A noted historian says it's fair to compare President Trump and Adolf Hitler, at least in one respect.
Peter Fritzsche, who will give the Robert Bone lecture next week at Illinois State University, said like Hitler, Trump was an outsider in 2016 before he took over the Republican Party.
“He is an anti-establishment candidate in many ways, very similar to other political insurgencies, including the one we see in Germany in the 1930s,” said Fritzsche, adding the U.S. is currently going through a political change that is not ordinary — just as Germany did.
“Not only in the view of the critics, but in the view of the protagonists of the change. It’s a major reorientation of American policy that is taking place not in Congress, but in the executive branch. And so, one wants to look very carefully at the power of the presidency,” Fritzsche said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Another parallel is the way people in Germany then, and people in the U.S. now, did not wholly know how the two leaders won and who supported them.
“We don't understand the degree to which that's economics — situational, long term — cultural. That is very much like the 1930s. In that sense we're literally doing political science. We don't know, but we're trying to figure out how do we understand social and collective human behavior? What are some of the reasons for these shifts? Are they deep? Are they broad?” said Fritzsche.
All analogies eventually break down, though, and Fritzsche, of course, noted big differences.
“One, in the violence. Two, in the organization and coherence. The ideological reach of fascism was explicitly and completely undemocratic. There was a celebration of violence. There was a much more promiscuous identification of internal enemies, who included tens of millions of Germans that needed, in one way or the other, to be reeducated,” said Fritzsche.
The Nazi project, he said, was one of explicit re-education and changing the morality of the nation, and that is relevant to America today where a less extreme version is happening.
“There's a lot of questions about why people do things. Are people loyal? Are people scared? Are people adapting? What is the reaction of people, and how much have they signed up for an economic program of improvement for their own lives, and how much have they signed up to a real re-orientation of America and what it means to be American?
Fritzsche said scholars have struggled to understand how Hitler gained such overwhelming support, even though voters certainly never voted for the holocaust. In early 1933, the Nazi party couldn’t crack 40% support.
“He has just over a third of the electorate. It's a relatively strong base. It's not a revolving electorate that's constantly changing, and there are really one of two places that German voters go if they are disloyal to their old parties. Two-thirds of them go to the Nazis, and one-third of them go to the Communists," said Fritzsche.
He said the Nazis were the biggest political phenomenon in 20th century Germany.
"Given the speed and thoroughness of their mobilization and the social breadth of the electorate, which includes Protestants and Catholics, workers and middle-class people, much broader than the other parties,” said Fritzsche.
Several factors contribute to the wide search among the electorate for something different: the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic, lingering wounds to the national image from the defeat in World War I, punitive war debt and reparations and resentment of it, and push back on societal changes in Germany.
“That's all relevant. There is a sense of national humiliation. It cannot be over emphasized the crisis that exists … People see the effects of unemployment and disorder; riots, lower retail sales, one third of the shops in the city of Berlin have collapsed," said Fritzsche.
"People drink one-third less beer. Civil service salaries have been cut. There is a tremendous sense of economic crisis, and no clear way out. This is the third winter of this crisis, and whether it's 35% unemployment or 27%, it is very serious,” said Fritzsche.
It’s not just negatives. Fritzsche said the Nazis are seen as a party that is open to workers, that wants to embrace the entire nation.
“It's not the old conservative playbook,” said Fritzsche,
Shortly after Hitler was named chancellor, he gained control of radio stations and the Prussian police. That helped get the party and its allies to 52% support. A bit later, Fritzsche noted even the opposition Catholic party voted to give Hitler dictatorial powers for four years and his public support went up to 70% after just 100 days.
He said scholars are asking similar questions in assessing who supports President Trump and why. He said it is not clear how many Trump voters explicitly and knowingly chose him because he wanted to enact huge changes to the economy and the role of the federal government.
Fritzsche will give his talk Brown Vibe: How Hitler won over the majority in 100 days at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in Schroeder Hall 130.
