On Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I'm jumping the gun by a few days. Maybe this belongs in American History too.

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days
He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.

By Timothy W. Ryback

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/rPu8BR5NRG488in85p-YaXVsRwc=/0x0:2500x1406/1952x1098/media/img/mt/2025/01/KWC54P/original.jpg


Adolf Hitler and his cabinet, January 30, 1933, the day he became Chancellor of Germany. (Everett Collection / Alamy)

{Source for photo: https://www.imago-images.de/fotos-bilder/kabinett-hitler}

January 8, 2025

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

Hans Frank served as Hitler’s private attorney and chief legal strategist in the early years of the Nazi movement. While later awaiting execution at Nuremberg for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, Frank 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. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler had renounced trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic by violent means but not his commitment to destroying the country’s democratic system, a determination he reiterated in a Legalitätseid—“legality oath”—before the Constitutional Court in September 1930. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.

{snip}

Joseph Goebbels, who was present that day [Thursday, March 23, 1933] as a National Socialist Reichstag delegate, would later marvel that the National Socialists had succeeded in dismantling a federated constitutional republic entirely through constitutional means. Seven years earlier, in 1926, after being elected to the Reichstag as one of the first 12 National Socialist delegates, Goebbels had been similarly struck: He was surprised to discover that he and these 11 other men (including Hermann Göring and Hans Frank), seated in a single row on the periphery of a plenary hall in their brown uniforms with swastika armbands, had—even as self-declared enemies of the Weimar Republic—been accorded free first-class train travel and subsidized meals, along with the capacity to disrupt, obstruct, and paralyze democratic structures and processes at will. “The big joke on democracy,” he observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”

[no_hypocrisy]

1. From George Seldes* :

Hitler and his nascent Nazis discovered that Paul Hindenburg had several unethical land holdings. They threatened to make this information public, which had the potential to topple him and his government, unless Hindenburg incorporated Hitler as Chancellor.

* George Seldes: Henry George Seldes (November 16, 1890 – July 2, 1995) was an American investigative journalist, foreign correspondent, editor, author, and media critic best known for the publication of the newsletter In Fact from 1940 to 1950. He was an investigative reporter of the kind known in early 20th century as a muckraker, using his journalism to fight injustice and justify reform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Seldes

[3Hotdogs]

2. Great photo. Bolton on the right. Billy Barr on the left.

I can't pick out RFK from the photo. Help, anyone?

[Midnight Writer]

3. "I'll drink to that!"-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth