Will Trump 2025 = Hitler 1933?

How far will Trump go?

Left: Hitler = tiger — Right: Trump = Faux Fur

Recently, I have come across a number of people who are terrified that Trump 2025 will be a rerun of Hitler 1933. It’s a possibility that deserves exploration.¹ There are certain disturbing similarities between Hitler and Trump.

• Trump won an election, Hitler won an election

• Trump has the support of the wealthy, Hitler had the support of the wealthy

• Trump has the support of a key element of the government (SCOTUS); Hitler had the support of the President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg

• Trump bases his political communication on anger and fear, Hitler thought emotion made political communication effective

• Trump spews hatred of his enemies, Hitler spewed hatred of his enemies

• Trump speaks of an “enemy within” that has destroyed the greatness of America, Hitler railed against Communists and Jews

• Trump openly wishes certain people would die or be imprisoned; so did Hitler.

However, most of these resemblances are superficial. Despite these similarities, there are underlying factors that are vastly different.

It is important to analyze Trump’s potential for political violence because the fear that Trump will take over America, as Hitler took over Germany, is paralyzing. Too many fear that a second Trump administration will start killing its enemies the way Hitler killed thousands and imprisoned even more. If that is the case, resistance to Trump means endangering your own life. Better stay quiet, and let Trump have his way. Not everyone can be a hero.

Everyone knows the valuable principle, “Don't obey in advance.” Just as important is the principle, “Don't give up in advance, don't lay down your arms before the first shot has been fired.” In this case, I would define the “first shot” as Trump killing an opponent on his express command.

Bottom line: if you are convinced that Trump will kill his enemies in the same way that Hitler killed his enemies, you have basically taken yourself out of the fight and made it gigantically easier for him to do just that.

How Hitler Used Violence

Before Hitler came to power in 1933, he already had a 12-year history of using violence against his enemies

At the end of World War I, millions of soldiers came home to German cities and towns with plenty to be unhappy about, especially food shortages and unemployment. Many ex-soldiers organized themselves into veteran groups, and became politically active, using violence to intimidate their opponents. Those with conservative views were called Freikorps. These were roughly the equivalent of American private militias, but far more violent. Note that modern American private militias do a lot of target shooting, but the German veteran groups used fists and clubs to dominate the political and social scene in small towns and villages.

However, in the major cities, veteran groups from the left and right clashed violently with each other. The biggest clash took place in Berlin in January 1919. The left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) had just split into three factions. This split paralleled the earlier split of Marxists into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia. Most German socialists preferred, like the Mensheviks, to work within a democratic parliamentary system, while the newly founded German Communist Party (KPD) insisted that a violent revolution would be necessary for a thorough transformation of the country.

On January 5, 1919, peaceful demonstrations brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of Berlin. A left-wing paramilitary group, the Spartacists, decided to turn these demonstrations into a revolution, taking over government buildings. This group was not under the control of any of the three socialist parties. Indeed, the newly founded Communist Party begged them to stand down. The KPD leaders knew that a disorganized, spur of the moment uprising could not succeed.

The Spartacist revolution did not last long. Elements of the German army and Freikorps counterattacked with machine guns and flamethrowers. A later inquiry found that 156 people died, including a number executed without trial. A similar communist uprising took place a few months later in Munich, the third largest city in Germany, and was likewise violently suppressed.

Despite these upheavals, advocates of democracy managed to write a constitution, and an elected government (Weimar Republic) began to function, but political violence never ended. Shockingly, a significant percentage of political leaders, including members of the German Reichstag, did not believe in democracy and were hoping to get rid of it one day, either at the ballot box or by revolution. The fact that both the left and right were open to mounting a violent revolution kept everyone in subconscious tension.

This is where Hitler enters the story. Hitler joined the Nazi Party in 1919 and became its leader in 1921. Like other political parties, the Nazi Party had a protection squad who served as Hitler’s bodyguard and kept protesters out of the party’s public meetings. This group eventually became known as the Storm Troopers (SA). The SA also had other functions—they disrupted the meetings of opposing parties, fought against the paramilitary units of opposing parties, and intimidated, attacked, and occasionally killed members of groups despised by the Nazis. BUT their behavior was not exceptional at the time—a Freikorps unit led by Captain Hermann Ehrhardt is credited with carrying out most of the 354 political assassinations that took place in Germany between 1919–1922.

