On this day in 1933 the National Socialist German Workers Party (popularly known as "Nazis") won a surprising 44% of the vote in German parliamentary elections. Together with the Nationalists that gave it a slender majority in the Reichstag. The rest is history.
Ponder that the Nazis rode to power on the back of inflation & hyperinflation. Hitler's first attempt to seize power, the Putsch in Munich, was staged at the height of the hyperinflation in 1923. That wiped out the savings of most Germans. When the Depression threatened to put every German out of a job, they listened to Hitler's promises & voted for him. The lesson of those times instructs us still today. Economic distress often brings totalitarian politics. America is not immune.
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