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
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
"[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.
Benjamin Carter Hett
Benjamin Carter Hett is the author of The Death of Democracy, Burning the Reichstag, Crossing Hitler, and Death in the Tiergarten. He is a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and holds a PhD in history from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. He now lives in New York City.
Related to The Death of Democracy
Related audiobooks
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Weimar Centennial Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic: The Rise of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Goebbels: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin---the Eastern Front, 1941-1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpeer: Hitler's Architect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51939: Countdown to War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heinrich Himmler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Culture in Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Young Hitler: The Making of the Führer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fall of Berlin 1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945, Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hitler Years: Triumph, 1933-1939 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
European History For You
The War on the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Hideous Progeny: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ghost Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Teutonic Knights: A Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Templars: The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Death of Democracy
29 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very easy to listen and very informative. There are so many other factors leading up to Hitlers Chancellorship that it is truly amazing that people didn’t realize what a deal with the devil in January 1933. I’d strongly recommend to anyone that wants a good understanding of the reasons for the rise (not all that one thinks).
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This is a horrible book. The author is trying to shift the blame away from the ideology that is still with us. This book is not worth the read just read who the author gas worked for and it will tell you all you need to know.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was just okay, some interesting tidbits and insights on what brought down Weimar but at times had the depth of a Wikipedia article. It also tried to be too on point with folks views on current politics. I didn’t get it until I saw the copyright date and then I figured it out. Next time I would read something at least 15+ years old. It is worth a listen but not a high priority one
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5During such times as these, having an understand of what brought down democracy in Germany after the 1st World War, is essential for this wanting to save democracies from destruction going forward (or at least avoid being inside when the roof collapses). This book is so extraordinarily in it's storytelling that it should be required reading. Thank you to the author.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If everyone in the West had read this book, we would not be on the precipice in (nearly exactly) the same way in the current moment.
I -only- wish that there had been a little deeper dive into the hedonistic and completely deviant behavior that was overtaking the Weimar Republic as it rose and fell, and how that added momentum from the people who wanted a return to “normalcy” and more conservative social behavior, to the surge of opposition to the Treaty of Versailles...
Once I find a book as detailed and excellent as this one, that includes that “side note”, I will be buying and gifting it to my kids (university students) as well as anyone else who might be willing to read even a portion of it -