53 Days
How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy
-
- Pedido anticipado
-
- Se espera: 1 sept 2026
-
- USD 12.99
-
- Pedido anticipado
-
- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
From internationally acclaimed historian Timothy W. Ryback, the chilling chronicle of how Adolf Hitler overturned a constitutional democracy in less than eight weeks
On September 25, 1930, Adolf Hitler appeared before Germany’s Supreme Court and outlined his plans to destroy the Weimar Republic through democratic means. The judge asked, “So, only through constitutional means?” Hitler replied, “Jawohl!”
Barely two years later, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed the fifteenth chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Within 53 days of that date, he had effected one of the most astonishing transformations in modern democracy, using the provisions of the Constitution to turn a democratic republic into an authoritarian state. Drawing from his 800-page political playbook, Mein Kampf, Hitler banned or neutered the print press and radio; purged the civil service and installed party loyalists; suspended civil liberties; compromised the courts; imposed Reich government control over the country’s seventeen federated states; slapped draconian tariffs on trading partners; co-opted, imprisoned, or drove political opponents into exile; assumed control over the central bank; and then compelled the Reichstag, the country’s legislative body, to pass an Enabling Act granting Hitler dictatorial power.
Charting the key events of those dramatic days in taut and compelling prose, Timothy W. Ryback evokes the raw political power and increasing inevitability of Hitler’s state capture, amid heroic efforts by journalists and social democrats to save the republic, underscoring the alarming observation in the introduction to Joseph Goebbels’ collected essays: “The big joke on democracy is that it provides its mortal enemies with the means to its own destruction.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hitler undid Germany's constitutional order through demagoguery and occasional violence, but also through maneuvering that was constitutionally sanctioned and the acquiescence of democracy's supposed defenders, contends historian Ryback (Takeover) in this incisive study. Ryback recaps the period in 1933 from January 30, when Hitler was appointed chancellor, to March 23, when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act granting him dictatorial power. During that 53-day span, he banned hundreds of newspapers, purged civil servants and police, arrested left-wing politicians, and had his brownshirts intimidate voters during the March 5 Reichstag elections—resulting in unfair elections that increased Nazi representation and allowed the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act. Throughout, Ryback highlights the insidiousness of "the Hitler playbook," presenting it as a type of interpersonal bullying. ("Cordiality and comradery, along with intrusive midnight calls, and vague assurances and agreements... all in confidence, of course, and when that failed, then bribery, coercion, blackmail, threats.") For all Hitler's malignant energy, however, Ryback styles the fascist takeover as democracy's own "suicide": pushback from courts and state governments was weak, business leaders caved to Nazi demands for funding, the Weimar constitution was fatally flawed in allowing emergency decrees, and Hindenburg's indulgence of Hitler's authoritarianism likely stemmed from his own yearning for a return to monarchy. It's a trenchant depiction of democracy as most vulnerable when its stewards are insufficiently committed.
