Absolutely essential reading. I compared Trump's use of the National Guard to Hitler's SA just last night in my column, "It's getting very, very serious." We are on the same page of the same book, as it turns out. Good one.
Yes, I also posted last night, although not on this platform: "The National Guard is a more serious matter than its "Weekend Warriors" nickname suggests. National Guard units and members, played key roles in the Iran War Abu Ghraib torture/prisoner abuse scandal. CBS News' 2004 broadcasts of US torture photos caused shock, outrage and widespread condemnation in the US and world wide. Nineteen Guard troops, including Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were tried, convicted and served time. No one can foresee their 2025 descendants will be better trained and controlled or held accountable for crimes which stain US honor." Nor should we forget the May, 1970 National National Guard killings of four unarmed students at Kent State and police shootings of 14 students at Jackson State colleges, just for protesting.
Thanks for this, Richard. I'd forgotten, or maybe did not ever realize, that Graner and England were National Guard. It's only a matter of time before we get another Kent State, and it's a minor miracle it hasn't already happened, given Trump's bloodlust.
All 19 convicted were National Guard from a NG military police unit. My guess is that most National Guard incidents in the past resulted from insufficient weekend training. But under maga the problems will be more what they're trained to do and how they're trained to react.
Excellent article Greg. I wish the MAGAs could read or hear it, but they wouldn't stand for it. Facts be damned. They'd rather wallow in their victimhood and ignorance.
MAGA don't believe it. They think he's the cat's pajamas, that the economy is booming, that only criminals are being ICE'd, etc. They occupy a different reality.
Interestingly, my first understanding of how Hitler installed fascism in Germany in the 1930s first came in Len Deighton's book WINTER, part of the ten-book masterpiece, GAME, SET AND MATCH. Wow. Extraordinary writing.
For many years, I had puzzled HOW educated, intelligent people could allow such a thing to happen. The three trilogies, modern spy stories predicting the fall of the Berlin wall, were punctuated by WINTER, and showed the Winter family life from the 1920s to 40s, typical of a modern educated German family. A tragedy now matched by our acceptance of the Trump Mobster Regime and ICE-Gestapo.
Also the superb BBC tv series Game, Set and Match (first trilogy), was hated by Deighton (now 96 years old) and only shown ONCE and then archived forever! I was lucky enough to obtain a VHS copy of that series with Ian Holm truly wonderful as the spy, Bernard Samson. 10/10. https://imdb.com/title/tt0092360/reference/
I happened to meet the late Mr Holm in the lobby of the BBC one day as I waited to appear on Tomorrow's World science series, and he was quite chuffed at my praise of the show and especially his extraordinary performance.
So Powerful, so important... thanks Greg, as always. Copied from part one comments below... part two is also now printed for my friend. I'll let you know what he says about it. If you happen to be in Louisville, come to lunch with us Thursday to discuss... Cheers!
Greg,
This memoir really is amazing. I am meeting for lunch on Thursday with an old man who has become a friend in recent years. He was born in 1932 – making him around the same age during WWII as Hafner was when his early memories of the war hit, when he was taken forever from his beloved woods and hurled into the thrill of the war fever for the first time as a kid. My friend Dean has vivid memories of WW2, and we’ve discussed in prior lunches of ours how everyone got quiet when he talked about Hitler in the lunch halls and and asked questions in the faculty rooms where he was a math professor in the years after the war. The topic was too painful, almost taboo then it seems, at least it was around his Midwestern university in the 50s and 60s.
I am taking him a copy of the memoir and a printed copy of your Substack article here.
Thanks for the suggestion. The memoir is amazing, honest, terrifying – beautifully written. Everyone seriously should read it.
* PS / Note: Any friends here who are also on Bluesky please note they shut me down on Bsky for potentially being hacked, but who knows when or if they'll ever restore me? For the moment I am on twitter and can be found there, as I cannot bear to start over again.
Trust me Greg, I’ve known who Trump was for decades. A lying, manipulative, self entitled, selfish, amoral predator; with dictator like aspirations. A man who likely at his core, if there ever was any inclination towards a moral imperative, lost it in the first decade of his life. And this time he has surrounded himself with an administration who are driven by the same lack of moral compass, greed, jealousy and a thirst for deliberate, institutionalized cruelty. My hope is that they cannibalize one another.
