by Keith Grint and David L. Collinson
- 24 January 2026
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A century ago, in 1926, Hitler published the second volume of Mein Kampf and was confirmed as the supreme leader of the Nazi Party. That same year Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. It traced American and British expatriates in Paris and Barcelona as they recovered from their experiences in the First World War. In the book Bill asks Mike,
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The idea that elected authoritarian regimes can be resisted by democratic forces often relies on assumptions about the linear progression of the corrosive attacks upon the constitution. Since the undermining of liberties and safeguards is itself limited by that same constitution, the resistance of liberal and progressive forces has time to understand the problem and institute forms of resistance to hold the government to account. But this assumes that the regime is intent on keeping within the constitution and is led by individuals who operate according to conventional norms of political behaviour.
What if the “gradually” becomes “suddenly” and what if the leader is both Machiavellian and concerned only or primarily with amassing power and deploying it to destroy the constitution or reframe it such that it becomes unrecognizable? What if Plato was right and democracy inevitably leads to the rule of charismatic but incompetent fools who lie to voters just to secure their election and then despoil the country for their own benefit? Or, as Tolkien suggested, what if an orc gets to wear the ring of power, for surely, we would all be enslaved in those circumstances?
Possibly, except that democracy — what Churchill called “the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried” (Langworth, 2008, p. 574) — has an inbuilt resilience to authoritarians if, and only if, its supporters organize themselves sufficiently, and sufficiently quickly, to see off the authoritarian threat. For that to happen we need to understand the likely sequence of events when wannabe dictators try to exploit the ambiguities and tensions of democracy and to replace this form of governance with autocratic forms of leadership. How does leaders’ exercise of power and control, as well as citizens’ conformity, compliance, and resistance unfold in the context of these contradictory dynamics? Just as accidents often occur through an unintended sequence of events, safeguarding democracy requires recognizing where and when to place roadblocks and interrupt dangerous patterns before an accident occurs.
The political scientist, Larry Bartels (2023), has argued that democracies tend to erode from the top. Rather than military coups or revolutionary movements, it is populist leaders winning elections and then subverting from within the institutions of democracy (e.g., the courts, the press, free elections) that undermine contemporary democratic societies, he contends. To prevent the rise of dictators we therefore need to examine and understand the authoritarian playbook. In what follows we re-examine and decant the history of Hitler and the Nazi party from 1933 to 1945. Drawing on some of the key moments in this very dark history, we highlight “25 steps” taken by Hitler and the Nazis in establishing their autocratic regime of terror, and in effectively producing mass conformity and compliance while suppressing resistance and dissent.
For those seeking to resist dictatorship, the critical point, then, is to recognize whether we in the West are now in a similar situation to Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The Nazi Authoritarian Playbook
- After a failed coup, sanctify the “martyrs.”
- Take power legitimately through democratic elections, then use the power of the state to overturn the constitution as quickly as possible, but only when circumstances are “ripe” and your enemies are unprepared.
- Play the victim and blame failures on previous governments, minorities, and foreigners. Then use these narratives of victim and blame to justify and legitimize brutal acts of oppression that crush resistance, reinforcing the leader’s image and reputation as a “strongman.”
- Use disparaging language to describe all opponents, such as “vermin” and “blood contaminators,” to cement the loyalty of your followers by providing scapegoats for their situation and buttressing their status.
- Construct a dominant narrative appealing to an idealized past that emphasizes making the country proud again and highlighting a core national identity and culture that all citizens are expected to accept, embrace, and celebrate.
- Use state propaganda to reinforce loyalty and submission by regurgitating both divisive messages about “them” and cohesive messages about “us.”
- Replace all “disloyal” judges, civil servants, academics, media editors, journalists, military, security, and police.
- Distract concerned citizens with a focus on resisters and scapegoats, who end up in detention camps.
- Ensure future electoral success by threatening and intimidating political opponents, banning other political parties, and through voter suppression, then abandon elections altogether.
- Criticize and then abandon formal allies as and when it suits you.
- Militarize society and recruit “auxiliary police” to “help out” with “lawlessness” caused by immigrants, so-called leftists and foreigners.
- Authorize the new police to use violence to arrest, detain, and imprison anyone in “protective custody” (any offense).
- Enhance the loyalty of the military by increasing its budget for offense and replacing dissenters with loyalists at the top.
- Seek to increase the size of the country and its resources by annexing or invading neighbors.
