Current U.S. Politics and the Rise of Hitler: There are Connections. Part 1
Looking for possible connections between current American politics and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis party started as a way to pass the time in the middle of the Covid-19 Pandemic. With so much free time for reading and research, it soon became less of an article and more of a thesis. Well, no one is going to read a thesis on Medium, and definitely not in one sitting. Still, as various political events have unfolded, seeing the connections between America now and the history of Germany’s Weimar Republic is more important than ever. This essay will be part one of answering this question: What can we learn from the Weimar Republic that could be helpful to America right now?
Whether it was fair or not, the comparison of Trump to Hitler has been tossed around since the start of his first campaign for president. However, in looking at Weimar it becomes clear that Hitler did not get into his position of power simply because of who he was. As such, comparing Trump to Hitler is a fruitless exercise. What is tangible is studying the components that allowed Hitler to rise to power. Then it is possible to see if there are any that are similar to those that led to Trump being elected and to his subsequent takeover of the Republican Party.
If there are similarities, we have reasons to be concerned. Once Hitler was made Chancellor he was able to manipulate democratic laws to create a fascist state and give himself full dictatorial power. Could the U.S. be subject to a similar fate?
What Exactly is Fascism?
Here is a description of what constitutes actual fascism.
“Fascist regimes ‘came to power on the basis of a very large mass movement, a political party, a large number of associated — what we would call today — civil society organizations,’ (…) The image of a fascist dictator like Hitler or Italy’s Benito Mussolini that sticks in the mind today is of ‘a leader in front of a mass audience of people who are in a kind of state of ecstasy’ and who feel ‘a sort of direct connection to the leader.’” (Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Columbia University’s Barnard College)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so, here you go!
Some might say that if we’re going to talk about fascism, why Weimar? Shouldn’t a discussion on fascism go back to the country that birthed it — Italy? The reason why we are not starting there is that while Benito Mussolini founded the fascist party in Italy, his creation did not start with the element of scapegoating a particular ethnic group for all of the nation’s ills. That piece came from Hitler in Germany — who got some of his core ideas of how to deal with Jewish people from how America dealt with blacks and other non-white people. It is America’s connection to what occurred in Germany that makes Germany’s history more relevant to what’s happening in the U.S. today.
For seasoned academic historians, some of this piece will likely not be presenting anything new. However, what about the rest of us? Most people know about World War II and the role of Adolf Hitler. As for knowledge about Weimar, the democratic republic government that existed before the Third Reich, if you’re a lover of musical theatre or old movies, you probably have seen Cabaret. Outside of that, most colleges don’t require a World or American History course as a requirement for graduation. While they usually are required as part of an American K-12 general education, the main thing taught about the fall of the Weimar Republic is that it fell because the Allies were too hard on Germany after World War I and, of course, Hitler and the rise of anti-Semitism. There’s much more to it than that, and much of it is relevant to what has been occurring in the U.S.
Today’s Horrific GOP Rhetoric & Actions vs Hitler’s Nazi Regime
What has been happening in the U.S.? At the start of looking into Weimar, the thesis was not about predicting some kind of American Holocaust-like moves by a Republican government. Even though Trump’s actions while in office targeted several demographics, including transgendered people, and his words have always been disparaging about just about anyone who was not a white straight able-bodied male, that idea seemed too extreme. After all, Trump has no books or manifestos displaying his underlying worldview. Nor has he (yet) come out with any talk about wanting to wipe a particular ethnic group off the face of the earth.
Unfortunately, the same can no longer be said for other leaders in the GOP. As such, before diving into the history of Weimar, the current actions of the GOP and the history of Hitler’s regime need to be addressed. We need to be clear about what is happening and how it compares to the beginning years of Hitler’s reign.
Minority Groups that Came Under Attack During the Reign of Hitler
When one thinks of the Holocaust and World War Two, the murder of six million Jewish people is the first thing that comes to mind — as it should. As such, learning that the U.S. had a 36 percent rise in Anti-Semitic incidents in 2022 is alarming. However, Hitler didn’t start out with his systematic murder of the Jewish people.
- The LGBTQ Community
One of the first things Hitler did when he became chancellor in January of 1933 was ban “all gay and lesbian organizations.” He would then begin rounding up gay men and putting them in jail or concentration camps. It was in those concentration camps that gay men were forced to wear the notorious Pink Triangle. What happened under Hitler to the thriving LGBTQ community in Weimar was the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” about what was to come.
2. Anyone African or with African Ancestry
It is often forgotten that the opinions Hitler held regarding people of African descent were as reprehensible as those he had for Jewish people. Unsurprisingly, he found ways to link the two.
“Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. […] The mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore…In both cases, there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.” Hitler, Mein Kampf
Hitler’s white supremacist ideology meant that anyone not a part of the so-called “Aryan Race” was considered an inferior being. His views informed the clarification of the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws. First announced in September of that year, they were amended that same November to clarify that the laws included not only Jewish people or those with Jewish heritage. These laws were also to be applied to anyone Black or of African descent, and anyone who was Roma or of Roma descent.
