Hitler spent time cultivating the foreign press, including American journalists like Frederick Burchall of the New York Times, who underestimated Hitler's rise to power and normalized him in the eyes of readers. Burchall's coverage included dismissing Hitler and inaccurately predicting the decline of the Nazi party. This highlights the role of the press in shaping perceptions of Hitler's ascent to dictatorship and underscores that his rise was not inevitable, but influenced by various factors.
There are a lot of Trump/Hitler comparisons being thrown around these days. So we went to the source, as chronicled by historian Timothy Ryback in his new book Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power. Ryback zooms in on the final six months before Adolf Hitler dissolved the government of the Weimar Republic, revealing that Nazi Germany was not inevitable. Kara and Ryback discuss the Berlin power players that misjudged Hitler’s bankrupt party, and the (not just rhetorical) similarities between the ascendance of Hitler and Donald Trump.
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