Who Makes the Nazis?

BBC2's recent three part documentary series, Rise of the Nazis, was a brilliant, methodical, and surgically precise, consideration of how the Nazis were able to turn the understandable anger of the German people into hatred of the 'other', how they were able to play other factions off against each other to consolidate their own power base, and how they were able to exploit weak and incoherent opposition leaders who were unable to work together to stop the Nazis taking over. How, basically, they lied, cheated, and manipulated their way into power.

We all know what happened next but what made this series different was that it ended in 1934. It showed not what the Nazis did when they achieved full power but how they managed to get into that position in the first place. What made this series timely was that it's been made, and aired, at a time when many countries around the world are running the risk of sleepwalking into the same position yet again. Populist leaders in Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines, and Russia have recently been joined in their contempt for both democracy and truth by Trump in the USA and Johnson in the UK.

I'm not saying, and the programme wasn't saying, that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are Nazis. What's being said, and what cannot be denied, is that they are using some very similar tactics to consolidate their own positions of power. What made this series vital was that it did not shy away from making this point abundantly clear. A series of talking heads, in each episode, spelt out the very real dangers we face and the very real lessons from history we appear to be ignoring at our own potential peril.

Ash Sarkar, General Sir Mike Jackson, and Baroness Helena Kennedy were the only talking heads I recognised but I pay respect to Dr Stephan Malinowski, Professor Richard Evans, Giles MacDonogh, Professor Richard Overy, Dr Heike B Gortemaker, Dr Christian Goeschel, Dr Timothy W. Ryback, and Clare Mulley too for putting their heads above the parapet and saying what needs to be said. If you think it can't happen here - you're wrong. If you don't want it to happen here you have to stop it happening. You can't bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away. It's much too late for that now.

 As a series about the death of democracy that, for the most part, avoids bombs and explosions it's earnest, austere even, but it needs to be so. It looks more to chicanery and political manouevring than it does to military hardware and it's all the stronger for that. The reconstructions, which sometimes can ruin programmes like this, appear accurate and last only as long as they need to. They begin in Munich in 1930 when Germany is a liberal democracy with elections and the rule of law. Within the four years that this programme covers there would be an end to freedom of speech, most political opponents would be in jail, and there would be murderers in government.

In 1930 Germany was on its knees after years of economic hardship and the people wanted change - but they didn't seem to know of what kind. That year's General Election was a total mess and saw the vote split between fourteen parties. The Centre Party were able to put together a modest, and weak, coalition but the Nazi party made substantial gains despite the fact that the party's leader had already been to prison following his attempt to enact a violent revolution (Munich's Beer Hall Putsch) in 1923.

Until 1930 the Nazis has been seen as a lunatic fringe but in 1930 they had 18% of the vote and they set about attempting to destroy democracy again, this time from within. The prominent right wing general Kurt von Schleicher took an interest. Schleicher viewed politics as a game and saw himself as a key player in that game. To further his own political ambitions he needed the working class vote in Germany and he felt he could exploit Hitler and the Nazis to get that.

He believed the Nazis could help him crush what he saw as the dangerous rise of the left in Germany. Schleicher's plan was to replace the current Chancellor (Heinrich Bruning) with his own choice but to do this he needed both the Nazis and Germany's President, the octogenarian Paul von Hindenburg, on side. Schleicher persuaded Hindenburg to work with the Nazis and his next task was to get Hitler on board.

At this time, Adolf Hitler was living with his niece Geli Raubal and it was rumoured he was having sex with her too. Those who've studied Hitler describe him as a power obsessed narcissist who believed that he was a man of destiny. They say he was hateful, he was increasingly ruthless, and he was, ultimately, a man of violence.

 

None of this comes as much of a surprise now but back then people were voting for him. Three weeks after Geli Raubal killed herself, shot dead in the chest with Hitler's revolver, the Nazi Party leader was invited, by Shleicher, to a meeting with Hindenburg. The idea being to build a right wing coalition based on a shared hatred of common enemies. Hitler had been brought into mainstream politics.

But Hindenburg was unimpressed with the 'Austrian corporal' and felt Hitler best suited to position of postmaster so, Hindenburg joked, he could lick the Chancellor from behind on stamps. Schleicher was annoyed by Hindenburg's position and thought it was time to start playing realpolitik.

