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41: How Hitler Dismantled the Weimar Republic

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On January 8, 2025, in an essay for the Atlantic titled "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days," historian Timothy W. Ryback, the director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague, described the process by which Hitler dismantled Germany's constitutional republic in just 53 days. What follows are excerpts from that essay: Ninety-two years ago, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time -- specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered. Hans Frank served as Hitler’...
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40: The Coming of the Third Reich: A "Revolution of Destruction"

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What follows are excerpts from Richard J. Evans' book   The Coming of the Third Reich : The Nazi assault on the Jews in the first months of 1933 was the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society. By the summer of 1933 this process was well under way. It was the core of Hitler's cultural revolution, the key, in the Nazi mind, to the wider cultural transformation of Germany that was to purge the German spirit of "alien" influences such as communism, Marxism, socialism, liberalism, pacifism, conservatism, artistic experimentation, sexual freedom and much more besides. All of these influences were ascribed to by the Nazis to the malign influence of the Jews, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Excluding Jews from the economy, from the media, from state employment and from the professions was thus an essential part of the process of redeeming and purifying the German race, and preparing it to wreak its revenge on those who had humiliate...
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