President Donald Trump initiated his second administration 49 days ago, on January 20, 2025. Before the first day ended, he signed a blitz of policy actions to reorient the United States government.

These executive orders covered a variety of issues, including trade, immigration, U.S. foreign aid, demographic diversity, civil rights and the hiring of federal workers. By the end of the first week, many Americans who attempted to follow the news found themselves stressed, confused, reeling, or some combination of the three.

It’s difficult to list all the executive actions which occurred since the 47th President’s inauguration, but Mr. Trump attempted so himself during last Tuesday evening’s address to a Congressional Joint Session.

As President Trump’s administration continues to enact policies from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, many citizens around the world continue to fear the worst. After the United States voted alongside Russia during a United Nations vote to condemn the War in Ukraine, President Trump and Vice President Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, further stoking fears of an authoritarian takeover in Washington.

According to the annual democracy report from the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) at the University of Gothenburg, 72 percent of the world’s population, 5.7 billion people, live under authoritarian rule.

“The level of democracy enjoyed by the average world citizen in 2022 is back to 1986 levels,” Staffan I. Lindberg, Director of the V-Dem Institute, stated following the release of the 2023 report.

In my ongoing efforts to study how authoritarianism is once again sweeping across the world, I decided to reflect on Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany, prior to World War II.

“A Man of Destiny”

Ninety-two years ago, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed as the 15th Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler immediately set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means.

In less than two months’ time - specifically one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and forty minutes - Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes.

Hans Frank, Hitler’s former private attorney and Chief Legal Strategist in the early years of the Nazi movement, once commented on his client’s uncanny capacity for sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness.

Hitler originally intended to overthrow the Weimar Republic through violent means, during the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. Following this failure, he renounced violent insurrection, but committed to destroying the country’s democratic system. He later reiterated this before the Constitutional Court in September 1930.

During his speech to the Court, he invoked Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people. Once he took power through legal means, he told the court, he intended to mold the government to fit his intentions.

By January 1933, the fallibilities of the Weimar Republic were as obvious as they were abundant. The 181-article constitution framed the structures and processes for its 18 federated states; after spending a decade in opposition politics, Hitler knew how to hasten his ambitious political agenda.

For years, he co-opted or crushed right-wing competitors and paralyzed legislative processes. In the lead-up to his electoral victory, he helped bring down three chancellors and twice forced the president to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections.

The Empowering Law

Once he became chancellor, Hitler quickly moved to ensure his opposition could not do to him what he had done to them. The National Socialist party rose quickly in Germany, following the 1929 market crash, and had increased its seats to 37 percent of the legislative body. Although the entire right-wing coalition controlled barely 51 percent of the Reichstag, Hitler believed he held the authority to exercise absolute executive power.

“37 percent represents 75 percent of 51 percent,” he argued to one American reporter. He meant that possessing the relative majority of a simple majority was enough to grant him absolute power. However, he knew the political calculus was not that simple, and believed he needed an “empowering law” to ensure his political survival.

Passing such a law would dismantle Germany’s separation of powers, grant Hitler’s executive branch the authority to make laws without parliamentary approval, and allow Hitler to rule by decree, bypassing democratic institutions and his own constitution. In order to do so, however, required two-thirds majority in the Reichstag.

During his first day in office, Hitler swore an oath to uphold the constitution and boasted during a meeting with his nine ministers that millions of Germans had welcomed his chancellorship with “jubilation.” He then outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling those positions with loyalists.

During the meeting with his ministers, he also brought up the empowering law. The law, he argued, would give him the time and authority necessary to make good on his campaign promises to revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were “poisoning” the blood of the nation, and exact revenge on political opponents. “Heads will roll in the sand,” Hitler vowed, at one of his political rallies.

Since the Social Democrats and Communists collectively held roughly 38 percent of the 584-seat Reichstag, the two-thirds vote seemed like a mathematical impossibility. “Now, if we were to ban the Communist Party and annul their votes,” Hitler proposed, “it would be possible to reach a Reichstag majority.”

However, Hitler feared the repercussions, including a potential strike from the six million German Communists and its impacts on the country’s economy. Alternatively, he considered calling for new elections to rebalance the percentages in his favor.

Economic Minister Alfred Hugenberg disagreed, arguing there was no way of getting around banning the Communist Party. When Hitler discussed the idea of using the military to crush public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea.

