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It doesn’t require reading many pages of this faux-scholarship work to detect the author’s purpose. Contrary to what the author says in the introduction, his narrative does not depend on new gems emerging from historical archives. It depends rather on a deliberate attempt, disguised in mostly neutral prose, to convince the reader of the parallels between Hitler Germany and Trump America. Whatever one’s position on American politics today, such a parallel is unconvincing to anyone who has studied Hitler and the Weimar Republic in detail. The author states, for example, that one of Hitler’s purposes was to “make Germany great again.” True? Certainly. But why use those exact words? Even the title phrase, “death of democracy,” echoes the Washington Post’s ridiculous and meaningless banner, “democracy dies in darkness.” The author refuses to accept that in the end, the Weimar Republic was destroyed by the Great Depression that started on Wall Street. Absent that event, which almost overnight wrecked the German economy, the Nazi party and Hitler would have descended into obscurity. In some sense, American greed for the quick buck is the most direct cause of national socialism’s triumph. There are many fine analyses available on the rise of Hitler and the dissolution of the Weimar Republic. This book is not one of them.