Timothy Ryback’s book, 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy, recounts how quickly Adolf Hitler destroyed Germany’s democratic system. Robert Kuttner uses that history to draw a terrifying comparison with Donald Trump, while arguing that Trump lacks Hitler’s shrewdness, discipline, and ruthless focus.

The Nazi Party lost seats in the November 1932 election. Yet Germany’s aged president, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933, with only three Nazis serving in his coalition cabinet.

By March 23, just 53 days later, a large majority of elected Reichstag members had voted to give Hitler full dictatorial powers. German democracy had been systematically murdered from within.

Kuttner argues that American democracy is more likely to survive, though perhaps barely, because Trump repeatedly sabotages his own grand designs. Where Hitler pursued power with savage focus, Trump has governed through narcissistic incoherence.

Trump came closest to that ruthless model on January 6, 2021, when he encouraged brownshirt style thugs to invade the Capitol and try to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election. Kuttner compares that assault to the Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933.

Hitler used the fire as a pretext to intensify emergency decrees, ban opposition parties, close newspapers, fire judges, and remove non Nazi state governments. Trump’s attempted coup, by contrast, became the high water mark of his coherent ruthlessness.

The American republic survived in large part because Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along. Hindenburg and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, however, flinched when confronted by Hitler and allowed him to proceed.

Ryback recounts that Hitler had banned several newspapers critical of his new government by February 6. Trump, rather pathetically by comparison, has played cat and mouse over which journalists receive access to the White House pressroom.

A week later, Hitler purged civil servants who had not sworn political loyalty to the regime. Trump instead unleashed Elon Musk to inflict random mayhem on federal agencies rather than systematically bending those institutions to his will.

Hitler placed fanatically efficient loyalists in crucial government positions. Trump appointed fringe figures such as RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth, producing abject loyalty while sacrificing competence and coherent policy.

Hitler also delivered what he had promised his supporters, including vicious antisemitism, gradual rearmament, public works, social benefits, and a return to full employment. At the same time, he waited before making his largest international moves.

Five years after taking office, Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938. In September 1938, he secured a diplomatic agreement from Neville Chamberlain permitting the annexation of German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia.

Trump, early in his term, impulsively launched a major war without a game plan and ended up trapped in a losing stalemate. Rather than avoiding needless and endless wars as promised, he provoked one, according to Kuttner’s assessment.

Germany’s unemployment rate declined from 26% in 1933 to 2% by 1938. Although a dictatorship offered no accurate public opinion polling, historians have concluded that Hitler could have won a free election in 1937 or 1938.

Trump has delivered the opposite of what he promised his followers, Kuttner argues. Instead of prosperity, he brought escalating inflation, while taking valued benefits away from his own constituents.

The contrast continues abroad and at home. Hitler restored Germany’s international power and united his base, while Trump has squandered America’s power, watched his base desert him, and subordinated policy priorities to impulsive vanity projects.

Absolute power eventually fed Hitler’s own delusions and overconfidence. Despite negotiating a nonaggression pact with the USSR in 1939 and having England on its knees by 1941, Hitler invaded Russia instead of an isolated Britain.

That decision caused the Nazi war machine to become bogged down and never recover. Hitler’s epic blunder cost him the war, his life, and reduced his promised Thousand Year Reich to only 12 years.

None of this comparison offers comfort. Before Hitler’s regime was destroyed, the war, the Holocaust, and the murder of other enemies of his Reich cost upwards of 60 million lives, including at least 40 million civilians.

Kuttner argues that democracy may endure long enough for Democrats to retake Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028. Even under that scenario, an increasingly deranged Trump would still have two more years in office, leaving other leaders to restrain him and America to hope its luck holds.