The Holocaust: A Warning From History

On 21 February 1934, the State Secretary in the Prussian Agricultural Ministry gave a speech in which he argued that it was the "duty" of every single German "to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work towards him. Anyone making mistakes will come to notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly towards the Führer along his lines and towards his aim will in future as previously have the finest reward of one day suddenly attaining the legal confirmation of his work." After quoting this, Ian Kershaw writes: "These comments, made in a routine speech, hold a key to how the Third Reich operated. Between Hindenburg's death at the beginning of August 1934 and the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in late January and early February 1938, the Führer state took shape. These were the 'normal' years of the Third Reich that lived in the memories of many contemporaries as the 'good' years (though they were scarcely that for the already growing number...

By Daniel James Brown In September 1935 the Nazi Party staged its seventh annual rally at Nuremberg, themed, with staggering irony, the Rally for Freedom. Again the storm troopers and the Blackshirts came in the hundreds of thousands. Again Leni Riefenstahl -- now thirty-three and firmly entrenched as Hitler's favorite filmmaker -- was there to document the spectacle, though the only footage that would ever emerge was a short film documenting the war games Hitler staged at the rally to dramatize Germany's defiance of the Treaty of Versailles's ban on German rearmament. Years later, after the war, Riefenstahl would speak as little as possible about her participation in the Rally for Freedom. By then it was remembered, not primarily for the war games, but for what happened on the evening of September 15. The rally reached its climax that night when Adolf Hitler stepped before the German parliament, the Reichstag, to introduce three new laws. The Reichstag had been assembled i...

By Ian Kershaw Apart from the all-out assault on the Left in the first weeks of Nazi rule, many outrages had been perpetrated by Nazi radicals against Jews. Since antisemitism had been the "ideological cement" of the National Socialist Movement from the beginning, offering at one and the same time a vehicle actionism and substitute for revolutionary leanings threatening the fabric of society, this was scarcely surprising. The takeover of power by the arch-antisemite Hitler had at one fell swoop removed constraints on violence toward Jews. Without any orders from above, and without any coordination, assaults on Jewish businesses and the beating-up of Jews by Nazi thugs became commonplace. Countless atrocities took place in the weeks following Hitler's assumption to power. Many were carried out by members of the so-called Fighting League of the Commercial Middle Class (Kampfbund des gewerblichen Mittelstandes), in which violent antisemitism went hand in hand with equally vi...

We should  not be so focused on the threats we clearly see in front of us that we are completely blind to the threats behind us.  By Ian Kershaw By the afternoon of 29 January [1933], Papen was able to tell  Göring and Ribbentrop that all was clear. "Everything perfect,"  Göring reported back to the Kaiserhof. Hitler was expected by the Reich President at eleven o'clock the next morning to be sworn in as Chancellor. Just before the new cabinet entered the Reich President's chambers, it was finally agreed that they would seek the dissolution order that Hitler so badly wanted. At least, shortly after noon, the members of the Hitler cabinet trooped into the Reich President's rooms. Hindenburg gave a brief welcome address, expressing satisfaction that the nationalist Right had finally come together. Papen then made the formal introductions. Hindenburg nodded his approval as Hitler solemnly swore to carry out his obligations without party interests and for the good of ...

While serving his prison sentence for his failed beer hall putsch, Adolf Hitler made some adjustments to "world-view."  By Ian Kershaw Ideas which had been taking shape in his mind since late 1922, if not earlier, on the direction of future foreign policy were now elaborated into the notion of a quest for "living space," to be gained at the expense of Russia. Blended into his obsessive antisemitism, aimed at the destruction of "Jewish Bolshevism," the concept of a war for "living space" -- an idea which Hitler would repeatedly emphasize in the following years -- rounded off his "world view." Thereafter, there would be tactical adjustments, but no further alteration of substance. The modifications in Hitler's "world-view" that were already forming in the year before the putsch are clearly evident in Mein Kampf . Hitler's book offered nothing new. But it was the plainest and most expansive statement of his "world vi...

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’...