Trump’s No Good at Dictatoring

I’ve been reading a terrifyingly informative new book by Timothy Ryback titled 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy. As Ryback reminds us, the Nazi Party actually lost seats in the November 1932 election. But Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, appointed by Germany’s aged president Paul von Hindenburg, with just three Nazis in his coalition cabinet. Yet by March 23, just 53 days later, a large majority of elected members of the Reichstag voted him full dictatorial powers. German democracy was over.

When it comes to both shrewdness and ruthlessness, Trump doesn’t hold a candle to Der Führer. German democracy was systematically murdered. Ours is likely to survive, if barely, largely because Donald Trump is the destroyer of his own grand designs.

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Trump was rather more like Hitler on the fateful day of January 6, 2021, when he encouraged brownshirt-style thugs to invade the Capitol and try to block certification of Joe Biden’s election. That day was the equivalent of the Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933, which gave Hitler his pretext for doubling down on a series of emergency decrees, banning opposition parties, closing newspapers, firing judges, and ousting non-Nazi state governments.

But for Trump, the attempted coup of January 6th was the high-water mark of coherent ruthlessness. The American republic was spared thanks to Vice President Mike Pence as much as anyone. By contrast, the non-Nazis around Hitler, notably Hindenburg and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, all flinched and let Hitler have his way.

Where Hitler was the picture of savage single-mindedness, Trump’s second term has been a model of narcissistic incoherence.

As Ryback’s book recounts, by February 6, Hitler had banned several newspapers critical of the new government. Trump pathetically plays cat and mouse with who has access to the White House pressroom.

A week later, Hitler purged all civil servants who had not sworn political loyalty to the new regime. Trump loosed Elon Musk to commit random mayhem with federal agencies rather than bend them to Trump’s will.

Hitler soon installed fanatically efficient loyalists in key government posts. Trump appointed fringe figures distinguished by their incompetence such as RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth. This created a certain abject loyalty but at the sacrifice of coherent policy.

Hitler delivered what he promised supporters—vicious antisemitism, gradual rearmament, public works and social benefits, and a return to full employment. But he bided his time to fully consolidate his power.

Not until he had been in office for five years did he move first to annex Austria in March 1938 and then to demand and get from Neville Chamberlain a diplomatic deal in September 1938 to annex German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia. Trump, early in his term, impulsively launched a major war based on no game plan and ended up with a losing stalemate.

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German unemployment declined from 26 percent in 1933 to 2 percent by 1938. There were no accurate public opinion polls in a dictatorship, but historians conclude that in 1937 or 1938 Hitler could easily have been elected in a free election had there been one.

Trump, by contrast, moved recklessly and delivered the opposite of what he promised his followers. Instead of avoiding needless and endless wars as he had pledged, he provoked one. Instead of prosperity, he brought escalating inflation.

Hitler built a comprehensive welfare state. Trump took away valued benefits from his own constituents.

Where Hitler restored Germany’s power in the world, Trump has squandered America’s. Where Hitler united his base, Trump’s base is deserting him. Hitler worked with his architect Albert Speer for a grand design for an imperial Berlin. Trump has subordinated policy priorities to impulsive half-baked vanity projects.

One thing the two eventually had in common: Absolute power tends to breed overconfidence. As Hitler began to become as delusional as Trump, he committed one epic blunder that cost him the war, his life, and shortened his Thousand-Year Reich to just 12 years.

In 1939, Hitler, though hysterically anti-communist, cynically negotiated a nonaggression pact with the USSR; and by 1941 Germany had England on its knees. But instead of invading an isolated Britain, which nearly everyone expected, Hitler, ignorant of Napoleon’s similar blunder, invaded Russia instead. The Nazi war machine bogged down and never recovered.

To observe that Trump is more unhinged than Hitler is of course faint praise. Before Hitler’s regime was destroyed, the war, the Holocaust, and the murder of other enemies of Hitler’s Reich cost upwards of 60 million lives, including at least 40 million civilians.

Even assuming that democracy holds enough for Democrats to take back Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028, an increasingly deranged Trump will have two more years in office. If America’s luck holds and other leaders restrain him, we may avoid World War III.

The post appeared first on The American Prospect.