HISTORY DOESN’T REPEAT ITSELF, BUT IT OFTEN RHYMES:  ON Friday, the rioters went after the Columbus statue in Chicago’s Grant Park.  They didn’t succeed.  But I’m a Chicago girl, so I’m livid.

A number of people keep comparing our present situation to the Weimar Republic.  Since I am not exactly the world’s leading expert on the Weimar Republic, I asked my go-to guy for absurdly detailed knowledge of “commies and nazis”–my friend and colleague Maimon Schwarzschild–how apt the analogy is.  Here is his detailed answer:

Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was a deeply troubled state throughout much of its 14 year existence. It came into being with defeat in World War I; it was seen by many Germans, especially those on the political Right, as an illegitimate creature of the Versailles Treaty. It endured hyperinflation in the early 1920s, demilitarisation and some loss of territory, persistent unemployment, and an especially harsh experience of the world economic depression after 1929. It was plagued with violence and political street fighting, carried on by what amounted to private armies associated with the political parties in Germany.

There were at least four such private armies: the Communist force (“Rotfront” or Red Front); the Social-Democrats’ Reichsbanner; the “Stahlhelm” or Steel Helmet – a right-wing but originally non-Nazi armed veterans’ troop; and the Nazi SA (“Sturmabteilung” or Storm Troops).

These private armies – and other similar but more ephemeral forces – fought street battles with each other at various times during the 1920s and early ‘30s. There were short-lived take-overs of cities and towns, and attempted coups like the right-wing Kapp Putsch in 1920 and the Nazi Beer-Hall Putsch in 1923. There were local Communist takeovers after the War and in the early 1920s, usually suppressed by right-wing “Freikorps” – unofficial right-wing brigades. (My grandfather Fritz Schwarzschild was a member of the Soviet which ruled Strassburg for about ten days, until chased off by the French Army which recaptured the city after World War I.)

All of this was obviously different – in various ways – from events in the USA in spring and summer 2020. There were private armies on all sides politically in Weimar Germany. They had – and they used – military firearms. Thousands of fighters (and bystanders) were injured and hundreds killed in armed street battles. The fighters were mostly war veterans; the commanders were experienced officers. In fact, there were millions of recently demobilised veterans in Germany, many of them angry and unemployed, embittered by defeat, trained and experienced with weapons.

The riots we have seen in the US in recent days and weeks have not – thankfully – been on the Weimar Republic scale. The violent groups, to the extent they are organised, like the so-called Antifa and some associated BLM groups, are essentially all on one side. (There are said to be right-wing or “white supremacist” militias that exist as well, but they have not been in evidence in the recent violence.) The rioters or fighters are not mainly – if at all – experienced military veterans. The use of firearms has been limited: certainly no large-scale shootouts.

Yet there are some disturbing parallels, or at least echoes, of what happened during the Weimar years. First, the very emergence (or re-emergence) in the US of ideologically inspired rioting, looting, and street violence. Second, the fact that at least some of the violent factions – like Antifa – appear to be systematically organised and funded, with fairly sophisticated recruitment, training, and communications capabilities. Third, there is the truly disturbing fact that violence seems to winked at – if not actively encouraged – by sympathetic office-holders and by the ever-more-politically-one-sided media, in thrall to the political Left.

(In Weimar Germany, too, the political armies represented the political parties, and they were protected by office-holders – and also by the courts – which were sympathetic to them. In the Weimar Republic, it was especially right-wing governments and judges who winked at right-wing or Nazi violence. Hitler, for example, was liable for severe punishment, or even the death penalty, for the Beer Hall Putsch – his attempted coup by armed force in Bavaria in 1923. Instead, after a trial by sympathetic judges, he served less than nine months “fortress confinement” in Landsberg Prison, where he was accommodated comfortably and free to write, or rather to dictate, Mein Kampf.)

Politically-inspired rioting, looting, arson; bitter racial and ethnic grievances and divisions; deepening ideological antipathies. Colleges and universities that foster one-sided extemism. (The Nazis were especially strong in the Weimar-era universities.) Public officials and media who minimise or cover for violence – creating an atmosphere of impunity for one side in the political struggle. None of these are healthy symptoms.

History – thankfully – may not repeat itself. It’s worrisome though, or at least rather creepy, when it begins to rhyme.

So there you have it.