A lot of Trump/MAGA vs Hitler/NAZI comparisons are out there, increasingly focusing on very real parallels between mass deportation based on racial ideology and Jewish persecution/genocide, along with the creation of a massive prison/concentration camp complex across not only America, but extending into other nations.
While these comparisons are both accurate and useful to serve as recruiting tools for civil resistance, it's critical not to neglect the most important parallel between the United States under the second Trump administration and Germany once Hitler became first chancellor and then fuhrer, which is to say the process by which the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic was rapidly converted into the textbook example of the modern police state.
In order to examine this process, I wanted to go back to a description of the creation of the German police state that could not possibly be tied to the politics of today. What I used is Professor Brian Chapman's book "Police State," published as part of MacMillan's series "Key Concepts in Political Science" in 1970. That's right: Chapman's book even predates Watergate and the subsequent emergence of President Nixon's abuses. Chapman cannot be accused of presentism in his accounting of the key factors of the establishment of the Nazi police state because he was writing 55 years ago (and in the UK, as a matter of fact).
Chapman's work has long been respected for its summary of how police roles in government emerged in early modern Europe up to the development of the first "modern police state" in Nazi Germany. You can download a copy of the book's second printing (1971) from Anna's Archive.
What follows is an abridgment of Chapman's Chapter Five, "The Modern Police State," into which I have interwoven comparative items from today's press and scholarly works to show the item by item parallels. Some items under the Trump administration have already been achieved, others are clearly under way.
The correlations between Chapman's work on the elements of the modern police state and the Trump administration policies driven out of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 are so close to being identical that they make it quite clear that the Heritage authors were either familiar with Chapman's work or the legacy of scholarship on -- effectively -- "how to create your own police state" and that we are looking at a conscious plan to emulate that process in America today.
A plan that has already moved through the foundational stage and is well into what could be called "implementation and consolidation."
The Brennan Center for Justice makes this case quite clearly in laying out the ten primary objectives set up by Project 2025 for the US Department of Justice and federal law enforcement:
- Eroding the DOJ's independence from the political control of the White House;
- Initiating political motivate prosecutions and investigations
- Installing party loyalists rather than law enforcement professionals in all key positions
- Protecting all party loyalists from prosecution
- Dramatically expanding the use of the Death Penalty
- Actively criminalizing abortion
- Extensively expanding federal control over local law enforcement
- Charging local prosecutors who do not follow new federal objectives
- Increasing federal law enforcement presence across the nation
- Removing existing federal oversight mandates protecting civil rights from state and local law enforcement agencies
The major constitutional changes which the National Socialist regime introduced after its accession to power in 1933 were the abolition of the main features of liberal democracy. Political parties were banned …
[NOTE: “Congressional Democrats were too consumed by their own hatred of President Trump, refusing to show support for lowering taxes, fighting childhood cancer, capturing terrorists, protecting women and girls in sports, or law and order,” The White House.https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/democrats-showed-whose-side-theyre-on-and-its-not-the-american-people/ ] …
… the press was placed under close censorship;
[NOTE: “Taken together though, these signs should be appreciated for what they are: a concerted push to align the U.S. information ecosystem with Trump’s entrenched view that the independent media is “truly the enemy of the people,” and that it must be replaced with information sources aligned with his personal views and under the control of himself and his allies,” Just Security, https://www.justsecurity.org/107377/trump-control-us-media-information/ ] …
… the semi-federal nature of government was replaced by an extreme form of political, and later administrative, centralization;
[NOTE: “Trump is using the multiple levers that a president commands both to neuter institutions he has scorned and reward others that align with his worldview” NBC News,https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-quickly-works-consolidate-power-muzzle-dissenting-voices-rcna197766 ] …
…trade unions were placed under official party control;
[NOTE: “President Trump signed an executive order late Thursday limiting numerous agency employees from unionizing and instructing the government to stop engaging in any collective bargaining,” The Hill,https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5218975-trump-administration-moves-to-end-union-rights-for-many-federal-workers/ ] …
…the army was strengthened …
[NOTE: “Despite deep cuts across almost all government areas, defense saw a significant increase (in President Trump’s FY 2026 budget), with the discretionary base budget receiving a potential 13.4% uplift to USD1.01 trillion, up from an enacted budget of USD892.6 bn the year before,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/05/president-trumps-fy2026-defence-budget-continuing-priorities-new-missions/ ] …
… and the educational system and youth movements used to foster civic virtues rather than cultural values.
