This is a very simplistic examination of Hitler’s rise to power compared with Trump’s, and what Trump might have to do to assume the same level of dictatorship that Hitler had.
I’m distilling most of this from the excellent Wikipedia articles on Hitler’s rise to power. If you want the full story, go there. Then find some books because Wikipedia doesn’t make much sense sometimes.
I’ll be trying to keep this a bit light, but don’t take that to mean I don’t take this seriously.
Hitler served in World War I (1914-1918) as a dispatch runner.
Number of world wars served in: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
Hitler joined his first political party, the German Worker’ Party or DAP, after the war in 1919. He was the 55th member of that party at the time. The name of the party was changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party or NSDAP (aka. “Nazis”). The swastika banner was created.
Number of crazy ideological parties started: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
Germany was in shambles after World War I. Hyperinflation was rampant. Anti-government sentiment ran high.
Number of collapsed governments lived in: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
Some might argue that the U.S. is also near collapse (certainly those folks in the Rust Belt we’ve been hearing so much about lately), but I feel like it would be pretty easy to make a case that Germany was in far worse shape overall in 1919 than the U.S. in 2016.
Hitler gained attention for the NSDAP by speaking in beer halls. He was a popular, charismatic speaker and utilized populist rhetoric with anti-Semitic themes.
For popularity based on charisma: Hitler 1, Trump 1/4.
You can still view film of Hitler’s speeches. Trump is no Hitler. I don’t ever recall seeing spittle flying from Trump’s lips while he spoke.
For hateful speeches: Hitler 1, Trump 1/4.
Sorry, I just can’t objectively equate Trump’s comments about immigration reform with Hitler’s comments about Jews.
Inspired by Benito Mussolini’s recent coup in Italy, Hitler attempted his own coup in 1923. It failed. He was arrested and jailed. The NSDAP was banned.
Number of violent coups attempted: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
Weirdly, Hitler was only sentenced to 5 years in prison for high treason (he only served 9 months).
For serving time in jail: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
In jail, Hitler wrote a book about how to rebuild Germany by killing off the Jews (a gross oversimplification, I know). It sold a quarter of a million copies between 1925 and 1932.
Number of popular genocidal books written: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
In 1925, Hitler promised to be good and the NSDAP ban was lifted. The NSDAP started winning seats in the Reichstag.
For working his way up through the political process: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
In 1929, the US stock market crashed, destroying the German economy again. The NSDAP gained increased popularity on a platform of strengthening the economy and providing jobs.
For promising job growth: Hitler 1, Trump 1.
Unemployment in Germany grew to 30 percent by 1932 (source). For comparison, unemployment in the US is about 5 percent (source).
For operating in a country with almost 1/3 unemployment: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
In 1930, the NSDAP won more seats in the Reichstag. The KPD (Communist party) also grew. Incidentally, both the KPD and NSDAP declared their intentions to dissolve the democracy of the Weimar Republic.
For declaring the party’s intentions to restructure the government: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
For a rival party intent on same restructure of government: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
After the 1930 elections, NSDAP operatives (known as SA troops or “brownshirts”) bullied people into supporting the Nazis. (“Bullied” is an understatement here. They went a little beyond threatening tweets.)
For having a loyal paramilitary force to enforce party discipline: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
I’ll admit I’m having trouble understanding Wikipedia for this part, but there was an election in July 1932 and then another election in November 1932. The NSDAP did well in the first one but not as well in the second. Then somehow Hitler was able to convince President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him Chancellor in January 1933. (I am not exactly clear how the roles of “president” and “chancellor” differed.) I think these shenanigans were attempts to keep the Communists from taking over Germany.
For doing shady government stuff that doesn’t even remotely resemble the way the U.S. government works: Hitler 1, Trump 0.
The interesting point for me is that Hitler was appointed Chancellor, he wasn’t elected. I’m not sure I ever knew that before.
For being elected by the people: Hitler 0, Trump 1.
If we assume Trump is anything like Hitler, we have reached the “present” in our timeline. Trump is now (or will be on Inauguration Day) roughly where Hitler was in 1932. Count the points up there to see how he’s doing on the OMG It’s Hitler Freak Out Scale.
