Comparing Trump and Hitler’s Tactics During Their First Weeks in Office
“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Often Rhymes” (Continued)
Dear Friends,
In my previous post I described the similarities in Hitler’s and Trump’s rhetoric. Today I continue this exploration by comparing Hitler’s and Trump’s tactics.
I have been reading and rereading an essay by Timothy W. Ryback that appeared in the Atlantic Magazine this past January 8. The article is titled How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days. I have attached the entire article to this post in pdf format, and I highly recommend it. Ryback is a historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in the Hague. His most recent book is Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.
I also encourage you to read this penetrating essay: Hitler’s Enablers, by Christopher R. Browning (New York Review of Books, November 7, 2024). As the subheading for this article explains, “The complicity of conservative nationalists in the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 offers disturbing parallels to the current American political situation.”
While the timelines and particulars of Hitler’s and Trump’s rise to power naturally differ, comparisons of their actions across their respective political rises and in their first few weeks in office are both chilling and apt. Both were oddly spellbinding orators. Both pretended to be populists in order to stir the passions of their base. Both were considered to be buffoons by those that saw through their lies, but both were woefully underestimated by their opponents. Both manipulated the machinery of government and elections to gain a narrow legislative victory. Once in power, both immediately took dramatic action to consolidate their power with complete disdain for democratic rules and norms.
Both had previously attempted violent overthrows of their democratically-elected governments – Hitler with the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November of 1923 and Trump with the coordinated assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. When those violent attempts failed, both men plotted to attain power through legal means, the better to enact a bloodless coup d’etat. In yet another parallel, Ryback writes that “Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the ‘parliamentarian swamp’ – den parlamentarischen Sumpf.”
Upon securing power, Hitler and Trump each claimed overwhelming electoral mandates to transform their governments, despite neither having won a majority of the vote. They both immediately moved to purge their governments of anyone they considered insufficiently loyal. They weaponized their judiciaries and law enforcement agencies to terrorize and punish their opponents. They took advantage of paralyzed and supine legislatures to usurp power. They each pardoned their violent supporters who had been convicted. On Tuesday, March 21, 1933, an amnesty was issued for all Nazis convicted of crimes, including murder, perpetrated “in the battle for national renewal.” On his first day in office, Trump granted clemency to every person charged or convicted for their role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, calling them patriots. Both men established extra-judicial detention camps within weeks of taking office: Dachau opened on March 22, 1933, initially to detain the Nazis’ political opponents; on January 29, 2025, Trump announced the repurposing of Guantanamo Bay to house tens of thousands of so-called “criminal aliens.”
Hitler’s goal of dismantling a weak parliamentary democracy such as Weimar Germany in 1933 required different tactics than Trump and his enablers’ present attempt nearly a century later to dismantle the longstanding American system of governmental checks and balances. But the playbook of the autocrat has not changed: instill fear of retribution, prize fealty over expertise, subdue the legislature, weaken and ignore the justice system, and gain control of the military, so that the power to rule might reside solely in the hands of the dictator.
While I focus here on comparisons between Trump and Hitler, I think it is crucial that we also pay close attention to Trump’s many authoritarian contemporaries. The “autocratic playbook” is in use around the globe. Trump’s admiration for strongmen is well known and unambivalent, and he is carefully following the regime of Vladimir Putin of Russia and – perhaps even more importantly – Viktor Orban of Hungary. If the United States does devolve into some form of illiberal regime, contemporary models may be more likely than the historic evil of Nazi Germany. I encourage you to read Jay Michaelson’s latest insightful post about potential scenarios of America’s slide into autocracy, in which he describes Hungary as a plausible model.
Democracies are fundamentally fragile. Since every citizen is, by definition, empowered to participate in the democratic process, a democracy is especially vulnerable to those acting in bad faith. Bad actors regularly embrace the democratic process for their own purposes, but without endorsing the principles of tolerance, equal rights and due process upon which modern democracy is based. This is why some democracies have seen fit to either ban or refuse to cooperate with certain political parties that openly espouse anti-democratic principles. But as illiberal trends surge in power around the globe, more and more fascistic coalitions are gaining legislative authority. For example, the Jewish Power party in Israel was banned for decades from any government posts due to their openly racist, hateful and violent ideology. But two years ago Benjamin Netanyahu, in his effort to remain in power, invited these openly anti-democratic leaders as full members of the current governing coalition. Germany placed careful limits on its post-war democracy by outlawing hate speech, Nazi symbols, and any far-right extremism that echoed Nazi ideology. But now Germany is frantically debating what to do as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party surges in the polls, abetted by Vice President J.D. Vance’s shameful embrace during his recent trip to Germany.
In this way, those who disdain and even despise the idea and the values of democracy are gaining the levers of control in democracies around the world. They are bent on dismantling the cumbersome and frustrating processes of democracy in favor of the brute application of power.
As I mentioned above, in 1923 Hitler and his National Socialists attempted to violently overthrow the Weimar Republic in an incident that became known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to prison, where he wrote his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). A mere nine months later he was released and resumed his political activities. Within three years the Nazis were once again allowed to run in parliamentary elections. In 1926 they won 12 seats in the Reichstag. Thomas Ryback quotes Joseph Goebbels, one of those delegates who later became Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels, marveling that the National Socialists, an openly anti-democratic party, had been permitted to run for office in the Weimar Republic, wrote: “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”
The struggle for the future of American democracy is upon us, but the battle has not been lost. We must meet this moment, and fight for the principles that we cherish. Understanding history can help us to gauge the challenges we face more clearly.
Wishing you strength, courage, and love,
Rabbi Jonathan Kligler
Thank you, Rabbi Jonathan, for this clear analysis of our current crisis. Let us pray.
Scary but credible. Thank you for your clarity.