Seems to me this country of ours is indeed splintered…into chunks of fear.
A certain percentage of us has been terrified and enraged by endless lies and crazy threats from non-existent enemies. A much larger percentage of us are being made frightened by historical comparisons evoking actual enemies, from very smart people who fully understand the history.
I don’t question the historians’ accurate portraits of autocracy, nor am I disturbed at what they’re doing. If fear of a potential dangerous autocrat drives more people to the polling booths, good. More than that, they’re teaching recent history to a country that seems often not to know anything about history. Spiking interest in studying history is fine.
Thus, I’ve reminded myself of the history of Nazi Germany by re-reading my original paperback of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. The book itself is in late disintegration mode, i.e., the (many) pages have turned sepia and shred in my fingers whenever I try to turn a page. The binding, of course, fell apart as soon as I pulled the book off the shelf. Gaffer tape took care of that problem, although some pages do sneak their way out.
So are the conditions in the 2024 United States similar to those in the German Republic known as the Weimar Republic — those conditions which experts agree created an unhealthy and unstable atmosphere that gave Hitler room to seize power?
I’m beginning at the beginnings — the founding facts for each country — because it seems to me the origins of each republic have something to do with later political developments.
–The Republic of Germany in 1918.
World War I began with a dubious political assassination, the excuse for Germany’s and Austro-Hungary’s invasion and occupation of other countries. Motive: imperialism. The war lasted from 1914 to 1918. Germany and its allies lost the war. Which seems important.
Immediately after the armistice, Shirer writes:
“Revolution was in the air in Berlin. The capital was paralyzed by a general strike…When word of this reached…the Reichstag…consternation. Something had to be done at once…[Philipp] Scheidemann [a journalist who became Weimar’s first chancellor] thought of something. Without consulting his comrades he dashed to the window overlooking [the plaza] where a great throng had gathered, stuck his head out and on his own, as if the idea had just popped into his head, proclaimed the Republic!”
The date was November 9, 1918, the same day on which the Kaiser abdicated. (Busy day.) Until 1918, the people of what became Germany had been subjects of a variety of absolute monarchs and monarchal dynasties for thousands of years. Germans had no embedded experience or historical memory of anything like democracy. Which also seems important.
Elections. The Republic elevated its subjects (yes, including women) into citizens who were given the right to vote. A very high majority of them did vote.
The Republic began on November 9, 1918. It ended on March 23, 1933, when Hitler came to power. The Weimar Republic lasted approximately 14 years and 4 months. Seems important, also.
Chancellors were not elected by the people; they were selected by the president of the Reichstag. Scheidemann’s tenure as chancellor was 127 days.
Political structure. The problem, as Wikipedia notes, was: “In the fourteen years the Weimar Republic was in existence, some forty parties were represented in the Reichstag. This fragmentation of political power was in part due to the use of a peculiar proportional representation electoral system that encouraged regional or small special interest parties and in part due to the many challenges facing the nascent German democracy in this period.”
Oh, and what about the generals? A lot of them wanted the Kaiser or his son to come back. They wanted monarchy, even if constitutional. They wanted a king.
–The U.S.A. in 1787.
The war that preceded the country’s founding, the American Revolution, was fought for independence and lasted eight years. America won. This seems important.
On May 25, 1787, a group of state delegates gathered in Philadelphia to write a Constitution for a new kind of government. The number of delegates varied over the course of the next four months; at its numerical peak, there were 55. Summer arrived and it was very hot. The delegates argued, discussed, debated, compromised, held 600 separate votes to resolve their differences.
On September 17, 1787 the Constitution of the United States was signed, and then carried to the thirteen states for ratification, during which period Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison published a series of articles about this Constitution and the arguments in favor and against every phrase, so that the People could understand what had been done.
They had kicked out an absentee monarchy and established, in its place, a brilliantly radical conception of self-governance, a democratic republic.
Nobody yelled out of a window. The U.S. Constitution was fully ratified by May 29, 1790.
Elections. In those early days only white men who owned property could vote. But there was no general election for our first president: George Washington was chosen by state electors; he was inaugurated on April 30, 1789 in New York, although New York State (was this a sort of funny omen?) didn’t pull itself together to select electors for the vote.
Four years later, Washington’s second term, all the states had figured out what to do and the electoral vote was unanimous. Washington served for eight years. He firmly rejected any thought of calling the new American leader “king.” Washington was the first American president and the first to swear an oath to our brand new Constitution.
There were no political parties.
Most significant difference? 14 versus 235.
We contemporary Americans have inherited a long history of regularly scheduled elections — and of hitting the streets to demand expanded enfranchisement. And our 235 years were not static as to our civil rights. Twenty-seven amendments were ratified; one full internal war and numerous activist movements were waged for full enfranchisement.
America’s civil rights are embedded into our genetic makeup and our calendars: we expect to vote annually and we do vote. A majority of us has not grown bored with elections; we are not a languorous bunch.
You think we’re capable of collapsing into acceptance of a dimwitted and repulsive autocrat-wanna-be who vomits up vile Nazi tropes more than a hundred years old, from a country utterly different in every way from ours?
I don’t think so. But if you genuinely fear our country might become like Nazi Germany, two hundred and thirty-five years of American experience tell you what you can do to derail it.