The Ways to Destroy Democracy: A Warning From History
A few months ago, I read the recently published book Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, written by German historian Volker Ullrich. It’s an astonishingly well-researched and captivating book-- both thrilling and frightening even for someone already well-versed on the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
The Nation posted a review of the book last month, appropriately titled “The Ways to Destroy Democracy: A Warning From History.” It was written by Richard J. Evans, a knighted British historian of twentieth-century Europe who is President of Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge and is an expert on Nazi Germany, having written books including The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War.
Both the book and the review have been on my mind daily.
Admittedly, contemporary comparisons that people make to Hitler are both overused and simplistic. They are often so overused, they are quickly dismissed. Still, important lessons can still be learned in relation to how demagogues consolidate power. The review from The Nation may not mention Trump outright, but clearly, the parallels are intentional. There is a popular narrative that Trump and his cronies are incompetent, in over their heads, confused by the realities of the presidency. I reject this narrative. Everything you see is deliberate.
I do not intend to be alarmist with this post. But I do ask that you read what I posted below in its entirety. If it alarms you, share it.Then, if you have the time, read the full review, read the book, and read even more... arm yourself and as many people as you know with knowledge of our shared past.
A few excerpts from the review include:
[T]he lower-middle classes, the bourgeoisie, the unorganized workers, the rural masses, and the older traditionalists—Protestants and evangelicals who wanted a moral restoration of the nation—switched their votes from the mainstream centrist and right-wing parties ... and gave them to Hitler instead.
Hitler issued an endless stream of slogans to win potential supporters over. He would make Germany great again. He would give Germans work once more. He would put Germany first. He would revive the nation’s rusting industries.
Hitler [carefully] prepared his speeches. Seemingly spontaneous, they were in fact calculated. Full of base allegations and vile stereotypes, they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and maximum reaction from the crowds he addressed.
Aided by his talented propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, Hitler not only flaunted his vulgarity and exploited tribal hatreds; he also lied and lied his way to success.
[I]n the last free elections of the Weimar Republic, the left-wing parties—the Communists and Social Democrats—won more votes and gained more seats in the national parliament than the Nazis did. But they were fatally divided, spending at least as much time fighting each other as they did trying to stop Hitler from establishing a dictatorship. Their rhetoric was feeble in comparison with his, their supporters less fanatical, their electoral propaganda less powerful and less sophisticated.
Hitler made sure that the armed forces were on his side by giving them massive increases in funding and a huge new armaments program.
His program for making Germany great again included a new aggressive attitude in international affairs.
Hitler’s seizure and remaking of the state was buttressed by a wholesale reorganization of the education system and an effort to redefine German culture. ... The intellectual quality of German universities, which had led the world in research before 1933, plummeted. It has never fully recovered. Hitler didn’t care. For him, education was a matter of practical instruction; it had nothing to do with the transmission of pure knowledge, let alone the traditional humanistic values that had underpinned the German educational system. ... The main objective of Nazi education and culture was not, however, to distract people from issues of political importance; it was to instill a new sense of patriotism.
The regime’s assault on culture extended to its policy toward the arts, which were “coordinated” by Goebbels in a Reich Chamber of Culture that ended funding for modern painting, sculpture, and music, and banned allegedly subversive artists from working.
[T]he regime constantly targeted minorities as a way of mobilizing popular approval and support. The Nazis may have dominated state power, but this wasn’t the kind of dictatorship that depended solely on repression, important though it was. Like many other modern dictatorships, it wanted to appear popular.
A key part of the process was the vilification of political opponents. ... Nazi media and officialdom heaped abuse on democrats and harassed them at every turn. These opponents of the regime bore the brunt of the new treason laws from 1933 onward; in 1935 alone, there were some 23,000 political prisoners in Germany’s jails, and more than 5,000 people were being tried and condemned for treason every year.
Ordinary Germans were not wholly won over by such acts of persecution and destruction; only a minority applauded them. But the great mass of Germans did nothing to stop any of this. Civil courage was in short supply in a country cowed into submission.
Hitler was a media figure who gained popularity and controlled his country through speeches and publicity. Far from being a consistent and undeviatingly purposeful politician, he was temperamental, changeable, insecure, allergic to criticism, and often indecisive and uncertain in a crisis.
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