Often, I believe they will be consumed by the paranoid insatiable thirst of the race to the pointy end of their pyramid scheme du jour. The competitiveness of winning by any means as the race thins out eating themselves is more likely than not. Imho.
I put a thread together on Twitter, I might just refine it with the swearing toned down and write something here as first post. Will share the thread with you.
Byline covered it too.
Btw I wrote a big introduction yesterday inspired by this post but honestly I chickened out
I have no idea if I was being offensive when describing your ability to forge a story plucked from the vaults of your mind pallace, something of tangible tonic at the moment we collectively need one.. that sounds better than my attempt to raise smiles. “I'm an acquired taste” and not a great writer.
I suppose you’re correct & it supports the old cliche, “birds of a feather” & all that.. Indeed shared criminality does become part of those ties.. perhaps part of the underlying premise being strength in numbers, repetitive discord & chaos, designed to unnerve us all. But I’d like to think we have the numbers as well, respect to Americans that reject his type of “ maga politics” & cruel & callous policies. Americans must speak up, say no & clearly reject this administration; or America as we hope to know of it one day (as it’s better self,) is lost to us.
I have been thinking about this moment in history all morning after reading Lucien Truscott's latest piece. Im trying to see what comes of this from the opposition. What occurs to me is that this movement against trump is widespread and leaderless in the old (before now) sense of the word. Leaders don't stand in front of the crowds and tell them how to do this. No one is taking the helm. But people are rising up, and holding people up, and moving people forward and amplifying their voices as required by events. Newsom, Pritzker, Mamdani. They are rising up through the noise and rukus and emotions and saying what we need to hear. They give us courage and we give them voice. It is like a mosh pit. A revolutionary mosh pit. Other's voices will break through, and again, and again, and again. We will do this. We are all going to do this. Together. It has already begun, and gives me much hope.
These voices include poets, painters, musicians, film makers, etc. they aren’t going to stop. They/we won’t be stopped. No matter how ugly this gets. Like you said, this isn’t Germany in WWII.
Speaking of, if you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend watching the movie Berlin Alone. Not for no reason it’s streaming now.
Thanks, Suzanne. I agree...people seem to be waiting to be told what to do to resist, and that's not how this works. I don't think people will ever bend the knee to this asshole and his asshole cabal. Not really. But I've been wrong about him a lot about how the people will respond to him...
I'm sure it won't shock you to find out that there are STILL people out there who subscribe to the große Lüge—the Big Lie. I ran into one last week, who insisted that Trump was doing FOR our country what Joe Biden never could; that he was actually making America great again, and that he had so much work to do now because his 2020 election victory was STOLEN.
"Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them."
Yes, I've been feeling this in my current quest to get people to change their political registration from Democrat to Independent. Each loss in the Dem registration rolls will send a message, "This is NOT what we voted for. This is NOT what we want." I still don't know how that will play out in 2026 or '28, but right now, at this moment, if an election were being held, I probably wouldn't vote at all. I'm NEVER voting for a Republican because now, the vast majority of them can be painted with a broad brush of "Traitor." The betrayal I feel for Dems is unmatched to anything else I've felt politically before. I might vote for them again, but I know I'll never be able to fully trust them to represent my interests. And yes, we NEED more parties than these two lame-ass ones we have. I'd join a Gavin Newsome or JB Pritzker party in a second!
"...how does a nation reconcile with the fact that so many of its citizens willingly and at times eagerly collaborated with the enemy? How does a country recover from such dishonor? Can it recover?"
I had to wonder, reading this, if there are still people/families in Germany that harbor resentment and/or shame within themselves for what their ancestors did, or more rightly DIDN'T do, when the Nazis were in power. Are there discussions among the young people in families about it to this day? I think the answer is there. I won't live long enough to see the end of MAGA in the US, but it will end because it's unnatural to what we've always professed ourselves to be. When it ends, resentments will still hang around for a very long time, probably into the next century, at least. As it turned out, Trumpism and MAGA (one and the same), are not just a flash in the pan. They've dug in. They've allowed other groups, like radical Christians who pervert the Bible to their own needs, and racists, homophobes, and militia-minded "citizens" to rise to the top of the food chain. They won't be there forever, but when they go, there will have to be a reckoning, which will, in some cases, take the form of resentments and shame within friend circles, and families. I can't see the US fully recovering from this until every last first-generation MAGAt is gone -- dead, I mean. We, as a country, will never again have the trust of other nations that we've enjoyed for over 200 years. We are currently one of the "shithole" countries, and it's a goddamned shame.
