Choosing Dictatorship? Democratic Culture and Its Enemies

Dear Guests, Friends and Colleagues of the House of the Wannsee Conference,

Yesterday marked the 82nd anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the official meeting –followed by a breakfast – which, unlike any other event, represents the state-organized and collaboratively-administrated mass murder of European Jews. 

The Wannsee Conference is an extreme example of the dangers inherent in a non-democratic regime. Today, we tend to consider this history of persecution from its endpoint and place the Wannsee Conference in the context of deportations and mass murder. Yet, there was a prehistory to the meeting at Wannsee, one of social and state-executed exclusion founded on the ideology of an ethnic community and antisemitism. It was pursued by a regime that suspended the principles of the rule of law, legal equality, freedom of opinion and pluralism within an atmosphere of terror and violence.

Such a meeting could not have taken place in this form in 1933. The Nazi regime’s agenda regarding the so-called “Jewish question,” which would develop and radicalize in the years that followed, had only just begun in 1933. The policies and underlying ideological attitude that made the persecution possible, however, had long been evident: through antisemitic propaganda, limits on individual freedoms, exclusion of people defined as Jews, persecution of political opponents and restrictions on cultural and social diversity.

To outline the road that led to Wannsee and the state administration’s role in organizing and implementing the mass murder, we need to go back even farther, to the years before 1933 when the Nazi regime had not yet been established. We need to examine and scrutinize the social processes and room for action that existed in the years between democracy and dictatorship. 

In examining how relevant this history is to our current situation, it is important to understand how the Nazi dictatorship was able to establish itself with the consent of large parts of the population and the participation of the functional elite from the state, culture and society. 

This also raises the question of where society stands today. Why are voters – both then and now – prepared to elect politicians who undermine the cornerstones of democracy, i.e., the rule of law, separation of powers, freedom of opinion, equality, and willing to openly declare this? How can we prevent democratic principles and the rule of law from being lightly cast aside and how can we encourage people not only to accept democracy as the basis of social coexistence but to actively support it?

How can an examination of the past help guide us in our actions today? 

Walter Benjamin evokes the image of the angel of history: An angel flies with frightful eyes when it sees the catastrophes of the past, “which keep piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurl it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise [...]. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future, to which his back is turned.”¹

We are like this angel, blind to what is still to come. We cannot see the end of social progress because we are still in the midst of it. We can turn our gaze to history, however, and look at the transition from democracy to dictatorship and ask whether this history is recurring today. We can be attentive to the present, draw lessons from the catastrophe, from the wreckage that keeps piling up. Yet, unlike Benjamin’s angel, who is swept away, we can take with us the call to act, to intervene, to get involved. 

The path to the present is not predetermined by looking at history, nor does history repeat itself; but it can warn us of dangers, of the consequences of developments that are never inevitable, and which can be shaped and altered.

What questions should we be asking as we review history? At the end of the Weimar Republic, which social groups and individuals were able to take a stand against the shifts in norms and the destruction of democratic principles? Did they use existing opportunities to act? When did people begin to realize that the National Socialists were not just another far-right political party, but rather a party whose main goal was to abolish the entire democratic system? 

As early as 1933, Erich Kästner wrote, “All the mischief that happens is not only the fault of those who do it, but also of those who do not prevent it.”² Germany’s ruling elites brought themselves into line with the party in many areas, even before they were forced to do so. The shift in attitude from a democratic and pluralistic society to authoritarian and one-dimensional black-and-white thinking had begun long before it was visible in society and translated into political power.

The historian Michael Wildt writes that antisemitism at the University of Tübingen “had been so effective even before the National Socialists took power that the university proudly announced that only two percent of the university’s instructors had to be dismissed in the spring of 1933, which was far fewer than at any other university. [...] By 1931, there were no longer any Jewish professors at the University of Tübingen. The professors at Tübingen appear to have decided quite early to appoint or promote as few Jewish professors as possible.”³

After the Nazis came to power, students at the Faculty of Law at Heidelberg University engaged in “violent riots and loud protests” which targeted the famous Romance philologist Ernst Levy. In light of the student agitation, Levy, who was scheduled to serve as dean for a year in the winter semester of 1932, was unable to carry out his duties and resigned from the deanship. He emigrated to the USA in 1936 and never returned to Germany.

