The German experience was a little more complex than McGrath's postings imply. Hitler certainly had a huge, fanatical following, but it was nothing like a majority of the electorate when he was elected Chancellor, as leader of a minority party. Thereafter all semblance of democracy was quickly dismantled.

If pre-war Germany tells us anything, it is how vulnerable a democracy can be to manipulation, and what can result when a nation is made to taste dirt as Germany was under the Versailles treaty.

The biggest political party in Germany in 1933 was the Catholic Party, but Hitler did a deal with Cardinal Pacelli (later Pious XII),whereby Catholic institutions would be left unmolested if Catholics withdrew from all political activity. The Catholic Party, the one democratic organisation that could have stood in Hitler's way, was accordingly disbanded. In the event of course, the Catholics lost out all ways round, as did anyone else who tried striking deals with Hitler. In fairness to Germany's Catholics, it should be said that Paccelli acted over the heads of, and in defiance of the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, among which many clergy, from archbishop downwards, remained courageously defiant of the Third Reich.