The First 100 Days of Fascist Germany: A New Online Project from Emory University

From Emory Uni­ver­si­ty comes The First 100 Days of Fas­cist Ger­many, an attempt to doc­u­ment online what hap­pened on each day–from Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 through May 9, 1933–when Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler of Ger­many.

As you can per­haps imag­ine, the moti­va­tion for the project isn’t entire­ly divorced from cur­rent events. The grad stu­dents behind The First 100 Days explain:

Dur­ing the high­ly con­tentious polit­i­cal cli­mate in this coun­try, the terms “fas­cism” and “Nazi Ger­many” have been tossed around quite freely by both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. As a response to this and in an effort to pro­vide some clar­i­ty of what fas­cism in Nazi Ger­many actu­al­ly looked like, we at the Emory Uni­ver­si­ty Ger­man Depart­ment ini­ti­at­ed a research project that aims to doc­u­ment the first 100 days of Nation­al Social­ism- from the day that Adolf Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler on Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 until May 9, 1933.

They con­tin­ue:

The gen­er­al plan for our project is that our research team will work its way through the 100 days, inves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the events of each day and then post­ing the find­ings on a dai­ly basis for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

As the dai­ly cal­en­dar shows, Hitler did­n’t waste a lot of time. By Day 51, Dachau–one of the first con­cen­tra­tion camps–opened and received its first pris­on­ers, notes Emory News. By Day 60, all new sto­ries crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment were cen­sored. And, by Day 88, the press expelled from its ranks all Marx­ists and Jews. That was just the begin­ning.

Mean­while, on Day 88 over here, Trump’s ini­tia­tives (some rel­a­tive­ly innocu­ous, some alarm­ing) have met civ­il, judi­cial and polit­i­cal resis­tance, or col­lapsed under their own weight. The con­cern of Jan­u­ary has giv­en way to com­e­dy in April. So far, it’s more farce than fas­cism:

But don’t get com­pla­cent, ter­ror might be the oper­a­tive word in May.

You can learn more about Emory’s his­tor­i­cal project here.

via John McMur­trie

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Stu­dents Launch a Free Course on How to Resist Trump

Hitler Was ‘Blitzed’ On Cocaine & Opi­ates Dur­ing World War II: Hear a Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view with Best-Sell­ing Author Nor­man Ohler

Fritz Lang Tells the Riv­et­ing Sto­ry of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Ger­many

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

The New York Times’ First Pro­file of Hitler: His Anti-Semi­tism Is Not as “Gen­uine or Vio­lent” as It Sounds (1922)

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da


by | Permalink | Comments (6) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (6)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Bill W. says:

    For some­one who is a ‘Nazi’, Trump sure likes Jews and Israel…so much so, he has a son-in-law and grand­chil­dren who are Jews! Speak­ing of fas­cism, and the first 100 days, remem­ber the ‘Change’ pro­pa­gan­da plas­tered every­where when Oba­ma came into office? Who knew that ‘change’ would NEVER hap­pen, and the Anoint­ed One would end up becom­ing our longest serv­ing wartime pres­i­dent (bomb­ing 7 coun­tries, while anti-war activists remained silent)? Then there was his abil­i­ty to divide, rather than unite…Trump is just clean­ing-up his pre­de­ces­sor’s left­over mess­es!

  • Susan Morgan says:

    Bill W., what’s wrong with you? Don’t you know that “fas­cist” is now defined as (1) any­one who dis­agrees with *left-wingers* and who there­fore deserves threats of vio­lence for hav­ing the gall to do so (See: Ann Coul­ter), (2) any­one who *oppos­es* fas­cism (which has been his­tor­i­cal­ly defined as unlim­it­ed state pow­er and/or state/business col­lu­sion), or (3) any­one who is “Repub­li­can” and does basi­cal­ly the same thing as “Democ­rats” who receive show­ers of bless­ings from places like “Open [sic] Cul­ture”?

  • Randy says:

    I think this makes very clear the shal­low­ness of equat­ing Trump with Hitler. He may be a nar­cis­sist, and real­ly stu­pid, but he’s no Hitler.

  • Joe F. says:

    Eas­i­ly the vilest post I have read in the years I have enjoyed Open Cul­ture.

  • Mike T. says:

    Bill W., lit­er­al­ly Hitler had a prob­lem with Jews. I believe the satire is due to Trumps prob­lem with His­pan­ics.

  • Maciek Janicki says:

    @Susan Mor­gan
    Not sure where you’ve come across those ‘his­tor­i­cal’ def­i­n­i­tions of fas­cism; per­haps you mean present mis­con­cep­tions? Far too many peo­ple con­flate it with Nazi state poli­cies. Fas­cism in essence was an overblown jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of ‘might makes right’, not sur­pris­ing­ly devel­oped by those in posi­tions of might. That was its only real under­ly­ing guid­ing prin­ci­ple (See: Ann Coul­ter).

    But besides that, that is poor form, Open Cul­ture. Trump may well have sucked what remain­ing hope I had for West­ern polit­i­cal cul­ture but to pair the Emory project with his 100 days is at best mis­guid­ed. If we had a his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly [sic] elect­ed leader bla­tant­ly sell­ing his own coun­try out to cor­po­rate inter­ests while with the oth­er side of his face claim­ing to be fight­ing the elites… there was that two-faced may­or in A Night­mare Before Christ­mas…

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.