[NOTE: “Buried in the flurry of President Trump’s Executive Orders is one that has been largely ignored, despite being potentially the most far-reaching of these presidential acts. Titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” this diktat lays bare Trump’s intention to roll back the gains that have been made over the last half century by historians working to present a more accurate portrait of American and world history. Trump calls these efforts “anti-American, subversive, harmful and false,” and demands instead that schools devote themselves to “patriotic education” that will “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation”—in other words, to teach the kind of history we learned three generations ago,” Arab-American Institute, https://www.aaiusa.org/library/trumps-war-on-history-and-education ] …
All these changes were classic steps in the creation of an authoritarian state, and they were justified on traditional grounds: improvement, protection, welfare, mobilization, modernization and development.
The National Socialist philosophy had, of course, its own special definitions of these terms, as all ideologies have; in particular it included racial origins in its definition of political dissent, and the means by which political dissent was eliminated consequently finally included genocide.
[NOTE: “After years of being branded a racist for his inflammatory comments and actions, Trump and some of his allies are attempting to turn that label back on their critics. In the process, they have wielded their own definition of racism, one that disregards the country’s history of racial exclusion that gives White people a monopoly on power and wealth. To make America more equitable, they argue, everyone must be treated equally and, therefore, White men must not in any way be disadvantaged,” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/05/trump-redefine-racism/ ] …
The constitutional changes necessary to transform Germany from a liberal democracy into an authoritarian regime were in practice remarkably simple. First, Hitler turned the Weimar constitution against itself. As with most constitutions it contained provision for reserve powers. Article 48 gave the federal minister of the interior general responsibility for the over-all supervision of law and order in the country. This was used to install Reich commissioners in all the Lander in which the National Socialist party had no legislative majority. This step effectively introduced political centralization.
[NOTE: "is edging closer than ever to invoking the Insurrection Act, driven by a vision of executive power free from the guardrails, governors and generals who stifled him in 2020. The Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the deployment of U.S. troops to quell domestic unrest, is among the most extreme emergency powers available to a sitting president,” AXIOS, https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/los-angeles-protests-trump-insurrection-act ] …
Next, a permanent state of emergency was introduced which would provide a legal basis for any subsequent institutional or juridical changes. The Reichstag fire furnished the pretext for promulgating the famous 'Ordinance for the Protection of the People and the State' on February 28, 1933, and this became the effective constitutional basis for Hitler's future authority. … It enabled Hitler, as head of state, to by-pass the normal legal processes whenever he wished to do so while ostensibly remaining within the confines of the law. …
[NOTE: “The (Alien Enemies Act) law has remained largely the same since its passage in 1798 and permits the president to apprehend, restrain, and remove noncitizens during a “declared war” or if the U.S. faces an “invasion or predatory incursion” by another country or foreign government. … Never before has a president invoked the law during times of peace to deny immigrants their right to due process … without review by a court.” ACLU Arkansas, https://www.acluarkansas.org/en/news/trump-invokes-alien-enemies-act-carry-out-mass-deportations-explained ] …
The use of reserve constitutional powers and the introduction of a permanent state of emergency have become the common means for introducing authoritarian systems of government. Hitler, however, added a third constitutional innovation, one which can only be used by charismatic leaders. He invented an extra-constitutional source of power for himself. As in Augustan Rome, Hitler, as Fiihrer, laid claim to an authority vested in him by sources other than the legitimate powers of his formal office as head of state. His supremacy over the state machinery of government was properly based on the constitutional doctrine of the ordering of office and the legality of succession. The established authorities of the state then had a duty to obey within the competence of their official positions.
[NOTE: “Trump’s expansive vision of the presidency is anchored in the misguided theory that Article II of the Constitution gives presidents virtually unchecked authority and relegates Congress (Article I) and the judiciary (Article III) to lesser branches of the federal government. Because presidents are popularly elected by voters across the nation, under this Article II theory, they enjoy virtually unchecked constitutional authority to accomplish their policy objectives and effectuate laws, and neither Congress nor the courts can unnecessarily impede them.” Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-first-100-days-creating-an-imperial-presidency-that-harms-americans/ ] …
Hitler added to this the claim to a peculiar type of personal sanctity which stemmed from his supposedly unique position as the embodiment of the German people.
