This article looks at the meeting that took place on January 30, 1933, which lead to the rise of hate and death.

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On January 30, 1933, at 10:45 am, in the Chancellery Building, Germany's leaders met to decide the future of their country. Each man is accompanied by fear. As a result, each was determined to end the Weimar Republic and establishing, as historian Peter Fritzsche writes in Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, an authoritarian government. Why? Because they feared the most influential and oldest party, the Social Democratic Party. And its Jewish leadership!

Germany's 84-year-old president Paul von Hindenburg, in his office at the Chancellery, waiting to hear the decision, sent his chief negotiator Joseph von Papen to confer with the right-wing German National People's Party and press tycoon Alfred Hugenberg and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party), Adolph Hitler. The loser of the 1932 elections, despite huge turn outs at his rallies that averaged 100,000 people, received only 30% of the vote to Hindenburg's 49.6%, writes Fritzsche. Yet, here was Hitler, without the experience of these seasoned politicians, deciding the fate of Germany. Here he was now the leader of the nation's largest party, thanks to an increase in street violence and thuggery, Hitler at least won the attention of those leaders at the table.

As Fritzsche writes, the three men were unified in their hatred of the socialists and the Communists, but Hugenberg was weary of the "loud" rabblerouser. Hugenberg held out while Papen supported his boss, a man Hitler despised.

It was Hitler's plan to replace Hindenburg, to end the Republic by removing its leader. If Hitler succeeds in gaining Hugenberg's trust and vote, writes Fritzsche, the Nazi Party would have time to "revise the constitution and put emergency powers in his own hands." He would have to convince Hugenberg that his plan represented the "'legal'" path to a "'total'" authoritarian solution that would once and for all do away with the Weimar Republic.

In fact, Fritzsche writes, Hitler's plan, "to dismantle the power of the presidency and consolidate the party's power, all without any constraint or arbitrary rule or revolutionary ambition," would do away with Hindenburg, Papen, and Hugenberg. He saw himself as a major Party leader on his way to becoming a dictator. The last thing on Hitler's mind was selecting individuals to serve in Hindenburg's cabinet! By the time Otto Meissner enters the room, Hugenberg has agreed to Hitler's plan.

Meissner, Hindenburg's chief of staff, reminds the men of the time. A quarter past eleven! Hindenburg is waiting! And time seemed to favor Hitler. As Fritzsche writes, "the conspirators walked up the stairs to Hindenburg's office, and at eleven thirty the president administered the oath of office to Adolf Hitler, who became Germany's new chancellor."

"Better Hitler than Weimar." And the rest, as they say, is history!

I read about the January 20, 1942, Wannsee Conference, attended by 15 members of the Nazis senior officers. The Conference was called by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich and one of the infamous participants was Adolf Eichmann, a man who, after the collapse of the Nazis reign in Germany, would suffer from amnesia at the Nuremberg Trials (1945-49). At the meeting, he certainly could recall the Jewish people, for the topic of for those attendees of the Wannsee Conference was to decide the fate of the Jews. The Jews would be rounded up and hunted down. Their destiny, the concentration camps where they would be cremated or gassed to death.

Hitler, possibly elsewhere in the Chancellery, isn't in attendance at this meeting. The topic has a long history. Longer than Nazism. Hitler's men had to come up with a solution to Europe's old problem: what to do with the Jewish people!

Fritzsche suggests that there could have been another outcome. What if the Catholic Center Party, the Social Democratic Party, the oldest party, Fritzsche points out, in Germany until 1932, and the Communists had attended the meeting? Together, the historian writes, these absent politicians "represented more Germans than the conspiratorial men in the room." What if they had attended the meeting at the Chancellery Building? What if opposition to fascism had come to the table?

After Hitler takes another seat at the Chancellery, democracy disappeared in weeks, Fritzsche writes, but this state of affairs had been visible in homes, in schools, on university campuses, and on street corners for months. Early on, writes Fritzsche, Hitler garnered the support of students and educators, intoxicated by Nazi propaganda. Hitler and Goebbels spoke at rallies, pointing to the times, dark and foreboding. Germany, on the brink of collapse, would do well to elect the odd-man-out among corrupt politicians, Hitler, who, in turn, would represent the "victims" of a government that recognizes the rights of enemies more than it does the rights of Aryans.

