How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany The way the Nazis used “the politics of legality” to gain absolute power after a failed coup is an ominous lesson about the fragility of a republic. Getty; The Atlantic By Christopher R. Browning The Atlantic, October 8, 2022 The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came ..