2024 U. S. Anxieties and Hitler 1933
Walter G. Moss
The closer we get to this year's presidential election, the more anxious I become about
the possibility that Donald Trump could be elected. Like Adolf Hitler in January 1933,
he could come to power in a democratic system because its citizens were
insufficiently wary. “The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that President
Biden and former President Donald Trump are statistically tied. . . . But the survey
found that plenty of people--about 40%--said they are at least open to changing their
minds.”
Being a historian, I am more aware of the circumstances permitting Hitler to come to
power than most LAP readers, so what I offer here is a friendly reminder that all it
would take for Trump to be elected is a series of mistakes by the electorate--many of
them not especially earthshaking. And once Trump is elected, all hopes of
maintaining our democracy are off. A Trumpian authoritarian regime is certainly
possible, many experts believe even probable.
Thus, a quick review of the Hitler scenario in 1933, of how someone in a democratic
system could come to power and then, in less than six months, have all other political
parties except his own outlawed.
First we’ll examine Hitler (1889-1945), without immediately comparing him to
Trump, though some readers will no doubt conjure up images of the American
capitalist turned politician as we examine the political fortunes of the ex-German
WWI corporal who earlier (almost a century ago) turned politician. Then, after
looking at Hitler’s early political career, we’ll turn to Trump with special attention to
some similarities with the Hitler phenomenon.
Hitler’s most significant act of the 1920s was his 1923 unsuccessful attempt in
Munich to topple both the local Bavarian and the German Republic governments.
Born in Austria in 1889, he had first come to that southern German city in 1913, and
from there enlisted in the German army when war broke out the following year. After
its conclusion he returned to that southern German city and became involved with,
and gradually the leader (or Führer) of, a small, rather insignificant nationalistic group
which called itself the German Workers’ Party. His unsuccessful 1923 Munich
“Beer- Hall Putsch” led to nine months in prison and his writing of Mein Kampf (My
Struggle), a work he originally wished to call Four and a Half Years of Struggle
against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice. In it he spelled out his nationalism,
antisemitism, and racism.
The national government he had hoped to subvert was based on a mid-1919
Constituent Assembly convened in the city of Weimar--thus the reference to the preNazi government of 1919-1933 as the Weimar Republic. The constitution furthered
political instability because it allowed a multiplicity of parties. In the Reichstag
(lower house of parliament) they received seats in proportion to the votes each had
gained in general elections, thus making coalition governments almost inevitable. The
moderate socialist Friedrich Ebert was president from 1919 until 1925, but cabinets
under several chancellors changed on the average of once a year. (Although the
president had certain emergency powers, the chancellor normally directed everyday
government operations based mainly on the decisions of a bicameral legislative body.)
After Hitler’s release from prison he continued to build up his party, by then renamed
the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. In 1928 elections it received
only about 3 percent of the total vote. But by 1930 the onset of the Great Depression
and continued national resentment over the Versailles treaty brought about impressive
Nazi gains in the Reichstag elections; the Nazis gained 18 percent of the vote and
became the second- largest party in that body.
At this point some more post-WWI German background is necessary. In a 2005
memoir, On Hitler's Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood, by
Irmgard Hunt, she writes that her mother, uncle, her mom’s “future husband, and all
of their friends grew up absorbing the incessant, all-pervasive message that the Treaty
of Versailles had been designed to destroy Germany, that it was the main cause of the
decadence and disorder of the Weimar Republic and the misery and hopelessness of
their youth.”
That memoir also points out Irmgard’s parents and their friends “were easy prey for
Hitler. After years of being made to feel like beggars and scum, they lent an eager ear
to the man who told them that Germany was not only a worthy nation but a superior
one. Anyone who promised economic stability would capture the nation’s mind and
soul as well. Of all the Weimar politicians, only Hitler understood fully that playing
up patriotism and making false promises to every interest group would garner a
following. And most important, perhaps, he realized that instilling fear of a vaguely
defined enemy—the ‘conspirators of world Jewry’—would bring a suspicious and
traumatized people, including my own mother and father, to his side.”
No doubt the Versailles Treaty was tough on the Germans. Germany and its allies
were declared guilty of aggression for imposing a war on the Allies. They lost
territory both in the east and in the west; others areas such as the city of Danzig were
put under the control of the newly formed League of Nations; and all its overseas
colonies came under the control of the victors. In addition the German Rhineland
suffered various deprivations. A 30- mile zone east of the Rhine River was to be
permanently demilitarized, and an area west of it was to endure Allied occupation for
periods ranging from 5 to 15 years. Germany also had to observe various strict
limitations on its armed forces and weapons.