[NOTE: “New York University School of Law professor Noah Rosenblum told Democracy Docket that Trump’s idea of executive power is in many ways an expansive version of the traditional understanding of the unitary executive theory. … “That is an appeal to democratic legitimacy, not the Constitution,” Rosenblum said. “He’s saying, ‘I was chosen by you to be the leader, so I’m in charge. I can do whatever I want.’“ Democracy Docket, https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-is-unitary-executive-theory-how-is-trump-using-it-to-push-his-agenda/ ] …
The state's authority, then, was simply used to give an official seal to the Fuhrer's non-official decrees. The police as well as the party greatly benefited from such an extra-constitutional source of authority. …
[NOTE: “On April 28, the Trump White House released an executive order titled “Strengthening And Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement To Pursue Criminals And Protect Innocent Citizens.” The seven sections outlined in the order aim to dismantle police accountability and empower police to act without consequence …” VERA, https://www.vera.org/newsroom/trump-administration-unleashes-abusive-policing-model-diminishing-police-accountability-and-compromising-public-safety ] …
The tone began to alter. Goering could threaten (July 24, I934) that 'should anyone in the future knowingly lift his hand against a member of the National Socialist party, or of the State, he should know, as of now, that he will promptly lose his life. It will be sufficient to show that he harbored the intention of committing the offense, or that, if he was acting under some compulsion, he had not been wholly effective, and had simply wounded when he had intended to kill.’
[NOTE: “A second Trump administration threatens to accelerate mass incarceration, further dehumanize people in our criminal legal system, engage in a death penalty “killing spree,” and reverse many reforms gained over the last two decade.” ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-the-criminal-legal-system ] …
A certain constitutional rectitude was, however, preserved. A sympathetic jurist added the gloss that 'the term terror must once again have its proper place in the Penal Codes.’ The laws relating to public order, economic offenses and political subversion were strengthened, making the judiciary formal if reluctant aides of the new state. The definition of a political offense was broadened to include anti-governmental and anti-party activities as well as the traditional anti-constitutional offenses.
[NOTE: “In April, Trump unveiled an executive order titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens” that hands sweeping new powers to police, guts hard-won reforms and punishes cities that refuse to fall in line. Under the facade of “law and order,” it shields law enforcement from accountability, expands their access to military weaponry, and treats organized dissent as a national security threat.” MR Online,https://mronline.org/2025/05/16/trumps-executive-order-promises-to-unleash-law-enforcement-and-expand-police-impunity/ ] …
These incursions into the judicial field continued into 1935. In Prussia it was held that the local administrative courts …’are not competent to examine the orders and affairs of the Secret Police’. Shortly afterwards another administrative court ruled that 'protective custody' was a form of arrest by the secret police made under emergency powers sufficient to exclude the courts from enquiring into the procedure. …
[NOTE: “In a sweeping ruling, the Supreme Court limited the ability of federal judges to block executive actions throughout the country through nationwide injunctions, greatly affecting how parties seek judicial relief going forward.” Democracy Docket, https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/supreme-court-nationwide-injunctions-trump-citizenship-executive-order/ ] …
HimmIer consolidated his various posts as political police commander of the various Lander by requiring the local police authorities to co-operate with the central political police bureau in Berlin, issuing for this purpose identical instructions ton all the forces under his command.
[NOTE: “Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, U.S. immigration officials have deputized a record number of local police to function as deportation agents,” ProPublica,https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-deportation-police-287g-program-expansion ] …
The final stage in the centralization of the police services came with the absorption of the party's intelligence organizations with the police apparat. … [The] Reich Security Headquarters … obtained a huge store of police files and intelligence from the party apparat, and it took over the Sicherheitsdienst's foreign intelligence department, and its special concern for the investigation of opposition movements and internal German currents of opinion. …
[NOTE: "We need some of those field operatives out in the field. We need some of those intelligence analysts out in the field," [FBI Director Kash] Patel told Congress last month. "We need their expertise in your states, in your counties, in your towns because the threat to this country in 2025 is everywhere, and we cannot quarterback that mission from Washington, D.C., alone.” NPR,https://www.npr.org/2025/06/05/g-s1-70449/fbi-kash-patel ] …
The creation of the Reich Security Headquarters in 1939 was the point at which Germany was transformed into a 'modern police state’. This transformation was accomplished despite the civil service, the judiciary, and the army, the three great established apparats of the German state ...
The growth of the police apparat to such a position transformed a country into a modern police state.
Valid but tragic conclusions. In both cases one person (with support of his sycophants) walked right through the inherent flaws in the existing strucutres. The comparative section could be set up as a side-by-side table. It would read more easily and forcefully. Excellent work.
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