How Dictators Come to Power in a Democracy | Jim Powell | Cato Institute

EXCERPTS:

"Hitler gave speeches appealing to those he called “starving billionaires” who had billions of paper marks but couldn’t afford a loaf of bread. Altogether, during the inflation, Hitler recruited some 50,000 Nazis and became a political force to reckon with. Economist Constantino Bresciani-Turroni called Hitler “the foster child of the inflation.”

"To be sure, he attempted a coup that failed (November 8, 1923), and he was imprisoned. But he retained his key followers and wrote his venomous memoir Mein Kampf that became the Nazi bible.