Get ready for Trump's October Surprise.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder claims it's hardly beneath the president to burn the Reichstag—or at least its American equivalent.
To cement his political power, Hitler did that in February 1933.
Germany’s Weimar Constitution, written in 1919, after the nation's surrender in World War I, included Article 48, a clause that gave its president dictatorial powers in cases of national emergency.
By the early 1930s, the civil unrest triggered by the Depression had thrust Hitler's new "law and order" Nazi Party from obscurity to the second-most rank among Germany's 40 political parties.
While unable to reach the uppermost rank among the 40 parties—earning a full majority—by January 1933 the Nazis' strength was such that they could demand Hitler be installed as Germany's chancellor. He was.
As chancellor, Hitler immediately set out to make his the majority party. He announced that his largest rival, the Communist Party, was planning to attack public buildings.
On the night of February 27, a suspicious fire broke out in the Reichstag.
"This is a God-given signal,” Hitler told the president. “If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the Communists, then we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist.”
The president believed him, and the following morning invoked Article 48, abolishing free speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalizing wire tapping and censoring mail; suspending the autonomy of Germany's 22 states; and assigning all legislative power to the chancellor, Adolph Hitler.
That night, Hitler arrested and tortured 4,000 German citizens, mostly Communists.
Later that year, the German government tried, convicted and guillotined a jobless bricklayer and Communist Party member for setting the Reichstag Fire. But suppressed evidence indicates Hitler in fact arranged the blaze (Germany exonerated the wrongly convicted bricklayer 75 years after his execution).
Okay, I know what you're thinking: Trump is incapable of setting fires. But he's not incapable of blaming his enemies for doing so, as he did last month.
Beware the October Surprise.