If we survive this, and we may not, both parties need to be exploded and two new ones established in their place. I would like to see a democratic socialist-leaning group on the left, with AOC as the leader, and a center-right group of what used to be called conservatives, with Liz Cheney as the leader. Anyone who is a Trumper should be banned from government under 14/3 forever, which should effectively ban Nazis. That's what SHOULD happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Nothing will change in the US until the inherent antidemocratic flaws in the political architecture are repaired. Slave states should never have been given disproportionate power. Senate needs to be tied somehow to population, SCOTUS needs massive expansion, Citizens United needs to die, DC and PR need to be states, tax code needs to change so top marginal rate is at least 50. Just that would fix a lot of issues.
From what I understand, Germany did as good a job as any society ever has in attempting to atone for the unatoneable. We would do well to learn from it.
This would make a great speech in the Olear2028 campaign:
“Nothing will change in the US until the inherent antidemocratic flaws in the political architecture are repaired. Slave states should never have been given disproportionate power. Senate needs to be tied somehow to population, SCOTUS needs massive expansion, Citizens United needs to die, DC and PR need to be states, tax code needs to change so top marginal rate is at least 50. Just that would fix a lot of issues.”
My best friend from high-school just texted to say her 2 granddaughters are safe after the shooting at their Minneapolis Annuncio Catholic school this morning. One was just about to open the door to the church and go in when a message over the PA said "RUN AND HIDE!" Physically safe anyway.
Hi Greg, like Truscott IV said, very, very good one. But I do think of several facts that tilt the current situation even further against us, starting with your technically true but circumstantially wrong statement: "There was no equivalent to a state governor in Nazi Germany, and no opposition leaders as charismatic or effective as Newsom, Mamdani, et. al." In fact , although the Nazis did away with them, the 1919-1933 Weimar governments had state-level officials functionally similar to U.S. governors, some very popular/ influential. These included the top officials in Bavaria and Prussia, a conservative in Bavaria who suppressed Hitler's 1923 putsch; and in Prussia, Germany’s most powerful state, a center-left Social Democrat, a staunch defender of democracy, and bulwark against rising authoritarianism.
As to why Germany had “no opposition leaders as charismatic or effective as Newsom, Mamdani, et al.” that's because the extremely popular leaders were either killed before and after the Nazis got power, arrested and imprisoned or forced into exile. The Nazi regime immediately banned all political opposition, outlawed the SPD and KPD which together were bigger than the Nazis. Dissenters were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. The Stormtroopers kidnapped and murdered journalists, editors and activists, and the Gestapo, a part of the state police, hunted and crushed underground resistance. The Magas in power have practically normalized the perception of Democratic officials as criminals and are moving in the same direction as the 1933-34 Nazis as they consolidate their police powers. It took Hitler eighteen months to cement his hold on power. It's underway and continuing at speed here in Trump's first year this time.
In addition, pre-Nazi Germans were significantly more engaged in democracy, with consistent 75–89% voter turnouts in national elections vs 62% turnout in the 2024 US presidential election. Germans also were much more politically organized than we are, via mass membership in parties like the SPD, KPD, Zentrum, and NSDAP. Those parties were deeply embedded in social life, with affiliated newspapers, youth groups, unions, and cultural clubs, Political identities often shaped peoples' daily lives, neighborhoods and communities.
Your essay makes so many great points that none of this dilutes their importance. Perhaps your most significance point is that both the Nazis and Magas based their main strategies on both manipulating the powers of the law and on ignoring the laws when that was more expedient.
P.S. Two more excellent books from the Nazi years are Little Man, What Now? and Every Man Dies Alone: Based on a True Story of the Courage of Ordinary People in Nazi Germany During World War II, both by Hans Fallada.
