Hillary Clinton’s stunning H-bomb — comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian invasion to Adolf Hitler’s 1938 seizure of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland — was a blatant attempt to distance herself from the Obama administration as she prepares to mount a 2016 campaign for the White House, critics said.

“As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was enthusiastically for the reset with Putin,” William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, told the Herald. “Now, as a presidential candidate, she’s appalled by it. Will the real Hillary please stand up?”

Clinton made the comparison in front of a fundraiser audience in California on Tuesday.

“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” Clinton said, according to the Press-Telegram of Long Beach. “Hitler kept saying, ‘They’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people.’ And that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”

With 2016 in mind, Clinton’s tough talk is meant to separate her from President Obama, seen as increasingly weak on the world stage and caught off-guard by Russia’s military seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, political observers said.

“She is trying to distance herself from the administration and stake out her own policy, which is more in line with moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans than Obama’s is,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell.

Democratic strategist Phil Johnston — while admitting Clinton’s remarks were “over the top” — countered that he believes they signal solidarity with the Obama administration. Johnston said he didn’t think they would hurt relations with Russia under a Clinton presidency.

“I think relations are very tense now, and one would hope they would improve before 2017, if and when she takes office,” Johnston said. “I do think she was trying to signal her very strong support for Obama’s policy toward Russia — that’s all I think it was.”

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who blogs at Instapundit.com, said, “I notice she’s already walking it back. A tendency to say things one regrets in order to seize a brief domestic political advantage is not a good thing in a president.”

As her comments hit the news yesterday, Clinton claimed she did not intend to make a Putin-Hitler comparison, though she said Russia’s actions were “reminiscent” of Nazi actions.

“I just want everybody to have a little historic perspective. I am not making a comparison, certainly. But I am recommending that we perhaps can learn from this tactic that has been used before,” Clinton said.

But she said she believes ?Putin is trying to “re-Sovietize” the old Eastern Bloc and “threatening instability and even the peace of Europe.”