The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (2018)
A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen.
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time.
To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.
Hett’s gifted storytelling and his portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
Named “Book of the Week” by CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph (UK) and The Times of London
Winner of the 2019 Vine Prize in History
“[An] extremely fine study of the end of constitutional rule in Germany. . . . With careful prose and fine scholarship, with fine thumbnail sketches of individuals and concise discussions of institutions and economics, . . . [Benjamin Carter Hett] sensitively describes a moral crisis that preceded a moral catastrophe.”
“With a wealth of telling detail, a keen eye for human character, and a talent for gripping narrative, Benjamin Hett analyses the end of the Weimar Republic and the inauguration of the Nazi regime. It is a chilling and warning tale, for he shows that Hitler’s victory was by no means inevitable. Rather, it was the result of human folly, greed, selfishness and, on the part of those who invited him, an unwillingness to confront the true meaning of Nazism and a willful insistence that they could use Hitler.”
“At a time of deep distress over the stability of democracy in America and elsewhere, Benjamin Carter Hett’s chronicle of the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Adolf Hitler could not be more timely. The Death of Democracy makes for chilling reading.”
“It is both eerie and enlightening how much of Hett’s account rings true in our time.”
“[Hett] is also that rarity, a specialist who writes lucidly and engagingly. In this post-truth, alternative-facts American moment, The Death of Democracy is essential reading.”
“An outstanding accomplishment.”