Thanks, Richard. The parts of the Haffner chapter I didn't include here talk about the political parties, the social groups, and etc. I'm sure you're right about local leaders there, but I maintain that they didn't have anyone quite like Newsom. Of course, as you point out, this is because the Nazis took out the opposition. One of the many things I learned in the book is that when the Nazis killed Rosa Luxembourg and the other Communist leader, the official cause of death was "shot trying to escape," which Haffner thinks is a Nazi invention. Putin does the same stuff in Russia, of course. In Afghanistan, right before 9/11, the main anti-Taliban warlord was killed.
The Nazis were very good at capitalizing on the sense of grievance felt by many in Germany after the loss in the war, and what happened after. MAGA is, too, but the grievance here is more based on vibes than anything else.
In 1932, KPD's champion Ernst Thälmann received 13.2% of the total votes (the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg, won with 53.05%.)
Newsom's highest ever approval poll is a 13% favorability rating among all voters (Echelon Insights, August 2025).
For grievances, we shouldn't forget a lot of Vietnam, Iraq 2 and Afghanistan war vets and casualties and all of their extended families, as well as the families of US opiate casualties. Not to mention America's white longer-term unemployed and their extended families.
Of course, the entire nation of Germany was more traumatized by the WW I defeat and the postwar and post-Crash economy disasters than Americans have ever been traumatized - (up to August, 2025.) But it does feel like Trump's working hard to crash the economy this time on purpose-since he doesn't sound as election oriented anymore.
A major difference in the circumstances around the rise of the Axis powers and the current situation is that Pope Leo is a very different character than PiusXII. The fact that he is an American from Chicago is also something to consider.
Good point, Teri. It's fascinating to me that Leo's brother is MAGA. Will be interesting to see how that plays out. Trump already brought him to the WH, if memory serves.
You are very welcome Greg. Your essay is beautifully written. Will read again. I am currently reading “The Story of a Life”, by Konstantin Paustovsky. It is Mr. Paustovsky’s autobiography and starts in Kyiv around 1905. (NYBR, Books 1-3.) He is Russian. This book is an interesting balance. Even as he is serving on a hospital train being bombed by the Germans during WWI he has a way of both describing the conditions of the injured soldiers and finding some beauty in breathing on a regular basis.
"Resistance is not linear." That may be the most important point you made, Greg. We do have to resist on multiple fronts. You gave me a little hope with citing the power of the states and some state leaders are not capitulating. Let's hope they keep pushing back, more judges keep pushing back, and the MSM grows a spine (along with the Democratic party under new leadership), and we find our way back from the brink of dictatorship.
Speaking of the D-word, I've been on a Charlie Chaplin fix at the end of the summer, and I was so moved by the end of "The Great Dictator" when the Tramp speaks out so forcefully against Hitler, the Nazis, the will to power. I recommend it to everyone (available on HBO/Max).
Thanks for posting the link to your column about "The Great Dictator," Greg--and the link to the Tramp's final speech so I could watch it again. I can't believe how well written it is. On this second view, it's a little odd how he gets worked up at the end so that his delivery is almost like Hitler's, which he parodies early in the film. It's almost like he was undermining his own speech. Any insights on that?
Thanks again for this moving piece. Above is a link to an essay which analyses the way that the ideology of Liberalism has informed the leaders of our era to the destruction of the good.
It’s TUESDAY🎉
Absolutely essential reading. I compared Trump's use of the National Guard to Hitler's SA just last night in my column, "It's getting very, very serious." We are on the same page of the same book, as it turns out. Good one.
Good one indeed!
Thanks, Dennis.
Yes, I also posted last night, although not on this platform: "The National Guard is a more serious matter than its "Weekend Warriors" nickname suggests. National Guard units and members, played key roles in the Iran War Abu Ghraib torture/prisoner abuse scandal. CBS News' 2004 broadcasts of US torture photos caused shock, outrage and widespread condemnation in the US and world wide. Nineteen Guard troops, including Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were tried, convicted and served time. No one can foresee their 2025 descendants will be better trained and controlled or held accountable for crimes which stain US honor." Nor should we forget the May, 1970 National National Guard killings of four unarmed students at Kent State and police shootings of 14 students at Jackson State colleges, just for protesting.
Thanks for this, Richard. I'd forgotten, or maybe did not ever realize, that Graner and England were National Guard. It's only a matter of time before we get another Kent State, and it's a minor miracle it hasn't already happened, given Trump's bloodlust.
All 19 convicted were National Guard from a NG military police unit. My guess is that most National Guard incidents in the past resulted from insufficient weekend training. But under maga the problems will be more what they're trained to do and how they're trained to react.
Thanks so much, Lucian. For people here unfamiliar with your work, I highly recommend it. Here is a link to that piece:
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/this-is-getting-very-very-serious?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=255301&post_id=171947796&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2wfp4&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Excellent article Greg. I wish the MAGAs could read or hear it, but they wouldn't stand for it. Facts be damned. They'd rather wallow in their victimhood and ignorance.
Thanks, Judy.
MAGA don't believe it. They think he's the cat's pajamas, that the economy is booming, that only criminals are being ICE'd, etc. They occupy a different reality.
Interestingly, my first understanding of how Hitler installed fascism in Germany in the 1930s first came in Len Deighton's book WINTER, part of the ten-book masterpiece, GAME, SET AND MATCH. Wow. Extraordinary writing.
I will have to check that out, thank you!
For many years, I had puzzled HOW educated, intelligent people could allow such a thing to happen. The three trilogies, modern spy stories predicting the fall of the Berlin wall, were punctuated by WINTER, and showed the Winter family life from the 1920s to 40s, typical of a modern educated German family. A tragedy now matched by our acceptance of the Trump Mobster Regime and ICE-Gestapo.
Also the superb BBC tv series Game, Set and Match (first trilogy), was hated by Deighton (now 96 years old) and only shown ONCE and then archived forever! I was lucky enough to obtain a VHS copy of that series with Ian Holm truly wonderful as the spy, Bernard Samson. 10/10. https://imdb.com/title/tt0092360/reference/
I happened to meet the late Mr Holm in the lobby of the BBC one day as I waited to appear on Tomorrow's World science series, and he was quite chuffed at my praise of the show and especially his extraordinary performance.
So Powerful, so important... thanks Greg, as always. Copied from part one comments below... part two is also now printed for my friend. I'll let you know what he says about it. If you happen to be in Louisville, come to lunch with us Thursday to discuss... Cheers!
Greg,
This memoir really is amazing. I am meeting for lunch on Thursday with an old man who has become a friend in recent years. He was born in 1932 – making him around the same age during WWII as Hafner was when his early memories of the war hit, when he was taken forever from his beloved woods and hurled into the thrill of the war fever for the first time as a kid. My friend Dean has vivid memories of WW2, and we’ve discussed in prior lunches of ours how everyone got quiet when he talked about Hitler in the lunch halls and and asked questions in the faculty rooms where he was a math professor in the years after the war. The topic was too painful, almost taboo then it seems, at least it was around his Midwestern university in the 50s and 60s.
I am taking him a copy of the memoir and a printed copy of your Substack article here.
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/defying-trump-lessons-from-1933-germany
Thanks for the suggestion. The memoir is amazing, honest, terrifying – beautifully written. Everyone seriously should read it.
* PS / Note: Any friends here who are also on Bluesky please note they shut me down on Bsky for potentially being hacked, but who knows when or if they'll ever restore me? For the moment I am on twitter and can be found there, as I cannot bear to start over again.
Cheers,
Grant
Thanks, Grant! I have no plans to be in Louisville, but thank you. You're more likely to find me in Prague. : )
Trust me Greg, I’ve known who Trump was for decades. A lying, manipulative, self entitled, selfish, amoral predator; with dictator like aspirations. A man who likely at his core, if there ever was any inclination towards a moral imperative, lost it in the first decade of his life. And this time he has surrounded himself with an administration who are driven by the same lack of moral compass, greed, jealousy and a thirst for deliberate, institutionalized cruelty. My hope is that they cannibalize one another.
Often, I believe they will be consumed by the paranoid insatiable thirst of the race to the pointy end of their pyramid scheme du jour. The competitiveness of winning by any means as the race thins out eating themselves is more likely than not. Imho.
Let's hope so. Meantime our system rewards them.
The popularity of Nigel Farage indicates that this problem is not confined to the US, unfortunately...
Believe me I am aware.
I put a thread together on Twitter, I might just refine it with the swearing toned down and write something here as first post. Will share the thread with you.
