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The Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 and the rapid collapse of democracy hold us in their grip to the present day. In this talk, Thomas Weber, the editor of ‘Als die Demokratie starb’ (When Democracy Died) raises the question of whether we frequently draw the wrong lessons from the failure of interwar democracy and the triumph of fascism and thereby inadvertently fuel today’s crisis of democracy. He also addresses the question as to whether we are underestimating the danger posed by illiberal democracies. Are we turning a blind eye to the fact that National Socialism also saw itself as an illiberal democracy? And do countries in which democracy survived in 1933 hold better lessons than the Nazi rise to power for how we can create a more resilient democracy?
Thomas Weber is Professor of History and International Affairs as well as the founding Director of the Centre of Global Security and Governance at the University of Aberdeen. He also is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; an Associate Fellow of the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of Bonn; a Senior Associate of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto; and a Member of the Security History Network at Utrecht University. His expertise lies in European, international, and global political history from the 19th century to the present.