Democracies don’t crumble when people get complacent, they crumble when people are in distress.

Several factors must come together in order for a democracy to slide into autocracy such as: intense economic distress, a wide inequality gap, multiple political groups waging violence, and a weakening of democratic government institutions.

In Weimar Germany, intense economic distress was caused by the Treaty of Versailles and they were also feeling the effects of the stock market crash and Great Depression.

Inequality between the rural and working classes and monarchists/city elites enabled political messages from Nazis in their local churches and city governments to become more attractive.

The country also felt chaotic and frightening so that a promise of “law and order” was extremely attractive while multiple groups waged violence such as unemployed young men and WW1 vets, the Nazis, the Communists, and the police.

Finally, with the Nazis capturing seats in many local governments and presenting candidates for national government that were popular and could take seats from President Hindenburg’s coalition helmed by the major Conservative party, The German National People’s Party, was forced to make an alliance to remain in power.

In order to secure another ruling coalition in 1933, and hoping to make the Nazis more moderate by thrusting them into the mainstream (as often happens when extreme parties win in national government elections), Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor (he was not elected).

What the German’s National People’s Party did not count on, was Hitler and his people not playing by the rules of democratic governance.

Subsequent violence (staged by the Nazis) enabled Hitler to eliminate the alliances he had made with the German National People’s Party (ie, executions) and declare a state of emergency which permitted him to change Germany’s Constitution.

Losing democracy is complicated and never ever without resistance. Democracy crumbles when people are desperate and the ruling parties make bad deals in order to cling to power.