Abstract
Reviewed by: Bodie A. Ashton, University of Passau, Germany
In the current political culture, historians face temptations to comment on the perceived ‘end of liberalism’. Particularly, the parallels between the Trump administration’s apparently wilful dismantling of the rule of law and democracy and that which occurred in Germany from 1933 onwards have become the object of debate – perhaps most notably by Christopher R. Browning in the pages of the New York Review of Books. Benjamin Carter Hett’s latest monograph, The Death of Democracy, constitutes his contribution to this growing discussion.
Hett’s book is ostensibly about the rise to power of the Nazis after the First World War, or, more precisely, the erosion of democratic principles and institutions that ultimately left the Weimar Republic weak and unprotected before the dictatorial ambitions of Adolf Hitler and his ilk. While Hitler himself plays a starring role (quite literally Hett’s lucid description of the would-be dictator preening before his photographers and practising his speaking to the advice and encouragement of Hess paints him as a prima donna), the author also emphasizes the weaknesses inherent in the political process of the Weimar Republic. Most of the usual suspects make an appearance: Hindenburg and Ludendorff, along with the ‘stab-in-the-back myth’; the presidential powers built into the 1919 constitution; the perception of the Treaty of Versailles. Particularly engrossing are the descriptions of Hitler as a populist, whipping up crowds with his mastery of invective and rhetoric. Hitler’s early courtship of the press meant that even the Social Democrat journalist Konrad Heiden, though acknowledging the danger of Hitler’s rhetoric, also recognized that that danger came via its seductive qualities. Hitler could speak to the masses, if not necessarily in their own language then in a language they found powerful and reflective of their social, political and economic anxieties. One can almost hear the echoes of ‘build the wall’ or ‘lock her up’ in Hitler’s beer hall appearances.
We should be clear that this book is sounding an alarm – not about Hitler, as that ship has sailed long, long ago, but rather about the current direction of American politics. Hett’s warning is really that of George Santayana in long form: if we did not learn from the German catastrophe of the twentieth century, we are in the process of sinking into a new, American catastrophe in the twenty-first. It is tempting to see shades of the Republican Party grandees in the vacillations of Schleicher, Hindenburg and the nationalists who were convinced that they could tame Hitler, just as it is tempting to see the reinvention of the GOP in the mutation of the German right at the beginning of the 1930s. Hett echoes the words of numerous commentators writing about Donald Trump when he warns that the ‘essential paradox of Adolf Hitler’ was that he ‘lied all the time … yet he also said clearly what he was doing and what he planned to do’ (38). The comparison becomes impossible to ignore or avoid when Hett, explaining that Hitler was contemptuous of the population, declares that Hitler ‘dreamed of making Germany great again’ (39).
Hett may have a point that raising the alarm is necessary (or, indeed, overdue). He may also have a point that there are parallels between the historic example of Adolf Hitler and the rise of National Socialism and the modern circumstances of Trump, as other historians and authors have also done. However, this raises two principal problems. The first is that the attention of the book is divided between the explicit historical context and the implied contemporary commentary. The result is that it does neither, particularly the former, justice. The road Hett follows in his exploration of the rise to power of the Nazis is well travelled and has been conducted in greater depth and with greater insight by other historians. Of these, the most notable (and certainly the most familiar to the public) is Sir Richard J. Evans, whose The Coming of the Third Reich is wholly and curiously absent from the bibliography. The gaps in the subject matter are, in places, similarly worthy of a raised eyebrow. Mein Kampf is mentioned in passing, though given no real prominence (indeed, it has no index entry). Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and the Spartacus Revolt in Berlin are given plenty of attention; comparatively little is given to the People’s State of Bavaria (Volksstaat Bayern) and the successor Bavarian Socialist Republic (Räterepublik), which emerged in Munich during the German Revolution of November 1918 only to be crushed later by the Freikorps in May 1919. Yet the events surrounding the Räterepublik were of key significance for the development and emergence of what ultimately became the National Socialist German Workers Party, as Bavaria – not Berlin – was the cradle of the Nazi movement. The reason for these shortfalls is the second problem with the concept of Hett’s work as a whole: while there are certainly comparisons that may be drawn between then and now, Hitler and Trump, the Nazis and the modern GOP, when there are no clear analogues between the two the work runs into trouble. Mein Kampf is presumably given a minor billing because there is little equivalent in Trump’s America (whatever may be said about it, The Art of the Deal is hardly the same). Similarly, while the trope of a radical liberal-socialist infiltration of Washington has long been a staple of the American far right (hence drawing comparisons with Berlin), a socialist republic was never declared in, say, New York State or New Hampshire. As with most works of this type, the argument only has efficacy as long as there are genuine tertia comparationis. Once these do not present themselves, the analogy can only be maintained either by neglecting some subject matter, or overemphasizing others. The present work appears to lean towards the former.
Benjamin Carter Hett is not the only scholar to look upon the developments in the modern United States with increasing dismay and concern. Nor is he the only one to relate these developments to those that occurred in Germany in the 1930s. Such a comparison only goes so far, however, and requires compromises that undermine the efficacy of the work. If Hett wishes to write about the Nazi rise to power, then this book compares unfavourably with others in an already crowded field. If he wishes to write about Donald Trump’s rise to power, then he should write about Donald Trump’s rise to power.