Lloyd Blankfein Defends Hitler, Falsely Saying He Didn’t Use Chemical Weapons on the Battlefield

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been subjected to excoriating criticism after he used Twitter to falsely claim Hitler’s military did not use chemical weapons during World War II, while failing to note Hitler’s use of chemical gas to facilitate the systematic murder of millions of Jews. Blankfein tweeted: “Worth noting even Hitler didn’t permit his military to use chemical weapons, though he had them,” in response to a Wall Street Journal article detailing President Biden’s comments Thursday at a NATO summit that the U.S. would respond if Putin used such weapons. Although Hitler was apparently reluctant to use chemical weapons widely on the battlefield, they were used: German bombers dropped bombs containing sulfur mustard gas on a Warsaw suburb in 1939 and used asphyxiating gas in Odessa in November 1941 among other incidents. In 2017, White House press secretary Sean Spicer had to apologize after claiming Hitler hadn’t used chemical weapons on his own people. “It’s always good to get a reminder that the people who run America are absolutely 100% out of their minds,” Jon Schwarz, a reporter for The Intercept, tweeted in response to Blankfein’s tweet.