The legal scholar and historian Klaus-Peter Schröder, who years later also worked at the Faculty of Law at Heidelberg University, writes: 

“Ultimately, the members of the Faculty of Law were powerless against the provocative actions and degrading defamations by the nationalist-antisemitic student body. They discussed tactics that could be employed against the student terror. But no one dared to openly stand up to the rightwing fervor.”⁴

People simply tolerated the disregard of democratic principles and the rule of law and instead accepted antisemitism as a cultural code and the use of violence to assert oneself. We see that the norms of the rule of law and democracy remain empty shells if they are not actively practiced. Democracy was not resilient enough to withstand National Socialism, despite appearances: only eleven years earlier, German society had been shaken by the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, who was shot and killed by members of the far-right organization Consul when he was on his way to the Foreign Office on June 24, 1922. This murder triggered a political upheaval in the Weimar Republic. A million people took to the streets to attend the funeral, while hundreds of thousands demonstrated in cities throughout Germany. How could a society that had been so deeply shaken by a political murder in 1922 abandon democracy so quickly and willfully eleven years later and surrender itself to a dictatorial, antisemitic and openly terrorist regime?

In 1939, Raimund Pretzel, writing from England under the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, commented on the 1933 Nazi takeover: “There are few things as comical as the aloof, superior calm with which we, I and my kind, watched the Nazi revolution unfurl in Germany, as if from a theater box – a curtain that was aimed precisely at removing us from the world.”⁵

Sebastian Haffner had been working at the time as a legal trainee at the Berlin Court of Appeals. Later, as a lawyer, he reflected on the pivotal year of 1933: “What is a revolution?” he asks and answers: “Constitutional lawyers define it as a change of constitution by means not foreseen therein. By this definition, the Nazi ‘revolution’ of March 1933 was not a revolution. Everything went strictly ‘by the book,’ using means that were permitted by the constitution.”⁶

The National Socialists exploited the democratic institutions of the Weimar Republic to establish their power. They abused the existing legal and political structures to dismantle and destroy the democratic system from within and ultimately establish a fascist regime. 

Those who are democratically elected are not compelled to abide by democratic rules.

When does democracy begin to slide into dictatorship? Is there a point at which the collapse can be prevented, or are we unable to recognize a dictatorship? 

In 2024, there is growing concern that our democracy is in danger (again). In September, new elections will be held for the state parliaments in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. In all three states, the AfD is by far the strongest force in the polls, with 34 to 36% in Thuringia and Saxony. 

According to a study of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation from September 2023, the center of German society is increasingly susceptible to extremist and anti-democratic attitudes. One in twelve people in Germany now shares a rightwing extremist view of the world. Another 20 percent are not clearly aligned with democracy.

The current survey shows increases in all indicators used by the experts to measure rightwing extremist attitudes. These include national chauvinist views, the trivialization of Nazi crimes, xenophobia, antisemitism and social Darwinist attitudes that differentiate between so-called “worthy” and “unworthy” lives. Anti-democratic attitudes, extreme rightwing world views and authoritarian mentalities have reached mainstream society.

According to the study, “There is the risk that parts of society’s center will distance themselves from the norm of democratic conflict resolution, from democracy itself; either to maintain self-interests and identities, or in the hope of gaining influence in a society that is increasingly dictated by privilege and national origin. Such search movements become more obvious when crises challenge society in a particular way [...]. Crises and conflicts not only demand crisis regulation and increased pressure on politics and social institutions; they also demand that one take a position.”⁷

In times of crisis such as the one we now are experiencing, voting for authoritarian and anti-democratic parties appears to be a real option for many people. 

These attitudes and values, however, can also be found beyond the political arena, often in connection with the reluctant responses of government authorities and civil society. There are many examples of this and our sample is not intended to be representative:

Today, we have rightwing groups in schools spreading fear and terror. We also have rightwing parents calling for the dismissal of people who want our democracy protected. Official bodies often respond with ambiguous “on the one hand, but on the other hand” statements when what we need is clarity. 