- Introduce oaths of loyalty for all public servants, teachers, judges, military, and police officers.
- Ban and burn books by “disloyal” authors.
- Censor all media and threaten and intimidate journalists, especially those who continue to question and challenge the leadership.
- Encourage people to spy on their neighbors, knowing that most people, most of the time, will comply (often in advance of any legislation or policy).
- Control women’s fertility and curtail their freedom.
- Control religion by turning various churches into a single state religion and disciplining recalcitrants.
- Turn the political party into a cult where loyalty is more important than truth
- Disparage the “weak,” reinforce patriarchy, masculinity, and violence.
- Seek out the conspirators (they are everywhere).
- Adopt a state of “permanent crisis” to legitimate abandoning the rule of law. This atmosphere of crisis generates widespread insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear that, in turn, helps to justify authoritarianism and the suppression of alternative voices.
- And when this all goes wrong, and it almost certainly will, blame anyone and everyone, but not yourself.
For those seeking to resist dictatorship, the critical point, then, is to recognize whether we in the West are now in a similar situation to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and if so, where we are in the cycle of events, whilst recognizing that history does not in any simple, mechanical, or causal way repeat itself and that we are not heading towards another Holocaust.
For the German resistance the “suddenly” moment arrived on the night of 27 February 1933, when the Reichstag was set on fire, either by van de Lubbe, a Dutch communist with a history of mental illness, or by the Nazis themselves. Either way, the opportunity provided by the “attack upon democracy” was realized the next day with the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State against “Communist acts of violence” which suspended individual liberty, free speech, press freedom, the right of assembly, and private communications. That began the elimination of German democracy and instigated the constitutional changes which delegitimized all forms of dissent. Of course, the USA has not, up to now, experienced a Reichstag moment, but the erosion of democracy and the rule of law seem to be well underway.
As James Vanderbilt’s new movie Nuremberg illustrates, there are fatal flaws and contradictions in the authoritarian playbook. One of them is overreaching yourself and prompting effective forms of resistance that cannot be overcome. Hitler’s catastrophic personal flaws included hubris, over confidence, and under competence. He never considered that invading Poland would provoke the British and French into action, and he never anticipated that invading the USSR would prove fatal. He was wrong on both counts, and it ended with the destruction of the Nazi regime and the Nuremberg trials.
Clearly, there are many important and substantial differences between the Nazi dictatorship and the contemporary forms of authoritarian populism that now characterize various Western countries (e.g., The Holocaust). However, there also seem to be some disturbing overlaps and similarities that are difficult to dismiss as mere historical coincidence. As an observation often ascribed to Mark Twain suggests, while history might not repeat itself, it does appear to rhyme. And in relation to authoritarianism history does appear to acquire new uniforms.
References
Bartels, L. (2023). Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe. Princeton University Press.
Hemingway, E. (1926). The Sun Also Rises. Simon & Schuster.
Langworth, R. M. (2008). Churchill by Himself: The Life, Times and Opinions of Winston Churchill in his own Words. Ebury Publishing.
Keith Grint is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. He has held Chairs at Cranfield University and Lancaster University and was Director of Research at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and Professorial Fellow of the Australian Institute of Police Management (AIPM). He is also a founding co-editor with David Collinson of the journal Leadership, and co-founder of the International Studying Leadership Conference. He received ILA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. His books include The Arts of Leadership (2000); Organizational Leadership (2005); Leadership: Limits and Possibilities (2005); Leadership, Management & Command: Rethinking D-Day (2008); Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (2010); and Mutiny and Leadership (2021).
David L. Collinson is Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organization at Lancaster University Management School. Previously at the Universities of Manchester, Warwick, St Andrews and South Florida, he is the Founding Co-Editor of the Leadership journal and Founding Co-Organizer of The International Studying Leadership Conference, both with Keith Grint. David’s publications focus on critical approaches to leadership, gender, management and organization. His primary research interests explore leadership & followership dialectics; power, identities & insecurities; gender, men & masculinities; resistance, dramaturgy & conformity and humor, positivity & Prozac leadership. His work has been published in leading journals including Organization Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Work, Employment & Society, Organization, Gender, Work & Organization, Leadership and Leadership Quarterly. Recent publications examine Critical Leadership Dialectics and Critical Perspectives on Leadership Communication. David is a past Chair of the International Leadership Association Legacy Committee and was awarded ILA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.
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Note: The image at the top of this blog was AI generated by the authors.