Hitler campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentary swamp,” only to find himself shackled by partisan politics and constitutional guardrails. In the end, he decided to ignore them and double down, calling for new Reichstag elections in early March.

“After a thirteen-year struggle, the National Socialist movement has succeeded in breaking through into the government, but the struggle to win the German nation is only beginning,” Hitler proclaimed. “The National Socialist party knowns that the new government is not a National Socialist government, even though it is conscious that it bears the name of its leader, Adolf Hitler.” He had declared war on his own government.

March Elections

Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of the country’s first democratic republic came almost as much as a surprise to Hitler as it did to the rest of the country. After three years of political ascent, he lost handily in the November 1932 elections, shedding many Reichstag seats to German Nationalists. In December 1932, Hitler’s movement was financially, politically, and ideologically bankrupt. He told several close associates he contemplated suicide.

Following a series of backroom deals and the shocking dismissal of Chancellor Schleicher in late January 1933, Hitler ascended to the chancellery. According to Schleicher, Hitler told him that “it was astonishing in his life that he was always rescued just when he himself had given up all hope.”

During his early days in power, Hitler filled his cabinet with two loyalists, Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Goring, as minister of the interior and minister without portfolio, respectively. Frick opening told the press about the enabling law and their goals to dissolve the Reich government. He also worked to suppress opposition press and centralize power in Berlin.

One day in early February, Goring told Rudolf Diels, the head of Prussia’s political police, to clear house. A shooting decree followed. This permitted state police to shoot on sight without fearing consequences. “I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job,” Goring explained.

Goring also designed the Nazi storm troopers as deputy police, compelling the state to provide the brownshirt thugs with sidearms and empowered them with police authorities.

On the evening of February 27, 1933, shortly before 9 p.m., the Reichstag erupted in flames. Sheafs of fire collapsed the glass dome of the plenary hall and illuminated the night sky over Berlin. Images of the fire sent a shock throughout the country. Communists blamed the National Socialists, while National Socialists blamed the Communists.

Hitler convened his cabinet the next morning and declared the fire a Communist coup attempt. Goring detailed Communist plans for further arson attacks on public buildings, along with the poisoning of public kitchens and the kidnapping of the children and wives of prominent officials. Frick presented a draft decree suspending civil liberties, permitting search and seizures, and curbing states’ rights during a national emergency. Paul von Hindenburg, the President of Germany since 1925, signed the decree into law that afternoon.

The emergency decree took effect only a week before the March elections. Hitler used this tremendous power to intimidate and imprison his political opposition. He banned the Communist Party, arrested members of the opposition press, and shut down newspapers. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene, as he rounded up thousands of Communists and Social Democrats.

On Sunday, March 5, German voters went to the polls. According to Frederick Birchall of The New York Times, Germans willingly submitted to authoritarian rule, although they possess the opportunity for a democratic alternative. “In any American or Anglo-Saxon community, the response would be immediate and overwhelming,” he wrote.

Nearly 89 percent of registered voters turned out for the vote, the most since the German Reichstag was founded in 1871. Most of the new votes went to the Nazis. Although the National Socialists fell short of Hitler’s promised 51 percent, the banning of the Communist Party positioned Hitler to form a coalition with the two-thirds Reichstag majority necessary to pass the empowering law.

The History We All Know

The day following the elections, the National Socialists stormed state-government offices across the country. People adorned public buildings with swastika banners. Opposition politicians fled for their lives.

Hindenburg remained silent. He did not call Hitler in to account for the violent public persecutions of Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews. He did not exercise his Article 53 powers. Instead, he signed a decree allowing the National Socialists’ swastika banner to be flown beside the national colors.

The President of Germany also acceded to Hitler’s request to create a new cabinet position, minister of public enlightenment and propaganda. Hitler quickly filled this role with Joseph Goebbels.

After Hitler and the Nazi party seized power through political and social persecutions, it asserted totalitarian rule. Its subsequent acts of aggression led to the Holocaust and the Second World War.

Goebbels later marveled at the National Socialists’ success in dismantling a federated constitutional republic through entirely constitutional means. “The big joke on democracy,” he observed, after being elected as one of the first 12 National Socialist delegates in 1926,” is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its destruction.”

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