This is John Batchelor, conversation with Timothy Ryback, his book Take Over, Hitler's Final Rise to Power.

This is the summer of 1932 to the winter at the end of January 1933.

The story is flabbergasting,

the unlikeliness of event after event.

And herein, the author, Timothy Rybak, describes Gerbels mocking the process that

they had designed to take over Germany, mocking it, about democracy, about how it can be used by its enemies.

Timothy Rybak on Gerbel's mocking the very concept of democracy in the Reichstag. More of this later.

All we have was going to say is that Joseph Gerbils, who was one of Hitler's first

delegates in the Reichside, you know, set explicitly, you know, the sort of

that the, the funniest thing or the craziest thing about democracy is that they give its mortal enemies the tools to

its own destruction.

And so the National Socialists saw the when they got into the Reichstag, they did not come in as

Gubil said.

We don't come as friends.

We don't come as neutrals.

We come as your mortal enemies, and they entered the house with the intention of burning it down.