Here's a little lesson from history, which, as we all know, tends to repeat itself. The following is admittedly a simple and succinct version, not an exhaustive account. Yet, it is true to the essence of what once happened and could very well happen again.

Although the German army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, the German government surrendered to the Allied Powers. Germany's soldiers, therefore, came home from war feeling betrayed by their own government. The prevailing belief was that the government had surrendered under pressure from its financial backers, who were mostly Jewish, because these financiers were fearful that the continuation of the war would cut into their financial profits. 

Adding insult to injury, Germany's government signed the Treaty of Versailles, which assured Germany of financial destitution for decades to come. For instance, the treaty called for the annexing of parts of Germany to other countries. It also prevented the rebuilding of the German military and Germany itself from having certain financially profitable industries. Finally, it also demanded Germany to pay billions of dollars in financial reparations to the Allied countries. Needless to say, the Treaty of Versailles proved to be an absolute economic disaster to an already staggering German economy. Then, when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, Germany, more than any other nation on earth, was brought to its knees. This former prosperous world power was reduced to pauperdom.

The simmering outrage among the German people over their believed betrayal by their own government finally boiled over in a populist movement lead by an Austrian corporal who served as a battlefield currier in the German army during World War I. The corporal, Adolph Hitler, and the movement he spearheaded, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party for short, snowballed in Germany and gained an enormous following. In fact, Hitler miscalculated both his movement’s influence and power and foolishly launched what has become known as the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed insurrectionist attempt to overthrown the government. Instead of being joined by the populace, the police, and the military in his attempted coup, as he erroneously believed he would, Hitler found himself opposed by all, his putsch going up in a puff, some of his followers gunned down in the streets, and he himself not only disgraced, but also arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch was believed at the time to be the end of him. The little man with the funny mustache had marched onto the world’s stage and been quickly pulled off with the stage hook of the times. However, while in prison, Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf, and Germany’s liberal government, emboldened by both Hitler’s disgrace and his movement’s defeat, continued their ruinous policies to the further ruin of Germany. By the time Hitler was paroled from prison, his movement, as well as himself, was back in sympathy with the German people, who were quickly reaching a breaking point with their liberal socialist government and its insane and injurious ideology. 

In 1932, Hitler, having skyrocketed from prison back into popularity, decided to run for president. Germany’s incumbent president, Paul von Hindenburg, against whom Hitler ran, was elderly and believed to be in the early stages of senility. Hitler’s presidential campaign promise was that he would “clean up the swamp” in Berlin and “Make Germany Great Again!” However, Hitler came up short in his presidential aspirations and the elderly and suspected senile von Hindenburg was narrowly reelected. Afterward, however, with Hitlers’ Nazi Party having gained the most seats in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, von Hindenburg was persuaded to make Hitler Chancellor of Germany, in order to keep him in check and under government control. 

As time went on and von Hindenburg’s cognitive impairment became more obvious, and his liberal socialist government’s policies more odious, the German people became more convinced than ever that only a revolutionary overthrow of their liberal socialist government could save their country. Thus, when von Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, Adolph Hitler, believing his time had finally come, soon seized the opportunity. He declared himself Führer, abolished the Reichstag, initiated, what he called, the Third Reich, and, as they say, the rest is history. You know what happen from here.

The similarities and parallels from this little lesson in history with events transpiring in today’s America are both unmistakable and foreboding. While we may want to turn our heads away from it, its haunting specter still looms over us. Although it is now indubitably inevitable that we are headed toward tyranny in these United States, it remains to be seen how we will get there. Will it be under the suspension of our constitutional rights and liberties by democratic socialists; that is, by a Joe Biden presidency unchecked in the implementation of its radical draconian policies by a Democrat controlled Senate and House of Representatives? Or will it be in a backlash against our democratic socialists by a populist movement, so fueled by rage that it will grant dictatorial power to a populist leader, in order for him to rid our republic once and for all of all semblance of ruinous democratic socialism? Time will tell and we’ll all soon see if history will once again repeat itself.