Tigerstar: A Comparison to Adolf Hitler By: Jayfrost

Jayfrost, from BlogClan, let me post his recent fan article on Cat Adventures! So here we go, Jayfrost's wonderful article!

 Tigerstar: A Comparison to Adolf Hitler

 By: Jayfrost on BlogClan

This one is an easy comparison to make. Persecuting people of a certain bloodline, most well-known tyrant in history, and so on. But there’s more than that vague connection. Tigerstar has many more connections to the Fuhrer than might first be apparent.

Alright, sit down kids, time for a history lesson. Be fore-warned, this is going to be a long one. Before Hitler came to power, Germany was in a rather bad state. World War I ended in 1918, when the Central Powers were defeated. The Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.

Now, World War I started for a majority of reasons. All these European countries were building themselves up, trying to act tough, itching for a fight to prove that they were the most powerful empire of the lot. Countries started gathering allies, building armies. Everyone wanted a fight, and that made for a very tense atmosphere. When the Archduke of Austria-Hungary was murdered by Serbian group called the Black Hand, the tension exploded. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia’s government and declared war, Serbia’s allies declared war with Austria, and Austria’s allies declared war on Serbia’s allies. Everyone jumped at the chance to prove themselves in a war. They had no idea the bloodbath that was in store for them.

In short, there was no one country to blame for WWI. But when the victorious countries wrote up the Treaty of Versailles, they placed the blame of the war solely on the shoulders of Germany. They demanded that Germany pay reparations, which basically means they had to pay to rebuild all the damages caused by the war. Germany was outraged at being blamed, but there was nothing they could do about it.

Paying reparations, and being hit with the Great Depression a few years after the war ended, drained Germany dry. They were broke, and on top of that, they were still recovering from losing so many people in the war. Germany was suffering, but on top of that, it was angry. The people felt like they had been wrongly blamed for the war, and they also felt that they had been betrayed. They figured that the only way that they had lost the war was that someone on their side had betrayed them somehow and made them lose.

This poor, degraded state is very similar to what ShadowClan was like when Tigerclaw found them. They were angry about what Brokenstar’s leadership had done to their Clan’s reputation (Treaty of Versailles) and they were weak from the rat sickness (reparations and the Great Depression.) And yet, the similarities don’t stop here. Germany was weak, but that’s not the end of the story.

Enter a young soldier by the name of Adolf Hitler. Now, until this point, Hitler had been little more than a failed artist and a soldier, even living homeless for a while. He was a born Austrian, but his loyalty was to Germany. Hitler was outraged that Germany had been blamed for the war, and he decided to take action. He made an attempt to overthrow the German government with the early followers of his Nazi party, but he ultimately failed. The man was tried and convicted of treason, and sentenced to five years in prison. After only serving nine months, he was released.

This all sounds similar to Tigerstar’s backstory. While Hitler didn’t murder a higher-up to try and take their position, he did attempt to overthrow the leader of his Clan, failed, and was convicted for it. The main difference here is that while Hitler later succeeded in taking over the same country he had first failed to, Tigerstar found better luck with ShadowClan.

Later, Hitler saw an opportunity to use Germany’s suffering for his benefit. The German people were angry, so he decided to give that anger justification. He told them that it wasn’t their fault they had lost the war. That they had, in fact, been stabbed in the back. And who had done the stabbing? Well, a few groups, but most importantly, the Jews. He gave the Germans their strength back, told them that they were strong and they could be a true empire again, and that allowed him to rise to power as the Fuhrer.

This all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? Tigerstar had a hate-on for halfClan cats very similar to Hitler’s persecution of Jews (and other groups). On his speech on top of the Bonehill, he blamed halfClan cats and their disloyal parents for the problems of the Clans, saying that they were destined from birth to be traitors. He used this hate of halfClan cats, and hate of other Clans in the case of ShadowClan, to rally the cats around him. He also helped the suffering ShadowClan cats, bringing in strong rogues to hunt for them and build their strength back up, telling them that the other Clans were to blame for their troubles, and that they could be strong again. In thanks for his help (and because of a false sign from StarClan), they made him leader.

Once Hitler was in power, he got greedy. He pushed his luck, taking over two german-speaking countries; Austria and Czechoslovakia. Since Europe had already suffered a devastating war and had no wish for a second one, the other countries hemmed and hawed. They didn’t like what Germany was doing, but they knew that they only way to stop him was to start another World War, so they avoided it as long as they could. Finally, Germany got just too aggressive to ignore. After Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France declared war.

Tigerstar managed to convince Leopardstar to merge her Clan with his, effectively taking over RiverClan. That could have been enough, but he got greedy. He tried to take over WindClan and ThunderClan as well. But Firestar and Tallstar had had enough, so they decided to fight back and meet TigerClan in battle together. Very similar to how France and Great Britain finally declared war on Germany.

Hitler allied with Russia (which at this point was the Soviet Union), using them to help invade Poland. But Hitler never intended for this to last. He considered Russians racially inferior to Germans, and he wanted to take control of them. He turned on his allies, but he wasn’t prepared for the consequences. The Soviet Union allied with Germany’s enemies, and this loss was one of the major reasons that they ultimately lost the war.

Tigerstar allied with BloodClan in order to take over the other Clans, but he never intended to give them a share of the forest. As Firestar said, he wouldn’t give power to anyone. When Scourge refused to fight, Tigerstar turned on him, which ultimately caused his death and his downfall.

And most famously of all, Hitler was responsible for the concentration camps that held many prisoners, including Jews, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and several others. These people were kept in horrific conditions, starved and worked to death, enclosed in fences and watched by guards. And many were killed, for no greater crime than their heritage.

Although it isn’t nearly the extent of the Holocaust, the halfClan cats that Tigerstar kept prisoner are comparable to the Jews that Hitler persecuted. Mistyfoot, Stonefur, Featherpaw, and Stormpaw were kept in a dirty hole stinking of crowfood and waste, starved and watched constantly by guards. Stonefur was strong enough to beat Darkstripe, but Firestar noted how thin and weak he looked. The four prisoners’ only crime was being halfClan, and yet they were kept prisoner and nearly died because of Tigerstar’s persecution.

In conclusion, beyond just being tyrants, Tigerstar and Hitler share a lot in common. Many aspects of how they came to power, the state of their home when they came to power, and how they acted as leaders, had striking similarities.