Also keep in mind some other basic differences: Germany was not a federation of states like the United States is. Germany was and is more like one U.S. state. Germany also did not have a two-party system like the United States does. It was more like British Parliament where the makeup of the governing body is determined by the number of votes that go to each party, or something like that.
One other thing to keep in mind: Germany did not have 24-hour cable news or the Internet in 1933. Many of the things happening above occurred completely behind closed doors, outside the view of the public. Nobody was watching Hitler’s appointment on C-SPAN.
Now here’s what Hitler went on to do:
Someone set fire to the Reichstag in February 1933. Hitler blamed the Communists and asked for an emergency decree to suspend civil liberties.
The Nazis arrested all members of the Communist party in the Reichstag, which was their chief political rival at the time. It left the Nazis in the majority.
In March 1933, Hitler asked for the (ostensibly temporary) power to enact laws without the Reichstag. Since the Nazis were now in the majority, and Hitler’s paramilitary brownshirts surrounded the building, the Enabling Act passed easily.
The rest is history, as they say.
So what needs to happen in the United States for Donald Trump to become a dictator and start those pogroms? I’m no expert, but I imagine it would basically be the same steps:
First, he has to find a reason to suspend civil liberties. Next, he has to arrest most of the people in Congress who might vote against him. Next, he has to threaten the remaining Congresspeople into giving him “emergency” powers to pass laws. There might be some extra steps in there to deal with the press and the judicial branch, too, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
Admittedly, he already has a little bit of a head start with the Patriot Act. If he could find a legal way to explain why Congress is made up of terrorists or enemy combatants, he could skip right to the next step. (But I think there are provisions in the Patriot Act preventing prosecution of U.S. citizens.)
Realistically, though, he would need a pretty convincing cause to declare marshal law. A civil war would do I suppose. (Lincoln did in fact suspend civil liberties during the Civil War.) Protesters right now are doing a great job of starting that up for him. California trying to leave the U.S. could escalate that.
Let’s assume he achieves marshal law somehow. Let’s assume his goal is to get rid of every minority, leaving only a nation of straight, white people. (I feel like that is the major fear right now.) So he arrests one-third of Congress, leaving two-thirds there, the required number to propose a Constitutional amendment. (There is another way using a constitutional convention, but I don’t feel like researching that.) Let’s further assume he has a paramilitary organization at his disposal who will surround the Congressional Building until the remaining legislators propose an amendment to the Constitution to exclude Muslims, Latinos, LGBTs, and any other minorities from civil protection.
He would probably also want an amendment to make presidential terms indefinite, I would think. At least for him.
That sounds ridiculous enough already to me, but that wouldn’t even be the end of it. Our system requires three-quarters of the States to approve changes to the Constitution. 38 States would then have to say, yes, they agree with a repeat performance of the Holocaust, right out in front of everyone in the light of day. Some of them might, but I doubt it. Still, let’s assume all of the “red” states do:
I count 29 red states on that weird-looking CNN map. He’ll need nine more. I don’t see how that’s possible, personally. Some of those blue states up there are pretty blue.
In any case, let’s look at what a State has to do to approve a Constitutional amendment. That archive.gov site I linked above has a great summary. Every state legislature would have to meet to approve the amendment. That’s a lot of people voting for a Holocaust. I know it might seem like there are a lot of terrible people in the world sometimes, but I have a hard time believing there are that many in state legislative bodies.
Now I know what you’re thinking right now: What about Executive Orders? Thanks to the expanded executive branch powers which Bush and Obama have enjoyed over the years, Trump could simply write an Executive Order to suspend habeus corpus for all minorities on day one.
Okay, you’ve got me. I don’t know enough about Executive Orders. But I just read a little bit about them on a site. And another site.
First of all, I just discovered that the usage of EOs has plummeted since World War II. Those expanded powers I mentioned are nothing compared to what FDR and Truman enjoyed. But I guess it makes sense for a president to issue a lot of orders during war time.
It does seem like a bit of a gray area, but Congress can always overturn any Executive Order with a two-thirds majority. Of course if your president has the above-mentioned paramilitary army threatening to kill off Congress, he probably wouldn’t worry about too much about that.