The SA makes its presence felt

How does Trump compare? Trump has private security who work his rallies. Obviously, these bully boys are far from gentle as they hustle hecklers out, but they do not beat them up behind the building. In the US, that would lead to lucrative lawsuits. But has Trump ever directly ordered the assassination of a political rival? Have 354 political assassinations taken place in the US from 2021-2024? Note that when Trump expressed a desire to deploy the National Guard to quell the George Floyd protests, he talked about shooting at the legs of rioters, not shooting to kill.

As Hitler continued his political career and his popularity grew, the SA also grew. Eventually, the SA was active in every town in which the Nazis had an organized presence. At the time Hitler took power, there were 3 million members of the SA, and the threat of Nazi political violence was nearly ubiquitous in Germany.

The police and army simply did not have the numbers to oppose the SA. The army was restricted in size to 100,000 soldiers by the Treaty of Versailles. The police were also outnumbered (and sometimes they were Nazi sympathizers).

Does this portrait of Nazi violent intimidation resemble what is going on in the United States today? Trump does not have a paramilitary under his direct control. AND there are enormous barriers that work to prevent him from turning the US Army into his SA. Trump knows that many Army brass do not support him—Trump counts them as a stumbling block rather than an asset. Indeed, there is no group more experienced in bureaucratic delay than the US Army brass. They are past masters at dragging their feet—they know exactly how to say yes while actually never getting anything done.

The Weimar Constitution Was an Open Door for Hitler

Besides having a private army, Hitler also took advantage of a Weimar Constitution that permitted the establishment of a dictatorship. The constitution had a clause that allowed the President and chancellor to rule together by decree in case of a national emergency, superseding elected national and local governments. The Reichstag could counteract this declaration by a two thirds vote, but the President could dissolve the Reichstag to prevent that vote from being held. By using these two powers, the President could set up a dictatorship in partnership with his chancellor whenever he wished. Indeed, President von Hindenburg had suspended legislative rule in 1930 amid the stresses of the Great Depression, three years before Hitler came to power. Thus, before von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor, there had already been three chancellors appointed without the approval of the Reichstag. Few people recognize that Hitler did not create the chancellor dictatorship, he simply was invited to play the role.

However, Hitler swiftly consolidated this dictatorship. Shortly after Hitler assumed office, a catastrophic fire broke out in the Reichstag building on February 27, 1933. A single, very confused Dutch communist was found wandering around inside the building, carrying the equivalent of a Bic lighter. He believed that he had set the Reichstag on fire, and freely confessed to the crime. It has never been conclusively established whether he did start the fire, or whether a Nazi arson team simply used him as the fall guy.

Hitler was awakened in the middle of the night and appeared astonished by the news, but he still reacted strategically. That very night, SA squads went out with lists of left-wing activists to arrest, including many members of the Reichstag.

The next day, the Nazis loudly declared that the fire had been the beginning of a communist uprising. The SA continued to arrest people over the next few weeks. It would seem that the Nazi claim that the Reichstag fire was the beginning of a Communist Revolution convinced President von Hindenburg to support a constitutional amendment, called the Enabling Decree, which gave Hitler power to rule Germany without Reichstag approval for the next four years.

To pass this constitutional amendment, Hitler needed a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. The day of the vote, the meeting hall swarmed with SA personnel. Eighty-one communist members did not appear, either arrested or in hiding . Only 94 brave Social Democrats voted against the enabling decree.

Although the Nazis were now firmly in power, the SA did not calm down. Instead, terror broke out all over Germany as local SA branches issued payback on long-held grudges. They totally ignored Hitler’s signals to stop.

Hitler’s respectable supporters (army and rich people) were horrified, and Hitler began to fear that the SA leader Ernst Rohm would seek to supplant him. Accordingly, Hitler showed up in the middle of the night at SA headquarters and had the top leadership of the SA executed. This event is called the Night of the Long Knives. Afterward, Hitler reduced the size of the SA by 40%.

