World War II the Nazis interned foreign diplomats in conditions ``that were not comfortable, but were nothing like what we are seeing in Kuwait and Iraq.'' These diplomats were eventually exchanged for German diplomats in Allied custody, Breitman said. He said he was not aware that the Nazis ever took hostages to potential military targets to use them as human shields as Saddam has done. Cooper, however, said Bush was ``absolutely wrong'' on the point. ``Look at the millions of people of all nationalities who were forced into slave labor factories in Germany and many of them got blown away by the Allied bombing missions,'' he said. Breitman said Hitler is not known to have visited any of the Nazi death camps, but ``that does not mean he was not involved.'' He also said the activities of the Death's Head units were ``only the tip of the iceberg in terms of brutality in Poland'' by the German invaders. The historian said he was not defending Saddam. He said the Iraqi leader has committed crimes ``that give the idea of a Nuremberg-type trial a certain legitimacy to raise.'' Administration sources have said that such a trial, along the lines of the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, is a possibility. At the Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Cooper said, ``Saddam Hussein has a list of crimes that I don't think has to be compared with anybody in order for the people of America to understand how serious a threat he represents.'' ``But let's also keep this thing in some sort of perspective,'' he said. ``And to say that he outstrips Adolf Hitler, I just think it's either a slip of the tongue or a speech writer got carried away.'' Other Jewish leaders generally agreed. David Harris, executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee, said, ``Both men, each in his own way, represents an incarnation of evil. But to try and suggest that Saddam Hussein is a man of even greater evil than Adolf Hitler to me doesn't add to the discussion.'' Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, called Bush's remark ``an unfortunate exaggeration that could hurt the president's credibility at a time when it is very important that he remain credible.'' ``Saddam Hussein is writing his own chapter of barbarism,'' Foxman said. ``It's the Saddam Hussein chapter and one need not compare or exaggerate.''
