The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic

Written by:
Benjamin Carter Hett
Narrated by:
Steven Crossley

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
3
Release Date
April 2018
Duration
11 hours 27 minutes
Summary
'[Narrator Steven Crossley's] British accent gives his narration an academic-sounding quality fitting for the text. He is clear and precise in pronunciation and enunciation and is suitably expressive throughout.' — AudioFile Magazine

The Death of Democracy is a riveting audiobook account of how the Nazi Party came to power, and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen.

Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time.

To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. From the late 1920s, the Weimar Republic’s very political success sparked insurgencies against it, of which the most dangerous was the populist anti-globalization movement led by Hitler. But as Hett shows, Hitler would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not tried to coopt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.

Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
Reviews
Profile Avatar
Ted E.

A MUST READ for any sentient US citizen! “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”...a loosely rendered quote from Edmond Burke. This book was not written as a cautionary note to Americans. But! The current parallels are troublesome. The loss of rational thinking, propaganda, and repeated disinformation of ‘alternative truths’ in the current US regime cannot be lost to even the most casual inept reader. This is an exhaustingly detailed trip through the rise of Hitler. Does Trump sleep with a copy of _Mien Kompf_ under his pillow, and the right wing establishment have laminated copies of Goebbels’ diaries in their desks?

1 book added to cart
Subtotal
$26.99
View Cart