Two years or so again I began an extensive research project into the totalitarian movements of the 1920s and 1930, with a heavy emphasis on Germany and Italy whose totalitarians regimes hailed from the political right.
When I started this research project I knew very little about the process by which the National Socialists actually rose to power, this despite holding both a college degree and a PhD in political science. My general knowledge was limited to the major battles of WWII and what was by far the Nazi’s worse crime: the systemic slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
With the tail end of the chaos of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party’s attempt to seize power after the 2020 election, what I wanted from my research was to feel better about the durability of democracy in America.
Instead, it made me feel worse. MUCH worse.
Turns out, how fascism rises is a tale as old as time, and its one that has profound implications for America’s current democratic woes.
That means it’s a tale that must be told.
This is the first in a series of episodes designed to bring what I’ve learned the past two years to you and hopefully from you, to your friends, relatives, and other associates. To assist with this effort, I’m teaming up with real experts on the Third Reich and on authoritarianism to talk about different aspects of how exactly, the Nazis seized power.
Today’s expert is Benjamin Hett, Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, author of the must-read book The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic.
Whether it is the Weimer Republic in Germany, pre-Mussolini Italy, modern Hungary, or most Cold War Russia, the common thread behind every successful totalitarian movement is underreaction by the rest of society while there is still time to stop them.
Once the crisis is obvious to everyone, it is already far too late.
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