When I was 18 years old I picked up a train schedule near Constance, Germany, where I was a student at an immersive German language program, and made my way 113 miles northeast through the Black Forest to the Dachau concentration camp, the first Nazi concentration camp, which operated from March 1933 to April 1945. Photographs of Dachau today show a comprehensive, visual history of the notorious death camp, but when I walked through its gate from the train station Dachau had the air of a raw, recently abandoned place. Which it was, having been liberated by World War II allies scarcely 20 years earlier. As the product of one of our nation’s best public school systems and the daughter of a U.S. Marines fighter pilot during the war, I knew all about Hitler’s Nazis; but spending a day at the camp among its blackened crematoria and towering piles of prisoners’ discarded shoes put a real face to the estimated 35,000 prisoners who died there.
I don’t recall at the time any mention of the murder of German journalist and historian Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich, who, as a vocal critic of Hitler, was arrested and died on the very ground where I was standing, shot and incinerated at Dachau in 1934. I write this as two independent American journalists, targeted by the authoritarian Donald J. Trump, have been arrested. One of them, former CNN anchor Don Lemon, was arrested after a Minnesota federal magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint against him in connection with a protest inside a church in St. Paul, reportedly enraging Attorney General Pam Bondi. If Bondi is not charged and permanently disbarred for violating her oath to uphold the law, there is no regulation of attorneys in the United States.
Before 1933, Germany had a constitution, the Weimar Constitution, which included fundamental rights including freedom of speech and religion. It ultimately collapsed from within from the twin forces of political instability and the rise of authoritarianism. What followed was the Nazi repression of speech in all its forms under its newly created ministry, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi’s new regime glorified Hitler by featuring his image on postcards, posters, and in the press (Trump memes, anyone?); making radios cheaper so that more Germans could listen to Nazi propaganda; broadcasting Nazi speeches; and organizing large, celebratory Nazi rallies (remember Trump’s military rally?). It was just one year later that journalist Gerlich was arrested, shot, and incinerated at Dachau in 1934.
I learned a lot about Hitler and the Nazis in school, even wrote my first paper at UC Berkeley on the Nuremberg trials. But it was all within an assumed context of relief, relief that understanding and public exposure surely inoculated us from the possibility of it ever happening here; faith in our own constitution and its rule of law would surely protect us from a similar fate. Our complacency and confidence in the rigor of our laws allowed us to miss or take seriously the warning signs of an approaching apocalypse that could topple it all.
Just like the Germans in 1933.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.
Better start standing up NOW!
Bruce Anderson: “Better start standing up NOW!”
Chris Hedges says it’s too late. He is the cure for my irrational optimism. I cannot look around and imagine everything transformed to eastern Europe in the Fifties, but that’s what’s happening. This transformation is proceeding with few delays.
I am standing, Bruce. ;-)
They’ve got to be stopped. How, tactically, to do it is the question I have, esp given that they obviously aren’t going to leave. (The Democrats, including the Northcoast’s cringing reps, have never been so gutless, afraid to even impeach the bastard.)
Here’s my long-winded reply to this issue, written by a historian, that gives another perspective on the dynamics of our current circumstances. It gives us cause for some hope. Still, of course we need to stand-up, and to protest by as many means possible.
“History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him”
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat
“ ‘A dictator comes from below and then throws himself in an even deeper hole.’ ” That sentiment was published by the French magazine Voilà in April 1939 in a preview of Charlie Chaplin’s satirical film ‘The Great Dictator.’
Today, President Trump appears to be testing the depths of the hole into which he can throw himself — and drag America with him. He faces falling approval ratings and growing unpopularity for his domestic and foreign policies, including his fixation on Greenland and repeated threats of using the U.S. military against Americans. Rather than recalibrating, Mr. Trump is barreling ahead (or down), whatever the costs to the nation and the world. Asked by reporters from The New York Times if he recognized any constraints on his actions, the president replied: ‘My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’
I have seen this brand of strongman megalomania and the adverse effects it can ultimately have on leaders and their governments. I call it autocratic backfire. Authoritarian-minded leaders present themselves as bold innovators with unerring instincts about how to lead their countries to greatness. Their personality cults proclaim their infallibility while propaganda machines suppress news of their failures and exaggerate their influence and competency.
As autocrats surround themselves with loyalists who praise them and party functionaries who repeat their lies, leaders can start to believe their own hype. As they cut themselves off from expert advice and objective feedback, they start to promulgate unscrutinized policies that fail. Rather than course correct, such leaders often double down and engage in even riskier behavior — starting wars or escalating involvement in military conflicts that eventually reveal the human and financial tolls of their corruption and incompetence. The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.
You can see this dynamic at work in three scenarios over the past 100 years: Benito Mussolini’s old-school one-party dictatorship, Vladimir Putin’s 21st-century kleptocracy and Mr. Trump’s attempt to erode an established democracy. All of these leaders constructed echo chambers, overestimated their abilities and underestimated or dismissed their adversaries’ capabilities.
Autocratic backfire can end in a leader’s ouster and a nation’s collective ruin, as it did in Fascist Italy; in a leader clinging to power over a weakened state, as is happening with Mr. Putin’s Russia; or in popular resistance and mass mobilizations that help restore democracy in the end — which could yet be the fate of the United States…
Mr. Trump’s behavior during a recent address to the nation suggests he is aware of cooling public sentiment. He shouted at times, as though he felt fewer people were listening. He repeated old lines about fixing the messes of others and newer lines about being a peacemaker, but the magic that brought so many to him may be dissipating. ‘Confidence fading. Can’t lie through the reality anymore,’ Owen Shroyer, a former Infowars host whom Mr. Trump pardoned for his activities on Jan. 6, commented on X. ‘His base has turned. He knows it. Ego damaged. Swagger lost.’
It is well documented that strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened. That is why, as popular discontent with the Trump administration’s actions deepens, Americans should brace for heightened militarized domestic repression and more imperialist aggression abroad.
The rules of autocratic backfire are clear. Even if a struggling strongman manages to stay in power, once his carefully crafted image is tarnished, a collective reckoning can begin with the costs of his corruption and lying. Once a leader proclaims ‘I am the only one that matters’ and sits alone at the pinnacle of power, it is hard for him to escape blame, no matter how many officials and former friends he purges. He is more vulnerable to being removed or, at the very least, judged — by lawmakers, by courts, at the polls and, perhaps most lastingly, by history.”
Dr. Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at N.Y.U. and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
NY TIMES
Feb. 1, 2026
Nuremberg has a new job to do in today’s classrooms: punch back against historical distortion, denial, and democratic erosion. That’s our mission at Courtroom600.org
Love to connect, Marilyn.
To Laurie Pasler: Would love to connect with you, too: [email protected]