“The European history of the 20th century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse. We might be tempted to think that our (US) democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism.”

This is a quote from Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny, published late last year. He might have added that we are no wiser than the Greeks, Romans and Florentines, all of whom saw their systems of popular government fail as well. As Snyder points out, the fall of a democracy involves far more than a change in governing systems. It is rooted in internal rot, in an abandonment of core values — societies “break,” ethics “collapse.”

For the less-than-all-wise citizens of any democracy in any place at any time, therefore, there are lessons to be learned from past mistakes. Particularly since the mortal wounds, intentionally or not, are usually self-inflicted.

Of all those breakages in the 20th century, though, none is more agonizing than that of the Weimar Republic of Germany. Its brief life represents one the great hinge moments of world history. In November 1918, at the end of the First World War, the Republic had replaced the pre-war authoritarian system. Only 15 years later, however, it was replaced by Nazi dictatorship. Had the Republic survived, there would have been no Führer Adolf Hitler to unleash World War II and the Holocaust.   

Those epic episodes have understandably dominated the attention of the history-consuming public. But a prior question is, I think, more pointedly relevant, and has received less attention. It is this — how did Hitler come to power in the first place? Many would point to Germany’s 15-year sequence of defeat in war, humiliation in peace, revolution, burdensome reparations, hyperinflation and economic depression and conclude that the Third Reich was dispensed as mechanically as a Ding Dong is spat out with the push of a button on a vending machine.

Those events no doubt prepared the ground, but they didn’t dictate the harvest. Right up until the last, in January 1933, the Nazi “solution” could have been averted. A few of the right people standing up to do the right things could have made a great difference, but instead, repeatedly, at crucial moments the people in positions of power did the wrong things. Or, did nothing. While he swore to upend all norms once in power, while his followers displayed their thuggishness for all to see, while he publicly detailed his plans to destabilize the world order even at the cost of renewed war, why did so many sane people abet the insane Hitler’s rise to power? That is the question, then and now.

The Nazis came to dominance through (mostly) legal means in a democratic republic that was one of richest, most highly educated, most culturally, scientifically, and technologically advanced countries in the world. One not unlike our own. Mercifully, we have never faced a Hitlerian-like threat to our own constitutional system. And we don’t face one today. But dangers far short of outright Nazism are worthy of worry. Out of the suicide of any democracy, lesser gremlins can still be born.

So, why do societies break, ethics collapse, and republics fall? This column is the first in a multipart series in which we’ll peer into that profoundly important question through the prism of Weimar Germany. Its history has lessons to teach.

Jim Wiggins is a retired Copiah-Lincoln Community College hsitory instructor. He is writing a bi-weekly column about history.