1932 was a pivotal year in the Nazis’ ascent. It’s a terrifying parallel for today
Hitler Youth recruits in a Nazi Party parade in Berlin on June 12, 1932. Photo by Keystone View Company/FPG/Getty Images
To many, it now seems inevitable that former President Donald Trump will win this November’s election — a sense that offers a huge boost to Trump’s campaign, and makes alarmingly clear how closely the United States in 2024 resembles Germany in 1932.
Then, a Nazi victory began to seem increasingly inescapable, as election followed election through the spring and summer.
It was a strange moment in German politics. On the one hand, National Socialism was the most significant political phenomenon in 20th-century Germany. On the other, the Nazis were unpopular. They repeatedly failed to win more than 40 percent of the vote in 1932, and barely did so in 1933, when they took power.
Today, Trumpism is both the most significant political phenomenon in the U.S., and unpopular: Only 4 in 10 — yes, 40% — of Americans think favorably of Trump himself.
What these parallels teach us: When an unpopular political movement is poised to take power it suspects it cannot legitimately maintain, democracy is endangered, with dire consequences for all of us. As the seeming inevitability of Trump’s election has increased with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts undertaken in office — a feather in Trump’s cap after a dismal debate performance by President Joe Biden led Trump to his highest polling numbers since 2015 — the seriousness of this threat cannot be overstated.
And it’s not just increased legal immunity that has enhanced Trump’s seeming inevitability. Even more effective was the defiant invulnerability he appeared to embody after an assassination attempt on him last weekend. Leaving that Pennsylvania field, blood streaming from one ear and fist raised high, the double role Trump prefers — that of both a victim, and a savior whose righteous path is now marked out — seemed newly clarified, and newly persuasive.
The idea of a ‘unified Reich’
The sense of certainty offers a huge psychological advantage to Trump’s campaign, during which he has sought to paint a picture of a unified America rallying behind him in protest of his victimization by state and federal prosecutors. He has promised, if he wins in November, to vindicate not just himself, but all the victims of the supposed damage wrought by tone-deaf elites under Biden.
There are identifiable culprits who have ruined America, he tells his followers, promising that they will be held accountable and locked up. He has referred to “military tribunals,” and the strong hands that will also repair “American carnage.” As he depicts a fateful struggle for the soul of the country, the muscular populism he preaches is pure melodrama. It casts purposeful redeemers against terrible villains. In Trump’s view, the U.S. resembles a crime scene in which order can and must be restored, through police action if necessary.
There’s a clear parallel to the rhetoric that fueled the Nazis’ rise. They billed themselves as speaking for the Germans who felt they had been stabbed in the back during World War I by domestic criminals, including Marxists, profiteers and Jews. Their vision was at once optimistic and conspiratorial; once the swamp was drained, new glories would emerge.
Yet by the end of 1932, Adolf Hitler had realized that Germany’s popular elections would not grant him the power to drain that swamp.
At the start of that year, he had been genuinely surprised when he lost a presidential election to the 85-year-old incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg. He was once more astonished when he did not gain a majority in parliamentary elections in July. The Nazi share of the vote had indeed grown by leaps and bounds, from less than 3% in Reichstag elections in 1928 to more than 18% in 1930, and 36% in 1932. No other party was able to match the Nazi presence in so many precincts. It won votes in the countryside and in the cities; it won votes among Catholics as well as Protestants.
But it was not enough.
Hitler had looked out at the enormous size of his rallies, the largest in anyone’s memory, and mistaken insurgency for mass acclamation. By the end of the year, he’d come to understand that mistake, which led to a shift in strategy: He would cooperate with conservative elites in order to gain power, then use violence to keep it.
At this point, eight years after his first election in 2016, Trump likely understands that he is leading an insurgency, not a true majority of the people. He has never won a popular vote. But to fuel his way to a second victory — after which, he has made clear, he intends to use violence to hold onto power for as long as possible — he must convince his audience that he speaks for the true Americans. A May video recirculated by his Truth Social account anticipated the moment of victory, using a make-believe old-timey front page to authenticate the sense that he expresses something true and eternal about the country — something that will bring all Americans together. “It’s a Landslide!” the fake newspaper roared. The “Economy Booms!” thanks to common-sense policies. “Peace Through Strength” means “No More Forever War” since Trump “Puts America First.” (The most eyebrow-raising headline among them, celebrating a “unified Reich,” was hardly the only alarming one.)
The problem with this picture is that the polls do not uphold what the rhetoric of the Trump campaign contends: That he will bring about a “unified America.” There is a conflict between the rhetorical mantra, in which the movement to “Make America Great Again” has unified the country, and the reality, in which large numbers of citizens oppose Trump. How will they be written into or out of the MAGA script?
Hitler’s feigned popular mandate
The answer Hitler came up with, after the Nazis finally came to lead a governing coalition after earning a plurality of votes in March, 1933, is one that’s too easy to imagine Trump turning to today.
The Nazis, newly in power, did not represent a “unified Reich,” since most socialists and Catholics stayed loyal to their own parties. But they possessed a huge psychological advantage that emboldened followers and paralyzed adversaries. They took advantage of that paralysis, turning things violent almost as soon as they took power by implementing the forced internal deportation of thousands of suspects to concentration camps. In doing so, they broke the back of the socialist opposition, which was unprepared for the rapidity or intensity of the move.
Even more effective was the way the Nazis employed visual media and street theater to create the impression of the unanimous backing they lacked — until, finally, credulous holdouts started to cross over, so that the idealized pictures became more and more real. Since the Nazis regarded themselves as “true” Germans — patriots as opposed to Marxists or globalists, Aryans as opposed to Jews and other so-called aliens — they insisted their slim majority could stand for all of Germany and legitimize the violence to destroy the unpatriotic and un-German.
Trump’s campaign is already distinguishing between the right sort of Americans and the wrong sort, between victimized saviors and powerful criminals, with the heavy implication that only the former category is truly American — and therefore, a true majority behind him. The growing sense of inevitability to his rise will only help him. It is central to the effort to create the appearance of unanimous support, the most powerful tool that the Nazis learned to employ. They redefined the nation in order to maintain their grip on it. The risk of Trump doing the same is immense.
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