Lessons from Nazi Germany: Safeguarding Western Democracy

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8. The most tragic part of being a German citizen under Nazi rule before World War II was that they had no idea what was going to happen. Nobody could have predicted how those events would have unfolded until they actually occurred. This is the biggest threat to Western democracy and what democratic societies can learn from. The German people saw a failing Weimar Republic and could only think that democracy had failed them, they had nowhere else to turn. It’s important for democratic societies to learn how to act in times of crisis, else they might find themselves experiencing the same fate as Germany. It’s easy for nations that boast freedom and democracy to believe that such a thing couldn’t happen in their country, however, even the most …show more content…

The failure of the Weimar Republic left the door wide open for the Nazi party to come in and take control. There was no respect or obedience for the Weimar Republic and anyone who promised to eliminate or change it would easily win over the people. Had this system of government provided stability and strong institutions (the backbone of a successful government) there would have been no desire for a takeover and any such attempts to destroy it would have been faced with opposition. This was not the case, and the Weimar Republic couldn’t meet the needs of the people; it couldn’t protect them economically, socially, or militarily. It was eventually succeeded by a government that promised to do those things, and accomplished quite a great deal of …show more content…

The most important oversight in Juan Cole’s article “Terrorism and the other Religions” is ignoring that there are different types of violence. Cole lumps the Holocaust with the deaths in World War I and terrorist acts committed by all religions. I see this as a disservice to the necessary distinction of the various different types of violence and different types of victims. I severely doubt that an innocent person brutally slaughtered in the Holocaust would like to be placed in the same statistic as a religious fanatic terrorist, or even Nazi soldier for that matter. To lump all of these acts of violence together is a gross misrepresentation of what killings are in the name of

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