The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett
The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett
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The Death of Democracy
Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic

Author: Benjamin Carter Hett

Narrator: Steven Crossley

Unabridged: 11 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2018


Synopsis

"[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

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 twentieth-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.

About Benjamin Carter Hett

Benjamin Carter Hett is the author of The Death of Democracy, Burning the Reichstag, Crossing Hitler, and Death in the Tiergarten. He is a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and holds a PhD in history from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. He now lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Pam on July 31, 2018

This is required reading for anyone who fears the events occurring in our country today. I always thought the comparisons between the current administration and Nazi Germany were hyperbole, but it is shocking how certain actions and behaviors today parallel those in the days of the Weimar Republic,......more

Goodreads review by Mal on July 18, 2018

How democracy died in Germany is the subject of a penetrating new historical study of the Weimar Republic and the political turmoil that wracked the nation in the early years of the Great Depression. Hunter College history professor Benjamin Carter Hett brings new evidence to light that exposes old......more

Goodreads review by Jakub on July 19, 2021

3,5/5 Hett má za sebou dve výborné knihy (Death in Tiergarten, 2004, čo je jeho prerobená dizertačka z Harvardu z r. 2001, a Crossing Hitler z r. 2008 o právnikovi Hansovi Littenovi, ktorého „znovuobjavil“ a vrátil do všeobecného povedomia, z ktorého sa Litten tak nejak nezaslúžene vytratil). Tretiu......more

Goodreads review by Wick on February 17, 2022

It could/will happen again. This book zooms in on the political brinksmanship and statecraft that brought the Nazi party and Hitler into power. If you don't know a lot of the key German political players of that time, you'll find yourself a little lost like myself. I'm not knowledgeable about this to......more

Goodreads review by Edward on June 19, 2024

This is an excellent and remarkably concise (and gripping!) book of the end of German democracy in the 1930s. Hett is an impressive historian -- not only in the way he synthesizes so many developments leading up to the Night of the Long Knives, but in the way he presents disturbing parallels to the......more


Quotes

"Steven Crossley gives a near-perfect narration of Hett's well-written and researched account of how the German experiment in democracy, the Weimar Republic, came to be replaced by the Nationalist Socialists, the Nazis. ...Crossley's British accent gives his narration an academic-sounding quality quite fitting for the text. He is clear and precise in pronunciation and enunciation and is suitably expressive throughout." -AudioFile