This ignores a breathrough measure the Nazi had come up with to undermine nationalism and its tendency to undermine empires: extermination not just of nationalist leaders, bu of the entire human population of the subject nations. Hitler’s plan for England, for example, was total extermination of the English peoples. He has similar plans for the Slavs of eastern Europe and Russia. Lebensraum was not a metaphor, or a slow process of taking control of foreign lands through immigration. It was a fully genocidal program of mass murder that would leave no possible nationalist opposition remaining.

Now, it remains true that not all evil needs to be opposed. Much evil self-destructs under its own internal contradictions. But many lethal viruses, like Nazism, do not self-destruct on their own, but only under the pressures of massive defeat. It seems like an awfully risky policy to have counted on Nazism to self-destruct without a massive attack by its enemies, including the US.