Outside the meeting rooms the Nazi paramilitary, the stormtroopers, were enacting violence on the streets against opponents and perceived opponents. But they were doing it in such a way that they couldn't be linked to the Nazi Party and the Nazis could deny any involvement. Schleicher wasn't bothered about that. He believed that force was needed to defeat the left and thought the stormtroopers could provide that force.

Hitler's arrogance, however, meant he was unable to accept a role in a coalition and he turned down an offer from Schleicher who, in reaction to this, brought forward another election with the idea being that he could put pressure on the Nazis to fall into line. Schleicher thought he'd played Hitler but the reverse was true. Hitler had manipulated Schleicher and Hitler's next task was to set about winning over the hearts and minds of the German public.

Portraying himself as anti-elitist (like they always do), Hitler appeared to many as an 'ordinary bloke' but others saw through this. One such person was the lawyer Hans Litten and not only could Litten see that Hitler was lying he set about proving it in court. Most specifically, he set about proving the link between the Nazi Party and the stormtroopers.

Litten didn't just see the law as a set of rules to be followed but as the foundation for a better, and fairer, society. He'd seen what the stormtroopers were doing and when four stormtroopers were arrested following an attack on Communists in a nightclub, Litten started to put together a case that joined the dots from the stormtroopers back to Hitler.

Litten arranged for a summons to be issued so that Hitler would have to appear in court and when Hitler entered the room the accused stormtroopers performed a Nazi salute which you'd have thought would prove something. But Hitler denied all knowledge of them and declared them a rogue group. Litten cross examined Hitler for three hours and produced a pamphlet that acted as a guide for stormtroopers and included a section stating that if the Nazis cannot win democratically they would, and must, resort to violence.

Hitler lost his shit. Litten won the day. But Hitler was not the type to forget as we discover later. Hitler believed that Litten, a Jew, was vermin and part of a worldwide conspiracy. It's an odd thing about antisemitism that it manages to hold two opposing beliefs at the same time. Jews, it says, are useless and less than human yet they're also able to operate a worldwide conspiracy to keep everyone else oppressed. Something it's hard to imagine actual vermin like, say, cockroaches or mosquitoes doing.

The cognitive dissonance is writ large. While Hitler and Litten were in court, Schleicher was attempting to bring down Chancellor Bruning who he believed to be under the spell of Socialism. Schleicher got business leaders on board, he used the media, and he employed gossip all to further his ends. He convinced Hindenburg that Bruning was destabilising Germany and that, worst of all, it was making the President look bad.

It worked. Hindenburg fired Bruning and Franz von Papen was installed as Chancellor. Papen, described as a "charming popinjay", was seen as both a gentleman but also ever so slightly incompetent. But Schleicher saw him as a useful idiot (the various pundits disagree on this point) and believed he'd be able to exploit Papen in to doing his bidding for him.

Papen, too, was not without guile. Both Schleicher and Papen had turned a blind eye to stormtrooper violence because they'd needed the support of the Nazis and both preferred Nazis to Communists anyway. Papen and Schleicher both saw the Nazis as their ticket to power. When another General Election took place in July 1932 the Nazi Party's share of the vote rose from 18% to 37%. Hitler had promised to Make Germany Great Again. It was an empty, meaningless, slogan with no policies to back it up but Hitler realised an empty slogan, repeated often enough, could bear fruit.

Empty, meaningless, or even a blatant lie. It didn't matter. Votes were what mattered and the Nazis were now the largest party in the Reichstag. They were too big for Schleicher to control. He'd fed Frankenstein's monster and now that monster, Hitler, was demanding to be Chancellor.

Concerned by these demands, Schleicher and Papen persuaded Hindenburg (who was already horrified by the idea of the Austrian corporal as Chancellor) to suspend parliament and rule by presidential decree. All Chancellor Papen had to do to make sure this happened was to attract the attention of the new speaker at the Reichstag. Hermann Goring.

 

If Papen could attract Goring's attention he could dissolve the Reichstag and Hindenburg would be able to rule by presidential decree. But Goring pointedly looked in the other direction when Papen tried to get his attention and, instead, called a vote of no confidence in Papen's government. Papen lost the vote by a huge margin. Goring laughed. Bullies tend to when things are going their way.

