Let me tell you about a man who was moderate in his political views, cared about democracy, proposed breaking up old medieval estates so the former peasants could own their land for the first time in history, and believed strongly in compromise.
Read the section on Hindenburg’s second presidency from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg#Second_presidency
Hindenburg was not a bad man. He preached unity. He believed in institutions and in never making anyone angry. He did care about democracy. He just made some horrible mistakes. That is my impression of studying him as a political figure.
But the problem with Hindenburg is that while his intentions were good, he was not forceful enough to defend German democracy, and led his country into fascism, without being a fascist.
The real lesson of studying President Hindenburg is that when your ideology is to be moderate for the sake of being moderate, an undying belief that if you just position yourself at the center that you will be able to reach everyone, you will fail. The political approach of Hindenburg is called middle ground fallacy.
The problem with centrism is that centrism does not espouse any belief. It does not have any ideology about liberty, economics, justice, or anything of the sort. It is mere political expediency for expediency’s sake. It was Hindenburg’s unbreakable dedication to being a moderate that was just the final stroke leading Germany into Hitler’s bloody hands.
Hindenburg teaches us that passivity, moderation, and seeking unity are to fascism as gasoline is to fire.
This comes back to a fundamental core of politics that anyone with experience working on campaigns will learn quickly. Once you get offline and start talking to people they don’t care about how you are going to bring people together. They care about how you will solve problems. They care about what your end goal is.
Now compare Hindenburg to another German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Konrad Adenauer was not a “leftist” or even a social democrat. He was a member of the CDU, Germany’s center-right party. He had been a member of the Centre party before the Third Reich, which is the party which formed a coalition with Hitler after the disastrous election bringing that monster to power. There was a real risk that Adenauer could have been like Hindenburg, always leading trying to find the centre, always trying to make everyone happy, which as we found with Hindenburg makes nobody happy.
But Adenauer chose another path. He watched the Soviet Union conquer 9 democracies through military conquest in the few years before he became chancellor and he swore they would not conquer the rest of Germany. To further this aim of protecting his country he was a strong Atlanticist and a founder of NATO. He led the way, he didn’t follow the crowd. He sent reparation money to deported Jews in Israel against the wishes of the majority of Germans. The interesting thing about Adenauer is that while he stopped the prosecution of people who had jobs in the Nazi regime, instead he favored the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community and then the European Economic Community, the earliest foundations for the European Union.
From here we see a difference in approach between President Truman and Chancellor Adenauer. Truman favored a punitive approach against everyone who worked for the Nazi regime. Adenauer realized this was untenable and would not solve the fundamental problems which led to the rise of Nazism in the first place, so he focused on rebuilding the German welfare state and integrating Germany with the rest of what remained of Democratic Europe to make it impossible for a far-right movement to ever succeed in Germany or any other European democracy ever again.
Adenauer teaches us that in order to effectively snuff out fascism you need ethics, clear rules, passionate argument, strong institutions, and a deep understanding of the paradox of tolerance. Democracy can only work when citizens and our leaders fight for it.
Adenauer was proactive while Truman was reactive.
Adenauer was right, Truman was wrong.
So here we have three distinct approaches to protecting democracy.
- Hindenburg thought that the role of the President is to find the center ground to make every equally (un)happy.
- Truman believed in a reactive approach of prosecuting people after the fact.
- Adenauer believed in a proactive approach by building a system which would make it impossible for a fascist regime to start.
History has now made it very clear that of these three leaders, Adenauer was the greatest of the three.
But here’s the thing… Adenauer was not the greatest German chancellor of the 20th century. Adenauer was after all a member of die Zentrum in the Weimar Republic, the absolutely disgusting party which made a coalition with Hitler in 1933.
Willy Brandt was chancellor in the early 1970s and he was instrumental in forming fully functional health and education systems to ensure the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all German citizens. His Ostpolitik of talking with countries in Eastern Europe increased awareness in Soviet colonies that life was better in the west. He worked on strengthening and deepening the European Economic Community. Willy Brandt is the only German politician to have ever received the Nobel Peace Prize. Most importantly, his policies worked.
Helmut Schmidt was a great chancellor too who continued to build on the foundations of Adenauer and Brandt which led to the formation of the European Union. He was working in the background growing consensus for expansion during his 8 years in office.
This led to Helmut Kohl who signed the Schengen Agreement in 1985, oversaw the reunification of Germany, signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, at which point the European Union was born.
With Wiedervereinigung and the formation of the European Union in 1993 denazification was finally complete.
I’m sure Italy has a similar history.
The history of Germany from the formation of the Third Reich to the formation of the European Union shows us every type of leader. We have the ineffective Hindenburg with his pleas for unity. We have the totalitarian dictator and professional asshole Adolf Hitler committing genocide. But we also have politicians who learned from their history and built a system which prevents fascism from forming. It’s obvious how each of these worked out.
America needs to learn from the history of Germany in the 20th century when picking our leaders. Compromise and seeking out the center of the extremes does not work in maintaining democracy, which is why it is correctly labeled as a fallacy.
Instead of falling for easy to understand fallacies our leaders need to offer clear benchmarks and outline their end goals of their policy. Make it clear where they are heading toward, like Adenauer, Schmidt, Brandt, and Kohl. Build a strong foundation that can be built on in the future. Do not tempt radical extremist forces to lead you towards their fascist end goals. Build a system which is secure which makes it practically impossible for anti-democratic radicals to destroy your country. Make strong arguments in favor of democracy, stand up for your beliefs, and preach to the world that freedom is for everyone, which is the spirit of Ostpolitik.
German history clearly teaches us it is the only way to defeat fascism.