It's stunning in retrospect, but 1922 was really early, and Mr. Bad still a relative nobody. A lot of people around the world were saying crazy things at the ti

It's stunning in retrospect, but 1922 was really early, and Mr. Bad still a relative nobody. A lot of people around the world were saying crazy things at the time. The Weimar Republic was dominated by feuding between the relatively normal Social Democrats who held power, and the more radical German Communist Party who were directed and funded by Stalin, who had a considerable share of the popular vote, and who regarded 'all parties to the right of them to be fascists' - and of course the Social Dems (nominally left of centre) to be the 'worst fascists'. The 'far right' were a weird fringe group that were even used as stooges by the Communists when their objectives aligned i.e. to overthrow the incumbent Social Dems. There were street/youth/thug parties of all stripes. Remember this is the time of Universal Suffrage, the rise of Unions, literally just a few years post Russian Revolution. And of course, there were all sorts of other Germany-specific issues such as hyperinflation etc. - which by some measures is happening right now (real estate, stocks, other assets) and our governments faced with COVID are going to be spending 20 years of deficits in 1 year etc.. The Weimar Republic [1] is a fascinating episode in contemporary history we should really spend more time looking at. By the time Hitler came to power, the cards were in play, so in a way, the 1930's are not nearly as interesting. Hitler did not just magically come out of a bottle in 1932 and take over - really it was the result of complicated set of factors in the 1920's. We should pay more attention there, but it's complicated, and doesn't make for great, populist filmmaking. Edit: 1924 Election results [2] 1932 Election results [3]. You can see this early, the Nazis & Co. were not important until later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1924_German_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1924_German_federal_electi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_elect...