Could you point to some reading that would help one become educated on this past history?
Could you point to some reading that would help one become educated on this past history?
> At that point the ultrawealthy will seek to form an alliance with the growing popularity of the far right and seek to annihilate the left.
This is the third stage of Paxton’s five stages, the first three being:
> 1. Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
> 2. Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
> 3. Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite fascists to share power
You might want to look into the Weimar Republic (the period of the region what is approx known as Germany between WWI and WWII). I'd start with Wikipedia. Babylon Berlin is a (fiction) series about that period. I guess you meant a historic book reading though.
Because that's some regularly overlooked context to the rise of Hitler, with his brand of fascism focused on anti-Bolshevik/communist sentiments which neatly played into racial theories [1] and stereotypes [2] that were rather common back then.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic
That said, I'd caution against putting too much emphasis on the possible parallels, even as there's a lot to learn by looking at them. That initial bargain--or rather, series of bargains--was made under very unique circumstances that aren't really present today. Industrialists saw the threat of the Great Depression (both in terms of the destruction of their wealth through purely economic means as well as the political consequences of the depression) and the possible rise of a communist German state as existential threats to themselves and their society. Richard J. Evans' The Coming of The Third Reich touches on the sheer terror over the possibility of a communist revolution a bit and how it influenced Weimar politics, given the example of the Russian Revolution of 1917: it meant not only confiscation of property, but also torture and death on a massive scale. The failed revolution in Hungary, and the White Terror that followed it, also made it explicitly clear that even failed revolutions would have immense levels of political violence. Labor unions and political parties associated with them were easy to associate with this; it helps that they weren't exactly predisposed towards them in the first place for a variety of social and financial reasons. The Nazis capitalized on (and pushed) the fear of communist revolution, both with the public and traditional conservative interests. There was also a sort of normalization of the presence of paramilitary activities and violence in Weimar and their use by political parties; if one was so inclined, it was apparently possible at the time to rationalize the Nazis as just another populist movement that wouldn't translate into lasting political power, and could even be co-opted. You also had a lot of nostalgia for the Bismarckian past and a very unhealthy democracy in the Weimar Republic; as such there wasn't much interest in defending democracy, such as it was, by the end. It seems as if everyone figured it could be replaced with something "better" in their eyes.
As for the industrialists and the rise of the Nazi Party, I'd suggest Diarmuid Jeffreys's Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine. It's not focused solely on the role of the firm in the Nazi's rise to power, but it covers it as part of a broader look at the company's history and what it eventually led to. Adam Tooze's excellent The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is somewhat related, with regards to the relationship between the Nazi Party and rearmament efforts and the Nazi process of Gleichschaltung, or coordination, through which the Nazis established control of "social, political, and cultural organizations...according to Nazi ideology and policy."[0] There are a few other books that might be of interest, but I can't think of them at the moment
I can't speak for its accuracy, but as a sidenote I found it fascinating and somewhat painful to read how the writer deals with homosexuality (quite negative). I suppose in its time this was a common enough sentiment, but it was still rather jarring.