Benjamin Carter Hett

You’ll always be able to tell when a book about Hitler was written post-Trump, I think. This one’s intro and conclusion emphasize Weimar citizens’ indifference to truth and Hitler’s lack of deep intelligence as opposed to pseudointellectualism; he was such a liar that he never even knew what the truth was. The rest of the book is a political history of the particular maneuvers that Hitler used to come to power in a regime where the Nazis lacked majority or even near-majority support show more until after they were firmly in charge. As we probably all know by now, it was the decision of non-fascist right-wingers that the Nazis provided needed energy and support to their movement, and their confidence that they could control Hitler, that made the difference. One described Hitler as chancellor not as the “head” of the nation, but as the “hat” to be put on and off as needed. Good metaphor, bad prediction. show less

We’ve long since passed the point where everyone thinks World War II started in 1941. That’s just when the US declared war. Most students get the modern version that has the war starting in 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland. China and Japan had been fighting since 1937, but now both sides of world were at war. But few, however, can pinpoint its ideological roots. Why did Germany invade? What led the German state to believe it could conquer Europe? While these questions are still show more being debated, there is an interesting occurrence which basically led to the formation of the Nazi state: the Reichstag fire of 1933. Benjamin Hett’s Burning the Reichstag studies the events and politics surrounding this fateful event.

During the evening of February 27, 1933, a fire erupted in the Reichstag, the German seat of government. It took a few hours to get under control, but eventually it was extinguished. Adolf Hitler, the newly-elected Chancellor of Germany was notified and he immediately blamed the Communists for trying to overthrow parliament. At the time, the Nazi party controlled only a third of the seats in parliament, about twice as many as the Communists. Hitler was already in the middle of proceedings to dissolve parliament and hold new elections (in an effort to increase Nazi seats). The fire allowed to him issue the Reichstag Fire Decree which effectively suspended civil liberties for Germans citizens. The ensuing elections and political bonds formed thereafter gave him power to pass the Enabling Act, giving direct and dictatorial power to the Chancellor. All this from one fire.

While the man responsible, Marinus van der Lubbe, was indeed a Communist and is historically believed to have done the deed, there is conflicting evidence as to whether it was part of a conspiracy on the part of the Communist party to start a coup or whether this was the Nazi machine’s first plot to gain control of the country. He may have been goaded into doing so by the Nazis in an effort to frame the Communists. Hett’s narrative of the events and the social climate, including the trial involving van der Lubbe and his supposed Bulgarian Communist co-conspirators, proves to be a very interesting read. Some of the more enticing bits are concerning the author himself, who writes about corresponding with the few people remaining who were actually involved in the fire and looking through the notes of past researchers. He proves that history is not just about what’s in the past, but that it’s still evolving, still seeking its own truth. It gets a little convoluted in places when he tries to parse out all the political connections and machinations, but his details are myriad and much-needed (he literally gives a minute-by-minute account of the night of the fire reconstructed from trail transcripts and police reports). All in all, this was a well-researched and thought-provoking book. show less

The story of the fall of the progressive Weimar Republic and the subsequent rise of Nazism in 1920s and 30s Germany is a complex one, but Benjamin Hett has produced one of the most compelling readable recent books on the subject. Each section starts with vignettes that shows the impact of the political turmoil on everyday people by telling some personal stories - a technique that grounds the broader narrative with relatable context. The political story is also well handled, lucid, and show more engaging. Early in the introduction Hett makes the observation that today’s political climate is closer to the 1930s than that of the 1990s, but then let’s the reader draw their own parallels and conclusions (many of which are uncomfortable). Overall as well as being an excellent historical account that examines the question “how did that happen?”, it’s also a reminder of just how fragile democracy can be. The book ends with the sentiment “We who come later have one advantage over them: we have their example before us.” Let’s hope that we do indeed use that advantage and heed the lessons learned. show less

This well-argued book is a warning from history. Anyone who wants to understand how the Nazis came to power and how much democracy depends on commitment to making the system work should read it. Hett shows the similarities between the diabolical political situation in Germany in the early 1930s and that of western democracies.

