Andrew Sullivan has posted a lengthy comparison of the “Enhanced Interrogation” techniques employed by the Gestappo during World War II, with those used by the U.S. on unlawful combatants.
The entire article is worth reading, and there’s far too much for me to quote here. However, the punchline of the article provides a pretty good synopsis:
Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes.