The Death of Democracy

Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic

De: Benjamin Carter Hett

Narrado por: Steven Crossley

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 20th-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.

©2018 Benjamin Carter Hett (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[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)

Eerily familiar to todays political climate in US

If you are a voting age, you need to read this book. It demonstrates how a political party can be hijacked and used to put forth the agenda of an entirely different ideology. For those who think this cannot happen today, think again, read this book, read about how it happened in history and how one of the world's Darkest Hours unfolded.

excellent narrative about the fall of Weimar

This book provides an excellent narrative of the fall of Weimar and the rise of the Nazi's. Even though I knew a good deal of the "outlines" of the story before reading (listening) to this book, I learned much about the persons, personalities, political parties and political machinations of the 1920s (especially the late-1920s) and the early 1930s. The book is dense in parts, the highly interested reader might benefit from having a copy of the book itself alongside the MP3 player to help his or her way through those sections. I did not have that, so I found it very useful at times to stop to research a person or incident on my iPhone or computer browser to get my bearings. This is not meant as a criticism of the book however. The narrator was good. I highly recommend the book.

A True Deep Dive ... for Better or Worse

I’ll be honest — this was a bit difficult to get through. I knew it would be a deep dive on the circumstances leading up to WW2, but there was a bit more info than I needed as a non-historian. The parts of the story we all know were really interesting, and the added detail was illuminating, but there’s a lot of story that doesn’t get commonly discussed, probably because it is of interest only to the hardcore scholars of history. I don’t want to fault this book for being in-depth, but I would have probably enjoyed an abridged version much more.

Grippingly told and voiced.

A history we must heed today. Hett's writing is detailed account and novelistically engaging. Mr. Crossley gives a perfect reading. Well done.

Truly Terrifying

Everyone who is concerned about what is happening in The United States today and everyone who thinks it can't happen here needs to listen to this!

As a history teacher, I am going to include this in my summer reading list. It is a gripping read.

It so foreshadows today’s US Republicans fealty to trump and the callous people he has surrounded himself with

Great!

May we learn from history. “What's past is prologue.” - Shakespeare. Well done. Enjoyed the story and narration.
Thank you.

Don't miss this beautifully written book

I get jaded at times when I try a multi-starred book and find it less appealing than I would like. This book is a gem on the three ratings. If your interest in Hitler and his rise, his eventual stranglehold on the Republic, its political parties, the church, and the media. Ultimately Hitler had the German people in his fist. and his organization bent to his will. There are many analogs to contemporary politics, and a careful reader will spot them. I bought the Kindle book so that I could identify sections in the recordings that struck my interest.
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Frighteningly familiar

Listening to this title in August of 2020, I cannot be more stunned at just how similar the death of their republic and our own are. We are much further down the road to fascism than even I knew. I will be totally surprised if Trump does NOT try and pull off a power grab - the evidence of the most blatant attempts to suppress the vote are already public (see the United States Postal Service), and they are refusing to make public a redacted report of the IC public so citizens are armed with knowledge about what foreign powers are doing - and it must be done BEFORE the election. The open acceptance of the American Right of fascism is far easier to understand after reading this timely & important work.

Incredibly important

A stunning book, full of great insights, and warnings. While this book is about the end of the Weimar Republic, it is about any and every democracy or republic. We should take heed. Now