Despite his obvious hatred of them, Black people in Hitler’s Germany were not systematically targeted by Hitler the way that Jewish, Romi, or LGBTQ were. This is mainly because in comparison the population was small. That doesn’t mean they weren’t persecuted. As noted in The Guardian:
A significant number of black people were detained in concentration camps and forced labor camps during the Nazi reign, and many were murdered. (…) they were denied their human rights, sterilized, persecuted, experimented upon and murdered in camps.
How These Groups Are Treated by Today’s Republicans
Trump’s Republican party has been calling for the complete annihilation of transgender people — and passing the bills in Republican-controlled state houses to help bring that to fruition. The ACLU is currently tracking 452 anti-LGBTQIA bills across 45 states. A more specific breakdown looking specifically at anti-trans bills can be found on the site translegislation.com. They track any “legislation that seeks to block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist.”
For 2023 the site lists 492 bills being introduced, with 32 passing, 43 failing, and 417 of them still actively being pursued as of April 7th. The bills include things like:
- Bans on “drag shows targeting minors”, and banning drag and people wearing gender-non-conforming clothing in general.
- Bans on gender-affirming care for minors, as well as some, “that extend into adulthood — up to 26 years old.”
Along with the acute attacks on transgender people, the Republican party has been trying to erase the truth from the history books about how African Americans have been treated throughout U.S. history. So far, 44 states have introduced bills that, using the misnomer of “Critical Race Theory (CRT),” ban or curtail the teaching of African-American history. There are 18 states that, either by state legislation, executive order, or individual school boards, have passed them.
It’s not just African-American history that they’ve been working to get rid of. Another congruence between post-Weimar and the GOP’s actions can be seen in the GOP push to not only remove African-American history from classrooms and textbooks but also from public libraries.
Banning books is a practice that the GOP MAGA base has been pushing across the country — via school boards and town councils — with some success. Books that have black or LGBTQIA characters, address issues of race or inequality, activism, or are informative about those issues or issues regarding puberty, sex, or relationships have been targeted for being banned, some successfully. This practice was something that also occurred under Hitler.
In Michael S Roth’s thoughtful review in the Washington Post of “The Book Thieves,” he discusses how Hitler’s Third Reich would ban and burn literature they didn’t like — which was anything that showed intellect belonging to other cultures — as well as work to rewrite the history of the Jewish people to fit the Nazi point of view.
“Alfred Rosenberg, one of Hitler’s chief ideologists, led a team of researchers bent on rewriting the history of the Jews from the National Socialist perspective. “Jewish Studies without Jews” was the goal. (…)The Nazis were bent on creating new knowledge and not just on destroying their enemies.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s idea that African-American studies should not mention issues of race seems reflective of the phrase “Jewish studies without Jews.” He is trying to create a new American history that doesn’t include how the country treated African-Americans — which enables a white supremacist viewpoint — into children’s textbooks. This has been happening in MAGA-controlled areas across America.
DeSantis’s “Stop Woke” bill is a prime example of how Republicans are creating laws to do this. It’s so vague that a textbook publisher revised its story on Rosa Park so that it didn’t mention she was black. If DeSantis, who started his 2018 election campaign for governor as a Trump sycophant, was the only one passing these kinds of laws it could be seen as just him. As we’ve seen though, these ideas are seen everywhere that the MAGA GOP has any kind of foothold.
For instance, this recently happened in Oklahoma.
In a public forum on Thursday, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, said teachers could cover the 1921 massacre, in which white Tulsans murdered an estimated 300 Black people, but teachers should not “say that the skin color determined it”. — from The Guardian, 7/8/2023
The Christian National Link: Then and Now
All of the above attacks have been fueled by the GOP’s radical evangelical base, which has adopted a White Christian Nationalist stance. This split between traditional Christianity and the Evangelical movement is similar to the split in the German churches of the 1930s. The German Evangelical Church (not the same as today’s Evangelical Church in Germany) was the pro-Nazi “German Christian” (Deutsche Christen) movement that emerged during that time. It attempted to fuse Christianity and National Socialism and promoted a “racially pure” church by attacking Jewish influences on Christianity. Hitler and his Nazi party were supportive of this movement, even though the man hated Christianity only slightly less than Judaism.
Another effect of today’s white Christian Nationalism can also be found in the 1930s Nazi era. It is the fate of women and women’s rights.
“Women were central to Adolf Hitler’s plan to create an ideal ‘Aryan’ German community.”
These seem to be on two contrary fronts. He wanted to be sure “pure” women remained at home birthing babies and raising good Nazi German citizens. This was to the point that the Nazi state “bestowed the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies, and increased punishments for abortion.” Yet, he also valued women as “our most loyal, fanatical fellow combatants.”
The Role of Women Loyal to the Nazi Regime
“The National Socialist Women’s League was created in 1931. These are the words of one member in 1936,
There is a growing recognition that mothers carry the destiny of their people in their hands and that the success or ruin of the nation depends on their attitude toward the vocation of motherhood.
