THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY
Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
By Benjamin Carter Hett
This book was reviewed by Timothy Snyder in the New York Times on June 14, 2018 and makes some new-to-me comparisons with Germany in the ‘30s.
Read the book review
I am not a great fan of comparisons with the Nazis. For one thing, they don’t provide us with the tools to resolve the present situation. However, the points made provide wide similarities to then and now.
The salient points that the book and reviewer makes that struck me are:
We take for granted that the Germans of the 1930s were quite different from ourselves, and that our consideration of their errors will only confirm our superiority. The opposite is the case.
The Nazis, in Hett’s account, were above all “a nationalist protest movement against globalization.”
As Goebbels put it, “We want to build a wall, a protective wall.”
Their core constituents, Hett indicates, were Protestants from the countryside or small towns who felt themselves to be the victims of globalization.
As Hett capably shows, the Nazis were the great artists of victimhood fiction.