More and more Germans identified with Hitler's perspective, and more young people took to the streets, seeking to pick "political fights" with anyone who opposed that perspective. Many of them joined the ranks of paramilitary groups, such as "the Wandervogel, the Birmarckbund, the Tannernbergbund, and the Stahlhelm," and, in the streets, covered with "black, red and white imperial flags and even swastikas," they shouted, all hail to Hitler. The Nazi members and supporters were treated to more rallies! Membership in the Nazi Party reflected the willing embrace, for the most part, of Hitler and fascism.

It certainly was an embrace of hatred! As Fritzsche writes, hate exploded on the streets with little or no warning. When Hitler spoke of unifying Germany--"come over to us and unify the people"--he believed the audience understood too that only the "best" would be invited to unify German as one people. Only the "best" were Aryans. At one rally in 1930, when Hitler spoke to an "overflowing crows of 5,000 students," about the "best" to come in a unified Germany, one of the "best" in the crowd, writes Fritzsche, happened to be Albert Speer, the man who became Hitler's "personal architect." To be "best" is to hate so much that it becomes a pleasure to design buildings where human beings would be gassed or cremated!

In the streets, an embrace of Hitler was understood by his supporters as permission to openly express their hatred of Jews or socialists. When the socialists shouted, "'Red Front,'" Hitler's supporters would respond with, "'Jews, Drop Dead!'" It was not unusual for a passerby, Fritzsche writers, to hear the sparring of opposing perspectives in the streets using "lethal fighting words," such as "'fascism'" or "'terror'" or "'Drop Dead,'" directed at the "enemy." Whenever a Nazi official shouted the words, "Weimar Republic," the audience would cry out, "'Hang them up! Bust their asses!'"

Hitler's rallies generated an atmosphere where verbal abuse and physical violence was not only permissible but even applauded! With a familiar ring to our 21^st-century ears, Hitler announced himself as the one who will pursue retribution for all those who endured the "radical" experiment called democracy. This freedom to openly, freely hate was contagious. German citizens joined the Nazi Party determined to have Hitler protect them from the Jews and socialists. When he becomes Fuhrer, Hitler supports pro-active "amateur detectives" assisting the Nazi SS in the business of weeding out enemies of the Third Reich.

As Fritzsche writes, membership in the Nazis brownshirts grew from 800 in 1928 to over 2000 by the end of 1931 since many who rallied around Hitler recognized in the brownshirts "peaceful protesters" simply fighting to save their country from "dangerous enemies." The brownshirts, many Nazi members and supporters surmised, "struggled" just like them. Just like the Fuhrer himself! It was no surprise when Nazi propaganda could include citizen testimonies, in praise of the day these boasting citizens "found" Hitler.

When Hitler settles in his seat at the table on January 30, 1933, he has the support of citizens who, like him, will revel in the anti-democratic force of fascism. On the 101^st day of Hitler's reign as dictator, Nazis students, Fritzsche writes, set fire to Jews businesses and homes, and many participate in burning "antipatriotic books." The history books written during the "period of struggle," the historian continues, commemorated the Nazis and the victorious Aryan race.

In the 21^st century, embracing fascism is still a thing!

Here in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a 56-year-old white man, Jeffrey A. Kiddle, distributed anti-antisemitic flyers throughout the city in late 2021. All "littering citations" were dropped this year. Kiddle's flyers are protected by the First Amendment. Should it have surprised anyone when, on January 20, 2023, anti-Semitic flyers re-appeared on the southside of town? Police are "investigating" the matter.

In Memphis, January of this year, 2023, after beating a bloody and dying Tyre Nichols, officers propped him up against a squad car and laugh, laugh, laugh among themselves. We see them in the video, gesturing. Jive talking, as we used to say. Something in this scene of horror, entertained these five Black officers of the law.

In another video, we witness another black young man is punched and dragged to the floor by at least ten sheriff deputies and medical personal at Virginia's Central State Hospital. Irvo Otieno's hands and feet are shackled; nonetheless, he is held down. The pressure on his body, on his chest, is unrelenting. Eleven minutes pass, and Otieno is no longer moving. Asphyxiation, says the coroner.

And there is yet another unfortunate constant: a governor who wants his state free of any historical reference to US slavery. To race, that is, black people! He's envisioning himself in the Oval office, eviscerating the very mention of blacks, Jews, indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, socialists, Communists, LGBTQ--any racial, social, political, or cultural difference. All must pledge allegiance to the superiority of white Americans in his New World Order.

In the meantime, the wannabe dictator commences his own meetings with the powerful. And shortsighted!

Authors Bio:

Activist, writer, American Modern Literature, Cultural Theory, PhD.