Byline covered it too.
Btw I wrote a big introduction yesterday inspired by this post but honestly I chickened out
I have no idea if I was being offensive when describing your ability to forge a story plucked from the vaults of your mind pallace, something of tangible tonic at the moment we collectively need one.. that sounds better than my attempt to raise smiles. “I'm an acquired taste” and not a great writer.
How was the coin show?
👉☺️👈
All of that, Bonnie, yes. Excellent description of him. I too have hoped that, but we'll see. Criminality does tend to bind people together.
I suppose you’re correct & it supports the old cliche, “birds of a feather” & all that.. Indeed shared criminality does become part of those ties.. perhaps part of the underlying premise being strength in numbers, repetitive discord & chaos, designed to unnerve us all. But I’d like to think we have the numbers as well, respect to Americans that reject his type of “ maga politics” & cruel & callous policies. Americans must speak up, say no & clearly reject this administration; or America as we hope to know of it one day (as it’s better self,) is lost to us.
I have been thinking about this moment in history all morning after reading Lucien Truscott's latest piece. Im trying to see what comes of this from the opposition. What occurs to me is that this movement against trump is widespread and leaderless in the old (before now) sense of the word. Leaders don't stand in front of the crowds and tell them how to do this. No one is taking the helm. But people are rising up, and holding people up, and moving people forward and amplifying their voices as required by events. Newsom, Pritzker, Mamdani. They are rising up through the noise and rukus and emotions and saying what we need to hear. They give us courage and we give them voice. It is like a mosh pit. A revolutionary mosh pit. Other's voices will break through, and again, and again, and again. We will do this. We are all going to do this. Together. It has already begun, and gives me much hope.
These voices include poets, painters, musicians, film makers, etc. they aren’t going to stop. They/we won’t be stopped. No matter how ugly this gets. Like you said, this isn’t Germany in WWII.
Speaking of, if you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend watching the movie Berlin Alone. Not for no reason it’s streaming now.
Thanks, Suzanne. I agree...people seem to be waiting to be told what to do to resist, and that's not how this works. I don't think people will ever bend the knee to this asshole and his asshole cabal. Not really. But I've been wrong about him a lot about how the people will respond to him...
"REVOLUTIONARY MOSH PIT." Yes yes yes! That's a perfect term!
Welcome back, Greg!
I'm sure it won't shock you to find out that there are STILL people out there who subscribe to the große Lüge—the Big Lie. I ran into one last week, who insisted that Trump was doing FOR our country what Joe Biden never could; that he was actually making America great again, and that he had so much work to do now because his 2020 election victory was STOLEN.
"Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them."
Yes, I've been feeling this in my current quest to get people to change their political registration from Democrat to Independent. Each loss in the Dem registration rolls will send a message, "This is NOT what we voted for. This is NOT what we want." I still don't know how that will play out in 2026 or '28, but right now, at this moment, if an election were being held, I probably wouldn't vote at all. I'm NEVER voting for a Republican because now, the vast majority of them can be painted with a broad brush of "Traitor." The betrayal I feel for Dems is unmatched to anything else I've felt politically before. I might vote for them again, but I know I'll never be able to fully trust them to represent my interests. And yes, we NEED more parties than these two lame-ass ones we have. I'd join a Gavin Newsome or JB Pritzker party in a second!
"...how does a nation reconcile with the fact that so many of its citizens willingly and at times eagerly collaborated with the enemy? How does a country recover from such dishonor? Can it recover?"
I had to wonder, reading this, if there are still people/families in Germany that harbor resentment and/or shame within themselves for what their ancestors did, or more rightly DIDN'T do, when the Nazis were in power. Are there discussions among the young people in families about it to this day? I think the answer is there. I won't live long enough to see the end of MAGA in the US, but it will end because it's unnatural to what we've always professed ourselves to be. When it ends, resentments will still hang around for a very long time, probably into the next century, at least. As it turned out, Trumpism and MAGA (one and the same), are not just a flash in the pan. They've dug in. They've allowed other groups, like radical Christians who pervert the Bible to their own needs, and racists, homophobes, and militia-minded "citizens" to rise to the top of the food chain. They won't be there forever, but when they go, there will have to be a reckoning, which will, in some cases, take the form of resentments and shame within friend circles, and families. I can't see the US fully recovering from this until every last first-generation MAGAt is gone -- dead, I mean. We, as a country, will never again have the trust of other nations that we've enjoyed for over 200 years. We are currently one of the "shithole" countries, and it's a goddamned shame.