Thus, Hitler's takeover of power in Germany was complete. As you can see, his success was made possible by a fatal defect in the Weimar constitution and violent political intimidation on a massive scale.

What About Modern Powers of Surveillance?

Another doomsday scenario is the argument that modern surveillance will enable Trump to effectively control the US population. I think this fear is also exaggerated. AI enabled surveillance can look for keywords in any kind of digital communication. Such surveillance enables the Chinese government to remove any public communication that expresses unwelcome ideas. However, if you want to go farther than this, real manpower is involved. You need intelligence operatives to identify opponents. You need police personnel to arrest them. You need places to imprison them. You need people to guard them. You need courts to condone all this.

It’s plausible to do this to a few people, but if you arrest beloved figures like Rachel Maddow, Mary L Trump, E Jean Carroll, Joyce Vance, Robert Reich, or Jeff Tiedrich, that’s going to arouse at least as much resistance as in the civil rights movement of the 1960s when despised African Americans stood up against murderous racist thugs and managed to win their rights.

If Trump tries to do it to several hundred thousand people, I think the energy aroused by that would be similarly full-bodied. If Trump tries to do this to several million, it will be a serious disruption to the economy.

A Final Terror: Betrayal by the Supreme Court

Some people view the Supreme Court as totally in Trump’s pocket. If so, it is hard to explain why they did not make him president in 2020, when it was totally within their power. So far, the SCOTUS has twisted the constitution, but it has not yet broken it.

It is my belief that Chief Justice John Roberts does not want to go down in history as the man who green lighted a Trump dictatorship. I also base this conclusion on my knowledge of the opinions of Joyce Vance, George Conway, and Steve Vladik, all experts in federal law. None of them believe that the Supreme Court has (or will) completely rubber stamp Trump’s wishes. To quote Joyce Vance:

Trump may try to turn our nation into an illiberal democracy—a country where existing democratic institutions are used to cloak undemocratic processes in a veneer of legitimacy—but we will not let him. At a minimum, though, we can make sure he doesn’t do it under the cover of darkness. There are people who will be willing to shine a light and expose what’s happening.

To put this in perspective, I would argue that we have been a somewhat illiberal democracy for years, because big contributions control too much of our legislative processes.

Hitler’s Big Goals vs Trump’s Small Self-Centered Goals

Hitler had a gigantic plan for Germany and implemented an astonishing amount of it before his final defeat. Hitler believed that Germany was capable of great things but was hamstrung by social and political divisions. Every segment of the nation had its own political party: Protestants vs Catholics, skilled labor vs unskilled labor, moderate socialist vs communists, agriculture vs small capitalists (petty bourgeois) vs big capitalists. No less than 9 parties won seats in the Reichstag in the 1930 elections. Thus, the deliberations of the legislature were a never-ending wrangle over control of the nation’s diminished resources. Hitler believed the nation needed unity and a mission that transcended the financial interests of any party. Also, the country needed to be cleansed of communists and Jews —parasites who contributed nothing and led the German people astray.²

Hitler believed the long-term lesson of World War I was that Britain would always dominate the seas, thus Germany could not be enriched by overseas colonies. Instead, Germany must become self-sufficient by conquest in Eastern Europe. Food security would come by conquering Ukraine and energy independence by conquering the oil fields of Romania and the Caucasus. These regions were inhabited by primitive people who had no right to enjoy these riches. The squabbling German people would be united by joy in their newfound prosperity. This was a big program, and Hitler did not deviate from it in hundreds of speeches during his 12-year rise to power. Incidentally, he did not arrive at the idea of conquest in Eastern Europe on his own but borrowed it from earlier nationalists.

In contrast, Trump’s goal for the US, Make America Great Again, is extremely vague. It seems to consist of deporting the illegal immigrant population and substituting tariff revenue for other taxes. Interestingly enough, the fascist portion of Trump’s brain does seem to drift toward acquiring new territory—he inquired about buying Greenland from Denmark and “joked” about making Canada the 51^st state.

But these ideas are idle—when it comes to carrying out big projects in his first term, Trump accomplished very little. While Hitler pursued his plan for national renewal with vigor and tenacity, Trump seems to care very little when his initiatives fizzle out. Instead, he focuses on adding the names of those who thwarted him to his enemies list and puts his passion into threatening punishment for them. Inspired by Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark (JVL), I wrote the following about Trump’s repeated failures to follow through:

On the other hand, nothing apart from gaining and maintaining power ever became an obsession for him. For example, looking at Trump’s major campaign promises from 2016, namely building the wall and the Muslim ban, he put up little fuss when these projects were thwarted. He made no persistent effort to work around the roadblocks. His followers didn’t seem to mind much either.

Trump cares to a moderate degree about tax cuts because they make billionaires happy, and billionaires are a big part of his power base. He’s willing to delegate deregulation to others because he knows that makes various big pockets people happy, but if deregulation doesn’t happen, it’s not something that Trump will obsess about for months on end.

As for radicals like RFK Jr, if this menace to modern medicine is installed as Secretary of HHS, Trump will be OK with whatever he manages to do, but if another HHS Secretary comes on board, Trump will not care that RFK’s ideas were never implemented. For this reason, it is important to oppose as many of Trump's lunatic appointments as possible—e.g., Kennedy, Hegseth and Gabbard.

To summarize, when it comes to tenacity in pursuing concrete policy goals, Trump is D- compared to Hitler’s A+.

Trump’s real goals are small and self-centered. I would summarize them as follows:

• Maintain public adulation and political power

• Accumulate more wealth from the bribes of large donors and sales of Bibles and merch to fans

• Own the libs, making them perpetually miserable by threats and outrageous statements

How can Trump get away with such small goals? Beginning with Reagan, the Republicans have preached that government is useless and can only degrade the lives of ordinary Americans. GOP strategist Grover Norquist famously proclaimed that he wanted to make the federal government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Thus, Republicans have conditioned ordinary Americans to expect nothing positive from the government. If Trump accomplishes nothing, that’s exactly what they expected. Lack of accomplishment is a feature, not a bug.

To summarize, Hitler was a homicidal maniac, while Trump is a Gilded-Age political plutocrat.

Signs That I’m Wrong and Trump is Dangerous

What would be the danger signs that lazy Trump is turning into ferocious Hitler?

• If Trump directly orders a political murder.

• If Trump sets up a paramilitary organization under his direct control and this paramilitary begins to carry out acts of violence.

• If Trump begins to create special units in the army that pledge loyalty to him without reference to the US Constitution.

• If Trump sends US Army troops/Red State National Guardsmen into a blue state to enforce his policies.

• If a Democratic House is elected in 2026, and Trump proclaims a suspension of Congress’s investigative power.

Actually, Trump does not need to suspend the legislative power, because he can veto any congressional legislation he wants.

Bottom Line

Trump’s most effective weapon is fear. He spews terror gas from his mouth hole without rest. He wants to make us miserable. He wants to rob us of sleep and wear us down physically and emotionally. And of course, this makes his supporters happy—it’s called owning the Libs. For them, it’s a benefit they can enjoy as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. Our misery is their payoff.

Does this describe you? Does Donald Trump live rent free in your brain? Does Donald Trump own your amygdala (the part of the brain where fear is registered)? Are you cooperating with Trump in achieving one of his major goals, which is to make you feel miserable and helpless?

Please don’t give up ahead of time. And please don’t confuse Trump with Hitler.

1. The historical information in this post is derived primarily from Hett, Benjamin Carter. The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (Allen Lane: Canada, 2018) and Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography (W.W. Norton & Co.: NY, 2008), as well as my decades of reading about Nazi Germany and World War II.

2. BTW, Hitler never told anyone he was going to kill all the Jews—everyone simply assumed that he would expel them from Germany. In fact, when Hitler began rounding up Jews and loading them into box cars, the Nazis told everyone it was simply “resettlement” (Umseidlung). No one knew for certain about the gas chambers until the death camps were liberated at the end of WW II.