Historian Timothy Ryback: "Hitler could only have dreamed" of Trump's fanatical support

The world has seen a version of this story before: A charismatic leader and demagogue with a God complex leads a populist-authoritarian movement and rises to power by claiming to be the savior of a people. This leader and his propagandists mine the resentment, hostility, anxiety and frustration of a disaffected population and direct it an out-group. Leaders of this new movement show themselves to be pathological, and their pathologies spread as a form of collective sociopathy that attracts like-minded followers and infects an entire nation.

The country where this happens experiences a crisis of democratic legitimacy and other profound changes in the order of things: "Normalcy" becomes malignant; the public sinks into learned helplessness and survival mode. Instead of stopping this threat to democracy and the rule of law, the legal system enables it. "Responsible” elites either do not take the danger to democracy seriously, reason that they can profit from this leader and his movement, or decide to ride it all out and position themselves for survival. 

This leader and his movement increasingly encourage violence as they pressure, infiltrate, undermine and bring down existing democratic institutions, both from within and without. The leader attempts a coup but is unsuccessful on his first attempts. The existing social and political order proves to be far weaker and more malleable than the elites and mostof the public expects. Voices of dissent are systematically silenced as the aspiring dictator and his party embark on a revolutionary project aimed at remaking society to suit their twisted vision. In both versions of this story, the leader survives an assassination attempt and then uses that event to present himself as a force of destiny and crush resistance. 

The American people — or at least those who are paying attention — have already grasped the parallels and understand that denial will not save them. Too many Americans, unfortunately, have not learned that lesson. 

To discuss these dangerous historical parallels, I recently spoke with historian Timothy Ryback, director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague and the author, most recently, of "Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power." His earlier books on the Third Reich include "Hitler’s First Victims," "Hitler's Private Library" and "The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau." His writing has also been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. 

Ryback warns of the many overlaps and similarities between the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany and the ascendancy of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, and also discusses some important differences. He argues forcefully that we must learn the lessons of history without assuming it is destined to repeat itself. He argues, for instance, that Trump is in a far more precarious political situation than may be obvious on the surface, especially in the wake of President Biden's decision to stand aside in the 2024 presidential election, passing the torch to Vice President Harris. 

How are you feeling these days? How are you making sense of this recent torrent of events?

How do I feel emotionally? With Kamala Harris as the prospective Democratic presidential candidate, a sense of relief. Hope that democracy in America still has a chance. A few weeks ago, I despaired for the America that once was. Astonishment that a hatred-spewing demagogue appeared poised to return as our president. A deep concern, call it dread or mild terror, knowing where political polarization and right-wing political fanaticism led Germans in the 1930s, and where right-wing extremism appears to be leading many Americans today.

Given your expertise, what do you see as you look at the Age of Trump?

Hans Frank was asked a similar question about Hitler while he was awaiting trial in Nuremberg [after World War II]. Frank was the lawyer who helped engineer Hitler’s strategy to dismantle democracy through democratic process and was ultimately hanged at Nurnberg as a war criminal for his role in Nazi atrocities.

“The Führer was a man who was possible in Germany only at that very moment,” Frank said. “Had he come, let us say, 10 years later when the republic was firmly established, it would have impossible for him. And if he had come 10 years earlier or at any time when there was still the monarchy, he would have failed.” According to Frank, Hitler came at a “terrible, transitory” moment, when the Kaiser was gone but the democratic structures were not yet secure.

For Hitler, 1933 was a make-or-break moment. He had tapped into the fear, anger and hatred of large portions of the electorate from the German heartland, who felt abandoned by the political establishment, with a simple set of talking points that he drove home repeatedly: economic despair, fear of foreigners, border security, the promise of making Germany great again. Remember “Deutschland über alles?” 

It is no different with Trump in 2024, both in terms of political talking points, but also in terms of the precarity of the moment, not only for America but also for Trump. With the upcoming election, America faces its own “terrible, transitory” moment that will decide the future of democracy in our country. Like Hitler, Trump is a once-in-generation political leader, a man who is only possible at this moment, especially since he will be 82 years old for the next presidential election, and we just learned what Americans think about octogenarian presidential candidates.

What, if anything, about the conventional wisdom regarding the age of Trump and our current democracy crisis most troubles you as a historian? Does it leave you rolling your eyes?

I spend more time rubbing my eyes than rolling them. The parallels between America and Weimar Germany astonish me. Legislative gridlock, political polarization, a deluge of incendiary news stories (some fake, some real), a proliferation of handguns. It’s like déja-vu all over again.

What troubles me most? The fact that Hitler and his National Socialists never received more than 37% of the national vote in a free and open election, and Trump is polling at around 50% or higher, according to some sources. These are percentages of popular support that Adolf Hitler could only have dreamed of achieving in a free and open election. The big question is how much Joe Biden’s historic decision and Kamala Harris’ historic candidacy will have on polling numbers and ultimately at the voting booth.

What is history, and why do we study it? How should we apply those lessons from the past to the present?

In simplest terms, historians tell us how we got from where we were to where we are. We chronicle, explicate, elucidate and constantly “re-adjudicate” historical events and personages. That’s what keeps us in business.

