Nancy Reagin draws many similarities between WWII and Harry Potter in her chapter “Was Voldemort a Nazi?” It is clear to see the similarities between the death eaters and Nazi members at the time, but also it gives insight into the actions of current leaders today. In this chapter, she goes into detail about how the Jews were treated and singled out among the rest of society. With this view point and knowledge that readers may not have known before, they can start to see how close Voldemort and his followers were in comparison to Hitler.

Right at the start of page 128, Reagin brings up the different classes of Harry Potter by stating, “The expressions “pure-blood”, and “half-blood,” and “Muggle-born” have been coined by the people to whom these distinctions matter, and express their originators’ prejudices. As far as somebody like Lucius Malfoy is concerned, for instance, a Muggle-born is as “bad” as a Muggle.” We’ve seen this through all of the Harry Potter books as Voldemort’s rise to power was focused on Muggles and Muggle-borns alike. To Voldemort and those that followed and thought the same way as him, Muggle-borns were suspected of stealing their wand from another witch or wizard. We see this when Umbridge is in charge of “investigating” every Muggle-born and questioning them as to how they were allowed to study magic.

In a similar way, Hitler and his followers were rounding up and persecuting Jews no matter where they were born. Anyone with even one Jewish relative was considered as polluted, no matter if they were German or not. On page 134-135, Reagin talks about how they determined who was and was not Jewish. On page 135 she brings up how the Nazi leadership wanted to label the citizens from intermarriages between German Jews and Christians who had converted to Christianity. This labeling process was the foundation and proof for the persecution of every Jew living within the country. With the Nazi government investigating the ancestry of every person in Germany, Jews were left to either prove that they had German ancestry by either faking it or rising in the military to protect yourself and your family. In the Nazi’s eyes, those with a German blooded relative was seen as “less” Jewish and someone that was mixed were treated better than “full Jews,” but treated nowhere near as well as the “Aryans.”

Throughout the Nazi regime, Jews weren’t the only people that were prosecuted and discriminated against. The Nazi government went after women and gays/lesbian Germans. They released policies to push “German-blooded” women out of their jobs and regulated what women could study at university. They even outlawed birth control and abortion so they could improve the amount of “desirable” children being born. On page 146, Reagin talks about gay and lesbian Germans being prosecuted because their homosexuality wasn’t considered healthy. “Those that were caught were often sent to concentration camps and made to wear a pink triangle, part of the Nazi’s color coding system for “undesirables,” just as Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David.”

I don’t think there is really anything in comparison to Muggle-borns forced to wear a sign to distinguish them from the crowd, but you can see a lot of similarities even in today’s society. With our current president, we have the discrimination against Muslims and the LGBT community and many other communities throughout our country. I’m not that caught up on everything that has happened, but for me to hear all about building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States, it’s scary to look at it after reading this chapter. This is just my opinion, but I feel like history just repeats itself over and over again. That’s what’s happening now. We live in a world today where it’s okay for people to think that genocide is a good thing to do in some cases. I feel like the future of our country and how the rest of the world sees us will change a lot in the next four years. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s still going to happen. It’s already happening. Other countries are coming out with policies and services in response to whatever bad that Trump puts out. With the Nazi government in mind, it’s scary to think that the same could happen to Muslims and anyone today.