Historian Benjamin Carter Hett, a professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, joins The Thought Project for a timely discussion of the rise of autocracy in America and its unsettling parallels to Europe in 1938. Hett is the author of The Death of Democracy, which examines Hitler’s rise to power and the fall of the Weimar Republic, and he brings his deep knowledge of history to analyze present politics.

As U.S. leadership shifts away from supporting Ukraine, echoing the West’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia before World War II, Hett explores the warning signs of democratic backsliding and the consequences of appeasing authoritarian regimes.

How does the erosion of democratic norms in the U.S. compare to the failures of the Weimar Republic? What lessons can history offer as NATO’s future hangs in the balance and American foreign policy changes course?

Listen to a compelling conversation on the fragility of democracy and the lessons of the past.

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