Quote (theCrossbones @ 2 Feb 2021 05:06)
The Weimar Republic was 15 years old in 1933 when Hitler seized power, the U.S. has survived for over 220 years.
Its constitution at the time had several crucial flaws, among them the lack of a percent threshold for parliamentary representation, leading to an extremely fractured political and parliamentary landscape, and far too much power for the head of state, a position which was filled by a monarchist who didnt believe in democracy and harboured sympathies for a military dictatorship.
By the time of the nazi takeover, German democracy had effectively already failed, there were elections every couple of months without anyone being able to form a stable government; political disputes had already begun being settled via streetfights between goon squads rather than through proper political process.
The political left was severely weakened by vitriolic infighting. The communists had geared their campaign mostly against the social democrats, who they deemed their "socialfascistic" main enemy. Keep in mind that the social democrats were the second most leftist party in the country and should have been the natural ally of the communists, or vice versa.
The country was gutted by the immense reparations under the Treaty of Versailles, and then plunged into total misery when the Great Depression hit. A few years earlier, most Germans had lost all their fortunes during the hyperinflation and currency reform of 1923, which was traumatic and had also contributed to a latent radicalization.
Sympathizers of monarchy, among them the powerful president Paul von Hindenburg, were actively trying to undermine the young monarchy.
Hitler would not have been able to come into power if conservative and monarchist forces hadnt miscalculated spectacularly, thinking that they could easily control him and use him as their puppet. And they only became open to such an alliance in the first place because they were spooked by the, at the time, very real threat of communism.
And last but not least, the nazi party never got above 37% in free and fair elections, they never came even close to having the backing of half the country. Furthermore, the whole ideological core of the movement had been violent and fascist since its inception, it were always murderous extremists who made up the bulk of its leadership and officials.
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A very large number of factors had to come together to enable the nazi takeover, none of which are given in present-day America, even if certain trends are going in a similar direction on a
much lower scale.
Given the geopolitical and economic conditions of the time, the young democracy in interwar Germany was always doomed. The country was a hot steaming mess during that time, with chaos and misery on a level far above anything you Americans can imagine. It would take 8 to 12 years of chaos and things constantly going
sharply downhill before the United States arrived in a similar spot to 1933 Germany where the country is ripe for the taking by actual fascists. By then, Trump will have died from junkfood-induced constipation.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 1 2021 10:46pm