Benjamin Franklin, one of America's Founding Fathers, is quoted as saying, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Thus, democracy without liberty can be a dangerous game.
On November 8, 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. According to its Constitution, he was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. The USA was and is a democracy with liberty. Unfortunately, Germany at that same time was only a democracy, albeit one with a short life span.
On July 31, 1932, the German parliamentary election results pushed the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) into the lead among the numerous competing political parties with 37% of the vote. The Social Democratic Party was second with 22% while the Communist Party of Germany was third with 14%.
As the leader of the largest party in the Reichstag (parliament), Adolph Hitler was appointed German Chancellor on January 30, 1933. He called for new elections to take place on March 5, 1933, a day after Roosevelt took office and 85 years ago this month.
Four weeks after Hitler's appointment, but before the election, the Reichstag was set on fire, gutting most of the building. The next day, at the request of Chancellor Hitler, German President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree, an emergency measure which removed many civil liberties.
As a result of extreme campaign intimidation and violence by the Nazis, their party rose to 44% in the March election. The Social Democrats fell to 18% and the Communists to 12%. However, the Nazis still fell short of the two-thirds needed to pass the Enabling Act, which would give the Chancellor (Hitler) the power to govern at will for a period of four years.
In order to get the necessary parliamentary approval, Hitler ordered the arrest of the 81 Communist Party members of parliament under the Reichstag Fire Decree preventing them from voting. Once the Enabling Act was passed on March 24, 1933 and after President Hindenberg died on August 2, 1934, Hitler was able to dissolve the former German government and create his Third Reich in which he was the absolute supreme unquestioned dictator, the Fuhrer. He used democracy to achieve his ends. Beware!
For the record, the First Reich (kingdom or empire) was The Holy Roman Empire (962 AD to 1806). The Second Reich was the German Empire (1871 to 1918). Thankfully, the Third Reich ended in April of 1945, replaced by a democracy with liberty, the Federal Republic of Germany.
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