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The Speed of Authoritarianism: Hitler 1933–34 and Trump 2025 [1]
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Date: 2025-09-18
Introduction: Fragile Democracies and Rapid Change
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does have a nasty habit of rhyming. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, few expected that within eighteen months the Weimar Republic would be dead and a total dictatorship firmly in place. Hitler didn’t seize power in a single coup; he exploited legal mechanisms, manufactured crises, and pushed every emergency to the extreme until there were no checks left on his authority.
Fast forward almost a century. In January 2025, Donald Trump returned to the presidency of the United States, promising “retribution” against enemies, radical reversals of his predecessor’s policies, and a sweeping agenda of national “restoration.” Nine months into that second term, his pace has been astonishing. He has invoked emergencies, reshaped federal agencies, issued sweeping executive orders, and demanded loyalty from institutions that are supposed to serve the Constitution, not the president personally.
The contexts are very different: the United States has stronger courts, federalism, civil society, and constitutional traditions than Germany in 1933. Yet there are enough parallels in the methods and speed of change to warrant careful attention. The comparison below doesn’t claim America in 2025 is Germany in 1933. But it does suggest that if we fail to see the signs of erosion, we risk learning the same lesson Germany did: democracies can collapse quickly, almost imperceptibly, until one day they are gone.
Hitler’s Path to Dictatorship, 1933–34
Hitler’s rise to absolute power is often remembered as inevitable, but it was anything but. When President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party lacked a majority in the Reichstag. Hitler was just another coalition politician, albeit one with a growing movement behind him. Yet within weeks, he had maneuvered into a position that allowed him to dismantle Germany’s democratic institutions.
The turning point was the Reichstag Fire on February 27, 1933. Blamed on communists, it gave Hitler the excuse to push through the Reichstag Fire Decree, suspending civil liberties and allowing mass arrests of political opponents. Less than a month later, the Enabling Act granted his cabinet the power to pass laws without parliamentary approval — essentially ending democracy by legal means.
From there, the dismantling accelerated. Trade unions were dissolved, political parties outlawed, and state governments brought under Nazi control in a process known as Gleichschaltung (“coordination”). By mid-1933, the Nazi Party was the only legal political party in Germany. In June 1934, Hitler consolidated his control over the military and conservative elites through the violent purge of the “Night of the Long Knives.” And when Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President, demanding an oath of personal loyalty from the army. The dictatorship was complete.
All of this happened in a year and a half.
Trump’s Second Term, 2025
Trump’s return to power in January 2025 was not greeted with the same disbelief that accompanied Hitler’s appointment in 1933, but it has nonetheless unleashed a torrent of rapid change. On his first day in office, Trump rescinded nearly all of Biden’s executive orders. He quickly signed Executive Order 14149, billed as a “free speech” measure, aimed at curbing federal agencies’ ability to regulate, fact-check, or moderate speech.
In February, he issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of non-citizens — immediately blocked in court, but a bold assertion of executive power against constitutional precedent. Around the same time, he signed another order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” invoking the language of existential crisis to frame immigration as a national emergency.
By March, Trump directed the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to investigate supposed “election fraud networks,” reprising themes from his “Stop the Steal” campaign. At the end of that month, he signed EO 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” ordering federal museums, agencies, and the Smithsonian to remove what his administration calls “ideological distortions” and reinstate statues or exhibits reflecting a more “patriotic” narrative.
In the spring, Trump openly called for boycotts of “woke companies” and threatened to strip federal contracts from firms with “anti-American” policies. By summer, he declared a Crime Emergency in Washington D.C., seizing control of the city’s police force and deploying National Guard units — a move many legal experts considered a dangerous precedent for federal overreach.
By mid-year, loyalists had been installed across agencies from the DOJ to the FCC, the NEA, and the Smithsonian. By late 2025, Trump’s DOJ was prosecuting political opponents, sparking accusations that the justice system was being used as a weapon. Even more ominously, reports surfaced that Trump was pressing for loyalty oaths from federal employees and exploring ways to restructure the National Guard and DHS to answer directly to him. At the same time, two prominent late-night hosts, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, were forced off the air under heavy political pressure from Trump allies — a striking echo of authoritarian efforts to silence dissenting voices in culture and media.
All of this has happened in less than a year.
Accelerated Timeline: Hitler vs. Trump
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