Description

A chilling chronicle of how Adolf Hitler overturned a constitutional democracy in less than eight weeks.

It took just 53 days – one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and forty minutes – from the moment Hitler became Chancellor on January 31, 1933 for him to transform the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich. And the minutes mattered.

In our era of astonishing far-right political gains, historian Timothy Ryback chillingly evokes the playbook by which Germany’s first constitutional democracy was disabled then dismantled.

Publisher Review

An utterly gripping and suspenseful account of how an elected leader can make use of a democracy to destroy a democracy — Margaret Talbot This book offers a powerfully written, blow-by-blow account of how German democracy was dismantled from within. It is a chilling reminder of democracy’s fragility -and how easily we can lose it at the hands of our elected leaders — Steven Levitsky, coauthor of HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE Incisive…a trenchant depiction of democracy as most vulnerable when its stewards are insufficiently committed * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * A sobering study of how democracies can become dictatorships overnight * Kirkus Reviews * Timothy Ryback’s riveting account, at once careful and brisk, dramatically reminds today’s friends of democracy how fragile self-rule can become – and why defending it should be the first priority of all who believe in freedom, equality and justice — E. J. Dionne Jr., author of OUR DIVIDED POLITICAL HEART The definitive anatomy of democratic collapse and a timely warning. Having watched Viktor Orban methodically use the machinery of law to hollow out the rule of law in Hungary, I found Ryback’s account viscerally familiar. 53 Days proves that our democracies are most endangered when constitutions, courts, and institutions are turned against the very freedoms they were designed to protect — David Koranyi, President, Action for Democracy Timothy Ryback tells a grippingly important tale. His meticulous detailing of the dramatic days before Hitler assumed power make for salutary reading in our times — Philippe Sands, on TAKEOVER How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but we think too little about how it began. This admirable account shows us how fragile and avoidable were those beginnings and helps us to reflect upon our own predicament — Timothy Snyder, on TAKEOVER Riveting … Reading Timothy Ryback’s excellent and forensic account of the complicated events in German politics in the six-month run-up to that fateful moment, I found myself willing the end result not to happen * Daily Mail, on TAKEOVER *