With Trump in Office, What Happened in Germany, Can Happen Here

 

By Alan Singer

In Berlin, near remnants of the wall that once divided the city between East and West, the Topography of Terror Center documents the Nazi Party rise to power and the collapse of democracy in Germany during the 1930s. The shift from democracy to dictatorship took less than 18 months, from January 1933 to August 1934. The exhibit is powerful and frightening account of the past and a lesson for the present and future about the fragility of democracy.

In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was allowed to form a parliamentary government by President Paul von Hindenburg although his Nazi Party only held only a third of the seats in the German Reichstag or Parliament. Conservative politicians and corporate leaders thought they would control Hitler and exercise power through him. Socialist leader Kurt Schumacher dismissed Hitler as their “Dekorationsstück” (decoration). But Fascist groups marched through the streets in torch lit parades celebrating Hitler’s new position as Chancellor and the Nazi’s Machtergreifung, seizure of power. A month later the Reichstag building was destroyed by a suspicious fire and Hitler received unprecedented emergency power. Civil liberties were suspended, political opposition was silenced, and Germany started to slip into dictatorship. In August 1934, with the death of von Hindenburg, Hitler was both Chancellor and President, the unchallenged German Führer. Troops and officers in the German military and civil servants were required to swear an oath of loyalty, not Germany or its Constitution, but to Hitler.

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Source: DAILY KOS