“Mussolini and Hitler were good at transporting millions to death in death camps”, the blunt comment by Jo-Marie Burt of George Mason University

The chief of the cabinet of Pedro Castillo's government, Aníbal Torres, raised a wave of repudiation of the to mention Adolf Hitler as a role model in the highway construction program in Nazi Germany.

“I give you an example: Italy and Germany were just like us. But once, Adolf Hitler visits northern Italy and [Benito] Mussolini shows him a highway built from Milan to Brescia,” Torres said.

“Hitler saw that, he went to his country and filled it with highways and airports and made Germany the first economic power in the world,” Torres added during Thursday's decentralized council of ministers in the city of Huancayo, which Castillo later joined.

The professor of Latin American studies at George Mason University, Dr. Jo-Marie Burt, spoke out, joining the absolute rejection of politicians, historians and the general population.

“And just when you thought things in Peru couldn't get more surreal, the Prime Minister refers to Mussolini and Hitler as models of infrastructure development. They were especially good at building trains that transported millions to death in death camps,” he said on Twitter.

The German and Israeli embassies in Lima also spoke out and rejected the claims of Torres, who had to go out and apologize hours later.

“Hitler was a fascist and genocidal dictator, in whose name the worst war of all time was waged from Germany and a genocide of 6 million Jews was committed. Faced with this scenario, Hitler is not a suitable reference as an example of any kind,” said the German legation on its Facebook page.

The Israeli embassy said that the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler are not an example of prosperity or progress.

“We regret that Peruvian political discourse includes references such as Hitler and Mussolini as an example of prosperity. Regimes of death and terror cannot be a sign of progress,” he shared on his Twitter account.

Hours later, at the close of the cabinet session and in the presence of Castillo, Torres apologized again: “To the Ambassador of Israel, if I have offended him, I apologize and we will talk personally.”

“If we had given as an example of Germany's progress on the roads of communication, it is a real fact. That is not to say that Adolf Hitler is not considered a great criminal,” he added.

Newspapers such as The Guardian and The Washington Post also replicated these regrettable statements

“Peruvian Prime Minister's praise of Hitler sparks wave of protests,” reports The Guardian on its website. For its part, The Washington Post states on its portal “Prime Minister of Peru cites Hitler as a model, provokes indignation”.

The head of the Peruvian Congress, María del Carmen Alva, tweeted indignantly that “what was said by Prime Minister Aníbal Torres, praising the genocidal Hitler, has offended thousands of Peruvians.”

“A shame that Premier Aníbal Torres cites as an example of a fascist and genocidal such as Hitler, we now understand where erroneous measures [of the government] come from such as the failed daytime “curfew” decreed in Lima on Tuesday,” said the ruling legislator Alex Flores on the same social network.

“We would have preferred it if it did not refer to the merits of Hitler. It is a nonsense that offends the six million victims of the Jewish genocide,” said the morning host of the RPP channel and radio station, Fernando Carvallo.

This is not the first time in his two months in office that Torres, a 79-year-old lawyer, mentions Hitler, because in March he compared the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori to the Nazi chief, stating that “no one is judged for his good works, he is judged for his bad deeds”.

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