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

By Benjamin Carter Hett

Categories: History

The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (2018) is a history by Benjamin Carter Hett. Hett explains how Germany's first democracy collapsed and how conservatives, industrialists and other elites helped bring Hitler to power between 1930 and 1933. He stresses contingency and miscalculation rather than inevitability in the republic's final crisis years.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “My book of the week is Benjamin Carter Hett's "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic." People forget that Weimar Germany was probably the world's most advanced country. How we went from there to the Nazis is a fascinating story that Hett tells, and it does have real lessons for today about the elites who either assisted or were complacent as Hitler destroyed German democracy.”