Speaker 2
We know the rest. So you write at the end of this book, it's been said that the Weimar Republic died twice. It was murdered and it committed suicide. There's little mystery to the murder. Hitler vowed to destroy democracy through democratic process, and he did. An act of state suicide is more complicated, especially when it involves a democratic republic with a full complement of constitutional protections. The murderer would be Hitler. Who, if you had to pick one, was the one who committed suicide? Or was it a process of having a multi-party system that nobody ever could act? So we understand the murderer, correct? Or maybe we don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1
yeah, yeah. No, there's no question about that. The perpetrator there is very clear. Hans Frank, before he was executed at Nuremberg, said something very interesting. He said, we Nazis came to power in 33 at the only moment when that was possible. Had we tried to do that 10 years earlier, the German people would have simply retreated back into the monarchy. Had we tried to do this a decade later, there would have been an entire generation imbued with democratic values. But he said, we came at this perfect moment where it was too late for the German people to escape back to the monarchy or save themselves into future with a strong democracy. So I think part of it was it was a fresh democracy, a new democracy. But, you know, I think the drivers to that, one, were a lot of politicians wanting to put their political interests ahead of the nation. But more importantly, and this is where I'll bring Hugenberg in, I think the divisive media played an incredible role in dividing the public, Hugenberg with this catastrophe and politics strategy, in hollowing out the center, forcing these wedge issues in there. And I think the public became polarized. And ultimately, it was a democracy. Hitler never received more than 37% of the vote in an open election. But I think I would blame the political leadership for playing games and basically Hitler outplaying them at their game, but also the, I think, the role of the media in fracturing the center. We'll be
Speaker 3
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