How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days - Timothy W. Ryback (The Atlantic)

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.

By Timothy W. Ryback

The Atlantic, January 17, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/timothy-w-ryback/

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.

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Timothy W. Ryback is a historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He is the author of several books on Hitler’s Germany, most recently Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.

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Foi mais ou menos o que Chávez fez, a partir de 2003, em um espaço de tempo mais delongado que o de Hitler. Mas os métodos foram relativamente similares: Chávez também conseguiu uma Lei Habilitante para começar a mudar por dentro o regime constitucional em vigor.

No caso de Hitler, ele nunca abrogou a Constituição de Weimar: ela permaneceu em vigor até depois de sua morte e do fim do Reich Alemão, formalmente uma república.

(PRA)