Last week I visited Dachau.
In the Reichstag elections of November 1932 the Nazi party, promising to restrict immigration and expel non-Germans, received only 33.1% of the popular vote. Although a majority of the German people voted for other parties, Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Democracy ended two months later, in March.
Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign, Hitler’s greater obsession turned out to be retribution against his enemies. One his first acts was to order the establishment of detention camps, the first of which, Dachau, opened on March 22, 1933, as a detention center for political opponents of the Nazi regime, primarily Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi program (the establishment of concentration camps for Jewish citizens came later).
92 years later, in the country that scarified nearly 500,000 of its citizens to defeat Hitler, a man idolized by almost exactly the same minority percentage of the voting population has also vowed to use the power of the presidency to seek revenge, retaliation, and retribution against those he considers his political enemies. At the same time, he told Time magazine and has repeatedly promised that immediately following his inauguration he will open detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.
Millions have visited Dachau since it opened as a memorial in 1965, determined that it must not be allowed to happen again.
But it is happening again. Historians analyzing the greatest global catastrophe of the 20th century observe that the Nazis could have been stopped in 1932 had major establishment figures not miscalculated that Hitler could be controlled, and had center-right and center politicians thrown their support behind a single opposition. Should Trump not be stopped, history will reserve its harshest judgment for non-MAGA Republican leaders who, through public endorsements of Harris, could have made it safe for conservatives of all stripes to cast the only moral, patriotic, and intelligent vote, but instead took the expedient, selfish, and cowardly route and stayed silent.