ABSTRACT
The openness of democracy’s “information markets” was a great natural advantage for Adolf Hitler’s demagogic abilities, and he played upon it to the hilt. The period from Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 and the outbreak of the War in 1939 was one which illustrated all the less attractive features of democratic political behaviour outside Germany: confusion, weakness, self-indulgence, and myopia. It was an era which showed the inability of the world democracies to diagnose the menace of Hitlerism correctly and develop policies to thwart the danger of Nazi expansionism. The positions of other world democratic states were even more “scattered” with many, like Sweden and Switzerland, looking toward “neutrality” as a way of saving themselves from Hitler’s prospective predation. The United States, with its democratic public opinion, continued on a course which was grossly insufficient to forestall a Nazi victory.