So for the sake of argument, let’s just say he can pull it off somehow. Dictator Trump makes it illegal for any minority to live in America, and suspends all civic rights for those people, and issues orders that all minorities should be tracked down and deported or shot.
That sounds pretty crazy. But okay, let’s stipulate that it could happen. I know about The Holocaust. I know about the Armenians. I know about Rowanda. So I’m putting on my imagination cap now, like I would if I were world-building a dystopian novel. None of this should be taken seriously.
There is a very small percentage of people who would definitely pick up their guns and start shooting minorities. I won’t lie. That would be a scary time. Life wouldn’t turn into The Walking Dead, though. It would manifest as an uptick in violent crime against minorities. The good news is that a lot of the people with guns live in rural areas, where there are less minorities, so they would have to travel some distance to find the minorities to shoot.
I think that we would have plenty of time to see the Minority Purge coming. Thanks to cable news and The Internet and cell phones, we have 24/7 visibility of everything that everyone is doing all of the time. (That’s a huge advantage we have now over Hitler’s time.) Dictator Trump would probably have to make a move to suppress that visibility somehow: Suspend the Internet, ban news organizations, etc. That would be a major cue that it’s time to pack up and go someplace safe. If you didn’t want to leave the country entirely, I would suggest California because of their technology base. Google’s infrastructure would prove very useful during all the cyber warfare. But any major city would probably work in a pinch. Well, except Washington, DC itself. I would certainly leave Virginia. It’s a purple state but it would still be too close to the center of Dictator Trump’s power base.
I would imagine we would see states and localities start declaring or at least enforcing their own sovereignty, by which I mean they might start enforcing local laws over federal laws. Someone has to carry out these directives that Dictator Trump is talking about, and some states and localities probably won’t want to. By which I mean there will probably be a large number of state and local governments that won’t think it’s okay to shoot people down in the streets, regardless of who they are. Some people with guns might organize and start shooting the people trying to shoot minorities. Local governments and police will probably try to enforce order by shooting everybody in sight. I actually don’t know if State militias still exist. National guard I guess? Is that still a thing? :) Anyway they would probably get involved. Every state governor would have to decide whether to carry out Dictator Trump’s master plan. Minorites will probably have a better chance in a state with a blue governor.
Dictator Trump would of course want to send the U.S. military in to suppress any rebellions. Presumably the U.S. military would have internal power struggles between people who want to shoot minorities and people who don’t. The military will undoubtedly split into smaller groups, probably aligned with States.
The stock market would crash big time if any of this happens, by the way. Most of Dictator Trump’s private wealth would disappear along with everyone else’s. All of Dictator Trump’s valuable real estate properties would undoubtedly be destroyed by the resistance just out of spite. There would be rampant unemployment, crime, starvation, riots in the streets (real ones, not what we’re seeing now). Most of that would happen in urban areas I would think. People in rural areas would probably stay in their homes and batten down the hatches, probably unable to get much news because of a lack of cable or Internet. Their local radio and television stations picked up over-the-air would be the only way to get any information. They would stock up on gasoline for their generators, creating gas shortages and long lines.
It’s entirely possible states may ask for help from foreign countries, who might send troops to assist. (This happened during the Civil War, too.) Obviously every other country in the world would denounce Dictator Trump’s actions in the strongest possible terms, and the United Nations would send troops to keep order. Dictator Trump’s America would become like Syria is now. Huge waves of refugees would be pouring over the northern and southern borders trying to escape Dictator Trump’s America. ISIL will trip over themselves running to try to get into Dictator Trump’s America to take advantage of the anarchy (and undoubtedly taking credit for it). I could imagine Canadian and Mexican troops marching on American soil, too. (They have troops, right?) A large number of special forces from other countries would probably drop in to secure our nuclear weapons (British, Russian, Chinese, etc.). Russia might well step up and declare themselves to be the new world police. They would probably worry a lot about what Dictator Trump might do with those nukes after he starts the Minority Purge.
That’s about as far as I can prognosticate.
But again, none of that is going to happen.
The real life worst case scenario is what’s happening now: An uptick in people being dicks. An uptick in hate crimes. It will settle out and return to normal.
