How to stop Hitler

Matthew Yglesias · 17 Sept 2026 · slowboring.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Matthew Yglesias did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Major historical events do not necessarily have deep intellectual or ideological causes; assuming so is a common fallacy.

Their wordsBut I think this impulse to gild the lily and attribute the rise of Hitler to deep intellectual trends is an example of a pretty common fallacy of assuming that an incredibly important world event must have incredibly important roots.
Our reading
Hitler's rise to power was mainly the product of contingent political and economic mistakes rather than deep ideological inevitability.

Their wordsThe real story of Hitler's rise is mostly a history of contingency - bad choices by specific influential politicians first wrecked the German economy and then handed power to Hitler.