Will 2024 be the new 1933?

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. To his supporters, it was a day of “national revolution” and rebirth. Germany, they believed, needed the restorative force of an authoritarian strongman after 14 years of the liberal-democratic Weimar “system.” That night, Hitler’s torch-bearing brownshirts marched through central Berlin to mark the dawn of a new era.

It was also a triumphant moment in the history of popular deception. Since the Weimar Republic’s early days, its politics had been defined by disinformation campaigns, including the lie that Weimar democracy was the work of a cabal of Jews and socialists who had “stabbed Germany in the back” to ensure its defeat in World War I.

Today, few people dispute that Hitler’s arrival was a turning point in world history, the start of a political process that would lead to World War II and the Holocaust. But Hitler did not “seize power,” as the Nazis later claimed. Instead, as his biographer Ian Kershaw has explained, he was “levered into power” by a small group of influential men.

One of those men was Franz von Papen, who served as chancellor in 1932. He (infamously) thought that Hitler and the Nazi Party – by far the largest party after the Reichstag elections of 1932 – could be used to advance a conservative agenda. Similarly, Germany’s president, former Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, wanted to use Hitler to restore the monarchy.

But these conservatives’ plans were soon swept away by Hitler’s ruthless leadership, Nazi violence, and the German public’s rush to join the regime and become a part of the promised national reawakening. The liberals and social democrats who opposed Hitler were either subjected to violence or caught up in their own optimistic escapism. As bad as things got, they assured themselves, Hitler’s rule would eventually collapse. Nazi infighting would surely bring an end to the new government.

Beyond liberals and socialists, a wider section of German society assumed that Hindenburg, who had promised to be president of all Germans, would keep Hitler on a leash, while others expected the army to do so. All had been fooled by Hitler’s ability to look respectable in the final years of the Weimar Republic.

Within 100 days of Hitler becoming chancellor, as historian Peter Fritzsche has shown, the Nazis’ ruthless drive for power became all too clear. By the end of the summer of 1933, German society had been brought into line. There were no more independent political parties, trade unions, or cultural organizations. Only Christian churches retained some degree of independence.

A year later, in the summer of 1934, Hitler ordered the murder of his internal party rivals and, following Hindenburg’s death on August 2, declared himself German Führer. His dictatorship was complete. By then, the first concentration camps were already up and running, and the economy was being put on the path to war.

This period of history remains all too relevant today. Hundreds of millions of people will vote in pivotal elections this year, and even though the warning signs are there, few commentators are prepared to say it out loud: 2024 might be the new 1933.

Just imagine the world a year from now, with disinformation having taken down democratic majorities around the world. President Donald Trump ends the United States’ support for Ukraine. Nato is no longer a restraint on Vladimir Putin’s dreams of building a new Russian Empire across Eastern Europe. A critical mass of far-right parties in the European Parliament blocks a unified European response. Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are on their own. With the war in Gaza having expanded into a regional conflict, Putin seizes the opportunity to launch another blitz, accompanied by long-range missiles. And amid the chaos, China decides to seize Taiwan.

Mark Jones, Assistant Professor of History at University College Dublin, is the author of 1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of Hitler’s Coup (Basic Books, 2023).