He prosecutes a compelling argument about the reasons for the rise of the despicable, despotic and disastrous Nazi regime. By 1930, there was mass disillusionment with show more the political system, a big proportion of the population economically struggled and the lies continually told by a major party leader, Adolf Hitler, were part of his political toolkit. Sounds familiar.

Hitler explained in his book, Mein Kampf, why he lied: “ … the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

One of the most widely-known and influential thinkers on management, Peter Drucker (1909-2005), lived in Germany is the early 1930s. He later recalled an anecdote for the role the disregard for the truth and rationality played in the rise of Nazism. “… many years ago I heard a Nazi agitator proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants’ meeting: ‘We don’t want lower bread prices, we don’t want higher bread higher prices, we don’t want unchanged bread prices – we want National Socialist bread prices.’ ” Higher, lower and unchanged bread prices had all failed. “The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one’s reason.” This reasoning make as much sense as a flat earth, people not causing the climate catastrophe and vaccination causing autism.

Hett debunks the conventional wisdom that the rise of Nazism was:
1. A product of the Wall Street Crash that precipitated the Great Depression
2. The unreasonable terms of the Versailles Treaty – especially the onerous financial repatriations
3. The instability of the Weimar Republic.

Hett argues the bull market on Wall Street in 1928 – and not the Crash the next year – that caused the hard-hitting Depression in Germany. The country depended heavily on foreign loans, many of which were short-term, to make its reparation payments. The bull market attracted capital from throughout the world which left Germany short. It was part of a perfect storm of unrelated financial factors that culminated in the late 1920s. A worldwide fall in food prices fuelled protests in Germany’s rural areas. The rise of automation at the cost of labour increased unemployment. In just one industry, mining, the workforce in the industrial Ruhr region dropped by 33% between 1922 and 1928. Unemployment in Germany was already 1.3 million by mid-1928.

Right-wing political parties made much about the injustice inflicted on Germany by the Versailles agreement. “A persistent myth has it that the (agreement) was excessively harsh, and that its harshness explains the rage that gave rise to the Nazis. Actually, the treaty was the mildest of the post-First World War settlements . . . Certainly, almost all Germans perceived the treaty to be unjust, which didn’t necessarily make it so.”

That notwithstanding, the Allies wanted to manage Germany’s financial position as “financial arrangements in interwar Europe were really about security and, in particular, keeping Germany in line. So long as Germany was constrained by reparations and the gold standard, it could not threaten its neighbours.” Germany successfully negotiated reductions and postponements.

By any measure, the republic was politically unstable. There were 13 chancellors and 21 different administrations in just over 14 years. And the President, Paul von Hindenburg, and none of the political parties – except the Social Democrats – supported the Republic. But there wasn’t big movement in voter support. Hett categorises voters into “camps” or “confessionals”, a religious term for shared values and beliefs. There were three confessionals:

1. Socialists (Social Democrats, Communists)
2. Catholics (Centre Party, Bavarian People’s Party)
3. Protestants (German Nationals, German Democratic Party, German People’s Party, Nazis).

Individual parties’ voter support fluctuated but it was only after 1933 that the Nazis broke out of the Protestant middle-class camp and won more than 30% of the vote. Much of that support was in non-metropolitan areas. The city/country divide was as stark in Germany in the early 1930s as it is in the UK and USA today.

Another contributing factor for the Nazi rise was the vain Hindenburg, the incompetent and vacuous Franz von Papen and the scheming, devious General Kurt Schleicher. This trio wanted a right-wing dictatorship they would control. They got the dictatorship but not the control.

Despite the overwhelming odds against the republic’s survival, two men worked assiduously to maintain it and peace in Europe. Gustav Stresemann, Germany’s Chancellor in 1923 and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1923 to 1929, and Astride Briand – French prime minister several times and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1925 to 1932. They talked about bringing their respective countries closer economically. They were the trail blazers of the European Union. Similar forces that fuelled the Nazi rise to power today threaten the EU and democracy in many countries. show less