A review of The Unfathomable Ascent by Peter Ross Range

This is a book for our time. It reads like a novel, but it’s all too real. It’s a book about the past, but it also tells us about our future. If you believe, as I do, that history is the best guide we have to understand where we are headed, then this guide is simply terrifying. Whatever has happened, can happen. And what happened in Germany in 1923 is happening to America today. It’s simply terrifying.

I’m an amateur student of history. I read a lot of history books. But I’m a country mile away from being an actual historian. Professional historians are in it to win it, so they haunt archives, and learn to read dead languages just to be able to be the top expert about something in history. Peter Ross Range isn’t one of those. He describes himself as a “journalist and author”. He has an impressive collection of credentials from institutions like Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. But “journalist and author” does it for me. I’ve read enough books about Hitler to recognize the real thing. The Unfathomable Ascent is the real thing.

Range’s book is different from other books because it reads like a thriller. I know what will happen in some detail, but that doesn’t stop the terror. The way Ross lays it out makes it different. I can read a normal, “professional historian” book in a couple of days. This book took weeks because I couldn’t stand to read more than half a dozen pages before I became so agitated that I had to put it down for a while to cool off.

Let’s start over at a different point.

Chris Coumo, brother of former New York Governor Andrew Coumo and a professional journalist, had a radio show when America was really starting to understand just who had been elected President in 2016. I was listening to him respond to a Trump critic who had phoned into the show. The critic started to compare Trump to Hitler but Coumo immediately cut him off. “No …  no. I won’t stand for that kind of character assassination. Say what you want about Trump’s policies or what he’s doing, but just comparing him to Hitler isn’t right.” There’s a lot of that going around today. News media seems to be afraid of saying the words.

Actually, it is right. The parallels between Hitler and Trump are stunning. Trump is following the very same formula to ascend to absolute power. And it’s working.

There are differences, of course. Hitler started with armed revolution and then turned to elections when that failed. Trump reversed that and didn’t resort to a failed “putsch” until he lost a key election. But now, Trump is following the more gradual electoral path that Hitler and many of the most successful dictators – Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi – are following. The basic formula is to create a populist base that will follow you anywhere and doesn’t really care what you say and do. Once you gain real power, then you don’t ever have to give it up again.

The problem with a disciplined comparison of ideas and policies is that the game you’re playing becomes “solitaire”. The other side simply doesn’t play the same game that you’re playing. The other side accumulates power until they have enough to say, “I win. The game is over.” And it is. Stalin never “gave up” power. Neither did Tito. Neither did Mao. Dictators die, still gripping absolute power. If Trump and Hitler are following the same play book, Trump will destroy American democracy and then die. So, the question, “What game are we really playing?” has to be answered first. The way that question is answered is the same for any game. Are we both following the rules? Trump doesn’t, and Hitler didn’t. The outstanding feature of Range’s book is that the parallel actions of Hitler and now Trump become so glaring and obvious.

When I read The Unfathomable Ascent, I just had to turn away every now and then. If Trump wins the next election, it will be the last one.