Thanks, Steve. It's good to be back.
If we survive this, and we may not, both parties need to be exploded and two new ones established in their place. I would like to see a democratic socialist-leaning group on the left, with AOC as the leader, and a center-right group of what used to be called conservatives, with Liz Cheney as the leader. Anyone who is a Trumper should be banned from government under 14/3 forever, which should effectively ban Nazis. That's what SHOULD happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Nothing will change in the US until the inherent antidemocratic flaws in the political architecture are repaired. Slave states should never have been given disproportionate power. Senate needs to be tied somehow to population, SCOTUS needs massive expansion, Citizens United needs to die, DC and PR need to be states, tax code needs to change so top marginal rate is at least 50. Just that would fix a lot of issues.
From what I understand, Germany did as good a job as any society ever has in attempting to atone for the unatoneable. We would do well to learn from it.
This would make a great speech in the Olear2028 campaign:
“Nothing will change in the US until the inherent antidemocratic flaws in the political architecture are repaired. Slave states should never have been given disproportionate power. Senate needs to be tied somehow to population, SCOTUS needs massive expansion, Citizens United needs to die, DC and PR need to be states, tax code needs to change so top marginal rate is at least 50. Just that would fix a lot of issues.”
Tell me where to sign up!
Joseph Goebbels (Gobbles)
I also like the nickname for Miller: Peewee German.
Thank You, Greg. Power-full for all of us feeling powerless. Sharing.
Thanks, MaryPat!
My best friend from high-school just texted to say her 2 granddaughters are safe after the shooting at their Minneapolis Annuncio Catholic school this morning. One was just about to open the door to the church and go in when a message over the PA said "RUN AND HIDE!" Physically safe anyway.
Ain't that America. When are Americans and politicians going to come to their senses and take meaningful action toward gun safety?
Glad to hear your friends granddaughters are safe.
Hi Greg, like Truscott IV said, very, very good one. But I do think of several facts that tilt the current situation even further against us, starting with your technically true but circumstantially wrong statement: "There was no equivalent to a state governor in Nazi Germany, and no opposition leaders as charismatic or effective as Newsom, Mamdani, et. al." In fact , although the Nazis did away with them, the 1919-1933 Weimar governments had state-level officials functionally similar to U.S. governors, some very popular/ influential. These included the top officials in Bavaria and Prussia, a conservative in Bavaria who suppressed Hitler's 1923 putsch; and in Prussia, Germany’s most powerful state, a center-left Social Democrat, a staunch defender of democracy, and bulwark against rising authoritarianism.
As to why Germany had “no opposition leaders as charismatic or effective as Newsom, Mamdani, et al.” that's because the extremely popular leaders were either killed before and after the Nazis got power, arrested and imprisoned or forced into exile. The Nazi regime immediately banned all political opposition, outlawed the SPD and KPD which together were bigger than the Nazis. Dissenters were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. The Stormtroopers kidnapped and murdered journalists, editors and activists, and the Gestapo, a part of the state police, hunted and crushed underground resistance. The Magas in power have practically normalized the perception of Democratic officials as criminals and are moving in the same direction as the 1933-34 Nazis as they consolidate their police powers. It took Hitler eighteen months to cement his hold on power. It's underway and continuing at speed here in Trump's first year this time.
In addition, pre-Nazi Germans were significantly more engaged in democracy, with consistent 75–89% voter turnouts in national elections vs 62% turnout in the 2024 US presidential election. Germans also were much more politically organized than we are, via mass membership in parties like the SPD, KPD, Zentrum, and NSDAP. Those parties were deeply embedded in social life, with affiliated newspapers, youth groups, unions, and cultural clubs, Political identities often shaped peoples' daily lives, neighborhoods and communities.
Your essay makes so many great points that none of this dilutes their importance. Perhaps your most significance point is that both the Nazis and Magas based their main strategies on both manipulating the powers of the law and on ignoring the laws when that was more expedient.