Papen's attempts to cling to power came to nothing when Schleicher abandoned him like a pawn in a chess game before telling Hindenburg that Papen was an idiot and had to go. Hitler, Goring, and the Nazis had got rid of Papen but public enemy number one for them remained the troublesome Jewish lawyer Hans Litten.

Following the court case against the stormtroopers which showed Hitler up for the ranting lunatic he was, Litten received death threats (familiar to anyone following British politics at the moment) and was also viciously assaulted. Despite this, and no doubt prompting this, Litten had been having success in getting stormtroopers convincted and defeating fascists in the court.

Litten started to notice collaboration between Nazis and the police. In one instance a policeman had passed a gun to a stormtrooper in a bar so that he could murder a Communist. He came to realise that the German system was riddled with members of the Nazi party and crucial evidence started to disappear. Judges lied on behalf of the Nazi party and called those that are seeking to tell the truth the liars. The whole system was becoming Nazified.

Meanwhile, Schleicher continued to work solely for himself. He persuaded Hindenburg that the next Chancellor, Papen's replacement should be none other than Kurt von Schleicher. Four months after the last one, in November 1932, there was yet another General Election in Germany and this time, with the German economy starting to recover, the Nazi vote fell and it started to look like Hitler wouldn't be taking over from Schleicher as Chancellor after all.

Years of constant campaigning had left the Nazi Party virtually bankrupt so Schleicher invited some minor Nazi figures to join him and by the end of 1932 the Nazi Party were in crisis. January 1933 saw a now desperate Hitler make a secret visit to deposed former Chancellor Papen who wanted to use Hitler to get revenge over Schleicher and get himself back into power.

An arrangement was made that Schleicher must go and that when he does that Papen and Hitler's Nazis will form a coalition government. Something Hitler realised was necessary - but, obviously, only in the short term. Schleicher had no idea of the extent of ill feeling Papen had amassed towards him.

Papen suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler should be Chancellor and that he, Papen, should be Vice Chancellor. Papen's idea being that if the Nazis were given power they would be exposed and people would see them for what they were and lose interest in them.

Time has taught us just how risky a policy that was but time, and options, were things Hindenburg had run out of. So he agreed. Schleicher was deposed and Hitler was made Chancellor. He'd outmanouevred both Schleicher and Papen. Hans Litten began to see democracy crumble before his eyes and there was nothing he was able to do about it.

Litten was arrested and sent to Dachau where he'd die, aged just thirty-four. Schleicher retired and was murdered by the SS at the age of fifty-two. Apart from the bullet that killed him what must have gone through Schleicher's head as he finally realised just how murderous the regime he'd enabled were?

Once installed as Chancellor in Berlin, Hitler refused to get bogged down in boring details, he refused to read briefings, and he refused to listen to experts. To begin with he had one clear aim and he instructed his team to do whatever it takes to destroy democracy and make him dictator. It takes them a terrifyingly short six months in 1933 to do this.

At the start of 1933, parliament could block Hitler, a head of state could fire him, and the legal system would have been able to prosecute him if he broke the law. By the end of the year none of these checks on power would remain in place.

Hitler encouraged his subordinates to fight among themselves, believing that the survival of the fittest theory would bring the best of men to support him to his side. One such man was Hermann Goring, still President of the Reichstag. Unlike other Nazis, Goring was jovial, flamboyant and enjoyed a drink. But he was also callous, brutal, and, eventually, happy to sign the order for the final solution. Jovial - but cool with genocide.

In February '33 Hitler called (yet) another General Election in an attempt to win more seats in parliament and consolidate his power base. Goring, worried that the left would do to Germany what he believed the Bolsheviks had done to Russia, turned his attention towards taking on Communist leader Ernst Thalmann.

As Communists prepared for the election, Goring called them enemies of the people and arranged a raid on their HQ. When the raid failed to uncover any evidence of a plot for a Marxist coup, Goring realised if he wanted to stop them (and ultimately lock them up) he'd need to try a different route.

On 27th February 1933 the Reichstag caught fire and Goring and Hitler soon vowed to wipe out the Communist 'vermin' they conveniently held responsible for the conflagration. Goring teamed up with the stormtroopers, at that time under the command of the brutal and ruthless Ernst Rohm, to bring them down and in just one night four thousand Communists were arrested. During an election campaign it's worth remembering.

