His stimulus plan pulled Germany out of the Depression.

If Adolf Hitler can drag Nazi Germany out of the Great Depression with a stimulus plan, then America can use a similar strategy — only in part, mind you — to do the same thing this time. Yes, we can, in Barack Obama's campaign catchphrase, which the new president is still more or less using.

Not that Obama is invoking Hitler's name or even obliquely referring to it. But the preternaturally cautious New York Times is doing so, in yet another provocative analysis by David Leonhardt.

The Gray Lady of journalism may be terminally ill, as readers of Mark Bowden's advance obit in Vanity Fair of publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.'s reign, "The Inheritance," can't help but conclude.

But as a journalist, Leonhardt is a keeper. You just can't think of anyone else on the Times (or practically any other media outlet) who would talk about Hitler's economic policies the way Leonhardt does in "Stimulus Thinking, and Nuance."

Unless he's pulling an April Fools' Day prank on us, which he's not. Because the Times wouldn't joke about Hitler, would it? Nah.

Anyway, forget the boring headline and Leonhardt's apologetic first sentence: "Every so often, history serves up an analogy that's uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant."

Poking around in the dustbin of Great Depression history, Leonhardt argues that stimulus plans have worked and points to Hitler's success in Germany as a prime example.

OK, so he doesn't mention that today is the 76th anniversary of Nazi Germany's historic "Judenboycott," which formally launched the government-sanctioned horror that ended in the Holocaust.

But that doesn't necessarily blunt his point.

After warning that his analogy to Hitler's stimulus plan will be "uncomfortable," Leonhardt gets right to it:

Leonhardt notes that "no sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this bit of economic history has a particular importance this week."

As if we need more evidence that Leonhardt's pieces are nuanced (something that most other daily journalism isn't), he argues that there's a historical subtext to the disagreement between the U.S. and Europe over the idea of a stimulus plan — and this context has nothing to do with Hitler:

Now that is nuance.

Meanwhile, over at the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman must already be typing an angry letter to the Times in protest of Leonhardt's pointing to Hitler's successful economic-stimulus plan.

The wrong kind of stimulus.

If Foxman wants to complain about Leonhardt's piece, he's got some good material to work with: One thing Leonhardt doesn't mention is that exactly 76 years ago, on April 1, 1933, Hitler's new government urged Germans to boycott Jewish businesses.

That "Judenboycott" was a historic moment that makes the G-20 summit pale in comparison. The history site Finding Dulcinea points out that it was the Nazis' "first government-sanctioned persecution of the Jewish people":

Yes, that's what makes Leonhardt's history lesson so uncomfortable.