| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, May 2, 2018 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM | Boardroom and Library, 315 Bloor Street West, Boardoom |
Join author Benjamin Carter Hett for a lecture and Q&A with Professor Randall Hansen on his new book, Death of Democracy.
About the Book:
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time.
To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.
About the Author
Benjamin Carter Hett is a Canadian historian and the author of three previous books: Burning the Reichstag, Crossing Hitler, which was the winner of the 2007 Fraenkel Prize from the Wiener Library in London, and Death in the Tiergarten. He is a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and holds a PhD in history from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. He grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, and now lives in New York City. His books have been translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Slovenian, and Chinese.
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