Hitler convinced Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree giving the Nazis emergency powers. Powers which enabled the Nazis to ban protest, ban free speech, and to arrest and imprison people without charge. The March 1933 General Election took place under a climate of fear and saw 43% of Germans vote for the Nazis.

Within just three weeks of this victory, Hitler suspended democracy (signed off, again, by Hindenburg) and laws were passed to restrict the freedom of movement for the Jewish population of Germany. A Jewish baker was found dead with a swastika carved into his chest and Hermann Goring received a promotion for his hard work. Goring was made Interior Minister of Prussia, Master of the German Forest, and given control of the Air Force as well as being presented with a pet lion.

 

In Munich another, soon to be infamous name, began to rise. Heinrich Himmler was jealous of Goring's proximity to Hitler and wanted to usurp Goring and become Hitler's number two. Himmler was head of the SS, a paramilitary band of loyalist fanatics who wore the famous uniform of blackshirts and jackboots. Himmler ruled the SS with such a firm hand that SS members had to seek his permission to marry.

He used 'protective police custody' to lock up opponents in their hundreds of thousands but he soon came across a logistical problem. Where do you put such a large amount of prisoners? His answer was, as we all know, chilling.

Himmler announced the opening of a camp for 're-education'. Communists, trade unionists, and Social Democrats would be sent to the camp in the small town of Dachau but they wouldn't all be re-educated. Over fourteen thousand people would eventually die there.

Deputy State Prosecutor Josef Hartinger had brought to his attention the case of four detainees shot dead while supposedly trying to escape the camp. Hartinger visited Dachau to investigate and soon became aware of the horror of the place. Hartinger saw dead bodies piled up like animal corpses and soon realised that the Nazis had been treating people as less than human.

Hartinger also observed that all four men shot dead were Jewish. He noticed that something was very very wrong and sought to bring murder charges against the Dachau SS. Which meant taking on the rising star of the Nazi party, Himmler, whose SS were beginning to take control elsewhere in Germany too.

When Himmler wasn't ordering executions he could be found bribing people with gifts and uniforms. He kissed women's hands while at the same time being responsible for the murder of thousands. He was patient, he was methodic, he was calculating, and he was a mass murderer.

Hartinger had noticed this when he found that the bullets in the bodies of the dead Jews could only have been fired at close range and were all in almost exactly the same spot in the back of the victim's heads. It had been a systematic killing of which the Nazis would eventually become only too well known for, and it was happening as early as 1933.

Further autopsies proved that men had been beaten to death in Dachau, and then had their corpses hanged to make it look like suicide. Hartinger amassed enough to evidence to prove that Dachau's Camp Commander, Hilmar Wackerle, was responsible for the deaths and Himmler began to fear that the truth, that Dachau was a death camp not a re-education camp, would come out.

But Karl Wintersberger, Hartinger's boss, refused to sign anything as he'd fallen under Himmler's spell. In desperation, Hartinger went above his boss and wrote to the judiciary. Hartinger's letter reached the governor of Bavaria but Wintersberger had tipped off Himmler who, threatened by Hartinger's work, started trying to gave the camps a stronger legal veneer.

Propaganda films were released showing inmates exercising in the yard and while these fooled much of the public, the SS were free to find new ways to murder. When Hartinger's file eventually reached Berln and the judiciary began to question the legality of what was happening in Dachau things changed - for a month.

Throughout July, the murders stopped. Hartinger believed that he, and more importantly justice, had won. He believed that Dachau would be closed down but Himmler had other ideas. Himmler offered Hitler a hand picked bodyguard from the SS. Hitler, by this time, paranoid about being bumped off was won over and gave Himmler a guarantee that no SS members would go to prison for anything that happened in Dachau.

To ensure this, Hitler had Hartinger's investigations blocked and the killing of Jews in Dachau recommenced. This time, nobody complained. It wasn't worth it. German law had proved to be completely meaningless under Nazi rule.

Newspapers, too, were banned from criticsing the government,women were encouraged to leave work and return to the home, and a Ministry of Propaganda opened up. While the Nazis were making life miserable for so many they were still infighting with each other too. Goring did not appreciate the rise of Himmler and, to win the heart of Hitler back, he started the Research Office of the Reich Air Ministry. The Research Bureau, to give it another name, employed phone tapping technology to snoop on people. Businesses were bribed using incriminating wire taps and others were killed or jailed for badmouthing Nazis in private telephone conversations.

