On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. For his followers, it was a day of “national revolution” and rebirth. Germany, in his view, needed the restorative force of a strong, authoritarian man after 14 years of the Weimar liberal-democratic 'system'. That night, Hitler's brownshirts, armed with torches, marched through the center of Berlin to mark the beginning of a new era.
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It was also a triumphant moment in the history of popular deception. Since the early days of the Weimar Republic, politics had been defined by disinformation campaigns, including the lie that Weimar democracy was the work of a conspiracy of Jews and socialists who had “stabbed Germany in the back.” to guarantee their defeat in the First World War.
Today, practically everyone agrees in which Hitler's rise to power was a turning point in world history and the beginning of a political process that would end in World War II and the Holocaust. But Hitler did not “seize power,” as the Nazis later said.
On the contrary, as his biographer, Ian Kershaw, has explained, he was “leveraged into power” by a small group of influential men. One such man was Franz von Papen, who served as chancellor in 1932. Papen (infamously) thought that Hitler and the Nazi Party – by far the largest party after the 1932 Reichstag elections – could be used. to push a conservative agenda. Likewise, the president of Germany, former Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, wanted to use Hitler to reestablish the monarchy.
But the plans of these conservatives were soon devastated by Hitler's ruthless leadership, Nazi violence, and the rush of the German population to join the regime and become part of the promised national renaissance. Liberals and social democrats who opposed Hitler were either victims of violence or trapped in their own optimistic escapism. No matter how bad things got, they assured themselves, Hitler's regime was eventually going to crumble. Internal Nazi disputes would undoubtedly bring about the end of the new government.
Beyond liberals and socialists, a broader portion of German society assumed that Hindenburg, who had promised to be the president of all Germans, would keep Hitler in line, while others hoped Let the army take care of that. They had all been fooled by Hitler's ability to appear respectable in the final years of the Weimar Republic.
In the 100 days after Hitler became chancellor, as historian Peter Fritzsche has shown, the Nazis' ruthless drive for power became starkly evident. By the end of the summer of 1933, German society was already aligned. There were no more political parties, unions or other autonomous organizations. Only Christian churches retained a certain degree of independence.
A year later, in the summer of 1934, Hitler ordered the assassination of his internal party rivals and, after Hindenburg's death on August 2, declared himself Führer of Germany. His dictatorship was absolute. By then, the first concentration camps were already operating and the economy was heading towards war.
The threats
This period of history is still all too relevant today. Hundreds of millions of people will vote in crucial elections this year, and while the warning signs are right before our eyes, few analysts are willing to say it out loud: 2024 could be the new 1933.
It is enough to imagine a world, in 2025, in which disinformation has been able to defeat a good part of the democratic majorities on the planet.
More specifically, we could see, for example, President Donald Trump ending US aid to Ukraine; NATO is no longer a limit to Vladimir Putin's dreams of building a new Russian empire across Eastern Europe, and a critical mass of far-right parties in the European Parliament is blocking a unified European response. Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia They would be left to their own devices.
And now that the war in Gaza has turned into a regional conflict, Putin is taking the opportunity to launch another bombardment, accompanied by long-range missiles. And, in the midst of chaos, China decides to take over Taiwan.
The prospects for 2024 are so dismal that many refuse to contemplate them. Just as liberals in 1933 predicted that Hitler would quickly fail, today illusions are clouding our judgment. We are sleepwalking – to borrow Christopher Clark's apt metaphor for the start of the First World War – towards a new international order.
In her masterful two-volume history of the interwar period, Zara Steiner refers to 1929-33 as the “hinge years,” when idealism in international relations was replaced by the “Triumph of Darkness.” By late 1926, however, the liberals seemed to be winning: French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his German counterpart, Gustav Stresemann, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on Franco-German reconciliation, and Germany joined in. the League of Nations. Extreme nationalism seemed to be isolated in Mussolini's Italy.
In the face of today's global crises, there is no room for optimism. We are, potentially, in another pivotal year. But if liberals act today, they can still prevail.
In an encouraging sign, hundreds of thousands of Germans recently took to the streets to support democracy and diversity, and to denounce the far right. But demonstrations in a single country are not enough. Others must join German liberals across the continent. A demonstration at the continental level would send a powerful message. The sense of urgency must escalate, particularly to business leaders like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who, hedging his bets, has already begun reaching out to Trump..
Not long ago, European leaders came together and did what had to be done to save the euro, because they recognized that the failure of the single currency would mean the end of the European Union itself. Europeans must now demand the same urgency to confront this year's threats. The EU needs a plan for a world without NATO. He needs new tools to deal with member state leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who would rather kiss Putin's ring than defend democracy. It is simply unacceptable that Orbán continues to exercise veto power in EU decision-making.
In the United States, political mobilization is the great variable. Trump's opponents must put aside their differences and unite ranks behind President Joe Biden. We all know very well where disunity and naive optimism can lead us.
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MARK JONES*
PROJECT SYNDICATE
*Professor of History at University College Dublin and specialist in the history of Germany between 1914 and 1945.
This year's momentous elections
On January 13, the Democratic Progressive Party was re-elected as Taiwan's ruling political organization, revalidating the island's anti-China stance. In the campaign, the community sold the elections as a battle between democracy and autocracy. These results close the door to any negotiations with China, which claims its sovereignty over the island. Tensions between both parties will surely persist, generating anxiety in the international community.
Europeans are summoned to the polls on June 9 to elect the new European Parliament. The growth of the radical right on the continent scares those who still believe in the absolute relevance of a regional unity project such as the European Union. The fears center on parties from that political shore achieving majorities and voting against integration policies and the transfer of powers from national governments to the European Union.
Finally, there is the US presidential election in November, which also has a lot at stake. The most likely thing is that the country will repeat the election between Donald Trump, who sweeps among the Republicans, and Joe Biden, who leads the Democratic polls. The first, if elected, arrives with an isolationist stance based on his America First slogan. Trump would have no interest in maintaining economic and military aid to Ukraine, a situation that worries the European Union, which would bear the entire burden of financing the war to prevent Russia's advance in the East.
Furthermore, Trump, who tried to withdraw from NATO during his term, has said he would not defend military treaty allies in the event of a Russian attack. He is also concerned about the position he would take regarding the war in Gaza, where more than 30,000 civilians have died, since during his administration he strengthened relations with Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel. So a major US diplomatic or humanitarian intervention on this issue seems unlikely..
And although Russia also goes to the polls this year, in March, the results are more than known, because Vladimir Putin is going for re-election without a strong opponent, with the war on Ukraine as his biggest slogan and with an opposition beaten after the sudden and controversial death on February 16 of Alexei Navalny, Putin's main opposition leader, who was serving nine years in prison in the Arctic Circle.
At the beginning of February, the opposition presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin was excluded from the electoral process, after the Central Electoral Commission rejected part of the signatures collected by him to be able to run.. With which Putin has a clear path to be re-elected.
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