In Brandenburg, the civil servant status of a rightwing prospective primary school teacher was revoked. If a rightwing populist or even a rightwing extremist education minister is appointed following the next election in Brandenburg, things might look very different.

And how resilient is the education sector, the field in which we, as a memorial and educational center, are deeply involved? What about the justice system, where a rightwing populist public prosecutor is still allowed to question the boundaries of democratic coexistence? 

How do the institutions in a robust democracy react to the attempts – which were dismissed as mere thought experiments – by lawyers from the rightwing populist milieu who use laws to abolish constitutional principles, especially to weaken legal equality. The connection between current nationalist thinking and historic National Socialist ideas is clear here. The Nuremberg Laws distinguished between people with so-called “German-blood” and Jews. While the former were granted full rights as citizens of the Reich, the rights of Jews were limited. 

Rightwing populists are increasingly making their voices heard in the media. Skilled in the use of rhetoric, they take advantage of the liberty they are granted to spread their propaganda, thereby shifting the discourse and expanding what can be said. The journalists who engage them often fail to assert the importance of democratic coexistence or to expose the authoritarian, anti-democratic and even openly fascist tendencies cloaked in their statements. These anti-democratic attitudes are also demonstrated by the efforts to exclude journalists from reporting openly on party conferences. Rightwing authoritarians are calling into question the legitimacy of public broadcasting as an institution. We know from history as well as from the current situation in other European countries what this means: the existence of the free press as a whole is at stake. 

Authoritarian, exclusionary and violent tendencies are not limited to the rightwing extremist spectrum. They also come from milieus that identify as left-wing, or even as enlightened. In particular since October 7, we have witnessed an open expression of antisemitism that was previously unthinkable.

Antisemitic actions veiled as “art performances” or promoted as freedom of opinion were carried out at universities in Berlin. There were also attacks on Jewish students. University institutions are reluctant to respond to these incidents, and some of the views harbored by professors remain ambiguous. (The reminder that things are not much better at American elite universities is not reassuring. It is actually an indication that things need to change everywhere in the academic world.) I remind you again of the Heidelberg professors mentioned in the beginning who were powerless to respond to the National Socialist students and their violent activism in the early 1930s. 

The model of authoritarian, intolerant coexistence has evidently asserted itself in society.

Today’s rightwing authoritarian parties and movements are focused on taking over and dominating the social arena beyond the political sphere and ultimately translating this into political power in elections. 

They assume that many people will vote for their parties even if they do not support every single goal. The true aim of these parties, something they express quite openly, is to abolish the current democratic system. It appears that the people who vote for them are prepared to accept this. 

And here, too, it helps to return to the question that we are repeatedly confronted with at the historical site where we work: Did the Germans want the Holocaust? No, we do not believe that all Germans wanted the Holocaust, but they wanted the National Socialist regime and they were prepared to accept the persecution of Jews to this end.  

We are not at a point where these kind of horror scenarios seem realistic. Still, we need to pay attention to the warning signs that our democratic coexistence is under threat. Allow me to quote the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang. 

On the German news program “Tagesthemen” in August 2023, Haldenwang described the degree to which the AfD’s incitement against minorities meets the criteria of unconstitutionality as determined by the Constitutional Court. He then added: “We really need to look back at history. The Weimar Republic failed because a party used democratic means of elections to abolish this democracy. Furthermore, it was an extreme rightwing party that led Germany into the abyss, set the world on fire and caused the death of six million Jews.”⁸

In an interview with the ARD political magazine “Kontraste” in early January 2024, Haldenwang also spoke about the passivity of large sections of German society: “People are very comfortable in their private lives and not sufficiently aware of how serious the threats to our democracy have become.”⁹

Last week’s revelations by the Correctiv media outlet demonstrated just how threatened our democracy really is, how far the ideas of far-right ideologues go and how widespread the mentality that allows for these ideologies has once again become (or perhaps continues to be?).

But today, at our anniversary meeting, we do not want to merely point out the threat posed by the enemies of democratic culture. We also wish to discuss what we can do about it and where we can take action. What is the situation in the areas of education and culture, in the judiciary and the media? What role does remembrance culture play in the democratic institutions of a diverse society?