Democracies now know they are mortal. Italy, Germany, Spain, and France have experienced this painfully throughout the twentieth century.
How can one explain the fact that the greatest and the oldest democracies were able, in just a few weeks, sometimes in just a few days, to collapse? This is the question raised in Jean-Claude Hazera’s new book.
In is in the dark years between the two World Wars that the answers can be found. How did it all begin? What are the origins of the decline of democracies?
Many have put forth economic causes, inflation, recession, and joblessness. But that doesn’t explain everything: in fact, how is it that the United States, affected as greatly by the economic crisis as Germany, escaped fascism?
Presenting archival documents, memoirs, and personal testimony, this book is an original and disturbing account of that turbulent interwar period, but it might also serve to shed unique light on the dangers confronting our modern democracies.