Inflation runs riot, sapping an already weakened economy; people go cold and hungry. A weak democratic government fails to maintain order, and is vilified by nationalists furious at the country's fall from world power to beggary. An attempted coup designed to install a dictatorship collapses, and its leaders are tried for treason. But after a final economic breakdown marked by mass unemployment, fascists come to power with wide popular support and institute a ruthless totalitarianism.
Historical parallels are never exact, of course. The Soviet Union is not fated to replay this capsule history of Germany's Weimar Republic. But the possibility cannot...
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