INCLUDES AN EIGHT-PAGE INSERT WITH HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS. We discuss the rise of the Nazis completely distanced, as a case from the past that doesn't concern us. We take it for granted that the Germans of the 1930s were very different from us, and the fact that we recognize their mistakes confirms our superiority.

Yet, the opposite is true. Why was democracy in Germany so quickly and entirely dismantled in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett provides answers to these questions, and the history he narrates leaves disturbing echoes for our own time, demonstrating how much we ultimately have in common with the Germans of the 1930s.

It reveals the myopic stance adopted by conservative German politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would be willing to support them, overlooking that their attempts to use the Nazis ultimately served Hitler. In this way, they voluntarily handed him the tools to transform Germany into a brutal dictatorship.

As a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller, Benjamin Carter Hett gives us a resounding lesson for our time, as democracy is once again at stake and the Sirens' song of all the “tough guys” seems to be ringing louder and louder.