In this process, we select those facts that support the argument we want to make. We tend to marginalize or disregard those that do not. This gleaning process can imbue certain events or people, e.g., the rise of Adolf Hitler, with a sense of historical inevitability. We highlight those facts that help explain why he was appointed chancellor and forget the political contingencies that could have resulted in a very different outcome, which is the point I wanted to make in writing “Takeover.” It is a story of political contingency rather than historical inevitability.

A simple example from the present moment:  In the past few weeks, we have seen a series of breathtaking developments that have scrambled, then re-scrambled, the American political landscape, along with virtually every strategic calculation: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, followed by Biden’s announcement on July 21, followed by Kamala Harris’ emergence as the prospective Democratic candidate. Who could have seen these coming? Who knows what impact they will have? Who knows what further unforeseen events await us in the months ahead? No one can say at this point who will be the next president of the United States. But I assure you, a week after the election, every pundit and scholar in America will have a compelling, itemized explanation as to why the one candidate won and the other lost.

History does not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

While political contingency certainly precludes historical inevitability, it does not mean that there are not resonances, parallels and lessons to be taken from the past. Perhaps it is best to view them as warning signals. I think this is what we are seeing with the repeated comparisons between Hitler and Trump. There are, in fact, some rather disturbing rhymed couplets, if you will. Here are a few of the most striking.  

Presidential elections: Hitler loses the spring 1932 presidential election by 6 million votes, then goes to court to have the results overturned amid claims of voter fraud and irregularities by state officials. Trump loses the 2020 U.S. presidential election by 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes (306 to 232), then goes to court amid claims voter fraud and irregularities by state officials to have the results overturned. In both instances, the cases were dismissed out of hand.

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Trump’s 24-Hour Reich: Trump said he would be dictator for a day, while Hitler promised a thousand-year Reich. Whether we are talking about 24 hours or a millennium, it is as chilling a rhymed couplet of stated political intent as one could envision.

Political vengeance: Hitler vowed revenge on his political opponents, promising “heads will roll” as soon as he came to power. Remember the Night of the Long Knives? In June 2024, exactly 90 years to the month that Hitler had his key political opponents murdered, Trump vowed vengeance on his own political enemies with the phrase, “Haul out the Guillotine!”

Finally, in the run-up to the November 1932 Reichstag elections, Hitler urged his followers to rally, with the promise, “Es wird wild werden,” an almost too perfect rhyme with Trump’s call to his followers for Jan. 6, 2021, “Be there, will be wild!”

As with Hitler, as with Trump, when it comes to the poetry of politics, one should not discount the madness in the method.

There are clear and obvious parallels between the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the political crisis today in the U.S. caused by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Why is there so much resistance to this basic fact?

We are hardly the first to sense and dismiss potentially nascent fascism in America. You have inadvertently, or perhaps subliminally, referenced the 1936 novel by Sinclair Lewis, that addresses this very point: "It Can’t Happen Here: What Will Happen When America Has a Dictator?” 

In a way, I can appreciate this inclination to believe in American exceptionalism. Back in the 1980s, as a graduate student at Harvard, I served as a teaching fellow in a course on Weimar and Nazi culture, taught by Richard M. Hunt. I framed the failure of the first German democracy in temporal terms. The Weimar Republic, which existed from 1919 until 1933, lasted less than 13 years, barely a half generation, compared with the United States with more than 200 years, at least 10 generations, imbued with democratic values and experience. Democracy was hardwired into us, I liked to say. It was part of our DNA as Americans. Hard to believe how naïve this sounds today.

Here, I might add that Sinclair Lewis was married to Dorothy Thompson, a star reporter who managed to secure an interview with Hitler in autumn 1931. “When I walked into Hitler’s room, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany,” Thompson reported. “In something like fifty seconds, I was quite certain I was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set world agog.” Thompson’s interview appeared in January 1932. Within a year Hitler was chancellor.

To my eyes, these denials are willful attempts to avoid the ugliness of racial authoritarianism and fascism here in the U.S., as seen with Jim Crow apartheid, chattel slavery, the American Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, racial pogroms, the genocide against Indigenous peoples and so on.

Americans may exercise willful blindness to this “ugliness,” but Hitler did not. He looked to America as a source for some of his most toxic ideas. For a time, he had a portrait of Henry Ford hanging on his office wall and, in the foyer, translations of the Ford treatise, "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem." In his private library, he had a copy of Madison Grant’s racist treatise, "The Passing of the Great Race." Hitler allegedly called it his Bible. Hitler’s original copy is in the rare book collection, along with 1,200 of his other books, at the Library of Congress. 

And what about that internet "rule" which holds that whoever brings up the Nazis first automatically loses the argument? How has such denialism limited the American people’s ability to understand the extreme danger they are facing?

If memory serves, Time magazine considered featuring Hitler as its “Person of the Century” back in 1999 but opted for Einstein. Hitler haunted the second half of the 20h century. He continues to stalk the public consciousness today. As “silly” as that "law" may be, Hitler remains the ultimate go-to example for vilifying an opponent. As you will recall, JD Vance, back in 2016, called Trump “America’s Hitler.” As far I know, he did not mean it as a compliment. But if Trump is indeed America’s Hitler, what does that make JD Vance, now that he is Trump’s running mate? Possibly Joseph Goebbels, the Hitler disciple who vowed that once he and Hitler were in office "they will have to drag us out as corpses” — which was, in fact, the case in the spring of 1945.