Paul von Hindenburg

The Nazi party has won a bunch of seats in the Reichstag, but they don't have a majority.

President Hindenburg, the octogenarian President Hindenburg has appointed Hitler chancellor.

And in 53 days, he will effectively dismantle a 14-year-old parliamentary democracy and many institutions of civil society.

However, there is an election coming up that you talk about in the book in March.

He would be out by the summer.

He would be out by December.

Hindenburg, the president who appointed him, said, this guy's going to burn himself out in six weeks.

What the election was supposed to do was be a referendum on Hitler's government.

The Hindenburg annoyed Hitler and the Nazis.

For one thing, it was named for Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany before Hitler took over.

Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels tried to make them name it the Hitler, but they refused, thankfully.

And second, the Hindenburg was fancy new technology that the Nazis wanted to use both militarily and as propaganda.

By all accounts, McConnell was obsessed with the power of politics from a young age.

As a quiet, introverted kid, McConnell was infatuated with the student council president, who, to quote his memoir, "Had the envy of everyone." Yeah, Mitch, you know how everyone loves the class president? Yeah, Mitch.

From that point on, McConnell was driven by winning over anything else.

His ideology bent with the political winds of the times, as long as they led him into a favorable position.

RIP, probably.

But lucky for this medium glass of room temperature water, Mitch didn't need any of that, um, personality.

In fact, his lack of personality made him the perfect heel for a certain president who had an abundance of personality.

Barry O., Mr. Tan Suit himself.

Not only did Hitler deceive Neville Chamberlain at Munich, Hitler deceived other German politicians.

He deceived Hindenburg.

He deceived German generals.

He deceived German business leaders.

"The Führer was a man who was possible in Germany only at that very moment.

He came at exactly this terrible transitory period when the monarchy had gone and the republic had not yet, uh, was not yet secure." Close quote.

According to historian Timothy Ryback, who builds on Frank's acute awareness of the contingent nature of Hitler's takeover, "Had Hitler's predecessor in the chancellory, Kurt von Schleicher, remained in office another six months, or had German President Paul von Hindenburg exercised his constitutional powers more judiciously, or had a faction of moderate conservative Reichstag delegates cast their votes differently, then history may well have taken a very different turn.

Both Hitler's ascendancy to chancellor and his smashing of the constitutional guardrails once he got there, I have come to realize, are stories of political contingency rather than historical inevitability." Close quote from him.

I think National Socialism ossified into what it truly was.

When Hindenburg told Hitler that Ernst Romm and all of his fellows in Strasser had to die, and then Hitler gave the order, and then Himmler and Sepp Dietrich... and the rest of them not just carried it out, but they also murdered guys like Kurt Von Schleicher.

I mean, that was, that's kind of like what turned national socialism into like a, a pretty conventional right wing tendency, honestly.

Like I, uh, not, not in the sense of, you know, not, not, not, not right wing in terms of like Donald Trump or not even right wing in terms of like Robert Taft, but by European standards, um, the third right was more conventionally right wing than people will acknowledge.

That wasn't, that wasn't just like so much talk.

And a lot of them were frankly psychopaths, but they, they, um, that, that, that, that came to an end in June, 1934.

And if, if, If you're killing people because a man like Hindenburg is telling you that, like, you know, these men are a red revolutionary rabble who have to be stopped, like, you're a lot of things, but you're not left-wing, okay, when you're executing that order.

So, I mean, that's my opinion.

It wasn't the fact that institutions were weak and had only The German constitution had safeguards like the old German constitution, the Weimar constitution, safeguards like a 5% clause or a weakening of the power of the presidency.

If Hindenburg hadn't been able to appoint Hitler the way he did, I don't think it would have made a difference.

This didn't happen because of some technical deficiency, because of an underlying failure of a central system.

I see that in place too, again.