Goring had an even bigger hit with the creation of the Gestapo. The official secret police force of Nazi Germany soon began using 'preventative arrest' on Jews, gays, intellectuals, and those suspected of being anti-fascist. Himmler wasn't best pleased with this as he felt it was his destiny to run not just the Gestapo but all German police.

But Hitler wasn't so bothered as long as the Nazis, and Adolf Hitler himself, were winning - which they undoubtedly were. By late 1933 only Hindenburg stood between Hitler and total power. Hitler turned on a charm offensive and won over the previously skeptical Hindenburg. Elsewhere, Hitler was finding it more difficult to appease the aristocracy and his huge base, which now included more than two million stormtroopers.

Hitler had promised a revolution and stormtrooper leader Ernst Rohm was impatient for that to happen. The stormtroopers were still routinely carrying out violent assaults but as Hitler had promised to bring order to Germany this was no longer a look he could wear. At the risk of upsetting the elite that he had worked so hard to win over, Hitler brought Rohm into cabinet as Minister-without-Portfolio.

But that was not enough to pacify Rohm whose desire was to command a Nazi army. Rohm went behind Hitler's back and tried to take personal control of the army at a time they were still officially reporting to Hindenburg. Rohm had personal grievances with Hitler, too. They'd been very close friends, when Geli Raubal died Hitler had chosen Rohm to be graveside with him, but now Hitler was stuck between Hindenburg (the President) and Rohm (his friend). Hitler told Rohm that the army, not the stormtroopers, were Germany's military force. Rohm took it badly, he issued thinly veiled threats to Hitler, called him ridiculous, and suggested he ought to take some leave.

Something had to give. Goring, unlike Hitler, was not friends with Rohm and so he decided the best course of action was to persuade Hitler of Rohm's disloyalty. He ordered the Research Bureau to go after Rohm and to do this Goring enlisted the help of his former political rival Himmler. Himmler agreed to help Goring as long as he got to take control of the Gestapo and Goring agreed to Himmler's request. Himmler wished to destroy the stormtroopers and make the SS Germany's only paramilitary force.

Rohm was openly gay at a time when it was illegal in Germany. He met with male prostitutes, drank in Berlin drag bars, and even campaigned for gay rights. Most people doing this in Germany would have been looking at a spell in prison or much worse but, because of his friendship with Hitler, Rohm had been secure.

Until they fell out. Hitler didn't really care that Rohm was gay but he did see Rohm's homosexuality as providing an opportunity to bring him down now that he'd turned against him. While Rohm made his own manouevres (publicly calling for a revolution in the middle of what surely was one anyway), Hitler, Himmler, and Goring played a longer game.

Vice Chancellor Papen had become uneasy with stormtroopers openly attacking diplomats and Germany's global reputation plummeting, Hindenburg had become very ill and was nearing death, and the right wing intellectual Edgar Jung (Papen's speechwriter) began plotting Hitler's downfall.

Jung had seen Nazism as a positive force, he'd been a supporter of authoritarianism, but the honeymoon, for him, was over and the scales had fallen from his eyes. Jung felt guilty for enabling Hitler and wanted to make amends so, with others, he formed a resistance cell which helped in getting people out of the prison and, if need be, out of the country.

Jung's initial plan to assassinate Hitler was abandoned as he felt it may have a negative affect on his own future political ambitions. Instead he set about trying to get Hitler removed from office. This he did by writing a speech for Papen that would speak the truth about Hitler's involvement with Rohm and the stormtroopers but the question was would Papen deliver it?

Concerned that Papen may not, Jung had copies of the speech distributed to the press in advance and only gave Papen the speech on the day he was due to make it, factoring that Papen had neither the backbone nor the intellect to replace it at such short notice. Papen, predictably, was shocked by the content but nevertheless he delivered it at the University of Marburg.

The speech announced that it was time to silence the fanatics, to make way for serious men, and that now was the time to make sure that Germany was not taken into the abyss. It went down a storm at the University of Marburg, though some stormtroopers walked out in digsust, and Papen, a vain man, proudly lapped up the applause.

The speech received plaudits elsewhere too and both Papen and Jung were elated with this masterstroke. The German public rallied for Papen whose next move had to be to try and topple Hitler. To do this he would need to meet with Hindenburg and gain his ear.

