This is good. Therefore it is also depressing. nybooks.com/articles/2018/
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Well he leaves out the role of the Communists almost entirely in bringing the Nazis to power. Yes they targeted the SDs as “social fascists” but Browning leaves out their street battles with Nazis which helped grow the Stormtroopers and cooperation with Nazis in the Reichstag
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The Communists refusing a coalition with Social Democrats and combining with Nazis on no confidence motions were the reason that Hindenburg had to appoint a series of “presidential cabinets” and ultimately Hitler. Browning knows this very well but whitewashed the record
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Sui generis, really. There’s some mild analogy to the demagogues of the 30’s, Long, Coughlin, Townsend and to the sharpening of sectional divisions in the late 1840’s and 1850’s. There’s a crisis of legitimacy and polarization but it’s not Weimar Germany yet
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