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What does it mean to march under the swastika flag? What does the swastika flag symbolize? What did it mean to the people who hoisted it in Germany—the people who inspired the Americans who marched this weekend in Charlottesville?

Those who inspired the marchers in Charlottesville marched through the streets of Germany, provoking violence, and singing “when Jewish blood spurts from the knife.”

Those who inspired the marchers destroyed democracy and eliminated all civil liberties in Germany.

Those who inspired the marchers demonized Jewish citizens, physically assaulted them, removed them from all aspects of public life, stripped them of their rights, their property, their very ability to survive in the only country they had ever called home.

Those who inspired the marchers carried out the biggest pogrom in modern German history, destroying 267 synagogues, vandalizing Jewish businesses, attacking Jews in their homes, and killing hundreds, all in a single night in November 1938.

They demonized and physically attacked political opponents, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, the handicapped, and any others they considered outside the boundaries of the German racial community.

They murdered more than 70,000 men, women, and children—German citizens!—who had been diagnosed with mental and physical disabilities in just two years between 1939 and 1941. . . .