I've been reading about Germany specifically on January 27, 28, and 29, 1933, during one of that country's perennial crises before Hitler was named chancellor.
If I'm reading this all correctly--and it is long, dull, tedious reading--Hindenburg was willing to name Hitler chancellor.....provided Hitler could show a workable coalition.
The Nazi party was the biggest party, but it wasn't big enough yet to run the whole deal.
With the left being pretty much in the wilderness (excepting the Nazis, of course), the Zentrum, the Center Party, had the second-largest slice of the pie.
The Zentrum was the Catholic party, but that's neither here nor there; just so one gets an idea what it was.
Most in this party were anti-Nazi, but there emerged some waiverers, some appeasers, some "moderates," the last days of January 1933.
The waiverers were generally seen as "reasonable," as those who wanted to get along, while there was much animosity (the press, the public) against the centrists who wanted no deal.
Well, the appeasers, a minority within their own party, got their way, and agreed to go along with the Nazis provided certain ironclad guarantees were made so as to insure religious freedom and institutions.
Which of course they were given, and so the Nazis came into power.
And immediately discarded all guarantees; by April 1933, three months later, the Zemtrum party no longer existed, and many of its members, the "moderates" and the "standers-against," in prison or even dead.
If I am reading all this history correctly, does anyone else see the similarity between the Nazis and the Democrats, between the "reasonable moderates" of the center, and Republicans wanting to get along with 0bama, and between the resisting centrists and Republicans who stand fast, insisting they don't want any part of it?