P.S. Two more excellent books from the Nazi years are Little Man, What Now? and Every Man Dies Alone: Based on a True Story of the Courage of Ordinary People in Nazi Germany During World War II, both by Hans Fallada.
Thanks, Richard. The parts of the Haffner chapter I didn't include here talk about the political parties, the social groups, and etc. I'm sure you're right about local leaders there, but I maintain that they didn't have anyone quite like Newsom. Of course, as you point out, this is because the Nazis took out the opposition. One of the many things I learned in the book is that when the Nazis killed Rosa Luxembourg and the other Communist leader, the official cause of death was "shot trying to escape," which Haffner thinks is a Nazi invention. Putin does the same stuff in Russia, of course. In Afghanistan, right before 9/11, the main anti-Taliban warlord was killed.
The Nazis were very good at capitalizing on the sense of grievance felt by many in Germany after the loss in the war, and what happened after. MAGA is, too, but the grievance here is more based on vibes than anything else.
Thanks for sharing this, and for the book recs.
In 1932, KPD's champion Ernst Thälmann received 13.2% of the total votes (the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg, won with 53.05%.)
Newsom's highest ever approval poll is a 13% favorability rating among all voters (Echelon Insights, August 2025).
For grievances, we shouldn't forget a lot of Vietnam, Iraq 2 and Afghanistan war vets and casualties and all of their extended families, as well as the families of US opiate casualties. Not to mention America's white longer-term unemployed and their extended families.
Of course, the entire nation of Germany was more traumatized by the WW I defeat and the postwar and post-Crash economy disasters than Americans have ever been traumatized - (up to August, 2025.) But it does feel like Trump's working hard to crash the economy this time on purpose-since he doesn't sound as election oriented anymore.
A major difference in the circumstances around the rise of the Axis powers and the current situation is that Pope Leo is a very different character than PiusXII. The fact that he is an American from Chicago is also something to consider.
Good point, Teri. It's fascinating to me that Leo's brother is MAGA. Will be interesting to see how that plays out. Trump already brought him to the WH, if memory serves.
We must—we must—break the spell.
Brilliant essay Greg. Thank you.! Ordering Occupation, the Ordeal of France now.
Thanks, Sara. I'm about a third of the way through, and will write more about it after I finish. Good god, it's depressing.
You are very welcome Greg. Your essay is beautifully written. Will read again. I am currently reading “The Story of a Life”, by Konstantin Paustovsky. It is Mr. Paustovsky’s autobiography and starts in Kyiv around 1905. (NYBR, Books 1-3.) He is Russian. This book is an interesting balance. Even as he is serving on a hospital train being bombed by the Germans during WWI he has a way of both describing the conditions of the injured soldiers and finding some beauty in breathing on a regular basis.
"Resistance is not linear." That may be the most important point you made, Greg. We do have to resist on multiple fronts. You gave me a little hope with citing the power of the states and some state leaders are not capitulating. Let's hope they keep pushing back, more judges keep pushing back, and the MSM grows a spine (along with the Democratic party under new leadership), and we find our way back from the brink of dictatorship.
Speaking of the D-word, I've been on a Charlie Chaplin fix at the end of the summer, and I was so moved by the end of "The Great Dictator" when the Tramp speaks out so forcefully against Hitler, the Nazis, the will to power. I recommend it to everyone (available on HBO/Max).
Thanks, Lincoln. I liked that line and wanted to put it somewhere.
Jen Taub showed some of the Chaplin yesterday when I was on the show. I wrote about it here five years ago:
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/sunday-pages-the-great-dictator?utm_source=publication-search
Thanks for posting the link to your column about "The Great Dictator," Greg--and the link to the Tramp's final speech so I could watch it again. I can't believe how well written it is. On this second view, it's a little odd how he gets worked up at the end so that his delivery is almost like Hitler's, which he parodies early in the film. It's almost like he was undermining his own speech. Any insights on that?
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/is-that-it
Thanks again for this moving piece. Above is a link to an essay which analyses the way that the ideology of Liberalism has informed the leaders of our era to the destruction of the good.
Thanks, Monnina, and thanks for the link!
For some maga, it is their year abroad. I say that as someone who did not have that in college.
I spent my semester "abroad" at NYU.