That's because you don't know your history. Roosevelt was an avid eugenicist. Roosevelt was closely allied with Madison Grant and William Temple Hornaday, who founded the Bronx Zoo and put a black kid named Ota Benga in a zoo cage and displayed him as a subhuman species. The child later committed suicide. Roosevelt wrote a glowing endorsement of Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler kept under his bed and referred to as his "Bible." Roosevelt's endorsement: "The book is a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize. It shows an extraordinary range of reading and a wide scholarship. It shows a habit of singular serious thought on the subject of most commanding importance. It shows a fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail. It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman; and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it." Opposition to scientific racism and eugenics was mainly raised by Christians at the time, and was dismissed by Grant as "sentimentality." Roosevelt strongly opposed "unfit" races being freely available to reproduce, in keeping with Darwin's prescription in his book The Descent of Man, and he advocated for forced sterilization of those deemed unfit to reproduce. He was a product of his time, and eugenics was mainstream thought back then. We shouldn't judge too harshly. But Hitler got his ideas from the U.S. eugenics movement. Calling Roosevelt "Proto Hitler" is not altogether unfair. Pictures below: Teddy Roosevelt at the St. Louis World's Fair, where African pygmies were put in a zoo display as "missing links" in evolution. Also pictured: the zoo display.