Nation and race are facts of creation, which we, too, are called upon to share in forming and preserving. Therefore a national leadership that respects and honors its mothers is on a sound and healthy path . . .
As a gatekeeper of the Nazi point-of-view for women, the organization had a list of “Principles and Organizational Guidelines.” This is principle 3:
We reject the misguided direction of the democratic-liberalistic-international women’s movement because they have not discovered new paths based on God and nationhood, and which are rooted in women’s souls; instead they represent the point of view that women are competitive with [or equal to] men, and in the demands they have raised they have elevated temporary stopgap measures to the position of a fundamental principle. This has resulted in the creation of a womanhood that has misplaced its energies and that has not understood its task in Germany’s time of need . . .
Except for the “in Germany’s time of need,” these things sound like something a white American conservative/evangelical women’s group would put out. That’s because white supremacy and Christian nationalism usually go together, regardless if it’s taking place in Europe or America
The Role of White Conservative Women in Today’s GOP
The role of white women in upholding white supremacy in America has a long and well-documented history. Organizations such as the “Daughters of the Confederacy” helped uphold Jim Crow in the South as well as raised money to finance the placement of Confederate monuments. Phyllis Stewart Schlafly is most famous for her successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, but her first book, A Choice Not an Echo, helped Barry Goldwater (a name that will be coming up often) get the 1960 Republican nomination. Schlafly died on September 5, 2016. The last book she wrote was The Conservative Case for Trump. It was published on September 6th, 2016.
Today some of the most prominent carriers of the MAGA movement are women such as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and influential women such as Ginni Thomas — the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There are also MAGA ideological groups such as Moms for Liberty, that work to further the radical right’s agenda by raising money, supporting governors like Ron DeSantis, and harassing school boards to ban books and the so-called CRT.
White women in general have been a strong voting block for Trump and the MAGA movement’s agenda. According to Pew Research, the 2016 elections had 47 percent of white women voting for Trump vs. 45 percent for Hillary Clinton. In comparison, only 28 percent of Hispanic women went for Trump — 67 percent went for Clinton. As for black women, 98 percent were for Clinton and statistically zero went for Trump.
So, How Did We Get Here?
Twenty months ago, this article was based on the idea that a Holocaust-type U.S. event was not a concern. Today, such a thing is still unthinkable in that no one is about to start setting up gas chambers. Still, there are other ways to commit genocide. America’s history with the Indigenous American populations is just one of them. After looking at where America and the MAGA movement are in 2023, having concerns about just how far the G.O.P.’s White Christian nationalism bent will go are valid ones.
Where American Politics Currently Stands
Where do things stand today? Well, when Trump started his first run for the White House, talk about fascism often came up around him and his behavior — including from the Republican party. However, as the Republican base of voters coalesced around him, those objections from elected GOP politicians went away. During his time in office, the actions of his administration were certainly concerning. There was: a Muslim ban, separating children from their mothers at our Southern border, and his vocal admiration of authoritarian rulers like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Meanwhile, his outward comfortability with white supremacist groups and rhetoric continued throughout his presidency. This culminated in the 2020 Presidential debate where he infamously sidestepped denouncing white supremacist groups.
Yet, what has made the linking of Trump and his MAGA following to fascism more acute (albeit not from many who still identify as Republican) are Trump’s actions after losing the 2020 election. The steady drip of information that came from Congress’s January 6th Commission was disturbing, and its final report included a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for several crimes. The last one on that list is, “Assisting, aiding or comforting an insurrection.”
Things have gotten so bad that in the run-up to the 2022 Midterm elections, America’s current President, Joe Biden, described the philosophy of Trump, “Trumpism’’ and the “MAGA Republicans” as being a “semi-fascist.” That Biden was willing to make that statement showed just how serious things have become.
If the insurrection itself didn’t give one pause, the subsequent rash of voter suppression & election interference laws in GOP-led states, the rulings by certain Trump-appointed judges, and the mess that is the currently Republican-led House of Representatives certainly have. Granted, one could argue that the Republican party has been working on voter suppression laws since 2013 — and you wouldn’t be wrong. However, these state moves to change the laws so that what Trump couldn’t legally do in 2020 would be legal in 2024 are essentially a soft coup attempt to bring a fascist dictator to power.
Where we are today did not occur in a vacuum, just as the rise of Hitler didn’t. For those who think/hope that the various Trump indictments will be enough to shut this trajectory down, there is bad news. Hitler was arrested, tried, and jailed. Ten years later he had control of Germany.
Knowing that the arrest and jailing of Hitler did not stop his trajectory means that there is only one way to truly stop these things in America from going any further. The problems that have gotten us here have to be pulled out by their roots. Studying the history of the Weimar Republic and comparing it to America’s past and present will show us what those roots are. Part two of this series will do just that. Then, in part three, the specific roles various American civil societies have played in getting the U.S. into its current predicament will be laid out. Part four will be a deep dive into the role of one particular civil society: the Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC). After that, the final essay will cover (given what will have been presented) how America can still avoid the fate of Weimar. Of course, seeing how something can be done and doing it are two different things. Only time will tell what America’s fate will be.
