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- I think the parent is most likely referring to the rise of the Nazi party in the Weimar Republic, specifically the eventual support of wealthy industrialists once they became a major political party after 1929 and the role of some of the same in that outcome in the first place. You could also include other conservative interests (Prussian aristocrats, monarchists, the Army, etc.), all of whom thought they could use and co-opt the Nazi Party for various aims without much difficulty. Papen was so confident that he and his conservative majority in the cabinet would be able to control Hitler as chancellor that he declared to worried associates that "within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far in the corner that he'll squeak." Power would, or so the rationalizations went, calm Hitler and force him to become a more traditional politician.
That said, I'd caution against putting too much emphasis on the possible parallels, even as there's a lot to learn by looking at them. That initial bargain--or rather, series of bargains--was made under very unique circumstances that aren't really present today. Industrialists saw the threat of the Great Depression (both in terms of the destruction of their wealth through purely economic means as well as the political consequences of the depression) and the possible rise of a communist German state as existential threats to themselves and their society. Richard J. Evans' The Coming of The Third Reich touches on the sheer terror over the possibility of a communist revolution a bit and how it influenced Weimar politics, given the example of the Russian Revolution of 1917: it meant not only confiscation of property, but also torture and death on a massive scale. The failed revolution in Hungary, and the White Terror that followed it, also made it explicitly clear that even failed revolutions would have immense levels of political violence. Labor unions and political parties associated with them were easy to associate with this; it helps that they weren't exactly predisposed towards them in the first place for a variety of social and financial reasons. The Nazis capitalized on (and pushed) the fear of communist revolution, both with the public and traditional conservative interests. There was also a sort of normalization of the presence of paramilitary activities and violence in Weimar and their use by political parties; if one was so inclined, it was apparently possible at the time to rationalize the Nazis as just another populist movement that wouldn't translate into lasting political power, and could even be co-opted. You also had a lot of nostalgia for the Bismarckian past and a very unhealthy democracy in the Weimar Republic; as such there wasn't much interest in defending democracy, such as it was, by the end. It seems as if everyone figured it could be replaced with something "better" in their eyes.
As for the industrialists and the rise of the Nazi Party, I'd suggest Diarmuid Jeffreys's Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine. It's not focused solely on the role of the firm in the Nazi's rise to power, but it covers it as part of a broader look at the company's history and what it eventually led to. Adam Tooze's excellent The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is somewhat related, with regards to the relationship between the Nazi Party and rearmament efforts and the Nazi process of Gleichschaltung, or coordination, through which the Nazis established control of "social, political, and cultural organizations...according to Nazi ideology and policy."[0] There are a few other books that might be of interest, but I can't think of them at the moment
- IG Farben and a cohort of allied corporations provided critical funding to the Nazi party in the early 1930s, without which it would have had little ability to gain political power, and IG Farben's immediate reward was guaranteed government contracts for fuel, and later profited as it moved in to take over mines and factories behind the advance of the German armies.
> "By the end of 1933, the Reich agreed to buy all of the Leuna factory's output that couldn't be sold on the market, Jeffreys says. That same year, Farben donated more than 4.5 million Reich marks to Nazi Party funds." (Diarmuid Jeffreys, "Hell's Cartel", 2008)"
https://web.archive.org/web/20201101015513/https://www.chica...
They were certainly the power behind the throne, and active participants as well.
