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gadicohen93's review
4.0
A solid chronicle of one of the most riveting and puzzling developments in history. The last few chapters were cumbersome; many characters tried to manipulate Hitler, or to manipulate other characters close to Hitler, but it was too convoluted to keep track of all of them and the narrative itself started feeling tired, even exasperated by the incompetence and shortsightedness of the Weimar politicians, so much so that those feelings flowed to the reader. By the last few pages -- where the author expertly summarizes his key points, answering the key question of the book in a substantive and original way -- I was happy for the book to be over.
List of similarities between Trump's America and Hitler's Germany, as gleaned from Hett:
-vote share. The Nazis only got as high as 37 percent in the elections, aka Trump base levels
-allergy to truth. In Germany, many people couldn't look truth in the face, clutching on to the "stab in the back" myth invented by Hindenburg and other conservatives that they lost WWI due to home front betrayal by Jews and socialists and republicans.
-right-wing fake news media spreading this allergy to truth
-"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." -Hitler, Mein Kampf. Trump must've studied this hard
-Trump being a little POS narcissist, just like Hitler, who remembered personal insults for decades, and just like Goebbels, who pretended in his diary that an entire derby crowd didn't jeer at him
-Christian conservatives trying to appease Hitler/Trump to save capitalism / keep workers' wages down
List of similarities between Trump's America and Hitler's Germany, as gleaned from Hett:
-vote share. The Nazis only got as high as 37 percent in the elections, aka Trump base levels
-allergy to truth. In Germany, many people couldn't look truth in the face, clutching on to the "stab in the back" myth invented by Hindenburg and other conservatives that they lost WWI due to home front betrayal by Jews and socialists and republicans.
-right-wing fake news media spreading this allergy to truth
-"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." -Hitler, Mein Kampf. Trump must've studied this hard
-Trump being a little POS narcissist, just like Hitler, who remembered personal insults for decades, and just like Goebbels, who pretended in his diary that an entire derby crowd didn't jeer at him
-Christian conservatives trying to appease Hitler/Trump to save capitalism / keep workers' wages down
patvulaj's review
3.0
Being that it’s historical, there are a lot of clunky moments with names and eras that are hard to keep track of all the time but overall it was an interesting read, and education in Germany in that time, and the way Hitler’s regime was able to come into power.