Episode 6 - How to Steal a Country: Adolf and Donald’s Grand Scheme
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The Date - March 5th 1933, the day of the the last semi-free election Germans would know during Hitler’s lifetime.
Hitler’s party polled 17.2 million votes — 44 percent. Only when combined with the 3.1 million votes of the conservative Nationalists did the authoritarian right finally edge past 20 million votes needed to secure a narrow parliamentary majority. This was not close to a landslide.
Even then, most Germans had not voted directly for Hitler’s party. The dictatorship that followed emerged not from overwhelming democratic consensus, but from coalition, intimidation, and the systematic dismantling of the state from within.
The Centre Party and its Bavarian Catholic Party allies together polled 5.5 million votes. The Social Democrats secured 7.1 million, the Communists drew almost 5 million.
Altogether, 17 million Germans voted for parties outside Hitler’s movement showing that Germany was far from being politically unified behind National Socialism. It was fractured, exhausted, polarised, and increasingly incapable of defending its own democratic institutions against a movement that understood power more clearly than its opponents did.
That, in a nutshell, is how you could characterize America a quarter of the way into the 21st Century.
Back to 1933 - The Nationalists threw in their lot with the Nazis, their 52 seats added to the 288 of the National Socialists, the Nazi’s, which gave Hitler a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. Pretty slim majority.
That was enough to rule, but not the two-thirds majority needed to carry out Hitler’s bold plan to establish a dictatorship.
The secret plan was deceptively simple, Hitler was going to cloak his coming actions as he seized power in legality — he was going to say he had the right to usurp constitutional power through legal gymnastics.
One of the enduring myths of modern populist movements is that they represent an overwhelming uprising of the people. The numbers are usually more complicated than the emotion.
In the 2024 American election for example, 244 million Americans were eligible to vote, yet only around 156 million actually cast ballots. Donald Trump received 77 million votes — enough to secure victory, enough to dominate the Electoral College, enough to reshape the American state once again — but still only about 31 percent of the total eligible electorate.
It goes to show then, that if you don’t vote, you get the leader you deserve.
That means seven out of ten eligible Americans either voted against Trump or did not vote at all. This is historically important because it reveals something profound about the mechanics of democratic power in moments of social fracture.
Transformative political movements seldom require unanimous national conviction.
They require intensity, discipline, emotional cohesion, and an opposition that is divided and its voters are disengaged. The illusion created afterward is one of inevitability — as though the entire nation rose in one direction at once. But history is often moved by organised minorities operating inside societies too distracted or exhausted to resist with equal force. Casting an eye on America in 2026 we can see just how exhausted, deflated and flaccid the Democratic Party appears. They can’t agree on anything right now even though Trump 2.0 has been an unmitigated disaster for the USA.
Back to Hitler.
The one main stumbling block for Nazi ambitions, Hitler’s ambitions, was the Army - where the leadership had taken a dim view of his dishonourable approach to social mores and their ancient traditions. It was time to make a grandiose gesture to the aging Field Marshall Hindenburg, the military, as well as nationalist conservatives. Hitler desperately needed to link his rowdy, brutal and violent Nazi movement to Count Hindenburg’s venerable name as a First world War hero.
In 1933, Hitler needed The Enabling Act because the Weimar Republic was structurally rigid—he had to murder the constitution legally.
Hitler’s party polled 17.2 million votes — 44 percent. Only when combined with the 3.1 million votes of the conservative Nationalists did the authoritarian right finally edge past 20 million votes needed to secure a narrow parliamentary majority. This was not close to a landslide.
Even then, most Germans had not voted directly for Hitler’s party. The dictatorship that followed emerged not from overwhelming democratic consensus, but from coalition, intimidation, and the systematic dismantling of the state from within.
The Centre Party and its Bavarian Catholic Party allies together polled 5.5 million votes. The Social Democrats secured 7.1 million, the Communists drew almost 5 million.
Altogether, 17 million Germans voted for parties outside Hitler’s movement showing that Germany was far from being politically unified behind National Socialism. It was fractured, exhausted, polarised, and increasingly incapable of defending its own democratic institutions against a movement that understood power more clearly than its opponents did.
That, in a nutshell, is how you could characterize America a quarter of the way into the 21st Century.
Back to 1933 - The Nationalists threw in their lot with the Nazis, their 52 seats added to the 288 of the National Socialists, the Nazi’s, which gave Hitler a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. Pretty slim majority.
That was enough to rule, but not the two-thirds majority needed to carry out Hitler’s bold plan to establish a dictatorship.
The secret plan was deceptively simple, Hitler was going to cloak his coming actions as he seized power in legality — he was going to say he had the right to usurp constitutional power through legal gymnastics.
One of the enduring myths of modern populist movements is that they represent an overwhelming uprising of the people. The numbers are usually more complicated than the emotion.
In the 2024 American election for example, 244 million Americans were eligible to vote, yet only around 156 million actually cast ballots. Donald Trump received 77 million votes — enough to secure victory, enough to dominate the Electoral College, enough to reshape the American state once again — but still only about 31 percent of the total eligible electorate.
It goes to show then, that if you don’t vote, you get the leader you deserve.
That means seven out of ten eligible Americans either voted against Trump or did not vote at all. This is historically important because it reveals something profound about the mechanics of democratic power in moments of social fracture.
Transformative political movements seldom require unanimous national conviction.
They require intensity, discipline, emotional cohesion, and an opposition that is divided and its voters are disengaged. The illusion created afterward is one of inevitability — as though the entire nation rose in one direction at once. But history is often moved by organised minorities operating inside societies too distracted or exhausted to resist with equal force. Casting an eye on America in 2026 we can see just how exhausted, deflated and flaccid the Democratic Party appears. They can’t agree on anything right now even though Trump 2.0 has been an unmitigated disaster for the USA.
Back to Hitler.
The one main stumbling block for Nazi ambitions, Hitler’s ambitions, was the Army - where the leadership had taken a dim view of his dishonourable approach to social mores and their ancient traditions. It was time to make a grandiose gesture to the aging Field Marshall Hindenburg, the military, as well as nationalist conservatives. Hitler desperately needed to link his rowdy, brutal and violent Nazi movement to Count Hindenburg’s venerable name as a First world War hero.
In 1933, Hitler needed The Enabling Act because the Weimar Republic was structurally rigid—he had to murder the constitution legally.
