From world-renowned historian Timothy W. Ryback, a harrowing account of how Adolf Hitler overthrew a constitutional democracy in less than eight weeks.
On September 25, 1930, Adolf Hitler appeared before the German Supreme Court and presented his plans to destroy the Weimar Republic by democratic means. The judge asked him: “So, only by constitutional means?” Hitler replied: "Yes!"Barely two years later, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed 15th Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Within 53 days of that date, he effected one of the most astonishing transformations in modern democracy, using the provisions of the Constitution to transform a democratic republic into an authoritarian state.Based on his massive 800-page political book Mein Kampf, Hitler banned or curbed the print press and radio; He purged the civil service and appointed party loyalists; He suspended civil liberties; The judiciary was weaker; Imposing the Reich government's control over the country's seventeen federal states; imposing heavy tariffs on trading partners; He co-opted his political opponents, imprisoned them, or drove them into exile.took control of the central bank; He then forced the Reichstag, the country's legislative body, to pass an enabling law granting Hitler dictatorial power.
In tight, engaging prose, Timothy W. Ryback charts the key events of those dramatic days, evoking the raw political power and growing inevitability of Hitler's takeover of the state, amid the heroic efforts of journalists and social democrats to save the republic, and emphasizing the alarming observation made in the introduction to Joseph Goebbels's collection of essays:The great paradox of democracy is that it provides its arch enemies with the means to destroy itself.
