He's not wrong...he just didn't tell the whole story - or even a fair part of it: Germany, and the principalities that formed it before unification at the beginning of 1871 - January 18, for the hard-core geeks - had been producing cultural and philosophical artifacts for centuries.
Its first form of unified government, however, was a monarchy.
Germany had little historical direct experience with democracy until after WWI.
A note: Germany did NOT start that war - and anyone who wants to argue that point with me, bring citations...and head protection - but was rather pulled in by treaty.
The nations of the Entente were equally fucked via treaty.
(Don't take my word for it. Look up the crazy domino effect that started WWI for yourselves.)
"The Great War" was no tame or romantic event where enemy soldiers treated each other by some set of civil rules; it was a war - a terrible nightmarish clusterfuck wherein older commanders were still wedded to 19th Century battle tactics that allowed 20th Century military tech to cut through soldiers on both sides like some terrifying scythe.
Soldiers would at one point be fighting their way across a gauntlet of mud, pits, barbed wire, shell fire, and sniper fire.
One moment they might be firing long guns or pistols or firing from machine gun nests.
In another moment, they'd be forced to route around themselves with rifle butts, spades, trench clubs, rocks, metal bits, or whatever the hell else they could get their hands on.
All sides. All the same. All quiet for seconds, minutes, hours...and then all hell would break loose all at once everywhere.
Whistles. Ladders. Screams. Mad running. Men blown apart. Men buried alive. Men shot through and through. Men caught in the wire. Men hacking their lungs out who weren't fast enough with their masks. Men with their heads smashed in by clubs.
Men burned alive.
...all while trying to adapt as quickly as possible to a new and unbelievably terrifying form of warfare.
When the war ended, the victors held a "peace conference" from which Germany was exluded - although the nation was still bound by treaty to pay the burden of reparations for a war a lot of countries bore some responsibility for starting.
THAT was when and how the Weimar Republic, Gernany's first democracy, formed.
Not a very auspicious beginning.
While America was enjoying the roaring '20s, Germany was struggling not only with French incursion but with an unemployment rate (which covered able-bodied men and ignored those with even marginal jobs) that was nearly 50% by 1932.
Germany, you see, had been hit with not one but two catastrophic economic crashes - the second, far-reaching one, became known as the Great Depression because so many in the world had suffered from it. (In 1924, the US made a good-faith effort to bolster the failing economy in Germany, but when '29 hit, that ended.)
Weimar had a multiparty system wherein the strongest minority challenger could 'win' an election merely by accruing more votes that competitors. (It's actually not a bad system; I prefer it greatly to the two-party system in the US. Sorry, America,)
Like all good things, however, that system could be abused.
There were FIVE elections in 1932 and Hitler did win, after a fashion. It was a complicated set up for a complicated time. Hitler and his first set of goons, the SA, worked hard to consolidate his power.
Meanwhile, on the streets of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout Germany people discussed not Hitler's hatred for the Jews (which a lot of people ignored or considered an aberration and not likely to impact his governance).
Some few could sense what was coming and warned their friends, to no avail. (Sound familiar? The people who saw Hitler's party for what it vwas had taken *all* his rhetoric seriously and not just the parts they favoured. They knew what was coming because careful listeners recognised he'd already told them...as far back as in 1924, in fact.)
The majority were more interested in those of his election promises related to job creation, stronger infrastructure, far greater industrialization, rearmament and national security. (And, God help us, he kept those promises...including the ones his electorate conveniently ignored.)
For those concerned that these changes would turn Germany into an industrial wasteland, Hitler and his people also expressed an interest in preserving the environment as well as in reclamation projects that were to take place after specific industries closed or moved on.
There was nothing "soothing" about Hitler's promises - considering that one leg of his platform was that NSDAP would no longer recognise the Treaty of Versailles as binding and would thus rearm while taking military action against the French presence in the Ruhr especially.
The situation was never simple, and I am personally tired of the canard about how if Hitler were for something, such as ecological protection, then such a plan must have been related in some way to the Holocaust.
Burning people is not good for the fucking environment. Birkenau reeked for kilometers. (((Fuck off!)))
Anyone who thinks even for a femtosecond about the "argument" that if Hitler were for a thing, it has to be bad, should recognise it's bullshit.
That is where the OP failed, and he failed big.
Don't ever be so arrogant as to think what happened in Germany could never happen in any other advanced nation on Earth, because I assure you it can.
It really can happen anywhere, when people stop paying attention to facts and only listen to those pundits and politicians who scream the loudest as a tactic to drown out legitimate opposition. (Ever see footage of Hitler giving a quiet speech? Me neither.)