Instead, in a disastrous move, Papen went to meet with Hitler to discuss a Nazi ban on reproduction of the Marburg speech. Hitler, on the other hand, wasted no time in arranging a meeting with Hindenburg who warned the Nazi leader that if he didn't bring the stormtroopers under control Germany would be placed under martial law. The crisis Jung had created for Papen to exploit had instead been exploited by Hitler.

Jung began making plans to flee the country, he was in mortal danger, while Himmler fabricated evidence that Jung and a group of aristocrats were planning a coup aided by Rohm and Schleicher, nicely tying up all of Hitler's most potent enemies into one handy grouping. It's possible Jung was planning a coup but it was nothing on the scale that Himmler portrayed.

The Nazi Party were no longer content to take on their existing enemies. They had to create new enemies to further their own ends, to increase their own power. It's the populist way. Create an enemy and then attack them with all you've got. You can see Trump doing it right now.

Jung was arrested and Papen flew to Berlin to demand an audience with Hitler who refused. So Papen arranged to meet with the now gravely unwell Hindenburg while, elsewhere, Himmler prepared a list of stormtroopers to be executed. Hitler, meanwhile, was giving the impression of being loyal to Ernst Rohm who was laying low in a nice lakeside hotel in Bavaria.

Goring and Himmler needed Hitler's say so before they could commence the annihilation of their enemies and at a wedding they were all attending Himmler told Hitler about Papen's planned visit to Hindenburg and suggested they needed to act soon against the stormtroopers so that Hindenburg didn't transfer his support to Papen.

At 0630AM on the morning of 30th June 1934, Hitler personally arrested Rohm in his hotel room. Back in Berlin, surrounded by armed guards and locked in a palace, Himmler and Goring were poised for action and at 10AM that morning they received the code word KOLIBRI (HUMMINGBIRD) and immediately, across Germany, Nazi officials opened sealed envelopes which revealed lists of names of their soon to be victims.

The killing began. Schleicher and his wife were murdered in their home, several men in Papen's office were killed and Papen was placed under house arrest, and Jung, also, was executed. To this day, nobody knows where or how - but his family later received his ashes and an empty wallet. The Nazis had no compunction about stealing from corpses. This we know from history.

In total over one hundred people were murdered during the Night of the Long Knives but Rohm, surprisingly, was not one of them. Himmler and Goring needed to persuade Hitler that Rohm, also, must be executed. The camp commander of Dachau, where Rohm was now incarcerated, handed Rohm a pistol so he could kill himself but as he refused to somebody else did it for him.

Hitler, Himmler, and Goring had gone from killing their enemies to killing strangers to killing their own closest supporters. Hitler was so impressed with Goring's dedication to brutality that he named him as his successor, a position he would eventually hold for one day following Hitler's suicide.

The SS then set about assassinating Jews and homosexuals. Himmler had considered the Night of the Long Knives as a piece of necessary office housekeeping and Hitler was not concerned with any illegality as he'd long considered himself, like Boris Johnson does now, to be above the law. Hitler felt they'd done a decent job of work and Himmler was sure they'd done the right thing.

Soon the army, the public, the aristocracy, and Hindenburg were to fall in line behind Hitler. It was too dangerous to risk otherwise. Soon Hitler was to pass legislation ensuring that following Hindenburg's imminent death he would take full control of Germany. A possibly irrational, close to death, Hindenburg had acceded to this.

In total control, the behaviour of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis would make the Night of the Long Knives look like a children's tea party. Germany's demand for a strong leader would eventually lead to the deaths of over seventy million people all over the world and as the Rise of the Nazis painfully showed us it took just four years of infighting, bickering, politicking, and appeasement to reach this point.

The evil that was done in the name of fascism then can never be undone. It is our job to learn the lessons of history and make sure this is never allowed to happen again. We are, once again, at a critical point in human history. There are people in power who seek to dehumanise, to other, to break the law to enforce unjust policies, to lie, to blame, and to bring suffering down on others. It's easy to look back at Nazi Germany and wonder why nobody did enough to stop the violence and hatred. It's more difficult to come up with workable solutions on how we stop the rise of these would be dictators now. But if we don't it's very possible our children won't even live to watch documentaries about what went wrong.