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The 45 Steps to Hitler's Germany [1]

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Date: 2025-05-17

It became high treason “punishable by death” to call for a general strike.

These steps are derived from The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. It was instructive to look at every step taken by Hitler and the Nazis in seizing power to discern vulnerabilities on both sides of a struggle to overtake a democracy.

Quick takeaways:

The Nazis feared a general strike the most,

Nazi response to unfavorable court orders was violence,

Hitler needed the money of big business,

Social Democratic response to Nazi violence was very weak: a stoppage of public meetings,

Non-Nazi publications were attacked by Nazi supporters, not people in authority. Nothing happened to them,

Nazi power depended on local police helping them with enforcement,

They started with suppressing Communists, and then the suppression moved to other groups.

Share The Tell with Christine Axsmith

How It Informs Us

The list below gives us the Trumpian pain points and also the next steps in their plan.

They need local law enforcement to help them.

That issue needs immediate focus. The Police Chief of Newark, New Jersey needs to be fired RIGHT NOW because his officers helped ICE and not the people of his city that he is sworn to protect. Mayors and Attorneys General need to make clear that law enforcement does NOT work for ICE. Like Dana Nessel, the Attorney General for Michigan, who oversaw Michigan State Police targeting students while playacting as an anti-Trump leader. She needs to pay a political price for that.

Michigan State Police targeting students under direction of MI Attorney General Dana Nessel for supporting the Palestinians.

Status Coup obtained Exclusive footage of the Michigan State Police raiding a student in Michigan under the direction of MI AG Dana Nessel. This was one of several raids against students whose only crime seems to be associations with the Pro Palestine movement. Jordan Chariton and Ashley Bishop are joined by Independent Journalist Wali Khan to discuss this serious breach of Free Speech.

More than that, violence is critical part of Trump’s plan, and doubtless why the leader of the Proud Boys was invited to meet with Trump recently . When too many court orders pile up telling this administration to backtrack, expect violence. Little pieces of paper are not going to stop them. I am looking at you, Meidas Touch .

violence is critical part of Trump’s plan, and doubtless why the leader of the Proud Boys was invited to meet with Trump recently Meidas Touch They need Wall Street support.

It’s like Trump’s self esteem is tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Whatever the reason, even if it is only the simplicity of looking at one number, Trump is very reactive to it.

They need to win the next elections

If not, all those little laws will be reversed, with matching Congressional hearings.

Trump doesn’t have the numbers

There are no people marching in the street with torches, let alone thousands of them. Shortly, these ICE hooligans will be doxxed and they will be getting consequences of social rejection and public shame. We’ve already seen mass protests scaring the powerful in 2020. No one thought those statues would ever come down. But they did. And we remember.

The Tell with Christine Axsmith causes all kinds of trouble and invites you to join us. Subscribe!

The 45 Steps to Hitler's Germany

The bolded items are what has already happened in the U.S. by mid-2025.

Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor, with a celebratory torch-parade by the Brownshirts, Steel Helmets and SS men through the streets of Berlin. Nationalists were elated. Goering compared the mood to the excitement on the eve of WWI, not seeing the irony, it seems. January 30th, 1933. Germany began preparing for war immediately. p.311 More torchlit parades in other towns, another one in Berlin stopped in front of their stock exchange to yell anti-Semitic slogans at stockbrokers. “The blood of the Jews will squirt from our knives!” January 31st. Communist newspaper banned and a shootout between Nazis and Communists. January 31st. Communists held public protests against the Nazi government. Police arrested 80 protesters and 71 were convicted of treason. Nazis controlled the Reich and the Prussian Ministries of the Interior which gave Hitler “extensive power over law and order.” The Minister of Defense banned military officers from joining the Nazi Party. Hitler promised the military to “restore conscription, destroy Marxism and fight the Treaty of Versailles” and the invasion of Eastern Europe in exchange for staying out of Germany’s “internal struggles.” February 3rd. p. 316-317 Secretary of Defense joined political Reich Defense Council, which disrupted the chain of command and made the military report directly to Hitler. April 4th. Put a lid on the Army’s ability to resist Hitler. p.317 Storm troopers began “attacking trade union and Communist offices and the homes of prominent left-wingers.” Decree that someone could be arrested and held without charge for three months “for those engaged in armed breaches of the peace or acts of treason”. p. 318 which was not applied to Nazi Storm troopers. Prussian police are ordered not to surveil Nazis anymore and to support them instead. February 15 Social Democrats met to discuss a general strike, but “the national leadership dithered.” p.149 January 31st. A Social Democrat politician is released from police custody following a 15,000 person rally. February 19th. “But no general policy of resistance emerged from the center.” p.319 (note: a few prisoner releases don’t mean victory) Certain issue of Social Democratic newspapers were banned. February, 1933 Social Democrats went to court and won there, but then gangs of Brownshirts began to go to their meetings and beat people up. Social Democrats reduced the number of meetings as all police protection was now gone by order of the Interior Ministry. Young Nazi shot the Social Democrat Mayor of Strassfurt dead. February,1933. Labor unions were demoralized, accelerated by the weak resistance of the Social Democrats. Police were no longer “trying to hold the ring between paramilitaries of the right and the left.” p. 320. “An armed uprising by the labor movement would have been suicidal.” “Social Democrats and the Communists were still not prepared to work together. in a last-ditch defense of democracy.” p.320. At any rate, their numbers were not bigger than the other side’s. (note: like Democrats and the left aren’t working together. Rather, the Democrats are working with mainstream Republicans) Social Democrats “stuck to a rigidly legalistic approach” to their resistance to Hitler and the Nazis “and avoided anything that might provoke the Nazis into even more violent action against them.” p.321 Nazi aggressiveness extended beyond the left “to threaten other supporters … of Weinmar democracy.” Hitler’s rhetoric “encouraged” the storm troopers to “take the law into their own hands.” Early 1933. Twenty “Center newspapers were banned for criticizing the new government” p. 322 “Public meetings were forbidden” in a number of places. “A wave of dismissals or suspensions of civil servants” who were Central Party members and there were violent attacks on political leaders who spoke out against the firings. Election results would not force Hitler from office, he said in February, 1933. German industry gave Hitler lots of money to support his election campaign. The Red Front Fighters League did not want to “respond in kind to the massive wave of violence” due to “over-confidence” that the Nazi government “would soon collapse.” p.326 “Massive police raid” on Communist Party Headquarters, February 23, 1933. Nazis plan a fake assassination attempt on Hitler “to justify a bloodbath.” Reichstag Fire Almost immediately, “lists of Communists prepared some months or years previously” p.331 were used to arrest 4,000 Communists. Law passed severely restricting civil liberties “in the interests of preventing the Communists from launching a general strike.” p.332. It became high treason “punishable by death” to call for a general strike. “Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly and association” were suspended. Court orders were not required to detain people anymore. Hitler said that fighting Communists “must not be made dependent on judicial considerations.” p.332 Big propaganda push about “imminent ‘German Bolshevik Revolution.” p.333 (note: I liken this rhetoric to the immigrant invasion language used by Trump), Nazi Brownshirts and German police violently attacked Communists. February 28, 1933. Communist Party leader arrested. March 3, 1933. “Communist Party organizations were smashed.” p.335 Share The Tell with Christine Axsmith “Brownshirt squads stole cars and pick-up trucks from Jews, Social Democrats and trade unions, or were presented with them by nervous businessmen hoping for protection.” p.337 “Civil servants, police, prison administrators and legal officials” were convinced to “actively help” storm troopers “in their work of destruction.” p.337 “Big business and the state” joined to support the Nazis in the election of March 5, 1933. “Elections were held in an atmosphere of palpable terror”. p.339. “Nazis set up radio loudspeakers” and Nazi banners hung everywhere. “The local storm troopers were authorized to carry loaded firearms on February 28th and enrolled as auxiliary police on March 1.” p.339 No opposition propaganda visible.

TYRANNY!!!

“The same combination of terror, repression and propaganda we mobilized in every other community, large and small, across the land.”

The Nazis still did not win a majority of the votes in that last election.

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