Hitler’s promise of better economic times also ignited German hopes. In 1923 after
Germany failed to meet a reparations payment and the Allies reacted, the economy
faltered and inflation skyrocketed—paying a billion marks for a restaurant meal was
not unusual. Later the Great Depression had longer consequences for Germany. By
the time Hitler came to power at the end of January 1933, its percentage of
unemployed had even climbed past that of the United States.
From the summer of 1930 to that of 1932, economic misery greatly increased in
Germany--by midway in the latter year about 30 percent of the German workforce
was unemployed. The suffering of the Germans and Hitler’s promises to make
Germany great again combined to elevate the Nazis to the top of the political heap.
They garnered almost 100 more seats than their nearest rival, but because of all the
political parties they still only had 37 percent of the total Reichstag seats.
The lack of a majority consensus in the Reichstag necessitated the issuing of more
emergency decrees by President Paul von Hindenburg, a former WWI general, who
eventually was persuaded to appoint Hitler as chancellor. He did so on 30 January
1933, and the former corporal moved quickly to end German democracy.
On 27 February he blamed (without proof) a fire that had blazed in the Reichstag
building on communists and almost immediately got Hindenburg indefinitely to
suspend basic liberties and the due process of law. In March 1933 Hitler convinced
the Reichstag, where by then Nazis held 44 percent of the seats, to agree to the
Enabling Act, which transferred legislative power to him and his cabinet and allowed
him to suspend parts of the Weimar constitution. In mid-July he had all political
parties except the Nazis outlawed.
From this point forward he gradually increased his powers, and his Nazis gobbled up
foreign territories and committed atrocities, including the Holocaust, which occurred
during WW2.
A central failing of the German people in supporting Hitler was their failure to realize
how bad, how inhumane, Hitler would become. A careful reading of his Mein Kampf,
written a decade before he came to power, had already spelled out much of his
inhumanity. Take, for example, this sentence, “If we pass all the causes of the German
collapse in review, the ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the
racial problem and especially the Jewish menace.” Reading this and other examples of
his antisemitism, most Germans did not envision his “final solution” (the Holocaust)
to what he called the “Jewish menace.”
No, many Germans thought that the responsibilities of the chancellor’s office would
tone down Hitler’s earlier extremism--or like Irmgard Hunt’s parents they simply
were too focused on their own economic difficulties.
With Donald Trump we see the same willingness to overlook or excuse earlier
extremist statements or behavior, and to do so because of similar reasons--overfocusing on one’s own grievances. How often have I heard statements such as “Biden
is almost as bad as Trump?” Unhappiness with Biden’s student-loan forgiveness, or
his support of Israel, or his age, or some other failing, real or perceived, might be the
trigger for the quote I furnish. But whatever the cause, it simply overlooks one central
reality--as I earlier phrased it, “Why Trump Is Different than Reagan, Either Bush,
Dole, McCain, or Romney—He’s Evil."
In that four-year-old essay I wrote, “Like Trump’s six previous Republican
presidential candidates (and like many Trump supporters), all of the major 2020
Democratic candidates are decent human beings. Trump is evil. He is a liar,
hatemonger and polarizer who has little knowledge of, or respect for, America’s
traditions and better political values. Unable to tolerate criticism, he increasingly
surrounds himself with flatterers and toadies”
About six months ago I updated this linking of Trump and evil by writing "New
Research Indicates Trump-Hitler Comparison Is Not Outlandish." In it appeared this
[2016] quote from former Republican presidential candidate conservative Utah
Senator Mitt Romney: “He [Trump] is unquestionably mentally unstable, and he is
racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, vulgar and prone to violence. . . . There is
simply no rational argument that could lead me to vote for someone with those
characteristics.”
There’s also a quote there from The Conspiracy to End America by Stuart Stephens,
who ran Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012. He wrote, “What happened within
the Republican Party in 2016 was a repeat of the rise of national socialism [the Nazis]
in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany.” In an interview Stephens added, “I think the
parallels are striking. What happened in Germany was that the ruling class . . .
realized that they had lost touch with the working class, and they thought that they
could control Hitler, that he would be someone who could connect them to the
working class and take them into power. And it's really exactly what happened with
the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell said that he was confident that Trump would
change, that they would change Trump, that they were the mainstream conservative[s]
and Trump would adapt to that.”
Wishful thinking? Too much focus on one’s own grievances? Supporting a third-party
candidate who takes votes away from Biden? It may make little difference which
failing we possessed if Donald Trump is once again elected.